The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 37

And in that instant the gun by the winch spat flame once more. The bullet seared across Solo's forehead as he was in midleap and dropped him like a stone. The truck rolled on over the third arch.

As it did so, two things happened. In the cab, Kuryakin jerked suddenly upright and blinked his eyes. In the back, the pile of sacks under which he had been conveyed away from the ambushed riot truck was thrown aside and the girl Annike appeared.

She vaulted over the side and ran to the cab before the astonished pair by the winch had recovered sufficiently to fire at her.

Jerking open the door, she jumped onto the running board, leaned in over the awakening Russian and hauled frantically on the handbrake between the seats.

Shuddering, the truck ground to a halt with its front wheels only inches away from the section over the central arch. On the muddy surface of the bridge a network of small cracks appeared, raying outward like the filaments of a spider's web as they watched.

"Quick!" the girl hissed. "For your life's sake! Drop out on the far side and lie underneath. Move!"

Kuryakin had suffered a great deal of pain, but he was not physically damaged. Also he was in superb training and used to hardship—which explained why the effects of the drug were wearing off sooner than Bartoluzzi had expected. Although the clouds in his mind had not entirely vanished, he reacted to the crisp note of command in the girl's voice and shot into action almost by reflex.

As the girl dropped back to the roadway on her side of the truck, he slid over to the far side of the cab, burst open the door and fell out onto the ground. Together, they crawled beneath the front wheels.

Bullets were whistling toward them from the winch, but for the moment the angle of the slope prevented them from penetrating below the truck.

"I don't know who you are," Illya mumbled through his drugged torpor, "but thank you! And couldn't you perhaps tell me where I am and what's going on?"

In a few crisp sentences, Annike filled him in. And then, "But what about your friend?" she asked. "Shouldn't we do something about him?"

"Solo? Where is he? I haven't seen him since before the case started."

"At the moment he's lying between the offside rear wheel and a kind of refuge built out from this viaduct like the flying bridge of a ship."

"Lying...? Good heavens!" Kuryakin exclaimed. "I'll go and get him." And suddenly alert again, he wormed his way toward the rear of the truck, scuttled rapidly out to grab Solo's ankles, and then hauled him back into shelter as a fusillade of bullets thwacked and spanged into the ancient vehicle above their heads.

"Is he hurt badly?" the girl asked anxiously.

"I don't think so. Fortunately, he was just creased—see, the furrow has hardly bled at all. But he'll be out of commission for an hour or so. Just when we need him most… Ah!" He had been feeling in Solo's pockets. Now he produced the Walther from Solo's waistband with a triumphant flourish.

Wriggling up until he was below the back axle, he squeezed off a couple of experimental shots. Marinka and the Corsican hastily ducked out of sight behind an old Steyr saloon that was facing back up the hill a little way behind the winch. From the shelter of this they loosed off desultory shots at the truck.

"If I could keep them pinned down there until Solo recovers..." the Russian called over his shoulder. And then suddenly he stopped and looked upward. Rain was falling on his head.

A stray slug, penetrating the wooden back of the cab, had bit the handle of the handbrake, knocking it off its ratchet and allowing the truck to resume its interrupted descent. Slowly, inexorably, their shelter withdrew, leaving them exposed on the rain-swept viaduct.

The truck itself rolled onto the cracked center section, continued across it... and then suddenly it wasn't there.

With the speed of a demon king in pantomime, it simply dropped from sight. The entire center of the arch, as soon as it received the full weight of the truck, plummeted downward with a roar like that of the trains the viaduct had once carried on their way. From below, the shattering reverberation of the impact was followed by a cannonade of blocks and small stones from the raw edge of the chasm. A cloud of choking yellow dust mushroomed up over the gap and blanketed them from sight.

Through the swirling fog they heard Bartoluzzi shouting: "No, no. Don't shoot now! We'll get them alive and drop them over on to the wreckage. It's perfect; it'll keep to my original plan, and the two extra bodies will provide scapegoats for the ambush of the riot truck."

When the dust had cleared enough for them to distinguish the winch, they could see the Corsican whispering something to the girl and pointing back up the hill toward his headquarters. The girl nodded. She eased the leather helmet from her head, shook loose a mane of blonde hair, and started off at a run.

"Who does she think she is?" Kuryakin asked. "She's auditioning for a part in an espionage series on television?"

"She's gone back for the helicopter," Annike said tightly. "We won't have a chance... and look!" She was pointing at the car. Crouched down in the driver's seat, Bartoluzzi was backing it cautiously toward them. He steered around the winch, with its snapped hawser, and slowly drew nearer along the bridge.

Illya felt in Solo's pocket for another clip of ammunition and fired the Walther as fast as he could. Glass in the Steyr's back window starred, and gasoline began to spray from the drilled tank below the spare tire.

But the Corsican continued to advance. When the car was only ten yards away, he stopped, ducking out of sight behind the seat. Obviously his tactic was to block them there until the girl arrived with the helicopter.

The rain redoubled in force. Beneath them, they felt the viaduct tremble in a surge of wind.

And suddenly it happened again. Safe enough while the structure was whole and rigid, the second arch became unsafe as soon as the bridge was breached. Beneath the car, the road appeared to warp. They watched, horrified, as the parapet on one side dipped sickeningly, canting the surface at a crazy angle. The heavy saloon began to slide toward the edge as great cracks zigzagged across the width of the bridge. They could see Bartoluzzi frantically fighting to reach the door on the upper side and open it. And then, with a roar like an artillery barrage, roadway, parapet, refuge, car and guard rails collapsed into nothing, vanished in a cloud of dust as dense as the first.

In a few minutes the girl from THRUSH would be back gunning for them in her helicopter.

And they were stuck like pigeons on a roost—marooned on a single isolated pillar of the ruined bridge...

Chapter 18

Nothing To Report

THE GIRL was crying, her drenched hair plastered across her cheek as she kneeled on the muddy road. "I'm... I'm sorry," she sobbed. "But he was... he used to be... I was very fond of him once."

Kuryakin kept a sympathetic silence. After a while the girl said quaveringly, "Is there any chance... your friend climbed up, I suppose we couldn't possibly climb down?"

The Russian peered over the edge into the dizzying depths of the valley. The single pile on which they were stuck, now that it had lost its anchorage at both ends, was swaying like a reed in the wind, and every few seconds they could hear another shower of stones break loose and plunge down to swell the twin disasters of rock strewn across the floor of the defile. He shook his head. "For one man, coming up, with the viaduct rigid, it was crazy enough," he said soberly. "But to try going down, with the pillar rocking like this and an unconscious man to carry... you might just as well jump!"