The Doomsday Affair Read online

  Solo shivered—not with fear, but rage at his helplessness.

  That plane would soon be airborne, loaded with its deadly cargo. It didn’t seem to matter much now that a girl named Barbry Coast was bending over him, ready to drive a knife into his back. What mattered was that the entire world was in danger, and he could do nothing to stop it.

  There was a new and terrible irony in it, too. Life now quivered tentatively more than halfway down his fingers. He could wriggle his feet, but he could not lift them. He could flex his fingers, but he could not move his hands.

  Using all his will power, he managed to turn his neck, his head twisting so that he faced Barbry. There was nothing to see in her face except the pallid emptiness.

  “Barbry!”

  She did not respond. He saw that her eyes did not even blink. Nothing would reach her.

  He sweated, seeing the knife lifting above her shoulder, her gaze fixed on his back, between his shoulder blades, precisely as Su Yan had commanded her.

  Below them, the rumble of the slowly rising lift.

  Nearer, the easy breathing as Barbry lifted the knife to plunge it—three times, Su Yan had told her. She was totally relaxed, dispassionate, her subconscious entirely divorced from this robot-action of her body.

  The lifting elevator grumbled, the building quivering. The knife glittered, stopping at the crest of the arc. The blade, zeroing on Solo’s heart, quivered in her hand, ready to flash downward.

  Solo tensed, desperately ordering his arm to fling upward—but knowing in advance that it wasn’t going to do it.

  VII

  SOLO HEARD the rustle of movement, the sudden shout of warning. For a split second he lay still, then his legs moved, and he twisted to one side. He swung his arm upward, and the tingling sensation of returning life flushed through him.

  He saw the knife striking downward. But contact was never made. Illya lunged through the air in an impossibly long tackle. He did it expertly, too, Solo saw, because to hit Barbry and drive her down upon him would send that knife into him with an impact Barbry could never manage alone.

  But Illya struck low, driving upward from the balls of his feet. His driving tackle carried Barbry forward and up, sending her sailing across Solo’s body to the tiled flooring beyond him.

  It was a near thing, but it was a complete miss. She struck face down, sliding some feet, losing the knife so that it clattered away almost to the wall.

  Illya landed on top of Solo, rolling across him. Solo saw that his wrists and his shirt were streaked with his blood, but his hands and arms were free.

  Solo spoke at once, putting the danger from Barbry and her knife from his mind, computing ahead, forcing himself to remain cool. He could move his head now, and his gaze located the lens of the closed-circuit camera in the far wall.

  Before Illya could pull himself around, Solo was speaking to him in a low tone: “The camera eye is directly across there, high in the wall. If you smash it, the control room will know it instantly.”

  Illya was on his feet. His gaze found the camera eye.

  He crossed the room, shoving a chair to the wall. Standing on the chair, he placed his hand over the lens and then calmly unscrewed it from the camera. Turning it around, he jammed it hard back into the aperture.

  He leaped off the chair.

  Solo said, “Illya. Stop her.”

  Barbry had pulled herself to her feet. Still moving in that halting robot’s motion, she crossed to the wall and retrieved the knife.

  “A lady with one-way mind,” Illya said.

  He strode across the room. She stared vacantly at him. He tried to take the knife, but she resisted. He caught her wrist and twisted it, removing the knife from her grasp. Her face showed no pain.

  “She’s disarmed,” Illya said across his shoulder. “But I’m afraid she still has murder on her mind.”

  Solo was sitting up now. He was not sure that he could stand, or that his legs would support him if he made it, but tension and rage had sent blood pulsing through his body, nullifying the effects of the paralyzing gas.

  He pulled himself up by clinging to a table, exploring the slow, confused return of his sensations. His skin tingled as a hand or fingers might, held too long in one position, or if the circulation were cut off.

  He stood shakily, like a newborn colt, clinging to the highly polished blond table.

  He heard the continued whine of the elevator, the rumbling through the earth and the foundations of the building.

  He straightened as a woup-woup whistling of the warning sirens flared, and then continued through the building. He knew the wrecked closed-circuit TV camera had created this warning. Undoubtedly word was already being called to DeVry and Su Yan below them. “Illya,” Solo said, keeping the warning sounds out of his thought processes. “Help me.”

  Illya ran to him. Solo jerked his head toward the gas cylinders.

  Solo was able to move only with a slow, shuffling walk that enraged him.

  He forced himself to speak calmly, but inside he was shaking desperately with the fear of failure even when he’d been given this last chance.

  “Three gas masks from that cabinet, Illya. A machine pistol from there. Watch that door. If it opens, start firing, and keep firing until it closes—no matter who it is.”

  Illya nodded.

  Solo pulled free and half-fell against the wall where the rubber tubing which had carried the nerve gas to him still lay. He picked up the tubing, disconnected it from the cylinder of nerve gas, and reconnected it to one of a simple anesthetic gas. Then he ran the rubber tubing up the wall to the air conditioning duct.

