Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

‘I’m sorry, Alan,’ she said. ‘But a situation like this is so alien to me. I’ve never had to face anything like it.’

I waved towards the knoll. ‘I was doing a bit of thinking up there. It occurred to me that perhaps my assessment of everything has been wrong – that I’ve misjudged people and events.’

‘No!’ she said definitely. ‘You’ve made a strong case against Slade.’

‘And yet you would want me to give him the gadget?’

‘What is it to me?’ she cried. ‘Or to you? Let him have it when the time comes – let us go back to living our own lives.’

‘I’d like to do that very much,’ I said. ‘If people would let me.’ I looked up at the sun which was already high. ‘Come on; let’s be on our way.’

As we drove towards the fork I glanced at Elin’s set face and sighed. I could quite understand her attitude, which was that of any other Icelander. Long gone are the days when the Vikings were the scourge of Europe, and the Icelanders have lived in isolation for so many years that the affairs of the rest of the world must seem remote and alien.

Their only battle has been to regain their political independence from Denmark and that was achieved by peaceful negotiation. True, they are not so isolated that their economy is separated from world trade – far from it – but trade is trade and war, whether open or covert, is something for other crazy people and not for sober, sensible Icelanders.

They are so confident that no one can envy their country enough to seize it that they have no armed forces. After all, if the Icelanders with their thousand years of experience behind them still find it most difficult to scratch a living out of the country then who else in his right mind would want it?

A peaceful people with no first-hand knowledge of war. It was hardly surprising that Elin found the shenanigans in which I was involved distasteful and dirty. I didn’t feel too clean myself.

III

The track was bad.

It was bad right from where we had stopped and it got steadily worse after we had left the river and began to climb under Vatnajökull. I crunched down into low gear and went into four-wheel drive as the track snaked its way up the cliffs, doubling back on itself so often that I had a zany idea I might drive into my own rear. It was wide enough only for one vehicle and I crept around each corner hoping to God that no one was coming the other way.

Once there was a slide of rubble sideways and I felt the Land-Rover slip with rear wheels spinning towards the edge of a sheer drop. I poured on the juice and hoped for the best. The front wheels held their grip and hauled us to safety. Soon after that I stopped on a reasonably straight bit, and when I took my hands from the wheel they were wet with sweat.

I wiped them dry. ‘This is bloody tricky.’

‘Shall I drive for a while?’ asked Elin.

I shook my head. ‘Not with your bad shoulder. Besides, it’s not the driving – it’s the expectation of meeting someone around every corner.’ I looked over the edge of the cliff. ‘One of us would have to reverse out and that’s a flat impossibility.’ That was the best that could happen; the worst didn’t bear thinking about. No wonder this track was one way only.

‘I could walk ahead,’ Elin said. ‘I can check around the corners and guide you.’

‘That would take all day,’ I objected. ‘And we’ve a long way to go.’

She jerked her thumb downwards. ‘Better than going down there. Besides, we’re not moving at much more than a walking pace as it is. I can stand on the front bumper while we go on the straight runs and jump off at the corners.’

It was an idea that had its points but I didn’t like it much. ‘It won’t do your shoulder much good.’

‘I can use the other arm,’ she said impatiently, and opened the door to get out.

At one time in England there was a law to the effect that every mechanically propelled vehicle on the public highway must be preceded by a man on foot bearing a red flag to warn the unwary citizenry of the juggernaut bearing down upon them. I had never expected to be put in the same position, but that’s progress.

Elin would ride the bumper until we approached a corner and jump off as I slowed down. Slowing down was no trick at all, even going down hill; all I had to do was to take my foot off the accelerator. I had dropped into the lowest gear possible which, on a Land-Rover is something wondrous. That final drive ratio of about 40:1 gives a lot of traction and a lot of engine braking. Driven flat out when cranked as low as that the old girl would make all of nine miles an hour when delivering ninety-five horsepower – and a hell of a lot of traction was just what I needed on that Icelandic roller-coaster. But it was hell on fuel consumption.

So Elin would guide me around a corner and then ride the bumper to the next one. It sounds as though it might have been a slow job but curiously enough we seemed to make better time. We went on in this dot-and-carry-one manner for quite a long way and then Elin held up her hand and pointed, not down the track but away in the air to the right. As she started to hurry back I twisted my neck to see what she had seen.

A helicopter was coming over Trölladyngja like a grasshopper, the sun making a spinning disc of its rotor and striking reflections from the greenhouse which designers put on choppers for their own weird reasons. I’ve flown by helicopter on many occasions and on a sunny day you feel like a ripening tomato under glass.

