The League Extraordinaire:
Part 8
by DarkMark
"Chief, for heaven's sake, you've got to let me and 99 into that situation."
"No, Max. I want there to be something left after the situation is over."
"Come on, Chief. Why won't you show any faith in me?"
"I have a lot of faith in you, Max. That's why I'm not sending you into this assignment. Other agencies have appropriate people in there and if they ask CONTROL to step in, we will. But not until then."
"The next thing you'll be telling me is that Siegfried isn't even involved with this thing."
"Siegfried isn't involved in this thing, Max."
"See?"
"You've got other things to do, Max. Like writing up the reports on your last ten assignments."
"I gave that job to Hymie."
"Hymie is a robot, Max."
"Are you going to be discriminatory towards robots, Chief?"
"No, Max. I've hired too many of them. But I don't like Hymie's literary style. He always puts a '10' in front of every line."
"Not every line, Chief. Just the first one. On the second one, he puts 20. On the third one..."
"MAX."
"Okay, okay, okay, Chief. But can't you believe that I'm the best qualified man to take on Fu Manchu?"
"No."
"Would you believe Auric Goldfinger?"
"No."
"How's about a couple of jaywalkers and a disturber of the peace?"
"MAX."
"All right, all right, all right, Chief. But what'll you say if the world is destroyed because I wasn't in there to handle things?"
"You really want to know what I'll say, Max?"
"Yes."
"'Missed it by about that much.'"
-L-
As the lot of them moved as quietly as possible down the halls of Fu Manchu's lair, Bond had something that had to be voiced. "Steed, exactly how do you propose to find this bomb, in the first place?"
John Steed pulled out the handle of his umbrella several inches. "A Geiger counter, Bond. Just the thing for locating hard-to-find objects of mass destruction."
"You came prepared for this sort of thing," Bond mused.
"One tries, Bond," smiled Steed.
"Charming," said Napoleon Solo. "One thing bothers me. Where the blazes are all the Si-Fans? Doesn't he have more people on guard than that?"
Derek Flint, keeping his eyes on the hallways behind the group, said, "He knows we've escaped, Solo. I give him credit enough for that."
Bond, a stolen gun in his hand, reflected on matters for a moment. Here they were, spies who had individually (and sometimes in pairs) saved the world, or democracy, or the present order, or something, time and again. They'd destroyed villains like Goldfinger, Mr. Big, the Cybernauts, GALAXY, and THRUSH, each on their own. All of them had, singly, faced death and violence innumerable times. That was part of the Great Game.
So why in hell did he feel, here, like a boy about to venture into a snakepit?
Emma noticed his expression and, for once, spoke to him with something like sympathy. "James. Are you all right? Relatively, that is?"
"I'm fine, Emma. Just want to get this done and get out of here."
"Understandable." She nodded. "If it helps, I'm feeling a bit tense myself."
"We could do something about that later."
"Not if you don't want both arms displaced, Mr. Bond."
"Apologies, Emma. Just trying to ease the tension."
"Myself as well. Shall we bury the hatchet till later?"
"I'm in favor of chucking the axe entirely," he said. "As long as it lands in Fu Manchu's heart."
Illya Kuryakin, shepherding Mike Fat Lee and the Baldwins, looked at the two of them. "Bojemoi. Will you keep your minds on work, please?"
"Illya," said Emma, coldly. "Mine never really left."
Steed made a chopping motion with his hand. The others stopped and fell silent. He displayed the umbrella handle to the rest. Bond and the crew could see a slight plastic inset within the metal umbrella's neck, flashing softly green in varying intensity. Steed swept the umbrella in an arc and stopped it on the backswing. He nodded at the direction indicated. The team of agents followed him.
The hallways were painted a neutral color, and Bond, feeling of a wall as he came, guessed that the walls were reinforced by solid metal. Not a reassuring thought, somehow. He went forward with them towards a section of wall that seemed to have no door before it. Steed stood and thumped the wall section softly with the umbrella handle.
"Only seems a bit less solid there than elsewhere," he remarked. "I propose we find a nearby door and try and enter through an interior wall, if poss—"
His instruction was interrupted.
An entire section of ceiling came apart in two halves and a squad of Si-Fan, weapons in hand, landed on their feet from an upper room. Others were joining them. There wasn't even time to spout obscenities.
Illya threw Mike Fat Lee and the Baldwins flat on the floor as the others opened fire at the same time as the Si-Fan.
