Solo followed immediately. Over the loudspeaker, Vanessa Robin shrieked in rage. An alarm klaxon began to scream; alerting the entire garrison to the atttempted escape.

THREE

Napoleon Solo banged his skull, shins and elbows as he crawled along the gamy-smelling tunnel with all possible speed. Illya reached the tunnel's end and tumbled out on to a ramp which ran down from the tunnel to the floor of a small cement-block room. Half of one of the other walls was the entrance to the bear's cage. A large section of bars had been slid aside, and a musky effluvium of straw and droppings floated from the dark place beyond.

On the floor of the small chamber sprawled the THRUSH animal handler, an electric prod in his lifeless fingers and a short kitchen knife projecting from his throat.

"Not very neat," Illya commented. "But let's not quibble."

Helene was trembling, obviously struggling to keep her fear under control. "I—I've never killed anyone before—"

"What happened? I thought you were one of the chief lady storm troopers of the Fourth Reich," Solo grunted as he unbent himself on the ramp outside the tunnel. He reached up and slammed a switch which lowered the bars into place. Behind, in the pit, the klaxon still howled.

Helene gave a quick, uncertain nod. "I thought I believed it. I pretended to be as tough as the next. But I've never killed. Not until now." Her head lifted. All the explanation the two U.N.C.L.E. agents needed was contained in the furious blaze of her eyes and the bitter way she said, "When that woman shot Papa, as if he were nothing, nothing but a lump of mud—everything changed. I had to strike back at them."

"We'd better get moving," Illya warned. "How do we get out of here?"

"The main gate of the estate is heavily guarded," the girl said.

Solo's eyes crinkled down to worried slits. "And the troops will be out in force."

Illya said, "I left two THRUSH fellows sleeping at another gate on the far side of the parade ground."

"Then let's try that," Solo said. "Helene, lead on."

The girl's wide black leather belt caught dull reflections from the ceiling lights as she spun around and unbolted an iron door. "This stairway leads up to a delivery passageway."

In the distance boots slammed. Other klaxons picked up the bleating ooogah-ooogah of the first. With Helene racing beside them, the two U.N.C.L.E. agents took the steps upward two at a time.

Solo was strangely conscious of the jaws of a trap closing unseen somewhere around them. His palms ran with cold sweat. Like a warning, the outraged bellow of the frustrated bear drifted after them.

They reached a feebly-lit landing.

"Here is the entrance to the delivery passageway," Helene whispered. She pressed her hands against a steel door patterned with rivets. Illya put his shoulder against it to help her roll it aside. Solo peered out.

To the left, a high, wide concrete passage ran back to double doors with round glass portholes blacked out with paint. To the right the passage opened on to what appeared to be a loading dock. A small, nondescript van was backed up to the dock. Beyond this vehicle Solo glimpsed the flood-lit parade ground, curiously green, empty, silent. In the far distance the wall reared up again.

"Decidedly peculiar," Illya whispered.

Even pitched low, his voice bounced eerily from the walls of the delivery passage. A field mouse nibbling at a wilted brown lettuce leaf inside a produce crate was the only living thing visible anywhere in the passage. The mouse raised its head, wiggled its nose, blinked its small ruby-colored eyes at them and bounded away into the thick-clustered shadows.

"Peculiar," Illya repeated. "No noise now. The klaxons have stopped. I should think Miss Robin and her cohorts would be boxing us in by remote control, locking every single door in the place until we were trapped."

"Maybe they're watching us on scanners," Solo suggested.

Illya chewed his lip. There were large circles of fatigue under his eyes. "Shall we see? They took my weapons away when they caught me, but evidently they thought they were leaving me my cigarettes."

From his pants pocket Illya pulled a gaudily-printed cigarette package. He flicked his thumbnail against the top. The lid popped open on a spring; the communicator was meticulously disguised with foil paper and cellophane.

"Napoleon," Illya said as he set a recessed control stud, "in the event that we don't get out alive, we should make certain that this little corner of the THRUSH empire ceases to function."

Solo nodded.

He gave a bleak nod. Illya breathed, "Open Channel D, please. Extreme priority, class triple-A red."

In a moment there came a measured voice:

"Alexander Waverly here."

"Kuryakin, sir."

"Mr. Kuryakin! Good heavens, I've been worrying about you for hours!"

"We've managed to stay alive so far, sir. How much longer we can do so is problematical."

Mr. Waverly went hmmm. "That serious, eh? Where are you?"

"Somewhere in the Schwarzwald, sir. I can't give you the exact coordinates. We're trapped inside the research station where THRUSH is manufacturing its Goliaths. We may or may not be able to get all the way out."

"Mr. Solo is there with you?"

"Yes, sir."

Static crackled for a few seconds as Mr. Waverly digested the news. In a more somber tone he said, "Please put Solo on."

Illya passed the small unit to his friend. When Solo had acknowledged, Waverly asked, "Mr. Solo, as senior Operations and Enforcement officer on this mission, what is your assessment of the threat posed by the THRUSH operation you have penetrated?"

Solo licked his lips. The words were difficult to say:

"Grave, sir. Just as we feared, these agents they're turning out—both men and women—are incredible." Solo avoided Illya's eyes. "We called in to recommend action, sir. A bomber strike. As quickly as it can be arranged. I can switch this unit to a homing frequency to guide them in."

Mr. Waverly coughed. "What is your personal situation as of this moment, Mr. Solo?"

In a few words Solo explained their predicament. Waverly was silent a second. Then:

"You may not be able to escape by the time the planes arrive. I have just consulted our system maps. According to my rough calculation, as soon as I flash the request overseas through London, a fighter-bomber squadron already airborne will be on its way. Perhaps a matter of ten minutes at supersonic speeds until they arrive."

Solo's temples hurt. Helene watched him with round, horrified eyes. Solo tried to keep his emotions out of play. He tried to remember that all of his professional traning had pointed to this moment—the moment when an U.N.C.L.E. agent had to make the last, hardest decision and place his own life and the life of others secondary to the preservation of the United Network Command.

It still wasn't an easy decision to make. Solo thought of the pleasures he enjoyed. Good wine. The aroma of freshly-broiled lobster. The raspberry tang of a girl's lips—

"Send in the strike, sir," he said.

Mr. Waverly said, "Good luck and God speed, Mr. Solo. Over and out."

The communicator went silent. And the clock began to run out for the three of them.

FOUR

Solo had switched to the proper channel. The communicator was now sending its homing signal into the sky, where it would be picked up at a range of fifty miles by the squadron of fighter-bombers that would soon be flashing in.