The Mind-Twisters Affair (12 page)

A door across the room opened and a figure was momentarily outlined against the light in the background. The door shut and a flashlight beam swept across the floor.

Illya aimed as carefully as he could in the blackness for a point just above and to the right of the flashlight. He squeezed the trigger. The report was alarmingly loud in the confined quarters and was followed by a sharp exclamation from behind the flashlight. The light swung up to shine on Illya for an instant, then wavered and dropped. There was the sound of a falling body and the clatter of the flashlight as it hit the concrete floor and went out.

Ears straining for any sound, Illya waited in complete silence for a full minute before taking his own flashlight and making his way across the room. Using the watchman's own belt, Illya tied him securely to one leg of a sturdy looking workbench. Satisfied that even if the man did wake up before be was supposed to, he could do no damage, Illya searched him and removed a Thrush communicator and a revolver from his pockets. With his own communicator, Illya called Napoleon in.

By the time Napoleon had parked the U.N.C.L.E. car behind the building and entered the back door, Illya had made a cautious tour of the premises and was confident that only one watchman had been on duty.

"If we had any doubts about Thrush's involvement before, this should dispel them," Illya held the Thrush communicator in the beam of his flashlight.

Napoleon glanced at it briefly. "Weapons?" he inquired.

"A .455 Webley revolver, of all things," Illya replied. "I didn't know Thrush went in for buying war surplus."

"Maybe somebody got a bargain. It's comforting to think of them having to justify expenditures, too. But right now we had best get busy looking for the drug."

Illya swung his light over the cluttered back room in which they stood. "Any tampering would be done here. There's a passageway and some offices in front. The upstairs seems to have been used entirely for storage."

The two agents separated and worked their way through the clutter. Several minutes later they met at a long bench near the center of the room. "This would seem to be it," Napoleon said. "The jugs of syrup over by the stairway have the seals intact, probably the way they were received from the manufacturer. And here we have several that have obviously been opened."

Illya swung his light along the bench, bare except for the half dozen jugs of syrup. "So they're opened here and then resealed, with the magic ingredient added." He squatted down and looked under the bench. What appeared to be a rusty toolbox rested on the floor. "Here's something he said, pulling it out from under the bench and setting it on top.

Napoleon stared at it for a moment, then laid his flashlight down and tried to lift the toolbox lid. When it became apparent it wasn't going to budge, Illya produced his picklock again and went to work. The toolbox was much more difficult to open than the back door had been, but something finally clicked and the lid came up easily. The inside was in perfect condition, in contrast to the rusted outer surface. Six small sealed canisters sat in a wooden rack.

Illya took one out and carefully unscrewed the cap, then shook a small portion of the contents onto the bench,

"Lavender?" Napoleon peered closely at the colorful powder. "I never suspected that esthetics entered into drug manufacturing."

Illya wet a forefinger and dabbed it into the powder, then brought the finger to his nose to sniff. "No odor," he reported as he eyed his lavender fingertip. "Considering its already proven effect on me, I don't think I'll test it for flavor. Besides, I wouldn't know what the drug tasted like anyway."

"I think we can assume this is the drug," Napoleon said. "What we had better do, though, is get some of it back to the lab for analysis." He pulled a small test tube from a jacket pocket, filled it from the canister and carefully stoppered it.

Illya, who had been looking about speculatively as Napoleon filled the test tube, looked back at the six canisters. "Why not take all of it?" be asked.

Napoleon shook his head. "No need for more than a sample to analyze. We'd better destroy the remainder, though. Any suggestions as to how? Pouring it down the sink doesn't seem too practical. You never know where a town's old, used water is going to show up next."

"Burning would be easiest, if it will burn. I saw something that looked like a trash burner out in the yard."

Napoleon looked around the littered room again. "Thrush has become rather messy lately. You think we can do it without setting the whole place on fire? Remember what Mr. Waverly says about wanton destruction of property, even when we are reasonably sure it belongs to Thrush."

