The Empire Dreams td-113 Read online

  A heavy footfall dropped nearby.

  Helene rolled onto her back. She saw the young skinhead running into sight above her. A pair of Nazi swastikas had been etched in blue in the flesh at his temples.

  The man jumped back, as if startled to be the one to find the object of their search lying in the grass before him.

  In that split second of hesitation, Helene fired. The bullet grabbed the young man in the throat, flinging him back into the grass in a violent spurt of blood.

  The angry yelling increased.

  She crawled faster now. With frantic purpose. But it was no use. She had given her position away. The next men to find her were not as timid as the first. They fell atop her from three different directions. A football tackle.

  She tried to get off even a single shot, but a knee had dropped solidly onto her wrist. Something hard-perhaps a rock, perhaps a gun butt-slammed against her curled fingers. She dropped her weapon.

  The group of skinheads dragged her roughly to her feet. Grabbing her arms and loose clothes, they hauled her back through the grass and onto the tarmac.

  The lone figure was still waiting at the large door to the hangar. Even from this distance she could see that the old man's face was a mask of rage.

  "Get her in here!" Hans Michtler screamed. Furious, he ducked back inside the hangar.

  A minute later the engines of the planes whined back to life. The aircraft pulled farther down the runway in the direction of the building before wheeling back around. Two at a time, they began zipping once more down the strip of asphalt.

  As Helene watched, the first pair launched out into the air over the channel.

  The French spy felt the tingle of failure in her chest and stomach. She barely noticed the surrounding men as they dragged her into the hangar.

  She had failed.

  The next wave of bombers was on its way to London.

  Chapter 13

  Nils Schatz accepted the news from Fritz with an angry tapping of his walking stick. When they had first set up shop in the small Parisian apartment, he had made a habit of striking the bronze cane tip against the bowed slats of the aged wood floor.

  It was not long before the downstairs neighbors had complained.

  After that he'd gone to great pains to muffle the sound by drumming the cane on the rug. It had been a supreme effort, but Schatz had no desire to call undue attention to himself in the early days of this great action.

  Now he no longer cared. Now they were close to completion of his great plan.

  Der Geist der stets verneint.

  The words came to him now. Mocking him.

  He banged the cane loudly against the wooden floor beside his straight-backed kitchen chair. There was a muffled shout of complaint from the apartment below.

  "This is Michtler's fault," Schatz complained hotly. "Is there no one in the SS that could have handled this assignment?"

  Fritz shook his head. "There are few of us left, Nils," he apologized.

  "Pah. How many planes were destroyed?"

  "Two. Both Fokkers. The rest left the base unharmed. Although Michtler admits that he lost radio contact with three of them. There was some frantic talk of a dogfight."

  Schatz closed his eyes. He was attempting to access stores of patience that he didn't possess.

  As his thoughts roiled, he rammed his cane harder and harder in short, desperate jabs against the floor. A small section of the wood began to splinter, splitting away in long slivers at the force of the metal tip.

  "Sinanju," he hissed.

  "Surely they could not have survived," Fritz said. "They were atop the planes."

  Schatz opened his eyes. He gave his assistant a glare that in his younger days had caused subordinates to release the contents of their bladders down the legs of their starched Nazi uniforms.

  Fritz swallowed nervously.

  Schatz pointed his cane at the man with whom he had grown old in that accursed South American village.

  "You tell Michtler to be prepared."

  "Yes, sir," Fritz snapped, clicking his heels. The movement came so naturally it was as if he had been magically transported back fifty years. "And what of the Frenchwoman?"

  Schatz shrugged. "I do not care. Kill her." He began rapping his cane against the floor once more. Fritz nodded his understanding. He started walking toward the living room, where the apartment phone was located. He hadn't gotten more than a few paces when the tapping of the cane stopped.

  "Wait," Schatz called. His tone had grown considerably lighter. "I believe I have an idea."

