Assassin's Express (5 page)

It was a sanitarium; white-uniformed nurses and orderlies stood behind or beside wheelchairs—the people, arranged almost like pieces on a chessboard, all started toward him. Hearing the sounds of voices getting louder, he glanced behind him, then started to run.

“Get out of the way—look out!” Frost shouted.

No one moved. He looked behind him, to where the nurses and patients and orderlies were staring. Almost as if they'd rehearsed it, ten of the twelve policemen who'd run after him were flipping over the fence.

Frost wing-shot the High Power over their heads. One of the officers tripped as he cleared the fence; the others ducked into the bushes or flattened themselves on the ground. Someone shouted, “Don't shoot—look out.”

A smile crossed Frost's lips. He thought if he could have seen his own smile in a mirror he would have called it wicked.

He started running again, toward the center of the knot of old people and hospital workers.

“Halt! Halt!” There was a shot and Frost spun around, seeing a policeman in the center of his pursuers with a service revolver still pointed muzzle-skyward. Frost started to turn, to run. There were hands grabbing at his shoulders and he wheeled, staring into watery gray eyes in a face that was a field of wrinkles.

“Hold it, boy!”

The man had to be eighty, but the eyes, despite their wateriness, were dead serious.

Frost looked at the man. Then, controlling his voice, making it dead serious, he whispered in a confidential tone, “I'm really an apprentice G-man and this is a training film—relax.”

There was a puzzled look in the eyes and Frost shrugged off the restraining hands as gently as he could, then started running again.

He saw what he wanted—a fence, on the far side of the sanitarium grounds.

Frost ran dead-out-the Browning High Power cocked and locked in his right fist—hearing the shouts of the policemen behind him, nurses screaming, some of the old people shouting; one of them laughing, another screaming, “Right on!”

Frost hit the fence, rammed the pistol into his trouser band, and jumped, getting hold of the top of the fence. He felt something holding his left ankle. He looked down—at a white-coated orderly with curly blond hair and a look of determination in his face. Frost kicked him with his right foot square in the look of determination, then flipped the top of the fence.

Frost hit the ground, but it wasn't level and he started to roll, snatching at his gun as he splayed out on the ground at the base of a low embankment. He pushed himself up; then ran toward the parking lot a hundred yards to his left. All he could see were police cars. One had the Mars lights on, the doors open. He spotted four policemen disappearing around the far corner of the lot—evidently having just run from the car.

Frost heard somebody shouting. “Shit, Larry! You left the motor runnin'!”

Frost hit the police car, almost throwing himself behind the wheel. Cranking the stick into reverse, he cut a wide arc to his right, then threw the transmission into drive. He started out of the lot; the rubber screeched as he stomped hard on the accelerator. The cops who'd been following him were running toward him; one of them threw himself on the hood of the car. Frost stomped hard on the brakes, then threw the car into reverse, cutting another wide arc. The cop fell off the hood of the patrol car; the front passenger door caught on the fender of another police car and tore away.

Frost got the transmission into drive again, then hammered the gas pedal down under his soggy right shoe. He heard and felt the leather squish, then lost the sound in the roar of the engine. The driver's side door slammed closed as he wheeled hard right out of the parking lot into the street.

There were police cars blocking the far end of the street, but Frost didn't worry about them—he wasn't going that way, he knew. He cut the wheel into another hard right, into the rear of the hospital driveway, toward the far parking lot where he'd left the taxicab.

He could see it ahead of him. Cutting the wheel hard left, he peeled off the police car's left front fender on a concrete abutment. Then, cutting the wheel right, he stomped hard on the brakes, threw the gearshift lever into park, and half-fell out of the squad car.

“The keys! What the—” But Frost found the taxicab keys in his trouser pockets, fumbled the door lock and crammed inside behind the wheel.

He pumped the pedal, turned the key; the taxi didn't start. He tried it again. The car started, then stalled out. “Flooded,” he muttered, looking over the hood of the taxi, watching as the squad cars closed into the parking lot, seeing the policemen who were on foot converging on him. “Patience,” he muttered; then counted to ten, forced a smile, and slowly turned the key. The engine rumbled to life and Frost touched the fingers of his left hand to his lips and planted a kiss on the dashboard.

He revved the engine, then before it slowed, was already hauling the cab into reverse.

