All at once the top left-hand carton flew apart in a bursting spout of amber froth, a wild succession of squirting jets of foam. His windshield grew a thick haze and he hit the wiper-switch frantically. He saw the next carton erupt in a firecracker series of spouting jets, and then the next. The heavy smell of beer flooded the cabin and foam piled up against the wiper-blades as the cartons vomited into destruction one after another.
On the roof of the cab Illya squinted against a rain of suds and relentlessly trained the whining unit along the top row of cartons, watching them burst into glorious ruin. Then he lowered his sights a fraction and swung back the reverse way. He felt the truck skid greasily as it ran into dribbling foam, and heaved madly to keep his aim. Solo fought the wheel like a madman, sensing that the driver ahead had noticed the trouble and was slowing down. He matched speeds instinctively and stared in awed fascination at the incredible carnage ahead—carton after carton bursting into a billowing mass of foam and spray, yellow beer spouting into the air from a dozen different directions at once.
The truck ahead slowed to a crawl and stopped. Solo matched it, but felt his rear wheels slip and the tail end of the truck slide over into the grass on the edge of the road. Now that his motor was idling he could hear the shrill scream of that ultrasonic unit over his head, and the steadily repeating boff—boff—boff as beer cans ruptured under the lash of that energy-beam. His wipers clacked. The rear of the beer-truck was a yellow Niagara of foam now, with cartons still erupting crazily.
Solo saw the bewildered driver come hurrying around the tail-board of his truck with futile waves at the rain of foam. In his hurry he ran right into a thick and sluggish stream of froth, lost his footing and went down with a mad flail of arms and legs. The co-driver came, cursing, from the other side, to slither and join his mate in the surging foam. The can cannonade came to an abrupt halt, and there was a hard thump from the roof. Solo let in his clutch with delicate care, felt his wheels spin crazily for a moment and then take hold, and they were off again. He pressed his foot down on the gas, spun the wheel, and turned to grin at Sarah.
“One down, two to go, eh?”
She laughed crazily. “Life is going to seem awfully dull after this!”
He felt a sudden qualm, a twinge of danger. “Something we forgot,” he muttered. “This damned stuff is potent, and who should know better than me? Try not to swallow too much of it!” She put her hand to her mouth in consternation. He groped in his breast pocket and got his handkerchief. “Here! Make a mask of that and stick it over your face!”
She stared at the square of linen, then at the shield, where drying froth was caking and blowing away in the breeze, and then at him.
“No!” she declared. “You’d better have it. You’re driving!” And she laid it on her knee and folded it with quick movements into a triangle. She was right, too. He set his jaw and held still as she placed the cloth over his nose and mouth and knotted the ends at his neck.
He thought of Illya, up on top and out in the open, without even the part-shelter of the cab. But he needn’t have been worried. That calmly resourceful mind had already seen the danger, and more. Solo grinned as he saw Illya’s head, inverted, crane down from the roof to peer into the cab and shout through his masking handkerchief, “That wasn’t such a good idea, Napoleon. When we catch the next one I’ll burst his tires first, and then we won’t have to run into the spray following him. Right?”
“Right!” Solo made a fist and thumb-up gesture. “I’d better be ready to stop fast, eh?” He drove his foot down now and they roared on through the dreaming countryside.
They caught up with the second truck as it was growling and snarling its way up a gentle rise just beyond a village that Sarah identified as Boher. Solo sent the truck sailing up after it, alert and ready to stamp on his brakes as the rear right wheel blew with a report like a cannon, echoed in a fraction of a second by its companion on the left. The truck bounced to an abrupt halt. Solo hauled on the parking-brake, threw open the door.
“Stand by,” he warned, “and watch my signals. I’m going to keep the truck-crew diverted awhile.” He dropped and ran, hearing the first fusillade of bursting cans as he came up to the cab of the beer-truck. Putting on a wide-eyed innocent expression he stared up at a puzzled Irish frown.