  Illya broke open the cabinets. He tossed a gas mask to Solo, pulled one over his own head. With a machine pistol under his arm, he crossed the room to where Barbry stood as though dazed, or walking in her sleep.

  Solo waited only until the mask was being pulled down over Barbry’s head. He turned the cut-on valve of the anesthetic cylinder to full.

  He stared at the gauge, seeing the needle flash across it, and danger lights flare red. The lights he ignored, just as he ignored the increased woup-woup of the warning whistles.

  The faint whispering of an opening door struck him and he turned at the moment Illya, on his knees, pressed the trigger of the machine pistol.

  Two guards were already running into the room. The machine-pistol bucked, and they crumpled forward, still running after they were already dead.

  Shuffling, pulling himself along the cabinets, Solo armed himself. The door was pulled closed.

  “Don’t try to wait for me,” Solo told Illya. “Try to stop that elevator—even if you have to detonate their bomb.”

  He saw Illya nod inside his gas mask.

  Illya gave Barbry a shove. She stumbled, moving toward Solo. He caught her, gripping her arm with his left hand.

  Illya stepped over the bodies of the dead guards. He emptied the machine pistol into the electrically controlled lock mechanism of the door. It swung open like the broken wing of a bird.

  Illya tossed the emptied machine pistol behind him.

  Solo tossed him two new guns, and Illya went through the door into the corridor. The woup-wouping whistle was increased ten times with the thick door hanging open.

  Through the din, Solo heard the rasping fire of the machine pistol outside the door.

  He heard DeVry’s voice blaring on the suddenly activated building intercom. “Proceed! Proceed! Proceed! Do not stop for anything! Proceed with the plan as scheduled! Do not stop! Proceed! Proceed!”

  There was wildness in his voice, and frustration, and the brittle wail of insanity as the anesthetic gas spread through the air-conditioning and men hesitated in what they were doing, paused, stopped, and sank to the floor unconscious.

  DeVry’s voice persisted.

  The intercom crackled with his commands, with his shouting, his cursing, his sobbing.

  Solo grabbed Barbry’s arm, dragging her after him. He stared at her face through the pl
astic face-shield of her mask. Her violet eyes remained staring, drugged. He talked to her savagely, knowing she was not hearing him, but himself gathering some strength from bullying her into following him from the room.

  In the corridor outside, Illya was the first person he saw. The young agent held his machine pistol at ready, but Solo saw in his face through the mask that Illya was lost.

  “The elevators,” Solo said. “The one marked private must go down to the underground lab.”

  “Come on,” Illya said. “We’ll go together. There’s time now. The gas has hit this place hard.”

  Solo moved with him, still shuffling, still dragging Barbry after him. He saw men slumped against the walls, lying on the flooring, some of them with guns fallen from their limp hands.

  He saw something else. This was Illya’s show from this moment. He could shuffle along in his wake, he could fire his machine pistol, he could find their way through the maze of floors and corridors—but only Illya could move with any speed.

  They reached the elevators. DeVry’s voice was weaker, but his wails were higher-pitched. Illya pressed the button on the elevator marked Private. When it whirred to a stop, its doors parting, they saw two guards slumped on the cage flooring, guns beside them.

  Illya pressed the last button on the panel. The elevator started a swift descent. DeVry’s voice rose, faded on the intercom, sank to a whisper, ceased…

  The elevator doors parted on the huge white-lighted lab. The manually operated elevator was high above their level. The man operating it had donned one of the masks the scientists used inside the atomic cages. He had oxygen and protection from the anesthetic.

  Otherwise the huge room was like a place of human statues. Men in almost every position, caught there in that final moment when the gas had felled them. Men with guns in their arms, men fallen to their knees or braced against walls. Colonel Baker, the renegade pilot, still clung to his can of beer, even in unconsciousness.

  Sam Su Yan had been struck to his knees. Across the room at the intercom microphone, DeVry still clutched the instrument, on his knees before its lighted panel.

  The lift operator jerked his head up, and saw Illya run out of the elevator ahead of Solo and Barbry.

  The operator instinctively slapped at the braking ratchet on the smallest series of wheels. As his fingers struck the small metal piece, Illya shot him. He toppled away from the controls.

  The tiny ratchet fell forward, slipping between the cogs of the oiled wheels. But total contact had not been made. The small wheel slipped past the ratchet. It struck the next cog, slowing it. But the second larger wheel then slipped backward, not braked, and so on in series until the cables lifting the hoist slipped and the elevator shuddered, slipping downward each time the ratchet missed its cog.

  Illya stared at the small wheels a moment, then at the trembling cables under the flooring of the lift.

  “Let’s get out of here! That hoist will fall faster and faster—by the time it strikes this sump—”

  He did not even bother to finish the thought, herding Solo and Barbry ahead of him into the elevator. He stopped at the doors, holding them open. He lifted his machine pistol, aiming it at Sam Su Yan, meaning to kill him and DeVry before he cleared out.

