Solo said nothing. He felt faintly' on edge, as well, a vague uneasiness.
They heard the jeep before they saw it. The sound came from behind them, the whine of an engine being geared down. Solo sat up on the seat, ears straining. "What's that?"
"Sounds like a jeep," Illya said, listening. "Behind us." Solo turned, looking out the rear window.
"I don't see anything." Illya hunched over the wheel, increasing his speed slightly. The road straightened as they came around a turn, dropping into a long dip and then rising steeply on the other side. They were climbing again when the jeep came into view around the turn.
"Jeep, all right," Solo said, still turned on the seat. "Three men. They're coming at a nice clip."
"Could be THRUSH agents, you know."
"Yes."
Illya, fighting the slipping clutch, pressed down on the gas. The sedan shot upward, cresting the rise in the road. Behind them, Solo saw the jeep, raising a cloud of dust, cross the dip and start up after them. The driver apparently knew the road well; his speed indicated that.
On the other side of the rise, the road turned sharply to the right. Illya braked heavily, twisting the wheel. The nose of the sedan pointed briefly towards the shale bank to the right, and then straightened.
The jeep came over the rise, slid into the turn, slowed momentarily, and then came on after them again. It was only a hundred yards behind, and gaining. Solo saw one of the men, the one net to the driver, stand up and rest something across the top of the open windshield, leaning forward. He knew instantly what it was.
"Machine gun!" he yelled. "Keep low!"
The quiet of the mountain road was split open with the roar of the machine gun. The rear window of the sedan shattered, and a bullet tore upward into the headliner, showering them with dust. Another bullet slammed into the seat back and buried itself there.
Illya, hunched over the wheel, threw the sedan into another turn, skidding, fighting for control. The sedan fishtailed, sliding sideways. Illya spun the wheel frantically. The nose, pointed out to the open drop to their left, reversed. The left rear wheel touched nothing but air, but the right caught the road bed, held, and the sedan straightened again.
Illya's heart was thumping wildly in his chest.
"We can't outrun them!" he yelled. "And there's no place to stop! We're trapped!"
"The slide!" Solo yelled back. "If we can get to it we've got a chance!"
The jeep negotiated the turn with no trouble. They were only fifty yards to the rear now, and still gaining. The chattering roar of the machine gun came again, and they heard bullets thunk heavily into the metal of the sedan. A deflected slug screamed past Illya's head, veering to the right, and spider-webbed the right hand side of the windshield.
Illya took the sedan into another curve, and when they came out of it, the road leveled into a long straight stretch. The drop to their left was not as steep now as it had been, but was grown with underbrush and dotted with rocks
A heavy wall of jungle grew down to the road on their right.
Illya peering ahead though the windshield, yelled, "The slide! Up ahead!"
The road was blocked at the far end of the stretch by a thick bank of mud and rocky earth that had been gouged from the jungle slope on the right. Kuryakin began to brake. Gear teeth snapped as he fought the gearshift into low. The sedan's engine protested wildly, but it began to slow.
"Right up to it!" Solo shouted. "Our only chance is to get into the jungle!"
The sedan was slowing rapidly, now. The man in the jeep cut loose with another burst from the ma chine gun. Another fifty yards...
The right rear tire on the sedan exploded.
The jarring impact of the burst tire, hit by one of the machine gun bullets, wrenched the wheel from Illya's grip. The sedan fishtailed again, violently, the back end slur ring to the right and the front end pointed directly at the open drop to the valley floor below.
Desperately, Illya clutched at the wheel, his foot crashing down on the brake, but even as he did so he knew that it was too late.
Solo had just enough time to yell, "look out!"
And then the sedan went off the road, front end lifting, and then crashing down heavily, and they began to slide downward, side ways, with Illya still hanging onto the wheel in a death grip, picking up speed as they crashed across. rocks and through the underbrush.
A large cluster of rocks lay in the path of their downward flight, and when the front bumper of the sedan crashed into the rocks, the rear end lifted, sending them airborne, catapulting the sedan end over end in a spinning, floating arc, like a toy tossed into the air by a child.
Further down, it hit the slope on its top, crushing it, and the sedan began to roll sideways, mutilated into a twisted pile of gray metal, and when it came to rest against a huge boulder a hundred yards from the valley floor below the gas tank exploded, sending huge tongues of flame and billows of black smoke high into the warm Mexican afternoon.
And then it was quiet again.
Three
Solo had been thrown clear. When the careening sedan had hit the first cluster of rocks, catapulting it into the air, the door on the passenger side of the vehicle had been jarred open and the impact had pushed him out.
He had landed in a clump of scrub brush, rolling, his head narrowly missing a large rock there. Dazed, he lay hidden from the road above in the brush and rocks, unable to move. The sound of the explosion below shocked his mind into instant awareness again.
He swiveled his head, looking down the slope. He saw the flames and the billowing smoke, and a numbness came over him. Illya, he thought. Illya's down there.
He started to rise. A sharp pain stabbed at his right leg. Looking at it, he saw that his trousers were torn. A huge gash had been ripped -in his leg from the fall. He lay still again, thinking, He's dead. Illya's dead.
A blind, white-hot rage came over him then. His head pounded. THRUSH was going to pay for this. He lay hidden, waiting. If the men in the jeep had seen him thrown clear, and came down to search... He felt for the U.N.C.L.E. special at his belt, but it was gone, lost in his rolling fall from the sedan.
He moved forward slowly on his stomach to where he could see around one of the rocks. He looked up at the road. He saw the jeep parked up there. The three men were standing at the edge of the slope, peering down. One of the men pointed. Solo saw another man grin, nodding his head. They were apparently satisfied. The three men turned and got back into the jeep.
Solo did not know any of the three, but he knew he would never forget their faces, even from this distance. The jeep moved up the road to the slide. The driver jockeyed, turning it around, and then stated back along the road, the way they had come. It disappeared around the turn.
Solo felt instantly in his pocket for his U.N.C.L.E. communicator. He had to contact Mr. Waverly, tell him what had happened. Waverly would send a team of U.N.C.L.E. agents out immediately. Solo knew there was nothing he could do by himself.
He located the communicator and brought it out. Damaged. The antenna had been snapped in the fall he had taken; there was no way he could fix it. He threw it down in disgust.
Now what? He had to get back to Teclaxican. But he did not know if THRUSH had anyone posted near the slide, though he decided they probably did have. He could not attempt to leave the area now for fear of being seen. If they knew he was still alive, and unarmed, he did not have a chance. There was only the one thing he could do.