The right rear tire on the sedan exploded.
The jarring impact of the burst tire, hit by one of the machine gun bullets, wrenched the wheel from Illya's grip. The sedan fishtailed again, violently, the back end slur ring to the right and the front end pointed directly at the open drop to the valley floor below.
Desperately, Illya clutched at the wheel, his foot crashing down on the brake, but even as he did so he knew that it was too late.
Solo had just enough time to yell, "look out!"
And then the sedan went off the road, front end lifting, and then crashing down heavily, and they began to slide downward, side ways, with Illya still hanging onto the wheel in a death grip, picking up speed as they crashed across. rocks and through the underbrush.
A large cluster of rocks lay in the path of their downward flight, and when the front bumper of the sedan crashed into the rocks, the rear end lifted, sending them airborne, catapulting the sedan end over end in a spinning, floating arc, like a toy tossed into the air by a child.
Further down, it hit the slope on its top, crushing it, and the sedan began to roll sideways, mutilated into a twisted pile of gray metal, and when it came to rest against a huge boulder a hundred yards from the valley floor below the gas tank exploded, sending huge tongues of flame and billows of black smoke high into the warm Mexican afternoon.
And then it was quiet again.
Three
Solo had been thrown clear. When the careening sedan had hit the first cluster of rocks, catapulting it into the air, the door on the passenger side of the vehicle had been jarred open and the impact had pushed him out.
He had landed in a clump of scrub brush, rolling, his head narrowly missing a large rock there. Dazed, he lay hidden from the road above in the brush and rocks, unable to move. The sound of the explosion below shocked his mind into instant awareness again.
He swiveled his head, looking down the slope. He saw the flames and the billowing smoke, and a numbness came over him. Illya, he thought. Illya's down there.
He started to rise. A sharp pain stabbed at his right leg. Looking at it, he saw that his trousers were torn. A huge gash had been ripped -in his leg from the fall. He lay still again, thinking, He's dead. Illya's dead.
A blind, white-hot rage came over him then. His head pounded. THRUSH was going to pay for this. He lay hidden, waiting. If the men in the jeep had seen him thrown clear, and came down to search... He felt for the U.N.C.L.E. special at his belt, but it was gone, lost in his rolling fall from the sedan.
He moved forward slowly on his stomach to where he could see around one of the rocks. He looked up at the road. He saw the jeep parked up there. The three men were standing at the edge of the slope, peering down. One of the men pointed. Solo saw another man grin, nodding his head. They were apparently satisfied. The three men turned and got back into the jeep.
Solo did not know any of the three, but he knew he would never forget their faces, even from this distance. The jeep moved up the road to the slide. The driver jockeyed, turning it around, and then stated back along the road, the way they had come. It disappeared around the turn.
Solo felt instantly in his pocket for his U.N.C.L.E. communicator. He had to contact Mr. Waverly, tell him what had happened. Waverly would send a team of U.N.C.L.E. agents out immediately. Solo knew there was nothing he could do by himself.
He located the communicator and brought it out. Damaged. The antenna had been snapped in the fall he had taken; there was no way he could fix it. He threw it down in disgust.
Now what? He had to get back to Teclaxican. But he did not know if THRUSH had anyone posted near the slide, though he decided they probably did have. He could not attempt to leave the area now for fear of being seen. If they knew he was still alive, and unarmed, he did not have a chance. There was only the one thing he could do.
He lay waiting for nightfall. Below him, the flames engulfing the sedan dwindled as the fire burned itself out. A thin waft of smoke curled into the sky, and then disappeared altogether. The charred, blackened lump of metal lay like a dark, ugly insect under the sun.
Solo looked away. He made his mind a blank. He did not want to think about Illya Kuryakin.
The sun began to fall into the west, maddeningly slow. Afternoon began to fade away to night. The shadows in the valley below deepened, and the air began to take on a slight chill. Another hour, Solo thought as he lay behind the rocks. It would be dark in another hour.
