The Mad Scientist Affair - Philifrent John T. Страница 21

Sarah caught a hand to her mouth in dismay. “We have a hundredweight of it already made up!” she cried, and Waverly pulled down his shaggy brows grimly.

“A hundredweight would be more than enough to paralyze Great Britain and a considerable stretch of the French coast. The same quantity again would be enough to eliminate the Balkan peninsula. One ton of it, strategically scattered, would blanket the entire North American continent in strangling jelly-sludge, and I need not spell out for you just what that would do. But it goes even further. Four fifths of the surface of this Earth of ours is ocean, gentlemen. We all of us depend on it, ultimately, for our very lives. And Dr. Michael O’Rourke has the power to foul the seas of the world, at will!”

The little room was silent as the people assembled there drew their own conclusions and built horrifying mental pictures of what could happen. Mr. Waverly waited long enough for it to sink in, then he sighed and spoke again:

“There it is, gentlemen. Dr. O’Rourke must be stopped, and quickly.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” Solo mused aloud. “That’s quite a castle—and pretty well staffed. Unless we try to undermine it. Illya?”

“It would take too long, and would be too chancy anyway, just to get one man. We’ll have to siege it frontally. We might be able to dicker, though.”

“Talk ’em into handing King Mike over, you mean? Sarah, how about that?”

“I doubt if it will do any good,” she confessed. “The Irish are great ones for sticking to a desperate cause. They’d all die rather than give in. At any rate, I know Uncle Mike would. And he’s the key one.”

“Are we sure of that?” Waverly demanded, and Kuryakin nodded.

“I heard him tell Trilli as much, myself. Bits and pieces of his discoveries are written down. I have a notebook of his that I took from a safe, and Sarah knows a little. But the basic tricks of the process are known only to him, and committed to memory. He said so. We’ve got to get him—before he can spill it to anybody else.”

“We’ll make that final, then.” Waverly sighed. “We’ve brought some heavy equipment. Mr. Solo, you’re in charge of the direct operation. Take whatever you think you’ll need. Stevens, you and Haycraft will go along with Mr. Solo. Patterson, I’d like you to hold back for a while.”

“What are you cooking for him?” Solo demanded.

“I’m trying to arrange for a helicopter; it will take a short while. Patterson can take that, along with whatever persuasion he thinks is advisable, and then he can come in and support your ground attack. You’re going to need everything we have. A castle! And it will be dawn in an hour.”

“I think we’ve thought of everything.” Solo scratched his chin. “The big thing is to get there fast, before he has time to suspect anything wrong. Where will you be, sir?” he asked Waverly as the crowd began to filter through the door.

“I shall be at our Limerick office, to pull all the strings I can to get that beer blacklisted. The authorities should be with us that far. I’ll take your reports there.”

Less than fifteen minutes later the little pickup was roaring off on its furious way once more. The generator and ultrasonic unit had been cleared from the back to give room for several much more lethal pieces of hardware. Solo drove intently, thinking ahead, trying to plan a strategy. Kuryakin was quietly busy checking his various pieces of gadgetry. There was just the chance he might have to make another foray up that drain-pipe. He hoped not, since it would be a bad place to be trapped, but he intended to be as ready as possible.

Sarah sat between them and tried not to shiver. She knew there was a big black car roaring at their heels, and in it two very competent-looking agents, plus some deadly armament. She had no idea what lay ahead, but guessed it was going to be unpleasant. This nightmare went on for a long time, she thought.

“Watch it now, Steve.” Solo spoke warningly into his transceiver. “We should be in sight of the pile in a minute or two, and they’ll see us just as fast as we see them.”

The acknowledgment came promptly. He slid the unit away and squinted ahead in the gloom. This road ran steadily uphill, the only approach, and Cooraclare commanded the crest. The original builders had chosen well. It was going to be a tough nut to crack. He saw the gray-black bulk of it now against the skyline, and could reconstruct the details from memory. A massive keep-wall ten feet high and three feet thick. One great gateway in easy view of all the windows. A wide courtyard to cross, under the muzzles of shotguns, and possibly other things as well.

The gate came near now: a hundred yards…less…It stood invitingly open. It seemed a bit too inviting. He saw a sudden spit of fire from up there on the crenelated wall of the roof, and then another. A wailstorm of shot screamed off the hood of the truck and hammered on the windshield, followed by a double bang in the distance.

That had been just a mild foretaste, he thought, as he spun the wheel hard and sent the truck jolting over turf, off the road and in the lee of the wall to the left. He twisted his head around to see the following car take the hint and roar away to the right. He cut the engine.

“So far,” he said, “so good. They can’t get out. Now let’s see if we can persuade them to let us in!”

Kuryakin shoved open the door on his side and slid out into the gloom to circle the truck and pick out a rifle complete with infrared spotter-scope and spare clip. Sarah was close on his heels.

“What can I do?” she demanded. “I’m a good shot.”

“You’re a very clever girl in many ways,” Kuryakin said, smiling in the gloom. “You come up here with me.” And he gave her a strong arm to boost her up onto the roof of the cab. “Keep your head down! Wait just a moment.” He juggled the rifle into readiness and leaned forward to be close to the wall, edging the muzzle up over it. He handed her his handkerchief. “Now—you just wave that, quickly, above the level of the wall, and then duck. Ready? Now!”

The man on the roof, whoever he was, had sharp eyes. The white had barely fluttered when there came a sharp crack and the scream of a bullet that gouged sparks out of the top of the wall and went wailing away. “That was no shotgun!” Kuryakin muttered as he pumped three rapid shots into the spot where that flash had been. He thought he heard a strangled howl from up there. Sarah evidently heard it too.

“You hit him!” she cried, waving her hand excitedly. There came another spurt of flame from up there, from another spot, and the handkerchief was plucked from her fingers. Kuryakin swung savagely, pumped three more shots, and heard the scream and then the impact of a body falling.

“I said keep your head down!” he said tensely, over his shoulder. “There were two of them up there!”

“But you hit the first one!” she protested, stooping to collect the ripped linen and waving it again. He swung back as another flash sent a scream of death by her cheek, and drove three more shots into that area. Then he drew back and down, grabbed her arm and drew her down too.

“Give me that handkerchief! You’ll get yourself killed!” He took the tattered white, draped it over the muzzle of his rifle, and poked it up gingerly. Nothing. He shoved it higher, higher—and there came a crashing blast of fire from the upper windows that whipped the linen away. “We’ve cleared the roof, at any rate,” he decided.

Napoleon Solo, meanwhile, was flat on his face by the bottom of the edge of the gate, studying the situation. Intermittent gunfire came from the roof of the black car. He heard Illya’s successful attempts to clear the snipers off the roof. He had a bazooka over his shoulder, loaded and ready. Gray light was just getting good enough now for him to be able to make out the darker blotches of windows.

“I think,” he mused, “that we will start upstairs and work our way down.” He took careful aim; the bazooka coughed and surged forward. The bomb went sloping up on a tail of smoke. There came the crash-tinkle of glass, and then a battering blam! as the explosion sent smoke and flames gushing out of the broken window. Almost by recoil there came a stuttering hail of machinegun fire from a lower window that kicked up the dirt in front of his face and gouged stone-dust from the wall. He scrambled back hastily.