And with a sweet, vile grin, she pulled the lever.
An entire wall of the water-filled chamber rose up, changing the level drastically. The water swirled away into the darkness of another room beyond. Them, like a tidal-wave, it swept back again.
Jackie Woznusky saw the thing first. He began to make bleating noises.
Sabrina screamed low. She clutched Napoleon Solo’s arm.
Brocade laughed. The amplified sound jarred against the thrashing in the water. Solo went rigid with horror as he stared at the monster that had been washed toward them by the tide of water from the dark room beyond.
Not for a single second did he take his eyes off the writhing tentacles and the awful, bag-like body of the giant octopus.
ACT FOUR
TO DIE IN THE SKY
As he ran upward through the jungle darkness, Illya Kuryakin realized with dismay that he, one solitary man fleeing a dozen or more pursuers, was playing the game all wrong.
To clatter along noisily as he was doing merely invited capture. Knowing Lobba-Lobba far better than he, Sailor and his pack of THRUSH uglies could wait until he wore himself out. Then they’d close in.
Illya banged against a palm trunk, caromed off. He steadied himself and tried a sudden change of tactics. He stopped stock still exactly where he was.
On the jungle slope below, the beams of electric hand-torches criss-crossed like eerie white blades. Shadows of men flickered among breaks in the foliage. Illya rubbed his face, sucked in a deep breath. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled silently under leafy protection of a prickly tropical shrub. There he sat, hunched over, arms clasped around his knees and his pistol held tight in his right hand.
“Where is ‘e, Sailor?” a voice bawled down among the lights. “I don’t ‘ear ‘im no more.”
“Spread out, spread out, form a search line,” Jackson shouted. “He may be holing up.”
“Maybe he’s lucked onto the cross-trail that goes up to the base,” someone else suggested.
“Shut up and form a line, you scum. Get strung out a good distance.”
The positions of the lights shifted, widened until each torch was a separate whitish diamond-burst of light.
Presently Sailor ordered: “All right. Start moving up the hill. Slow and steady. He can’t get very far.”
All Illya had to his advantage was the impenetrable inkiness of the rain-forest at night. The air beneath the fronds of the shrubbery was damp, sticky. Sweat congealed on the tip of his nose and fell off a droplet at a time.
Was he wise to try and avoid them this way? What if Napoleon Solo were alive and needed his help at the base further up? Did he dare delay like this?
Illya had no evidence to support the wishful conclusion that Solo was alive. Illya concluded that his primary responsibility was to seek out the THRUSH installation and destroy it.
To this end, he had to stay alive. He resigned himself to the perilous task at hand, the task of sitting absolutely still while the search line moved up toward him.
The flashlight-beams speared the darkness. They wigwagged back and forth as their operators swept the underbrush ahead of them. An interval of perhaps eight or ten feet separated each searcher. They were quite close now, less than a dozen yards off. One man would pass within a couple of feet to the left of the thick shrub under which Illya sat, holding his breath.
The light-beams flicked and flashed. The searcher coming up from Illya’s right had already cast his beam higher up the hill. The man on the left, one of the Japanese Illya had seen in the bar of the Episcopalian Hotel, was moving more slowly. He swung his light back and forth in slow, meticulous swathes.
The tension nearly tore Illya Kuryakin apart. It took all his strength and training to remain rock still as the Japanese searcher moved to within a yard of him.
Something tickled Illya’s right leg just above the edge of his sock. He gave his leg a little jerk. The searcher swung his light-beam toward the very bush beneath which Illya was hidden.
Illya’s leg jerk dislodged the cause of the itch. A hideous yellow spider tumbled down the slope of his ankle and stopped, quivering, on the toe of his right shoe.
Illya knew enough about insects to recognize a horrendously deadly Pacific species. If the spider bit him he might not die, but he would fall unconscious at once. And that would make him fair game for all the vipers and other lethal creatures abroad in the jungle.