He was acutely aware of the pain in his right leg. He had inspected it gingerly for broken bones. There were none. The gash was deep, and blood had flowed freely from it, but he did not think it would prevent him from walking. He had tied his handkerchief above the wound, tightly, to act as a tourniquet. It had stopped bleeding finally.
The sun was gone completely now, and the sky had turned from blue to muted black. A faint orange glow of twilight emanated from the west, fading, and then there was no light at all. The hour had passed.
He waited until the darkness was complete before moving.
He stood slowly, then, testing his leg. It seemed to be able to support his weight well enough. He started up the slope, keeping into the cover of the rocks there. The footing was treacherous in the dark, and he stumbled several times, almost falling.
He moved laterally instead of straight up, not wanting to get on to the road until he was out of sight of the slide and any lookouts that might be there. When he had worked his way around the turn at the western end of the straight stretch, he moved up to the road itself. He saw the path through the jungle to his left, the one Diego Santiago had told him led to the lake.
He debated going there for a look, decided against it since he was unarmed and since he did not know the area. When he got back to Teclaxican he would contact Mr. Waverly for the team of agents, and tomorrow they would come up here in force. Chances were that THRUSH thinking he too was dead, would not vacate the area before then.
He moved along the road, walking slowly, favoring his injured leg. He was careful to stay close to the slope on his right. If anyone came up the road, it seemed likely that they would be members of THRUSH, and he wanted to be able to get out of sight quickly. No one else would have reason to come up this road at night.
It took him over an hour to reach the main road. He had not seen any cars on the secondary road, nor did he see any now on the main one. It was ten miles back to Teclaxican, and he knew it was very possible that he would have to walk the entire distance. There was little chance of a car being out here on the plain at night.
The prospect was a grim one. His leg was aching badly now. He wondered if it would hold up for ten miles. But he had no alternative; he began to walk. He had gone approximately three miles, walking along the side of the road, when he saw the headlights.
They were coming toward him, from Teclaxican. He stopped. He did not know what to do. If he flagged the car down, and it turned out to be THRUSH-manned, he was a dead pigeon. He looked around him. Flat plain on both sides of the road, with no place to hide from the sweeping glare of the headlights. They were coming closer. He had no choice now. It was too late to run, and he knew he would not get far on his injured leg. Bending, he picked up a large, heavy rock and cupped it in his palm. It was little defense against a gun, he knew, but it was all he had. He stood waiting for the car.
It had been moving at a fast speed for the condition of the road, and it slowed suddenly, quickly. Solo knew that the driver had seen him, and had applied the brakes. He took a tighter grip on the rock, holding it at his side and slightly behind him in his right hand.
The car came to a stop almost next to him. A white face peered through the driver's window at him.
Solo stared. "Estrellita!" he said. Estrellita Valdone, black eyes wide, stared back.
"Mr. Solo! What...what are you doing here?"
"No time to explain now," Solo said quickly. "I've got to get back to Teclaxican. Will you take me?"
"Yes, certainly," she said. Solo went around to
the passenger side of the car, a new Ford, and slid inside. He leaned back against the seat, stretching his injured leg straight out in front of him under the dash.
Estrellita was looking at him, eyes still wide. "You're hurt. What happened to you? I was worried when you did not keep our dinner engagement. No one seemed to know where you were."
"We had an accident," Solo said shortly.
"Where is Mr. Kuryakin?"
"He's dead," Solo said through clenched teeth.
"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"Does Teclaxican have any policia?" Solo asked her.
"A subjefe," Estrellita said. "His name is Hernandez."
"Take me to him."
"But you should see a doctor. Your leg..."
"Later," Solo said. "The only person I want to see is the subjefe."
"All right." Estrellita swung the Ford into a U-turn, heading back toward Teclaxican. Solo sat staring out the windshield, not speaking. His face was grim, tightly set.
After a time he turned, looking at the girl beside him. "What were you doing out here this time of night?" he said.
"I could not sleep," Estrellita said. "I often go for a drive when I cannot sleep. I find that it relaxes me."
