The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 28

When he had swung the gates open, he ran lightly back across the road and released the handbrake of the car.

"Here, take one of these guns," he said crisply to the girl, rummaging again in the attache case. "Basically, as you see, they're long-barreled .32 automatics - too big for the pocket but splendid for using in a car. The great thing about them, however, is the accessory department: look, you can screw on, separately or together, a shoulder stock, a barrel extension with silencer that gives them greater accuracy, a butt extension that means you can use them two-handed from the hip, and an infrared viewfinder. That means you can see the light thrown by this flashlight for aiming - but you don't have to bother about wearing special glasses."

"I can't wait!" Coralie exclaimed, taking the spidery-looking weapon gingerly and examining it carefully.

"I'm serious," Kuryakin said. "You may have to use it if you're with me... In the meantime: let's go!"

Standing outside the open driver's door with one hand on the wheel, he began to push. Slowly the car began to move, gathering momentum as it left the grassy shoulder and rolled across the highway, moving still faster as the tires crunched on gravel and it passed the gateposts, accelerating at last as the wheels ran down the gentle I slope leading towards the screen of bushes and the tunnel mouth. As soon as the vehicle had enough momentum, Illya swung into the seat and steered from the inside, his eyes probing the space behind every bush in the weird illumination provided by the infrared lamp and the glasses.

The Volkswagen, without a light showing and with a dead motor, sped down the incline in the darkness, twisting past bushes and obstructions with unerring aim.

The dregs of the night hung heaviest in the wooded hollow just before the entrance to the tunnel. Taking her eye away for a moment from the infrared light, the girl was astonished to see how stygian the blackness was. Very dimly, now, she could make out the darker blur that was the cliff face, the indistinct opening of the tunnel mouth. From here, too, she could faintly make out the double row of low-power ceiling bulbs that marked the course of the subterranean passage curving away into the heart of the hill.

Kuryakin's plan was to switch on the ignition, put the car in gear and then let in the clutch to start the engine once they were inside the tunnel. He only needed the surprise brought by silence to get past any guards and keep the car rolling. From there on, he intended to roar through the tunnel as fast as he could, trusting again to that element of surprise to enable him to get through and establish a position on the far side before any of the defenders had realized what was happening.

After that, he would have to play it by ear. He only hoped that fate would allow him to consolidate a position strong enough at least to bargain from. If not, his own position - and the girl's - would be as bad, if not worse, than Solo's.

Still - he had to try. There was nothing else he could do.

Coralie was looking through the gunsight again now, squinting along the barrel at the strange lunar landscape thrown into relief by the magic beam of the flashlight in her other hand. She idly scrutinized the shadowed interstices of the cliff face, glanced at the trees standing proud like cardboard cutouts against the rock, looked past the closed door to the guardhouse, and up at the arched tunnel mouth –

"Illya!" she screamed. "Look out! The tunnel… Stop!"

Tires screeched as he stamped on the pedal to lock the car's back wheels. The great steel shutter that she had glimpsed rumbling down to seal off the entrance slammed home in its metal guides. The VW, slowing but not able to stop entirely in the time, slid straight into it with a noise like a hundred thunderclaps.

"We must have crossed a photo-electric cell guard," Kuryakin shouted as he started the engine, crashed the gearshift into reverse and backed the buckled car away from the blanked off tunnel mouth. "That thing was automatically operated or I'm -"

A burst of shooting drowned his words. Bullet thumped into the bodywork and spanged off metal projections as he screamed around in a half circle, thumped a tree bole, coaxed the car back into first and shot back the way they had come. The VW's gas tank was in the front of the car and if there was to be shooting it was better to keep it at the far end! "The light! Put the light on again!" he yelled to the girl as he wrestled with the wheel. "Nobody can see it but us!"

Coralie had, almost as a reflex, switched the flashlight off as soon as she'd seen the steel shutter crashing down. Now she thumbed the lever again and stared anxiously through the screen as Illya rocketed them up towards the house. There was nobody to be seen, although the gunfire was as intense as ever. Above the explosions, an insistent, thin shrilling, an alarm bell could be heard ringing and ringing.

"Get down below the seat back!" the agent shouted.

"They're firing at us from in front too, now." He zigzagged the car wildly from side to side. The windshield starred and a side window shattered. Shards of glass fell noisily to the floor.

"As I thought," be continued. "Those guns must be computer-aimed - they could never fire so accurately in the dark otherwise. Look! In the infrared! You can see a bank of them."

The girl peered over the edge of the door and saw in the beam from the flashlight a group of muzzles belching flame and smoke from a steel screen behind a clump of bushes.

"Hold tight!" Kuryakin called. "I'll go in here: maybe the trees will slow down their radar responses." The car careened off the roadway and bumped on flat tires among the great trunks studding the woods between the tunnel and the estancia. Abruptly there was a stinging sensation in Coralie's hand and the light from the lamp dwindled and vanished. A stray slug had killed the flash light. At the same time the motor spluttered and died; it was all very well to turn your back to preserve the tank, but that put your carburetor in a very vulnerable position.

Now that the car was silent, they could hear above the shrilling of the bell the distant shouts of orders, the trampling of feet, a door opening and slamming as men filed through. Somewhere through the trees, a searchlight dazzled on and outlined the leaves in golden light.

For a moment Kuryakin sat tense, his lower lip thrust out, his deep-set eyes glittering beneath that bulging brow. His forehead was beaded with sweat and a trickle of blood from a furrow scoring one cheekbone had dried on his face. For the moment, the shooting seemed to have stopped.

"They've halted the automatic fire to let their men move in," he said at last. "Come on! Let's go while the going's good." Seizing the girl by the hand, he pushed his way out of the riddled car and dodged away through the trees. A moment later they heard a tractor grinding along the road towards the thicket.

There was a flurry of commands and a second searchlight killed the dark just behind them. Tiger-striped with bars of blazing light, the little wood seemed suddenly a bare and empty place, the black shadows the only hints of comfort and warmth within it. There was a rattle of bolts and a volley of gunshots again. Bullets thwack into the leaves around them and the girl heard one zing past her ear with a noise like an angry bee.

"Stay behind a tree and give me covering fire," Kuryakin cried.

As the girl turned to pump slugs from the unfamiliar U.N.C.L.E. gun in the general direction of the shouts, she saw him flit from shadow to shadow, from trunk to trunk, until he was only forty or fifty yards from the tractor. He dropped on one knee and cradled the gun to his right shoulder.