THE 43 YEARS AFTER AFFAIR
Chapter 4
"Did I Do Something to Upset You?"
Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo, Heckler-and-Koch XM8s in their hands, proceeded through the main entrance of the large isolated THRUSH installation.
"You go that way", Napoleon suggested with a jab of the barrel end of his XM8, causing Illya to look in that direction, "and I'll go this way. Use your pen communicator to stay in touch."
"Is it wise that we separate?" Illya asked stoically.
Answering with a half-shrug and swift smile, Napoleon replied, "If we go two separate ways, it's a lot more likely that at least one of us can see this mission affair through to the end."
With a lazily lifted eyebrow, Illya smiled and said, "That's quite logical, Napoleon. Definitely not like you."
Offering no response, save a slanted smirk bespeaking of their decades-old camaraderie, Napoleon Solo slipped off to the left, while Illya did the same to the right.
The two recently reactivated U.N.C.L.E. agents proceeded with a stealth born out of an exceptionally long time as clandestine operatives for the number one top-secret establishment in the entire world; safety switches of their borrowed XM8s off and trigger fingers poised alongside triggers, the two continued on.
In the meantime, Andrew Vulcan ultimately gave in to the palpable pain brought about from shuffling around the affluent offices of GlobeChem Corporation. The cybernetics making his damaged muscles work, along with surgically-implanted flex-rods holding together a nearly destroyed spine, damn you, Napoleon Solo!, and gradually eased himself down into a high-backed, very padded office chair behind a plain cold metal desk.
"It would appear, Mr. Driscoll", Andrew Vulcan stated with a shaky smirk on his scarred face while addressing his lieutenant, Darien Driscoll, "that my 'prayers' have been answered. According to this computer screen beside my desk, tied in with those small interior cameras you, rightfully, argued should be included in this installation's design...Napoleon Solo, my old nemesis, seems to be coming straight to me. I shall have my vengeance at long last."
Snapping to, like a good little soldier, Darien promptly asked, "Should I send guards to kill him, Mr. Vulcan?"
"No!" snapped the physically and mentally scarred Andrew Vulcan, stiffly shifting his seated position, still eyeing the closed circuit picture displayed flawlessly on the computer's screen. "No, Mr. Driscoll...let him come directly to me. I want to...relish his final moments."
Though Darien Driscoll considered his superior's plan borderline idiocy, he would've been the last person to show dissent involving any THRUSH chief...especially him.
If face-to-face vengeance was what Andrew Vulcan craved, then face-to-face vengeance is what he would get.
At that same moment, snaking through one side of the building's interior, which seemed more a glorified industrial-sized storage facility than anything else did, was the U.N.C.L.E. agent Andrew Vulcan despised so intensely. Moving in and around crates of all sizes, some twice that of a full-sized suburban vehicle.
God only knew what was actually stored within them.
Whatever was inside them, Napoleon Solo was absolutely certain that the destructive laser device he and Illya were here to obliterate, before next eliminating Andrew Vulcan, was much worse. Still, as important as the first part was, Napoleon found he was actually looking forward to the second part even more.
This time, Napoleon silently promised himself while ducking and dodging in and around the stacks of crates inside this THRUSH installation, I'll make damn sure Vulcan doesn't manage to escape. I'll put a 9mm bullet square through his noble brain. Hell, it'll probably be more a mercy killing than an assassination from the images Ms. Hall showed us.
On the opposite side of the sizeable interior skulked Illya Kuryakin. Unlike Napoleon, his primary concern was the first part of the mission affair: the systematic destruction of the directed energy weapons network. He'd leave it to his friend and fellow U.N.C.L.E. agent to satisfy the second part.
To Illya, this was no more personal than the seemingly endless other top-secret cases he'd undertaken as an U.N.C.L.E. agent since 1964. Still, if Andrew Vulcan somehow came to stand between him and the weaponized laser system...
