The Ghost Riders Affair Read online

  The Ghost Riders Affair

  By Harry Whittington

  July 1966

  Volume 1, Issue 6

  Two men alone must divert THRUSH's ruthless plan at using the Prehistoric past to master mankind. Can they do it?

  Baffled, U.N.C.L.E. faces the deadly riddle of the sleek luxury liner which sped off into the dark on schedule—and vanished from the face of the earth! Follow Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin in this, their most danger-packed adventure of all. It's a story you'll never forget.

  Deep inside the Earth a blind, gasping madman had marshaled a monstrous army of Evil, as Solo and Illya race against time and cruel odds to face THRUSH's most incredible death plot of all.

  ACT I: INCIDENT OF THE STOLEN TRAIN

  Protected by every safety device know, the Central Chieftain flashed through the night, racing against time between Pittsburgh and Chicago.

  "Care to sign these letters now, Mr. Howell? They're urgent."

  Harrison Howell glanced up from the plush luxury of his custom-built sleeping car. Accompanied by two male secretaries, a French chef, and a guard supplied by Protection, Inc., Howell waved the secretary aside. "I'll get to them before we reach Chicago."

  Stout, in his fifties, accustomed to being obeyed unquestionably, Howell smiled. "Got involved in this geology book written by Dr. Leonard Finnish before he disappeared. A man I'd liked to have known, since geology was my first interest—"

  "But your letters, sir—"

  "Later."

  At this instant all train lights flared out, throwing the entire streamliner into total darkness.

  In the Chicago dispatch office bored operators checked the progress of the Chieftain on the brightly illumined computer, a complex of multi-colored lights, each bulb a vital message in itself.

  An operator shouted, "The computer's flipped! Get a technician in here!"

  Other operators crowded around the suddenly dark, silent computer.

  The awed operator stammered, "Lights out on the Pittsburgh-Chicago run. Three hundred miles southeast of Chicago. The computer clicked off as if the trip was completed."

  "Try to contact the Chieftain by phone."

  And it wasn't too many hours later when the nation's afternoon newspapers carried the incredible story: The impossible had happened. A streamliner disappeared off its tracks, vanishing from the face of the earth, with all passengers and crew.

  TWO

  Hundreds of miles west, in the Sawtooth Mountain ranges of Wyoming, a rail-thin cowpuncher in battered Stetson, dusty levis and boots rode dazedly downslope toward the ranch yard of the Maynard Cattle company.

  At the ranch house people spilled into the yard. They'd spent two days searching for him. They shouted at him as he approached.

  He sat straight in his saddle, but when he came near they saw he was dazed. He almost fell. Three men grabbed him

  "Take him inside," Carlos Maynard said. A heavy-set man in his forties, his florid face was troubled. "Get a doctor."

  Ranch hands carried the rider into the house and laid him down on a bed.

  Four hours later, a doctor from Cripple Bend settlement shook his head over the rider. "Can't find anything physically wrong with Pete. Looks like exhaustion and exposure."

  Carlos Maynard stared at the doctor. "That all you can tell me?"

  "What else do you want me to say?"

  Maynard scowled. "This is the second man I've sent out looking for my cattle. They come back like this—dazed. Out of their heads. Don't know where they've been. You find nothing wrong. Only they can't tell me where they were, or what's happened to more than one thousand head of Santa Gertrudis cattle."

  The doctor shook his head. "Let Pete sleep. Maybe when he wakes up he can remember what happened."

  Awaking after ten hours of sleep, Pete Wasson found Maynard sitting beside the bed. "What happened up there, Pete?"

  Pete stared around the roughly furnished room. "How did I get here?"

  "Come on, Pete! Three days ago I sent you looking for Marty Nichelson and my cattle—"

  "Three days?" Pete's eyes clouded. "I been gone three days?"

  Maynard managed to control his indignation and puzzlement. "Right. My cattle have been missing a week now. Did you find even a trace?"

  Pete drew his hand across his eyes. "Nothing, boss. They just vanished like clouds, not leaving a track! I remember I kept thinking it was like that song about the ghost riders—"

  "That's enough senseless talk, Pete! I want to know where my cattle are!"