  His yellow teeth bared in an evil rictus of a smile.

  HERRE MICHTLER THOUGHT it was stupid to await the arrival of men who would never come.

  The two fools who had leaped atop the planes as they soared off over the channel were dead.

  The other aircraft had radioed back news of the wreckage moments after takeoff. Michtler had been late to the radio, so busy was he with capturing the French spy.

  One plane had crashed into the bluffs just below the end of the runway. It had flown in too low for them to see from atop the rocky plateau. The other two were simply missing.

  It was the bombs they had been carrying, Michtler concluded. They must have gone off prematurely. He had told this to Fritz in his second phone conversation with Paris, once it was learned why the planes had lost contact with the Guernsey base.

  Their cargo was unstable. The pilots had simply panicked when they found two fools clinging to the skins of their aircraft and somehow had shifted the dangerous cargo. Boom. It was that simple.

  But it was only that simple for Hans Michtler. Schatz thought otherwise.

  So, because of a couple of fools who had died twenty minutes before, Hans Michtler had to deal with this idiocy.

  He was a good soldier. Always had been. He followed every order given him. Whether it was shooting at Russians, hurling grenades at Americans or marching his fellow countrymen into ovens. An order was an order. Hans Michtler couldn't be held accountable for the things his superiors had commanded him to do.

  After the war he found that the world thought differently.

  His zeal for his work in the Treblinka concentration camp had made him a target for the various Jew-sponsored groups whose job it was to persecute simple soldiers who were only following orders.

  Michtler had been forced from his homeland to the small IV village in the mountains of Argentina. When Nils Schatz had come to the other old Nazis with his bold proposal, Michtler had jumped at the chance to leave. The truth was, in life there were those who gave orders and there were those who executed those orders. Hans Michtler was one of the happy few who actually enjoyed following orders. Until now.

  "Your friends are dead. You know that, do you not, girlie?" Michtler sneered. He was a big, lummoxy thing. His hands were as large as small baseball gloves.

  "They are not my friends," Helene replied evenly. She was strapped to a chair in the middle of the hangar. There was a wooden floor beneath her, stained with oil. All around were stacked piles of ordnance stolen from the deminage depots. Helene had found some of what she was after, but was maddeningly unable to do anything about it.

  Michtler curled his lip in disgust. He turned to the skinheads spread about the hangar. "Has the boat moved?"

  "It is still docked below," one of the men enthused.

  "No one aboard has made a move toward us?"

  "There are only four aboard that we can see. They have remained on the boat."

  Michtler nodded. "After we take care of her, we will kill them and scuttle their boat," he announced. He slapped his big hands together for warmth, glancing at the men. "For now we wait. Pointlessly."

  There were about a dozen skinheads standing around the room. They each held a Schmeisser submachine gun. Michtler was so confident that the men they awaited were dead that he had left his own gun on a nearby table.

  The man shot by Helene in the field beside the runway had been propped up next to a
door that led into a small office. He sat wheezing and bleeding. Someone had given him a filthy cloth to hold over the gurgling wound in his neck. It was already drenched with blood. His complexion had grown waxy over the past several minutes. He appeared close to death.

  Michtler glanced over to the open doorway. An oversize garage door, it was wide enough for two planes to roll in and out of the hangar.

  Ordinarily there was room for four of the small aircraft inside at one time. But there were two partially dismantled Messerschmitts in the hangar now. They had been scavenged for parts for the working planes. These, along with the rusted shell casings, left little room for functioning planes.

  When not being worked on, the IV air force had bided its time outside beneath heavy tarps and camouflage mesh.

  Michtler looked out at the spot on the grassy field where the planes had sat idle for weeks. Two skinhead guards stood on either side of the open doorway.

  Bored, he began to daydream.

  He pictured the planes en route to England. His mind drifted to thoughts of London. Ablaze.

  It was a beautiful sight.

