by DarkMark
part 10
"There's nothing I can do?"
"Absolutely nothing, Matt," said the voice on the other end of the phone. "Go back to writing your Western, or whatever else you were doing. It's in other hands."
"What other hands?"
"Not at liberty to say," said the man from ICE. "We estimate the problem will be taken care of within 24 hours. One way, or the other."
"That gives me plenty of time to get out there."
"Not enough time to do anything worthwhile. Those are your orders, Matt. We expect you to follow them."
He paused, breathed, thought of a boxcar load of swear words he wanted to unleash and never would. "Is your intel reliable on this one? Is it pretty much like you told me before?"
"Even worse, Matt."
"Then I need to be there," he said. "I need to get my hand in. There has to be something I can do."
"There is," said his superior. "Just what the rest of us are doing. Sit tight...and wait."
That was the worst poison a man of action could be forced to swallow. But, unless he intended to tender his resignation, there was little else he could do. He also had to admit that the man on the other end was right. What good could he do, even if he did catch a flight to San Francisco, without knowing where in that city the crisis was, or what its precise nature was?
All he could do was hope. When Fate had rested heavily upon one man before, and that one man was himself, he had prevailed. He could only hope that these others, whoever they were, could handle it as well.
"Yes, sir," said Matt Helm, and hung up.
-L-
Steed's contingent forced their way in through a third-floor window, breaking it with a rocket and grappling hooks, pitching a gas grenade inside, waiting for it to disperse within thirty seconds, and then quickly scaling the side of the Transamerica building. Solo and Mark Slate went first. As quickly as they ascended, they were still met in the breached office by a pair of Si Fan assassins. Three others were unconscious on the floor. The Asiatics were good. The UNCLE men were better. Within seconds, the Si Fan joined their brethren on the floor.
"Bring back fond memories, Napoleon?" grinned Slate, positioning himself beside the door.
"If you mean D-Day, no," said Solo. "Too young for that. Korea. Didn't get to climb a cliff there."
The others were up within moments: Emma, Illya, April, and Steed. Mike Fat Lee and the Baldwins were waiting in Steed's van, a couple of blocks away. The sextet had little time for pleasantries. Whatever they'd endured in Fu Manchu's other lair they estimated to be just a warmup for this encounter.
Steed fixed the listening disc of a stethoscope-like device to the wall nearest the hall. The others kept silent. He finally said, "They're outside. More than one."
Illya nodded, taped a small, potato-shaped object taken from his backpack to the wall, and motioned the others to lay on the floor in the mostly-bare office. In a few cases, that put them uncomfortably near the dead or sleeping Si-Fan. There was nothing more to be done about it.
The shaped charge went off and blew the wall outward, catching the Si Fan behind it with impact and fragments. The six League members followed as quickly as they dared, blasting at anything that moved, knowing that, from this point, secrecy was dead and the rest was war.
And war was what they had.
-L-
Both Bond and Flint had been equipped with miniature Geiger counters. Bond's was provided by Steed; Flint had one in his cigarette lighter. Thus, each of them knew that the bomb was only two floors above them, on the 45th floor. The problem was, any time they got near the stairwell, a blast of machine gun bullets came from the next floor. The elevator cables had been cut. There would be no heroic Douglas Fairbanks-style climbing of them to the next floor. Fu Manchu would undoubtedly have guards by the elevator doors, anyway.
"Bit of a problem," muttered Bond, sotto voce, crouching beside Flint.
"Now we think of a way out," said Flint. "And up."
"Got any ideas?"
Flint nodded his head towards the ceiling. "Lift me up. I'll use the lighter to burn a hole up there."
"Bound to notice it when you do," Bond pointed out.
"We've got a bomb to defuse, James," said Flint. "Every second we have is one Fu Manchu gives us."
Bond grunted. "All right, Flint. Ups a daisy."
He stooped, grabbed Flint's legs about the knees, and lifted him up. Flint could barely reach the ceiling by doing so. The American put both hands to his lighter, did something Bond couldn't quite catch, and made an oxyacetylene flame leap from its top. Quickly, Flint began to describe a rough circle about the ceiling, one which, when cut, would admit one of them at a time. Naturally, it would have to be Flint alone, unless Bond could drag a desk over, stand on it, and jump up there. Bond wondered how a sufficient oxygen supply for it could be fitted into the body of the lighter, and wished he could get the thing, or schematics of it at least, for Q to analyze.
At that point, he looked out the west window and reacted without thinking to what he saw.
What he saw was a helicopter drawing near.
He fell to the floor, dragging Derek Flint with him, an instant before bullets shattered the windows and sliced the air above them.
Flint, astonished, lay on his back beside Bond, glass shards falling about them. Shielding his eyes with an arm, he said, "Remarkable powers of observation, James."
"Always someone trying to crash the party," Bond remarked, tightly. He held out his hand. "Give me your lighter."
"What?"
"Give me the lighter. Do something that'll let me kill someone with it."
Wordlessly, Flint touched a finger to its surface. Then he handed it over. "When you're ready to use it, flip the top open and point it where you want it. It'll only be good for eight seconds."
"Thanks."
"You should let me do this."
"I really should." Bond lifted his head, listened well for the interval between the gunfire, saw the helicopter beginning to present its side to the window...
...and, straightening up, sprang for it.
The two Si Fan soldiers in the chopper barely had time to register what was happening. Well and good. Bond flung himself through the open window space, over its knives of jagged glass in the frame, out over the forty stories of space between building and helicopter, and snagged the edge of the open door in the chopper with his left hand.