"I know. He's been rather sensitive on the subject since you blew a hole in that poor woman's bedroom floor to get at Dr. Morthley. But the burner is away from the building, and I don't see any other quick way."

Napoleon gathered the six canisters and the small pile of powder from the workbench and headed for the back yard. Illya grabbed one of the jugs of opened syrup and followed. In the back yard, Illya found an open space that looked like it would soak up the syrup while Napoleon started a fire in the trash burner. A minute later, he dumped the contents of one of the canisters into the flame and was rewarded with a blinding green flash that approximated seasick daylight.

"If it has that many calories, it must be fattening, too," Napoleon remarked as he hurriedly dumped in the rest of the powder and waited for the glare to die down. By the time Illya had dumped all the jugs of syrup, Napoleon's vision had cleared and he could make out the car several yards away.

They were just starting toward the car when the yard was suddenly swept by headlights turning into the drive. "Word gets around fast," Illya remarked as they broke into a sprint for the car.

The oncoming vehicle skidded to a stop on the grave and began disgorging armed men who were firing as they emerged. Illya and Napoleon were just able to make it to the cover of their car as the bullets began striking around them and whining off the car. From behind the car, Napoleon returned the fire with his U.N.C.L.E. Special while Illya got out the Mercox an fitted it with one of the high explosive projectiles. He fired quickly; a second later there was an answering explosion and the car's lights went out. Illya hurriedly reloaded the Mercox with a tear gas projectile.

"Get ready to move when I fire this one," he said, pulling the trigger a split second later. There was a slight popping sound, and Thrush fire rapidly slackened to be replaced by violent coughing and choking sounds

"Now!" Illya shouted, wrenching open the door and, leaping inside. Napoleon jumped for the door on the passenger's side and made it just as a final shot from a determined Thrush sent a bullet whining off the hood

Illya got the car moving before switching on the head lights to reveal a number of red-eyed Thrushes diving for cover behind their car. The car itself was little better off, its hood crumpled and a large puddle of something under the radiator. Napoleon glanced back as they roared past. "Haven't I seen a couple of those faces before?"

"At the Fort Wayne airport, yelling 'U.N.C.L.E., go home!'" Illya confirmed as he swung the car onto the long driveway that led to the highway. He reached the end of the driveway and was pausing to let a fast moving car by when he realized that it was not going by but headed directly at them. The glint of an automatic was visible outside the right front window and a bullet thudded against the rear of the car.

"Reinforcements," Illya muttered as he floored the accelerator. In a matter of seconds, the U.N.C.L.E. car began to pull away. Several ineffective shots came from the pursuing car.

"Whither away?" Napoleon inquired as Illya negotiated a curve with an expert, if stomach twisting, controlled skid.

"Anyplace I can find a straight road," Illya replied, braking suddenly and swinging onto a blacktop road that intersected the highway. At the same moment, he gave one of the buttons on the dashboard a quick jab. A cloud of smoke billowed out behind them, obscuring the intersection. They should have fun making that turn," he remarked.

Napoleon looked at him admiringly. "You're developing a very creditable mean streak," he said.

Illya concentrated on negotiating another curve. As he slid into it, he could see the Thrush car emerging from the cloud. "Now that we're on a side road, how about the laser system?" he asked.

Napoleon peered backward for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not well enough checked out on that thing to try hitting something on these curves. And on a straight road, we won't need it."

Illya nodded. All he really needed was a few miles of straight road; he felt sure he could run away from anything on the road.

Signs warned of an intersecting highway. Illya braked again and swung onto it. The pursuit took the corner on two wheels and almost ended up in the ditch, but the driver fought the car back under control and continue There were more curves and then Illya grinned as the car topped a low hill and the headlights revealed a long expanse of straightaway, with no other cars in sight. He floored the accelerator again and simultaneously cut in the car's high speed supercharged exhaust system. On either side, berm and fencerows became a gray blur. Behind, the Thrush car. dropped steadily further back but continued to pursue.