  REMO KNEW that their greatest challenge would be to keep the Germans from blowing them all sky-high. When they had rounded the shore and gone back up the stairs to the plateau airfield, the first thing he and Chiun had done was to sneak a peek inside the hangar from one of the side windows. They were disturbed to see explosives stacked everywhere.

  Helene Marie-Simone sat strapped to a chair beside a doltish-looking, aging Nazi. The French agent was, in effect, seated in the middle of one gigantic bomb.

  "That complicates things," Remo whispered to the Master of Sinanju. He was peering at the bound Helene.

  "Why?" Chiun said blandly.

  "For starters we've got to save Helene and one Nazi for interrogation without getting ourselves blown up."

  "What need have we of the woman?" "For one thing, I could use her phone."

  "Save her phone, then," Chiun sniffed. "Allow fate to take charge of the daughter of Gaul."

  Remo raised an eyebrow. "You're sounding more mercenary than usual."

  "Sinanju has not found work from France for many years. Let the Bourbons worry about their own."

  "Let's give them a freebie this time out, okay?" Remo replied deadpan. He looked back in the window. "Okay, here's the plan. We get the younger nasties out of the hangar. Less chance of their bullets setting off the bombs. Once we've thinned their ranks, we can go in after Kaiser Baldy. Does that sound good to you?"

  "Everything save the part where we are to follow a plan of your design," the Master of Sinanju replied.

  "If you've got a better idea-" Remo began. But Chiun was no longer there. The diminutive figure was already flouncing around to the front of the hangar where the first of the skinhead guards stood. Remo had to run to keep up.

  STILL LOST in his own thoughts, Michtler had just drawn up an image of the stodgy British parliament building gutted by dancing flames when something flashed across his line of sight.

  It was a subtle movement. So small Hans Michtler could not quite figure out what it was.

  He blinked.

  The hangar door was there. Open, as before. The grass was still pressed down in the field beyond where the planes had sat. The guards...

  Hans Michtler started.

  The two skinheads at the door were missing. "Where did they go?" Michtler roared.

  "Who?" one of the skinheads asked.

  Michtler stabbed a pudgy finger at the door. "Those two! Tell them to get back in here!"

  With a sullen nod the young man went obediently to the large entryway. Rifle in hand, he stuck his head around the corner. In the next instant he was yanked outside.

  Michtler watched the young man's black boots disappear around the edge of the door frame. "Impossible," he exhaled. Wheeling, he flung an open hand at the door. "Get them!" he snarled at his men.

  As the remaining skinheads bounded obediently toward the door, Hans Michtler raced over to a desk against the wall. To collect his Luger.

  SO FAR THE PLAN was working perfectly.

  Chiun had taken the left, Remo the right. Already the Master of Sinanju had eliminated two of the guards. The old Korean flitted around the side of the building.

  After Remo took out the man on the right of the door, he ducked around the side opposite Chiun. Someone shouted inside. Although the order was in German, Remo guessed that it was a command to attack. The other men would be swarming out any minute.

  There was a steel drum next to the corrugated-steel wall of the hangar. Remo vaulted atop it.

  The toe of one loafer barely brushed the surface rim of the oily barrel before Remo was propelling himself farther upward. Twisting in midair, he landed on the back-angled roof with no more noise than that of a falling leaf.

  Remo waited.

  He didn't have to hold his position long.

  The skinheads came barreling into sight. Outside the door they split up. Some went right, while others moved to the left. Three of them tromped around the side of the building near Remo, waving their guns menacingly. One was farther ahead, and two were shoulder to shoulder taking up the rear.

  All of them were anxious to fire. With the constant threat of detonating the war ordnance, their eagerness would make matters all the more tricky.

  When the two in the back paused near the oil barrel, Remo dropped down from the roof, landing lightly behind the pair of skinheads.

  They hadn't even become aware of his presence before his hands flashed out.

