ACT IX: THE CRASH
Slowly, desperately, Illya Kuryakin kept repeating a brief message. It took about five minutes before Waverly's broken transmission indicated that the U.N.C.L.E. chief understood their situation. He told them to keep transmitting while the great U.N.C.L.E. locator transmitters located in strategic places around the world tried to zero in on the pen-communicator transmission and get a fix on their position.
Three minutes later Waverly reported: "We will have you in forty-five minutes."
"We must land! We must land! We must land!" Illya kept repeating the message for a full minute. "Give us the coordinates for the nearest atoll! Give us—"
This interchange went on for what seemed forever to the anxious men in the plane. Finally there was a slight break in the rain static. They heard Waverly so clearly he seemed to be in the cockpit with them.
"The Alofa Atoll, a group off the beaten track but governed out of the British Gilbert Islands, is about twenty-five miles from your present location, as nearly as we can determine. The storm is interferring with our reception on the locator beams as well as on the radio. If you take a heading of—"
"All our directional equipment is out, sir," Illya interrupted to say. "We don't even have a working pocket compass. All we know is that we are circling."
There was a silence on the radio. "I think we've lost them," Illya said. "And only twenty-five miles away! It might as well be twenty-five million if we don't know which way to head!"
Then the pen-communicator speaker boomed out again. "Waverly here. Can you read me?"
"You are coming in loud and clear, sir," Illya said.
"I can barely hear you," Waverly said. "I will talk fast before my own transmission fails. Our directional beams can no longer pinpoint you exactly. It is impossible for us to give you directions."
"Well, that's it!" the pilot said wearily.
"But there is a bare possibility," Waverly went on. "We have direct lines open to New York Weather Central and Weather Central in Hawaii. Weather planes with long range radar were dispatched over two hours ago. They have the storm in their scopes, but cannot pick you up. In any event, they know the speed and location of the storm exactly. It has stopped pulsing and is picking up fury. It is moving directly toward Alofa Atoll. Are you reading me?"
"Clearly, sir," Illya said quickly.
"Then here is what the aviation and weather experts suggest," Waverly said. "They say it is your only chance."
"We'll take it!" Illya said.
Rain from the cracked window splattered his face and dripped to the flight deck.
"You must get into the eye of the storm. In your crippled condition you can't stay aloft in this violence. All prediction is for it to get worse. Get into the eye. Then, if you can keep circling for the next forty-five minutes, the typhoon will move directly over Alofa. After that you can crash land the best you can. Do you read me?"
"Yes, sir," Illya said.
"It's a desperate chance," Waverly said. "But it is all you have. Good luck. We'll all be pulling for you here!"
The next hour was the longest either of the men from U.N.C.L.E. had ever experienced. The drawn out terror of fighting the awful battering of the storm was the worst moments of their lives. They struggled to the point of total exhaustion to keep the plane flying a halfway level course. Those able to take the controls spelled each other until worked into exhaustion themselves.
The pitching of the plane was so bad all except Kuryakin were airsick. The rain and hail slammed the unfortunate plane. Once a terrific gust of wind seemed to whirl them in a circle. The plane side-slipped, at one point falling so far the crippled engines almost failed to bring her back up. Once the nose went down and the tail acted as if it wanted to take the lead. For a breathless moment the plane was completely out of control.
Kuryakin and Solo were at the controls. The injured pilot was thrown from his perch between them, slamming heavily against the instrument panel.
Both men from U.N.C.L.E. hung on to the wheel, fighting to bring the plane's nose back up. Two of the crewmen pulled the pilot up, but a sudden shift of the wind piled them all on top of Solo. He lost his grip on the wheel. The savage fury of the wind was too much for one man to hold.
Kuryakin struggled, but the plane's nose went down again.
The plane picked up speed, plunging down at a forty-five degree angle.
"Some one help me!" Napoleon Solo gasped.
One of the crewmen sprang to his aid. Solo got his hands back on the other wheel. One of the other crewmen gave him a hand. The other tried to get the pilot back on his feet.
