Assassin's Express (14 page)

Frost was ten yards from the lip of the ditch, when he stopped, wheeled, and threw the KG-9 up on line. Its ventilated front handguard was in his left fist, his right hand vised around the pistol grip. He started pumping the trigger in two-round semiautomatic bursts; the ground in front of him was chewing up as the helicopter crew returned fire. Frost turned, ran, and dove to the ditch. The gunfire louder now. Whoever aboard the chopper was doing the shooting apparently had ammunition to burn, and was firing whatever he had in sustained full auto.

Frost rolled into the ditch, bumped into Jessica Pace's right arm, rasped, “Sorry, kid,” then punched the muzzle of the KG-9 over the lip of the ditch and continued firing.

The helicopter began backing off. “They're going!”

“Nuts,” Frost shouted to the girl. “They're just establishing a beachhead—landing their guys to come at us from the sides of the clearing.”

Frost could see the chopper landing, but at the far side of the field, too far for him to take an accurate shot. He tucked down behind the lip of the ditch and pulled the partially shot-out magazine from the KG-9, replacing it with a fresh one. He had one spare box of fifty rounds in the pack, a little more than enough to load the partially shot-out stick for the KG-9 and the partially shot-out magazine of the Browning. He started doing that, rasping to the girl, “Keep an eye on 'em—” as he sluffed the pack off his shoulders.

He punched the 115-grain JHPs down between the feed lips, loading the KG-9 magazine first. He needed sixteen rounds there. “They're not doin' a thing,” the girl told him.

Frost shot a glance over the lip of the ditch as he jammed the last round in place, then whacked the spine of the magazine against the palm of his left hand to seat the cartridges.

He looked back to the Browning, loading it with ten rounds, feeling the magazine full.

“How you doin' on ammo?”

“Got two spares for the Walther, and that's it,” the girl told him without looking at him.

“Save 'em—I'll do the shooting. I got more ammo,” he said. He looked up over the ditch. He could see the helicopter's running lights, see shadowy figures around it. He sucked in his breath hard, a bull horn sounded from the far edge of the field.

“This is the CIA, Frost—we got you nailed down. Got more guys comin'. Give up!”

“They'll kill me, Frost,” the girl rasped.

“I know,” Frost told her.

The bull horn sounded again. “We're gettin' you one way or the other—now give it up!”

A smile crossed Frost's lips, his stubbled cheeks creasing with it. “I always wanted to say this,” he told her; then shouted, “You dirty coppers—you'll never take me alive, see!” He looked at the girl, saw her looking at him, and shrugged, “I like old movies—what can I say?”

“Crazy,” she said emotionlessly; then shouted across the field, “I'm no assassin—and maybe you know that, maybe that's why you want me—”

There was a burst of automatic-weapons fire and Frost dragged the girl down lower behind the lip of the ditch. “Diplomacy struck out, kid,” Frost cracked, readying the KG-9, anticipating there would be no more talk, just an assault, the helicopter going airborne to pin them down, a couple of the self-proclaimed CIA men rushing them. He looked behind him, trying to judge if there was any virtue in making it to the road. There was a car parked there—Frost could just see it from his vantage point. “Maybe more of them behind us,” Frost rasped to the girl.

“It's a damned hit squad! They're out to murder us,” the girl shrieked, taking her silenced pistol, pointing the muzzle up over the lip of the ditch and firing rapid-fire toward the helicopter.

Frost grabbed her arm and pulled her down. “Save the ammo—we'll need it.” He looked over the lip of the ditch as he heard the whirring of the helicopter rotor blades increasing in pitch—they were coming. he realized. Frost snatched the High Power out of the Alessi rig—awkwardly—with his left hand, jacked back the hammer, and clenched it in his fist. “I think we're goin' down, kid,” he rasped, wanting to follow up the remark with something stirring like, “But we'll take a lot of them with us,” but somehow not finding the heart to say it.