"It's a lucky thing you decided to come out here," Solo said. "I don't think I could have walked much further on this leg."
When they reached Teclaxican, Estrellita drove through it, turning to the right along a short street on the western edge. At the far end of the street, a low, balconied house lay behind a white-washed fence. A pair of twin banana palms grew in the yard.
Estrellita brought the Ford to a stop in front of the house. "The subjefe lives here," she said. Napoleon Solo nodded.
They got out and went through the gate in the fence. There was no time to lose, Solo thought. He would have to see the subjefe and then call Mr. Waverly in New York immediately on the spare communicator at the hotel. It would take time for him to get a team of agents here, and Solo knew that the longer they delayed the more likely the possibilities were that THRUSH would complete its testing in the area and pull out. He wanted to get back up to that lake as quickly as possible.
They walked up to the front porch. Solo rapped loudly on the door. There was only silence from inside. He rapped again. Still no answer. Solo turned to Estrellita Valdone.
She had been carrying a small, straw handbag, and it was open on her arm. She had taken something from inside.
Solo said, "What..."
She held a thin, silver vial in her hand, raising it up toward his face. Solo knew instantly what it was. He threw his right hand across his face, reaching out for her with his left. But he was too late. She released a button the side of the vial and a thin stream of odorless, almost invisible gas escaped from the end, enveloping Solo's head in a vaporous mist.
Nerve gas!
He had encountered it before. It had been developed, and perfected, by THRUSH, a favorite and deadly weapon they used mercilessly on whoever stood in their way. It attacked the nervous system, rendering the victim helpless within a matter of seconds. Any number of after-effects were known to have occurred after contact with it...brain damage, palsy, respiratory malfunction.
Now, Solo stumbled backward as the gas poured into his lungs. He felt his mind beginning to cloud, a strange, disembodied feeling, and thoughts whirled together in a disjoined jumble. Estrellita, a THRUSH agent, should have known, should have been more careful, too friendly, asked too many questions, should have known, she must have been going to the lake tonight, story too pat, her house here no reality, too late,—can't contact, too late, too
Napoleon Solo collapsed, unconscious, to the wooden porch.
ACT III: THE RIM OF HELL
Illya Kuryakin thought he was dead. He lay in a sea of blackness, deep, impenetrable, and his first conscious thought was, So this is what it's like. It wasn't so bad, he decided. Just blackness. Nothing but a sea of blackness.
He smelled food. That was strange, a part of his mind said. You shouldn't be able to smell food if you were dead. He tried to identify the smell. Chili peppers.
Chili peppers?
He became aware that the blackness was not as deep as it had appeared at first. There seemed to be a light there, far away, almost a feeling of light, like you had when you were sleeping and someone turned on a dim lamp somewhere in the room.
Illya realized his eyes were closed. He tried to open them. The lids seemed stuck together. He concentrated on opening his eyes, and finally one parted into a slit. He was looking at a ceiling. It was rough-hewn, made of what seemed to be wood-braced adobe. He got the eye open all the way then.
He was in a single room, he saw, the walls of dark adobe like the ceiling. The light he had seen came from a small oil lantern on a wooden table at the far end There was a door there, closed. The smell of chili peppers seemed to come from the other side of the door.
He was lying on a straw mattress supported by a rough-wood frame. There was a thin blanket covering him to the waist. He saw that his chest was bare, and that he seemed to be wrapped in some kind of white cloth strips across his stomach and chest.
He tried to sit up then, and a sharp, biting pain stabbed through his right side, ripping a gasp from his throat, and he sank back down again. But the shock of the sudden pain cleared his mind completely, and he was instantly alert.
Illya Kuryakin began to remember, then.
He remembered the hurtling, downward flight of the sedan as it left the mountain road with its blown tire. He remembered his futile efforts to slow it, and the pressure on his arms as he tried t manipulate the wheel. He remembered the jarring impact as the sedan crashed into the rocks on the slope, and then the floating, helpless feeling as they became airborne. He remembered the right door being wrenched open, and Solo being thrown out, and then his own frantic tearing at the door, his body leaving the sedan, spinning into the air.