There was a drag. He released the emergency brake; the cab lurched backward—too fast. He hammered into the front end of the nearest squad car, before he worked the shift into drive, stomped on the gas, and started across the parking lot.

There were two police cars, wheeling to a half a hundred yards in front of him. Frost cut a sharp right, bouncing off another police car just parked there, then started diagonally across the parking lot. There was a grassy hill on the far side and he didn't know what was beyond it. He got his right foot all the way to the floor and started toward it, the taxicab bounced up over the low curb, then ground up the grassy hill. Frost couldn't see anything past the top, and then he was there. The hill dropped off and Frost felt a sickening feeling in his stomach as the taxi sailed through midair, every bone in his body shuddering as the taxi impacted.

“My God—I'm alive,” he rasped, then pounded his foot to the floor. He was back on the broad palm-lined boulevard and he didn't understand how. There was honking, shouting, and he realized he was driving against the flow of traffic. He tapped the brake pedal, cut the wheel hard left, and skidded from a sloppy bootlegger turn up and over the grassy area separating the two-way traffic. Bouncing into the opposite lanes, he joined the flow of cars.

Miraculously, there wasn't a police car behind him, and he had no desire to push his luck. Frost hauled the cab into the far right lane and made the first right, then turned down an alley. He could hear sirens in the distance. He didn't wait for them. Reaching into the rear seat he snatched up his luggage and ran toward the far end of the alley. There Frost sank into a heap behind a fence, caught his breath, then boosted himself up and looked over—a Doberman lunged up toward him, missing his left hand by less than an inch as he let go of the fence top and dropped back into the alley.

Frost grabbed up his baggage and started to run again. He could still hear the Doberman barking and yelping so he turned his head to shout, “Sorry!”

Having found the nearest good-sized men's clothing store and purchased a pair of slacks as an excuse to use the dressing room, Frost left his luggage temporarily behind the cashier's desk and changed out of his ripped and grass-stained blue three-piece suit. The slacks weren't bad, really, but the price had been a little inflated he'd thought—and besides, he hadn't needed them, just the place to change. He'd told the clerk who'd waited on him that he'd been the victim of muggers whom he'd repelled and that he felt so self-conscious about his appearance that he wanted the fresh clothes before consulting the police. He didn't think the clerk had bought the story. There was no reason it should have been bought—why purchase a pair of slacks when you're carrying luggage, one piece of which is clearly a suit bag? In the taxicab he'd taken after leaving the store, Frost had changed out of his suitcoat and into a blue denim jeans jacket. His shoulder rig and the Browning High Power were wrapped up in his old pants. He'd changed taxicabs twice more; before he caught the last one he'd ditched the eye patch over his left eye and replaced it with dark, big-lensed aviator-style sunglasses.

As Frost exited the taxicab now, he stretched, and snapping up the collar on his denim jacket, he reached back inside the taxi for his luggage. He'd shifted the shoulder rig, still wrapped inside the old trousers, into the SWAT bag; the Browning High Power nestled in his trouser band slightly behind his left hip bone, butt forward.

“You sure this is where you wanted to go, mister?”

Frost looked back at the cabdriver. “Yeah—I think so.” He handed the man a twenty and, waiting for his change, looked down the narrow, dirt road ahead of him leading off the highway.

“I can drive you in there if you want,” the driver volunteered.

Frost absent-mindedly shook his head, saying, “No—thanks anyway.”

He stood by the side of the highway, staring up the dirt road as the taxi moved off. The sign by the dirt road read BLUEBOY NURSERY. It had to be the right place, he thought. When Deacon had written the name of the place down on the matchbook, Frost hadn't thought to ask anything about it—and Blueboy Nursery was definitely not the kind of nursery where they had little kids. On the last cab drive, Frost had mentally reviewed the only nursery rhyme he knew: Little Boy Blue, come blow your kazoo; The sheep's in the meadow; The cow's in there, too. Where's the little boy who's watching the sheep? Behind the haystack, kissin' Bo-Peep.

“All for nothing,” he smiled, whispering to himself. Blueboy Nursery didn't raise children—it raised Christmas trees, or at least that was what the small print said on the sign.

Frost shouldered his baggage and started walking up the dirt road, his sixty-five-dollar shoes still squishing and wet from the stream under the bridge near the hospital. He'd elected to walk up the road rather than use the taxicab. If somehow the information on where Jessica Pace was hiding had been pried out of Andy Deacon, Frost felt he stood a better chance in a trap if he could take to the woods rather than be stuck in a vehicle.

