[Magazine 1967-­10] - The Mind-­Sweeper Affair - Davis Robert Hart (читать лучшие читаемые книги .TXT) 📗

"Wait," Rand said. "I think I should be given a post of some authority in THRUSH, Danton, and for that I have something to give you."

"Give me?" Danton said.

Rand smiled. "Something quite important. Without it, you'll never leave this plant alive."

"What kind of a trick is this?" Danton snarled.

"No trick. I just need your word that I will have some rank in THRUSH."

"You want to die? If you have anything important to say, Rand, say it and without a deal."

Rand and Danton glared at each other. At last Rand sighed. He ran his thin fingers through his grey hair.

"Very well, an act of cooperation then. You see, I have to tell you that in my plan—"

Illya Kuryakin suddenly stood up from behind his boxes and shot three times at Rand.

Rand screamed once, hit by all three shots. The slender man pitched forward on to his face and lay still in a pool of spreading blood.

The room erupted with shots. Danton screamed orders to shoot Illya and Solo.

"Get them! There, behind those boxes!"

Behind the boxes Napoleon Solo sat on Dr. Heimat and fired from the cover of the heavy boxes. Illya fired. From their cover they picked off the THRUSH men like sitting ducks.

"Take cover!" Danton roared. All the THRUSH men dove for safety. Danton leaped behind a box. For a long and sudden minute all firing ceased as both sides crouched under cover.

Kevin Rand lay in his own blood between the two sides.

Danton peered over a box and called out.

"Come now, gentlemen. We have you outnumbered ten to one. You know you don't have a chance. Solo? Kuryakin?"

"Come and get us, Danton," Solo called out. Heimat squirmed under him. Solo grinned.

"We'll simply outflank you, Solo," Danton said.

"Go ahead," Solo called back.

"Do you think you know some thing I don't know?" Danton said.

"Come and see," Solo said.

He looked down at Heimat beneath him. Danton would not want to hurt Heimat. Illya Kuryakin was watching the hidden enemy.

"So?" Danton said. "Very well. We don't need you, do we? I suppose you have help on the way. It will do you no good. I have enough men in the plant. From where you are you can't cover the machine. My men will simply pin you down, and we will take the machine and go."

"What about Heimat?" Illya called.

There was a long silence. Danton crouched behind his box.

"I see," Danton said at last. "You have Heimat, eh? Well, I suppose we'll have to make a deal. What do you say…"

Behind the boxes Illya Kuryakin suddenly touched Napoleon Solo. "Down!"

Solo looked at the small Russian.

"Down, now!" Illya cried.

Solo dropped. He lay flat with his hands over his head. Illya lay beside him. Dr. Heimat did not even attempt to escape. Illya was looking at his watch.

Danton called. "Well? What deal would you—"

First the concrete floor seemed to rise up.

Then the roof beams buckled, sagged.

The earth seemed to rock like a ship at sea.

Then the explosion shook the entire building to its core.

Beams fell, the floor heaved, men were thrown everywhere.

Screams came from all through the plant outside the warehouse. Flames began to flicker at the windows.

Explosions and shock waves shuddered through the plant and the night.

The THRUSH men ran in confusion, screamed, shouted. Boxes tumbled onto men all through the warehouse. Debris showered down on Solo and Illya.

FIVE

BUT THERE HAD been no explosion in the warehouse.

The building shook and rocked and cracked but this was from the explosions in the other parts of the plant. Flames filled the night sky outside the warehouse, but in the warehouse itself there was no explosion or fire, only the results of near explosions, and the smoke of close fire.

Danton shouted. "It's a destruct! But not in here! Grab the machine! Quickly now!"

Chaos and confusion filled the warehouse. Illya and Solo stood up. They hauled Heimat to his feet. They began to move across the warehouse, their guns ready.

THRUSH men saw them. "There! U. N. C.L.E.!"

Illya and Solo shot, staggered on across the broken floor among the chaos of men and littered boxes.

"Forget them!" Danton screamed. "The machine! Get the machine out! Hurry! Watch them, but get the machine!"

Firing as they went, Illya and Solo moved toward the door through the smoke and confusion. The door was blocked by fallen beams. Illya and Solo turned toward the outer loading doors. Some of the heavy double doors stood shattered and open to the night that was bright with flame.

"The machine!" Danton shouted. "You fools, get the machine! Hurry"

With a curse, Danton ran to the machine himself. He grabbed other THRUSH men and forced them to take hold of the Mind-Sweeper. They worked like smoke-blackened demons around the malignant machine, bent, took hold, strained to raise it.

Illya and Solo ran with Heimat toward the open loading doors at the far end. Suddenly Heimat looked back and saw Danton give the order to lift the Mind-Sweeper.

The stocky German fell to the floor.

Illya and Solo bent to pick him up.

The explosion ripped through the warehouse itself.

The Mind-Sweeper, the THRUSH men lifting it, and Emil Danton seemed to vanish in a sheet of flame.

One instant Danton was there with his arms out in an order to lift the Mind-Sweeper, and the next instant he was a shattered corpse in the twisted and broken metal of the exploded machine.

In the explosion, Illya and Solo were knocked flat. They lay stunned. All through the room—a shambles now—THRUSH men lay groaning on the floor.

Illya and Solo staggered up.

Heimat was gone.

"There!" Illya shouted.

Heimat was running some fifty yards ahead and almost at the doors out.

"He knew the machine would explode!" Illya cried.

"Come on!" Solo shouted.

"We've got to get him!" Illya cried.

They ran after the stocky German. They reached the doors and ran on out into the night. Heimat was still some fifty yards ahead running toward the woods. He turned and saw them gaining on him. He was an old man and they could easily outrun him.

Heimat turned and raced as fast as he could back toward the buildings of the plant that burned fiercely in the night.

"If he gets away we can still lose it all!" Solo panted as he ran.

"Head him off," Illya gasped.

They gained, but they were still some twenty-five yards behind the fleeing scientist when the ground suddenly rose up and seemed to enfold Heimat like a great mouth eating him. He rose into the air and for a long second his feet continued to move, his legs pumping madly as he ran on empty air.

Illya and Solo were flung down again.

The explosion tore up out of the bowels of the earth itself.

Heimat hung there, still trying to run suspended in mid-air, and then he fell screaming into the yawning pit of flames that came from below where the underground rooms had exploded in the final holocaust of the plant.

Illya and Solo lay where they were for a moment. Ten yards in front of them a great hole had opened in the ground and the flames licked up into the darkness. They stood up, battered and bruised but unhurt.

They looked around them. Flames burned everywhere. The entire plant was a shattered hulk. But there were no more explosions.

The darkness was almost dead in its silence.

Only the small sound of flames, and the faint screams of the injured.