Текст книги "[Magazine 1967-­12] - The Pillars of Salt Affair"

Автор книги: Bill Pronzini

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He walked. He walked from front to back of the green-walled room, from side to side. Some of the weakness had begun to leave him. He flexed his arms, his fingers, working his muscles. He held his hands in front of his eyes and willed them to stop shaking.

He had to keep moving. If he gave in to the raw jangling of his tortured nerves, his mind could still snap. He forced blankness of his brain, continuing to walk. A whirring sound came from behind him. His heart began to pound wildly and he spun around, crouching catlike.

A small, square opening had appeared in the flat surface of the floor near the cot. Solo closed his eyes, clenching his fists, concentrating every ounce of his will on quieting the raging forces in his body. When he felt calm returning, he opened his eyes.

The opening was gone. But on the floor where it had been was a small bowl, wooden, containing some kind of greenish liquid.

Solo went there and bent, looking at the bowl. He was ravenously hungry. He did not know how long he had been without food. He wet his lips and lifted the bowl to his mouth.

Warning lights touched his brain. Drugs, he thought. It might be loaded with drugs. Maybe they think I know something, and they put some kind of narcotic in here, like a truth serum.

Solo flung the bowl from him, across the room, and it hit the concrete floor with a dull thud, spattering the greenish liquid on the green walls.

* * *

Solo had lost all track of time. At first, he refused to sleep. He paced the room continually, stopping only to rest for short periods. His nerves had begun to function normally, as had the remainder of his body. But he was afraid to close his eyes, afraid enough of the gas remained in his system to have harmful effects while he slept.

Finally, the fatigue became too great, and he knew it was impossible for him to remain awake. He lay down on the cot, and sleep covered him like a blanket the instant he shut his eyes. When he awoke, the surging pain in his head was gone. He felt stiff, but otherwise the adverse bodily conditions had disappeared completely. He was greatly relieved. The danger point had been passed, now.

There was another bowl of the greenish liquid on the floor, but he ignored it, feeling the pangs of hunger in his stomach. He lay on the cot for a while, thinking about Illya and, bitterly, about the girl named Estrellita Valdone. Then he stood and began pacing. There was still the possibility, he knew, of claustrophobia setting in, and of morose melancholia. He had to keep busy, keep doing something, keep his mind from dwelling on his imprisonment.

He walked. He thought, though for short periods. He exercised his body. He slept, fitfully, for an hour or two. And he fought the growing hunger in his stomach each time a fresh bowl of the greenish liquid came up through the opening in the floor.

He had been in that single room for three days, though he had no idea it had been that long, when the two men came for him. He was sitting on the cot, resting his legs after walking, when a loud whirring sound came from one of the walls on his right. The sound did not frighten him, as had the one that first day. He looked up.

The wall had slid open. Outside was a hallway. Two men stood there, each armed with a sub-machine gun and an Army-type automatic at their belts. They were dressed in brown khaki uniforms and black-billed caps. Solo recognized their attire as that worn by THRUSH guards.

One of the men made a motion with the gun he held in his hands. Solo stood, wetting his lips. They were taking him out of here. Now, he thought, maybe I'll find out where I am. Maybe I'll find out what T.H.R.U.S.H....

A sudden thought struck him, What if it were too late? What if THRUSH had already launched their offensive? And what if it had succeeded? What if... He forced the questions out of his mind. He couldn't afford to think like that. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be. There was still time. There had to be.

Solo went out into the hallway. One of the guards prodded him to the left, and they walked in that direction. The guards flanked him. At the end of the hallway was a blank wall that opened to reveal an elevator as they neared.

They moved inside. Machinery buzzed, and the panel slid shut. They began to rise. Napoleon Solo had the odd feeling that he was in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, ascending to see Mr. Waverly; the electronic panels, the concrete and steel construction, was very similar. There was no doubt about it, Solo thought. This was a major THRUSH fortress.

The elevator stopped abruptly. The panel slid back, and they stepped out. Solo was not prepared for what he saw. It was a laboratory.

