The Light-Kill Affair Read online

  The clerk behind the desk didn't even bother looking up. "Afraid that jeep's not ready, sir."

  "But we ordered it ready and waiting!" Illya said, annoyed by the villager's apathy.

  The clerk shrugged. "Like I said, I'm sorry, mister."

  Illya counted a slow ten. He managed a smile. "Where is the jeep?"

  "Round the corner there at Mapes' Garage. You can't miss it."

  Illya grinned. You couldn't miss anything in this town.

  The bus was gone and there were only a few people lounging along Main Street when Illya stepped out on the walk.

  He turned right, going past a grocery store, a dress shop toward a bar and the side street.

  The gun that fired was not silenced. The rifle cracked and instinctively Illya toppled forward. The bullet sang waspishly past his head.

  Illya crawled forward, then sprawled behind the questionable concealment of a rain barrel.

  He did not move for a moment. He tried to make sense in his being ambushed. Friendly little town. No wonder U.N.C.L.E.'s computers kept spewing out reports of turbulence in the area, mysterious influx of strangers, sudden unexplained activity.

  Cautiously, Illya edged his unruly blond head around the barrel. He stared across the street. A two-storied brick hotel, a window open, a curtain riffling in the breeze. The shot had come from that window, all right.

  He waited another few seconds. The rifle barrel did not reappear in that window.

  People ran out of stores, and at the hotel men and women were shouting.

  Illya leaped up from behind the rain barrel, taking advantage of the excitement and people milling in the streets.

  He almost bowled over a stout man in straw hat and smudged butcher's apron outside the grocery. The man yelled involuntarily.

  "Charming little town," Illya said to him, bowing as he hurried past. "Charming. Loud, though."

  The greasy mechanic at Mapes' garage had run halfway down the block as Illya rounded the corner.

  "What's the excitement?" the man called to Illya.

  Illya forced himself to walk slowly, speak casually. "Tire blew out."

  "That a fact?" The mechanic's face showed disappointment. "Could have sworn it was a deer rifle. Thought I knowed a deer rifle for sure. You positive it was a tire?" He fell in beside Illya and walked back to the littered garage-filling station with him.

  Illya gazed in sick disbelief at the jeep parked on the garage ramp. The four tires were pancaked flat, the hood was up and he saw the wiring had been ripped loose.

  The mechanic said, "You the fellow ordered this jeep? It was ready. Last night I checked it out myself. It was all ready for you. But this morning, when I got here, I found it just like this."

  "My grandmother always said never waste time crying over spilt milk," Illya said. "Let's get to work."

  "Your grandmother live around here?" the mechanic asked.

  "Why?" Illya bent over the engine.

  "Lots of folks have that saying around here. I never really knowed what it meant."

  "You repair the tires," Illya said, "I'll get these wires back together."

  In less than half an hour the tires were fixed and Illya had the jeep engine purring.

  "Never heard that car running so sweet," the mechanic said admiringly. He smiled at Illya. "Say, you ever want a job as a mechanic, you got one with me."

  "I'll remember that," Illya promised. He swung into the jeep.

  "You going up in the Big Belts prospecting, mister?" the mechanic shouted.

  "Why?"

  "Lots of men up there prospecting lately. Never have seen so much action going on."

  "Not me," Illya assured him with a bland smile. "I'm just looking for the place where the deer and the antelope play."

  A few miles outside the settlement the hard-packed road ended. An ill-defined trail led upward to ward the foothills and the raw brown mountains rearing above them.

  The car rattled as if the rocks would shake it to pieces. Illya clung to the wheel, bouncing on the hard seat.

  He frowned, hearing distant thunder.

  He checked the sky, finding it cloudless, sun-struck. But the thunder rumbled closer.

  Illya turned, staring across his shoulder. His eyes widened. The noise was not thunder. From the foothills south of him a Cessna four-seater raced toward him.

  He tried to tell himself that cattlemen and coyote hunters used small planes up here. But in less than two minutes, Illya admitted that the Cessna was zeroing in on him.