Lead threaded the air, ricocheted off the metal walls. The deadly, poison-tipped knives that were the assassins' trademark appeared and struck very near their marks. Some of the Si-Fan fell. The League members managed to avoid that fate just barely.
Flint was the first one to close with their foes hand-to-hand. He had two of the Si-Fan knives in hand and was putting them to deadly use. Moving like a ballet dancer with martial arts moves Bond had never even seen before, he killed four of the enemy within thirty seconds. For an instant, Bond allowed that Derek Flint might be the most formidable of all their number.
No. He'd never settle for less than the top, himself.
With a cry he barely took note of himself, Bond plunged headlong into the foe. He emptied his gun into them, smashed their heads against the walls, dodged clothes-ripping knives, kneed them in the crotch, went for their eyes, stomped them, hit them, battered them with his gun, picked up another from a fallen foe and blazed away, keeping the fire to directions other than those of his friends.
Not exactly as he would have chosen, but he was familiar with the situation.
In later times, his brain would have opportunity to process the scenes he caught just in fleeting. Emma Peel was delivering deadly kicks, smashing blows with fist and elbow, knife-thrusts and bullets from borrowed weapons, even stunning headbutts to the enemy. She seemed hardly less competent than Flint.
Napoleon Solo was using more conventional karate, judo, and street fighting, but he was showing a vicious side of himself Bond wouldn't have credited him with. He choked an assailant from behind who was trying to get at Emma Peel. At the same time he used his elbow on the man's throat, his fingers were reaching out and doing something terrible and permanent to the Si-Fan's eyes. When the man dropped, Solo stamped his foe's head several times and things came apart.
There was no other way to fight. If you gave the bastards quarter, you'd be in that very position yourself in seconds.
John Steed slashed at his foemen with the deadly-sharp tip of his umbrella, blasting shots of deadly accuracy with a gun he'd brought himself. Illya Kuryakin was guarding their three allies, piling up his own total of corpses with shot and knife.
Mrs. Baldwin looked as though she was about to throw up, despite her THRUSH experience. Given the battlefield look of the place, Bond didn't blame her.
The fight seemed over in hours, but it couldn't have taken longer than ten minutes. Some of them had their own blood shed, but not substantially. Bond looked up from a man whose nose bones he'd just driven into his brain.
The pile of dead about the hallway were all Si-Fan.
Perhaps, Bond thought, whoever had chosen the members of the League Extraordinaire had known what he was doing, after all.
That thought was interrupted by the sound of Mrs. Baldwin crying.
Ward Baldwin was holding her in his arms, trying to comfort her. God knew what she had seen in her days in THRUSH, but still...there were some things you only could get used to by being in combat, yourself. He started towards them, meaning to offer a word of help. Emma stopped him, a hand on his arm.
"No, James," she said. "That's his job."
Reluctantly, he stopped. "What the hell. We have a bomb to find."
Flint made a growling sound. They looked towards him.
He was holding one of the Si-Fan corpses as though he meant to wring its dead head off. There was a look in his eyes Bond had only seen in that of the deadliest killers. He wondered if others sometimes saw it in him.
The others were looking at Flint, and he seemed to notice them, then. Their faces all registered astonishment. He blinked, and looked at the body in his hands, and dropped it.
"My apologies," he said.
"Just so long as you're on our side, Flint," murmured Bond.
An instant later, the lot of them were shocked by the noise of an explosion.
Bond was shaken off his pins, finding his hand in the blood and grue of a fallen foe. The others seemed to be in similar positions, except Emma, who had braced herself against the wall, and Flint, who didn't seem to know how to fall. Bond looked at Steed. The other looked back, and the two of them took off down the hall in the direction of the blast.
Rounding two corners, they stopped dead-still at the sight before them.
Six Si-Fan lie unconscious on the floor, a vapor rising from their bodies. Beyond them, two persons stood, handkerchiefs pressed to their faces over their noses and mouths. Bond had never seen them before. They were a man and a woman. A very attractive brunette woman in a blouse, a short skirt and high boots. She was also carrying a gun.
"Sorry," said the man, in a muffled British accent. "The gas grenade's louder than it should be. Hang back for a moment while it dissipates."
Bond felt a bit woozy himself. He stepped back around the corner with Steed behind him, and both took breaths of fresher air before turning back. The man and woman followed them, stepping over their fallen foes.
Steed leaned against the wall, using his umbrella to steady himself. "Excellent," he said. "You made it, after all."
"You would be Mr. Steed?" The woman offered her hand to him, and he took it. The rest of her face was exposed now, and she was extraordinarily pretty.