Not a laboratory by any normal standards, however, it was huge, the size of an auditorium, high-ceilinged. Banks of equipment, huge caldrons, like wine vats, long rows of benches laden with jars, bottles, test tubes and other chemical paraphernalia covered every available inch of space. Overhead, a maze of intricately spiraling glass tubing linked the vats with each other and with various oddly-shaped machines...each with a series of dials, gauges, and round glass bowls at the base...scattered throughout the room. A colorless liquid bubbled, apparently under great heat, inside the tubing and the glass bowls under the machines. To his right, Napoleon Solo saw a large, straight piece of tubing, much larger than the ones overhead, that led from the largest of the vats to a conveyor belt of sorts. It was circular, revolving slowly.

Three men stood grouped around it, and Solo could see that they were filling five gallon jars through a tap in the tubing. One man operated the tap, and when each jar had been filled with the colorless liquid one of the other men would take it from the revolving belt and put it onto another, short conveyor that disappeared through an opening behind him. The third man replaced the full jars with empty ones.

This was not only a laboratory, Solo realized; it was a manufacturing plant. The colorless liquid, he guessed. was the chemical which was capable of converting fresh water into crystallized salt. But why were they producing such great quantities of it?

One of the guards prodded Solo again, and they began to walk across the room, threading their way through the equipment. They passed men in white laboratory smocks, hunched over the benches, checking gauges, scurrying about in an appearance of general disorder. Like they were pressed for time, Solo thought. Like they were trying to meet a deadline. A chill touched his neck. There was only one reason why they would be moving at such pace.

The room was alive in a cacophony of sound...the liquid bubbling overhead and in the vats, the whirring of machinery, voices raised in an effort to be heard. Solo's head began to ache again; after the time he had spent in the total silence of the single room, the sudden exposure to such din was almost deafening.

They reached the far end of the room. There was a wide, Plexiglas window there, affording a view into another, much smaller laboratory. It was almost a miniature, scale model of the one in which they stood, replete with everything except the vats, the conveyor belts, and the oddly shaped machines.

Private lab, Solo thought. And inside there had to be the man who was behind all this, the head of the THRUSH project, the developer of the salt chemical. One of the guards opened a door set beside the Plexiglas window, and they stepped inside.

The private lab was soundproofed. As soon as the door was shut, the outside noises ceased. There was only the gentle bubbling of liquid in the spiraling tubing that connected two small glass jars at one end.

A man sat on a high stool before a group of test tubes on the long, single bench that covered the length of the room. He was writing furiously on a piece of yellow paper. He seemed not to have heard them enter. "Dr. Sagine?" one of the guards said.

The man made no response.

"Dr. Sagine?" the guard said, louder this time.

The man looked up irritably. "Yes, yes, what is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"You asked us to bring him down," the guard said, pushing Napoleon Solo forward with his free hand.

"Well, all right. You've brought him," the man said. "Wait outside."

"Hadn't we better..."

"Wait outside, I told you!"

"Yes, sir."

The two guards left the room.

Solo stood looking at the man on the high stool. He felt a faint revulsion.

The man was the ugliest individual he had ever seen. He was chinless, with a wetly protruding lower lip. He was very short, almost gnome-like, with a huge head and a bushy mop of shoulder length, jaundice-colored hair. His skin was pale, an unhealthy white color, and bushy yellow brows topped bright, gray eyes that reminded Solo of rodent's.

Sagine was bent over the yellow piece of paper once again. Solo waited. The man finished his writing, swiveled on the stool, and broke the pencil he had been using in half. He threw the two pieces over his shoulder, staring at Solo.

"MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent, is it?" the man said. "Got you, didn't we? Nerve gas. Breaks most men down. You're a strong one, you are, but we'll break you. Watched you in the cell, you know. Watched you the whole time in there. View plates in the walls. Thought you were going to drink the soup. Did you guess it was drugged? Of course you did. You're a smart man, MR: U.N.C.L.E. agent, but we'll break you. Oh yes, we'll break you."

Solo stared at the man. He was obviously quite mad. The short staccato speech had been clipped off in a reedy, high-pitched voice. If the man spoke that way, then he must think in the same manner, a thousand confused, whirling thoughts spinning in his mind. Solo shuddered involuntarily, remembering how his own thoughts had spun, how close he had come to madness himself.

Yes, this man was mad, all right. But he was also very dangerous. Solo would not make the mistake of underrating him.

He said, "Just who are you?"

"Who am I? Who am I? Dr. Sagine, that's who. Dr. Mordecai Sagine. The finest chemist in the world. They laughed at me; did you know that? I showed them. Oh, yes, I showed them. They won't laugh now, you know. I developed the Sagine formula. I did it. Took me ten years."

