Assassin's Express

by Jerry Ahern

  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—�
��

  Chapter Fifteen

  “There’s a roadblock up there—I don’t think we’re easin’ through this one, guys,” O’Hara rasped through his gritting teeth.

  Frost looked across the wheel of the rented Ford Granada, then glanced back to O’Hara, peering over the front seatback between Frost and the girl. “What now, FBI person?” Frost asked.

  “What you mean we, paleface?” O’Hara laughed. “Let’s turn off—try to make it look inconspicuous. Could be a driver’s license check, you know.”

  “My rear end,” Frost answered.

  “Yeah—well, that too. Naw. You’re probably right—the Mississippi cops are lookin’ for us. Couldn’t be lookin’ for the car, though—unless the guy at the rental agency made me. Can’t see ’em puttin’ out an APB on a fellow fed though,” O’Hara groused.

  Frost spotted a side road of the highway—they’d avoided the Interstate—and took it. O’Hara had rented the car early in the morning, leaving the FOUO car in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket; then they’d started heading out of Louisiana for the Mississippi line. They’d passed state troopers twice and there hadn’t been as much as a flicker of a Mars light, Frost thought. But the roadblock at the border into Mississippi had to be for them.

  Frost went slowly down the side road—it was in clear view of the roadblock still.

  “You finked on us, O’Hara—at that last gas station,” Jessica Pace shouted suddenly.

  “What? You’re bananas, lady—why the heck would I rat on you when I’m workin’ with you?”

  “It’s a trap, just a con to get us off guard. That whole CIA thing last night, then you showin’ up. Just to sucker us into a better spot for them to nail us without too many of them getting it. Or maybe they want to get me alive so they can get me to tell them something—that’s how the Commies work, they—”

  “Now shut up!” Frost realized he was losing it, losing control, losing his temper. “Just shut up. O’Hara is my friend, he’s trying to be your friend. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “A Commie’d sell out his own mother!” Jessica Pace shrieked.

  “Well ... I can’t argue with that,” O’Hara said with what Frost labeled almost insane calm. “But I ain’t a Commie, girl—see!”

  “O’Hara—Jessica—just both of you—or so help me,” Frost realized he was shouting; what he was saying was incoherent, didn’t make any sense. “Damn it!”

  “He’s gonna put us away, Hank!”

  Frost started to say something back to the girl, but O’Hara, his voice odd-sounding, cut him off. “No, lady—I’m not, but maybe they are!”

  Frost glanced into the rear-view mirror, just catching sight of an airplane disappearing over the car.

  “Get over there,” O’Hara rasped, leaning forward into the front seat, apparently trying to look up through the top of the windshield. “Look at that! A lousy airplane—they got us spotted.”

  “Cops or the feds?” Frost grunted.

  “Naw—KGB. I’ll lay ya money on it. Looks like the shootin’ war’s got itself started, guys,” O’Hara snarled. The FBI man leaned back from the front seat, Frost moving the mirror down to watch him. O’Hara had the big Metalifed Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum out of the shoulder rig under his coat, the cylinder swinging out, then closing in his hands. “Never shot down an airplane with one of these—but if they start shootin’ at us, they can kiss that single engine good-by.”

  There was a faint whistling sound, then suddenly the front end of the car was shuddering, the steering not responding under Frost’s hands; there was a burst of light, dirt and gravel rained down on the hood of the car.

  “For God’s sake, Frost—you don’t drive worth a—”

  “Shut up, O’Hara,” Frost rasped through his teeth, his lips bared, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he fought the car back onto the road, the plane off to his far right. “That was a bomb—maybe a grenade. I’ve had it—really had it with accidents, with cars, with driving this woman from one end of the country to the other!”

  “Those weren’t Mississippi cops at that roadblock,” O’Hara muttered.

  “I’ve had it with automobile accidents, with people I don’t even know shooting at me! What the hell is—”

  The plane was coming back and Frost shut up. He felt foolish, angry and disgusted. As the plane made another low pass he saw a small dark object drop out of it and he felt semiterrified. “Grenade!” Frost shouted, cutting the wheel hard left to avoid it. The concussion rocked the car. Frost cut the wheel left again as the dirt and gravel streamed down on the hood of the car and across the windshield.

  “Look out for that tree!” It was the girl shouting.

  Frost tried pulling the steering wheel hard right, but the steering wasn’t working. The hood had popped up in front of him. Frost tried the brakes and when they didn’t stop him fast enough he tried the transmission; he realized the grenade had knocked out the engine. “Get down—we’re gonna—”

  Frost’s hands and wrists and forearms and then his shoulders, shuddered. His forehead hammered forward into his right fist still locked on the steering wheel, his head bouncing back as he rolled down toward Jessica Pace. The car stopped dead and Frost rolled to the floor.

  He opened his eye, not knowing if he’d been unconscious or not; his head ached.

