It was now late afternoon, and the sun was coasting down the western sky to quench its fire in the Pacific Ocean a few hundred miles west. There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and with any kind of luck, Napoleon thought they would be back in Los Angeles with their prize tonight and sleep comfortably while the lab gang sweated for a change.
He was wrong. There is another kind of luck besides good luck.
None of them noticed the light plane that hummed out of the sun to their left. Illya looked up when it started circling low over the road ahead of them. Then it came roaring down the road straight toward them at an altitude of about thirty feet. An insignia was visible in the fraction of a second it flashed overhead, blazoned black-on-white on the wings and side of the plane — a taunting insignia. A stylized bird, wings raised in defiance and beak open. A Thrush.
Napoleon sat low in the seat, and Illya leaned forward to push Garnet to the floor. She objected only momentarily, then dove and curled up under the dash in comparative safety. Illya cranked down his back window and started clipping the long barrel and shoulder stock to his powerful automatic pistol.
The little airplane zoomed off over the desert, circled and started back. Illya clipped the telescopic sight to the top of his gun as the plane came tearing over the barren ground, perpendicular to the highway this time, to pass about seventy feet ahead of them. He fired several shots, but it was impossible to gauge the relative speeds accurately. Suddenly a row of dust-spurts shot up along the sand to their left like the footprints of a charging invisible centipede. The line chattered across the road ahead of them and into the sand on the other side. The car swerved slightly as the airplane roared overhead again and the wheels bounced on the strip of pavement chewed up by the steel-jacketed machine-gun slugs.
Illya rested the arm holding his weapon on the window sill and sighted on the plane as it circled again to their right and started back toward the highway. He squeezed off four shots as it approached, correcting for the decreasing range. But either it was armored or the motion of the car was throwing his aim off, because his shots seemed to have no effect.
This time he could clearly see the snout of the Thompson protruding from the side window of the plane. It flickered fire, and the line of impact scampered across the dirt directly toward them.
At the last moment Napoleon tapped the brakes and the shots tore into the highway only a few feet ahead of them. Then the front of the car made a sound like a garbage can hit with a baseball bat, and swerved wildly.
Illya was thrown off balance as the car slewed off the highway. The gun went out the window as the top of the frame swung over and violently down.
Napoleon wrestled with the wheel in an effort to keep the car upright — it is no joke to have a front tire practically disintegrated at ninety miles an hour, just as you apply the brakes.
Garnet hugged her knees to her chest and braced her feet against the front seat, but even so was bounced about like a marble in a bottle.
The car had cleared the ditch in a fraction of a second, and now was tearing a swath through sagebrush and mesquite — still more or less frontwards, but sometimes almost sideways as Napoleon fiercely fought the skidding and tried to brake. There was no traction on the loose sand for brakes or accelerator. The steering was doubtful at best. Nevertheless, Napoleon somehow managed to keep some amount of control over the car by sheer effort of will, and after an indefinite length of time leaping about the sand dunes it lurched sideways and came to rest against a large bush. With one wheel flat and another in a sandhole it leaned against the brush like a winded horse, its engine gasping.
The Thrush plane circled a thousand feet above, a vulture over the carcass of the car. Something small and black detached itself from the side of the plane and seemed to hang in mid-air, growing slightly larger. Then it split into two pieces which continued to grow.
No one below saw it. Illya was dazed from the blow on his head, Napoleon was recovering from his fight with a ton of careening steel, and Garnet was struggling to get out from under the seat.
Neither did anyone in the car see the two black shapes suddenly sprout great white canopies.
The two Thrush agents landed within fifty feet of the car. One was carrying the Thompson in ready position all the way down, watching for signs of resistance. There were none.
Chapter 7: "Call It Egotism, But I Think We're Worth More Alive."
The first thing Garnet saw when she got her head above the level of the dash made her wish she hadn't. Two men in brown business suits were walking toward them across the sand. And the sub-machine gun one was carrying showed they meant business.
"Napoleon. . ." she said.
He didn't answer, but she saw his eyes flick toward the advancing figures and then back to her. His hand on her shoulder ordered her back to the floor. She sighed and curled up again, favoring a bruise on her side.
Illya sat up and looked. "Maybe if we act friendly..."
Napoleon opened the door on his side and climbed slowly out, hands extended. Illya got out the back door at the same time. The Thrush with teeth stood back some thirty feet while the other approached Napoleon.
He looked at the car, bent over to examine the front wheel, then straightened. "Nice piece of driving, Mr. Solo — we appreciate it. Our little prize should not have been damaged at all."
"Now, just what is it you're..."
"Can it, Solo!" the Thrush snapped. "We want that brown camera bag you have in the back seat. We don't want to have to hurt you or Kuryakin or the girl. So just get us that bag."
"I don't really..."
"You have no choice. Get it!"
Illya reached slowly back into the car. He dragged the case out by its strap and held it at arm's length. "Call it egotism," he said, "but I think we're worth more alive. What shall I do with it?"
"Call it good sense. Walk to a place about halfway between me and my friend and place it gently on the ground. Then walk back to the car."
Illya did. Napoleon made no move. In a movie, he thought, Garnet would have crept out the door on the far side of the car, and would come up behind the Thrush with the machine gun and clip him over the head with a large rock, whereupon Napoleon and Illya would attack the other one. But this was not a movie. Unfortunately, Garnet was probably hiding under the dashboard, waiting for the sound of machine gun fire.
The talkative Thrush stepped carefully over to the leather bag and looked at it without touching it for a moment. Then he looked around and said, "Mr. Solo — take your gun out very slowly with your left hand thumb and forefinger and toss it away."
Napoleon did. "Now that you have us completely disarmed," he said, "will you fly over and drop a bomb on us?"
"There are times when the idea of shooting a helpless man seems very attractive. Keep your mouth shut and we can resist the temptation. Now turn around and lie down on your face."
Napoleon was still secretly expecting Garnet to do something — but in the meantime he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest. He lay down.
"Now stay there until you hear us take off."
The small plane had landed on the highway a couple hundred feet away, and the two Thrushes picked up the brown bag between them and started for it. The motor was still turning over as they hopped into the open door. The propeller spun into a blur and the little craft shot off down the deserted highway and into the air with a roar.