  Years of diet and exercise had made Remo's fingers harder than titanium. The index and middle fingers of both hands struck off center in the backs of the skinheads. Splitting only a single rib in each body, the fingertips shot through the thoracic cavities, puncturing the rear walls of two nervously beating hearts.

  Quick as a shot, Remo's fingers withdrew. They had gone in with the speed and precision of a surgical laser. So fast had Remo moved that not a single drop of blood showed on his fingertips.

  The men grew rigid. The attack had come so quickly that they felt the pain and shock only when their hearts began spurting blood wildly throughout their chest cavities. That lasted only a second.

  They dropped to the ground.

  As the first fell, his gun dropped against the metal barrel. It made a loud clang.

  The remaining skinhead was firing his submachine gun even before he wheeled on Remo.

  Bullets pinged against the steel wall of the hangar. Remo twisted through the barrage, advancing on the shooter, all the while waiting for the building beside him to erupt in a ball of flame and fragmented metal. Luckily he reached the man in time.

  Swatting the gun harmlessly into the nearby field with his left hand, Remo sent his right hand forward, palm flat. The skinhead's rib cage was crushed to jelly.

  Remo waited a fraction of a second.

  The only sound from within was an angry shout. He heard more voices, these ones outside. They had heard the gunshots and were coming to investigate.

  "I'm never going to live this down," he griped. Leaving the three skinheads where they lay, Remo bounded back up atop the hangar roof.

  AS REMO DUCKED around one side of the building, Chiun was mirroring his pupil's movements in the opposite direction.

  The old Asian found himself in a small, enclosed junkyard filled with discarded airplane parts. At the far end of the lot a chain-link fence capped with razor wire lent a prisoner-of-war-camp feel to the area. There was too much junk between him and the fence. And while Chiun could cross the space easily, his pursuers would have a much harder time of it. Chiun had hoped to draw the men away from the building and the bombs within. He was angry at himself for not heading out across the tarmac and into the open fields.

  Vowing that this would be the last time he would allow Remo to talk him into a plan, Chiun turned around and headed back in the direction from which he had come.

  He hadn't gone more than two paces before
a pair of skinheads marched around the corner of the hangar.

  Seeing Chiun, they hastily raised their weapons to fire.

  "Thank you, Remo the Plan Maker," the Master of Sinanju grumbled.

  He couldn't allow them to get off a shot. Any one of the chunks of metal in the courtyard could cause a ricochet that would blow up the entire area.

  His wizened face displaying his annoyance, Chiun quickly scooped up a pair of five-foot-long propellers that were leaning against a rusting engine nearby. Bringing the heavy blades back up over his shoulders, he snapped his hands down and forward, releasing the curving pieces of metal when they were at the farthest point from his body.

  The propellers whizzed through the air at a speed faster than any aircraft engineer could have dreamed of.

  In that fraction of an instant before the fingers of the skinheads pressed against the triggers of their machine guns, the props slammed against the extended gun barrels.

  The propellers ripped through the metal barrels, bending them back like banana peels, embedding both curling ends into the chests of the two men. The propellers continued on their forward paths, pulling both men from the ground and launching them back into the steel wall of the hangar.

  The side of the structure quivered like a beaten drum as the men slammed against it, chunks of gun and propeller jutting from their chests. An instant later they grew limp against the wall, their boots hanging slack a foot above the ground.

  More voices.

  There were other men coming in his direction. Chiun prepared himself for another assault.

  There was a sudden short burst of gunfire on the other side of the hangar. The men coming toward him grew distracted, running back in the other direction toward the new sound. Muffled, wet thuds met them. Then all was silent.

  In the next instant Chiun saw a flash of movement atop the hangar. When he looked up, he saw Remo crouching on the flat rooftop.

  "Before you blame me, it wasn't my fault," Remo whispered.

  "No," Chiun agreed, his expression stern. "It is my fault for being foolish enough to listen to you."