Solo could see that the tracks began to drop steeply on the opposite wall. They led down out of the mountains, all right. Just as he had thought. He started down the tracks toward the trestle.
Solo heard the helicopter then. A cold ball of ice knotted his stomach. He stopped, looking upward. It was moving out over the trestle from the granite behind him. He saw two men inside.
It was the helicopter he had seen inside the warehouse at the THRUSH fortress. Solo had forgotten about it. He should have known they would send it up to search for him. He leaned back against the canyon wall. Maybe they wouldn't see him.
The helicopter, hovering above the canyon, rotor blades whirring, started to rise, banking to his left, away from him. They hadn't seen him. His relief was short-lived. The chopper halted its climb, sat motionless in the air like a giant hummingbird for an instant, and then started back.
Solo saw one of the men inside leaning out, and sunlight flashed off something metallic. Machine gun. They'd seen him, all right. And they were moving in for the kill.
Solo was trapped, and he knew it. He was the proverbial sitting duck, a naked target against the granite wall. There was no place to hide. No place...Then suddenly he thought of the trestle!
If he could reach it, get inside, they couldn't get at him with the machine gun. But what good would it do? They could hover up there for hours, keep him trapped inside until more members of THRUSH reached him along the tracks.
Maybe I should just stay here and get it over with now, Solo thought helplessly. No, he couldn't think that way. As long as there was a chance, no matter how slim, he had to take it. The fate of the world was at stake.
The helicopter was coming closer. He saw the man with the machine gun leaning out. The chopper was close enough so that Napoleon Solo could see the man's face. He was one of the three men who had run him and Illya off the road in Teclaxican, one of the men responsible for his friend's death.
Solo gritted his teeth, turned, and began to run toward the trestle, his feet skidding on the rocky surface, unmindful of the danger of falling now with an even greater danger overhead.
The man in the helicopter fired a short burst from the machine gun. Solo heard the bullets chunk into the granite where he had been standing, spraying chips of rock at his back.
Solo stumbled in his light, staggering, and then regained his balance. More bullets from the chattering Thompson gun overhead nipped at his heels, splattered into the granite. Miraculously none hit him.
He reached the trestle and ducked into the cover of the snow shed, leaning against one of the wooden walls, fighting for breath. He could hear the copter whirring over the shed.
Solo wiped sweat from his eyes and looked downward. His heart jumped into his throat. If he had taken another ten steps in his blind flight he would have fallen to his death on the canyon floor below.
Part of the wooden ties supporting the tracks had long since dropped away. One of the rails hung loosely there, about to give way. The other, on the side Solo stood, still seemed to be solid. It was the only passage, and a hazardous one, through the trestle. It would take careful footwork to get past the yawning hole.
Solo closed his eyes, his breathing returning to normal. There was nothing he could do now but steel himself for the rush he would have to make on the open tracks down the other canyon wall.
He was aware of the sound of the helicopter outside. But the noise of its rotos did not seem to be overhead; it was opposite the shed wall across from him. It seemed to be dropping. Why would they...
He saw the tip of one of the helicopter blades through the hole in the tracks, and he knew in that instant what they were doing. He felt the chill of fear move up his spine. They were going to come after him from beneath the trestle.
They rust have known about the hole, known that there was no place Solo could hide from them. If he went back the way he had come, they would climb and pick him off. And there was not enough time for him to work his way across that single rail to the other side of the hole.
There was no escape.
The helicopter hove into view below him, and Solo saw the evil, grinning face of the man with the machine gun as he leaned out, raising the weapon up towards him. Solo hugged the wooden wall behind him in helpless panic, waiting for the bullets to tear into his body.
ACT V: ONE-WAY DEATH STREET
Come in and sit down," Estrellita Valdone said. "There will be a short wait before we depart."
"I'll stand, thank you," Illya said. He was still looking at the gun clenched in her hand.
The man standing behind Illya Kuryakin jammed the gun muzzle into his back and shoved him inside the warehouse office. "The lady said sit down, friend," the man said. "You do like she tells you."
There was a single, straight-backed chair next to the desk. Illya sat down. The man came inside the office and stood near the door. He was tall and angular, with a bloodless slash for a mouth, and dressed in khakis similar to Estrellita's.
Illya leaned back in the chair, resting one hand on the corner of the desk in a position of apparent relaxation. But inside, his muscles were taut, wound like a steel spring, ready to explode if the slightest opportunity for escape were to present itself.
"Well," Illya said. "Nice little THRUSH trap you've baited here. Too bad you're going to be caught up in it yourself."
Estrellita Valdone smiled her cold smile. "Really?" "There are ten U.N.C.L.E. agents waiting outside," Illya told her. "I should think they'll be battering down the doors any second now."
The angular man gave a short, barking laugh. "Won't work, friend. We were watching when you came up. You were alone, all right."
"When I came, yes," Illya said smiling. "But were you watching the front when I knocked on the rear door?"
The man frowned, looking at Estrellita. She said, "You don't really expect us to believe that, do you?"
Illya Kuryakin shrugged.
The angular man seemed uncertain. "What if he's telling the truth?"
"He's not telling the truth, Benson," Estrellita said. "It's an old trick. He wants to make us believe there are U.N.C.L.E. agents outside so I will have you go out to look. Then he'll be alone here with me. It would be much easier for him to overpower one person, and a woman at that. Isn't that correct, Mr. Kuryakin?"
Illya shrugged again, his face impassive. Estrellita Valdone had guessed that he was lying, and had guessed his purpose behind the lie.
Now he had to contend with both Estrellita and the man named Benson. And they were well trained, standing apart from one another, watching him carefully. When he made his move, as he knew he must, it had to be quick and sure, with no margin for error. Perhaps if he could get them talking, distract them somehow-
He said, "What are we waiting for, if you don't mind telling me?"
"A telephone call," Estrellita said. "When we receive it, five minutes from now, we shall take you to where Mr. Solo is."
"And just where the devil might that be?"