The Invisibility Affair - Stratton Thomas. Страница 35

"Probably just ship noises," Hunter said. "This thing creaks like an old windjammer."

"How would you know what a windjammer sounds like?" McNulty said with a sneer.

"Because I've sailed in one, you pipsqueak! You and your antiquities societies...I've done things! All you do is talk about them."

Napoleon smiled. If they would just keep on talking, he could tell where they were and his job would be much easier. He must be close to Sanders now. He reached out, cautiously, and touched the man's back. Sanders started to turn, but Napoleon quickly located the caretaker's neck with his left hand and delivered a solid karate chop with his right. The Ithaca clattered on the deck as Napoleon grabbed Sanders and eased him down. A quick search located the gun and something in one of Sanders' pockets that felt like a Thrush communicator. He pocketed the communicator and stuck the gun through his belt, feeling much safer.

Deciding that any sudden cessation of talk from either Hunter of McNulty would make the other one suspicious, he crept forward toward two other men he could hear talking in low tones near the front of the gondola. He didn't quite make it.

"Sanders, what do you think you're doing?" Hunter demanded, his words coming from a point inches away from Napoleon's face. Napoleon mumbled something he hoped was a passable imitation of Sanders' cracked voice.

"Speak up, dammit!" Hunter yelled.

Accurately gauging the location of the voice, Napoleon chopped Hunter across the throat, then got him with a blow to the back of the neck as he stood strangling. He caught the Thrush as he fell, and relieve him of a pistol and another communicator. After some thought, he put the communicator back; he didn't have room to carry it. He hefted the pistol, then reversed it and gripped it firmly by the barrel as he moved forward again. McNulty had begun to curse the OTSMID, which Napoleon hoped would keep him from noticing that he wasn't getting acid comments from Hunter any more.

Napoleon moved up behind the two men at the front of the gondola, who seemed to be standing and idly talking. Once he ran into something and stopped to rub a painful shin. The voices were close to him now. He crept up behind the nearest one, reached out to touch the man's shoulder, and then swung the pistol at the spot where the head would be. The man collapsed and Napoleon eased him to the floor.

The second man sensed that something was wrong. "Hey, Rudolph, what happened?" he asked. Getting no answer made him more nervous. Napoleon could hear him moving about. "Rudolph? Say something; what's going on?" Napoleon reached to locate the man by feel when the lights suddenly came on. He leaped and swung the pistol; the Thrush collapsed.

Napoleon whirled toward the OTSMID and McNulty. The latter had turned to jeer at Hunter. "If you'd just shut up earlier I could have..." He took in the situation and reached for the pistol in the shoulder holster under his coat, at which point Illya stepped silently behind him and pressed the point of the knife into his ribs. McNulty froze. Napoleon got his pistol reversed and aimed at the Thrush agent, while Illya deftly reached under McNulty's coat and extracted the pistol, exclaiming in surprise as he noted that the gun was his own U.N.C.L.E. Special. He stepped well back, out of range of a sudden gram by McNulty and out of Napoleon's line of fire. Spotting the open door leading to the dirigible body, he ran back and slid it tightly shut.

"Get his communicator," Napoleon said. "And you might frisk him for any secret weapons before you tie him up. We can check these others after we get him put away."

McNulty had a communicator but no obvious weapons. From the unconscious Thrushes, Illya gained three communicators, two more guns, and an assortment of wristwatches. Napoleon stared at the latter booty in some puzzlement. "Aren't you carrying your Russian background a bit far?" he inquired.

"I have seen wristwatches," Illya said, "which contained, among other things, secret cameras, radio receivers and transmitters, electronic equipment, miniature time bombs, and one that could be reassembled into a tiny machine pistol. It was a rather large watch," he added, noting Napoleon's disbelieving stare.

"We'd better try to get the troops out before they send someone up to investigate," Napoleon said. He turned to McNulty. "What was the signal to jump?" he asked.

McNulty glared at him and said nothing. Napoleon glanced around the gondola. His eyes lit on the door. "How high would you say we are?" he asked no one in particular.

Illya thought for a minute, turned several switches on the OTSMID, then walked to the front of the gondola and looked out. "I'd estimate at least a thousand feet," he said. He looked thoughtfully at McNulty. "High enough for a parachute to operate. Too bad we don't have one for you."

Napoleon was studying McNulty with interest. "You could use some of the properties of a real Thrush in about thirty second, if we don't get some information out of you."

McNulty laughed. "You don't scare, U.N.C.L.E. doesn't operate that way."

Napoleon moved over to the door and released the catch. "When he's gone, I suppose we'll just have to make do. Do you think that we could just open that door back there and yell at them?"

"I don't see why not," Illya said. "The communicators could have been affected by the blackout, for all they know. Come on, now, Arpad." Each agent took one of McNulty's arms and urged him toward the open door.

McNulty held back. "Oh, come on, now. We all know that you're not going to push me out. You can't; it isn't civilized. You simply aren't going to do it, I know you're not. You..." He paused briefly as he faced the opening from a distance of less than a foot. "By George, I believe you would, at that," he decided. "All right, I know when to quit. There's an intercom system up front. You just announce 'Prepare to jump,' then give them a couple of minutes to get the hangar doors open, and say 'Jump' and they jump."

"Very cooperative," Napoleon said, keeping McNulty facing the open door. Illya stepped back to the OTSMID and reversed every switch he had previously thrown. The view of the ground outside the opening was replaced by blackness. He walked to the indicated intercom, studied it for a moment, then flicked a switch and announced, "Prepare to jump."

They could hear a grating sound from somewhere back of the gondola. When it stopped, Illya said "Jump!"

There was a very slight swaying motion as fifty men dropped almost simultaneously through the open hangar doors. "Go check, just to make sure," Napoleon said.

Illya crossed the length of the gondola, pausing for a moment to administer a thump to Sanders, who was beginning to show signs of life. "Tough old bird," he remarked. Checking the body of the dirigible he found no one. Even the man who operated the hangar doors had apparently jumped with the rest; the doors still swung open. Tidily, he closed them and returned to report.

Napoleon nodded in satisfaction. "See if you can find something to tie all these people up. We can't be stopping to crack someone over the head every few minutes."

Rummaging through the storage areas in the gondola, Illya located an assortment of odds and ends including a very large coil of rope. He cut several lengths from the latter and tied up the Thrushes.

"Now then," Napoleon said, "we are approximately a thousand feet up, invisible, and heading in the direction of, first, Cerro Bueno and, second, the Pacific Ocean. What does your dirigible lore say about getting us back to hearth and home?"