Even that failed to slow down Monk, who lunged at Simon, withstood a tremendous smash to his jaw, and lifted the Saint completely from the ground with a crushing bear hug. Monk’s aim was clear: he intended using the momentum of his charge to carry the Saint to the mouth of the extractor vent and hurl him down the hole. The Saint, however, had no intention of being thrown down the hole. Monk’s dependence on his own brute strength made him forget to guard himself against more subtle forms of attack. Simon slashed out with his forearm, slicing so hard into Monk’s larynx that the grip of the huge arms was loosened immediately as Monk fell choking and gagging to his knees.
In the instant which passed as he drew back his foot to swing the toe of his shoe against Monk’s jaw, the Saint had time to realize consciously what the new sound was which had joined the general cacophony. Nero Jones’s machine gun had opened up out beyond the fences with a chattering blast. Simon assumed at first that Jones was firing at guards who were trying to make a foray out of Hermetico’s front door, but then he realized that the machine gun was aimed at him. The next staccato of explosions sent lead gnawing into the cement wall not six inches above his head.
He had to forego the pleasure of kicking Simeon Monk in the face, and instead drop to his own knees. Monk lunged at him, knocking him on to his back with the sheer force of his weight. But the impetus of Monk’s weight served another purpose: it enabled the Saint to catch the gigantic man in the pelvis with both feet and flip him completely over his own body. Monk landed with the small of his back on the rough metal edge of the open extractor vent down which he had dropped Bishop. His legs were in the three-hundred-foot-deep shaft before he could catch himself. For an instant the back of his sweater, snagged on the jagged metal, delayed his complete disappearance down the duct.
“Stop me!” he screamed.
But the sweater ripped free, Monk’s head dropped suddenly from sight, and the prolonged sound of his wild howl echoed from far down inside the earth.
Nero Jones’s machine gun ripped into the wall by Simon’s shoulder. Stony chips and dust shattered from the face of the dome, stinging his eyes and nostrils. The Saint had hoped the Hermetico guards would have opened the side door by now, but obviously their strategy did not involve exposing themselves to bullets when they could remain safely inside their fortress. There was a roar of gunfire from high up in the dome as they began to answer Jones’s fusillades.
There was absolutely no shelter along the side of the dome. Simon knew that his only chance to avoid being cut down was to get back across the aluminium bridge. He picked up his glasses, which had been knocked to the ground, and tensed himself low on his knees for the dash. In his path was Warlock, who had thrown himself on his stomach and was groping out over the edge of the mine field to recover his pistol. He obviously had regained most of his sight.
He screeched to the Saint, “You bloody fool! You’ve ruined everything! It was working! It was perfect!”
Simon ran, leaping over Warlock, racing for the bridge. Lead barked at his heels and whistled around his head. A glance over his shoulder told him that Warlock had retrieved his pistol and was staggering to his feet. He was crazed beyond all caution, screaming incoherent curses as he pitched forward into a stumbling, weaving pursuit of the Saint.
Simon reached the bridge. At least for the moment he was beyond Nero Jones’s angle of fire, but he knew the respite was only momentary. He had glimpsed Jones’s white face bobbing in the darkness of the field. The machine-gunner was on the run himself. He too was heading for the escape car, and in a few seconds he would again be in a position to fire at the Saint. Luckily, the guards in the dome were still concentrating on Jones, giving Simon at least some chance of getting across the bridge to shelter without being noticed immediately.
He shoved the coated glasses back on his nose as he ran and without a moment’s hesitation more or less dived on to the rollers of the bridge, launching himself like a torpedo so that he shot along the aluminium rails and was almost to the other side before even the most alert gunman could have reacted to his appearance and taken aim.
Simon was pulling himself the last feet of the way to the truck with powerful clutches of his fingers when he heard Warlock shouting hysterically behind him. The pistol cracked twice, undoubtedly aimed in the Saint’s general direction, but without any more effect than Warlock’s words. Then, incredibly, he felt a violent shaking of the bridge.
“Damn you!” Warlock was crying. “I’ll get you! Nobody beats Warlock! It has to be like the book! It’s real!”
Simon could not raise his head to see the man, who was trying to kick the supporting legs from under the inner end of the bridge. But Warlock had arrived too late. Simon was already rolling through the fence into the dark protection of the van.
It was only then that Warlock seemed to recover his reason enough to realize that he was kicking down his own means of escape. He clambered on to the bridge, his arms stretched in front of him along the rollers, his pistol aimed at the van. He fired even as he dragged himself along, and the bullet ripped up through the roof of the van.
Suddenly a voice more like the voice of a machine than a man resounded from a loudspeaker within the wall of the dome.
“Halt there or we’ll shoot! Give yourselves up. You have no way of escape.”
Warlock floundered along the rollers with greater urgency.
“Don’t shoot,” he screamed. “Don’t shoot me!”
“Halt!” bellowed the loudspeaker.
Warlock stopped midway across the bridge, clutching the rails desperately even as he took aim against Simon.
“I’ve stopped! Don’t shoot!”
That was when Simon moved his foot to push the lever which controlled the bridge. Slowly the electric motor began to draw in the rails. The supporting legs at the far end grated and creaked. Warlock, as he realized what was happening, squirmed and bellowed. His eyes rolled wildly as he clawed at the rails and tried to haul himself forward.
Then the already precarious support of the metal legs gave way, and the bridge tilted and sagged. Through his glasses Simon could see Warlock roll with flailing arms into the web of light beams — the last, almost immaterial wisps of reality with which Warlock would ever have to deal.
A series of explosions erupted across the mine field with a volcanic thunder that buried all other sound. Simon dived for the floor of the van as he saw the bridge blasted into flying, twisted shreds. Stone, turf, and metal rained down on the van’s roof and on to Simon’s back. Then, the instant the rain of debris ended, he rolled over and swung himself to the ground, taking advantage of the cloud of smoke and dust which enveloped the whole area to make a dash into the woods. He could only hope that Nero Jones had not managed to get to the car ahead of him.
4
As Simon raced around the van into the dense wood, an unworldly silence suddenly replaced the bedlam of bells, sirens, gunfire, and explosions. Hermetico’s alarm system had been shut off, and there was nothing left in sight for the guards to shoot at. The only sound the Saint heard behind him now were the distant muffled sounds of Hermetico personnel.
He hurried on stealthily into the darkness of the wood, straining his eyes to try to see whether or not the police car was still parked in the clearing where it had been left. It was, and there was no sign of Nero Jones, who easily could have made it back to the car before Simon. Either Jones had been shot by the guards from their posts in the dome, or he had come to the car, found that it had no key, and escaped on foot.
But there are ways of starting cars without keys, so it was most likely that Jones had been hit by the withering fire from Hermetico before he ever got to the trees. The Saint quickened his stride to a run. The luminous dial of his watch told him it was ten minutes before three. Every step of the operation had taken longer than anyone had foreseen. Still, if he could start the police car Simon knew he could get back to Warlock’s estate before the three-thirty deadline.