  The plane banked, losing altitude. Watching it, Illya almost drove headlong into a boulder.

  He jerked the car back onto the trail at the moment someone in the Cessna opened fire with a repeating rifle.

  Illya yelled, clinging to the wheel. This attack was senseless. But it occurred to him that the attack from the hotel window in Big Belt village hadn't made a lot of sense, either.

  Illya stepped down hard on the gas.

  The plane zoomed down, hawk-like, in pursuit. Bullets battered the little car, windshield shattering.

  Holding his breath, Illya watched the plane climb slightly as it passed.

  He looked about for concealment, but there was none except boulders and stunted trees. He stepped harder on the gas, climbing toward a distant hammock of pines.

  He wasn't going to make it. He watched the plane bank daringly and turn at a few hundred feet, maneuvering with maniacal skill.

  The plane returned, coming directly down and toward him.

  Illya leaned forward into the protection of the dash. He whipped the jeep off the trail into a cluster of boulders.

  Rifle bullets ricocheted off the hood and black holes pocked the shatter-webbed windshield.

  Kuryakin swore. The boulders slowed him, but didn't impede the plane at all.

  "Doesn't make sense letting them drive me out into these rocks," Illya said aloud.

  He quickly whipped the little jeep back toward the trail. He cut across country, heading toward the pine hammock on the ridge.

  The plane banked, making a steep turn. The roar of the plane engine was louder than the rattling of the jeep.

  Suddenly Illya smelled gas. Nobody had to point out to him that the rifleman had scored a hit on the gas tank.

  A tire whistled and the car listed, bumping frantically down slope. Another tire went and Illya lost control in the shale and rock outcroppings.

  The plane had reached a turn. It climbed slightly and peeled off, returning.

  Raging, talking to himself and sweat-wet, Illya slammed on brakes so hard the jeep side- slipped.

  Catching up his overnight kit, Illya plunged from the car, striking hard on his knees. He felt the cuts of the sharp rocks, but had no time to submit to pain.

  He thrust himself hard into the shadow of the boulder. He heard bullets rattling off the jeep, the shatter of glass, the scream of engine and fuselage as the plane passed less than a hundred feet above him.

  He opened the bag, inching around the boulder. He watched the banking plane, saw it skid along the wind, making its turn for another pass.

  He drew his U.N.C.L.E. special from the bag and socked an extension barrel on it, flipped up the telescopic sights.

  Above him and directly before him the Cessna faltered as if pilot and gunman were seeking him in the rocks, trying for a final and fatal pass.

  The plane moved swiftly. It nosed toward him again, the rifle spitting red.

  Pressed against the bounder, Illya coldly set the special, sighted through the telescopic glass. A section of the plane was magnified for him, brought inches before his face.

  Around him shale and rock chips flew as the bullets clipped them from the approaching plane.

  Illya Kuryakin held his breath and pressed the trigger.

  He shot only once. He sagged against the boulder then and waited.

  For a long time it was as if nothing happened, as though he'd missed. He knew better.

  The sleek plane flicked past, its shadow
slapping at him and for a brief instant shutting away the sun.

  Slowly, Illya turned, watching the plane. It fled outward as if one with the wind. It banked, started an Immelmann, and then it was as if the string ran out.

  The Cessna stopped, suddenly, as if it had struck an invisible wall. It faltered, wavered, went out of control. Nosing over, it plunged toward the earth far out in the rocky hillside.

  Illya remained unmoving watching it. It was already burning before it struck the rocks. It landed with a wild explosion that rocked the hillside like a mild quake.

  Illya sagged against the rocks, and put his blond head back.

  His face was expressionless as he stared upward into the infinite blue.

  After a moment he lifted his head and gazed out there where the remains of the plane and the land around it for a radius of fifty feet still burned.

  He got up, slowly, dismounting his gun and replacing it in his over night bag.

  He inspected the gun-battered jeep. The job they'd done on it was thorough. The windshield was webbed, gray and opaque. Two tires were flat. Gas leaked to the ground. Even if he could make it run, it wouldn't go far.

