Twelve Hours To Destiny Read Online Free PDF

enemy? The sound of the car engine faded a little. With an effort, he forced himself to relax. Then, abruptly, the sound came again, growing louder. The car was coming back! He opened his mouth to yell a warning to Kellaway. Before a single sound could be uttered, the car was there, jerking to a halt opposite the cul-de-sac, the harsh squeal of rubber against the road surface sounding painfully in his ears. Pulling his head down, he jerked up the gun, every nerve in his body screaming that there was danger here. The beam of a powerful flashlight lanced from the rear of the car, touched the boot of Kellaway’s car, then slid on, probing the shadows. Someone said something in a high, sing-song voice.
    Carradine had a momentary glimpse of some dark object which flew through the air towards him, bounced off the wing of the car and hit the hard-packed dirt a few feet from where he crouched. Instinctively, he hurled himself forward, shoulder halfway under the protruding bonnet as the night erupted in a cavernous roar of smoke and flame. Ears ringing from the thunderous explosion, his body jarred and shaken by the blast, he held his arms over his head as bits of debris began to fall all about him. There was a tinkle of shattered glass, the licking of red-tongued flame at the edge of his vision.
    For a moment, he lay half-conscious, struggling to focus all of his senses. Then, choking and coughing, he hoisted himself to his feet. In the distance, above the roaring in his ears, he heard the unmistakable sound of a car engine being revved up, saw through tear-blurred vision the other car jolting forward as the driver gunned it for all his worth down the hill towards Kowloon.
    Their car was a shambles. Flames were beginning to lick around the boot and the rear door had been blown completely off its hinges and lay buckled and twisted some feet away from the wreck. Staggering forward, he hauled desperately at the front door. Kellaway lay slumped back in his seat, his face a pale white blur in the dimness. Any minute now that fire would reach the petrol tank and once that went up there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of getting Kellaway out of the blazing wreck.
    Savagely, his head swimming, he struggled with the warped door, cursing futilely as the sharp metal tore at his fingers until blood trickled warmly down his wrists. Glass lay over the front seat and over Kellaway’s back and shoulders but he did not seem to be badly injured. The blast must have knocked him forward so that he had struck his head on the dashboard. Carradine groaned aloud as he heaved with all of the strength left in his pulverised body. Any second now and even if the naked flames did not reach the highly sensitive fuel, the heat alone would be sufficient to ignite it. If he was to save himself, he would have to get away from the burning car and leave Kellaway to his fate.
    With one final desperate heave, he contracted the muscles of his arms and shoulders and dragged back on the door handle with all of his weight. With a high-pitched screech of tortured, rending metal, the door gave, opened so abruptly that he fell back on to the dirt with the mass of metal on top of his bruised chest. Without pausing to think coherently, he sucked a gust of air into his lungs, sprang to his feet, caught Kellaway around the waist and dragged him out of the driver’s seat in a single, convulsive movement.
    Catching the other beneath the arms, he hauled him madly over the uneven ground, felt the yielding mass of a thorn bush at his back, kept moving in spite of the inch-long thorns which lacerated his battered flesh even more. Ten yards—fifteen. Then he felt the strength leave his body, falling forward, he dropped on top of the unconscious man, pulling his head down. Five seconds later, the petrol tank erupted with a belching of flame and smoke. Carradine felt the blast of heat on his face, recoiled instinctively. Sweat boiled out of his body, trickled down into his eyes. Slowly,