Solo tried to extract some logical sense from the man's diatribe. He had never heard of Dr. Mordecai Sagine, but the man doubtless was the inventor of the chemical. And as such, he would know what THRUSH was planning to do with it. All else was unimportant now.

Solo said, "I must admit, it took a brilliant mind to perfect such a process as you have here."

"You agree, do you?" Dr. Sagine said. "You're intelligent, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The rest of them weren't. Fools, all of them."

"There must be a great number of uses you can put your discovery to," Solo said.

"Uses, eh? Only one use, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The ultimate use. My name will be legend, did you know that? I will be immortalized. THRUSH has promised me. Oh, yes. Dr. Mordecai Sagine."

"What use will your chemical be put to, Dr. Sagine?" Solo asked softly. A crafty look crept into Dr. Sagine's fevered eyes. "Trying to get information out of me, are you? Well, no matter. Nothing you can do about it. We'll break you like a stick, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. agent."

Dr. Sagine hopped down off the stool and walked in a shuffling, crab-like step to where a door stood at the far end of the private lab. Solo followed him. Dr. Sagine opened the door, stepped through, turned to see if Napoleon Solo was behind him, and then went to a desk in the middle of the adjoining room and sat down in a chair behind it, folding his arms across his chest.

"Well?" he said. Solo frowned. "Your office."

"Look there," Dr. Sagine said, pointing to what appeared to be a blank wall. Then he pressed a button somewhere beneath the desk. The wall slid back, revealing a Plexiglas window much like the one in the laboratory.

The first thing Solo saw was blue sky. Blue sky, dotted with gently rolling clouds. In the distance, he could see snow-capped mountain peaks. He went to the window quickly, looking out.

Below him, and to the side, he saw sheer walls of granite. This fortress is hollowed out of solid rock, he thought. Near the top of a mountain. Below him was a precipitous drop of what he guessed must be in excess of a thousand feet. A canyon lay down there, and there was the tiny, winding line of a river that flowed through it. To his left, where the walls of granite curved, receding, he could see the edges of a road that had been carved in the mountainside.

"Well?" Dr. Sagine said. "What do you see, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent?

Solo said nothing. The snow-capped mountains in the distance reminded him of something. He had seen them before. Where...

"Do you see the river down there?" Dr. Sagine said. "Do you?"

"I see it," Solo said. He was trying to remember.

"Do you know what river that is?" Dr. Sagine asked him.

Solo got it then. Pike's Peak. He and Illya had been to Denver once on an assignment, and they had... The river! Of course, there was only one it could be.

"The Colorado River!" Napoleon Solo said.

"Yes, yes, the Colorado," Dr. Sagine said. "Quite correct." He laughed maniacally. "Four hours to go. Exactly four hours. Going to put the Sagine formula in that Colorado River down there, you know. Going to turn that river into a frozen bed of rock salt. What do you think of that, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent?"

Solo spun it round. The Colorado River, the most important river in the Western United States. If it were crystallized, thousands of fertile acres of agricultural land in Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California that depended on water from the Colorado for irrigation would be reduced to barren wasteland. Electrical power derived from the huge dynamos at Hoover Dam would cease. Hundreds of thousands of people would be without drinking water.

"Only the first step, you know," Dr. Sagine said. "THRUSH wants a major test. After that, the formula goes into every main body of fresh water in the world. Simultaneously. Oh, yes, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the Nile, The Amazon, the Congo, the Huang. All of them. In the mountains, too. Melting snow. All the fresh water reduced to rock salt. Millions of people at my mercy. I'm the only one who knows the antidote. The only one."

Spittle flecked Dr. Sagine's deformed lower lip. Solo stared at him, speechless. "Two days," Dr. Sagine said, his mad eyes alive with the fever of his affliction. "Two days to immortality! I'll have my revenge then. Oh. yes, they'll be sorry they laughed at me. THRUSH will see to that. Going to force the world powers to surrender under their terms. Extinction by thirst and famine if they don't. Tidal floods, too. I can do that. Just put in too much of the antidote. Food everything. Two days, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. agent. Two days, and THRUSH and I will rule the world!"

