Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno by Mike Barry Read Free Book Online

explanation as any other. He could not stay in the car. That much was clear; it would be impossible for him to stay in the Pontiac much longer because the heat was already beginning to dehydrate him, he could feel it wringing at him like an animal, and soon enough he would begin to feel the more severe effects, the lightheadedness, the feeling of weakness in the bowels. An hour or two was much too optimistic, the assassin thought, he might last fifteen minutes in this car, not much more. Carefully he cranked down the passenger window half an inch. A little breeze tugged at him, vaulted past his eyes, stabbed under the cheekbones where the deep and intricate nerves under the eyes lived. No help. No help at all, the assassin thought. He would have to get out of the car.
    Seized with an idea, though, he pushed the body of the driver away, tried the key in the ignition. The battery fed a little power, enough to turn the amp light red, but the starting motor, after one click, seized. No good, then. The car would not move. He had to get out.
    The body of the driver was already beginning to stink, a faint rancid whiff of death coming up from the corpse as the assassin had leaned over. He reeled back, reached for the door handle, lifted it, and wriggled out of the car, tumbling then to the ground. The heat surrounded him like a fist, squeezed him, little bolts of energy and sickness moved across his body. He crouched on his hands and knees, using the car as cover, crawling very cautiously so that he was not exposed in the direction of the Cadillac.
    It was a mess, that was for sure. All avenues of exit seemed blocked, his mobility was gone, his command of the situation wrecked by the accident. Still, he thought, he had a vew options; he still had his gun and his will and his brain, and that was something. That was not for nothing; you could not take that away from a man until the very end, the integrity of his own purpose, the fixity that had taken him through twenty years and a hundred kills in a life that was for the most a six-month business. He began to think like an assassin again. The fifty grand was still there for the taking. The quarry was still there, too. His partner was gone but that meant that he had to make no excuses and that he had to make no split. His. It was all his.
    Using the Bonneville as cover he started his stalk.

VI
    “I don’t think he’s dead in there,” Owens said. “I think that at least one of them is alive.”
    “Probably,” Wulff said. He kept the Bonneville pinned, but even with 20/20 vision and lots of terrain-searching experience in Vietnam, it was not easy to detect movement in a car a quarter of a mile down in blinding, dazzling sun. Cloudy weather might have been better, but it was never cloudy on the desert; it was either a baking heat or rain. Nothing between. “One thing is sure,” Wulff said, “if he gets out we’ll see a door move. And he’s got to get out.”
    “I think so, too,” Owens said. For all they had been through he was quite calm, a good man, Wulff decided; it was a pity that he hired out rather than being inner-directed. An inner-directed man like Owens with the right cause could have blown whole cities, not just ships, out of geography. “He can’t stay in there,” Owens said. He raced the engine of the Cadillac for emphasis; the compressor whined and little puffs of cold air came out of the air-conditioner vents as if for emphasis. Owens took his foot off the accelerator and said, “Of course, his problem is our problem. We can’t sit here forever; we’ll run out of gas.”
    “I don’t think we’ll sit very long,” Wulff said. “I figure we’ll close in and take him out.”
    “That’s how I think, too,” Owens said, “But I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I knew exactly what his condition was.”
    “We’ll find out,” Wulff said. “We’ll find out soon enough. If there isn’t any movement out of that car in the next fifteen minutes,