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

said, “I guess I know what you mean. But that’s self-protection, saying that you’re dead. You really didn’t believe that, you knew you were alive, but saying you were dead, feeling that way was able to keep you operating. But that’s different from really wanting to die. If you had wanted to die you would have taken care of that.”
    “Maybe,” Wulff said, “maybe. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to calculate anything like that.” He moved on the seat again feeling the exposed steel loops bite into his shoulder blades. “Enough,” he said.
    “No,” Owens said, “it’s never enough. You think that something’s the end, you think that you’ve had enough and that it won’t be the same and that you’re moving toward the end, but every time you get that feeling it starts all over again. There’s no enough. It just goes on and on. Until you die, of course.”
    “I don’t understand,” Wulff said.
    “Me neither,” said Owens. “I don’t understand a fucking thing.” Then he looked up at the rear-view mirror and something caught his glance. He said, “He moved.”
    “What?”
    “He’s out of the car and moving,” Owens said. “I caught a glimpse of him. He’s on the ground now. He came out of the car and took cover. He’s crawling around down there now.”
    “Slowly,” Wulff said, “he must have moved damned slowly.”
    “He hit the ground fast enough.”
    “I mean out of the car.”
    “He probably opened that door inch by inch,” Owens said. “He probably spent fifteen minutes getting out of it, yeah. But he’s out now.” He leaned forward, clutched the shift lever, then dropped it into reverse. “I’m going to back up on him.”
    “You think so?”
    “I think that’s the best way.”
    “What if he’s got heavy artillery?”
    “Then he can reach us up to fifty yards anyway. Closing in won’t be any more dangerous then staying here. But I don’t think he’s got any heavy. Generally people don’t carry that around and you can be sure that Carlin, that cheap bastard, wasn’t supplying anything.”
    “All right,” Wulff said. Momentarily slack, he had returned to full alertness, the old combat feeling coursing through him. He had not handed over the decision to Owens so much as having abandoned it, but now he let the feeling of control come upon him again. “Back up very slowly,” he said, “and if you see any movement, stop.”
    “All right,” Owens said, one arm draped over the seat back, driving with the rear-view mirror, which was the way that the experienced ones did it. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “I’m not worried about anything.”
    “We’ll get him,” Owens said. “This is just a diversion.”
    “I’m sure it is,” Wulff said. Something hit the rear window again, another part of the glass splintered, and Wulff heard the whine of the rifle. “Son of a bitch,” he said, scrambling below seat level, “he won’t give up.”
    Owens had stopped the car, cranked it into neutral already, and then had hit the floor, squeezing himself in the place between steering wheel and seat, barely fitting in. Another round hit them, the glass splintering more densely now, little fragments momentarily visible in the air as a halo, then falling into the rear seat. Wulff, his pistol gripped in his hand, could not see the assassin yet, the assassin using the Pontiac as cover. The situation was not good. They had no cover but the assassin did. The glass splintered yet again and now Wulff could see open space, holes had been lifted out of the glass, the desert was coming in. “Bastard,” he said, but he continued to concentrate. “He won’t stop, will he?”
    “You never stop,” Owens said. “If you stop you start to think,” and the fire went yet again, the bullet passed through the rear and impacted into the windshield, driving itself out on a course no more than a foot above Wulff’s head. “Back it,” Wulff said, “back it again.”
    “I’m going to go