  "That's all I can tell you. There was a clear trail just like Marty said, up into the Sawtooth ranges. Then the trail just stopped."

  "You loco? A thousand head of cattle have got to leave some kind of trail!"

  "These didn't, boss. That's all I know."

  "All right. What happened to you?"

  Pete Wasson stirred on the bed, face gray, almost afraid to answer. "I must have fallen, boss—"

  "Don't you know?"

  "No sir, I don't. It's all cloudy. Seems to me a rain came up, and I was looking for trail. Got this kind of funny feeling—a headache like, dizzy, sick at my stomach. I must have fallen, hit my head on a rock. I remember riding down here toward the ranch, and then I woke up in here. That's all I know, Mr. Maynard."

  Maynard walked to the door. He stared at the dudes sitting around the huge front room, waiting to hear the verdict on Pete. A pall had shrouded the ranch for more than a week.

  Not only was Maynard losing cattle but the tourists were getting edgy, leaving, as though the ranch were haunted. Well, that didn't make sense. But then neither did the loss of a thousand head of cattle!

  "Maybe somebody's trying to put you out of business, Mr. Maynard." Marty Nichelson said. The young cowboy sat beside Pete's bed. "I can't tell you any more than Pete has. Not even as much. Like he said, I got this headache, too, but I know how sore you were going to be, losing all those cattle and no trace, so I kept riding. This headache got worse, and I got so sick I headed into Cripple Bend."

  "And spent three days on a drunk!" Maynard accused him.

  Marty winced and nodded. "I don't know what happened, boss. It was like I was sick—"

  "Drunk!"

  "But first I was sick. And fouled up. Them cattle just walking off the face of the earth didn't make sense. I decided a couple of drinks might help.

  Next thing I knew, you said I'd been gone three days. I wish I could help you, but I can't tell you any more than Pete did."

  Maynard growled. "Pete hasn't told me anything! But somebody's going to!"

  Newspaper headlines, television cameras and radio newsmen sped the story around the world: 1000 CATTLE MISSING WITHOUT TRACE.

  * * *

  Illya Kuryakin walked silently down the gleaming length of the long streamliner.

  Behind Illya five Central trainmen and special detectives watched him, but Illya ignored them.

  He paused at the special car which had been added to the regular Chieftain run, making this an exact replica of the train which had vanished.

  The small sender-receiver crackled in his hand. Alexander Waverly's voice spoke as if the United Network Command officer were at Illya's shoulder. "Did you find something, Mr. Kuryakin?"

  Illya grinned faintly from beneath corn-yellow hair.

  "Why are you smiling?" This was Solo's voice from the small speaker.

  "Because I'm on your candid camera," Illya said.

  "Yes. And you will be, " Alexander Waverly told him. "We will attempt to keep this train on camera as long as we can."

  "Do you pick up the bleep signal?" Illya asked.

  "Loud and clear," Solo answered. It was as if they were not in the command office at U.N
.C.L.E. headquarters but were nearer than the train detectives. Still, Illya had a sense of being alone that he could not explain and could not escape.

  A slender, Slavic blond man, he was no stranger to peril. Congenitally a loner, he liked solitary assignments.

  It seemed to onlookers that he was like a machine. At moments like this nothing existed for him except the assigned task. He'd been born in a country where freedom was taxed and strained and sometimes betrayed; he had learned to despise evil in whatever guise it appeared, to fight it wherever he found it.

  Now, Illya felt as if he might be embarking on more than a routine train ride from Pittsburgh to Chicago, his latest assignment from U.N.C.L.E.—the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

  "You look a little green around the gills," he heard Napoleon Solo saying, knowing that Solo stood beside Waverly in the command room, watching him on closed-circuit television.

  "Poor camera work," Illya said casually.

  But inwardly, Illya admitted that Solo was perceptive. The unexplained disappearance of a sleek modern streamliner from its tracks belonged to the ghostly unknown, the kind of fantastic stories Illya Kuryakin had heard from superstitious natives in his early childhood.