"If this just holds out a little longer," Illya murmured hopefully. "We'll have -"

The car swooped over the crest of a bill and he saw that the road was totally blocked just ahead.

Chapter 11

"Who Ever Heard Of A Flying Saucer With A Parachute"

A SIGN READING "Beaver Dam, Pop. 862" went by in blur as Illya and Napoleon bore down on a street fair that stretched along the highway for blocks. Reacting automatically, Illya simultaneously shut off the afterburner, punched the button to fire the braking parachute, and applied the conventional brakes. The savage jolt as the chute took hold almost threw the car off the road, but Illya managed to hold it under control as their speed dropped below 100.

At 50, he discarded the parachute and a second later, skidded around a corner on screaming tires, still a half block from the near edge of the street fair. A block off the highway, he came to another street running parallel to the highway. Now at normal speed, Illya turned onto it and found himself confronted by an extension of the fair. A large, darkened tent loomed invitingly at the next intersection, and without hesitating, Illya drove inside. The two agents paused only long enough to let out their breath, which they realized they had been holding since they came over the last hill, then got out and locked the car.

"I take it we stay here while the pursuit goes merrily by," Napoleon said as they walked out of the tent and carefully closed the flaps behind them.

A sudden crash, followed by an outburst of shouting came from the general direction of the highway. "The pursuit doesn't seem to be very merry at the moment," Napoleon commented.

"Let's hope that was the only car," Illya said as he started to trot forward a little faster. "I saw another pair of headlights back there once, I think. At the speed we were going, it had to be either Thrush or some local hot rodder who wanted to race."

By now they were merging with the crowd that swarmed over the brightly lighted highway. The Thrush car, obviously going at a good speed and lacking a parachute brake, hadn't been able to stop in time. At the last minute, the driver bad managed to avoid the Ferris wheel but had steered into what proved to be a livestock tent. While the lone passenger indulged in a nose-to-nose confrontation with an annoyed cow, the driver was arguing with a local law officer, apparently the sheriff.

"But dammit, you're blocking a state highway!" the driver was shouting.

The sheriff looked as unimpressed as the livestock. "Son, we've been blocking this highway for our Muck Crop Festival for twenty years. We've got a court order saying we can block this highway. Now then, I know how much space you had to stop in and you didn't make it. You can have your choice - speeding or defective brakes. Which will it be?"

Meanwhile, another hubbub was breaking out on t fringes of the crowd. Someone had spotted the chute lying at the side of the street almost a block away. "I
told
you I saw a parachute!" someone was indignantly.

"And there was a little round ship that came down with it!" another chimed in. "It made a terrible screaming noise as it came down and I saw port holes a strange yellow man in it."

"Yeah, me too," said a third. "It just hovered there for a minute and shot out of sight over the trees."

"Don't be silly," someone else said. "Whoever heard of a flying saucer with a parachute?"

"What's wrong with a parachute?" the first man asked still sounding huffy. "That's how our space capsules down. Why shouldn't theirs?"

"What would a flying saucer want to observe a Crop Festival for?" a bewildered individual asked. "What does it all mean?"

At this point, another car came tearing over the hill and came to a lurching, tire-squealing stop halfway between the parachute and the Ferris wheel. The driver got out quickly and headed for the first car. The sheriff waved to him as he walked past where he was slowly and deliberately writing out a ticket for the driver of the first car.

"Good brakes there, son," the sheriff said cheerfully. The driver of the second car smiled weakly and we up to the first car, nudging the cow out of his way. After exchanging a few words with the passenger, he left and headed directly for the spot where the U.N. C.L.E. agents were standing.

Illya and Napoleon hastily faded into an alley and ducked around the corner of a garage as the Thrush also entered the alley and pulled out a communicator. He spoke quietly into it, instructing all units to converge on Beaver Dam. "Cover all roads between here and Midford," he concluded. "They'll have to take one of them."

"Maybe waiting it out wasn't such a good idea," Illya suggested as the Thrush disappeared back into the crowd.