  Jessica Pace was beside him, on the floor of the front seat. Frost heard O’Hara. “Out of the car-quick! They’re comin’ after us!”

  Jessica Pace was already moving, the little Walther PPK .38 with the funny-looking silencer at its muzzle clenched in her tiny, right fist. Frost pulled himself across the seat, like a swimmer, his hands ahead of him, clawing at the fabric. He half-rolled, half-fell to the ground. O’Hara shoved his pack at him and Frost started to his feet. His ears ached suddenly as the big .44 Magnum went off too close to him. “Put a muffler on that thing!” Frost snapped, on his feet, slinging the pack across his back, the KG-9 in his right hand, the two spare magazines rammed into his trouser belt.

  “Lay down some fire on that plane, Frost, and stop complainin’,” O’Hara shouted.

  “Bite it,” Frost retorted, then grasped the ventilated barrel shroud of the KG-9 in his left fist, the thirty-two-round magazine already loaded up the well, the bolt already back. Frost’s right fist tightened around the pistos grip, the first finger of his right hand pumping the trigger. He started running, the KG-9 spitting two-round bursts as he moved.

  The plane was making another low pass and cars from the “police” barricade were streaming up the side road toward the wrecked Ford Frost had piled into the tree. His head still aching, Frost shouted, “Grenade!” The small single-engine plane made another low pass along the ground. Frost hit the ground, rolling, covering his face with his hands. He heard the booming of O’Hara’s .44 Magnum, then looked up. The windshield of the lead car was shot through; the car piling off the road, roaring into a ditch. Frost rolled to his knees, the KG-9 in his fists, its trigger pumping as the small aircraft started to climb, away from him, into the low clouds over a stand of pines. The KG-9 bucked slightly in his hands as Frost kept elevating the muzzle, the aircraft almost out of range. Mentally keeping count, he guessed at four rounds left in the magazine—Frost pumped them out as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  The single-engine plane seemed to stall in midair; then Frost dove for the ground. The forward portion of the fuselage exploded, leaving Frost’s ears ringing with the sound. He looked up, his right eye squinted against the black, oily smoke and the debris. More explosions, smaller than the first, belched from the tumbling aircraft—the grenades, he thought. There was a whistling sound, almost like an air-raid siren. It grew louder and more intense as the aircraft, belly-flopped, then half-glided back into the stand of pines. There was another explosion, then an orange-and-black fireball gushed upward out of the trees.

  Frost was on his feet, ramming the next magazine into the KG-9. O’Hara shouted behind him, �
��Nice one, Ace—come on!”

  Frost wheeled, pumping a half-dozen rounds from the KG-9 at the five cars speeding toward him along the side road fifty yards to his rear. Then he bent low, wheeling, starting into a dead run.

  Frost could see Jessica Pace, ahead of him, stopping every few yards, spinning around, firing two-round bursts from the little Walther .38. O’Hara was on one knee, the gleaming .44 Magnum in both fists, the six-inch tube jerking upward as the booming of the big-caliber handgun reached Frost’s ears. Frost spun around, dropping low, firing at the men streaming from the cars along the road. The faces were Slavic-looking, their guns a collection of automatic weapons not common in domestic police arsenals. O’Hara had been right, Frost thought. It was the KGB. Frost could hear the Model 29 booming again, see one of the KGB men flying backward, his assault rifle falling from his hands, the hands going up to the chest.

  “Ha! Ha!” It was O’Hara. “Got one!”

  Frost pumped the trigger on the KG-9, ripping a ragged, vertical line of red into the neck and face of a mustached man holding an AK-47. The man spun around crazily, then collapsed into a heap on the ground, and AK-47 firing into the muddy dirt at his feet as he fell.

  Frost got to his feet again, hearing the 29 boom once more, and catching a glimpse of O’Hara cramming a speed loader against the cylinder of the N-frame Smith, then starting to run. Jessica Pace was about twenty yards ahead of him, Frost judged, on one knee, firing the little Walther. Frost shot a glance behind him. One of the KGB men snapped his head back, dropped his gun; his face was a mass of red, his body was collapsing forward.

  Frost, without looking, snapped off two two-round bursts behind him. There was a drainage ditch of some kind up ahead and he aimed for it. Already the volume of fire from the dozen and a half KGB men was heavy and once they organized into more than a group of running, shooting, and hollering gunmen, the fire would get heavier.

  “The ditch—over there!” Frost shouted, seeing O’Hara, then catching sight of the FBI man nodding. “Jessica—make for the ditch,” Frost shouted. The girl didn’t seem to register anything on her face—that she’d heard Frost or even cared—but she changed the direction in which she ran, still pumping the Walther again, the absence of noise when the gun discharged almost making it seem unreal, as if she were a child playing cops and robbers or cowboys, and not firing real bullets at men firing back.