She broke off suddenly as Napoleon kicked her ankle.
"Mr. Lavell—Rollo, did you say?" Napoleon ignored Lee's startled look and looked at Lavell inquiringly.
"R. O. L." Lavell replied. "My initials. Some people"—he glowered at Lee—"think acronyms are funny."
Napoleon smiled uncertainly before he went on. "I'm Napoleon Solo and this is Illya Kuryakin. We're naturalists, on a field trip from New York."
By the time they had shaken hands, Lee had recovered from the kick and introduced Kerry. She smiled and nodded across the table to Lavell. "Lee said you knew everybody in the county. Does that include those two men who were on the news this morning? The ones who saw U.S. 14 disappear in front of them?"
Lavell looked taken aback. "U.S. 14 disappeared?"
Kerry recounted what she remembered of the morning newscast. Lavell's eyes widened as she spoke, and he breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief when she concluded.
"Maybe there is something going on around here," he muttered, half to himself. "Or, if I am cracking up, I apparently have company in my delusions."
Napoleon displayed a sudden interest. "Delusions, Mr. Lavell? You saw a pit yourself?"
Lavell looked around the table, debating with himself. "More or less," he admitted after a moment, then plunged on. "I was down towards Maplewood this afternoon, southwest of here. There's an old gravel pit down there, and I've fixed up a little private target range. I was trying out a new scope mount, one that fits a Bushnell telescope to a Navy Arms Co. percussion revolver."
"Isn't that a little impractical?" Illya asked, ignoring Napoleon's disapproving frown at the interruption.
"You don't think the gun fraternity is practical, do you? Haven't you ever seen a target match with forty-pound muzzle loading rifles? And hundreds of us, every year, pay good money for a modern replica of a revolver that was obsolete a hundred years ago. Like all true hobbyists, we're governed by novelty, not practicality. Anyway, I was down in the gravel pit, when I thought I heard something—a motor of some sort, but up in the air. I looked up and—I know this is crazy, but..."
"Go on," Napoleon urged; "we're very interested."
"Well, when I looked up, across the gravel pit, a section of one of the sides had disappeared. It looked like someone had taken a big knife and sliced a chunk right out. And I swear, the motor sound increased, and a faint voice said 'Look out, McNulty!' It was sort of muffled and far away, and a second later, something hit the ground and splattered, not twenty feet in front of me."
"What was it?" encouraged Illya.
"A sandbag!" Lavell said. "A sandbag out of a clear, blue sky!"
"Could you show us where this happened?" Napoleon asked.
"You believe me, then?!
"In addition to being naturalists, we have a certain interest in the supernatural as well," Illya explained. "Charles Fort has documented thousands of seemingly impossible occurrences like this—blocks of ice falling from a clear sky, even live fish once. But this is a new one; Fort never mentioned sandbags in any of his books."
Before Lavell could decide whether or not he was being put on, the food arrived. He ordered a double scotch for himself and when he had downed it, agreed to take the four of them to his target range the next morning.
* * *
The gravel pit looked like myriads of others, lumpy and abandoned. Lavell drove gingerly down a rutted road to its bottom. A homemade shooting bench stood on a small mound in the center of the overgrown pit; brush had been cleared away from one of the walls to make room for a target frame. Old tin cans and odds and ends of junk were scattered everywhere. The remnants of the sandbag still lay where it had fallen. Napoleon and Illya and the girls inspected it while Lavell wandered off to inspect his target frame. Except for the legend 50 KILOGRAMS, the bag was completely blank.
Napoleon looked around thoughtfully. "You know," he said, "if I wanted to hide a dirigible, I think I'd pick one of the gullies that runs down to the river just south of here. The Wisconsin, isn't it? Not too close to the river itself, perhaps a mile or two north, where it couldn't be seen from the river. And if I were going to test it, I'd stick pretty close to home base on the initial flight, in case something went wrong."
"Something apparently did," said Illya.
"What puzzles me most is how they installed the OTSMID in the dirigible so fast. It couldn't have been here more than twenty-four hours before they were flying it."
"There really isn't much to do," Kerry said. "If they brought some batteries with them, all they had to do was bolt it down somewhere in the dirigible."
Napoleon frowned. "That easy? We'd better get moving, then," he said, motioning to Lavell to rejoin them. "Let's hope they need a few more test flights before they're ready to move. If they move it to a new location, we may never find it."
Chapter 9
"I Never Realized Hunding Was a Thrush?"
Illya and Napoleon and the two girls held a council of war at Lee's house. Lee and Kerry had been in favor of enlisting Lavell in the search, but Napoleon had vetoed the idea. "After all, we are supposed to be secret agents, and the fewer people who know about us, the better."
"But what happens if Thrush gets the OTSMID and the dirigible both operating properly before we locate them?" Kerry asked.
"We hope they don't," Illya replied. "We know the general area now. Considering the amount of space required for a dirigible hanger and the fact that trucking in anything as heavy as the OTSMID is bound to leave traces, they shouldn't be hard to locate."
"Lee, do you have a car?" Napoleon asked.
"Of course; why?"
"If we divided our forces, we can cover twice as much territory. Illya and I can keep in touch through our communicators."
Illya nodded. "It's also an advantage in case Thrush spots us first. We'll each know where the other is, and if one party disappears, the other will know where to look."
"I'll go with Illya," Kerry announced. Napoleon and Lee simultaneously looked at one another with raised eyebrows.
"I guess we go together, then," Napoleon said.
After some discussion, it was decided to use the gravel pit as a starting point. Napoleon and Lee would work toward the west and Illya and Kerry toward the east. Lee and Kerry would drive, with Napoleon and Illya observing. Lee presented Kerry with a map of the county, showing all the back roads and creeks.
"And remember," Napoleon said as they walked to their cars, "keep in constant communication, except when actually investigating a possible site. If you disappear, I want to know where."
"Don't worry," Illya assured him, "if I disappear, I want you to know where, too."
* * *
The day seemed to move at a much faster pace than did the search. With nothing but Lee's ubiquitous peanut butter sandwiches for sustenance, they slowly cruised the back roads. Frequent stops were made for closer examinations of the terrain, but as dusk approached, all had proved fruitless. The sun was low on the horizon as Lee and Napoleon drove down one more dusty back road. Suddenly Napoleon stiffened and peered sharply at a particularly impenetrable looking thicket on his side of the road.