But I wasn’t thinking about that right then because Elin had come up on the wrong side of the Land-Rover. ‘Get to the other side,’ I shouted. ‘Get under cover.’ I dived out of the door on the other side where the cliff face was.

She joined me. ‘Trouble?’

‘Could be.’ I held open the door and grabbed the carbine. ‘We’ve seen no vehicles so far, but two aircraft have been interested in us. That seems unnatural.’

I peered around the rear end of the Land-Rover, keeping the gun out of sight. The helicopter was still heading towards us and losing height. When it was quite close the nose came up and it bobbed and curtsied in the air as it came to a hovering stop about a hundred yards away. Then it came down like a lift until it was level with us.

I sweated and gripped the carbine. Sitting on the ledge we were like ducks in a shooting gallery, and all that was between us and any bullets was the Land-Rover. It’s a stoutly built vehicle but at that moment I wished it was an armoured car. The chopper ducked and swayed and regarded us interestedly, but I could see no human movement beyond the reflections echoed from the glass of the cockpit.

Then the fuselage began to rotate slowly until it was turned broadside on, and I let out my breath in a long sigh. Painted in large letters along the side was the single word – NAVY – and I relaxed, put down the carbine and went into the open. If there was one place where Kennikin would not be it was inside a US Navy Sikorsky LH-34 chopper.

I waved, and said to Elin, ‘It’s all right; you can come out.’

She joined me and we looked at the helicopter. A door in the side slid open and a crewman appeared wearing a white bone-dome helmet. He leaned out, holding on with one hand, and made a whirling motion with the other and then put his fist to the side of his face. He did this two or three times before I tumbled to what he was doing.

‘He wants us to use the telephone,’ I said. ‘A pity we can’t.’ I climbed on top of the Land-Rover and pointed as eloquently as I could to where the whip antenna had been. The crewman caught on fast; he waved and drew himself back inside and the door closed. Within a few seconds the helicopter reared up and gained height, the fuselage turning until it was pointing south-west, and then away it went until it disappeared into the distance with a fading roar.

I looked at Elin. ‘What do you suppose that was about?’

‘It seemed they want to talk to you. Perhaps the helicopter will land farther down the track.’

‘It certainly couldn’t land here,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re right. I could do with a trip back to Keflavik in comfort.’ I looked into the thin air into which the chopper had vanished. ‘But nobody told me the Americans were in on this.’

Elin gave me a sidelong look. ‘In on what?’

‘I don’t know, damn it! I wish to hell I did.’ I retrieved the carbine. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

So on we went along that bastard of a track, round and round, up and down, but mostly up, until we had climbed right to the edge of Vatnajökull, next to the ice. The track could only go one way from there and that was away, so it turned at right-angles to the ice field and from then on the direction was mostly down. There was one more particularly nasty bit where we had to climb an outlying ridge of Trölladyngja but from then on the track improved and I called Elin aboard again.

I looked back the way we had come and was thankful for one thing; it had been a bright, sunny day. If there had been mist or much rain it would have been impossible. I checked the map and found we were through the one-way section for which I was heartily thankful.

Elin looked tired. She had done a lot of walking over rough ground and a lot of jumping up and down, and her face was drawn. I checked the time, and said, ‘We’ll feel better after we’ve eaten, and hot coffee would go down well. We’ll stop here a while.’

And that was a mistake.

I discovered it was a mistake two and a half hours later. We had rested for an hour and eaten, and then continued for an hour and a half until we came to a river which was brimming full. I pulled up at the water’s edge where the track disappeared into the river, and got out to look at the problem.

I estimated the depth and looked at the dry stones in the banks. ‘It’s still rising, damn it! If we hadn’t stopped we could have crossed an hour ago. Now, I’m not so sure.’

Vatnajökull is well named the ‘Water Glacier’. It dominates the river system of Eastern and Southern Iceland – a great reservoir of frozen water which, in slowly melting, covers the land with a network of rivers. I had been thankful it had been a sunny day, but now I was not so sure because sunny days mean full rivers. The best time to cross a glacier is at dawn when it is low. During the day, especially on a clear, sunny day, the melt water increases and the flow grows to a peak in the late afternoon. This particular river had not yet reached its peak but it was still too damned deep to cross.

Elin consulted the map. ‘Where are you making for? Today, I mean.’

‘I wanted to get to the main Sprengisandur route. That’s more or less a permanent track; once we’re on it getting to Geysir should be easy.’

She measured the distance. ‘Sixty kilometres,’ she said, and paused.