It was at that instant that Illya heard the humming of what sounded like an elevator on approach from somewhere deep beneath his feet. Ducking behind and between two stacks of large crates, the XM8 held tightly with both hands, trigger finger now lightly caressing its trigger, Illya readied himself to kill any and all THRUSH operatives who might emerge.
There was no time, even, for Illya to use his pen communicator to contact Napoleon and let him know others were coming. So he waited.
Watching around the corner of the lowest wooden crate of the stack in front of him, Illya saw the secret elevator arrive even as a false section of inner wall slid open to reveal the lift car within. One which had just brought two more armed-with-XM8 THRUSH thugs from some subterranean section.
They couldn't be allowed to live or else they would discover that two of their number had been shot and stripped, meaning two enemy agents were somewhere within.
Still, Illya didn't want to use a weapon like the XM8, which had no silencer fitted onto its flash-suppressor equipped muzzle, so he gently leaned it against the stack of multi-ton crates behind him. Then, moving with the light-footed stealth of a cat, Illya inched to the side closest to the building's center. All the while easing out his holstered Walther P38, then furtively retrieving the pistol's silencer from the attachments pack positioned behind his back. And, then, quickly yet quietly, screwing it in place.
Knowing that the silencer would make whispers of any gunshots, Illya took hasty-yet-spot-on aim, squeezed the trigger twice, Pft! Pft!, and two 9mm Parabellum bullets burrowed bloodily into the base of two human skulls destroying two human brains in the process.
Thus dropping two more THRUSH gunmen as easily as dropping marionettes whose strings were suddenly cut.
Napoleon barely heard the double tap of silenced gunfire yet knew, without looking, that Illya had evidently discovered, then dispatched, two more THRUSH goons standing between them and the successful completion of their mission affair.
Good boy, Illya, he thought with an inward grin, you keep watching our backs and I'll see to it Andrew Vulcan never troubles U.N.C.L.E. again.
By the time Illya had made his way to the still-open secret elevator, its lift car silently waiting for return use, Napoleon had rounded the rear wall to join him, noticing right away that Illya had already holstered his Walther P38 to once again fondle the Heckler-and-Koch XM8.
"Looks like neither of us plans on being quiet once we get below", Napoleon wisecracked just before either of them stepped past the standing-open false wall/elevator door.
"Something tells me we won't have to be", Illya replied in return, "once we do start down."
"After you, my Russian friend", Napoleon said with a friendly smirk, while gesturing with his XM8.
"Beauty before age, Napoleon?" Illya gibed, smilingly, as he stepped into the elevator's car first with Napoleon following quickly behind, causing the door to slide shut.
"Why do I get the feeling", Napoleon lamented as the elevator lurched to began its downward path, "that we're already expected?"
"One thing's for certain", Illya said with a tense but steady tone, "things have gone much too easy for us not to be."
As the elevator continued down into the subterranean THRUSH headquarters nestled in Canada's chilled wilderness, both U.N.C.L.E. agents popped out the transparent banana ammo clips, then slap-inserted them back into their proper place. Then, fluidly, giving a proper yank of the cock-and-lock bolt on the weapon's side in order to chamber that all-important first 5.56 NATO round of the full auto weapon.
They both instinctively knew that, once the elevator's door opened at some point down below, they would have to literally hit the ground running.
And shooting.
Even as the two U.N.C.L.E. agents readied themselves for a firefight, Andrew Vulcan had issued the order to clear all underground corridors in order to more readily invite his adversaries deeper inside.
When the time was right, both agents would be properly dealt with.
And then...
"Here we go", Napoleon said somberly, his XM8 aiming outward, just as the elevator car stopped and its door rumbled open, revealing the corridor of a sub-floor of this underground THRUSH HQ.
"Where is everybody?" Illya asked rhetorically, his own XM8 aimed outward as well.
Both agents glanced at one another, inwardly wondering about this overt lack of defense yet secretly assuming that it was exactly what it appeared to be.
"Trap", Napoleon noted in a hushed aside as that same realization flashed through Illya's forethought.
