Now that he was higher up he could see—Bartoluzzi and a girl dressed in black were crouched by a winch in the middle of the road, paying out a hawser hooked to the old truck. And the truck was rolling slowly down the incline toward the viaduct. The squeaking was from one of its wheels.
Solo thought furiously. If he did hammer in the pitons, they would be bound to hear. But in his position, although exposed, he would be a difficult target to hit from the winch.
The parapet would get in the way, and it was in any case an extremely fine angle for a shot. If Bartoluzzi or the girl moved out wide, of course, he would be a sitting duck. But this was just what they could not do; they had to stay at the winch until the truck reached the unsafe central portion of the bridge if they left the rope and let it run free it might simply come to rest against the parapet... or even go over the edge before it reached the weak section. And that would throw doubt on the consciousness of the driver at once; they wanted it to be assumed that he had been driving normally and that the viaduct had collapsed beneath him. Solo should therefore be safe from shooting until the truck had plunged down... and by then he hoped to have reached it himself and pulled on the handbrake anyway!
What would happen then, he would have to decide later. For the moment it was enough to get to the top. Almost before the thought was formed, he was hammering in the first of the iron pegs.
He had rested his weight on it and was pounding on the second when the noise registered with Bartoluzzi and the girl. There was a shout from the winch, followed a moment later by the bark of a heavy caliber pistol.
Solo paid no attention. The squeaking was coming perilously close; the old truck was rolling slowly out over the first arch. He stepped cautiously onto the third peg and looked for a suitable crevice for the next.
Another shot cracked out. And another. Something that sounded like a large insect hammered through the air behind the agent's head. An instant later a shower of stone chips stung his forehead as a slug flattened itself against the wall a little way above him. Two more near misses sent fragments of sandstone flying from the parapet some way to his right and then at last his lacerated fingers had grasped the coping itself and he was hauling himself agonizingly up for the last time to collapse face down on the permanent way beyond the lip.
The truck, between the second and third arches, was just drawing level with him. Through the grimed window he could see the lolling head of Illya Kuryakin drooped over the wheel.
Solo levered himself to his feet. His knees were trembling. He launched himself toward the door of the cab, prepared to wrench it open and dive for the handbrake.
And in that instant the gun by the winch spat flame once more. The bullet seared across Solo's forehead as he was in midleap and dropped him like a stone. The truck rolled on over the third arch.
As it did so, two things happened. In the cab, Kuryakin jerked suddenly upright and blinked his eyes. In the back, the pile of sacks under which he had been conveyed away from the ambushed riot truck was thrown aside and the girl Annike appeared.
She vaulted over the side and ran to the cab before the astonished pair by the winch had recovered sufficiently to fire at her.
Jerking open the door, she jumped onto the running board, leaned in over the awakening Russian and hauled frantically on the handbrake between the seats.
Shuddering, the truck ground to a halt with its front wheels only inches away from the section over the central arch. On the muddy surface of the bridge a network of small cracks appeared, raying outward like the filaments of a spider's web as they watched.
"Quick!" the girl hissed. "For your life's sake! Drop out on the far side and lie underneath. Move!"
Kuryakin had suffered a great deal of pain, but he was not physically damaged. Also he was in superb training and used to hardship—which explained why the effects of the drug were wearing off sooner than Bartoluzzi had expected. Although the clouds in his mind had not entirely vanished, he reacted to the crisp note of command in the girl's voice and shot into action almost by reflex.
As the girl dropped back to the roadway on her side of the truck, he slid over to the far side of the cab, burst open the door and fell out onto the ground. Together, they crawled beneath the front wheels.
Bullets were whistling toward them from the winch, but for the moment the angle of the slope prevented them from penetrating below the truck.
"I don't know who you are," Illya mumbled through his drugged torpor, "but thank you! And couldn't you perhaps tell me where I am and what's going on?"
In a few crisp sentences, Annike filled him in. And then, "But what about your friend?" she asked. "Shouldn't we do something about him?"
"Solo? Where is he? I haven't seen him since before the case started."
"At the moment he's lying between the offside rear wheel and a kind of refuge built out from this viaduct like the flying bridge of a ship."
"Lying...? Good heavens!" Kuryakin exclaimed. "I'll go and get him." And suddenly alert again, he wormed his way toward the rear of the truck, scuttled rapidly out to grab Solo's ankles, and then hauled him back into shelter as a fusillade of bullets thwacked and spanged into the ancient vehicle above their heads.
"Is he hurt badly?" the girl asked anxiously.
"I don't think so. Fortunately, he was just creased—see, the furrow has hardly bled at all. But he'll be out of commission for an hour or so. Just when we need him most… Ah!" He had been feeling in Solo's pockets. Now he produced the Walther from Solo's waistband with a triumphant flourish.
Wriggling up until he was below the back axle, he squeezed off a couple of experimental shots. Marinka and the Corsican hastily ducked out of sight behind an old Steyr saloon that was facing back up the hill a little way behind the winch. From the shelter of this they loosed off desultory shots at the truck.
"If I could keep them pinned down there until Solo recovers..." the Russian called over his shoulder. And then suddenly he stopped and looked upward. Rain was falling on his head.
A stray slug, penetrating the wooden back of the cab, had bit the handle of the handbrake, knocking it off its ratchet and allowing the truck to resume its interrupted descent. Slowly, inexorably, their shelter withdrew, leaving them exposed on the rain-swept viaduct.
The truck itself rolled onto the cracked center section, continued across it... and then suddenly it wasn't there.
With the speed of a demon king in pantomime, it simply dropped from sight. The entire center of the arch, as soon as it received the full weight of the truck, plummeted downward with a roar like that of the trains the viaduct had once carried on their way. From below, the shattering reverberation of the impact was followed by a cannonade of blocks and small stones from the raw edge of the chasm. A cloud of choking yellow dust mushroomed up over the gap and blanketed them from sight.
Through the swirling fog they heard Bartoluzzi shouting: "No, no. Don't shoot now! We'll get them alive and drop them over on to the wreckage. It's perfect; it'll keep to my original plan, and the two extra bodies will provide scapegoats for the ambush of the riot truck."
When the dust had cleared enough for them to distinguish the winch, they could see the Corsican whispering something to the girl and pointing back up the hill toward his headquarters. The girl nodded. She eased the leather helmet from her head, shook loose a mane of blonde hair, and started off at a run.