Bond's attention was drawn to the man, who had offered his hand for a shake. "And you must be Bond. Really, sir, it's an honor to meet you. Even in our bunch, we've got your picture on the wall."
"Uh," said Bond, approximately, giving his hand for a shake. "Flattering, I suppose. Thanks."
"Slate," said the other, with a British accent. "Mark Slate. UNCLE. Honored, sir."
"My name is April Dancer," said the woman. "I'm also with UNCLE. Napoleon and Illya know us."
"As do I," said Steed. "Glad you answered the invitation."
Emma Peel hurried around the corner. "Steed," she said, with a look of concern. "Come quick."
"What?"
"I said, come!"
The four of them went with her. Bond tried to put a hand to Miss Dancer's eyes to shield her from the sight of death, but she pushed his arm away. Nonetheless, she went drop-jawed when she saw the shambles, and controlled herself only with a visible effort.
"Bloody hell," said Mark Slate, slowly.
The voice of Napoleon Solo was heard. "Get in here, all of you," he said, from within a room whose door had been opened. "Now."
Steed, Slate, April, and Bond entered the room. Solo, Illya, the Baldwins, Lee, and Flint were inside. The only other things that were there were a largeish table and a mineral specimen.
It was, Bond guessed, uranium. And not inside of a bomb.
The spies kept their distance from it, but Bond could read their frustration, and felt it himself. Fu Manchu had suckered them.
Illya Kuryakin produced a note. "He left us this," he said. "We've already read it. Care to?"
Bond took it and began to read.
To be continued...
Notes for part 8:
"Chief, for heaven's sake, you've got to let me and 99 into that situation." The speaker is Maxwell Smart, chief enforcement agent of CONTROL, who appeared in the GET SMART television series and novels. 99 is his fellow agent and partner, a woman who later married him. Their chief enemies were an agency known as KAOS. The Chief, whose name is Thaddeus, is Max's superior and constant foil.
"Siegfried isn't involved in this thing, Max." Siegfried, a KAOS agent, was one of Smart's most frequent enemies.
"They were a man and a woman. A very attractive brunette woman in a blouse, a short skirt and high boots." Mark Slate and April Dancer, respectively, two crack UNCLE agents who appeared in THE GIRL FROM UNCLE television show and novels.
Part 8
by DarkMark
"Chief, for heaven's sake, you've got to let me and 99 into that situation."
"No, Max. I want there to be something left after the situation is over."
"Come on, Chief. Why won't you show any faith in me?"
"I have a lot of faith in you, Max. That's why I'm not sending you into this assignment. Other agencies have appropriate people in there and if they ask CONTROL to step in, we will. But not until then."
"The next thing you'll be telling me is that Siegfried isn't even involved with this thing."
"Siegfried isn't involved in this thing, Max."
"See?"
"You've got other things to do, Max. Like writing up the reports on your last ten assignments."
"I gave that job to Hymie."
"Hymie is a robot, Max."
"Are you going to be discriminatory towards robots, Chief?"
"No, Max. I've hired too many of them. But I don't like Hymie's literary style. He always puts a '10' in front of every line."
"Not every line, Chief. Just the first one. On the second one, he puts 20. On the third one..."
"MAX."
"Okay, okay, okay, Chief. But can't you believe that I'm the best qualified man to take on Fu Manchu?"
"No."
"Would you believe Auric Goldfinger?"
"No."
"How's about a couple of jaywalkers and a disturber of the peace?"
"MAX."
"All right, all right, all right, Chief. But what'll you say if the world is destroyed because I wasn't in there to handle things?"
"You really want to know what I'll say, Max?"
"Yes."
"'Missed it by about that much.'"
-L-
As the lot of them moved as quietly as possible down the halls of Fu Manchu's lair, Bond had something that had to be voiced. "Steed, exactly how do you propose to find this bomb, in the first place?"
John Steed pulled out the handle of his umbrella several inches. "A Geiger counter, Bond. Just the thing for locating hard-to-find objects of mass destruction."
"You came prepared for this sort of thing," Bond mused.
"One tries, Bond," smiled Steed.
"Charming," said Napoleon Solo. "One thing bothers me. Where the blazes are all the Si-Fans? Doesn't he have more people on guard than that?"
Derek Flint, keeping his eyes on the hallways behind the group, said, "He knows we've escaped, Solo. I give him credit enough for that."
