The two U.N.C.L.E agents dodged instinctively. Something small and white whizzed past them, and pinged against the great steel doors. Instantly, deafening sound, raw heat, gouts of fire and billows of smoke swirled around them.
The explosion's force hurled Solo against the corridor wall. Chee stumbled, off balance, keeping up that maniacal, demoralizing shrieking. Chee pelted past them through the smoke, which was already beginning to leap and swirl as fresh currents of air struck it.
The salty aroma of the East River washed over Solo as he jerked Illya along in pursuit.
Alfred Chee had already leaped over the wrecked remains of the great doors. His shoes clicked rapidly out in the darkness.
Solo and Illya could see little. The underground channel which led in from the East River under an arched concrete tunnel opened into a far larger, tear-drop shaped basin at this end. Three to four powerful motor launches were customarily anchored there. Only one at a time could pass from the tear-drop through the narrower channel. And the channel's river end was being blocked now. The explosion had activated other alarms.
As a metallic squawk came raucously from a speaker overhead, a grille of thick iron bars descended at the channel's far end. It was visible to Solo because its pattern stood out against the city lights on the river's opposite shore.
Somewhere in the dark down by the tear-drop marina there was a clunk of feet hitting decking. Then a heavier slosh of water as one of the fast launches' took the sudden weight of Alfred Chee jumping aboard.
Solo ran to the left, out of the jagged frame of light created by the ruined doors. Illya followed. They flattened against the concrete wall, listened.
Water lapped out by the launches. Chee laughed. It was a low, unpleasant sound, smacking of lost sanity.
"We have to rush him," Solo whispered.
"I can't see a thing except those lights on the river," Illya said.
"Hang on for a second. Your eyes'll adjust."
"I hope he doesn't have another of those exploding molars conveniently fastened in his head. If he threw one right now, we'd be two very -"
A white spot of light bloomed out by the marina. It widened, blasted Solo's eyes with its glare. Suddenly Illya and Solo were circled in brilliance. Chee had found the spotlight on the launch.
Solo leaped out of the light, zigzagging wildly as he ran. Illya went the other way. The spotlight whipped back and forth wildly, searching for them. Finally it hit Illya, and stayed on him.
Then the thing which Solo feared happened. The THRUSH agent discovered the swivel-mounted machine-gun mounted near the spot.
A stuttering roar filled the dark. Tracers left orange trails as the bullets ripped the wall in the center of the spot-lighted circle. Illya had thrown himself face forward just in time. Now he leaped up, started to run. The spotlight swiveled. The machine-gun stuttered evilly. Illya wrenched out of the way again, wincing as cement dust driven up by the bullets stung his eyes.
Chee was operating the searchlight with one hand and the machine-gun with the other, Solo guessed. He started a reckless run forward. Illya was jumping back and forth like a madman. The light followed him.
Solo poured on the speed, heedless of how much noise he was making. Shielding his eyes at the quay's edge, he made out the shape of another launch moored between the quay and the launch from which Chee was firing. He tensed, jumped, landed on the nearer deck
with a thud. Chee heard the noise.
Around came the searchlight and the machine-gun muzzle. The searchlight blinded Solo. He used his thumb to set the pistol on automatic fire. The gun bucked and barked in his hand as he fired into the heart of the light and kept firing, moving his aim slightly to the right.
Glass broke. The searchlight element sizzled and sparked and went dark. Alfred Chee screamed.
In the echoing confines of the secret marina, the machine-gun noise lingered long after the gun itself had stopped. The weapon swung gently on its upright mount, creaking.
Solo and Illya jumped aboard the second launch a moment later. Illya produced a pocket torch. He shined it down on Chee's blood-flecked shirt, then up to his lifeless face. Chee's mouth was open. Two of his teeth were noticeably shorter than those alongside.
"Mr. Waverly won't be happy about this," Solo said.
"Mr. Waverly was not down here the last few minutes."
"Well," said Solo, though he sounded rather dubious, "I guess you have a point. But I wouldn't bet on it"
The interior of the U.N.C.L.E morgue was chill, blue-lit, uncomfortable. Solo shivered. Mr. Waverly dropped the white sheet over the corpse of Alfred C. Chee.
An attendant rolled the slab back into place and latched the locker door. Mr. Waverly's breath clouded as he said, "His death is regrettable, though I suppose you had no alternative. But now it is impossible to execute our plan to have you follow his contact route from Hong Kong. Therefore -"
Mr. Waverly sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid you'l1 have to take the more dangerous route into Tibet. By parachute."
"Tibet!" said Solo. "By parachute?"
"Why, Tibet's practically the end of the world!" Illya exclaimed.
"It may well be just that for all of us, if you fail," Mr. Waverly said soberly.
Act II: World's End This Way, Two Miles
Dawn arrived with chill magnificence.
In the east the snowy crests of the Himalayan peaks slowly glowed golden. The light rose behind the peaks and spilled down the western slopes, but it did little to relieve the stark, basalt severity of the landscape. Napoleon Solo groaned and thrashed in his bedroll.
His bones ached with cold. The rarified air stung his lungs. But he was getting used to it.
Five hours had passed since he and Illya jumped from the hatchway of the disguised cargo plane into abysmal blackness and the howling slipstream…
At the top of his lungs, Solo had raised the same question he had been raising ever since he discovered, back at the secret U.N.C.L.E. airstrip outside Macao, that it was to be a night drop:
"I hope you people know what you're doing." The wind tore his words away as he hung in the cargo plane door, fat in his para-suit which contained appropriate disguises and weapons. "I don't see anything down there but a big black nothing."
"We would regret landing atop Mount Everest by accident," Illya shouted.
The U.N.C.L.E. jump-master was a swarthy, jolly Portuguese from Macao. He showed his gold teeth. "Be assured, gentlemen, this aircraft has been equipped with the finest of computerized sensors. You will be dropping on to an open plateau between major peaks. The plateau is at least three miles across. Perfectly safe. You will land but a few miles from your target areas. Everything is in order."
"And U.N.C.L.E. always sends flowers if it isn't. Very comforting," Solo said, and jumped.
The ache in Solo's right ankle had not lessened very much. He stuck his right arm down into his bedroll and rubbed. They hadn't landed on one of the peaks, true enough. But Solo had conked against the side of a sizeable boulder, and twisted his right leg as he
slid down the boulder's side.
They had made their camp inside a ring of boulders, on a slope which was the beginning of a majestic peak. Illya was already working a short distance up the slope, burying his parachute and jumpsuit in the shale with a trenching tool. Solo enjoyed the comparative warmth of the bedroll a moment longer. Then, with a nothing-for-it groan, he tumbled out.