One man, of slight stature, wore a rumpled THRUSH uniform and had an attache case handcuffed to his left wrist. That would be the station chief, taking all key documents with him. It was the man lumbering along at the station chief's side who curdled Solo's blood.
Through the smoke the man loomed up, a misshapen apparition with sloping shoulders and arms that hung nearly to his knees. The man had a bulbous, lemon-shaped head of grotesque size. Huge ears stuck straight out. His nose was a gigantic wreck. His eyes seemed to burn through the heat and smoke like brown lanterns as he turned and whipped up a gun which looked like a toy in his huge fist.
The man stood at least six feet eight inches tall, a grotesque giant.
Illya and Solo slammed themselves on the ground for cover as the giant fired. The bullet buzzed harmlessly by. The hatch of the plane had been opened. The section chief was climbing up. The giant aimed a second shot. His gun jammed. He threw it away. His face wrenched into the vilest expression of hatred Napoleon Solo had ever seen.
From the plane's hatchway the chief called, "Don't waste time on them, Klaanger. Hurry—"
Klaanger? Klaanger? Somewhere a frantic little bell rang in Solo's mind. But the meaning of the warning escaped him.
The hulking Klaanger turned and lumbered toward the plane. At that moment Peterson came charging up behind Solo and Illya. He went right on past. Peterson's face was black with anger, and he ran with surprising speed for a man of his size.
Illya and Solo went after him, both of them trying to load their pistols on the run so that they could halt the plane.
Peterson dashed out ahead of them, fighting his way through the blast of air from the port engine just as Klaanger hauled himself clumsily up into the hatchway.
Shouting curses, Peterson flung his empty demolition pistol at Klaanger. The weapon whanged off the fuselage, a bad throw. Peterson leaped, caught the edges of the hatchway, intending to pull himself into the plane in a suicidal attempt to stop it.
Solo and Illya had just reached the plane's tail section. They were running at top speed. Wind from the engines blasted them, thrust them reeling back. And in that howling, smoking delirium, the horror came—
Klaanger appeared to crouch down in the hatchway as the aircraft started to roll. The man's liverish lips curled up in a bleak imitation of a smile. He balled his right fist, shot it forward and gave Peterson, who was struggling and hanging there in the hatch, what seemed to be the lightest of taps on the top of the skull.
Peterson's head popped open like a fruit.
For a moment a piercing thread of a scream filled the morning. Then it was drowned out by the roar of the plane's engines. The turbo-prop surged forward. Klaanger hung in the hatchway, laughing uproariously as the THRUSH craft lifted lazily to its escape—
There at the end of the airstrip, caught in the sudden intensified surge of wind from the accelerating plane, Napoleon Solo felt warm droplets against his face. The wind blew blood upon him, and upon Illya. Peterson's blood.
The plane whined, screamed, lifted silver against the flaming circle of the sun. Gradually the noise of the engines diminished. Solo and Illya watched the craft become a speck vanishing far off over the desert. Defeat showed in the slope of their shoulders as they stumbled forward along the blood-spotted runway.
"God in heaven!" Solo breathed.
Peterson's body lay sprawled on the concrete, dead and incomplete. Instead of a head, there was nothing but a grisly gray and red welter, sickening to look upon.
Illya's eyes were soot-stained, haunted. "What sort of a monster was that man, Napoleon? To do that with a tap, a little tap—" Wonderingly, Illya raised his own rather fragile-looking right hand and stared at it. "Just a tap of one hand."
Behind them silence enfolded the destroyed pillbox. Here and there hot metal creaked. Solo's voice sounded harshly:
"I've seen that man somewhere, Illya. Somewhere a long time ago I saw him. I remember something else. He wasn't tall. He was scrawny. Small and scrawny. But it was the same face. I know it was the same face. Or—almost."
Slowly Napoleon Solo turned and stared into the sun-blasted sky. The plane had gone. What lingered was the dawning significance of the horror which the two U.N.C.L.E. agents had discovered at what they had thought was the end, not the beginning, of a mission.
Raspy-voiced, Illya put it into words:
"What is THRUSH breeding, Napoleon? Supermen?"
ACT ONE — Death to All 97-pound Weaklings!
ONE
Had it not been for one relatively small piece of evidence, Mr. Alexander Waverly would have been unconvinced.
The evidence lay in the center of the motorized revolving conference table in the center of the chamber which served as the planning room for U.N.C.L.E.'s Operations and Enforcement Section.
This chamber was located high up in the unbelievably modern and complex offices and research facilities located behind a front of decaying brownstones on a certain street in the East Fifties.
Arms folded across his immaculate tweed jacket and perpetually unlit pipe clenched between his teeth, Mr. Waverly slowly circled the conference table. He stared down at the item of evidence with an I really wish you hadn't brought this up expression on his lined face. At last he halted and uttered a short, emotion-charged word.
Napoleon Solo was lounging in one of the deep leather armchairs near the table. His right eyebrow hooked up in surprise. Mr. Waverly's resorting to purple language was highly unusual, to say the least.
Mr. Waverly waved his pipe stem at a small, curled, three-by-five inch photo print lying on the table. "We have quite enough bonfires burning at this very moment. We are stretched thin in terms of personnel. Now you bring this back. I don't know where I'm going to find agents available to handle it."
Napoleon Solo reached inside his faultlessly tailored dark blue blazer and extracted a thin two-dollar cigar. He lit it and inhaled the pungent tobacco with relish. He wasn't much of a smoker. It hampered his physical conditioning. But this cigar symbolized his return to civilization.
He and Illya had been back in the U.S. less than thirty-six hours. He had finally succeeded in scrubing and scouring all the Saudi Arabian sand out of his pores. Liberal doses of antibiotic lotion had somewhat mitigated the blistering sunburn pain which had set his skin on fire just as he and Illya had regained the 'copter after the attack on the THRUSH station.
On the long flight back to America via a commercial jet—poor Peterson's remains were flying specially crated in the cargo hold—Solo sat miserably in his seat by the window. The brace of charming young things in trim uniforms who serviced the plane's first-class compartment hovered over him, solicitous and eager to minister to his comfort with pillows or cocktails.
The sunburn unmanned him, made him feel awkward and adolescent. How in heaven's name could you carry on amusing, provocative conversation with a pretty girl when every other minute you were scratching your ribs through your shirt?
Besides, there was the evidence: the evidence carried in a flat black leather card case in Solo's inside jacket pocket. It served to depress him thoroughly as he thought about its significance for the entire flight.
Just before departing from the annihilated THRUSH station in the desert with Peterson's remains wrapped up in a canvas, Illya had popped open the crystal and face of his oversized watch and aimed the revealed inner workings at the sorry bundle of flesh slowly gathering flies on the blood-spattered airstrip.