Bond, a stolen gun in his hand, reflected on matters for a moment. Here they were, spies who had individually (and sometimes in pairs) saved the world, or democracy, or the present order, or something, time and again. They'd destroyed villains like Goldfinger, Mr. Big, the Cybernauts, GALAXY, and THRUSH, each on their own. All of them had, singly, faced death and violence innumerable times. That was part of the Great Game.
So why in hell did he feel, here, like a boy about to venture into a snakepit?
Emma noticed his expression and, for once, spoke to him with something like sympathy. "James. Are you all right? Relatively, that is?"
"I'm fine, Emma. Just want to get this done and get out of here."
"Understandable." She nodded. "If it helps, I'm feeling a bit tense myself."
"We could do something about that later."
"Not if you don't want both arms displaced, Mr. Bond."
"Apologies, Emma. Just trying to ease the tension."
"Myself as well. Shall we bury the hatchet till later?"
"I'm in favor of chucking the axe entirely," he said. "As long as it lands in Fu Manchu's heart."
Illya Kuryakin, shepherding Mike Fat Lee and the Baldwins, looked at the two of them. "Bojemoi. Will you keep your minds on work, please?"
"Illya," said Emma, coldly. "Mine never really left."
Steed made a chopping motion with his hand. The others stopped and fell silent. He displayed the umbrella handle to the rest. Bond and the crew could see a slight plastic inset within the metal umbrella's neck, flashing softly green in varying intensity. Steed swept the umbrella in an arc and stopped it on the backswing. He nodded at the direction indicated. The team of agents followed him.
The hallways were painted a neutral color, and Bond, feeling of a wall as he came, guessed that the walls were reinforced by solid metal. Not a reassuring thought, somehow. He went forward with them towards a section of wall that seemed to have no door before it. Steed stood and thumped the wall section softly with the umbrella handle.
"Only seems a bit less solid there than elsewhere," he remarked. "I propose we find a nearby door and try and enter through an interior wall, if poss—"
His instruction was interrupted.
An entire section of ceiling came apart in two halves and a squad of Si-Fan, weapons in hand, landed on their feet from an upper room. Others were joining them. There wasn't even time to spout obscenities.
Illya threw Mike Fat Lee and the Baldwins flat on the floor as the others opened fire at the same time as the Si-Fan.
Lead threaded the air, ricocheted off the metal walls. The deadly, poison-tipped knives that were the assassins' trademark appeared and struck very near their marks. Some of the Si-Fan fell. The League members managed to avoid that fate just barely.
Flint was the first one to close with their foes hand-to-hand. He had two of the Si-Fan knives in hand and was putting them to deadly use. Moving like a ballet dancer with martial arts moves Bond had never even seen before, he killed four of the enemy within thirty seconds. For an instant, Bond allowed that Derek Flint might be the most formidable of all their number.
No. He'd never settle for less than the top, himself.
With a cry he barely took note of himself, Bond plunged headlong into the foe. He emptied his gun into them, smashed their heads against the walls, dodged clothes-ripping knives, kneed them in the crotch, went for their eyes, stomped them, hit them, battered them with his gun, picked up another from a fallen foe and blazed away, keeping the fire to directions other than those of his friends.
Not exactly as he would have chosen, but he was familiar with the situation.
In later times, his brain would have opportunity to process the scenes he caught just in fleeting. Emma Peel was delivering deadly kicks, smashing blows with fist and elbow, knife-thrusts and bullets from borrowed weapons, even stunning headbutts to the enemy. She seemed hardly less competent than Flint.
Napoleon Solo was using more conventional karate, judo, and street fighting, but he was showing a vicious side of himself Bond wouldn't have credited him with. He choked an assailant from behind who was trying to get at Emma Peel. At the same time he used his elbow on the man's throat, his fingers were reaching out and doing something terrible and permanent to the Si-Fan's eyes. When the man dropped, Solo stamped his foe's head several times and things came apart.
There was no other way to fight. If you gave the bastards quarter, you'd be in that very position yourself in seconds.
John Steed slashed at his foemen with the deadly-sharp tip of his umbrella, blasting shots of deadly accuracy with a gun he'd brought himself. Illya Kuryakin was guarding their three allies, piling up his own total of corpses with shot and knife.
Mrs. Baldwin looked as though she was about to throw up, despite her THRUSH experience. Given the battlefield look of the place, Bond didn't blame her.
The fight seemed over in hours, but it couldn't have taken longer than ten minutes. Some of them had their own blood shed, but not substantially. Bond looked up from a man whose nose bones he'd just driven into his brain.
The pile of dead about the hallway were all Si-Fan.