There was a loud, unmistakable boom and an almost blinding flash from behind the helicopter. A smile crossed Frost's lips—if Michael J. O'Hara had one consistent ability, it was that he could shout loud. Frost could still make out the words over the noise of the chopper. “FBI—freeze, you turkeys!”

There was a short blast of automatic-weapons fire—Frost saw the flash and heard the noise, then another loud boom and then a scream; then O'Hara's voice. “I said freeze—the next one of you that tries anything doesn't just get knocked on his ass, I'll make chopped liver out of him!”

Frost started up out of the ditch, half-tempted to tell Jessica Pace to wait there, but not bothering since he knew she wouldn't.

Frost started across the field, one gun in each hand, the girl walking slowly beside him. He could hear one of the men by the chopper starting to talk.

“If you're FBI, then get the hell out of here. ClA—you hear that!”

“All I know,” O'Hara was shouting, “is that the next time I shoot, it's for keeps!”

There was another voice, younger, panicked-sounding. “That guy shot my gun right out of my hands.”

The first CIA voice shouted, “Shut up!”

Frost, the KG-9 in his right fist and the Browning in his left, stopped a dozen yards from the chopper, hearing the younger voice saying, “They're coming up behind you!”

Frost rasped, “I think I'm with him—drop 'em!”

It was the CIA voice again and from the weird light of the helicopter running lights, Frost could see the outline of the man it belonged to—tall, thin, a hawk-featured man. The rain still poured down. “These people are federal fugitives—we—”

“Shut up,” O'Hara shouted. “This gun is aimed right at your head, Florence. If they're federal fugitives, then that's my job, isn't it? CIA has nothin' to do with domestic stuff—or at least that's the way it reads, huh?”

“But—”

“But nothin'. Drop the rods and get away from the whirlybird or your head decorates the side of the chopper—so help me.”

Frost kept quiet—it was O'Hara's show and Frost decided the crazy-sounding man was doing all right so far.

“Drop 'em!”

There was a long silence, except for the omnipresent whirring of the helicopter rotor blades. Then, the hawk-featured CIA man spoke, his voice low, sounding menacing in the darkness and the rain. “All right—do as he says. But so help me, whoever you are—when I get my hands—”

“Shut up—if you make me tremble in my boots too much I might
accidentally
pull the trigger and blow you away—move it!”

The men—for the first time Frost counted them—five CIA, men, or at least they said that—dropped their guns, then started edging back. O'Hara walking slowly out of the trees, the big .44 Magnum in both his fists. “Frost—pick 'em up! Miss Pace—get over to the chopper and help the pilot out safely—get his gun and do something nasty but not too expensive to the control panel so they can't fly the thing. And get the radio, too.”

Frost kept low, not crossing O'Hara's line of fire, retrieving the guns. As Frost started gathering up the guns, he felt as though he were in on an illegal-automatic-weapons raid. There was a .45 automatic with a wooden shoulder stock fitted to it; there was an almost unrecognizable semiautomatic sporter, the rifle stock chopped back to pistol grip proportions and the barrel cut to about twelve inches. All the assault rifles were M-16s, selective fire. “Want me to shake 'em?” Frost asked O'Hara.

“Yeah—go shake 'em. May as well have all of it.”

Frost started on the nearest man—the hawk-featured one—and as he searched each man in turn he added to the pile of guns, trying to keep mental tally. Three snubby .38s—one guy had carried two of them—and five 9-mm autoloaders, four lock-blade folding hunters—he finally gave up.

Frost started emptying the guns, then stripped them, snatching parts here and there and throwing the ammo into the darkness. He kept the three revolvers, since he didn't feel like fishing in his pack to get a screwdriver for them.

Frost looked up to see Jessica Pace stepping out of the helicopter. “They're going to need a whole new interior.” She laughed. Frost liked it when she did that.

“Nothin' too expensive—I told you that.” O'Hara groaned. “I might have to pay for it.”

The hawk-faced CIA man shouted, “You'll have to pay for this, all right.”