  “Forget it!” Solo said behind him. “When that lift falls out of control, their bomb is going to go. Let them go with it.”

  The breath sighed out of him and Illya nodded. He stared one final time at Su Yan, at DeVry across the room, at that little ratchet slipping as it tried to brake that tiny wheel.

  He let the gun sink to his side.

  The elevator doors whispered shut. The warning whistle continued to wail in the eerie world of immobility. The elevator screamed upward, stopping at ground level.

  “Nobody outside this building is going to be affected by that gas,” Solo warned. “Be ready to fight your way out.”

  Illya nodded. “I need no coaxing. The way that ratchet is slipping is all the impetus I need for clearing out of here, fast, no matter who’s in my way.”

  Solo led them along the corridor to the maintenance exit, out of which he had been permitted to run in his earlier escape attempt. Su Yan had enjoyed that cat-and-mouse game, letting him get almost within reach of escape, but that dry run had shown him where the institute cars were parked.

  He shoved open the door, hearing the savage yelping of the dogs from the kennel. He and Barbry stepped out into the bright morning sunlight, followed by Illya with his gun held at ready.

  The first car Solo saw on the ramp was a Rolls-Royce, black, gleaming, headed out on the drive. It was undoubtedly Osgood DeVry’s car, waiting for an instant getaway in case of any disruption in the plans of the doomsday bomb.

  Beyond the garage and the cars on the ramp, the silver fan-jet rested in the sun, surrounded by armed men and technicians. The woup-wouping whistle shattered the morning silence.

  “The Rolls,” Solo said. if any car has a chance to clear this place, it would be DeVry’s.”

  They ran for it. Inside the garage, men shouted. Illya grabbed the door of the Rolls, threw it open. In the same motion, he knelt, the machine pistol bucking and rattling as he spray-fired into the garage.

  Men turned, running from the plane. Illya sprang into the Rolls under the wheel, turning the key as he moved.

  Solo thrust Barbry in between them, and Illya had the car rolling as he struck the seat and slammed the door. The men on the grass sank to their knees, firing at the racing car. Illya braced the machine pistol on the window, firing only for effect. His entire attention was on the drive and the iron gate in the fieldstone walls.

  The gate attendant ran out as the car approached. Behind them, Solo saw the other cars being started, racing forward in pursuit.

  Illya held the machine pistol out in plain sight, fixed on the guard. He shouted at him. The man nodded quickly pressing a button. The huge gates swung open.

  Illya stepped hard on the gas. “I’ve always loved the way these things look,” he said. “But they handle awkwardly.”

  Solo was watching the road behind them. “Do you suppose you could move it faster?”

  “I don’t know,” Illya replied. “I’ve never actually driven one before.”

  He held the car close to the inside of the winding mountain road, slowing as he went into the curves, but speeding as he navigated them.

  They were some miles down the mountain when the explosion came. It shook the earth, battering it. From above them, earth crumpled and boulders larger than houses fell free. Other small explosions followed. Behind them there was silence as the pursuing cars stopped up above.

  “That chalet up there,” Illya said, shivering slightly. “It must have crumbled into itself.”

  “An underground atomic explosion that they’ll pick up all over the world,” Solo said. He drew the mask off his face. “Maybe they’ll write it off as an earthquake.

  The battered mountain continued to quiver and shake as if torn loose from its foundations. The violence of that atomic underground blast loosened the earth from its shackles. Huge boulders, tom loose, hurtled downward like pebbles in a land-pounding avalanche. Brittle-rooted trees broke out of the rocky soil, sending up more thunder, more dust.

  The big car rattled to its underpinnings. It lunged out of control and, with the convulsions torturing the earth, danced in jerky pirouettes from one side of the narrow road to the other. Shatterproof glass splintered, webbed and crumpled.

  Illya fought the wheel, pulling his foot off the accelerator.

  His hands gripped the wheel even harder when there was an electronically triggered click, and Su Yan’s voice rose eerily from a concealed recorder.

  “Memo,” the voice droned. “‘From Samuel Su Yan to Osgood DeVry.” The car slowed. “Well, old friend of childhood days—whom I trusted no more then than now—you will be hearing this memo for one reason only. Something will have fouled our plan, and you will be running for safety, leaving me to face the debacle.
This time you won’t make it—”

  As if sharing the same thought, Solo and Illya simultaneously thrust open doors on both sides of the Rolls. The voice continued, “‘Race down the mountain. The heat bomb will be triggered by your speed. You can’t win. I always have the last word. It’s too late for you now—and my last word, my friend, is goodbye.” The recording was speaking to an empty car.

  Solo grabbed Barbry’s head against his chest and hurtled them outward. When Illya leaped free the car went finally out of control. As it struck a mountain wall and rebounded, the heat bomb exploded, turning the mountain white. The fragmented car still moved, rolling, brightly orange with flames, to the brink of the cliff, and over it.