He remembered rolling himself into a tight ball in midair, and automatic reaction, and then solid collision with the ground, and rolling, over and over, downward, and his desperate clawing at the rocky earth to stop his momentum, and then simultaneous knives of pain in his side and the back of his head. After that there was only blackness.
Illya felt himself sweating. Where was he? How had he gotten here? And what had happened to Napoleon Solo? MaybeԵ
He heard the door at the far side of the room open. An old man came inside. Illya could see his face, wrinkled, leathery, in the flickering light from the lantern. He looked to be Indian.
The man came across the room cautiously, peering down at Illya. Seeing he was awake, the old man's lined face broke into a toothless grin. He said something in what Illya supposed was Zapotec dialect.
Illya shook his head slowly, indicating that he did not understand. The man nodded and left the room. But he returned seconds later with a young girl in her late teens. The girl went to stand above Illya. She smiled shyly.
"Can you speak English?" Illya asked her. His voice was thick.
"Yes, a little," the girl said, pronouncing each word carefully. "I have been to school to learn."
"Good," Illya said. "Now tell me, where are we?"
"The house of my father, Juan Corrazon," the girl said.
"Yes, but where? Teclaxican?"
The girl explained. Teclaxican was many miles to the west.
Illya said, "Are we near the lake?"
"Yes."
"How did I get here?"
"My father found you near the wreckage of an automobile," the girl said. "He was gathering firewood in the valley. He brought you here on the burro."
"When?"
"Tonight, after supper."
Illya could see through the single window in the room that it was dark outside. There was no sign of a moon. "What time is it?" he asked the girl.
"It is near midnight," she said. "We have been waiting for you to awaken."
Midnight. He had been unconscious for more than eight hours. He thought, What about S
olo? He said to the girl, "Ask your father if he saw anyone else near the wreckage. Another man."
The girl spoke rapidly to her father. The old man shook his head emphatically. Illya wet his lips. Solo had been thrown clear he knew that. Suppose he was still up there on the slope, hurt, dying, or... He had to get to Teclaxican.
He tried to raise up again, and the biting pain in his side forced him down. His breath came in short gasps.
The girl stepped forward and put her hand gently on his shoulder. "You must lie still," she said. "You have broken ribs. I could feel them when I bandaged you."
"I've got to get to Teclaxican," Illya said through clenched teeth.
"In the morning I will go for the doctor," the girl said. "Tonight you must rest."
"You don't understand," Illya said. "I have a friend who was in that car with me when it went off the road. He's still on that slope somewhere. I've got to get help."
Again, Kuryakin tried to rise. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Groaning. he sank back.
The girl spoke to her father again. He shook his head. She seemed to be arguing with him. Finally, the old man gave a reluctant grunt and left the room.
The girl said, "I will take the burro to Teclaxican. I will bring the doctor back here."
"You'll go now?"
"Yes."
"All right," Illya said. "And bring the policia back with you."
"Policia?" the girl said. "subjefe Hernandez?"
"If that's his name," Illya said. He thought of something. "Where's my jacket?"
"On the chair," the girl said.
"Bring it here, will you?"
The girl brought him the jacket. Grimly he searched the pockets. His U.N.C.L.E. communicator was gone, undoubtedly lost on the slope. He threw the jacket down in frustration.
"I will go now," the girl said.
"Hurry," Illya Kuryakin said. "As fast as you can."
TWO
Subjefe Hernandez was one of the fattest men Illya Kuryakin had ever seen. He weighed in excess of three hundred pounds, and wore a soiled khaki uniform and a black-visored cap that was too small for his huge head. He was obviously not pleased at having been gotten out of bed in the middle of the night. He scowled down at Illya as the small, hawk-faced doctor probed with gentle fingers at his side. The girl had brought them from Teclaxican, arriving just a few moments before in a vintage station wagon belonging to the subjefe. She had been gone two hours.
The Pillars of Salt Affair Page 4