The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

was almost exactly where Bell had guessed. He was staying put in the thicket, which was now less than three hundred yards below him. But now Frost knew to look behind him.

Without warning, he exploded into action, shoving out of the dense undergrowth running for the cover of a depression in the land that looked to Bell like the mouth of a small canyon. Frost was limping, as Tom Griggs had speculated, but still covering ground at a startling speed for a man his size. Bell snapped a shot at him that missed. He levered a fresh round into the Winchester and stood erect to deliberately line up a second shot, leading the running man and calculating the effect of the rising wind over the two hundred yards that separated them. His rifle spoke.

Frost flung his arms high. His Marlin went flying. The distance was too long to hear him yell, but Bell thought he had hurt him badly until he saw Frost scoop his fallen rifle off the ground and disappear into the canyon.

Isaac Bell ran down the slope, bounding from hummock to hummock, leaping brush and boulders. He lost his footing, pitched to the ground, rolled on his shoulder, and sprang to his feet again, still running and clutching his Winchester.

He sensed more than saw a flicker of movement at the mouth of the canyon and dove headlong to the ground. A pistol slug whistled through the air he had just vacated. He tucked the Winchester tight to his chest, rolled, and this time when he sprang to his feet he came up firing, levering slug after slug into the breech, spraying a deadly fusillade that sent Frost in retreat.

For some reason, Frost wasn’t using his Marlin. Bell guessed that his Winchester shot that had set it flying had damaged it, in which case Frost was down to sidearms. He burst into the canyon, which was no wider than a town house but appeared to bore deeply into the hillside. Thick brush clogged the mouth. Bell pushed through thorny chaparral. Pistol shots booming close at hand revealed Frost, crouching and firing his snub-nosed Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver with which he had almost killed Archie Abbott. The range was too long for the sawed-off barrel. The manstoppers flew wildly, scattering splinters of wood.

Bell tried to fire back. His Winchester was empty.

Frost charged, plowing through the brush like a buffalo, triggering his heavy pistol as he halved the range and burst from the thicket. It was Bell’s first close look at him. One eye was cloudy, the socket scarred where Bell’s Remington rifle shots had hurled stone chips in his face at the Chicago armory. The ear Bell had winged was a ragged appendage. The jaw Archie had broken was misshapen. But his good eye burned hot as a gasoline fire, and he ran with the unstoppable gait of a locomotive.

Bell dropped to one knee, pulled his throwing knife from his boot, and flung it hard. It slid between the bones of Frost’s forearm, and the deadly Webley-Fosbery fell from his convulsing fingers. Before it hit the ground, Frost pulled out a pocket pistol with his left hand.

Bell drew his Browning and triggered it twice. Their weapons echoed in unison. Frost’s vest deflected both of Bell’s bullets. One of Frost’s shots fanned Bell’s cheek, the other plucked his sleeve. Frost’s pocket pistol jammed, and he drew his own Browning, a far deadlier threat than the pistol. Bell ran straight at him and shot the Browning out of Frost’s hand. Frost threw a roundhouse left, spraying Bell with blood from his skewered forearm.

Bell deflected some of the impact with his shoulder. But the giant’s punch rocked him to the core, knocked him halfway to his knees. White flashes stormed before his eyes. His hands felt heavy as lead. He sensed a second pile-driver punch coming at him, rolled with it, and hurled his own punch, aiming for the jawbone that Archie had broken.

His tightly clenched fist connected, staggering the giant and drawing a grunt of pain. But Frost whirled around and backhanded him with a blow that knocked the detective to the ground. Frost picked up his ruined rifle and raised it to the sky like a long steel club. Isaac Bell whipped his derringer from his hat.

“Drop it!” he said. “You’re a dead man.”

Frost swung the rifle.

Bell squeezed the trigger.

A blaze of light and an explosion fifty times louder than a pistol shot sent the rifle pinwheeling forty feet. Frost was smashed flat on the ground. Six feet away, Isaac Bell remained on his feet, ears ringing, staring down at his fallen adversary in astonishment. The smell of burning flesh hung in the air. Frost’s face was black, his beard burned, his shirt and trousers smoldering, the soles blown off his boots.

Life was leaking from Frost’s eyes. He sucked air through his charred lips. But his voice was still strong, harsh and thick with scorn. “You didn’t get me. Lightning bolt hit my rifle.”

“I had you dead to rights,” answered Bell. “The lightning just happened to get you first.”

Frost croaked bitter laughter.

“Is that why Van Dorns never give up? You got weather gods on your side?”

Isaac Bell gazed down triumphantly at the dying criminal. “I didn’t need weather gods,” he said quietly. “I had Wally Laughlin on my side.”

“Who the hell is Wally Laughlin?”

“He was a newsboy. You murdered him and two of his friends when you dynamited the Dearborn Street news depot.”

“Newsboy? . . . Oh yeah, I remember.” He shuddered with pain and forced out another jibe. “I’ll hear about it in Hell. How old was he?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve?” Frost lay back. His voice grew weak. “Twelve was my grand year. I’d been a little runt getting used by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Then all of a sudden I started growing and growing, and everything went my way. Won my first fight. Got my first gang. Killed my first man—twenty years old, he was, full grown.”

A hideous parody of a