More important than retrieving his clothes back at the hospital had been retrieving his gear—and now the Interdynamics KG-9 9-mm assault pistol, the bulk of the spare magazines for the Browning, and the big German MkII were secure. If he did successfully link up with Jessica Pace and they started the cross-country run for Washington, in light of the opposition he'd encountered so far, Frost decided he'd need all the firepower he could get. He wished for an assault rifle, but his CAR-15 was locked away back in Indiana and there was no way to obtain one legally in California—California was hardly contiguous to South Bend. He smiled. There were always ways of obtaining almost anything through other than legal means, but for the moment at least Frost had no desire to have a federal weapons charge against him so he'd content himself with his existing ordnance.

He reached a small bend in the steep dirt road and turned it, then stopped. It reassured him to hear the sounds of birds in the trees flanking the road—had there been men in the woods waiting to ambush him, the birds would have gone and there'd be total silence. He remembered once in Vietnam laying an ambush for a high-ranking V.C. officer and the patrol escorting the man. It had been important to capture the officer alive and well for later interrogation. To avoid alerting the patrol Frost had borrowed a cassette tape recorder, and prior to going out into the jungle, left the machine running and recorded forty-five minutes' worth of jungle animal and bird noises. In addition to the regular arms and equipment when Frost had led his men out on the ambush, he'd carried the recorder and two sets of stereo speakers a guy in the motor pool had rigged to work with a portable battery-operated recorder. The V.C. patrol had walked blissfully into the ambush, not suspecting men were hiding in the jungle because the jungle noises had been right. Frost smiled to himself, wondering if some clever FBI or CIA man was sitting off in the trees right now, playing a cassette recording. He hoped not.

Frost started walking again, up the road and toward the small two-story house and wide, low garage beside it. Behind the house and garage Frost could see the nearest of several greenhouses, long, low, glass-enclosed structures. He knew little about plants he realized, but decided it was safe to assume the Blueboy Nursery people grew their trees from seedlings; hence the greenhouses.

Frost walked to the base of the front-porch steps and then started up, leaving his cases on the front-porch floor and walking the few steps to the front door. He saw no doorbell, so he knocked, and lit a Camel in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo, inhaling the smoke deeply into his lungs as he waited. He squinted skyward, despite his dark glasses. The sun was strong, and a pleasantly cool breeze blew against his face from the west.

He turned back to the door, starting to knock again.

His hand froze as the screen door opened outward toward him.

Frost made a smile appear on his face, but held his cigarette cupped in his right hand between his first finger and thumb, ready to be snapped into the face of the person at the door if need be, to buy him a split second to get to his gun.

“Yes—can I help you?”

“Yes, Ma'am,” Frost told the housedress-clad woman. He guessed her age at somewhere in the middle to late fifties; she was somewhat on the chubby side, but not unpleasantly so, with short gray hair carefully combed framing her full face and dark-rimmed glasses balanced precariously on her nose. “I am a friend of Andy Deacon. You know he's in the hospital.”

“Yes—I'd read about it in the papers,” the old woman cooed.

“Well, I understand Andy was supposed to come here and pick up some valuable old books he was interested in acquiring.” Frost always felt stupid using code phrases and recognition signals.

“Books?”

“Yes—a nineteenth-century Canadian imprint of one of Mark Twain's works, I believe—the title escapes me.” Frost waited—now the woman was supposed to tell him the title.

“Old Times on the Mississippi,
wasn't it?”

Frost smiled at the woman, saying, “I'm glad that's over.”

“Andrew said that if he couldn't make it he'd send someone and tell him what to say. Is Andrew going to be all right?”

“Yes, ma'am—I think so,” Frost told her honestly.

“He's my nephew—a good boy, really.” She smiled.

“Yes, ma'am—can I see Jessica Pace?”

“She's out back in the greenhouses—I think greenhouse B with the Georgia pines.”

The woman smiled and as Frost started to turn away, he turned back, saying, “Can I just leave my things here?”

“You can put them inside the door if you'd like.”

“Fine,” Frost told her, as he caught up his baggage and started for the door.

“Just inside here, young man,” the woman cooed.

