THE 43 YEARS AFTER AFFAIR
Chapter 3
"How do you think top-secret organizations get most of their hardware?"
Having reached the wharves far faster than they might have had Illya not relied upon the rental car's GPS system, both reactivated agents bartered for a boat which wouldn't arouse suspicions. Then he set course for that secretive section of an otherwise unspecified segment of Canadian shores whereupon the two U.N.C.L.E. agents would proceed against the THRUSH installation situated a few short-but-treacherous miles inland.
While Illya, yet again, manned the wheel, Napoleon took the time desperately needed for using an old-fashioned paper map in order to memorize the route required for a secretive trek by foot in order to cross via stealthy access to the THRUSH site.
"I hope you've been keeping in shape these last couple of decades, Illya", Napoleon called up to his partner standing like a seasoned sea captain neatly navigating across currently still waters. "We've got a nice little hike ahead of us once we land."
"I've been walking between five to ten miles per day", Illya shouted back down, without turning toward his friend and fellow agent, "not to mention daily yoga and Pilates. I also find weekly acupuncture a nice way to..."
"Illya, that was a rhetorical statement", Napoleon pleaded in hopes of putting a stop to a ceaseless stream of needless information from U.N.C.L.E. Agent 2.
"Sorry", was all Illya managed, more amused than embarrassed. That'll teach Napoleon to bother me while I'm steering a boat across freezing waters, he thought with a touch of satire.
For pretty much the remainder of the watery route, the two U.N.C.L.E. agents kept to themselves, until it was, at last, time to step off the anchored-just-offshore boat and begin a half-jogging journey through a frosty forest and, inevitably, over small-but-challenging hills.
Once again, the two talk as they walk along their predetermined path.
"I assume you have our proposed direction committed to memory?" Illya asked drolly of Napoleon.
"Of course", Napoleon huffed and puffed, as it became comically clear to Illya that his partner was most surely not in shape. "Stick close...I don't want...to lose you out here."
Ignoring the jealous gibe, Illya remarked in a matter of fact fashion, "It's important for us to reach our destination before nightfall, Napoleon. As chilly as it is now, it'll be much, much worse once temperatures fall to well below freezing. Our suits, though exceptionally stylish, are simply not designed to properly protect us then."
"Once again", Napoleon replied with his statement staggered by his continued need for extra oxygen during their top-secret excursion, "your ability...to state the obvious...is unmatched...my fair-haired friend."
As the Canadian cold increased due to the loss of initial daylight, Illya and Napoleon now knelt atop a paltry rise, surrounded by largely leaf-free trees, to silently scrutinize the self-same THRUSH installation viewed earlier only in projected images. Only two armed, jumpsuit-and-beret wearing THRUSH thugs, continually patrolling the forward parameter of the sizeable building, stood in their way.
"Two of them, two of us", Illya stated concisely as he began putting together what would become his U.N.C.L.E. carbine via the use of add-ons attached with practiced skill onto his previously holstered Walther P38.
"Yeah", Napoleon replied through a few final gulps of air which burned still suffering lungs, "looks like our luck's...still there...even after all these years."
Then, finally, even as Illya completes the assembling of his own U.N.C.L.E. carbine, complete with telescopic scope, Napoleon was sufficiently replenished, physically, to pull his own Walther P38 and commence the change needed to alter a pistol into a carbine. Complete with extra-long ammo clip containing very real, very lethal 9mm Parabellum bullets as opposed to the high-velocity knockout shells they'd been forced to use in decades past.
Clearly the whole "Good Guy" mentality of the mid-20th Century, partially influenced by "flower power" Movements and demonstrations, had suffered greatly in the harsher, harder light of the early-21st. That was fine by Napoleon. Lethal force was always more welcome than having to worry about an opponent you knew would eventually regain consciousness and, therefore, have to be addressed again.
Napoleon silently assumed that even Illya's former non-violent viewpoints, which made him the darling of left-wing thinkers of their day, had taken a beating. Especially when suicidal terrorists could commandeer a jetliner and crash it into one of New York's tallest buildings, massacring many thousand in the process.
"Kill 'em all!" had definitely come to the forefront of modern-day mindsets...especially in cases of espionage.
"Ready?" Illya finally asked softly, not wishing to be overheard by the two THRUSH thugs a few hundred yards away from their currently elevated locality.
"Ready", nodded Napoleon, speaking just as softly yet still with a punch to his tone. Clearly he, at least, was starving to restart a clandestine career that included, like it or not, Illya!, liquidating the enemy with extreme prejudice.
Both U.N.C.L.E. agents, disregarding the notion of ruining their expensive designer suits, lay stomach-down atop the small rise. Then they aimed their respective weapons, via braced-for-steadiness elbows, while peering through telescopic sights that were, unfortunately, deficient in regards to any night vision capabilities. Quickly placing crosshairs squarely on the heads of the pacing back-and-forth THRUSH thugs. The kill shot simply had to put them down quickly and quietly.
"Now."
Pft! Pft!
No sooner do two average-sized bodies drop, dead, than two U.N.C.L.E. agents scramble to their lavishly shoed feet in order to dash down the Lilliputian hill, U.N.C.L.E. carbines clutched tightly with safeties secured.
"Still can't understand", Illya deliberated aloud, even as they hurriedly closed on the two dead THRUSH thugs, "why THRUSH would blatantly abandon the use of closed circuit cameras at the entrance end of their installation."
"I'm sure it's not THRUSH, so much", rebutted Napoleon as he once again started sucking in huge gulps of air while struggling to stay alongside his partner, "as Andrew Vulcan. Ever since what happened to him 43 years ago in that explosion...he probably preferred people to technology."
"Strange", Illya promptly replied, just as the two of them reached the bottom where the land leveled out, "considering that, according to U.N.C.L.E. Intel, technology, in the way of cybernetics, is responsible for his still being alive and able to walk at all."
"Well", Napoleon heaved between great gasps meant to appease his desperate shortage for oxygen, "there you go. If I had to rely on small mechanical implants to make it from one day to the next, I'd tend to hate the technologies that saved me, too."
"His loss, our gain."
Napoleon nodded in agreement to that comment made by Illya, as both drug the two dead THRUSH thugs, shot precisely through the head, off to either side of the aboveground building complex. Then both donned the jumpsuits and berets and took possession of the firearms previously clutched in death grips by the two dead men.
Meeting back up before the installation's entrance, Illya was audibly admiring the new rifles being carried by such THRUSH operatives.
"Beautiful. Heckler-and-Koch XM8. Uses 5.56 NATO rounds. Can fire 750 rounds-per-minute. Muzzle velocity, 920 meters-per-second. Excellent Tasco PDP2 sighting system, augmented, it appears, with infrared night vision capabilities, not too dissimilar to their former sighting system, although a little more compact. Fairly lightweight. Solid."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Illya", Napoleon surmised an instant later, "but didn't the U.S. Army cancel the contract on these rifles on October 31st, 2005?"
Illya gave a sideways glance that was as deadpan as any Napoleon had ever experienced regarding his sometimes cerebral partner, then contested, "How do you think top-secret organizations get most of their hardware?"
"Ready, my Russian friend?" Napoleon Solo asked somewhat anxiously as he tentatively tightened his hold on the XM8, safety switched off in preparation for unmediated use (just in case).
Having done much the same with the XM8 in his hands, Illya Kuryakin looked at his lifelong friend and fellow U.N.C.L.E. agent and surreptitiously replied, "As ready as I'll ever be, my American friend."
"Let's do it!"
END OF CHAPTER 3