“You have a couple of flats back there,” he said. “What happened?”
“It sounded like a couple of punctures to me,” the driver argued.
“That’s what I said. Flats. Blowouts. You call them punctures?”
“That’s right, punctures. Is that what it was? Hell, for a minute there I thought me back-end had dropped out. D’ye hear that, Barney? The back tires are gone! Only this morning I was telling Muldoon we should have had new ones this trip!”
Barney scratched his head in doubt. “That doesn’t sound like punctures to me,” he said. “More like a machine.-gun, I’m thinking. There now!” he said as another row of cartons erupted, “did ye hear that? There’s somebody taking shots at us, if you ask me!”
Beer fumes eddied on the air. Solo hoisted his makeshift mask, drew his pistol and backed away carefully. The driver’s eyes popped.
“Hey!” he cried, all at once. “Somebody’s pinching the beer! I can smell it!”
Solo waved the pistol gently. “Just sit still,” he advised, “and you’ll be all right. Nothing to be excited about.” He backed off still more, flicking a glance to see a spouting yellow cascade boil up in the back of the truck and surge in great lazy suds over the sides, while squirting volcanic jets leaped high in the air as Illya swept his weapon with cold efficiency. “Fourth of July was never like this!” he mused as the last of the cartons blew apart into oblivion. He hooked a “come on” gesture to Sarah, and the little truck stirred, came purring towards him.
He smiled at the astonished crew. “Nasty stuff, canned beer. Better stick to the bottled stuff next time—it’s safer. Good night!” He waved cheerily and caught the cab door as the truck went by. On impulse he used the momentum to swing him around, up and over into the back alongside Illya.
“That wasn’t such a good idea either,” he frowned. “If those two had been feeling nasty I’d have been in a spot. I couldn’t very well shoot them.”
“That’s right. We have to assume they’re innocent parties. We might not be so fortunate with the last one.’”
“Third time unlucky. It’s a small miracle that truck didn’t turn over, anyway. We’ll have to cancel the blowout stunt.”
“We’ll just have to choose a suitably wide stretch of road, pull alongside and keep pace, and get them that way.”
Solo nodded. “All right. That’s worth a try.” And then he grabbed for a handhold as the little truck lurched wildly across the road, straightened by a miracle and roared on again.
“I’m a fool!” he cried. “We have a crazy woman at the wheel. She’s been gulping the stuff down all this time! I’d better get back down there while we’re still right side up!” He plunged for the roof, but Kuryakin tapped him on the shoulder and pointed ahead.
“Too late,” he said. “There’s our last pigeon now!”
“This road’s wide enough, anyway. I’ll give her a shout, tell her what to do. Let’s hope she has sense enough to obey!” He clung and craned over at a perilous angle to peer into the cab and yell at her.
“Pull up alongside! Alongside! Keep even with him. Keep up the same speed-all right?”
“Yahoo!” she screamed back, her eyes afire. “Down with the heathen blackguards! Erin go bragh!”
“And the best of luck to all of us,” he sighed, hauling himself back to stand beside his companion. “Who was it who said, ‘Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself.’?”
“That was Voltaire. I agree with him. I would rather fight a dozen fools than have one on my side. Still—we will just have to bear with it.”
Illya hoisted himself up onto the cab roof, to squat and haul the ultrasonic unit around to
a broadside position. The little truck lurched and bucked as Sarah drove it madly on, rapidly overtaking the booming giant ahead. “Pull out!” Solo prayed, biting his lip. “For God’s sake, Sarah, pull out!”
And at the very last moment the little truck lurched violently sideways across the road, bumped into the ditch, swung back and came up alongside its prey. Now Solo stared in awe as the cartons began to blow and burst in wild confusion, all over the place, top bottom and sides as Kuryakin struggled to keep aim against the crazy sways and surges of the little truck. The chaos in the beer-truck was beyond description as cartons and cans alike danced and bubbled on spouting-up streams of escaping beer, bobbing and leaping over a seething sea of froth and squirtings like so many crazy ping-pong balls on a rifle range. They pulled up to hold level with the giant’s cab. Solo waved to the driver.