  He stood up, shoulders sagged round. He turned tiredly, inspecting the hills, the flat graze land, the wild mountains and the ranges lost in the blue haze. And this was when he heard the drone of another plane motor.

  A shudder racked his body.

  He was too tired to feel fear, or even rage. He toppled against the jeep, staring into the bleached sky.

  It came racing toward him. The motor was different and he recognized that it was a helicopter. It could still chase him like a fox through this rocky country.

  "Somebody's trying to tell me something," he said. He sighed and opened the overnight bag again. He'd have to have his answer ready. They were persistent.

  But he was stubborn.

  ACT II—THE SUMMONS TO DEATH

  ILLYA KURYAKIN slapped the Special together again and snapped the telescopic sight into place.

  He straightened then, standing braced with his legs apart. Around him the rocks glinted back at the sun and his damaged jeep leaked it's gasoline into the sand.

  The copter engine rattled and reverberated in the rocks, drowning out everything except the rage that gorged up in Kuryakin.

  He tightened his grip on the gun, ready to slap it into place against his shoulder for a steady brace.

  "Go ahead! Start it!" Illya raged, his voice lost and puny in the thunder of the chopper motors.

  He shook his fist. The helicopter circled him. It whipped around him as if battering at him with its shadow. Then it side-slipped, flying out over the burned Cessna.

  Gun ready, Illya awaited the first move from the men he could see in the plastic bubble.

  The chopper returned to the rocks where Illya waited in impotent rage for the first attack. Suddenly it climbed, going almost vertically above him.

  "Come back and fight, you finks!" Illya raged, shaking his weapon at the climbing copter.

  The chopper continued upward, its engines quieting in the distance.

  Illya didn't relax because it was going straight up, not leaving.

  Suddenly the sun glinted as a plastic door was opened up there. A man hung balanced for a moment and then plunged suddenly outward.

  Illya held the gun forgotten in his arms, watching. The jumper tumbled, one, two, three.

  Suddenly parachute ropes popped free from the falling figure. The brilliantly colored chute budded and then blossomed like an air plant.

  The figure dangled on the end of its strings and then floated toward Illya in the rocks.

  Illya exhaled expansively, recognizing Napoleon Solo, even in the distance, even in a jump suit.

  Solo struck the shale outcropping hard and was bobbled along like a cork for a few seconds be fore the chute deflated.

  Illya remained where he was in the rocks. Solo unfastened the chute, loosened the bulky jump suit and walked toward Illya, pushing his dark hair back from his face.

  Illya flinched slightly at the sight of Solo's battered face. He looked as if he'd gone a few rounds with a meat grinder.

  But Solo grinned, bowing slightly. "Howdy, partner. They sent me looking for you."

  Illya Kuryakin remained tense, holding the light gun across his chest.

  Solo laughed. "What's the matter? Don't you trust anybody anymore?"

  Illya exhaled and lowered the Special. He said, still raging, "I'd tell you just some of the violent things that have happened to me since I arrived in Big Belt this morning, but I can see by the condition of your face that you don't really care."

  Solo nodded, touching gingerly at his bruised face with the back of his hand. "Right. You don't tell me your woes, I won't tell you mine."

  Illya nodded in agreement and sagged against a boulder.

  Solo strode past him, going toward the jeep.

  "Where you going?" Illya asked mildly.

  "Come on. Let's get out of here."

  Illya shook his head. "Not in the jeep. That's one of my woes that I won't tell you about."

  TWO

  IT WAS late afternoon.

  Footsore, sweated and thirsty, Solo and Kuryakin climbed an escarpment in the east range of the Big Belt mountains.

  They stood on the brown rock ledge. All man's evil for that instant seemed dwarfed by the purpled majesty of the late afternoon mountain ranges. The peaks jutted upward toward the darkening sky, and beyond them higher peaks, capped with snow were yellow and ash gray far in the distance.

  "One thing wrong with the world," Solo mused. "People."

