Assassin's Express (12 page)

“I was worried a lot,” Frost heard the Pace woman say from behind him. Frost said nothing to her. He got up, walked back to the car, and got his pack, fishing in it until he found a small screwdriver ; then he walked back to O'Hara. Frost snatched up the muddy Model 60, then reached under O'Hara's coat and grabbed the Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported Model 29 .44 Magnum. He took the guns back to the car and opened the driver's side door.

“What are you doing?” Frost heard the girl ask.

“I'm fixing his guns so he can't. use them for a while.”

“Why don't you just take 'em and throw 'em in a trash can somewhere?”

Frost looked at her, amazed. “You don't steal a friend's gun—boy!”

“So what are you doing?”

Frost emptied both revolvers and dropped the ammo into his jacket pocket; then with the cylinders still open, he picked up the model 60 and turned the gun over until the right side of the frame was under the screwdriver bit. He found the forwardmost screw, the one under the cylinder cut-out, and started turning it out.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm taking out the crane lock screws on the guns. He won't be able to use them until he finds replacement screws. If he fired them without the crane lock screws in place it'd be dangerous, maybe blow the cylinder out of the frame. All he'll have to do is find a Smith & Wesson warrantee center or a ridiculously well-stocked gunsmith.”

“Out here?” and she gestured to the barren countryside around them.

Frost smiled, laughing, saying, “Yeah—out here—ha!”

Frost did the same thing with the Metalifed N-frame .44, then dropped the screwd safely into the breast pocket of his jeans jacket.

He put the partially disassembled guns on the ground beside O'Hara and turned back to Jessica Pace. “Keys in the car?”

She leaned down, looking inside; then her head popped up over the roof line and she nodded, saying “Yeah.”

“Let's roll then!” Frost started toward the car, giving a last look at O'Hara—he was already stirring, starting to awaken. Frost almost envied him—at least the FBI man would be out of the thing for a while. Frost wished he were.

Frost switched on the wiper blades, telling the girl beside him, “We gotta ditch this FOUO pretty quick—this is instant hot sheet.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Steal a car, I guess—since this is all in the name of good old Uncle Sam—I guess once I get you to Washington, the President ought to be able to cool a grand-theft-auto charge.”

The girl laughed—it was, if not the first time, one of the few times he'd heard her laugh. “You relaxing a little bit?”

“Yes. I guess you were right—about not killing your friend O'Hara.”

“He's a good guy—he was just doin' his job.” Frost hit the wiper blades up to high speed. “I wish this rain would quit.”

“It isn't cold enough for it to turn to ice is it?”

“No. When you were asleep,” he told her, “I had the radio on. There's a chance of severe thunderstorms, but the temperature should stay in the high fifties, lower sixties—it was a Fort Worth station, so I guess we're driving into warmer temperatures all the time.”

“How long before we hit Dallas?” she asked him.

“I guess about three hours—more or less,” Frost answered. “I'm gonna have to stop for gas again—maybe I can swap cars when I do.” Frost lit a cigarette, watching the rain, slowing his speed a little below fifty. “Why do you think Plummer told O'Hara you were an assassin?”

“I think he didn't trust O'Hara, figured maybe O'Hara was in on things with the double agents on the list. That's why he told him to kill you and put me away, then call him—he would have probably sent his own people to get me and bring me in.”

“None of Plummer's people are involved in this, then?”

“No—see, Plummer is technically part of the CIA, but it's a separate agency, completely autonomous. He reports to the National Security Counsel and the President—that's it. As far as I can understand it, some U.S. deep-cover agents have moled into the Soviet Union so well they've been operating for years. With Plummer being independent, changes in political administrations, in the CIA—none of that interrupts his operations.”

“I still don't see why, though, that he helped get out the story that you're an assassin. Isn't that—”

“No,” she interrupted. “He's just playing along with the idea—he may be in jeopardy, too. I don't know about that. I think he was doing the only thing he could.”

“Still, though,” Frost began, then gave up, shaking his head and leaning over to flick on the radio. The rain was slackening, but there was an ominous look to the sky off to his left.

“... tornado alley for nothing. To repeat, this is a tornado warning for—”

Frost turned up the volume on the radio, listened to a string of town names he didn't recognize and county names—one stuck with him. He'd just seen a sign that they had entered it five miles back. “. . . with softball-sized hail reported—that wasn't a mistake, softball, not golf ball. Hail and damaging winds—”

“Why me?” Frost groaned, looking skyward through the windshield.