"Quick!" Solo gasped. "Ask him what we do now! We can't seem to bring it out of the dive!"
"He's out completely!" the sergeant bent over the pilot cried.
"Then what in Hades do we do?" Napoleon grated. "Doesn't anybody know how to fly this confounded thing?"
"Major Patterson! Can you take over these controls for me?" Illya said hurriedly. "I'll see if I can raise New York on the communicator again. Maybe Mr. Waverly can get us a pilot who can give us directions!"
"You had better get him in the next minute or two," Solo said. "The way we're going down, it won't be long! I can't see the ground, but it must be down there somewhere. The ocean, I mean."
Major Patterson slipped into the pilot's seat as Illya relinquished his grip on the wheel. He started to step back. As he did the plane gave a mighty lurch. The nose was thrown up until the plane almost stood on its tail.
Solo and Patterson, who had been pulling back on the controls with all their strength in an impossible attempt to bring the nose up, now frantically reversed procedures to try and bring it down again.
Illya's grip on the back of the pilot's seat was torn loose. He was thrown back, slamming against the back of the cockpit compartment with a jarring force that momentarily stunned him. He hit the flight deck and his instinct for survival caused him to try and fight his way back on his feet again.
He got to his knees when another sickening turn of the plane threw him heavily against the back of the co-pilot's seat. He staggered up, hanging on the back of the seat occupied by Solo.
He was swaying so badly he did not immediately realize that the terrible wind had ceased.
He looked around in surprise. The slashing rain was gone. There were stars visible overhead. He blinked, still too dazed to comprehend the sudden stillness of the air about them.
Then Solo's voice cut through his hazy brain: "We're in the eye! Don't tell me we did that!"
"Not us," Patterson said from the pilot's seat. "It was the plane! It must have been, for I surely didn't know what I was doing!"
"I guess these planes are like the cavalry horses. The old soldiers used to tell recruits just to let the horses alone and they would get them through the drill. Horses had more sense than soldiers in those days!"
"We're still going down," Napoleon said, suddenly sobering after the first burst of jubilation at getting out of the wild winds of the spinning typhoon.
The plane was losing altitude as its overtaxed engines started cutting out momentarily, but not as badly as before.
"Can you see the atoll?" Patterson asked anxiously.
"I can't see a thing," Napoleon said. "Do you think the eye has already passed the island?"
Below it was dark, but they could easily make out the frothing sea. It looked white for the trapped waters were churned into a mad frenzy by the circling wall of terrific winds.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Each knew it was death for the plane to drop in those anguished waters.
"How is the pilot?" Solo asked. "Is there any way of bringing him to long enough to give us some instructions?"
Patterson crouched over the pilot's body looked up. He shivered.
"No, sir!" he said in a thick voice. "He's dead!"
"And the flight engineer is dead too," Solo said in a stricken voice.
Illya pulled himself together and reached for the pen-communicator. He s
hakily extended the aerial. All he got was a thick crackle of static from the boiling ring of clouds circling about the typhoon eye with speeds above one hundred and seventy-five knots.
Solo glanced back over his shoulder. "Illya! Can't you raise New York?"
"No," Kuryakin said, shoving the communicator back in his pocket.
"Well, that's it," Solo said grimly. "That looks like the atoll ahead. It is just emerging from the storm into the eye."
"Yes! That's it!" Patterson cried.
"But how do we land?" Solo said. "I wouldn't know what to do if there was a ten thousand foot runway. What can I do on a coral strip covered with coconut palms, and most of them blown down by the wind?"
They were still circling, trying to stay within the forty miles radius of the typhoon eye. But at the same time they were gradually losing altitude.
It was only a matter of minutes before they had to come down somewhere. Each second, the mad, vicious ocean was getting closer and closer to the belly of the doomed plane.
"What do we do?" Patterson said, his voice hoarse.
