"Mark—"
"Yes?"
"Listen—"
From somewhere at one end of the corridor came a click of noise. April tensed, clutching Mark Slate's forearm in warning. They both froze where they stood. No door had been opened that they could see; no telltale light lit up the darkness. Yet they both knew from long experience that someone was in the corridor with them. Perhaps, more than one—
April felt the barest influx of air playing over her flesh. It had to come from an opening of some kind. Then it was gone. The trickle of wind came from the gloom just ahead of them, no more than fifteen feet away. April flattened against the wall, straining to listen. She pushed her long dark hair back, away from her ears. She kept herself from trembling, concentrating on the source of the sound. This was a typical THRUSH maneuver, this baiting-in-the-dark. She remembered ruefully the way they had bottled up poor Donegan in Granada. The abandoned air shaft of an old apartment house. Donegan hadn't had a chance, either.
She was dimly aware of the sound of Mark's breathing. Or was it the enemy's? Too hard to tell. She couldn't risk a whisper now. She had almost lost sight of the pale blur of his body. Where exactly was Mark?
Had someone decided to traverse the width and length of the corridor with scathing bursts of machine-gun fire, they wouldn't have had a chance in a million. Either of them. Therefore, that could only mean one thing. The enemy was in the corridor with them. And they were wanted alive. That was worth knowing, but—
Far too late, she sensed the rush of bodies. She tried to scuttle back in the darkness. And then a hard knee rocketed from nowhere, ramming into her stomach. The air shot from her lungs. Tears sprang to her eyes; a fierce stab of agony filled her middle. She staggered, only to feel herself vised by a pair of arms which should have belonged to a gorilla. She shook herself violently, trying to dissolve the waves of shock. But it was too soon. She allowed herself to fall forward against her assailant, smelling the sweaty nearness of an enormous, muscular body. From somewhere, she heard Mark Slate's clipped voice blurt something. Then there was a savage series of smacking, thudding noises, suggesting a terrible fight at close quarters.
Someone else cried out in pain and terror. A blue shaft of gunfire lit up the darkness, briefly, as a streak of lightning ignites an overcast sky. And then April was too occupied with her own troubles to think of anything else. The dry, acidic taste left her mouth and her senses cleared.
Her heavy assailant mashed her in a crushing embrace. She allowed herself to sag further. Now, her attacker, well aware of the softness and pliancy of the curved figure in his hands, roved with his brutal fingers, mixing pleasure with business. April gritted her teeth, shifting her weight into a dead, unstruggling mass. The attacker made himself more comfortable, lessening his fierce hold slightly. April tightened like a bowstring, flipped quickly and her legs levered like scissors. There was a startled curse and the heavy body, anchored at the waist by suddenly lithe and superbly conditioned legs, crashed into the wall.
April broke free and regained her feet.
The gorilla had been deposited somewhere behind her. She braced herself for a return onslaught. It came. A second animal-like charge. She sidestepped but the corridor was too narrow. A wedge of a shoulder clipped her and the man collided with her. April hugged him, in order to avoid a killing kick in the groin.
A hoarse, angry laugh echoed close to her ear. Hot breath washed over her face. There was a rough, tweedy feel to the man's clothing as it chafed against her exposed flesh. She shot a hand into where she knew the face to be, fingers pronged. Another howl as she found the target. She lowered her head and butted. The distance wasn't great for maximal effect but it served. The gorilla's grip loosened as his head snapped back. But he grunted and hung on.
April pushed fear out of her mind. She had run up against a man who had at least ninety pounds on her. Ninety pounds and years of experience as a back-alley fighter. This was obvious from the gouging, corkscrewing motions of the man's hands as they ground cruelly at her flesh.
It was impossible to use her legs now. She was cramped like a pretzel beneath a mammoth opponent. Desperately, she kept her arms high to protect her face and throat. The gorilla added pressure.
"I'll make you say Uncle, baby," his low, gutty voice chortled near her ear.
The sound was all April needed. It measured the distance for her. Swiftly, she reared her head, butting again. There was another howl, followed by a curse. For one precious second, the tight hold about her loosened. She heaved and followed through, slashing savagely with a stiffened palm, driving her right arm out from the shoulder like a pile driver, exactly the way a Karate expert drives through the thick slab of a wooden door.
A hideous gurgle of sound, ending in a tingling, snapping sensation at the very socket of her armpit, told her how successful she had been. The gorilla's body swept from her like a chaff of wheat in the wind. A crash signaled the fall of his heavy body to the floor of the corridor.
April sagged against the wall, her right arm limp and useless. She strove to clear her head of its blurred agony. Her heaving breasts strained at the bra. Her heart was tom-tomming.
The corridor had remained dark. Only now was she conscious of the sudden, terrible silence. Mark—
No, the silence was not healthy. She had to find her way out. She needed light to see by. She staggered down the dark corridor, toward the direction from which the gorilla and his friends had come. There had to be an entranceway somewhere.
She came up hard against a barrier of some kind. She pushed out with her hands. A door fell inward, exposing a bare, drab, basement of sorts. There were low-running water pipes, damp cobbles from another era of New York living and a cracked porcelain sink filled to overflowing with cobwebs and the soot and grime of years of disuse. The light that illuminated the interior of the basement was daylight. Pale, dirty daylight, streaming through a high window that was grilled.
April moved warily into the basement, breathing hard, her body on fire with fatigue and pain. Her eyes roved rapidly. She sniffed the air, experimentally. She waited for some sound, anything, that might alert her faculties. But there was none. All of her training in the U.N.C.L.E. Academy, where she had graduated with honors, plus her actual experiences on assignments, had taught her how to read the atmosphere of a room, a building—a place.
There was no mistaking the aura that hovered over the basement.
The birds from THRUSH had flown. It was quite obvious that they had taken Mark Slate with them, once again. She moistened her lips, reflecting. How could they have? True, she had been occupied in the corridor with Tom Too-Many Thumbs, but she had seen and heard nothing to indicate Mark Slate's mysterious disappearance. How could they have gotten him out of that corridor without her hearing something? There had to be another exit then—it was all too confusing. April, fighting the agony of her bruised shoulder, found it hard to assemble her thoughts.
But there was a time to fight and a time to run for cover. Hadn't Napoleon Solo told her that more than once? She had to choose an alternative course of action. For one wild second, a sense of doom dominated her. Damn Mark Slate, damn THRUSH—