ACT IV: NO ESCAPE

The address Estrellita Valdone had given Illya Kuryakin was a rundown warehouse along the East River.

At nine o'clock, he stood on the deserted street in front of the warehouse. An ice-like, numbing wind blew in across the river, touching his face with chill fingers. It was very dark...there were no street lights...and the silence was deep except for the mournful howl of the wind.

An alleyway ran alongside of the warehouse to the left, a pit of blackness. The rear entrance, Estrellita had told him. Down the alleyway, up on to the pier.

She had sounded frightened on the phone. She had information about Napoleon Solo, and had come to New York to find Illya. But there had been two men on the plane, and they had followed her. A cousin of hers owned the warehouse, she said, and she was staying in a small room he had there. She had eluded the two men, but she was afraid to leave the warehouse for fear they would find her. He must come alone, she had said; he must trust no one. And he must make sure he was not followed.

A nice story, Illya Kuryakin thought as he stood on the dark street. He had passed over it at first, elated over the news that he might soon find out what had happened to Solo and where his friend was. But in the taxi ride over, he had begun to dwell on Estrellita's story, and had found holes in it you could drive the proverbial truck through.

Why had she come to New York at all? Why hadn't she simply gone to authorities in Mexico? And if there were some other reason then why hadn't she gone to the authorities here?-Why call him? He was supposed to be a mere photographer. What could she expect him to do that the police could not?

He had a strong feeling of uneasiness. There were things that disturbed him about Estrellita Valdone. She hadn't put in an appearance in Teclaxican the morning after their accident. She and Solo had had a dinner engagement; yet, when Solo had not shown up for it, she had not asked any questions of the hotel clerk as to his whereabouts. Illya had questioned the clerk and knew this for a fact.

Of course, it was possible that she had seen something that afternoon, after the accident, that had sent her into hiding. It could have been then she learned whatever it was she had to tell Illya. But he had thought of arguments against this; if she knew of Solo's whereabouts, then she must have seen him being taken somewhere. And if she had learned this the afternoon of the accident, then that would logically mean that Solo were still somewhere in Mexico. That being the case, Illya was right back to his original query. Why had she come to New York?

He was beginning, as they say, to smell a rat. Or, more correctly, a—THRUSH.

He debated his next move. He could go back to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, report his suspicions, and lead a raiding party back to the warehouse. But if he did that, there was the possibility that Estrellita would be gone when he returned. And that would leave them where they had started. In a blind alley.

Too, there was the chance that they had seen him arrive. They might be watching him now, hidden in the shadows. If he tried to leave they could stop him without any trouble. A well-placed bullet in the darkness, and you could scratch one U.N.C.L.E. operative.

He knew he had to go through with the meeting. He had to take the risk. U.N.C.L.E. was powerless now; they knew nothing of THRUSH's cabal. Inside that warehouse, one way or another, lay the answers to a lot of questions.

Illya Kuryakin entered the mouth of the alley. The blackness was absolute. He walked carefully, feeling his way along the side of the warehouse. He had gone no more than a few steps when he heard something. He stopped, listening. Quiet, and the howl of the wind. He took another step, his hand on the U.N.C.L.E. special at his side.

There was a scurrying sound directly in front of him, and a shapeless black form darted past him, brushing his leg. He eased the pressure of his hand on the gun. Cat, he thought. But his body did not relax.

He reached the end of the alley and stepped up onto a catwalk at the edge of the pier. Below, the black waters of the river churned at the pilings. The sting of the wind was more pronounced here, tugging at his clothing, chilling him. He walked carefully. One good, strong gust of that wind could send him plunging into the icy river. He would not last five minutes in the subzero waters.

He stepped up on to the pier itself, and went along it to where he found the door Estrellita had said would be there. He lifted his U.N.C.L.E. special from its holster, flicked off the safety, and thrust his right hand and the gun into the pocket of his overcoat. He rapped loudly on the door.

It was opened almost immediately. The white face of Estrellita Valdone peered around the jamb.

"Mr. Kuryakin?"

"Yes."

"Are you alone?"

"I'm alone."

She swung the door wider. He stepped past her, inside. A light glowed dimly at the far end of the warehouse. Estrellita shut the door, motioning for him to follow her, and they threaded their way through heaping rows of empty pallets, packing crates, and misshapen, canvas covered mounds, toward the light.

