The Mad Scientist Affair - Philifrent John T. Страница 22

“I see!” he murmured. “All ready for a siege, are we?” He pulled out his transceiver and spoke into it to raise Stevens, on the other side of the gate. “They want to make it hard. I think we’d better help them. Grenades and gas-bombs, right?”

He rolled over and stood up in the shelter of the wall, then circled the truck, climbing into the back. He picked up a grenade, tapped Sarah on the ankle to gain her attention and said, “Watch this carefully. You pull out this pin, you say ‘Eenie, meeny, miney, mo!’ and you throw it—that way!” He winced at the crash from the other side of the wall, and then grinned at her. Kuryakin bobbed up, let off a rapid rattle of fire at the windows and ducked again.

“This is all very spectacular and noisy, Napoleon, but it’s not going to get us anywhere. All they have to do is keep down and away from the windows and laugh at us. We don’t have anything that can touch walls that thick—not even bazooka bombs will dent them.”

The two men stared at each other in the graying light. “Stalemate!” Solo muttered. “And with every minute the light improves, it’s to their benefit. We might try a bluff. Suppose you talked to them with a bullhorn, Sarah? They know your voice. You can promise them that if they come out with their hands up—”

“Wait!’ Kuryakin pointed away down the hill and into the gray sky there. “Maybe this will tip the balance on our side.” They turned and saw the whirling blades of a helicopter slicing the sky.

“That’s Peterson!” Solo grinned, and pulled out his transceiver. “Ground to chopper. Good work, Pete, just in time. It would help a lot if you could lay a nice heavy egg right on—hey! What the blazes is he doing? Pete? Come in, Peterson!”

He stared mystified as the helicopter swung away to one side and then swooped and streaked back in a run almost paralleling the wall. Just above the black car it released a small, dropping object. Instinctively, the two men ducked into the shelter of the truck, Kuryakin dragging Sarah down with him. The truck lifted and rolled back with the force of the explosion. Solo raised his head and peered at the bomb-crater in the ground just in front of the gate, then at the helicopter as it went swinging and circling away.

“Whoever’s up there,” he said softly, “is not on our side, that’s for sure!”

It had been a long, dreary and dull vigil for Lloyd Gumm and his partner, Louis Addel. Their instructions had been clear and concise: see Miss Sarah O’Rourke safely over to Shannon, and home, and then stay at the airport, watch incoming and outgoing flights and make sure she didn’t leave again, that none of the O’Rourke brood departed, and that nobody came in to interfere with Dr. Trilli and his operation. When the Thrush executive gave orders, it was wisest to obey implicitly. So the bored pair had watched all the flights, all afternoon and, in weary shifts, all night.

Gumm was in a snarling mood as Addel shook him out of a snatched slumber, but he stifled his petulance as his partner announced, “They’re here, Lloyd. Big Uncle himself and a squad, in a private plane. They look like this is a showdown! What do we do?”

“We watch and see what they do, stupid!” So they watched and saw the pickup being loaded, and the black car, then saw them both roar away. “We ought to chip in,” Gumm declared, not very enthusiastically.

“With what, pop-guns?” Addel said sarcastically.

As they hesitated and deliberated, they saw Peterson approach a uniformed official, and they were close enough to overhear.

“How long before that helicopter will be ready? Time for me to grab a cup of coffee, maybe?”

“You should just make it, sir. I’ll see that you’re called as soon as it’s ready for you.” As Peterson expressed thanks and hurried away, Gumm drew his partner to one side.

“That’s us,” he said. “I can fly one of those things. Come on!”

They made their way out and to the private comer of the field where a motor coughed into life and great windmill blades began to spin and speed up. Ducking under the downdraft, they ran up to the cab and Addel poked his head in.

“You giving Uncle a ride, mister?”

The pilot turned to grin and nod, and Addel shot him where he sat, then scrambled in, with Gumm on his heels to take over the controls. “Shove him in the back, out of sight!” he ordered. “We’ll wait a while.”

“What the hell for? Let’s get going now!”

“We wait!” Gumm snarled. “The U.N.C.L.E. guy will be along in a minute, and we want what he’s carrying. Now shift that body and shut up!”

The blades whirled into full speed, and now Peterson carne, staggering under the weight of two large bags, to duck against the slipstream and up to the perspex cab side. He hoisted up the bags one at a time, and then climbed in.

“Two of you, eh? All right, maybe I can use the help. Let’s go!” And then Addel shot him, dragged him out of the way, took his seat, and the helicopter lifted up and away, swooping swiftly across the wide waters of the Shannon estuary.

In the cold gray of dawn there was no one to notice as two bodies fell into the sleeping water down there.

Solo glared up as the helicopter circled back over its tracks, then he flung himself down and aside as the clattering machine suddenly spat a rain of lead, plucking dust and stones from the ground in a dotted line. A bullet whanged off the front fender of the pickup. He saw Stevens crumple and go down in a heap, and cursed in helpless rage.

Illya Kuryakin crouched in the back of the truck, his rifle steadied on the cab-side, his gray eyes steady and cold. He could just make out figures in that perspex cab up there. He fired, and the helicopter seemed to stagger in mid-air and go sliding away, around and over the castle grounds. He followed it grimly in his sights, saw somebody laboring to stand and throw something. He fired again, and saw the man fall back.

Then the bucketing machine erupted in a great sheet of red fire and flames, the explosion blasting down into their ears. Shedding burning debris, it fell swiftly, struck the edge of the castle roof, and there was another explosion, twice as violent as the first. And then another, and a blazing ball of wreckage drifted off the edge and fell away out of sight. For a moment they all were stunned and silent. Then Sarah let out a shriek.

“The stables! They’ll catch fire! The horses!” And she leaped down from the truck and ran heedlessly through the gate and away, heading for the far end where the fiery wreck had fallen.

“No use calling her back!” Kuryakin said. “We’ll just have to make covering fire.” He sprang to the wall, aiming and triggering as fast as he could, sending a hail of lead at those threatening windows. Solo came up with the bazooka again and lobbed a bomb into the upper floors. Haycraft, on the roof of the black car, added his fire to Kuryakin’s. All at once the big arched door swung darkly open and a stick appeared, with a grubby white handkerchief on the end of it. The gunfire stopped. Kuryakin peered, caught a stir of movement from the edge of the roof up there, cringed as a bullet sent stone dust into his face, and snapped a shot in reply. He saw Schichi rear up and hang a moment, then fall in a whirl of limp arms and legs, to lie quite still. The stick waved to and fro.

“All right!” Solo shouted. “Come on out!” He and Kuryakin dropped and ran around to the gate as a dismal file of battered defenders came out into the dawn. Kuryakin glanced away to where Sarah had disappeared.

“I’d better go after her, Napoleon. You can manage here, and she’s bound to run into some kind of trouble on her own.”

He ran off hurriedly, around the curve of the wall and into the twisting fingers of smoke. He saw her darting and ducking, trying to catch and free a heavy door, and coughing as the smoke caught at her breathing. The leaning roof was well alight and he heard the horses inside screaming in terror. Dropping his rifle, he put a hand over his face and dashed in, caught the hasp, jerked it free and pulled the door back. She ducked back with him as half a dozen panic-stricken horses galloped madly out.