18 - The Unfair Fare Affair
Page 16
"If I could keep them pinned down there until Solo recovers..." the Russian called over his shoulder. And then suddenly he stopped and looked upward. Rain was falling on his head.
A stray slug, penetrating the wooden back of the cab, had bit the handle of the handbrake, knocking it off its ratchet and allowing the truck to resume its interrupted descent. Slowly, inexorably, their shelter withdrew, leaving them exposed on the rain-swept viaduct.
The truck itself rolled onto the cracked center section, continued across it... and then suddenly it wasn't there.
With the speed of a demon king in pantomime, it simply dropped from sight. The entire center of the arch, as soon as it received the full weight of the truck, plummeted downward with a roar like that of the trains the viaduct had once carried on their way. From below, the shattering reverberation of the impact was followed by a cannonade of blocks and small stones from the raw edge of the chasm. A cloud of choking yellow dust mushroomed up over the gap and blanketed them from sight.
Through the swirling fog they heard Bartoluzzi shouting: "No, no. Don't shoot now! We'll get them alive and drop them over on to the wreckage. It's perfect; it'll keep to my original plan, and the two extra bodies will provide scapegoats for the ambush of the riot truck."
When the dust had cleared enough for them to distinguish the winch, they could see the Corsican whispering something to the girl and pointing back up the hill toward his headquarters. The girl nodded. She eased the leather helmet from her head, shook loose a mane of blonde hair, and started off at a run.
"Who does she think she is?" Kuryakin asked. "She's auditioning for a part in an espionage series on television?"
"She's gone back for the helicopter," Annike said tightly. "We won't have a chance... and look!" She was pointing at the car. Crouched down in the driver's seat, Bartoluzzi was backing it cautiously toward them. He steered around the winch, with its snapped hawser, and slowly drew nearer along the bridge.
Illya felt in Solo's pocket for another clip of ammunition and fired the Walther as fast as he could. Glass in the Steyr's back window starred, and gasoline began to spray from the drilled tank below the spare tire.
But the Corsican continued to advance. When the car was only ten yards away, he stopped, ducking out of sight behind the seat. Obviously his tactic was to block them there until the girl arrived with the helicopter.
The rain redoubled in force. Beneath them, they felt the viaduct tremble in a surge of wind.
And suddenly it happened again. Safe enough while the structure was whole and rigid, the second arch became unsafe as soon as the bridge was breached. Beneath the car, the road appeared to warp. They watched, horrified, as the parapet on one side dipped sickeningly, canting the surface at a crazy angle. The heavy saloon began to slide toward the edge as great cracks zigzagged across the width of the bridge. They could see Bartoluzzi frantically fighting to reach the door on the upper side and open it. And then, with a roar like an artillery barrage, roadway, parapet, refuge, car and guard rails collapsed into nothing, vanished in a cloud of dust as dense as the first.
In a few minutes the girl from THRUSH would be back gunning for them in her helicopter.
And they were stuck like pigeons on a roost—marooned on a single isolated pillar of the ruined bridge...
Chapter 18
Nothing To Report
THE GIRL was crying, her drenched hair plastered across her cheek as she kneeled on the muddy road. "I'm... I'm sorry," she sobbed. "But he was... he used to be... I was very fond of him once."
Kuryakin kept a sympathetic silence. After a while the girl said quaveringly, "Is there any chance... your friend climbed up, I suppose we couldn't possibly climb down?"
The Russian peered over the edge into the dizzying depths of the valley. The single pile on which they were stuck, now that it had lost its anchorage at both ends, was swaying like a reed in the wind, and every few seconds they could hear another shower of stones break loose and plunge down to swell the twin disasters of rock strewn across the floor of the defile. He shook his head. "For one man, coming up, with the viaduct rigid, it was crazy enough," he said soberly. "But to try going down, with the pillar rocking like this and an unconscious man to carry... you might just as well jump!"
"What will happen when that... when she comes back?"
"She has only one aim now. THRUSH was interested in taking over Bartoluzzi's network, but only if he was there to operate it. He was the only one with the knowledge of all the details. Now that he's dead, I'm afraid her sole course is to eliminate the witnesses and go. They'll just write the project off as a deal that didn't materialize."
Five minutes later, the helicopter skimmed over the trees from the north and sailed across the valley, circling the pillar. They watched the black figure of the girl pull back the Plexiglas door, level a submachine gun with one hand, and coax the machine lower and nearer with the other.
Kuryakin pushed the girl to the ground beside Solo and flung himself across them as the stutter of the gun drowned out the noise of the helicopter's rotors. Fragments of rock spurted up from the road and drew blood from his cheek as the line of slugs ripped past only inches from his head.
The helicopter was turning, preparing for another run… and all at once he was aware of a third sound, louder than either of the other two. He twisted his head and looked up. Incredibly, a second helicopter, much larger than the girl's, was slanting over the valley toward it, spitting flame from the open door in its nose.
Marinka turned her machine swiftly. It rose in the air like an elevator and made off rapidly toward the west. Evidently she preferred to live to fight another day... and anyway there wasn't much the witnesses could say against her!
The bigger machine hovered over the stricken viaduct. A rope ladder snaked down to the top of the pillar. And over a bullhorn a voice exclaimed in the fruitiest accents of County Cork: "Going up now, ladies and gentlemen! Going up! Networks. Settlement of Accounts. Rescue Service. Information. Going up now please…"
It was Habib Tufik, alias Hendrik van der Lee.
Smiling genially, he surveyed them from his wheelchair as one of the two bland Dutchmen crewing the plane helped them to get Solo up the ladder.
They had barely closed the transparent hatch in the blister when the solitary pillar from which they had been rescued collapsed into the valley in a great fountain of dust that rose hundreds of feet into the air.
"But how did you get here? How did you know?" Napoleon Solo asked a little later as they applied a dressing to the wound in his temple.
"I'm afraid that was me," Annike said. "You had lent me that nice little radio. I know a little about them... and I couldn't resist calling up my employer and telling him why I was late for work!"
"A good thing you did," Illya smiled. "Also that you hid in the back of that truck instead of waiting for Napoleon along the road as you arranged."
"You know how it is with Napoleons," the girl said. "They're always retreating! A girl has to make all the advances herself, these days!"
"As soon as I'm upright again I shall be honored to prove the converse of that remark!" U.N.C.L.E.'s Chief Enforcement Officer riposted.
"Sure, 'tis a fine, enterprisin' spirit you have there, the two of you!" the fat man said enthusiastically. "And it's similar to the one I've employed here meself at all. But seein' as how it's still well short of six o'clock, you can profit, from the cheap-rate day tariff, you."
"Day tariff?" Solo echoed. "Cheap rate?"
"To be sure. For the Van der Lee emergency escape service. I was thinkin' of starting a network, a European network, just to be used for getting the boyos out of scrapes. Do you not think that would be a good idea now?"
"You're incorrigible! Send in a bill," Solo said. "What I'd be much more interested in would be a service for writing reports! How I hate doing it... and I've just remembered—we shall have to do just that for Waverly."
"You're worrying for nothing, Napoleon," Kuryak
in soothed. "It's all been attended to. It's done already.
"But... how can it be? We've just…"
"I did it myself. Tufik... er, our friend here, that is to say... kindly coded it for me and dispatched it via the plane's transmitter. It was quite short."
"Illya—what did you say, for heaven's sake?"
"I said we had investigated the existence of the reported criminals' escape organization in Europe... and that there was no foundation for the reports…"
* * *
[1] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #16 The Splintered Sunglasses Affair
[2] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E #7 The Radioactive Camel Affair
[3] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E #9 The Diving Dames Affair