"Let's try to figure out something!" Solo replied. "What do you do when you land? You go down, level off, touch the wheels and roll. Going down is no problem. We're doing that any way."
"We can't roll," Patterson said. "So we can't use that to eat up our landing speed."
"How about pulling back on the stick just before we strike? That should bring the nose up and then the tail can drag and slow us down before the nose drops?" Illya suggested. "It seems to me that is the big problem. We have to get our speed down before we take the big bump."
"We would break the tail off," Patterson objected.
"Well, we'll break our own tails off if we don't!" the fiery little man from U.N.C.L.E. retorted.
Patterson had no answer to that one.
"Let's try it," Solo said, the deep lines of his face mirrored his bone weariness. The terrific struggle to hang on to the plane's controls had brought him close to the point of collapse.
"Well, you never know what you can do until you try it," Patterson said. His weary voice held little confidence.
TWO
They circled one more time and then headed directly in toward the storm-battled island. The atoll was a circular stand of coral built on the rim of an extinct undersea volcano to make a thin rim of tiny islands circling a small lagoon. The water in the lagoon, partially protected by the encircling reef, was not lashed to the terrible fury of the open sea.
They came in less than one hundred twenty-five feet above the sea. The boiling foam started striking the bottom of the plane as they descended lower.
They came over the south strip of islands at fifty feet. It was uninhabited and completely treeless. In the darkness Solo got just a glimpse of coral sand reflecting the starlight coming down through the open eye above them.
The larger island was looming up fast across the lagoon.
"Now!" Solo cried.
Both he and Patterson pulled back on the wheel, desperately trying to lift the nose of the plane. All the others braced themselves for the coming crash. Illya threw himself on the flight deck, pressing his back and the back of his head against the rear of the pilot's seat. He shoved his legs hard against the fuselage to brace himself.
The tail of the plane struck the lagoon. The crashing surf splashed higher than the plane. They were blinded by the foaming water striking the windshield. The tail dragged on the coral, sending a terrible vibration through the dying airplane. The two men in the pilot and co-pilot's seat struggled to hold back on the stick, still fighting to keep the planes' nose up.
It was losing speed fast. One wing tip struck the huge bole of a coconut tree. They spun around. The other wing dug into the sand. The plane heaved up as if trying to fly again. It settled and the broken trunk of a palm, ripped by the typhoon, ripped through the fuselage.
Its splintered end sliced through Patterson's body. It rammed past Napoleon Solo and smashed into the instrument panel.
The plane hung there, rocking, each metal joint creaking in a dying agony.
Outside there was a glaring flash of light and fire burst through a tearing hold in the wing as one of the wing gas tanks exploded.
"We've got to get out!" Solo gasped. "Illya! Are you okay?"
"Yes," Kuryakin said shakily. "We've got one dead man, but the rest seem to be okay."
"I'm trapped," Solo said. "This broken palm trunk has me wedged in. Can you—"
Illya grabbed the palm trunk and heaved as Solo pushed with all his strength. It would not budge. Outside on the wing the flaming gas fire was eating closer to the cockpit.
Illya straightened up. "We're not doing any good. Just a minute, I'll get some help. I—"
"Hey!" one of the airmen cried from the back of the plane. "Somebody's coming! There's people on the island!"
"I'll get help!" Illya repeated to Solo. "I'll be right back."
Kuryakin turned and ran to the waist door of the plane. In the flickering light of the fire he could see several people running through the downed palms toward the wreck. One of the latter was a woman.
"Hurry!" Illya shouted to them. "We've got some men trapped in here!"
The first to clamber into the plane was a giant Polynesian man wearing only a native lava-lave loin cloth. Illya grabbed his arm.
"This way!" he gasped. "There's a man trapped in the cockpit. We must get him out now, before the flames—"
The big Polynesian grunted. He grabbed the smaller man about the waist and threw him from the plane. Illya hit the wet coral sand, sprawling flat and just missing the bole of an uprooted palm.
He jerked himself up. "Hey!" he shouted. "I—"
"Stop! Stop, Mr. Solo!"