“Yes, ma'am.” Frost smiled back, stepping inside the small hallway, realizing as he did it that something was wrong, that he was being stupid. He started to let go of the baggage, to straighten up, to snatch at the Browning High Power in his trouser band, when he felt—heard—movement behind him and tried to spin around on the balls of his feet; his right hand touched the butt of the Browning.

It wasn't actually pain, but a dullness; then bright floaters over his eye and a burst of light. Frost could faintly make out the worn Oriental rug smashing up toward his face as the blackness washed over him....

Frost opened his eye, but all he could see was diffused light, no images. There was a sack or maybe a pillowcase over his head—he couldn't be sure. He tried to move, but his hands were bound together behind him at the wrists and he was naked—he could feel the coldness of a stone floor under him. He tried moving again, this time discovering his ankles were tied as well and that when he moved his ankles there was pressure around his neck—some sort of noose.

“You awake?”

It was a woman's voice—he mentally bet with himself it was Jessica Pace.

“I said, you awake?”

“You get your butt over here and untie me—right now,” Frost snapped.

“Shut up,” and Frost felt something hard and round pressing against the front of his forehead. “Know what that is?”

“A gun—do I win the prize?” Frost rasped angrily.

“
Your
gun—the Browning. Now you keep quiet and only answer the questions I ask—try moving, try telling me something I didn't ask about and you get this,” the voice snarled—and the muzzle of the Browning ground into his forehead.

“Now—Andy Deacon sent you—what's your name?”

“You read my wallet,” Frost snapped.

“What's your name?” The voice was rising, angry-sounding, and he could feel the muzzle of his gun twisting hard against his forehead.

“Frost—Hank Frost—you know that, damn it!”

“What did Deacon tell you?”

“Who are you?” Frost asked.

This time the muzzle of the pistol moved away from him. He could feel its absence, then feel it hammer into his stomach. His back arched and his legs stretched and he felt the noose tightening around his neck.

“Now we'll try again,” he heard the voice say, the words sounding as though they were being spit out between clenched teeth.

“What?” Frost choked.

“What did Deacon tell you?”

Frost mentally shrugged, trying to ease the tension of the noose around his neck as he spoke, recounting what Deacon had told him in the hospital room, the recognition signal to the old woman—Deacon's supposed aunt—everything. Finally, after what seemed to him like an eternity, the woman asked another question.

“What are your plans?”

“Are you Jessica Pace?” Frost asked back.

The muzzle of the pistol left his forehead and he braced for another shot to the stomach. Instead, he felt something—a hand—at the top of his head, felt the sack or pillowcase moving; he almost choked as the thing caught in the noose around his neck. The thing covering his head—it was a pillowcase—was pulled up, and he squinted against the light.

The woman had long, straight dark-red hair, brown eyes, and a pale complexion. She looked tall—at least from where Frost lay on the floor. Deacon had described her to him and as far as Frost could tell, this was the woman. His Browning was in her right fist and there was a smaller, medium-frame automatic shoved into the beltless waistband of the faded blue jeans she wore.

“Jessica Pace?”

“Yeah,” the woman answered emotionlessly.

“Sorry about having to cold-cock you, pal,” she added.

“Aww, listen—I can understand your wanting tobe on the cautious side.” Frost smiled.

“Then no hard feelings?” The woman smiled.

“Hey—listen, just get me untied, huh?” Frost told her.

She bent down to his ankles, using a pair of household shears to cut the clothesline binding his feet together. Almost immediately, the pressure around his neck and throat eased, the tension on the noose around it relaxed.

She pulled the pillowcase all the way off; then held the scissors close to his throat—too close, he thought—and snipped the noose. She turned him around on the floor and cut the ropes around his wrists. “There—why don't you take a stretch?”

“Good idea,” Frost said cheerfully. He noticed the Browning in her hand had the safety on, the hammer cocked. Frost swept his left leg around and up, catching Jessica Pace behind the knees, making them buckle. His hands reached up, grabbing for the High Power, his left thumb easing between the cocked hammer and the frame to prevent the pistol from going off. His right hand whipped down, snatching the blued medium-frame automatic from her pants as she started to fall face-first to the floor.

The girl came out of it in a roll, starting for him, but Frost was already on his feet, one pistol in each hand. “Why the routine?” Frost snarled.

“I had to be sure—”

“Why the hell you take my clothes, tie me—”