[Magazine 1966-­06] - The Vanishing Act Affair - Lynds Dennis. Страница 2

In the factory building there was light now, faces at the windows, but no one came out. Illya saw, through the distant windows of the factory, a man on the telephone. The police would be here soon, but no one would come from the factory until the police arrived.

He had perhaps fifteen minutes.

Quickly he bent over the fallen guards. They were not dead; there was no mark of any kind on them. They seemed to be in some kind of drugged sleep, and Illya remembered the way the limping man had motioned toward the air vent of the locked armored truck.

He slapped the faces of two guards. Nothing happened. The men neither moved nor groaned. They did not come awake. Illya turned his attention to the armored truck itself.

The doors of the truck were open, and Illya circled it cautiously. There was nothing unusual, no signs of battle. Inside the truck, through the open rear door, Illya could see the cargo—bags of money.

Nothing seemed to have been taken or even disturbed. How could it have been, since Illya and Solo had seen nothing and no one approach the truck? And yet? The guards had fired at something, for some reason.

Illya did not believe in magic, but something which defied logic had happened here. Carefully, he climbed into the truck to check the bags. Five minutes later he squatted in the truck and rubbed his chin. The bags were all full. They had not been opened. Nothing at all seemed to be missing.

Why attack an armored truck of money and take nothing? Why drug the guards, force them out into the open to fire at nothing, and take no money? It made n o sense at all. But Illya had long ago learned that everything made sense if you knew the key, the—

And then it made sense.

Illya saw them through the open rear door of the truck. Crouched there inside with the bags of money, he looked out through the rear door and saw them coming from the bushes, out of the shadows, pouring into the road.

Thrush!

Of course, Thrush! Always Thrush!

There were six of them. They had been lying in wait. But they had moved too slowly. Illya crouched among the money bags, fitted the stock on his U.N.C.L.E. special, and opened fire.

There were ten of them now. They fell screaming all across the road as he fired. But others came on, firing as they came.

* * *

NAPOLEON followed the limping man across the wooded country toward the small car Solo and Illya had trailed from the meeting of the Things To Come Brotherhood. The leader of the only branch of the strange cult in America, the limping man looked like some shaggy mutation of a human being.

But crippled and grotesque as the man was, he moved with amazing agility. Solo scrambled to keep up. The man reached his small car, and glanced quickly behind. He had heard Solo, and now he had seen the youthful agent. Solo abandoned his cover and sprinted for his own car.

The small car roared away down the dirt road. In his own car Solo raced after the small car. The cultist drove like a madman, the small car careening down the dangerous dirt road. Solo clung grimly to the wheel of his own car as he followed as closely as he could.

The small car was quicker on the narrow turns, but Solo's car was heavier and held the road better. What he lost in speed on the curves, he gained back by holding the road better in and out of the turns.

But the small car pulled slowly away. And then the dirt road reached the highway—not the highway that went past the factory, but the coast highway. The mountains came down close to the sea, and beyond the road the cliffs dropped to the ocean.

The small car screeched into a turn and vanished down the highway and around a curve. Solo, forced to slow down, made the turn and gunned his heavier car after the vanished small car of his quarry. He rounded two sharp curves without sighting the car of the limping man.

Ahead there was a sickening screech of rubber, a loud, rending crash, and silence.

Solo came around the last curve into a long straightaway—and saw, just where the curve entered the straightaway, the broken guardrail above the sea. He jammed on his brakes. The highway ahead was completely empty. Solo jumped out of his stopped car and ran to the broken guardrail. The jagged pieces of wood and metal were still quivering.

He looked down over the edge of the sea cliff. Spreading ripples and white foam showed where something had struck. In the center of the circle of white, a black object bobbed on the surface, and, even as he watched, slowly sank.

It was the small black car.

Solo stared down. He saw no sign of life, no one swimming or struggling in the water. Then he looked carefully around him where he stood just off the highway.

Perhaps the limping man had gone over with his car, and perhaps he hadn't. Solo could not be sure either way. And it did not really matter. Either way, he was not going to catch the limping man this night.

Either the cultist was dead with the car, or he was snugly hidden somewhere in the bushes of the mountains across the highway. And if he were alive he was well aware of Solo on his trail. No, Solo would not catch up with his quarry now.

The chief agent of U.N.C.L.E. returned to his car, and turned back. He drove more slowly, but without wasting any time. On the dirt road he wondered if Illya had found anything at the armored truck.

He heard the wild firing as he neared the spot where the small car had been parked. The heavy firing of what his trained ears told him was an U.N.C.L.E. Special firing on automatic.

Silently swearing at himself for splitting up forces, Solo leaped from his car, readied his own Special, and ran through the woods and across the open country toward where he had last seen the armored truck.

Again he swore at himself. Illya had fallen into a trap. Grimly he ran on, hoping he was not too late. But while he was still a hundred yards away, the firing stopped. Solo paused, listened.

There was no sound at all in the dark night.

THREE

SOLO CREPT quickly but silently through the bushes. Moving with the catlike speed of a trained athlete, he reached the edge of the road and looked out. What he saw made him stare in bewilderment.

The road, the guards, and the armored car were exactly the same as they had been when he last saw them.

Nothing had changed.

Illya was not in sight. These were no new bodies. There were no enemies, no one of any kind. Only a distant police siren, wailing faintly and moving closer.

Solo moved out from the bushes, standing openly now, and looked for any signs of the gun battle he had heard as he ran up. The only sign was a smell of burned powder in the night air.

He bent to check the unconscious guards. They were all alive, unharmed, and unmarked. The only injuries visible in the night were the torn and shattered bushes and trees.

And still he had not found Illya. He knew he had not been mistaken about the sound of the heavy firing he had heard—it had been an U.N.C.L.E. Special. Then Illya had to be here, unless they, some enemy, had taken their dead and wounded, and Illya, with them!

Solo was feeling far from happy with this thought; then he looked inside the armored truck. Illya lay face down on the bags of money, his U.N.C.L.E. Special still gripped in his hand.

With a sinking in his stomach, Solo leaped into the truck and bent over his friend. The small Russian did not move. Solo felt his friend's body. Illya was very much alive. Solo could see no signs of a wound or an injury of any kind. Like the guards outside, Illya appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

But Solo checked the Special in the blond Russian's hand. The clip was empty, the barrel still hot to the touch. Solo squatted on his heels in the silent truck and rubbed his jaw. What the devil had Illya been firing at?