The Monster Wheel Affair - McDaniel David - Страница 20

He snorted and leaned back in his chair. "You understand my position. All I can do is make the situation clear to you, and urge your greatest efficiency and most careful work. And this is unnecessary, because you work at peak efficiency most of the time anyway. If you didn't, you wouldn't be in the positions you now occupy."

"Exactly," said Napoleon. "We'd be sitting behind a nice safe desk somewhere."

Waverly's face wrinkled into a wry smile. "There are times, Mr. Solo, when I would gladly trade this nice safe desk of mine for a good simple field assignment. Out there, at least, you are allowed to shoot back when you are attacked. Here there is no protection, and no retaliation." He shook his head. "But to return to the subject. I would like to accelerate the operation by a day, if possible. How would you feel about taking off for Ceylon tomorrow, instead of Friday? It will give you a day less to practice with the submarine, but Simpson's reports on your work have been most satisfactory. How do you feel?"

They nodded simultaneously, and Napoleon spoke. "If you have the aerial survey maps, and the underwater contour maps we'll need, we can take off any time."

"They are ready, and will be here in my office for you tomorrow morning. You can spend the day making your final preparations. The jet leaves Kennedy International at four P.M. It's not a regular commercial flight, but a cargo plane. The submarine will accompany you disguised as several automobiles."

"I suppose it's too late to make one change in the submarine," said Illya slowly. "Not a major one—more a design revision than anything else."

They looked at him questioningly.

"Gray is such a drab color. How much more appropriate if it could be painted yellow."

"Appropriate? And why yellow?"

"Oh, never mind," said Illya. "It was just an idea...."

Chapter 10: "Island Ho!"

After lunch the Captain conducted Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin below decks and unlocked the doors in the "D" hold. The harsh incandescents overhead cast black shadows and sharp highlights around the small chamber, and left a pool of inky blackness under the Squid, which hung in a double canvas sling a few feet above the floor.

The ship in which they had left Colombo some three days ago was a disreputable-looking freighter, flying the Liberian flag, but owned and operated, sometimes at a profit, by the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. It usually worked as a real freighter, but was maintained as a cover for a number of unusual operations, for which it was specially outfitted. "D" hold was only one of the many special features of the ship. Only her captain was privy to all the surprises contained by her hull, and his U.N.C.L.E. rank was not much lower than Solo's own.

Down in the damp darkness of the hold, the mini-sub swung gently in her canvas cradle, awaiting the kiss of the salt water that would bring her to life. Inside her dull gray body rested maps, supplies and equipment that would direct and sustain two valuable men for an indefinite period of time—underwater, and ashore in a hostile land.

The ship's engines were idling now, and the time had come for parting. Napoleon and Illya slipped through the hatch in the underside of the Squid, with a last look around at the dim interior of the hold—the smell of rust, the patches of moss on the walls, and the bearded captain standing near the door, awaiting their signal.

And then they were inside. The slight pressure change on his eardrums told Napoleon that the outer hatch had been sealed, and a moment later Illya's blond head appeared in the airlock.

"Welcome aboard, Captain Kuryakin," he said formally.

"Thank you, Captain Solo," said the Russian agent, as he slipped into his padded control seat and fastened the safety straps.

At the same time, Napoleon lifted a small microphone from a clip below the board, thumbed the button on the side, and said, "Hello, Mother Ship. Squid is ready to go."

A speaker next to the mike-slip hissed to life. "Hello, Squid. Your signal clear. All set." The lights outside the little sub blinked out, and a moment later, as Illya touched a button, their own headlights blazed to life. "'D' hold sealed," said the speaker. "Open 'er up."

Faintly through the double hull of the submarine Napoleon could hear a low rumble of heavy machinery. Leaning forward, his head next to Illya's, he peered out through their little porthole into the vast hollow of the hold.

The floor was bubbling up, blue and sparkling, beneath them. The deck plates were drawing back into the bulkheads, and the sea, carrying the hot equatorial afternoon sunlight around the bulk of the ship, surged up under their plastic craft. It stopped a few feet below the porthole, and the speaker hissed again.

"Pressure in 'D' hold equalized. Bleed air."

Smoothly now the level began to rise. Illya turned off their headlights again as a bright line of surface crawled upwards across the window, and the Squid began to quiver as the water took her weight. She rocked slightly as she floated free of the cradle sling, and meters sprang to life as Napoleon closed the switches that began the powerful electromotive forces driving sea water out through the Coanda ring. The two agents felt a gentle surge as the Squid slipped out of her sling, and Napoleon slid a lever slowly forward. Tanks of ballast began to flood, and the walls of the hold seemed to move upward around them. Then the hull of the ship was suddenly floating above them, and the blue-green light flooded into their pressure sphere. Napoleon thumbed the microphone button again.

"Squid away," he said. "We'll see you right here in a few days."

"A-Okay, Squid," said the metallic voice under the control panel. "Stay out of trouble, and write if you get work."

"So long, Mother Ship."

"Back to radio silence, now," said Illya to Napoleon, a tone of caution in his voice.

"Squid out," said Napoleon, and replaced the microphone.

On two of his display screens, a long oval blob indicated the freighter, already two hundred yards behind them and a hundred feet above. The Squid continued to sink, aiming for a cruising depth of a thousand feet. Soon the inside lights were switched on, as the illumination from outside dropped through the spectrum past blue and green and finally out of the visual range altogether.

They leveled off some two-tenths of a mile below the sparkling waves, secure in the knowledge of more than two miles between them and the bottom, and Illya set the course at 195?. An automatic sonar watch would alert them if anything as large as themselves showed on their screens, or if an uncharted sea-mount should loom nearby. Napoleon leaned back for a nap. The chairs were comfortable, and they would probably have no place to sleep tonight.

"You ought to get some sleep too," he told Illya. "We have five hours to go before we come up on that island, and it's going to be a busy night."

"In a few minutes. You go ahead and I'll join you. I want to check our drift rate. The South Equatorial Current goes west at a knot and a half around here, and I don't want to miss our island by nine miles."

Napoleon woke up some time later to the smell of food. He looked first at his board, and saw they were still under way, at reduced speed, but the bottom was rising gradually. There was something showing on the edge of his scope, and he extended the range to its limits, regardless of lost definition.

Some ten miles ahead of them the bottom rose past their present depth and broke the surface over a space of two or three miles. He leaned back in his contour seat and declaimed in a properly nautical tone, "Island ho! Dead ahead at ten miles."