Destroyer - The Empire Dreams Part 16

"Harold?" His wife had come back out to him. Boom... boom ...boom...

It was like the footsteps of some remorseless movie monster, a celluloid beast come to devour them all.

"Maude, please step outside," Smith said calmly.

"What is it?"

"Please hurry," he pressed, a welling urgency in his tone.

Mrs. Smith obliged. At Smith's urging the two of them quickly made their way back up the sidewalk. There was shouting coming from Trafalgar Square by the time they reached the Piccadilly entrance to London's Underground. Air-raid sirens sounded. Fingers and cameras were aimed at the squadron of incoming ?ghters.

Smith didn't dawdle. In another minute the crowd would become a mob. As it was, the ?rst cl.u.s.ters of spectators were just beginning to herd themselves toward the safety of the subway as Smith and his wife climbed hurriedly down the stairs.

The stairway ended at a concrete landing that banked right into another staircase. This one was an illuminated tube with a metal railing running up either side.

Smith hurried down through the second enclosed staircase to the train platform below the city. He steered his wife to a spot near one of the largest support columns.

Already behind them the throngs of panicked people from the street were ?ooding down the stairs. Subway pa.s.sengers soon got the message. They stopped heading for the exits, staying instead on the platform with the recent street arrivals. Anxious chatter rippled through the crowd.

The station began to quickly ?ll up.

"They said in the paper that this was over." Maude Smith's voice trembled.

"It is a mistake to trust the London press," Smith replied thinly. He was thinking of how wrong he had been for trusting the RAF.

The bombs hadn't yet begun to strike the streets above them. However, the crowd sensed it was only a matter of time. The smell of fear and sweat from hundreds of anxious people ?lled the long platform area.

Smith heard a sudden sharp series of noises.

It wasn't the German bombs. The sound hadn't come from outside. It was far too close.

It almost sounded like...

Again. The noise was more insistent. Screams followed.

The rattle of machine-gun ?re grew worse. The crowd began to swell toward them. Pressing. Frantic. Behind the pillar Smith and his wife were safe. For now.

"What's happening?" Mrs. Smith begged. Smith did not respond.

The sound of weapons ?re ebbed momentarily. During the lull Smith took a chance to peer around the side of the column. He was just in time to see dozens of armed young men dressed in chillingly familiar uniforms. They were stomping up the staircase to the street.

He had to blink back his amazement. The men were dressed in the black-on-black uniforms of Germany's World War II SS. Their black boots clicked on the concrete stairs as they ran out of sight.

A moment later there was ?ring from the stairwell. Three bloodied bodies dropped into sight on the platform.

Smith wheeled on his wife.

"Stay here," he instructed, his face severe.

He started to go, but was stopped by a timid voice. "Harold, I'm scared."

Smith stopped dead.

He looked down at his wife. A plump woman on the far side of middle age. There was alarm on her gentle features.

Smith touched her softly on the cheek. "Everything will be ?ne, dear," he promised. Maude blinked back tears. She nodded once, bravely.

The crowd had ma.s.sed on the far end of the platform. There was no one between him and the stairs. Leaving his wife huddled behind a pillar with her bags of souvenir statuettes of Big Ben and London, England T-shirts, Harold W. Smith ran to the bloodstained subway staircase after the ?eeing band of neo-n.a.z.is.

THE SMALL IV ARMY accomplished a feat that the Third Reich had never been able to achieve during the six long years of the war in Europe. They had placed an invasion force on the streets of London. Neo-n.a.z.i ground troops swelled up from the Underground stations, ?ring as they ran. Others joined them on the street, exiting from buildings and cars. Bodies fell to the pavement as soldiers raced to ?nd shelter in enclosures along the mob scene that was Trafalgar Square. A whistling bomb landed amid a group of three soldiers, tearing a mailbox-sized hole in the pavement and ?inging the invaders through the smoke-clogged air.

The Master of Sinanju ?ew through the worst of the battle, a wraith in ?ery red. Even as armed soldiers swarmed the square from hidden positions all around, Chiun ran into the mouth of the nearest subway station.

There was still shooting going on belowground. He would stop as many as he could before they were able to join their murderous fellows above.