As Illya Kuryakin approached, he saw that the light came from an office. A glass partition allowed him to see that it was empty, containing only a single, cluttered desk and a row of metal filing cabinets.

Estrellita entered the office, and then turned, facing him. Illya stood in the doorway. "All right," he said. "Now tell me where Napoleon is."

He did not hear the man come up behind him. He did not even know the man was there until he felt the hard thrust of metal in the small of his back, and the rough hand that jerked his arm from the pocket of his overcoat and tore the U.N.C.L.E. special from his fingers.

He stood motionless, feeling the pressure in his back, pressure that could only come from a gun muzzle, and cursed himself for not being more careful. He should have checked the warehouse. He should have

Estrellita Valdone, clad in a khaki shirt and men's trousers, was smiling coldly at him. "I am going to do better than tell you where your friend is," she said. "I am going to take you there. I think, perhaps, we can arrange for the two of you to share the same cell. An U.N.C.L.E. reunion, as it were. How does that strike you, Mr. Kuryakin?" Illya said nothing. He was staring at the Army-issue, .45 automatic that was clenched, black and deadly, in one of Estrellita Valdone's small, white hands.

TWO

I've GOT to get out of here, Napoleon Solo thought.

I've got to get out of here and warn U.N.C.L.E. what THRUSH and this madman are planning to do. They've go to be stopped, no matter what the cost.

It was a fantastic plot. But it would work, Solo knew. If THRUSH succeeded, the world would indeed be at their mercy. They could wreak havoc, destruction. Panic would result, and nations would crumble into chaotic ruin. If THRUSH gained control... He had to get out of there. But how? Solo looked at Dr. Sagine. I could grab him, he thought. Use him as a hostage.

No, that was no good. Dr. Sagine, even though he probably did not know it, was now expendable. He had perfected his chemical. THRUSH no longer needed him, no matter what they had promised. Once the crystallization had taken place world-wide, they would undoubtedly reward him with a bullet in the back of the head. Dr. Sagine might think he was the only one who knew the chemical antidote, but THRUSH scientists, working in close proximity with him, would have undoubtedly learned the secret by now. No, using Dr. Sagine as a hostage wouldn't work at all.

Solo had to think of another way. And it couldn't be here, not in this office or in the laboratory outside. It had to be...

He had an idea. It was a slim chance, a very slim chance. If he failed, there would be no second opportunity.

He said, "You're insane, you old buzzard."

Dr. Sagine jumped up from his chair. "What?" He said.

"That's what I said," Solo told him. "A psychotic old buzzard with delusions of grandeur."

A sound like the enraged squawk of a bird came from Dr. Sagine's throat. He brushed past Solo, into his private laboratory, and threw open the outer door.

"Guards!" He yelled. "Take this man back to his cell! Lock him in! We'll break him and reduce him to a quivering mass of jelly! Nobody talks to Dr. Sagine like that!"

The two guards rushed inside, grabbing Napoleon Solo. They hustled him out into the main laboratory. Solo could still hear the mad doctor screaming hysterically, even above the clamor.

Roughly, the guards prodded Solo across the laboratory to the elevator. The electronic panel slid back, and they stepped inside, one guard on either side of Solo. The panel closed again, and they began to descend.

Solo had accomplished what he had set out to do by infuriating Dr. Sagine. He needed to get out of the office and out of the laboratory as quickly as possible, to get into the elevator alone with the two guards. This was his chance. He allowed his body to relax, arms hanging loosely at his sides. One more second, now. One more...

The elevator stopped. The panel began to slide back.

Solo dropped to one knee. It was a single, fluid motion, catching the two guards completely by surprise. They reacted just as Napoleon Solo had hoped they would. They both turned toward him, leaning forward.

As soon as his right knee touched the floor of the elevator, Solo pushed upward with his left foot, hands clenched into fists, touching one another at his chest, elbows extended to the sides.

He had come up into a crouch, body still moving upward, when he drove both elbows out, simultaneously, in piston-like quickness It had been perfectly timed. Both elbows ripped with pile-driving force into the respective stomachs of the two guards, bending them over at the waist. Twin explosions of gasping pain escaped from their throats.

Solo, standing once again as the two guards went double, lifted both hands and brought the hard edge of each hammering down karate style He felt a satisfying shock shoot up each arm as his hands connected solidly with the back of each guard's neck. They dropped without a sound.