The cold feminine voice caused Illya to jerk around. He stared open-mouthed into the deadly hole of a .38 automatic held in the hand of Lupe de Rosa.
"Grab him!" she ordered.
A native in European dress sprang forward to grab Illya's arms. He tried to struggle, but in his weakened condition they handled him easily.
"Napoleon! Napoleon!" he shouted. "We're in the hands of THRUSH! We crashed on a THRUSH controlled island!"
The European smashed him in the face. Illya sagged. They let him drop. He fell face down in the sand.
Inside the cockpit, Napoleon heard Illya's warning cry. He knew it was impossible to extricate himself in time. The tree trunk was pressed so tightly across his chest that he couldn't even get to his gun in its shoulder holster.
He reached out and rubbed his hand over the bloody body of the dead man in the pilot's seat. He streaked the blood across his own temple and sagged his head against the trunk. He closed his eyes.
The big Polynesian came into the cockpit. He looked at the smashed body of the pilot and grunted. He looked at Solo and reached for Napoleon's wrist. He felt the pulse and grunted again.
He wrapped his huge arms about the entrapping tree trunk and heaved. The bole shivered and moved just a fraction of an inch. The giant relaxed, took a deep breath and grasped the tree trunk again.
Outside the blazing fire was moving rapidly up the plane's wing. Solo could feel the heat, scorching against his head.
But as the big Polynesian grasped the log for a final heave to free Solo, a voice with a Middle-Eastern accent said from behind them:
"Leave him! It's not worth the trouble."
"Him still alive!" the Polynesian said.
"He won't be long!" the newcomer said and laughed. "Let the fire take care of him."
The Polynesian straightened up. "You big boss," he said.
"I sure as hell am and don't you ever forget it. Come on. Let him burn!"
ACT X: THE THRUSH OUTPOST
When Illya Kuryakin regained consciousness, he found himself strapped in a chair inside a small room jammed with electronic gear. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the angry face of Lupe de Rosa. The first thing he heard was her bitter voice: "Kill him! He has caused me nothing but trou
ble!"
"That's what I like in my girl friends," Illya mumbled. "Quiet, shy, lovable—"
She hit him hard across the mouth. A trickle of blood ran down from a cut where her blow drove his lip against his teeth.
She whirled on a tall man with a middle-Eastern accent.
"Where is the other one?" she snapped.
"Miss de Rosa!" he said in a harsh voice. "You may be the chief scientist for this project, but I am in charge of this station! I am responsible to THRUSH headquarters for its security. Not you. I will stay out of your technical business. You will stay out of my security affairs!"
"If you had done your work properly here, it would not have been necessary for me to come!" she snapped. "These storms lost energy because this station did not operate correctly. We must have three points of electronic focus to build up these typhoons to the point where their own energy will carry them forward. Your station here did not reach full energy capacity!"
"That was not my fault," he said defensively. "The equipment you sent was defective."
"It was no such thing!" she snapped. "I personally checked it out before it left South America. The trouble was in sabotage—here! Now what about your highly vaunted security!"
The tall field chief grabbed Lupe's shoulder. "If you try to send out a report like that, I'll—"
Lupe's hand flashed down to her handbag. She didn't bother to draw the gun cached there. She fired through the leather. The field chief clutched his stomach. Blood pumped between his agonized fingers. He pitched forward on his face.
The girl from THURSH whirled to face the others, drawing the gun from her bag. The group, three European and the big Polynesian, stared silently at her.
"Get the THRUSH-Pacific on the coder!" she snapped. "It sends though the water. The storm atmospherics will not interfere."
One of the Europeans came to remove a silver key from the body of the dead man. He moved back, keeping a wary eye on the gun in Lupe's hand.
He inserted the key in an electronic box. The key completed a complicated circuit inside.
A voice from the box said, "Four-oh-one. The check shows the mixer-coder in operation. We cannot be intercepted. You may speak."
The Synthetic Storm Affair Page 9
