“Anything you say, Solo.”
He nodded. “No telling when his team will show up. His body is covered with scars. So if you don’t want to look, don’t.”
He didn’t wait for her answer. Golgotha had moaned faintly. It was hardly a sound, but Solo bent swiftly to the unpleasant task of undressing the man. It took a full five minutes of struggling exertion. Golgotha was tall and heavy despite his lankiness of form.
Solo left him lying face down on the stone floor, his enflamed, withered flesh revealed to the light, grotesquely unreal in T-shirt and boxer shorts.
The clothes were a bad fit, but they would serve. Solo rolled up the cuffs and hitched the belt a notch tighter. The cloak, a heavy woolen affair with poncho type sockets for Jerry Terry’s arms to thrust through, would at least keep her warm.
“Well,” she sighed. “We’re dressed for the ball and we look a sight but like the man said, what do we do now?”
“The door.”
“Huh?”
“It’s time to take a look outside. The door is thick or else no one’s been on guard duty. In any case, it’s high time we found out just how bad off we are.”
He motioned her to the other side of the door, which was no more than a slab of stone set tightly in the wall, with an iron handle jutting from the mass. Golgotha moaned again, and Solo cursed as he stepped quickly to him. He rapped the skull quickly with the butt end of the Luger. Golgotha subsided once more.
They waited at the door, listening. No sound issued forth. Solo frowned. He didn’t like the silence or the fact that no one had shown up in all the time Golgotha had been with them. Possibly the man had issued strict orders for everyone to keep out. Twisted egos always had their shortcomings, and one of them was the “Me-Me-Me” attitude.
Solo gestured for Jerry Terry to step back. He took the iron handle and turned it. A latch clicked. Carefully, he tugged the stone backwards.
There was a sudden wash of cool air from the outside. Solo peered quickly around the rim of the door.
Semi-darkness met his eyes. He blinked. A dim glow of light, as though from a miner’s lamp, filtered toward him. He stared at the ground. It was damp, muddy earth. Strange. Golgotha’s boots had been dry. He signaled to Jerry Terry to follow him. She moved swiftly, the cloak wrapped about her shapely figure, her long, copper hair flying.
They were in a tunnel of some kind. A long, low passageway with timbers and beams shoring the sides and the earthen ceiling. Cool air was fanning through the tunnel from some distant, unseen opening. Solo closed the stone door, held his left hand behind him for Jerry to take. She squeezed it warmly and they pushed on through the dimness.
The shaft narrowed suddenly, forking in two directions like the cross-bar of a T. Solo hesitated, as his eyes tried to search the darkness ahead. Grinning to himself, he moistened the forefinger of his right hand and held it up. Almost immediately, the influx of air evaporated the dampness on the right side of his finger.
“Right,” he murmured. “God bless the Boy Scouts.”
The clinging mud beneath their feet was firm enough to allow easy passage. Jerry had no shoes and her bare feet made slick, slapping sounds. It was unavoidable now and too late to remedy the oversight.
Solo was puzzled. What could all this lack of protection mean? No sentries or guards. No security. Was it possible that Golgotha had handled the two of them all by himself? A lone wolf caper to bargain for higher power in the Thrush Council? No, it wasn’t likely. And yet there must be some explanation for all this. It was beginning to look as if they could walk right out of the spider’s web into the sunlight.
Up ahead, the glow of light widened. The darkness was dissolving. The air current had increased in volume. He knew they were getting closer to the surface, without not knowing how far was Down in the first place.
Then they both heard the sound.
It came suddenly, with frightening loudness and nearness—a roaring, rhythmical throb of gigantic pistons of some kind. The beat mounted with ear-shattering violence. They flattened against the earthen walls of the passageway, trembling, waiting. Then the sound ended as abruptly as it had begun. The new silence was awesome. Solo licked his dry lips.
“What was that?” Jerry whispered.
“Turbines or pistons. I really can’t say.”
“Maybe there’s a plant overhead.”
“Maybe. Let’s keep on going and play it by ear.” They moved on again, toward the light. It had seemed closer than it was. They panted down the passageway, feeling their path in the gloom. Solo didn’t dare risk using his pencil flash. They’d been too lucky as it was.
The roar of engines throbbed again. The sound had faded somewhat, meaning they had passed beneath it a few minutes back. But the pounding, humming noise was eerie and somehow terrifying. When the silence fell again, Solo realigned his grip on the automatic pistol. No telling what lay ahead now.
If Golgotha had been discovered—
Solo saw the man before the man saw him. He drew up so sharply that Jerry Terry ran into him but she had enough presence of mind not to cry out.
Solo held her back, flattening them both against the passageway. The man up ahead had his back to them. He was a silhouette framed against the daylight.
He wore a uniform of some kind—belted middle, puffy jodhpurs and boots, and a peaked helmet. More importantly, a stocky, ugly looking grease gun was cradled in the crook of his arm.
Solo pushed Jerry Terry back. “Stay here,” he commanded. “We can’t walk past that one. He’ll have to be taken.”
“Be careful.”
He smiled to himself at the obviousness of her concern, and moved stealthily along the wall. The man was a scant thirty yards away. Thirty yards and freedom. But the grease gun was something to think about. It could spray them down in seconds and no real marksmanship was called for. Solo held his breath as he swiftly and soundlessly bridged the gap between them before he made his move.
And then he stepped on something that snapped in half with the loudness of a pistol shot. A dry twig. In the mud of the tunnel of all places. The irony was too cruel to be funny—and Solo did not feel like laughing. He was caught flat-footed.
The man with the grease-gun revolved as though on a swivel. His gun came up and his hoarse, guttural voice cried out challengingly. His cry echoed down the passageway.
“Vast ist?”
Napoleon Solo fired, straight from the shoulder this time, a steady burst of three, at the shadowy figure framed in the entranceway.
The tunnel reverberated with the sound of death.
THE MAN WITH THE SKULL
ALL HELL broke loose.
Even as Solo saw his three shots hit home, picking up the man in the entranceway and smashing him back, the entire passageway suddenly came alive with the ringing of bells. It was a shocking assault on the eardrums. The air of the tunnel seemed to be alive with the high, almost screaming sound.
Fortunately, he had hurtled forward, following up the death blasts of his pistol, and Jerry Terry had followed. They reached the fallen sentinel even as they saw what was happening. A rumbling sound came from overhead, cutting through the pealing of the bells. Solo shot a look skyward. A gigantic slab of concrete was coming down, a secret door to seal the passageway to the outside world. Frantically, he seized Jerry by the wrist and pulled her through—just before the massive concrete door thudded shut between them and freedom, sending mounds of dirt and mud flying upwards. Behind the stone door, the bells continued their mad cacophony. A simple device. It took only the firing of a gun to set up a walled blockade in the subterranean fortress.