“Lovely night for a drive, isn’t it?”
The pleasantry got him a dark glare of suspicion. They fell back as Sarah trod a little too heavily on the brake. The beer-barrage went on. Solo could see, now, how the fine beam of sound carved its way through froth and spray like an invisible knife. The poppings and splurtings died away.
Kuryakin made one last weary traverse, and said, “I think that’s all, Napoleon. Tell that madwoman we would like to go home now, would you?”
Solo craned himself over the edge of the cab once more to peer at her. “Head for home, darling. It’s all over. If you know another route, better take it. We won’t be too popular where we’ve come from.”
She gave him a broad and dazzling smile. “Do you know where we are right now? We’re almost to Tipperary!”
“I’ve heard of it,” he admitted. “It’s a long way!”
“Not at all. Only a few more miles. Would ye like to go there?”
“Some other time. Let’s go home, eh?”
“Home!” He saw the smile wash away from her face, leaving it crumpled and forlorn. “I’ve no home left now. None at all.”
He realized instantly that what she said was absolutely true. More than that, he knew she was feeling the deadly letdown of the aftermath of the drug. He twisted his head around to see that the last ruined beer truck was now halted and falling behind.
“Pull in to the side and stop,” he ordered her, and swung himself down as she obeyed. It took only a few strenuous minutes for the two men to drag the ultrasonic unit down from the cab roof and stow it in the back of the truck. Then Solo took the wheel. Sarah sat between them, tears showing in her eyes as she reflected on her situation. Solo didn’t feel too wonderful either as he put his foot down on the gas. Fast action was a fine thing for occupying the mind, but once it was over the mind inexorably went back to the main problems and worried at them.
“You realize,” he said to Illya, “that we’ve only postponed this thing for a while?”
“Yes, that’s true. We still have to deal with King Mike and Trilli and his boys. And so long as they have the sense to stay put in Cooraclare Castle it will take an army to get them out.”
“We’ll just have to scream for help.”
“But we won’t get it, Napoleon. You’re forgetting one thing. This is Eire. The Irish Free State. A republic!”
Solo gripped the wheel and stared grimly ahead, that simple reminder stirring his mind and making a lot of things suddenly fall into place. This little country, so peaceful on the surface, had a long and bitter history of fight and feud with England; Eire was independent and fiercely proud of it. There would be still many of the older generation with no love at all for Britain—and that would be why King Mike had directed his first murderous scheme against that nation. Sarah began to weep silently, and he sympathized with her. All three of them were weary and hungry, but Sarah now had no home, no possessions and only the clothes on her back—plus the depressing aftereffects of the drug to make her feel like death.
“Where are we?” he asked, to give her something positive to think about. “I’m just going at random here.” She knuckled her eyes, and Kuryakin unfastened his handkerchief and gave it to her. She thanked him, dabbed, and peered as Solo slowed for a roadside signpost. A finger-post pointed back to Kilteely, another on to Herbertstown. She sniffed and thought.
“We should strike a trunk road in a minute or two,” she said. “If you turn right there, it will get us back to Limerick. It’s the T 57.”
“That’s for us, then. Perhaps the Limerick office will be able to come up with something. We’ll see you safe, anyway.”
“If everything else fails,” Kuryakin observed, “I have a very kind landlady in Ennis. I’m sure she can find you a room.” Silence fell over the trio for a moment as each retreated into his or her own thoughts. Kuryakin was frowning slightly, as though something were nagging at the back of his mind. Finally he said, “Tell me, does your uncle dabble in electronics too? Radio gadgetry and that kind of thing?
She gave one last dab with the handkerchief, handed it back to him and frowned in blue-eyed bewilderment. “Not him. Whatever gave you that idea? I do, quite a bit. I like to mess about with gadgets and equipment. Why?’
