The Empire Dreams td-113 Read online

  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, hello." She appeared shell-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 flashed across her field of vision. The next thing she knew, Chiun was flying 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-Nazi 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 flying 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 fins 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 shells impacted against the wing of a Messerschmitt flying at a lower level.

  The struck plane exploded in a bright orange blast of flame 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 finished 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 fingers against the base of the Source commander's spine, Remo kneaded a cluster 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 attitude 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 firing 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 space 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 definitely being bombed this very minute," Philliston shouted.

  Why Sir Guy felt compelled to shout was beyond Colonel Bexton. There was a sudden, godawfully 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?"

  Colonel Bexton bristled. "Not, I'm afraid," he said haughtily. "You see, Sir Guy, after the success of the first run and the, um, miscalculation on my part during the second, Her Majesty's Royal Air Force has beefed up alertness to a point greater than any other time since the Falkland crisis. We have a web along our shores that cannot possibly be penetrated. There is absolutely no conceivable way an enemy plane could enter sovereign British airspace without my knowing it. Therefore, no matter what you may personally believe to be happening in the greater London area at this particular time, I assure you that it is not another bombing attack. Now, if there is nothing else, I have many duties to attend to, so you will please forgive me if I ask you to take your fanciful notions elsewhere and kindly piss off. Good day, sir."

  He hung up the phone, not realizing that his connection with Sir Guy had been severed midway through what he considered a well-deserved tirade.

  Colonel Bexton did manage to do a little more light paperwork in the ensuing two minutes after Philliston's phone call. His peace was disrupted when an aide raced into the room with an urgent message from London. It had come not from RA
F sources, but rather from the radio. The BBC World Service was reporting that London was, indeed, in the process of being heavily blitzed by hostile forces.

  Colonel Bexton took the news with a choice of words that would be recalled for years to come among those aspiring to become officers of Her Majesty's Royal Air Force and who had no desire to follow the colonel's lead in reaction to a crisis.

  "Oh, bloody hell," said the soon-to-be-retired Colonel E. C. T. Bexton.

  Chapter 19

  Smith caught up to the last SS-uniformed soldier on the top few steps of the lower staircase.

  The rest of the band had just rounded the corner and was heading up into the daylight. They weren't paying attention to their rear.

  Smith flung himself at the legs of the escaping soldier, wrapping his arms around the man's knees. The man let out a startled yelp as he toppled forward against the stairs.

  The heel of the young soldier kicked up as he ran, catching Smith in the jaw. The impact cut a small gash in the CURE director's jaw and shifted his rimless glasses. Smith barely noticed.

  The image was ridiculous. A man in his seventies tackling a fit twenty-five-year-old man.

  But Smith had not only the element of surprise on his side. He had training. These so-called soldiers, no matter their pretension of identifying themselves with the formidable Nazis of ages past, were exceedingly sloppy.

  The man fell and turned, kicking at his still unseen attacker as he tried to grab for his machine gun. His hat dropped off, revealing a pale, tattoo-painted scalp.

  Smith had already rolled away from the flailing legs. Grabbing the soldier by the belt, Smith dragged him down the stairs with a mighty tug.

  The skinhead bounced roughly down the wellworn steps, the back of his shaved head slamming against the concrete. He had just located his gun. It slipped from his fingers, rattling down the stairs beyond Smith.

  When the young man was within reach, Smith lashed out with his free hand-fingers curled, palm extended. His hand smashed into the bridge of the skinhead's nose with a sickeningly loud crunch.

  Blood gushed from the man's nostrils. He wriggled woozily, trying to pull himself back away on elbows and heels.

  Smith repeated the blow, more vicious this time. The crunch was louder, the effect lethal. The young skinhead's eyes rolled back in their sockets. His head lolled to one side. He didn't stir again.

  Kneeling next to the body, Smith didn't take time to catch his breath. He scrambled down the stairs, snatching up the skinhead's dropped machine gun in his gnarled hands.

  It was set to fire.

  His bones creaked as he climbed to his feet. Ignoring the pain in his jaw, Smith ran up to the landing.

  The group of SS-clad skinheads had no idea what had just happened behind them. They were higher up the second landing, stuck in a bottleneck. The first men in line were waiting for a lull in the fighting at street level before racing into the smoke and flames in the road outside.

  Not that there was much resistance from above. Even though some bobbies were allowed to carry guns in modern London, the police in the square were no match for the heavily armed IV troops. What the soldiers were avoiding were the bombs and occasional machine-gun bursts from their own attacking air force.

  Smith braced his back against the wall as he stole a quick look up at the neo-Nazi troops.

  Clustered together. An inviting target.

  Smith twisted into the landing. His gray face a steel mask, he began firing carefully and methodically at the troops jammed tightly on the stairwell.

  The gun rattled a relentless staccato in his steady hands. Bullet wounds erupted on the nearest startled troops. There were screams and shouts.

  Caught off guard, the soldiers didn't know how to react. There were too many of them packed together to maneuver well. Those who did manage to wheel around succeeded only in firing on their own troops.

  Bodies fell in crumpled masses, toppling atop one another in an avalanche of twisted limbs.

  In a matter of seconds the subway staircase was transformed into a blood-drenched abattoir.

