[Magazine 1966-­06] - The Vanishing Act Affair - Lynds Dennis - Страница 16

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The dial on the gauge indicated that Morlock The Great had turned his car and was not heading sharply north. The pilot swung the helicopter in pursuit.

The first faint grey of dawn was just tinging the eastern sky when the pilot suddenly spoke.

"You say he's out to start a war?" the pilot said.

"We think so," Illya said.

"Then I think I know where he's going," the pilot said. "on your map. You see the town of Colingbrane?"

"Yes," Illya said.

"Well, it won't show on your map, but there's an IRBM missile base at Colingbrane. According to our information, the missiles are hot, are aimed at major Soviet cities!"

"Then that's it!" Solo said. "How close is Morlock?"

"A few miles from the town," Illya said, looking at both his gauge and the map.

"But how does he figure on starting anything?" the pilot said. "Those missiles don't go without a call on the hot line from the top. The base has world-wide communications and missile tracking. They can't be surprised, and they can't fire without clearance from the top. Only the general has control of the firing button."

"Foolproof?" Illya said, his voice a question.

"I'd say so," the pilot said.

"No," Illya said. "Nothing is foolproof, because there are always fools. In everything there must be a human element, no matter how small, and what one human can make almost perfect, another can always destroy by locating the tiniest flaw."

"Well—" the pilot began.

"Illya!" Solo warned, pointed down to the gauge in the blond Russian's hand.

The gauge showed that Morlock had stopped. The helicopter was closing in rapidly.

"Set down right on top of them!" Illya snapped.

The two agents prepared their weapons, leaned out the windows of the lowering helicopter. A very faint grey light revealed the black car parked below at the edge of a high fence. Beyond the fence there was nothing but houses and trees and small hills.

But the trained eyes of Solo and Illya saw that the houses inside the high fences were not houses. The trees were newly planted. The small hills were not hills but mounds covered with sod.

That was all they had time to see. As the helicopter swooped down, hovered over the car, morlocks came out into the open. Exposed, in the open, and stupidly fearless, they raised their weapons to fire.

They never fired.

Illya leaned out of the copter, dropped a small cylinder that exploded with a silent puff. The gas spread incredibly fast, and the morlocks slumped to the earth, asleep.

"Set us down," Illya said to the pilot.

The helicopter touched down just outside the fence. The fence, the two agents knew, would be electrified. They took their tools and weapons and turned to run toward the fence.

Solo instructed the pilot. "They'll have picked you up on their radar. Take off, but stay around. Let them catch you a mile or so away. Don't talk for a half an hour; that should give us time. If it doesn't, it won't matter by then."

"You are so encouraging, Napoleon," Illya said.

"A realist, my Russian friend. Come on."

The helicopter took off. Already they could see two jet fighters approaching high in the dawn sky. Solo and Illya, hidden in the grass, watched as the jets swooped in and forced the copter to land again a mile away.

Then they moved off along the fence.

The base was a friendly base, and the soldiers on guard would be their soldiers, but the soldiers would not know this, and the two U.N.C.L.E. agents did not have time to convince them. At the fence they went to work.

The fence was electrified and wired for alarm. Swiftly they attached special circuit loops to the wires they planned to cut so that no circuit would be broken. Then they shunted off the wires they would cut. Using insulated cutters and gloves, the cut just two wires, and squeezed through without touching the fence again.

Inside, they moved at a trot through the dawn light. The gauge in Illya's hand led them unerringly across the missile base, among the camouflaged silos, toward wherever Morlock The Great was working his deadly plan.

Twice they had to shoot guards with their sleep darts. The soldiers fell without a sound and the two agents moved on. The gauge led them directly to what looked like a simple English country house. There were two guards at the door. Illya and Solo crept closer.

The two guards did not move. They were dead.

"Morlock," Illya said.

"Yes, and that means he's inside," Solo said.

Without saying any more to show their thoughts that even now they could be too late, Illya and Solo entered the building and moved along the dim dawn hallways. They found deserted offices, empty halls, silent rooms.

"Even at dawn the base should be active," Illya said.

"Below?" Solo said. "That's where the control would be."

"And where Morlock is," Illya said, pointing to his gauge.

They followed the gauge until they located the heavy door that led down into the bowels of the earth where the heart of the missile base would be. The door was locked. It was an extra-heavy door, made of some strong metal. Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo looked at each other.

"Alloy steel, from the look of it," Solo said.

"Will our thermite melt it?" Illya said.

"I don't know. We may have to blow it."

"Try the thermite. We can't warn Morlock," Illya said.

Solo pressed the foil to the door over the lock, pulled the metal fuse. The white-hot glow filled the dawn hallway.

When the foil burned out there was s hole, but the door was still locked.

"Again," Illya said.

The second foil glowed in the dim dawn light of the silent corridor. The hole in the alloy steel door grew deeper, wider, and, then, was through. The door swung silently open.

Illya and solo faced a small antechamber—and a second door!

"Elevator," Illya said.

"But there has to be a stair also," Solo said. "They wouldn't have only one way down. Electrical systems can fail."

"There," Illya pointed to a flat panel that had a button beside it, an emergency stairway.

This door was much thinner and the thermite bit through with dispatch. The door opened and Illya and Solo plunged quickly down a narrow, winding staircase. At the bottom there was another steel door—but this door was open!

They went through and found themselves on a kind of balcony—a circular gallery that ran around the walls above a large room. They looked over the edge at the room below.

The sight that met their eyes made them stare in horror.

TWO

MASKS!" ILLYA barked.

The two agents quickly put on the small gas masks they carried for just such an emergency. Wearing the masks, they peered down at the scene on the floor below.

The room was the central control of the IRBM missile base. A giant illuminated plastic map covered the far end of the room. The most sophisticated tracking instruments lined the left wall—radar, DEW Line relays, telemetric relays from all across the world. A long table filled the center of the room. A row of telephones was at the right—the red telephone standing out like some malignant monster.

But it was not the room itself that chilled the U.N.C.L.E. agents. It was the men in the room—the frantic men.

At the giant map enlisted men with long pointers were tracking the moving lights that indicated the incoming enemy missiles detected by the tracking instruments. The men at the map were wild with excitement, shouting, screaming out the progress of the enemy. A mad, wild excitement mixed with a thick odor of fear.

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