Read Online Operation Stranglehold by Dan J. Marlowe - Free Book Online Page A

cans into a soup pot over the campfire to make a heartening slumgullion.
    “Yes,” I replied.
    But if my tone was less hearty than hers, there was a reason.
    From looking at the map and studying the situation, I was sure that Karl Erikson had made his move from somewhere in the near vicinity.
    Erikson was a shrewd, powerful, painstaking man, but he had made his move and failed.
    And I didn’t know why.
    • • •
    We got off to a flying start in the morning.
    I woke to find my sleeping bag unzipped and a bare-assed Hazel crawling in with me. “I’ve never done it in Spain,” she stated. “For that matter, I’ve never done it in a sleeping bag.”
    She managed matters so well that I was hard before I was fully awake. It wasn’t as good as Hemingway makes it sound, but it wasn’t all that bad either. “Way—to—go, Horseman,” Hazel murmured in my ear as I jackhammered her encompassing flesh. “Way—to—go!”
    We relaxed in the sleeping bag after our burst of energy. “That was a real ring-a-ding-ding session,” my redhead sighed. “I’ve always heard it was better at higher altitudes.”
    It hadn’t been that good for me, but when it is for the woman, that’s seven innings of the ball game. I reached out an exploratory foot from the unzipped bag and pushed the tent flap open. Pale sunlight had dispersed the worst of the previous night’s misty fog. I had a quick cup of coffee while Hazel curled up in the sack again. There was no need for last minute instructions; I’d covered as many contingencies as I could think of while we were driving up.
    I woke her when I was ready to leave. She clamped her arms around my neck and gave me a goodbye kiss. I backed out of the tent and the flap dropped behind me. I went to the Opel and took out the canvas shoulder bag I’d crammed with tinned and dried rations the night before. I’d packed enough to last for three days. Julio had said the prisoner transfer was to take place today, but with the unpredictability of Spanish schedules I wanted to be prepared.
    I checked myself before I took off: gun, box of ammo, matches, knife, can opener, full canteen, six-power binoculars. With the essential gear draped from both shoulders, I still had my hands free.
    I looked down at the gravel road which stretched for a quarter mile in each direction before it was cut off by curves. I could hear nothing but the rustling of pines and the chirping of birds in the after-dawn breeze. In the solitude of the mountains sounds carry clearly and over long distances. It was one of the problems.
    I eased myself down the steep dirt bank into the roadbed, checking my progress with my heels. Then I walked uphill toward the nearest crest. My map wasn’t detailed enough to show each bend and twist in the road, and I needed a good spot to set an ambush.
    I wanted a place that would give me a view of the road for at least a mile ahead. I knew what I’d be watching for: a boxlike vehicle with its body mounted behind a regular truck cab; double axle drive with dual wheels at the rear; wire screen mesh covering the single small window high in the side of the sheet-metal body. The van had only one purpose, the transportation of prisoners, and it wasn’t going to be hard to recognize it I was expecting trouble. I didn’t know what kind, but trouble. Erikson had gone this route, and hadn’t made it. The resistance he’d run into must have been a good bit more than he expected. And since a hijack attempt had been made once, it figured that extra security measures had been laid on.
    I found an intercept point along a relatively straight stretch of road between two sharp curves. The prisoner van would not be proceeding at speed. As the crow flies it was no more than 1000 yards from where Hazel was waiting with the Opel beyond a lower hairpin turn.
    I staked myself out in bushes on the bank above the road, and waited. Only three cars and one truck passed in the first hour. The rising sun removed the