The Si Fan riding shotgun had time enough to swing his gun in Bond's direction.
Bond, with one hand and one foot in the doorway, brought up his other hand.
It held Flint's lighter, and he flipped it open.
A streak of red, not even as wide as a pencil, leapt from the top of it, intersected the Si Fan's skull at the level of his eyes, and penetrated it. Blood spurted. The wound was cauterized on the spot, but the motion of Bond's hand took it well into the Si Fan's skull before he fell.
The motion of his falling took a good chunk of the man's head with it, as the red ray continued to do its job.
The other Si Fan, the one driving the helicopter, gaped in astonishment and nausea. Bond had to perform the small mental trick of putting aside what he had just seen and concentrate on what had to be done next. Or, rather, not to concentrate, simply to do. He only had two seconds of power left in the thing.
With those seconds, he used the ray from Flint's lighter to cut into the pilot's chest. The man had time to cry out, and that was about it. Acrid, sickening-smelling smoke emerged from the hole Bond had made in him.
His dead hands began to drag backwards on the controls.
The craft began to lurch crazily upward. Bond thrust himself forward, leaning towards the control panel as the axis of gravity within changed. The first man he had killed slid backwards and toward the open door. The pilot was strapped in. Bond grabbed for the control yoke, sat down in the dead man's lap, mentally swore at the smell, and, within seconds, brought the damned thing back under control again.
Idly, he noticed that the machine was just a commercially-available helicopter, modified for deadly use by its buyers. Obviously bought in America. But it had to have been a long time since the FAA inspected this one.
Bond had flown helicopters before. He cut the rotor engine enough to drop the craft back to the level of the Pyramid which Flint occupied. This thing had to be done quickly, now. There'd be no way of preserving secrecy with this blasted eggbeater in the mix.
He held it as steady as possible outside the broken window of the Pyramid. "Flint," he called out. "Boarding."
The Yank was off the floor and into the helicopter faster even than Bond had managed. He took in the sight of the two corpses, grimly. Bond handed him back the lighter. "Thanks," he told Flint. "What was that, really?"
"Laser," said Flint. "Unparalleled for cutting. Inefficient with power, though. I won't be able to use much in the lighter for a bit, I'm afraid."
"Bugger that," said Bond, and brought the chopper up a floor. He pointed the front of the machine at the windows before him and triggered the machine gun. The windows before it burst as had the ones a floor below. If there was anything made of meat in the path of the bullets, they weren't worth worrying about now. Bond brought the helicopter as near to the windows as he could manage.
"There'd better be an autopilot on this thing," said Bond.
"There is," said Flint, as he reached over and activated it. "We're going to have to finish this before this runs out of fuel."
"Just a moment," said Bond. He reached inside his vest for a handset and thumbed it on. "Baldwin. Are you there?"
The voice of Ward Baldwin came back to him. "Acknowledging, Mr. Bond."
"You and Lee have to contact the police," said Bond. "We're having to exit a chopper up here. Autopilot. If we don't get back to it in time, it'll crash. Keep spectators out of the area. Period. Out."
"Received, Mr. Bond," replied Baldwin. "Out."
Bond cut off the switch on the handset. UNCLE had been notified, of course, and both it and the FBI were on alert, probably in the area. So, he assumed, was the AEC. Of course, if he and Flint didn't finish the job within the next hour or so, they'd have a lot more to concern them than a falling helicopter.
Flint was gathering himself at the door of the helicopter. "Mind the glass, Flint," Bond barked after him. He needn't have worried. The American flipped through the air like the most finely trained of trapeze artists, made himself into a ball, shot through the jagged window space, and unfolded himself inside to land on both feet. After sweeping the room with his gaze and seeing little of anything besides normal office space, Flint turned back, pulled out his gun, and smashed away at the glass shards still embedded in the bottom and sides of the window. Then he waved to Bond.
With a bit of disgust and even more of effort, Bond raised himself from the lap of the dead pilot, stepped across the corpse of said pilot's partner, and leapt across the gap between. Flint's hand was poised to grasp his wrist, which he did. Flint fell backwards into the room, dragging Bond with him. Both ended up on the floor, thankful not to be cut by the glass shards lying flat below them.
"Got a directional yet?" asked Bond.
"No, power's drained," said Flint. "Can you use yours?"
Bond took the pocket Geiger counter from his pack and listened to its muted ticking. The signals came most strongly from the direction facing the hall without. He nodded his head in that direction. Flint nodded up and down, sharply, and both of them proceeded to the door. With Flint standing against the wall near the jamb, Bond kicked the door open and went out, gun leveled.
Three figures in dark coats and hats, situated at the farthest end of the hall from them, started forward. Bond opened fire on them, almost point-blank. He shot them in the chest area and in the faces.
He could tell from the noises the bullets made that they were spanging off. Ricocheting.
The men in the coats and hats were still coming on. He'd knocked the hat off one of them. The pate below it seemed to gleam in what moonlight was available. All three of the buggers were swinging their arms, mechanically.
Flint, who appeared by his side, gun in hand, was astonished. Bond turned to him. "Armored," he snapped.
"No," said Flint, in wonder. "Machines."
"What? These things can't be robots!"
"Worse," said Flint. "They're what Emma was telling us about. They're Cybernauts."
To be continued...
Notes for part 10:
"There's nothing I can do?" The speaker is Matt Helm, top agent
of ICE, whose adventures have been chronicled in a series of novels by
Donald Hamilton, beginning with DEATH OF A CITIZEN.