  His mind was coldly analytical, and he had no patience for fantasy. Yet not even the coldest mind could deny that a train, exactly like this one, had vanished, and with it every soul aboard. And without leaving a trace.

  It was as if Alexander Waverly read Illya's thought. The receiver crackled as Waverly spoke: "We may not be able to follow the entire run by televised pictures, Illya, but no matter where your train goes, you'll send back a radio bleep. Don't worry—we'll follow you all the way."

  The conductor said, "We're ready to roll now, Mr. Kuryakin, if you are."

  Illya waved his arm and nodded. He swung aboard the custom-made sleeper that was a precise duplicate of the car in which billionaire philanthropist Harrison Howell had ridden into nothingness.

  The sleek streamliner glided along the tracks. Illya prowled the richly appointed car.

  "Do you take well to being a rich man, Illya?" Solo inquired via the speaker.

  "I was born a billionaire at heart," Illya answered. "I thought you knew."

  There was no reply from the command room in New York. Illya turned up the volume on the sender-receiver. "Something gone wrong, Solo?"

  Still there was no answer. Illya shook the receiver. The line between him and the command room was open. He was certain of it. There was the urgent crackle, yet neither Solo nor Waverly spoke.

  Illya said, "Solo, answer please. Waverly. This is Mayday. Come in, please."

  The speaker crackled in his hand. Holding his breath, Illya waited, but no one spoke.

  He pressed the sending button. "Come in. Come in. Can you read the bleep-message?"

  As if distantly, Illya heard Solo's voice. But Solo was speaking to Waverly, not to Kuryakin: "Can they locate the source of the interference, sir?"

  Then Illya heard Waverly, voice sharply impatient: "Negative."

  "We better tell Illya the problem," Solo suggested.

  "Yes!" Illya spoke loudly into the sender. "Somebody be kind enough to tell me what's going on."

  Alexander Waverly's voice came into the private car clearly: "Slight problem here, Illya, but it should not be a major obstacle. Temporarily at least, we've lost the televised picture. When the train got under way, some interference was set.

  "We're getting nothing but a jumbled pattern at the moment. We're working on it. Meantime, I assure you the bleep is coming in strong. We're following every mile of your trip. As soon as we get the picture back, we'll let you know. Meantime, I'm sure I don't have to caution you to remain alert."

  Illya stood motionless in the private car aisle.

  He looked around at the luxurious appointments. Everything was arranged for the animal comfort of men of wealth and power. Men like Harrison Howell.

  Howell had been poor in his youth. He'd worked his way through school, majoring in geology. His first job had been with an oil company. Now his holdings in oil ringed the world.

  Illya shook his head. When the train bearing Howell had vanished, U.N.C.L.E. had made a routine check into his background, trying to find some hidden evil. The computers found none. Howell had indulged himself, making all the wishful dreams of an under-privileged boy come true, but he had been honest, hard-working, unselfish, patriotic, in no way linked with subversive factions such as THRUSH.

  Illya prowled the car. He had searched his own mind for some logical explanation, and had found none.

  Assigned to this trip by Alexander Waverly, he had not held much hope for its success.

  Now, alone in this car, he could not shake a sense of unexplained, mounting tension.

  "Keep busy, Illya," he told himself aloud, for no better reason than that hearing his own voice was reassuring in the eerie silence as the streamliner raced west through the night.

  He checked over his own arsenal of latest U.N.C.L.E. designed gimmicks for communication and self-protection. The machine pistol that assembled from light weight parts that served other purposes as well. The small button in his lapel that transmitted its own "bleep" received only in United Command headquarters.

  He moved along the aisle, thinking that he was equipped with the latest inventions, and yet he was on a witch-hunting errand. Could fifteen-car trains actually vanish in this modern world?

  He could not rid himself of that rising feeling of something wrong.

  What could be wrong? He bent over and stared through the thick windows at the night country whipped past on the hundred-mile-an-hour wind drift. Great, rich country, its people sleeping in security in their beds. The wan lights of a midwest village flared by, then the distant glow of a farm house window.