The light-beam traveled slowly past the shrub, moving on to the right. It stopped traveling after a yard, then reversed itself. The Japanese was swinging it back past the clump of shrubs one more time---
The spider apparently could not decide to hop off Illya’s shoe or return up his leg in hopes of finding a meal. After an agonizing delay, it decided on the latter course, moving briskly back toward the stained white cuff of his trousers.
Illya’s flesh crawled. The light-beam was sweeping steadily toward the shrub, but he couldn’t risk the spider’s bite. He flicked the insect away with one quick brush of his gun-muzzle.
The light-beam caught the spider as it spun off into the air. The Japanese uttered a startled syllable. Illya hugged his legs and froze.
The light-beam remained fixed on a point of earth a foot from Illya’s concealed shoes. Pinned in the circle of brilliance, the spider bolted into the dark.
With an exclamation of revulsion, the Japanese whipped his flashlight up. He directed it toward the summit of the island and moved away rapidly.
Illya almost fainted with the exhilaration of taking a deep breath. He blessed the spider silently, and hoped it found a palatable dinner somewhere else.
Soon the lights diminished to pinpoints higher on the hillside. Illya rose. The searchers would be coming down eventually, though. He had to move fast.
Illya Kuryakin was lucky. In a matter of minutes he found a thick, gnarled tropical tree with branches which would support him.
He dragged himself up to one of them and stretched out. Voices rattled in the distance. The lights returned. This time the searchers were less methodical. One man passed directly under the branch where Illya lay. The man only flicked his light casually around the lower part of the trunk. Off in the muggy dark, Sailor was uttering all sorts of blasphemies and indecencies. The search had failed.
Illya remained in the tree all night. He was fairly comfortable even though his strained nerves didn’t permit him to sleep. Several times during the hours before dawn the sky up near the summit flushed pinkly. Illya heard a rumble, which he adjudged to come from the not-so-extinct volcano.
When the first palings in the east indicated the approach of dawn, he climbed down. He stretched and started cat-footing up the slope. He found the going much less difficult now. Even the faintest light helped him pick his way through the underbrush with dispatch.
After he had climbed for perhaps ten minutes, the jungle thinned out. He came face to face with an immense slab of concrete that rose from the earth to a height of six feet above his head. The concrete, the edge of the great plateau, ran into the distance to the left and right.
The humid morning wind carried sounds of men’s voices. Down to the left, Illya spotted an iron ladder built into the vertical face of the concrete plateau. He broke from the cover of the tree, reached the ladder and pulled himself up.
When his head popped over the edge, he saw he was directly behind a small, square concrete building. Past one corner he saw part of a quadrangle, other buildings including a hangar-like structure toward which a squad of men in blue suits was dog-trotting.
Inside the hangar Illya Kuryakin clearly made out a pair of the saucer craft. He thought he detected the silhouettes of others further back in the same building.
As he was taking this all in, a THRUSH soldier with a rifle walked around the corner of the small building. The man’s eyes bugged at the sight of Illya’s head sticking up over the edge of the man-made plateau.
The guard fumbled to bring his rifle into firing position. His
mouth dropped open.
Illya whipped his right hand up, fired his pistol once. The explosion was a flat pop, instantly diffused by the morning breeze. The guard corkscrewed slowly to the ground and never got his scream out.
Illya clambered up onto the level concrete. He dragged man and rifle into the shadows at the rear of the little building. There he proceeded to change clothes with the deceased functionary.
In another moment Illya briskly rounded the corner of the little building. The THRUSH rifle was draped in the crook of his arm. He paused to give his cap a tilt and look over the scene before him. The concrete quadrangle was lined on all sides by buildings. Some of them were huge. On the quad’s far side, a double line of men in coveralls poured out a barracks and disappeared down a stairway resembling a Manhattan subway entrance. The double file looked for all the world like a herd of commuters rushing to work. Were they going to a manufacturing facility underground?
Directly to Illya’s left, several small buildings were arranged in a row. The one nearest him bore a small sign reading, Machine Tool Shop. The next one’s sign said Office of Nutrition Department. The third one---Illya’s pulses quickened---was marked Armory.