Perhaps, Bond thought, whoever had chosen the members of the League Extraordinaire had known what he was doing, after all.
That thought was interrupted by the sound of Mrs. Baldwin crying.
Ward Baldwin was holding her in his arms, trying to comfort her. God knew what she had seen in her days in THRUSH, but still...there were some things you only could get used to by being in combat, yourself. He started towards them, meaning to offer a word of help. Emma stopped him, a hand on his arm.
"No, James," she said. "That's his job."
Reluctantly, he stopped. "What the hell. We have a bomb to find."
Flint made a growling sound. They looked towards him.
He was holding one of the Si-Fan corpses as though he meant to wring its dead head off. There was a look in his eyes Bond had only seen in that of the deadliest killers. He wondered if others sometimes saw it in him.
The others were looking at Flint, and he seemed to notice them, then. Their faces all registered astonishment. He blinked, and looked at the body in his hands, and dropped it.
"My apologies," he said.
"Just so long as you're on our side, Flint," murmured Bond.
An instant later, the lot of them were shocked by the noise of an explosion.
Bond was shaken off his pins, finding his hand in the blood and grue of a fallen foe. The others seemed to be in similar positions, except Emma, who had braced herself against the wall, and Flint, who didn't seem to know how to fall. Bond looked at Steed. The other looked back, and the two of them took off down the hall in the direction of the blast.
Rounding two corners, they stopped dead-still at the sight before them.
Six Si-Fan lie unconscious on the floor, a vapor rising from their bodies. Beyond them, two persons stood, handkerchiefs pressed to their faces over their noses and mouths. Bond had never seen them before. They were a man and a woman. A very attractive brunette woman in a blouse, a short skirt and high boots. She was also carrying a gun.
"Sorry," said the man, in a muffled British accent. "The gas grenade's louder than it should be. Hang back for a moment while it dissipates."
Bond felt a bit woozy himself. He stepped back around the corner with Steed behind him, and both took breaths of fresher air before turning back. The man and woman followed them, stepping over their fallen foes.
Steed leaned against the wall, using his umbrella to steady himself. "Excellent," he said. "You made it, after all."
"You would be Mr. Steed?" The woman offered her hand to him, and he took it. The rest of her face was exposed now, and she was extraordinarily pretty.
Bond's attention was drawn to the man, who had offered his hand for a shake. "And you must be Bond. Really, sir, it's an honor to meet you. Even in our bunch, we've got your picture on the wall."
"Uh," said Bond, approximately, giving his hand for a shake. "Flattering, I suppose. Thanks."
"Slate," said the other, with a British accent. "Mark Slate. UNCLE. Honored, sir."
"My name is April Dancer," said the woman. "I'm also with UNCLE. Napoleon and Illya know us."
"As do I," said Steed. "Glad you answered the invitation."
Emma Peel hurried around the corner. "Steed," she said, with a look of concern. "Come quick."
"What?"
"I said, come!"
The four of them went with her. Bond tried to put a hand to Miss Dancer's eyes to shield her from the sight of death, but she pushed his arm away. Nonetheless, she went drop-jawed when she saw the shambles, and controlled herself only with a visible effort.
"Bloody hell," said Mark Slate, slowly.
The voice of Napoleon Solo was heard. "Get in here, all of you," he said, from within a room whose door had been opened. "Now."
Steed, Slate, April, and Bond entered the room. Solo, Illya, the Baldwins, Lee, and Flint were inside. The only other things that were there were a largeish table and a mineral specimen.
It was, Bond guessed, uranium. And not inside of a bomb.
The spies kept their distance from it, but Bond could read their frustration, and felt it himself. Fu Manchu had suckered them.
Illya Kuryakin produced a note. "He left us this," he said. "We've already read it. Care to?"
Bond took it and began to read.
To be continued...
Notes for part 8:
"Chief, for heaven's sake, you've got to let me and 99 into that situation." The speaker is Maxwell Smart, chief enforcement agent of CONTROL, who appeared in the GET SMART television series and novels. 99 is his fellow agent and partner, a woman who later married him. Their chief enemies were an agency known as KAOS. The Chief, whose name is Thaddeus, is Max's superior and constant foil.
"Siegfried isn't involved in this thing, Max." Siegfried, a KAOS agent, was one of Smart's most frequent enemies.
"They were a man and a woman. A very attractive brunette woman in a blouse, a short skirt and high boots." Mark Slate and April Dancer, respectively, two crack UNCLE agents who appeared in THE GIRL FROM UNCLE television show and novels.