“What are you talking about?” Jessica Pace asked him.

“I was just wondering why all this kinky weather has to come down on me—and right now. Why?”

“Well, the climate does seem to be changing, you know.”

Frost just looked at her as he listened to the radio announcer recite the litany of what you were supposed to do in the event you sighted a funnel cloud. He left the radio on, heard the weather bulletin repreated, then breathed a sigh of relief when the music came back on. He knew the tornadoes were out there, knew what to do if he sighted one, but being constantly reminded to expect one wasn't something he enjoyed. He started looking for a gas station; it was time to get rid of the car. He glanced down at the ashtray and smiled. It had been full for at least an hour.

There was a large service station just off the road on his right. A clearly marked exit ramp looked as though it led right to it. Frost, glancing behind him in the rear-view and almost shocked not to find a trailer there, started edging over right, his directional on. He eased up on the gas, braking a little to dispel any moisture on the brakes before he actually needed them. He was tired, he realized, having driven through the night after they'd taken the car from O'Hara. Frost was somewhat grateful for the rotten weather—it was keeping the police so busy they hadn't had time to find him with the stolen car. Frost stopped at the
Yield
sign. The rain was still so heavy that he had a hard time seeing through it any great distance and the FOUO car had poor defrosters unless the temperature was turned up all the way. When Frost had tried that he had felt as if he were suffocating.

He made a right, then a quick left into the far driveway of the gas station, pulling up by the far end of the large concrete apron rather than over by the pumps. He turned to the girl. “When I get the car, however I do it, you be ready to run and don't forget my backpack.” He scratched his several-day-old beard, then pushed the keys for the FOUO car under the front seat.

“What are you doing that for?”

“Look—once the feds get this back if they can't find the keys, they'll have to get new keys made—and that means they'll raise taxes. What am I—a fool?”

She looked at him a moment, then started to smile, and Frost, reaching across and touching her left thigh with his right hand, said, “Be back in a flash with new wheels, kid—keep the faith!”

Frost opened the door quickly, instinctively pulling up the collar of his jeans jacket against the rain although it almost felt good to him; he had neither bathed nor washed his hair since the last time he'd shaved.

Frost ran his tongue across his teeth as he ran toward the open side door between the two large garage-type doors protecting the mechanic's work area from the rain. He promised himself that as soon as he'd stolen the car, he'd at least find the time and opportunity to brush and floss his teeth.

Frost hit the small door, fought the slick-feeling metal doorknob, and gave it a hard twist, then stepped through, inside. Water streamed down his face from his hair; his eye patch felt sodden, the collar and back of his shirt under the jeans jacket heavy and cold. There was no one in the work area. He glanced to his left and started across the bay past a car in the middle of an oil change. His wet jeans clung to his legs, making him feel heavy as he walked into the office.

He took one step up, then stopped. There was a guy wearing a light-blue shirt with the name “Raphael” on the pocket and around him were two guys dressed like cowboys, almost as wet-looking as Frost felt; and a massive-looking man in a plaid shirt and windbreaker with a truckdriver's wallet in his right rear pocket and a sheath for a big lock-blade folding hunter on his hip. All four of the men were staring at Frost. Frost smiled, then looked over their collective shoulders. A small, fuzzy-pictured color television set was mounted on the wall in brackets, the sound too low for him to hear accurately what the news announcer was saying. But there was a picture on the screen—his hair had been combed for once. It was the photo taken of Frost after he'd foiled the airline hijacking some months earlier.
²
Two men, trying to get the place to Cuba, had used a knife held at the throat of a stewardess as their lever. Frost had stopped them with the help of a woman passenger. A smile crossed his lips a moment as he remembered her, wondering what she was doing now.

The gas-station attendant—Raphael—leaned across to the television set, reached up, and raised the sound. “. . . wanted in connection with a string of bizarre incidents which began several days ago in Los Angeles. To repeat, federal authorities are looking today
for Henry Stimpson Frost,
former captain in the U.S. Special Forces and reputed mercenary soldier. The Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned persons that if Frost or the suspected female assassin he is traveling with should be spotted, both are to be considered armed and dangerous. . . .”

Frost, the smile riveted to his face, walked past the burly truckdriver, reached past Raphael, the gas-station attendant, and the two motorists, and turned off the television set.

He looked at the man named Raphael. “Poor reception anyway.”

