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.