David Morrell: Double Image

The roar of a large machine attracted Coltrane’s notice toward the cumbersome piece of equipment that the men had unloaded from one of the trucks. It had a huge funnel on one side and a spout on the other. It resembled the device that city cleanup crews used to pulverize fallen tree limbs. In this case, the machine was a rock pulverizer that Dragan Ilkovic had brought from one of the many nearby mines. The backhoe was dropping bones into the funnel. The spout on the other side was spewing horrifying pebbles into the back of a truck. The pebbles would be eliminated in a shaft in one of the mines, Coltrane’s informant had suspected. The trouble was, no one could prove that this sanitizing was actually taking place.

Until now , Coltrane thought with fury. Abruptly he noted how quickly the clouds were darkening and thickening. The few flakes of snow had become flurries. He had to work fast. He got a close-up of Dragan Ilkovic, switched to a wide-angle view, and felt his heart stop as the camouflage sheet suspended over him was torn away.

HANDS GRABBED HIS ARMS AND SHOULDERS. Guttural voices barked. Coltrane barely had time to snag the straps on his cameras before he was jerked from the pit. The hands spun him, bringing him face-to-face with two muscular men wearing outdoor clothes, their features flushed with anger. The repeated clicks of his cameras must have alerted them as they searched for intruders. Conversely, the clicks – amplified in the confinement of his narrow shelter – had prevented him from hearing their footsteps creep toward him.

“Okay, guys, calm down.” Coltrane had no hope that they understood him. But if his tone communicated his intent, the men had absolutely no interest in calming down. Instead, they shoved him backward.

Coltrane made a futile placating gesture. “Look, I was only camping. No hard feelings. Why don’t I grab my stuff and leave?”

The men unslung assault rifles from their shoulders.

Several times, in Nicaragua at the start of Coltrane’s career, later in Lebanon and Iran, armed men had confronted him about photographs he had taken. Their attention had always been on his cameras. But these men barely glanced at his cameras. As they raised their weapons, all they seemed to care about was his chest.

Jesus. Coltrane reacted without thinking. Pretending to stumble back, he twisted as if to try to regain his balance, and kept twisting, spinning to face his attackers again, swinging his heaviest camera by the end of its strap. The bulky zoom lens collided with the chin on the man to Coltrane’s right, bone crunching. With a groan, the man lurched to Coltrane’s left, jolted against the second man, and threw off his aim, the second man’s assault weapon blasting chunks from a tree.

Coltrane rushed the men as they toppled into the pit. Swinging the camera again, he cracked it across the second man’s forehead. Blood flying, the man collapsed.

Startled voices echoed from the valley. Coltrane jerked his gaze in that direction. The small figures below had heard the gunshots. They were glaring toward this slope, some of them pointing, others shouting. The heavy-chested man grabbed his rifle and scrambled toward the slope.

Coltrane raced toward the ridge top, entering the dense fir trees on the opposite side. Shadows enveloped him. His cameras banged against him. The one he had used as a weapon was smeared with blood. The lens had shattered. If only the camera isn’t cracked, he hoped. If only the film hasn’t been exposed to light. Despite the frenzy of his descent, he pressed the rewind button and heard a whir, relieved that the motor hadn’t been damaged. Immediately, he lost his balance, a mat of fir needles slipping out from under him. His back struck the ground so hard that his teeth snapped together. He fought to dig in his heels to prevent himself from sliding faster down the slope, but the needles kept giving way. He tumbled, walloped to a stop against a tree, and grimaced from a sharp pain on his right side, finding where the camera had rammed against him.

Have to get the film, protect the film. Hands trembling, he freed a catch at the side of the camera, flipped open the back, and pulled out the rewound film. His elation lasted barely a second as shouts crested the ridge behind him. Fear rocketed through him. Struggling to catch his breath, he shoved the film into a pocket, dropped the damaged camera, and charged down the remainder of the incline.

Even on a sunny day, the massive fir trees in this region were dense enough to filter light, but this had not been a sunny day, the dark clouds massing, turning the afternoon into dusk. The air became colder. Snow started falling again, at first sporadically, then steadily, a gentle blanketing that made a whisper as it settled through the fir boughs.

Behind him, the shouts became more angry. A staccato burst of gunshots shredded tree limbs.

Coltrane reached an ice-rimmed stream, almost tried to leap across but realized it was too wide, and veered to the left. For certain, he couldn’t just jump in and wade to the opposite bank. The water was so cold that it would give him frostbite or hypothermia. He had to try to find a fallen log that bridged it. But the stream widened as he ran along it, and there weren’t any logs. The color of his clothing – brown woolen pants, a green ski jacket, a matching knit cap that he had pulled down around his ears – had been chosen to help him blend with the evergreen forest. He tried to assure himself that at least he had that advantage. The thought didn’t give him much confidence when another stuttering burst of gunshots riddled the trees. Despite the unfamiliar language, the tone of the shouts behind him left no doubt that the men were cursing.

Slowed by the slippery accumulation of snow, Coltrane saw a fir tree close to the stream and noticed that one of its boughs – dead, about nine feet off the ground – extended over the water. He leapt. His leather-gloved hands fought for a grip on the bough. The snow made the bark slick. Straining, he tightened his fingers, dangled, felt the awkward weight of his remaining three cameras hanging from his right shoulder, and struggled hand over hand across the bough.

Behind him, closer, branches cracked. Footsteps thundered. He dropped to the ground on the opposite side of the stream, straightened, and raced deeper into the forest. Determined to get the film from his cameras, he pressed their rewind buttons. Without warning, something yanked him backward. The jolt had such force that he thought he’d been shot. But instead of falling, he hung on an angle, his boots on the ground, his body suspended over the gathering snow. A moment of disorientation cleared and he realized in dismay that a stout branch had snagged one of his camera straps. The branch had torn the right shoulder on his ski jacket. It had gouged his skin. He slipped painfully free of the strap, heard the camera’s rewind motor stop whirring, opened its back, stuffed the roll of film in a pocket, abandoned the tangled camera, and charged onward.

If I can just keep going. The snow’s falling harder. It’ll fill my tracks, he thought. Behind him, heavy splashes told him that some of his pursuers had jumped into the stream, too impatient to wait in line to go hand over hand on the branch. Wails followed, the icy water shocking their bodies. At least some of them will be slowed, Coltrane tried to assure himself.

But he was also slowing. The forest sloped upward. Gasping for breath, he struggled higher, the pain in his ribs getting sharper. Although he had jettisoned two cameras, he still had two others and continued to fear that something would happen to the film in them. Grabbing one as he ran, he pawed open its back and yanked out its rewound film, only to moan in despair when he dropped the cylinder into a drift. Rushing, he stooped to fumble through the snow and retrieve it, shoving it into the jacket pocket where he had put the others.