The truckdriver made the first move and Frost countered the haymaker by wheeling right, stepping inside the truckdriver's punch. As the right flew past him, Frost's left elbow smashed back, into the bull-of-a-man's solar plexus. Frost's right elbow snapped up and back into the chest, his left foot driving down across the right foot of the truckdriver. As the man started doubling forward, Frost wheeled again—this time left—stepping out of the truckdriver's failing guard. Frost's left fist shot out in a straight jab to the man's chin.

The gas-station attendant was already starting to react, a revolver coming up in his right hand from behind the cash register. As Frost finished the left jab to the truckdriver's chin, Frost swung his left out toward Raphael in a wide arc, the fist opening, the edge of Frost's left hand connecting with the left side of Raphael's neck. The gun fell from Raphael's right hand and clattered to the floor.

Now the two cowboy motorists were coming at Frost, their hands reaching for him. Frost's right leg went up, feigning a knee smash to the nearest man. The man started to block it; Frost's right foot kicked out instead. Frost's instep connected hard with the man's left kneecap, his right fist shot up and out, the middle knuckles aimed just below the Adam's apple. Frost's right pulled back, then hammered forward again for a second blow.

The one-eyed man backstepped. The second cowboy, stumbling over the first man going down in front of him started to dive toward Frost who sidestepped. The cowboy bypassing him, hitting into a pyramid-shaped stack of motor-oil cans, that crashed down to the floor. Frost wheeled right, his left foot shooting out and catching the cowboy near the tail bone, kicking him forward and further off balance, into a couch at the far end of the office.

Frost wheeled one-hundred-eighty degrees around to his left. His right hammered forward, clipping the chin of the first cowboy who was already on his feet; the man stumbled back.

Frost started to spin left, then ducked. Raphael, having the biggest storage battery Frost had ever seen in both hands, hurled it. Frost hit the floor; the battery sailed over him. As Frost glanced back, the battery hit the plate-glass office window, the glass shattering.

Suddenly the office was streaming water, the wind outside blowing the rain at them. Frost was half-up to his feet when Raphael came at him. Frost's right punched out into Raphael's stomach; then Frost's left angled high for an uppercut to the tip of the gas-station attendant's chin. Frost was on his feet, the truckdriver coming up from his knees. Frost feigned a right-left, one-two combination; the truckdriver raised his guard. Frost's right foot shot up and out as Frost half-stepped to his left, the toe of Frost's combat boot catching the truckdriver just above the big trophy buckle he wore. The man doubled over and fell forward.

Frost glanced up to the wall rack with automobile keys on it. He snatched an odd-shaped, rubber-backed key. The tag wired to it read, “Tightened belts, adjusted timing.” Frost shrugged, glancing into the parking lot. He saw the car belonging to the key—a vintage Volvo P-1800s; about a '67, he judged. Frost jumped through the broken window, over the frame, and into the rain, breaking into a dead run for the off-white two-seater sportster. The door wasn't locked and Frost pulled it open, sliding behind the wheel. “Damn it!” He pushed the seat back—a woman had obviously driven the car there and the mechanic hadn't bothered moving the seat back. Frost found the purse-handle-type hand choke, pulled it out all the way, and turned the key. His foot stomped down on the clutch, his right hand moving the short throw floor-mounted stick into first, his right foot stomping down on the gas as he raised his left off the clutch. The drive-shaft-mounted emergency brake was already off and the car streaked forward, the tires screeching. Frost slowed the car. Balancing it with the gas pedal and clutch rather than keeping his foot on the brake, he stopped beside the FOUO car. Jessica Pace was already out, running around the front of the Volvo. Frost reached across, working the door handle. The woman tossed his pack and her purse through the open door first, onto the jump seat, then almost threw herself inside. “Ready?”

“Yeah—ready,” she shouted back. Frost punched down on the gas, his right hand pushing in the choke; the tach raced up over three thousand RPMs before Frost stomped on the clutch, revved the gas pedal, double-clutched to upshift, and did a racing charge from first to third, cutting the wheel hard right as he did. He let up on the clutch; the car stalled a second, then streaked forward. He double-clutched and down-shifted into second, making the turn onto the freeway entrance ramp fast and tight, the Volvo's rear end fishtailing a little on the slick roadway. As it started straightening, he punched the H-pattern manual into third, then hauled it into fourth gear as they jumped the acceleration ramp and hit the highway.

Frost found the small lever on the steering column and flicked it; the red light came on in the dash and the engine noise dropped. “Electric overdrive,” he grunted.