  Illya nodded. "Funny. Greedy men won't stop long enough to look around and see what they've got."

  "Well, because they won't, we've got to get to work," Solo said. He unpacked the kit he'd carried strapped to his back, setting up a range-scanner like the one he'd used in the tropics.

  When the instrument was set up, he said across his shoulder, "Just better warn you, Don Sayres was using one of these things when he was killed—mysteriously, instantly."

  Illya shrugged. "One way is like another."

  "Pleased you feel that way."

  Illya sank to a small boulder. He removed his dust-caked shoes. "Right now I feel nothing but tired and hungry. Let's find out what's going on and get out of here."

  Solo nodded in silent assent. He worked some moments in silence and deep concentration.

  Suddenly Napoleon Solo whistled.

  Illya got up from the rock in his bare feet. Napoleon Solo moved aside.

  Illya studied the pictures jumping darkly on the six-inch dial face, or screen, a scene picked up as sound and transmitted as light, reproduced as photographs through any obstructions, even mountains.

  Illya was silent a long time. At last he shook his head, "I see it. But I don't believe it. Tropical plants don't grow in Montana."

  "I believe it," Solo said. "I know where those plants came from."

  "What's the point of growing tropical plants in this part of the world?"

  "There's a point to it, all right. Those plants are growing even larger and greener and wilder than they did down in that damned rain forest."

  Illya shook his head. "What's the exact distance and range reading?"

  Solo checked the readings. "Four miles, due west."

  "That could be a long walk."

  "Yes. That four miles is as the scanner and the crow flies."

  Illya Kuryakin pushed his feet back into his shoes. "Much as I don't want to, we've got to get closer. We've got to get in there."

  Solo checked the flickering pictures reproduced on the tiny screen another few moments. Illya Kuryakin sank to the rock and tied his shoes.

  They both heard the noise from the rocks behind them at the same instant.

  They moved as one man. Illya came up from the rock and Solo spun around, .38 U.N.C.L.E. Special drawn.

  They stared down the barrel of a waiting rifle.

  Tense, they gazed at the
girl holding that gun. The first thing they saw was that she was extraordinarily beautifully, unspeakably frightened.

  She trembled, barely able to hold the rifle fixed on them. This made her triply dangerous because her finger on the trigger quavered, too.

  Her voice shook. "Don't move, either one of you, or I'll kill you."

  Solo gave the quivering girl his blandest smile. "I wasn't planning any move."

  "Nor me," Illya said. "Matter of fact, we were just sitting here, waiting for you to come along."

  "Go ahead. Laugh," the girl said on the verge of tears. "I hope you can laugh as easily with a bullet in you."

  "That's the hard way, all right," Solo agreed.

  THREE

  "WHO ARE YOU?" Napoleon Solo kept his voice level, afraid any undue excitement might drive her into hysterical use of that gun. Her voice slashed at him, quavering, but the rage riding it. "Never mind that. I'll ask the questions."

  Napoleon Solo watched the girl narrowly. "You don't act like a professional with that gun, but THRUSH has used more obvious gimmicks."

  "THRUSH?" The girl scowled.

  "That's right," Illya Kuryakin said. "Are you from THRUSH?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," the girl said, hysteria mounting behind her voice again.

  "She thinks THRUSH is a bird," Illya said.

  "Make your jokes," the girl said savagely, tilting the mouth of the rifle. Even with the gun in her hands there was a breathtaking loveliness about her. Not even the functional clothes she wore could truly detract from her eye-widening beauty.

  Her hour-before-dawn black hair was brushed back carelessly from her face and toppled in lustrous waves almost to her shoulders. She wore Levis, denim shirt and scuffled boots as if they were the latest from the House of Dior. She looked to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty. "Death is no joke to me."

  "You misunderstand," Illya said. "Would you want to see grown men cry?"

  "My father cried," she said in that savage tone. "You people made him cry."

  "Wait a minute! This is a case of mistaken identity," Illya began.

  Her quavering voice rang out. "You stay where you are."

  She jerked the gun up, her finger trembling on the trigger.