closed' sign hanging discouragingly. I looked round wildly, frantically, for some kind of bolt hole, but there was just the bare asphalt of the approach road. In a few minutes, I thought despairingly, I'd be trapped, held firmly in the sights of a rifle with the bleak choice of surrendering or being shot. If they gave me the choice!
I sprinted across the front of the building and turned the corner. A car park. Two cars. And a man getting out of one of them twenty yards away. Probably he ran the place and was just arriving to open up. He turned inquiringly as he heard my running footsteps.
`Happened to you?'
Ì'm being chased. Hunted,' I gasped. I knew how stupid it must sound. 'There are men with rifles! Help me, for God's sake!'
He stared at me for a second. I said, 'Quickly. Please. Get me away from here!' —
wondering what I'd have done in his place.
"Kay. Get in!' He flung the door wide and I more or less dived across the front seat, scrambling to the far side. Rapidly he slid in beside me. The motor spun and the tyres squealed as the car tore out of the park towards the road.
`Thanks. Christ, thanks!' I stared across him, waiting for my pursuers to come into view round the angle of the building. And they did; four men, moving fast. One raised his rifle and fired as the car lurched on to the approach road, but we weren't hit. A few seconds later they were out of sight as the car tore over a little rise. I began to explain: Ì
don't know why. They just—'
`Save it.' He was concentrating on what he was doing, whamming the big car along the shimmering tarmac with skill and judgment, hands easy on the wheel. The soft suspension bounced us, but he took the bends easily, sun-. tanned face still but watchful. After three or four miles there was a crossroads. Signs pointed left to Echo Bay and Las Vegas, right to Glendale. We took neither, ploughing straight on. As I stared ahead the scenery changed with startling suddenness from greyish shale to weird reddish rock. Another sign came up SCENIC RIM DRIVE: VALLEY OF FIRE STATE PARK and he swung left, away from it, plunging down a lesser road among the red rock formations. We'd both looked back pretty often, he through the mirror, I by turning in my seat. So far I'd seen nothing. But now I did. A blue car was racing over the rise behind us. I watched it in dismay. The empty car at Overton Beach had been blue, too .. . That was when he began to brake. I turned in surprise, but the braking was sharp and the big car slowed suddenly, flinging me forward, almost out of my seat. By the time I'd grabbed the padded ledge and was pushing myself back, he'd stopped. Also a revolver had appeared in his hand and was pointing at me.
Òut,' he said.
`But
Òut.'
The tanned face was expressionless. I said, 'They're right behind—'
Ì'll count to three.'
I forced my eyes /away from him, looking back up the road. The blue car was closing fast. I said, 'They'll kill me.' Òne.'
`Christ!' I reached behind me, for the door handle,
`Two.'
I pulled the handle, swung the door open and lurched out. The blue car was only a couple of hundred yards away and slowing. I looked round me desperately. There was a gap of sorts in the rearing rocks at the roadside. .I flung myself towards its doubtful shelter.
CHAPTER FOUR
As I stumbled quickly between the sheltering rocks, I heard the car stop and doors open and close. Then there was silence. I kept going, frantic to get space and distance between myself and the road. Already I was disturbingly conscious of the heat. The sun blasted down out of a brilliant sky; there was no wind; the spaces between the rocks were filled with air so hot it was uncomfortable to breathe. In the open spaces it was worse. I tripped and fell, then dragged myself to my feet and plunged on between two red, rock outcrops. Within fifty yards sweat was streaming off me. Then five more yards and a bend in the narrow passage and I was faced with a blind end, a massive lump of red sandstone ten feet high, blocking the way. But it was fissured, there were big cracks. Maybe I could scramble up . . . I tore at it, jammed my foot into a low crevice, grabbed for handholds., and forced my way up. Seven or eight feet above ground was a narrow ledge and I strained to reach it, managed to haul myself up. From there to the top was simple: two easy footholds and I was standing, then flinging myself flat as a bullet sang by. The rock was intensely hot to the touch; I could feel it even through my soaking clothes and it was too hot for my bare hands. All the same, I had to get off the flat top of that rock. I turned, rolling over across the bumpy, scorching surface towards the far edge and glanced down. The drop was a good fifteen feet into a rough fissure strewn with stones. I swung my legs over the edge and eased my body backward, trying to grip the smooth rock with hands that demanded relief from the burning contact 'with the red sandstone. Then my feet found a ledge, but there was nothing for my hands, no way down but to jump and pray I didn't break leg or ankle.
The jar as I landed hammered at joints I scarcely knew I had, and drove the breath out of me, but at least there was a passage now and it seemed to offer a route away through the stone jungle. I staggered bone-achingly on, threading my way along the defile. Òver here!' The shout came from behind me, and not so far behind at that. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man standing, not fifty yards away, on top of a rock. He was raising his rifle. I flung myself sideways into the shelter of a boulder and heard the crack of the shot. Now if I moved it would be into the open into his sights. But no, there was another gap, dark in the sweltering shadow, four or five feet away. I took a deep breath, launched myself into it and found that a rocky track led steeply upward. By now I could scarcely breathe; the heat was unbelievable, the air itself seemed to scorch my lungs, sweat cascaded out of my hair and off my forehead and ran saltily into my eyes. Valley of Fire the sign had said, one place in the burning Nevada desert that had been singled out for its heat, one place hotter than all the others. Oh God!
I staggered up the narrow track, my heart beginning to hammer frighteningly. Then I blundered out into the open, where another defile crossed mine and instantly a rifle cracked and I heard the bullet fizz by, smacking into a rock to my right. I dived forward, flinging my body headlong into the defile ahead, scraping knees and elbows painfully on the rough sandstone. It ,was like diving on to emery paper. But I was up quickly and driving my body forward because there was nothing else I could do. It couldn't go on. I'd travelled only about a quarter mile and I was almost exhausted, my energy was being drained away fast by the murderous combination of heat and height. Up there, three or four thousand feet above sea level, the air is thinner. I was flogging along with my sea-level lungs and a body accustomed to temperate climates, in a high-altitude desert.
Trying to move fast, I knew I was slowing with every step, forcing each leg forward with my hands on my knees, not even aware until I heard the shot that I'd left shelter and was exposed again. Blindly I flung myself flat, but on to a lump of rock that smashed against my ribs and sent a tremendous flash of pain through my body. I glanced back dizzily. I could see nobody, but that didn't mean a thing; they could be in any of a hundred places, waiting to pick me off as I rose. I didn't rise. I edged my body agonizingly forward across the baking rock until I could slide into a dark, protected crevice and crouched there, gasping, knowing I was done. I no longer had the strength to run, barely the strength to crawl. I was bruised and beginning to suffer from oxygen starvation; sweat was sluicing out of me and the sun was hot as hell. What lay ahead, if I lived that long, was heatstroke.