“Yeah? Well—go suck an egg,” O'Hara snapped back. “Let's get out of here, Frost,” O'Hara shouted. Frost, both guns trained again on the CIA men, started to back away.

His eye riveted on Jessica Pace—she was holding a revolver, apparently the one taken from the helicopter pilot. She had it pointed, her arm straight out in front of her, at the hawk-faced CIA man. Frost shouted at her, “No, Jessica—don't!”

O'Hara was shouting, “Pace—pull that trigger and so help me, I'll drop you where you stand, woman!”

“Why?!” She screamed in the darkness, the rain drumming harder now. “Why? They would have killed us, all of us. That's what they were here for. A damned hit team, that's all they are. They don't see; they don't want to see! No—”

“Jessica!”

The girl turned, looking at him by the glow of the running lights as Frost shouted at her. “If we let 'em go, Jessica, they'll, ahh—” Frost was trying to come up with a reason.

“If you shoot, and I shoot you, lady,” O'Hara shouted from behind Frost, “then all of it's for nothing. You'll never get where you want to go. They'll have won and you'll have given it to 'em on a silver platter.”

Frost watched what he could see of her face and O'Hara's words had apparently clicked with her. She lowered the gun to her side, letting it hang limply as she started walking toward Frost, then past him. Frost stopped her, almost gently taking the gun from her hand. Side by side, Frost and O'Hara backed out of the clearing.

Once, Frost caught a look at O'Hara's face. It registered what Frost was feeling in his guts, registered something he hadn't wanted to say but realized both he and O'Hara knew.

Jessica Pace was cracking up, going progressively more homicidal, more irrational. And the thought that he had her only marginally more than halfway to Washington scared Frost to death.

Frost had debated what was the more pressing need. He'd decided to brush his teeth first—then shave and shower. He brushed twice, almost rubbed the dental floss through the skin of his gums, then shaved, the Norelco balking only slightly at the multiple days' beard growth. Now, after washing his hair and his body at least twice, the one-eyed man stood under the hot steaming water and tried to relax.

He'd let Jessica shower first and she'd promptly fallen asleep on the bed in the motel room. O'Hara had the adjoining room and was now sitting in their room, watching a western on one of the television movie channels cabled into the set. Frost let out a long sigh. He wondered where it would end.

After leaving the CIA people with the disabled chopper, they'd tossed the revolvers and spare parts Frost had lifted from the other guns into the trunk of O'Hara's FOUO car. It was the same car—O'Hara had gotten it back. As they'd driven away, O'Hara had seemingly felt immediately compelled to tell them how he'd followed them—and rescued them. After the fight with Frost, O'Hara has awakened, fumed over what Frost had done to his guns, then hitchhiked back into the town where there had been the fight with the KGB people under Chevasnik and Gorn. There was a U.S. Border Patrol Station there and using his FBI identification, along with the help of the border patrol, he'd gotten the tow-truck operator to get him out to Frost's trailer and car. O'Hara had searched both. He'd gotten the car freed up and found it in perfect running condition except for the smashed-in left rear fender. O'Hara had taken what personal articles he could find that belonged to Frost and the girl, then he'd taken their car. The armorer at the border patrol station had been friends with a local gunsmith who had supplied the crane lock screw for O'Hara's N-frame model 29 and the armorer himself had been able to come up with the J-frame screw for O'Hara's little .38 special Model 60. Using Frost's car, and his guns working again, O'Hara had set out after Frost and Jessica.

Assuming Frost had no choice but to head for the Fort Worth/Dallas area, O'Hara—with the help of a borrowed magnetic Mars light and the use of his Federal I.D. for the few persistent highway-patrol people who'd stopped him—had pushed one hundred miles per hour whenever weather had allowed. He'd reached the service station where Frost had ditched the FOUO car and stolen the Volvo about six hours after Frost had gone. Telling the local police Frost had been assisting a federal investigation, he'd gotten the heat backed off slightly on the auto theft charge and gotten his own FOUO car out of the police impound lot, then continued on. With the radio in the FOUO car, he'd picked up the air-to-ground transmissions between the helicopter and their back-up units on the ground; that led him—he'd admitted with a generous amount of luck—to where Frost and the girl had been cornered by the CIA helicopter crew and its hawk-faced leader.