Two THRUSH soldiers were moving in his direction along the line of buildings. Illya got going, marched ahead smartly. The soldiers passed him. One glanced over and touched his cap in a cordial way.
“Morning, Voboronsky.”
Illya grunted, kept his head down and kept moving.
At the entrance to the Armory, Illya turned sharply left. He shoved at the door, found that it yielded with no difficulty. Behind him, a shout from one of the soldiers ripped out abruptly.
“That wasn’t Voboronsky. I’ve never seen that fellow before!”
Illya dove into the building, flung his rifle. A Thrushman on duty behind a wooden counter went for the pistol at his belt. Illya fired a second earlier, dodged as the Thrushman’s bullet chewed cement and dust from the massive wall behind him.
Illya Kuryakin hadn’t missed. The man at the counter slid down until his jaw hit on the wood. Blood ran out of his mouth as the weight of his body pulled him all the way to the floor. Boots slammed outside. A whistle blasted. The little building was solidly constructed, with no other doors or windows. That was bad.
Shelves and racks at the rear held rifles, pistols, bandoliers of ammunition. With savage delight Illya spotted one more item.
Grenades, in neat rows like black eggs.
Illya vaulted the counter. He put down his rifle and rummaged among the ammunition boxes until he found what he needed for his pistol. He dumped a goodly supply in his pockets. Then he stuffed half a dozen grenades under his shirt and whirled around as the first of a squad of soldiers jammed in the door.
Illya snatched his rifle up, from where he laid it down, flicked the switch to automatic, squeezed the trigger as bullets fired by the soldiers began to eat into the wooden counter.
Illya dodged toward one of the high metal rifle racks, firing shot after shot. Two of the rather disorganized Thrushmen crowding the doorway bleated, fell back, clawed their middles and folded up dead.
A third soldier signaled the rest to draw back. Illya went up and over the bloodied, bullet-pocked counter in one long leap and hit the cement on the other side. His rifle bucked as he charged out the door.
The soldiers outside struggled to get their pistols and rifles into firing position as Illya raced at them. Their shots whistled off at wild angles. Illya had the advantage of surprise. It wouldn’t last long. More soldiers were coming on the run across the quadrangle. Illya chose the moment to leap over a corpse, cut sharply to the left and race down the side of the armory.
He went behind the next building, spun to fire at the corner. Several soldiers were already coming in pursuit. Two died under the impact of Illya’s bullets.
He whirled around again, reached the far corner of the back of the building, cut toward the quad again. His chest had begun to ache. Things blurred around him in the breaking light of morning. He had no notion of where he was going. Running along between the concrete wall he felt like a rat in a maze.
His only hope now---a savage angry hope---was to slaughter as many of them as possible before they converged and killed him.
TWO
Jackie Woznusky wailed in the flooded chamber: “Octop-p-p-pus!”
The cabbie’s corpulent frame seemed to be consumed by a vast series of frightened quakes. Up to his neck in water with Sabrina, Napoleon Solo couldn’t blame the hackie one bit.
Solo’s stomach was cold as he watched the monstrous body of the octopus float toward them, its tentacles whipping and sloshing lazily in the water.
“A charming little pet, don’t you think, Mr. Solo?” Brocade called over the loudspeaker from her position of safety in the booth.
Solo didn’t bother to reply, or to voice the red fury he felt because she’d tricked him. He backed up slowly, moving away from the octopus and its flicking, reaching tentacles.
One whipped near his nose. Solo’s stomach turned over at the sight of the hundreds of sucking orifices that opened and closed, opened and closed hungrily---
Coarse laughter sounded overhead. Solo assumed that THRUSH soldiers were gathering at the edge of the trap door, planning to enjoy the spectacle of death about to be enacted below. Well, Solo thought, if ever there was a time to use the couple of ace cards he’d been keeping since Westchester County, the time was now.
He’d wanted to save them until the final moment. He’d hoped to employ them on the SLAV craft in the THRUSH hangars. But nothing else could save the three of them now. He had no choice.