The old Korean found himself in a steeply angled pa.s.sageway. It veered off at a sharp bend far below. Footsteps clicked urgently against unseen concrete stairs.

Chiun raced down a half-dozen steps before ?inging himself in the air toward the landing below. The instant he was airborne, a crowd of black-suited men ran into view from the lower staircase. The soldiers didn't have time to be shocked. Chiun sailed in at an angle parallel to the stairs.

The heels of his sandaled feet caught the pair of men in the lead squarely in their chests. They ?ew backward from the pressure, slamming solidly against the wall of the stairwell. Their spines cracked audibly, bodies folding in half.

Some of the other men began ?ring. Flying lead pinged loudly in the cramped s.p.a.ce. Bullets chipped holes in the sealed concrete walls around them.

Chiun swirled through the volley of projectiles, arriving at the far end unharmed.

His ?sts shot out in rapid-?re lunges, slamming against gun muzzles in the impossibly brief fraction of time between rounds. The weapons rocketed back with a force far greater than that of any launched bullet. The brittle crack of a dozen sternums collided into one single, horri?c symphony of sound.

The men in the ?rst line of storm troopers suddenly found their machine guns protruding from their chests. Blood spurted from around gun stocks as the men dropped to the staircase. They rolled downward, upending the next batch of soldiers who were even now racing up for the confrontation above.

Chiun leaped over the bodies, dropping into the middle of the next advancing throng.

His hands ?ashed forward.

The foreheads of a dozen men shattered under the force of unseen ?sts.

Chiun's elbows lashed back.

And the throats of another ten imploded, fonts of blood erupting from shocked mouths.

The Master of Sinanju became a blur of arms and legs. A twisting, h.e.l.lish dervish. Knees cracked beneath heels; bodies dropped and were ?nished by lightning-fast toe kicks to the temple.

Some at the back tried to get off a few feeble shots. The nightmare blur in the bloodred kimono had already sliced through their lines with the power of a buzz saw and the speed of a lashing cobra. They were dead before the sounds of their weapons echoed up the stairwell.

It was over before it began.

Leaving the bodies to breathe their last, Chiun raced into the Underground, searching for any other modern-day SS troops that might be in hiding.

There were many wounded English civilians, but no more soldiers. He was about to head back upstairs when he caught sight of a familiar ?gure crouching beside a nearby pillar.

His black sandals made a skittering beeline to the column.Chiun bowed. "Empress Smith."

Maude Smith looked up, surprised that someone here had recognized her. She saw the somewhat familiar face of the Master of Sinanju. She believed at one time that he had been a patient at Folcroft. He had also lived near the Smiths in Rye for a period several years ago.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo." She appeared sh.e.l.l-shocked, her voice distant.

"Is your regal husband near?" Chiun demanded.

"Harold?" she asked. "Why, no. No, he's-" She pointed to the staircase up which Smith had vanished several moments before.

A red blur ?ashed across her ?eld of vision. The next thing she knew, Chiun was ?ying up the distant staircase her Harold had taken.

Events had so rattled Maude Smith she didn't think to ask why the old man had called her "empress."

"CALL IN your frigging air force, for crying out loud!" Remo screamed. He was working through a group of neo-n.a.z.i soldiers. As his palms drove like pile drivers into the faces of the swarming men, he twisted to face the head of Source.

Sir Guy Philliston was cowering behind the great pedestal that was the base of the statue of Lord Nelson. His handsome features had grown pale in the attack. He shook visibly.

"Can't do it, old chap," Philliston apologized. A glazed expression had taken hold of his aristocratic features. "Too frightened. Bad show, really."

The sky was thick with German bombers. Even though there were only about forty of them, they were ?ying so tightly together that the air appeared to be teeming with attacking aircraft.

One plane higher up than the rest dropped a payload to the square. The three dozen bombs screamed from the belly of the plane, sailing on ancient, rusted ?ns toward the mob of panicked people more than two hundred feet below.

The pilot was obviously inexperienced in bomb warfare. On their way down, a small pack of the sh.e.l.ls impacted against the wing of a Messerschmitt ?ying at a lower level.

The struck plane exploded in a bright orange blast of ?ame and a horrifying tearing of metal. Shrapnel from the explosion tore into the fuselages of two nearby planes, causing an explosive chain reaction.