One more shared glance between the two, then both, as a single unit, stepped cautiously out of the lift car. The elevator's door sliding shut in their excessively cautious wake.
"I hate to say it, Napoleon", began Illya with a groan whose meaning was instantly understood.
"I know, Illya", Napoleon chimed in a moment after, "we'll have to split up...again."
"Excellent", hissed Andrew Vulcan while watching the digital display of the two U.N.C.L.E. operatives on his computer's screen. "I could not have hoped for a more perfect plot. It would seem, Mr. Driscoll, that although I have lost natural muscular function...not to mention all my prime years...I have not lost my cunning. Yes?"
Afraid to do anything less than agree with his twisted, physically as well as psychologically, superior, Darien Driscoll only nodded, "Yes...of course, sir."
If Darien Driscoll had had his way from the start, every armed THRUSH operative would've already blown these two aging U.N.C.L.E. agents to bits in their vicinity.
Allowing their blood to openly flow through these self-same corridors.
No need, however, in risking his own death to verbally second-guess the scarred, cybernetic-assisted Andrew Vulcan; not when it was clear that, eventually, this barely-alive old man would be dead. Thus leaving the leadership of THRUSH to Darien Driscoll.
Then everything would most definitely be handled differently.
"Once again", Napoleon suggested with a gentle gesture of his XM8 down one particular corridor, "I'll go this way..."
"And I shall go that way", finished Illya with a directional nod of his blonde head. "Call out if you need me."
Understanding instantly that Illya was referencing their pen communicators, Napoleon nodded, then proceeding down the corridor branch he had previously selected for himself. While Illya slipped down the other one.
"Have THRUSH guards", groaned Andrew Vulcan as he slowly stood, "meet the blonde-haired agent. They may kill him as quickly or as slowly as they wish. Mr. Solo, however, shall be met by me."
Before Darien Driscoll could offer an objection, the heavily scarred, aged Andrew Vulcan opened a right-hand drawer of his plain metal desk and removed a Luger pistol, ironically also loaded with a clip of 9mm Parabellum bullets, just like the Walther P38s. Then slide-cocked it with a depraved gleam in old eyes set deep in a devastated face. A smile shakily showing yellowed teeth.
"I shall go to meet", he snarled murderously, "Napoleon Solo."
Darien Driscoll could not help but allow the same dastardly smile to slowly form on his own, infinitely younger and decidedly more handsome, countenance. For the first time since Andrew Vulcan's seemingly insane plan had been formulated, he understood.
As Illya cautiously made his way down his corridor branch toward an intersection of same, XM8 held firmly ready to use without hesitation, the Russian-born U.N.C.L.E. agent could not foresee the gathering of perhaps two dozen XM8-armed THRUSH ruffians to either side.
The only luck he had operating in his favor was the fact that said THRUSH operatives were in one another's line of fire. Thus they could not open up with their XM8s, but would, rather, be forced to rely upon tried-and-true hand-to-hand combat tactics.
So, no sooner did Illya inch into the middle of said corridor intersection...
"Get him!"
He suddenly found himself the flesh-and-blood practice dummy for a rather large number of jumpsuit-and-beret wearing thugs using their hands and feet in basic martial arts mode; however, Illya Kuryakin was, if nothing else, just as well-trained in weaponless fighting as he was with weapons.
Though he didn't get the chance to squeeze off even a single burst from the XM8, Illya still managed to expertly plant a punch here and a kick there in such a fashion as to send several of his attackers, either dead or dying, to the spotless corridor floor. Unfortunately for him, however, age combined with inactivity along with the sheer numbers assaulting him from every side...
"We have him!" one of the larger, a good 6'9", 325 pounds and none of it useless fat, THRUSH goons proclaimed delightedly as Illya went down.
As the still-standing THRUSH operatives gathered about the blonde-haired/blue-eyed man from U.N.C.L.E., he quizzically queried, "Did I do something to upset you?"
END OF CHAPTER 4