Concussion shattered through a wall seventy feet behind them, and they ducked against flying rocks. A dozen Thrush Guards came running out of the smoke, and were cut down by steady fire from Napoleon and Joan. An automatic rifle snarled briefly from the other side and they dropped to the floor, swinging their muzzles in that direction. A moment later a spray of slugs blasted splinters out of their desk, and Napoleon broke into a sprint across the hall to an alcove already occupied by a bronze statue on a four-foot pedestal; shrinking behind it into the curve he directed one-handed shots into a pillared doorway down the hall.
Joan leaped to her feet and dashed along the wall to the next open door, where she paused and snapped a slug towards the end of the hall. Instantly Napoleon moved again, directly toward her target, as chips of cement splattered beside him and battered slugs whined away into the flame-tinted darkness. As he approached her line of fire, she too broke from cover and followed him in a zig-zag dash into the vaulted room which opened before them.
Ruddy light danced on the domed ceiling of a generous rotunda through a half circle of windows looking out over the lagoon. Booths lined the wide walls, and large comfortable furniture and extinguished lamps dotted the floor. Men crouched behind shattered windows, firing and ducking back as bullets dug into the walls or splintered the edge of glass-sharded panes.
"This is the Library," said Joan as they crouched together again behind a horsehair sofa. "We're at the front of the house, facing east, close to the south corner. There's a big flight of steps to the porch just outside here."
"Sounds like most of the fighting is around on the side of the house. Let's reduce the local opposition."
Five Guards fell among the defenders within a minute before the survivors began to react. Napoleon and Joan ducked as they saw silhouettes turn infrared sniperscopes in their directions.
"Stay low," Napoleon whispered. "Their rifles are sighted for a hundred yards. They'll shoot high."
"Check."
A voice to their left yelled something and a slug burst through the sofa from that side. They vanished like rabbits and fired futilely in the direction of the shout. Joan replaced her first clip and claimed another Guard with her next shot; they then had to move again, towards the sheltered rear corner of the room…
Napoleon dodged across an open space and around an armchair, and something like a truck bumper hit him in the side of the head. It knocked him sprawling across the polished floor, helpless before the impact, until he skidded half under a divan. He twisted, dragging his right arm around from under him. Half dazed, he saw a foot descending towards his face, saw his own hands grab for the foot and twist. He heard the Thrush yelp as he was flipped over backwards, his head hitting the padded arm of a chair.
Napoleon steadied himself against the divan as he tried to stand. His attacker rolled smoothly to all fours and flowed to his feet, pulling a long murderous Bowie knife from what must have been a specially designed sheath under his jacket. Seeing the gleam of steel in the uncertain light, Napoleon recognised the lean scarred face grinning like a skull a few feet away and realised exactly who his opponent was: Kiazim Refet, Thrush's number one assassin. Illya had met him in Australia and escaped with his life"- with a little help. Now it was Napoleon's turn.
Refet crouched, shifting gently from side to side, the blade floating above his right hand. Napoleon felt instinctively into his defensive stance as adrenalin blazed into his system and focussed his clearing mind on the man facing him. He knew that at that moment, wielding twelve inches of steel, Kiazim Refet was the most dangerous man in the world. And he knew that unless he made the first move he would be dead in moments.
Napoleon feinted, kicking sharply out with his right foot and switching it aside as Kiazim slashed down with the vicious blade. As it flicked through the space beside his leg, he lashed up with a full kick, catching the Turk under his chin and driving him back against the wall.
Refet rebounded like a rubber tire and lurched towards him, knife flailing as he recovered his balance. Solo stepped back, and his heel turned behind him on the stock of his fallen U.N.C.L.E. Special – his only possible defense. Swiftly he shrugged off his shoulder rig, catching the leather loop in his right hand and whipped the empty holster forward as Kiazim lunged, slashing it across his face. Blood spurted just above the Turk's left eye and he ducked back a step, half-blinded.
Napoleon dived to grab the Special lying at his feet as Kiazim leaped towards him again, his face a gory mask of hate. Evidently the Turk's depth perception was impaired, for he struck two inches short as Napoleon snatched the Special from the floor to catch the blade between the 'scope and barrel of his gun and twisted, the knife forward and down, out of Kiazim's grasp.
Uncoiling like a spring, Napoleon drove forward from his crouch with every ounce of effort in his body behind the stiff-armed U.N.C.L.E. Special, slamming it up into the bridge of the Turk's nose. Cartilage crunched as it burst like a pomegranate and blood gouted over the pistol.
With a hoarse groan, Kiazim staggered back, clutching his mutilated face with his left hand, snatching Solo's flimsy turtleneck with his right. – Unable to swing his long barrel around to fire at this close range, Napoleon brought the gun down across the hairy arm with a dull slap. Kiazim shrieked as his hand was torn free of Napoleon's shirt and flopped limply at the end of a splintered wrist.
Napoleon reversed his swing and launched the gun upwards again with a force born of sheer terror; Kiazim, in a last desperate move, lashed out with a vicious, shattering kick across Napoleon's right knee just as the heavy butt of the U.N.C.L.E. Special smashed into his nose again, driving the broken splinters of bone up into his brain. Both men hit the floor – Napoleon face down, his right leg twisted at an impossible angle under him, and Kiazim Refet on his back a few feet away dead.
Through a gathering haze of shock and dull agony, Napoleon saw Joan stumbling through the dimness toward him. He tried to move and something grated in his leg.
Then Joan was beside him, dragging an overstuffed chair as a shield behind her. "Okay," she said, "you picked it. This is where we make our last stand. Can you see to shoot?"
He tried to twist to a sitting position, but part of his leg wouldn't work at all. It hadn't started to hurt yet but there was that aching numbness of shock…
"Where were you when I needed you?"
"Twenty feet away, and I never got a shot. It was all over in ten seconds.
He's dead, you know."
"I hope so. Help me up. Mind the leg -"
Eight rifles tracked them, and only two pistols could reply. Slugs smashed into the wall above them and plunked cotton batting from the chair, but Napoleon managed to get off a few shots before his eyes began to mist over.
"Joan he said. "I don't think I can hold this thing steady anymore. There's five rounds in my left pocket…"
Four Guards charged the hasty barricade as running footsteps and a blast of gunfire outside preceded, the slam of a grenade at the front door.
Joan stood, her own unadorned Special in her left hand and Napoleon's fully assembled one in her right, shooting from the hip, alternately one and then the other, firing into the shadows where other Guards crouched, spraying lead at the outer door where dozens of running black-clad figures were bursting in amid smoke and thunder. The four Guards crumpled before Joan's deadly fire, and she shouted over the confusion, "U.N.C.L.E.! This way! This way!"