Solo twisted his head around, caught Sabrina’s shoulder, shook her. “Sabrina, you’ve got to let go of me. I’ve got to get at my shoe.”
“Speak up, Mr. Solo!” Brocade called. “I can’t hear your bleats of fright.”
Numb with horror, Sabrina had both hands wrapped around Solo’s right arm. He pried at her fingers underwater. Something slimy caressed the back of his neck. Jackie let out a calf-like bellow of warning.
Solo jerked his head down, felt pain as half a dozen tentacle-suckers ripped loose from the nape of his neck. The tentacle waved wildly over his head. Solo let himself go limp, pulling Sabrina down under the water with him.
Warm though the water was, it revived her, shocked her out of her hysteria. Solo pried her fingers loose, shoved her back against the concrete wall and let her fend for herself. His fingers strained down until he had a grip on his left shoe.
Weird, distorted into a fun-house image by the water, the slimy body and tentacles of the octopus moved steadily for them. Solo got his fingers under the edge of the crepe sole of his shoe, jerked hard. He peeled the entire shoe off in one piece.
Kicking, he shot to the surface just as one of the octopus tentacles wrapped around his waist.
Another tentacle flew straight for his face. Solo held the crepe sole out of the water.
Brocade wore a concerned look in the booth. She began to cry shrill warnings to the soldiers overhead. Solo got the slit in the crepe sole open, pulled out both of the capsule-shaped pellets.
He caught one on the tip of his tongue and sucked it into his mouth. A sudden bite with his own teeth and his head would be blown half way up to the top of the volcanic mountain outside.
He was hardly conscious of the dreadful pain around his middle as the pressure of the tentacle increased. He acted almost without thought. Death was very close.
The tentacle waving in front of his face swept in toward him. Solo thrust the remaining capsule into one of the sucking orifices.
The octopus sensed that it had a tidbit. The tentacle swept back toward the body, toward a maw Solo couldn’t see because of all the splashing, foaming water. There’s your breakfast, you bloody monster, Solo thought and turned his head away.
The octopus ingested the demolition pellet and blew up with a thunderous report.
Water geysered. Pieces of gelatinous flesh fle
w in all directions. The tentacle around Solo’s waist writhed, then relaxed and slithered loose. Solo opened his mouth, carefully shoved the other pellet into his right palm with his tongue, arched his arm back.
“Get down Jackie!”
He let fly at the wall on his right and grabbed Sabrina.
Another mammoth explosion rocked the chamber. Cement tumbled in huge blocks as the entire side wall caved outward. The glass of the observation booth shattered, jagged pieces dropping into the water. Solo’s lips peeled back from his teeth.
He’d hoped there would be air space beyond the wall he’d blasted. His fondest hopes had been exceeded. There was not only air-space, there was a brightly-lit corridor. And all the water in there was draining out of this chamber into the next.
“You soldiers!” Brocade screamed. “You soldiers up there---jump down and catch them!”
But the Thrushmen watching from above were reluctant to leap into the water. They didn’t know but what Solo had another pellet ready. Solo shoved Sabrina and Jackie Woznusky toward the opening through which the water was running out.
He intended to leave that way himself. He glanced back once. Brocade’s cheek ran with blood where glass had cut her. She was frothing with fury as she climbed onto the sill of the booth window so she could look directly up at the soldiers overhead and scream orders at them.
Swiftly Napoleon Solo sloshed across the pool. Before anyone could stop him, he reached high to grab Brocade’s ankle.
Hair flying, arms flailing, she tumbled off the booth window sill into the water.
She came up bubbling and spitting. The soldiers had their weapons unlimbered now. Solo crooked an elbow around Brocade’s neck and instantly converted her into a very effective shield.
Brocade struggled frantically, spitting out a cry at the soldiers: “Don’t hesitate. Shoot!” But they were not so foolish as to assassinate Dohm’s second in command.
The Dolls of Death Affair Page 10