The elevator panel stood wide open, revealing the long, empty hallway. Solo, bending quickly now that the first part of his gamble had worked, took the automatic strapped to one of the guard's waist and shoved it into the belt of his trousers, ignoring the machine guns because of their bulk. Then he grabbed each of the guards by the back of the shirt and dragged them out of the elevator, depositing them in the hallway. He stepped back inside.

He had noticed that there had been two small buttons, barely visible, on one of the walls of the elevator when he had been taken up to the laboratory. It was with those buttons that his chance for escape lay.

They had undoubtedly been put there so that whoever was riding inside would be able to change the elevator's direction if needed, since its original course was electronically controlled from outside. Solo pressed the lower of the two buttons, keeping his finger on it, and listened to the pounding of his heart.

The panel closed. The elevator began to drop. Solo took the automatic from his trousers and held it ready in his right hand. He wanted to get the lowest floor of the THRUSH fortress. He did not know what he would find there; for all he realized it would be the living quarters of the THRUSH guards.

But there was one thing he did know, and that was the fact that there had to be an outside entrance somewhere on that initial floor. He remembered the road that had been carved from the mountainside. And since there was a road, THRUSH would have vehicles—jeeps, most likely—and the logical place for them to be kept would be on that first floor.

The elevator stopped. Solo took his finger off the button on the wall as the panel began to slide back, holding his breath, squeezing gentle pressure of the trigger of the automatic.

Warehouse.

Solo let his breath out slowly, eyes darting rapidly from side to side. To the left he could see several jeeps, parked in twin rows on the concrete floor. Six, altogether. On his right, he saw a large helicopter, cargo-type, of a manufacture he suspected was THRUSH's. There were crates, skids of glass jars, and other goods stacked near him. Directly ahead was a partitioned area, behind which he could see what looked to be a large control panel. A single man stood before the panel, his back to Solo. There was no one else in sight.

Solo stepped out of the elevator, walking softly. If he could reach the man at the control board knock him out before he could raise an alarm, he would have enough time to get safely away. He knew how to operate a helicopter, and there had to be a platform somewhere at one end of the warehouse that would serve as a launching area. The control board should be able to give him the answer. He moved swiftly, silently, across the concrete.

He had gone halfway when he heard the shout from his left. He spun there, bringing up the automatic. A man in mechanic's clothes had been working near the jeeps. He was standing now, yelling a warning across to the man at the control board, digging inside his uniform with right hand.

Solo snapped a quick shot just as the man fumbled a gun from his clothes, saw the man spin, toppling backwards to the floor. Solo whirled toward the other man, just in time to see him pull a lever high on the control panel. A wailing, ear-splitting siren began to pulsate throughout the warehouse, echoing shrilly off the walls.

The alarm Solo thought. He's thrown the alarm!

He began to run towards the man, legs driving on the concrete. The man turned, groping at a holster strapped to his belt. He had the gun out of the holster just as Solo reached him, but he had no opportunity to use it. Solo brought his automatic down on the side of the man's head, watching him crumble in a heap on the floor.

Solo looked wildly at the control board, the vibrating howl of the siren screaming at his ears. There was no chance to use one of the helicopters now. THRUSH guards would flood the warehouse in a matter of seconds. His only opening for escape lay in the road outside. Where was the control that operated the entranceway? His eyes swept in frenzied motion at the bank of levers on the board and then stopped on one marked: Main. He grabbed the lever, heart thudding in his chest, and jerked it downward. There was a great, rumbling sound drowning momentarily the wail of the alarm siren. The entire wall to his right began to spread open. Solo saw the same blue sky, the same snow-capped mountain peaks, he had seen from Dr. Sagine's office. And he saw the road.

He turned again, running for the rows of jeeps. He reached the first jeep in the row, saw the keys dangling from the ignition, and started to clamber inside. Then he stopped, his brain racing.

Got to stop them from following me, he thought. There were five bullets left in the automatic, and five jeeps. One bullet for one tire on each. It would leave him defenseless, without a weapon and without time to get one, but he had no other choice.

Quickly, he ripped a shot into the tires of each of the five jeeps, the left row first and then skirting between them to the right row. He threw the empty gun down, hearing the whir of descending elevators. He jumped into the remaining jeep, twisting the ignition key. The motor roared into life.