As Frost toweled down, then pulled on fresh clothes, he decided O'Hara had seemed relatively pleased with himself. Frost studied his face in the mirror again as he put on a fresh black eye patch, crumpling the paper cover and throwing it away. It was fast getting to the point where he would no longer be able to avoid getting into a shoot-out with federal authorities—and despite the girl's story, Frost was in no way eager to start shooting at men who were on the same side he was. If the girl's story was wholly true, at the worst, the men who were leading the field operations could be Communist doubles—which meant the men Frost would wind up trading shots with would be nothing more than patriotic guys doing their duty—they supposed.

He shook his head, noted the added gray hairs in his sideburns, and walked through the bathroom doorway, flicking off the light. O'Hara was just watching the end of the western. Frost poured himself a drink from the quart bottle of Meyers rum. He smelled the dark liquid in the motel-room glass, then sipped at it, its warmth assailing his throat and stomach almost instantly.

“You've got good taste in liquor, O'Hara,” Frost remarked.

The icy-eyed FBI man looked up from the television set, smiled, and nodded.

“Got lousy taste in friends, though.”

“Yeah, well ...” Frost laughed.

O'Hara stood up and flicked off the television, glancing back over his shoulder at Jessica Pace as was Frost. Frost had never seen her sleep so peacefully. “What—you mickey her?” Frost asked.

“Naw—never do that with girls—just gave her two healthy shots of the rum there and as tired as she was, she conked out.”

“Good.” Frost nodded, sipping again at the dark rum.

“You hold onto my crane lock screws? It irks me to have blue screws on a stainless gun and a Metalifed one.”

“Yeah.” Frost nodded, finding his jeans jacket, then fishing in the breast pocket. He handed them across to O'Hara; the FBI man already held a small screwdriver in his hand.

“Good—at least I'll give you that. Ya didn't throw 'em away.”

O'Hara sat down at the table by the motel-room window, pulled the Model 29 out of the Lawman leather rig on the dresser, unloaded it, and started to turn out the incongruous-looking blue screws.

Frost poured himself more of the rum, then sat down opposite O'Hara. Frost had cleaned his guns earlier while Jessica had taken a shower. Without looking up from his work, O'Hara asked, “You think the dame is bonkers,e right”

Frost's eye hardened as he looked past O'Hara to the girl sleeping on the bed.

O'Hara looked up. “If she didn't wake up when the Indians attacked Fort Apache, she won't wake up now. Answer my question.” O'Hara set the Model 29 aside, reached down under the table, and pulled the little Model 60 from the ankle holster, unloading it and then backing out the blued screw.

“Maybe.” Frost sighed. “Maybe she is—but if she is, it's more like battle fatigue.”

“I see ya been thinkin' about it, though, huh?”

“Yeah, well—”

“Look, Ace—if she is, we may have mucho problems. Ya know?”

“What made you bail us out back there?” Frost asked.

“About time you asked me that—beginnin' to think you took me for granted or somethin'. It was all because you didn't shoot me—or let her shoot me.” O'Hara jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the sleeping Jessica. “I was watchin' the superspook there with that wheel-gun she took off the chopper pilot. She was gonna ice everybode right there—not battin' an eye, either.”

“She's been in a rough game the last few yeara—and she didn't choose it either. Plummer just recruited her because she looked like the Russian girl she substituted for. Pulled her out of grad school, gave her the spy-school routine, and then told her about the job, almost brainwashed her into it.”

“Yeah, well—looks like she got the hang of it all right.”

“Just what are your plans—now that you rescued us from the jaws of death and that whole bit?” Frost laughed, trying to change the subject and lighting a Camel in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo.

“Help get ya to Washington—but not to the President.”

Frost sat bolt upright.

