The Thousand Coffin Affair - Avallone Michael. Страница 19

They were in a tunnel of some kind. A long, low passageway with timbers and beams shoring the sides and the earthen ceiling. Cool air was fanning through the tunnel from some distant, unseen opening. Solo closed the stone door, held his left hand behind him for Jerry to take. She squeezed it warmly and they pushed on through the dimness.

The shaft narrowed suddenly, forking in two directions like the cross-bar of a T. Solo hesitated, as his eyes tried to search the darkness ahead. Grinning to himself, he moistened the forefinger of his right hand and held it up. Almost immediately, the influx of air evaporated the dampness on the right side of his finger.

“Right,” he murmured. “God bless the Boy Scouts.”

The clinging mud beneath their feet was firm enough to allow easy passage. Jerry had no shoes and her bare feet made slick, slapping sounds. It was unavoidable now and too late to remedy the oversight.

Solo was puzzled. What could all this lack of protection mean? No sentries or guards. No security. Was it possible that Golgotha had handled the two of them all by himself? A lone wolf caper to bargain for higher power in the Thrush Council? No, it wasn’t likely. And yet there must be some explanation for all this. It was beginning to look as if they could walk right out of the spider’s web into the sunlight.

Up ahead, the glow of light widened. The darkness was dissolving. The air current had increased in volume. He knew they were getting closer to the surface, without not knowing how far was Down in the first place.

Then they both heard the sound.

It came suddenly, with frightening loudness and nearness—a roaring, rhythmical throb of gigantic pistons of some kind. The beat mounted with ear-shattering violence. They flattened against the earthen walls of the passageway, trembling, waiting. Then the sound ended as abruptly as it had begun. The new silence was awesome. Solo licked his dry lips.

“What was that?” Jerry whispered.

“Turbines or pistons. I really can’t say.”

“Maybe there’s a plant overhead.”

“Maybe. Let’s keep on going and play it by ear.” They moved on again, toward the light. It had seemed closer than it was. They panted down the passageway, feeling their path in the gloom. Solo didn’t dare risk using his pencil flash. They’d been too lucky as it was.

The roar of engines throbbed again. The sound had faded somewhat, meaning they had passed beneath it a few minutes back. But the pounding, humming noise was eerie and somehow terrifying. When the silence fell again, Solo realigned his grip on the automatic pistol. No telling what lay ahead now.

If Golgotha had been discovered—

Solo saw the man before the man saw him. He drew up so sharply that Jerry Terry ran into him but she had enough presence of mind not to cry out.

Solo held her back, flattening them both against the passageway. The man up ahead had his back to them. He was a silhouette framed against the daylight.

He wore a uniform of some kind—belted middle, puffy jodhpurs and boots, and a peaked helmet. More importantly, a stocky, ugly looking grease gun was cradled in the crook of his arm.

Solo pushed Jerry Terry back. “Stay here,” he commanded. “We can’t walk past that one. He’ll have to be taken.”

“Be careful.”

He smiled to himself at the obviousness of her concern, and moved stealthily along the wall. The man was a scant thirty yards away. Thirty yards and freedom. But the grease gun was something to think about. It could spray them down in seconds and no real marksmanship was called for. Solo held his breath as he swiftly and soundlessly bridged the gap between them before he made his move.

And then he stepped on something that snapped in half with the loudness of a pistol shot. A dry twig. In the mud of the tunnel of all places. The irony was too cruel to be funny—and Solo did not feel like laughing. He was caught flat-footed.

The man with the grease-gun revolved as though on a swivel. His gun came up and his hoarse, guttural voice cried out challengingly. His cry echoed down the passageway.

“Vast ist?”

Napoleon Solo fired, straight from the shoulder this time, a steady burst of three, at the shadowy figure framed in the entranceway.

The tunnel reverberated with the sound of death.

THE MAN WITH THE SKULL

ALL HELL broke loose.

Even as Solo saw his three shots hit home, picking up the man in the entranceway and smashing him back, the entire passageway suddenly came alive with the ringing of bells. It was a shocking assault on the eardrums. The air of the tunnel seemed to be alive with the high, almost screaming sound.

Fortunately, he had hurtled forward, following up the death blasts of his pistol, and Jerry Terry had followed. They reached the fallen sentinel even as they saw what was happening. A rumbling sound came from overhead, cutting through the pealing of the bells. Solo shot a look skyward. A gigantic slab of concrete was coming down, a secret door to seal the passageway to the outside world. Frantically, he seized Jerry by the wrist and pulled her through—just before the massive concrete door thudded shut between them and freedom, sending mounds of dirt and mud flying upwards. Behind the stone door, the bells continued their mad cacophony. A simple device. It took only the firing of a gun to set up a walled blockade in the subterranean fortress.

Jerry Terry was sobbing softly, her nerves coming undone at last. He let her cry in peace and stared at their surroundings. They were in the open, the side of some mountainous shelf of rock. Ahead was brown country ground and a thin smattering of gnarled trees. A crow was cawing from one of the branches. Overhead, foggy sunlight washed down over them. It was so still out here, compared to the madhouse inside.

“Come on,” he urged. “We still have to make a run for it.”

She nodded, her eyes showing she was still game. She was a peculiar vision stumbling along in Golgotha’s cape, her long, copper-colored hair catching random rays of sunlight.

They began to run in earnest, following a broken trail of stone and sand which seemed to wind downwards to lower levels. Solo kept his eyes open, the automatic pistol ready. It was such a peculiar setup there was no way of knowing what they could run into.

The road ended, spewing them into a flat table of land which showed a vast unbroken meadow stretching almost as far as the eye could see, only to end before the towering majesty of the Bavarian Alps. Solo cursed. Damn the terrain. It was all of a piece; one place looked exactly like another.

“Solo,” Jerry said softly. “Look.”

He didn’t see what she meant at first because of the camouflaging gnarled trees. Then his eyes cleared, making out the dark outlines of the MIG fighter. It sat, silent and ready, directly under a canopy of branches, its nose pointed toward the wide meadow before it. Only three hundred yards away.

There was no one in sight. But the bells were still sounding faintly somewhere and there was no time to lose. It was now or never for both of them.

“Jerry, listen.”

“I’m way ahead of you. Let’s move out.”

He was glad she understood. “Okay. We’ll be clay pigeons if anybody is watching. On the other hand, we’re dead anyway. May I say it’s been nice knowing you?”

“Forget it. We’re going to get out, Napoleon, and we can take up the subject there.”

He kissed her briefly, nodding half to himself, and then sprinted for the plane, knowing she would follow as best she could. He ran with his head low, his legs churning, putting forth everything he had for the run. There was no sense in looking back, no point in trying to pick out targets for the automatic. Either way, they had nothing but time on their side. Time, surprise and the fact that they were fast-moving targets.