Free Operation Stranglehold by Dan J. Marlowe

green-uniformed guard and removed a large brass key from one of his pockets. I took the key and unlocked the truck’s doors. I flung one wide, staying behind it to use it as a shield. An older man, also in uniform, stood cringing, carbine held loosely, muzzle down. I reached inside before he saw me and snatched it away from his feeble grip, flinging it over the edge of the road. It whirled end over end and disappeared in the heavy brush far down the precipitous slope. I gave the first carbine an underhanded flip and sent it to join the second.
    A wave of the Luger barrel was sign language enough to induce the older guard to climb down from the van’s prison box. His eyes darted nervously to the groveling figure of his companion who was still on his knees. The older man sat down on his heels in the roadway, not an ounce of opposition in him.
    The guard’s removal provoked an outpouring of prisoners from the van. They dropped down into the road like ants. At least a dozen hit the dirt. Walter Croswell was the third or fourth one out. Even in dirty khakis he looked pure Ivy League.
    I was watching for Erikson. He was the last to climb down, and he did it carefully, moving as though he were fragile. His right arm was done up in a sling made from a black bandanna, and he was supporting the arm with his left hand.
    He stopped dead when he saw me. “You!” he said huskily. “How the hell did they ever get to you?”
    “They have their ways,” I said drily.
    Erikson surveyed the gabbling prisoners who were all talking at once and gesticulating at each other. Then his face darkened when he saw the arrogant-faced young guard whom I’d touched up with the carbine. With more of his usual vigor, Karl strode over to him and kicked him sharply in the ribs. He recovered his balance from the energy expended, then kicked him again. It was so foreign to Erikson’s usual style that I could easily picture what must have taken place to provoke it.
    “Get the prisoners moving, Karl,” I said. “We want them scattered through the hills so the roundup effort will be diluted, and so no special importance can be attached to the fact that you and the kid are missing.”
    Erikson spoke half a dozen sentences. The ragtag group was moving even before he finished. Walter Croswell was standing beside the van, looking at me curiously when he heard me speaking English. With him was another prisoner. It took me a second look to recognize that it was a girl, despite the fact she had long, straight black hair that fell to her shoulders.
    Her hair was confined by a beaded band around her forehead. A fringed leather vest was accentuated by a three-strand necklace of metal and glass beads. A tight-fitting tee shirt, punched out by the nipples of well-developed breasts, was a fine advertisement for the braless look.
    “Get rid of the hippie,” I said to young Croswell in the first words I’d spoken to him.
    “She’s with me,” he answered. He sounded like Joe College. His tone was cool and patricianlike.
    “She
was
with you,” I emphasized. “Get rid of her.”
    “Don’t talk to me like that!” he snapped. “My father sent you, didn’t he?”
    The arrogance of money, I thought to myself, but it was no time for a debate. We’d been lucky already that nothing had come along the road. I’d take care of the girl myself later. “Let’s move it,” I said to Erikson. “Hazel’s waiting down the road with a station wagon.”
    I let the air out of the rest of the truck tires before I joined the others. The driver and the two guards sat huddled at the side of the road. There was no haughtiness in the face of the young one now, just simple fear.
    Erikson was moving so slowly when I caught up to him that I sensed a real problem. He stumbled constantly, seemingly unable to put his feet down evenly. His condition was such that I could envision a major complication in the escape effort.
    Young Croswell walked along in front of us with his companion.