“Relax—I got a compromise you'll love. Makes good sense too. Get her to Plummer. If Plummer didn't trust me on the phone and doesn't trust you, gettin' his prize agent back to him oughta show him we're on the up and up. Right?”

Frost nodded, sipping at more of the rum.

“So, fine—Plummer takes her to the President, or tells us to do it, but we get to check her out first before springin' her on the old chief executive. There's still that assassin story. But I get more and more to where I don't buy that—nobody in his right mind would pick a dame like that for an assassin. Blows her cool too much, too eager to knock off folks—know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Frost groaned. “I know what you mean.”

“Take you, for example—you'd be a lousy assassin.” O'Hara laughed. “Lose your temper too much. Your only good quality is persistence—you're stubborn.”

“I wish I could give you a compliment.” Frost laughed. “But I hate to lie.”

“Bite it,” O'Hara cracked, starting to reload his 29 and the little Model 60. “Oughta get yourself a revolver, Frost—cut out all this automatic-pistol nonsense. Get yourself one of them new stainless .44 Magnum 629s—now that's a honey of a gun. That little pipsqueak 9mm you like won't knock a guy down unless you fill him full of holes.”

“No—you miss the idea,” Frost told O'Hara, keeping his face straight. “This one time I was in a windstorm, fightin' some bad guys holed up behind a wrecked automobile. Workin' with a cop who carried a .44 just like you do. Well—two of the guys we were after started out from behind the car, firing subguns, the whole bit. My buddy with the .44 shot the one guy and I shot the other guy with my 9mm. A big, superstrong gust of wind came along—right? Blew over the guy I'd shot. But the one my buddy had plugged with the .44—the wind blew right through the hole and the guy just kept shootin'. Let me tell ya'—”

“Aww, shut up, Frost. You and them sick jokes!”

“You didn't spring your master plan on Jessica Pace yet, did you—about the Plummer detour before she sees the President?”

O'Hara stood up, smiling. He slipped the Lawman leather shoulder harness across his back, anchored the .44 to his belt to keep the holster from swinging out, then bent down to put the little .38 back in his ankle holster.

“Well?” Frost persisted.

“Naw—figured I'd let you do that, sport—since you know the lady better, she trusts you more. She still doesn't trust me. Just watch out she doesn't give me an ice pick in the kidney or somethin' when I'm eatin' a pizza.” Then the smile faded from O'Hara's face. “I'm not kiddin'—I think she still figures 1'm up to somethin', settin' her up. And she'd kill me as soon as look at me. And maybe you, too, Frost. Take this the way I intend it, huh? But I'm glad it's you sleepin' with her and not me. I'd be scared to death to close my eyes.”

“I don't have that problem—eyes,” Frost said, trying to laugh and realizing he couldn't.

O'Hara started for the door. “I got a wake-up call in for both rooms at seven—see ya in the mornin'.” O'Hara's hand was already on the doorknob, the sportcoat draped over his left shoulder, covering his gun. “Hey—incidentally. How's Bess—now there's a hell of a nice dame—”

“She's dead, Mike,” Frost told him, realizing O'Hara probably wouldn't have known. Frost suddenly wondered why he'd called the man by his first name.

“She's what—? She was doin' fine when I left Canada—at the worst she would have been in a wheelchair; but dead?”

“It wasn't that,” Frost said, his voice low, his throat tight-feeling. “She recovered from the bullet wounds, had the operations for her hip, was perfectly fine. Had this little scar from the operation on her—” and Frost suddenly felt embarrassed talking about it, revealing an intimacy. “No. We were—”

“How'd it happen?” O'Hara demanded, turning around, staring at Frost.

“We were in this store in London, were going back stateside to get married. Some goddamned terrorists put a bomb in the store and—” Frost downed the rest of his drink.

O'Hara sat down on the luggage stand by the door. “God, man—I didn't—I'm sorry, Hank. I mean really sorry. She was so—”

Frost inhaled hard, lighting another cigarette, almost choking on the smoke because his throat wasn't working right. “Yeah—she was so—”