Assassin's Express by Jerry Ahern Page A

Phoenix—windy. It took him three tries with a match—he mentally refused to destroy the wick on his Zippo. But he got the pilot lit, waited a few seconds, and turned the dial for the water temperature to hot. He closed the vented cover and walked over to the door, then up into the trailer.
    â€œI’ll have dinner in about twenty minutes,” Jessica said without turning around.
    â€œThanks,” Frost grunted, crawling past her, going into the bathroom and turning on the sink to wash his hands—there was no water. “Hit the power switch, huh!”
    â€œSorry,” she sang back. The water gurgled and sounded as though it were about to explode, then started through the pipe.
    Frost washed his hands, dried them, and studied his face in the bathroom vanity mirror. If he felt half as tired as he looked, he decided, he would be dead.
    He started out of the bathroom, sliding past Jessica and sitting down at the table by the front window. With only one light on in the trailer overhead, he was still able to see something of the outside when he peered closely through the glass.
    â€œDamn it!”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Jessica asked him.
    Without looking at her, Frost answered, “Those kids—about a dozen and a half of them out there—split up into two groups, over by the playground area it looks like.”
    â€œWhat are they up to, you think?”
    â€œWell, when I was a kid, I think they called it a rumble. God—that’s all I need!”
    Frost could feel Jessica behind him. He turned a little, and saw her peering through the window over his shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
    â€œWell—if they get a big, loud fight going, we’ve got cops all over the place—all over us, too.”
    â€œYou wanna unhook and get out of here?”
    â€œWe do that, we’ll have a good stiff drive ahead of us before we find another campground, feel like hell tomorrow morning.” Frost looked at his watch again, then added, “It’s already tomorrow morning anyway. We can’t afford to sit it out too late in a campground—settin’ ourselves up for the KGB people, the cops, anybody. We’re better moving.”
    â€œWant to just sleep in shifts tomorrow?” she asked.
    â€œI’ll go outside, see if I can scare them into thinking I’m a cop or something and get ’em to hold the festivities somewhere else—probably the best idea.”
    Frost started to push up from the bench-type seat, then felt her hands on his shoulders and looked up into her face. “You figure about eighteen of them, and one of you—what if they don’t buy your pitch?”
    â€œWell, maybe I knock a few heads together.” Frost smiled.
    â€œWhat if a few of them knock your heads together?”
    â€œI only had one head the last time I looked,” Frost told her, standing up, closing his jeans jacket and starting for the door.
    â€œWant me there as backup?”
    â€œNo—just have dinner ready when I get back.” As soon as Frost stepped out the door, he realized that if he hadn’t been so tired he wouldn’t have made the decision to brace eighteen or so hotheaded kids all alone—it was dumb. But he was too tired, he realized, to do anything else. Maybe the kids would sense that and pull back, sense he was too tired to fool around, just pick up their chains and switchblades and go home-maybe.
    He listened to the crickets and night noises, the gravel crunching under his feet, turned once to look behind him, and saw the warm lights of the trailer behind him. Ahead, under the light of the playground, he could see the dark-clad figures, the voices already audible as laughter, murmuring, a few clear words shouted loudly. The words spelled a fight even if the presence of the two opposing knots of bikers hadn’t.
    Frost stopped at the edge of the playground, by a rough wooden teeter-totter. The