  For several long moments Smith was forced to duck and hide behind the wall. For short stints he would pop out and fire on the dwindling German forces.

  Eventually all that was left in the staircase was Smith. And the bodies of the men he had killed. He peeked around the corner.

  The others had fled.

  A rectangle of daylight that appeared to have been cut out of the concrete around him opened into the street. He could hear the angry pop-pop-pop of machine-gun fire echoing down the now silent stairwell.

  Dropping the weapon in his hands, Smith scooped up two others from a pair of nearby corpses. Slinging one gun over his shoulder, he held the other firmly in his hands.

  Ignoring the pains that screamed from every joint, Smith hurried up through the scattered dead to the street above.

  THE CHAOS of Trafalgar Square was far below. Remo had just reached the top of the nearly two-hundred-foot-tall granite pedestal. He was standing next to the legs of the sixteen-foot-tall statue of Lord Nelson, and he still didn't know what to do about the huge German bomber.

  The Heinkel moved with a plodding remorselessness across the smoke-choked sky.

  Remo saw that its bay doors were open. Briefly a broad face came into view. It disappeared into the cavernous interior of the large aircraft.

  What could Remo do?

  Remo patted his pockets. He had nothing but his phony ID, a few credit cards and a roll of cash. Desperation.

  There was nothing he could use. Nothing he-

  The Heinkel was directly above him. It was like the Shadow of Death had passed over London.

  All at once Remo became aware of something new in the air above him. Something small had fallen from the plane.

  He looked up.

  The bomb-the first of many, Remo was certain-was whistling angrily toward his head.

  He glanced around frantically. He could rip one of the legs off Lord Nelson and use it to bat the bomb harmlessly away.

  Bad plan. That wasn't how bombs worked. They waited until they hit something and then blew up. This wasn't a game of tag. He'd never win a contest with a bomb by striking it first.

  It was closer now...twenty feet ...ten feet... There was not much choice. Remo steeled himself. Five feet...

  It would have been easier if the bomb hadn't been sitting in a French farmer's field for thirty-seven years and then in a deminage depot for another eighteen.

  Two feet...

  No choice.

  One foot...

  Remo slapped his hand out.

  The whistling bomb was at chest level now. He caught the nose of the 75 mm shell with carefully cupped fingers.

  Slow the descent. Turn the bomb around.

  Remo felt the rough, corroded surface of the unexploded shell through every nerve ending in his hand. Fingertips became suction cups. A variation of the technique that allowed him to climb sheer faces. Using the coarse bomb exterior for leverage, Remo whipped the explosive device back in the direction it had come.

  The entire sequence took a split second to perform. The shell soared back up through the open bay doors of the Heinkel just as the aircraft began to drop another small handful of bombs.

  There was a muffled explosion deep within the belly of the plane. Another distant sound of a single detonating shell was followed by an eerie second of silence.

  All at once the huge aircraft erupted in a massive ball of flame. Smoking metal fragments exploded in every direction as fire tore down the length of the fatally wounded plane.

  Lord Nelson became a shield. Remo ducked behind the statue as it was pelted with hundreds of chunks of jagged steel.

  The Heinkel tore out of the sky with a pained scream, crashing solidly against the seventh floor of a ten-story building on the far side of the square. The nose buckled; the wings snapped forward into the brick walls and then sheared loose. Another explosion followed, after which the H
einkel's tail section ripped away and plummeted in a flaming mass to the street below.

  What remained of the plane jutted out above the square. A burning hulk.

  "Now, that was a plan," Remo announced to Lord Nelson.

  Brushing the rusted metal fragments from his hand, he climbed swiftly back down to the ground.

  RAF JETS INTERCEPTED the German warplanes above London at 12:25, Greenwich mean time. By most estimates, that was precisely twenty-five minutes after the attack had begun.

  Rockets blazed into the sides of the woefully outmatched IV air force. Crippled and burning planes flew nose first from the hazy afternoon sky.

  Most buildings and tourist attractions from Oxford Street to Constitution Hill and from Shaftesbury Avenue to Park Lane had sustained some kind of damage.

  Some police were on the scene in riot gear. More were arriving every minute. Sirens sounded in every direction.

  Fires raged in several ravaged buildings as Remo made his way around the periphery of the neo-Nazi defenses.

  Many of the skinheads he dispatched were clearly in some altered state of mind. The bodies of their innocent victims lay everywhere around the smoke-filled square. For this reason alone, Remo continued to battle his way through the thinning troops.

  A trio of men in an alley was firing against an unseen assailant near a burned-out car. Remo leaped into the middle of the dazed group of skinheads. His presence had barely registered to them before he was spinning on one heel.

  With a triple crack, Remo brought both forearms and one knee against each man simultaneously. They were dead before they hit the ground. Remo slipped out of the alley.

  Whoever had been firing on the three skinheads from behind the car had changed direction. The machine gun was now shooting at a group of men in SS uniforms fleeing for the nearest Tube entrance. Several of them dropped to the street, mortally wounded.

  Remo assumed the shooter was with the police. He was trotting past the car when he was startled by something familiar about the figure crouching at its charred rear bumper. He stopped dead.

  "Smitty?" Remo asked, shocked.