The trio of wrecked aircraft blasted toward the ground, striking the street in near unison, ripping up pavement and leaving a blazing gouge a hundred yards long.

Remo sent a foot into the groin of the last storm trooper nearby. The man's pelvis split in half from the force of the blow. He dropped, shrieking, to the ground. Remo ?nished him with a sharp toe to the temple.

Hopping over a carved lion at the slablike base of the Nelson statue, he grabbed Sir Guy by the lapels. He wrenched the Englishman to his feet, slamming him against the column.

Philliston was limp with fear. He put up no struggle against Remo. Indeed, he barely noticed the rough treatment. It was a shame, really, for it was what he generally enjoyed the most.

"Call them!" Remo snapped.

Guy Philliston merely looked at Remo with the dull gaze of lapsed reason.

"Oh, for pete's sake," Remo snarled.

He spun Sir Guy around like a top. Jamming his ?ngers against the base of the Source commander's spine, Remo kneaded a cl.u.s.ter of tangled muscles. There was a sudden intake of air from the Englishman. When he turned back around, it was as if Sir Guy had come out of a coma."You have exquisite hands," Sir Guy breathed dreamily.

"Tell me that when they're wrapped around your throat," Remo barked, reaching into Sir Guy's breast pocket. Pulling out a small cellular phone, he jammed it into Philliston's hand. "Call," he commanded.

Sir Guy took the phone obediently and began punching in the RAF number he had called the previous day. His att.i.tude had changed completely from a moment before. He was now all business. As the line rang through, Philliston casually removed a Walther PPK from a shoulder holster and began ?ring at the nearest German soldiers.

Remo saw that there was nothing more he could do about getting air support.

There were still many people in the square. With the positions the troops had taken, there was no real place they could go. Until reinforcements arrived, they were sitting ducks to the German bombs and marksmen.

Remo was about to start working his way through the soldiers on the left of the huge open s.p.a.ce when something enormous loomed into view over the southernmost buildings surrounding Trafalgar Square.

He looked up with a feeling of deep foreboding. Another, larger, engine rumble had joined the insistent whine of the Messerschmitt Me-110s and 109Es. As he watched, the huge shape of a Heinkel He-111 bomber soared into view. The Messerschmitts zoomed around the larger plane like fawning attendants in a royal court.

Though unfamiliar with the model, he knew that a plane that size would certainly house an enormous payload.

Remo looked around.

Guy Philliston was on the phone. Helene MarieSimone had vanished several minutes before. There was no sign of Chiun.

It was up to him. The only problem was, he had no idea what he could do to stop the enormous plane. Remo abandoned all hope of quickly devising a plan.

He hopped atop a carved lion's head.

Hoping to improvise something on the way, Remo began scaling the large granite column of the Nelson Monument.

Chapter 18.

On the last day he would be serving in Her Majesty's Royal Air Force, Colonel E. C. T. Bexton received the urgent call from Sir Guy Philliston with intense skepticism.

"I am sorry, my dear boy, but that is utterly, utterly impossible. London cannot possibly be under attack."

"I am telling you, Colonel-despite RAF information-London is most de?nitely being bombed this very minute," Philliston shouted.

Why Sir Guy felt compelled to shout was beyond Colonel Bexton. There was a sudden, G.o.dawfully loud noise in the background.

"What is that?" Bexton asked, face pinched in displeasure.

"I believe it to be a Heinkel bombing the square," Philliston yelled.

"Heinkel? My good man, the Heinkel is an obsolete German number from the Second World War."

"Yes," Philliston said. "And at this precise moment it has begun a bombing run on the far side of Trafalgar Square." Sir Guy suddenly seemed to be talking to someone nearby. "I say, what are you doing? Get down from there this instant!"

"Is there something wrong, Sir Guy?"

"Yes, there is. Aside from the German warplanes swooping around blowing up everything and his uncle, there is a crazed Yank agent climbing the statue of Lord Nelson."Colonel Bexton pursed his lips as he considered this latest news.

"Sir Guy," the RAF man asked slowly, "have you been enjoying a few sundowners at your club this a.m.?"

"Listen to me," Philliston snapped. "There is a bombing raid going on against London this very minute. Do you intend to send in RAF planes or not?"