  It was all too normal to support the idea of unearthly disappearance; yet, he waited, tense for the unknown into which this train raced.

  At the furbished desk, Illya lifted the intra-train phone, pressed the engine button.

  After a moment a man's casual voice spoke, "Engineer."

  Illya said, "Kuryakin in the special car."

  "You living it up, Mr. Kuryakin?" the engineer asked.

  "I don't know," Illya said. "That's what I called you to find out."

  The engineer laughed. "If it was any smoother, Mr. Kuryakin, we'd be flying."

  Illya replaced the phone, aware that he was less than reassured by the engineer's confidence. A train had disappeared a week ago.

  Still, hundreds of trains had covered this same tracks, night and day, before and after that strange disappearance.

  The railroad people had made every effort to conceal the loss. Failing this, they'd tried to minimize it while they retraced the known run foot by foot. The railings appeared unaltered, there was nothing to suggest any calamity. It was simply as if the fifteen cars, the special sleeper, and all its people had simply ceased to exist.

  "We were called in at United Command," Alexander Waverly had told Illya and Solo in the command room three days earlier, "when world-wide panic might ensue if more publicized agencies were at work. We here at the command have determined to make up an exact duplicate of the vanished Chieftain down to the special sleeper in which Harrison Howell rode."

  Now, Illya watched the night world skim past in darkness and sudden, quickly lost lights. The duplicate Chieftain had been altered in only one way. Illya himself had installed the United Command bleep-signal which would emanate from the train no matter where it went. These bleeps were being monitored on special receivers in United Network's command room.

  Illya smiled. It was as if the entire evil-fighting organization rode this train with him.

  Yet why did the hackles rise at the nape of his neck? Why couldn't he escape the sense of an impending wrong so incredible that even the full forces of United Command might be helpless against it?

  "These thoughts don't make sense," Illya told himself aloud. "It's just another assignme
nt, like returning a book to the library. And you can handle it."

  Nevertheless, the slowing of the train went through him like a sudden electric shock and he lunged for the desk, grabbing up the phone, signaling the engineer.

  "Engineer."

  "What's wrong?" Illya asked. "Why are you slowing?"

  "Just a water stop, Mr. Kuryakin," the engineer said.

  "Why didn't you let me know?"

  The engineer's voice sharpened. "You'll find the stop listed, Mr. Kuryakin, if you'd bothered to check the trip pattern."

  "How long will we be stopped here?" Illya said.

  But there was no answer. The engineer had replaced his receiver.

  Abruptly, the train shook like a wet dog, the metal parts grinding and squealing in protest.

  The lights flashed out, but came on again immediately.

  The train was sinking, straight downward. It was not as if it were entering a tunnel, but as if the fifteen cars were being lowered via some kind of elevator!

  Illya rushed to the door. He grabbed the knob, turning it. The door was locked.

  Illya did not even bother checking it; the door was somehow electronically sealed, as if the door were frozen into its framing.

  Heeling around, Illya caught up the nearest heavy object and ran to the windows with it.

  He stopped, holding the bar aloft, useless. It was heavy enough to break the thick glass, but beyond them were walls of solid rock like close-pressed subway tunneling.

  The train continued to plunge straight downward toward the center of the earth.

  Illya jerked the sender-receiver from his jacket pocket. He pressed the button. "Uncle Charley, come in. Mayday. Come in, Uncle Charley. Acknowledge please. Over."

  There was no sound. The instrument was dead metal in his hand. He loosed his fingers, letting the small sender slip from his grip to the floor.

  The lights flared up and then were doused, putting the car into stygian darkness, a pall of gloom that pressed in hot and thick and suffocating.

  THREE

  Napoleon Solo stood in the United Network Command Room and stared at the blank screen of the instant-bulletin set.

  A kind of creeping helplessness immobilized him.

  Other men, of every age and nationality, moved around him, each wearing the same electronic identification badge that he wore, all of them vitally concerned in this latest unnerving disorder that left the world-wide organization impotent and disabled.