“Just something I came across.” He fished out the enigmatic little notebook he had extracted from the safe and flipped the pages until he came to the curious circuit diagram. “This. It seems to be a short-wave transmitter with a critically selective wave-length output.”
“That’s mine!” She moved close to peer over his shoulder and point. “Uncle Mike asked me to work this out, a long time ago. He didn’t say what it was to be for, only that it had to put out a fine-tuned frequency, and to be adjustable—here, see?”
Solo shot a side-glance at the two heads close together and grinned wryly. In his serious and quietly intense way, Illya was something of a lady-killer himself. He certainly had Sarah’s interest at this moment. Two technical minds together. Ah well, it was keeping her happy, if only for a little while. He paid attention to the road ahead. The total quietness and peace of this land caught at him. No wonder the children of Erin had been world famous for philosophy and letters. This was a land in which a man could think, and take his time at it.
He slid into a semi-reverie in which he seemed to stand back and watch thoughts and ideas form and twist themselves into designs and patterns. Little by little a certain pattern stitched itself into shape, and it bothered him. He stirred, ran it through again, and it still bothered him. He sat up.
“Illya,” he murmured, in a deliberately casual tone. “I’ve been thinking.”
“You can have fun like that, if you don’t overdo it.”
“I’ve been thinking,” he repeated deliberately, “what I would do, if I had been driving a truckload of beer peacefully through the night, and then, for no apparent reason, it suddenly blew itself all to pieces behind my back. And especially if I then saw a small pickup truck go sailing by right after that.”
“What would you do?” Illya demanded.
“Well, I think I’d take a moment or two to gather my thoughts, but then I would hie me to the nearest telephone, and inform the place I had just departed from. Wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose.” Illya agreed uneasily. “That’s if they have telephones!”
“We’re not that backward!” Sarah cried. “Of course we have the telephone!”
“Yes!” Solo stared thoughtfully at the long straight stretch of deserted road ahead. “I sort of thought you had, somehow. Well, then I went on to imagine what the person at the other end would think. The dispatcher, I mean. First one driver calls in to say his shipment has been bombed. Then the second. And then the third. And each one also reports an interfering little pickup appearing from nowhere on an otherwise deserted road.”
“And then?” Sarah seemed to be holding her breath.
“Somebody puts three ones together and gets three plus. Somebody looks at a map and does some figuring. Somebody sends somebody else—a plural somebody else, with muscles—to find out just what goes on.”
“The next question is,” Kuryakin mu
rmured, “would they follow the truck route, which would be rather pointless and a delay, or would they be smart and try to intercept us by another route?”
“The question is well put. I have a feeling the answer is about to be supplied free of charge. Far in the distance I see headlights bearing down on us. The first signs of traffic I’ve seen since we left the last truck!”
The other two peered ahead urgently and saw the faraway eyes coming fast to meet them. Sarah caught her breath.
Kuryakin said, “If they run true to King Mike’s form, they should be large men with shotguns, but I doubt if they’ll have anything else on hand at short notice. How long would you say, Napoleon?”
“Fifteen minutes at the outside, by the rate they’re traveling. We can pull off the road and let them go by.”
“I doubt it would work. They must have seen our lights just as we’ve seen theirs. I’ll have to arrange a diversion for them.”
Solo wasted no time in asking what. He eased his foot from the gas just a shade. “What do you want us to do?”
“If it is them, as we suspect, better pull up when they say, and keep them guessing for about five minutes. Perhaps Miss Sarah could act drunk. I need only about five minutes. As soon as you hear me yell, get rolling again. I’ll pick you up.”
With no more ado he stood, eased himself out of the door of the cab and squirmed away out and over into the back of the truck. Solo drew in a breath to steady himself, and made a tight grin for Sarah.
“You’re about to drop your reputation in the mud and walk all over it,” he told her. “If this is an interception committee from the brewery, then some of them will know you by sight. Do you mind?”
Man From U.N.C.L.E. 05 - The Mad Scientist Affair Page 8