Destroyer - The Empire Dreams Part 12

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

He blinked.

The hangar door was there. Open, as before. The gra.s.s was still pressed down in the ?eld 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 ?nger 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. Ri?e 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 ?ung 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 ?itted 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 ?re. 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 ?ashed out.

Years of diet and exercise had made Remo's ?ngers harder than t.i.tanium. The index and middle ?ngers of both hands struck off center in the backs of the skinheads. Splitting only a single rib in each body, the ?ngertips shot through the thoracic cavities, puncturing the rear walls of two nervously beating hearts.

Quick as a shot, Remo's ?ngers 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 ?ngertips.

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 ?rst fell, his gun dropped against the metal barrel. It made a loud clang.

The remaining skinhead was ?ring 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 ?ame and fragmented metal. Luckily he reached the man in time.

Swatting the gun harmlessly into the nearby ?eld with his left hand, Remo sent his right hand forward, palm ?at. 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 ?lled 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ?elds.

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 ?re.

"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 ?ve-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 ?ngers 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 a.s.sault.

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

In the next instant Chiun saw a ?ash of movement atop the hangar. When he looked up, he saw Remo crouching on the ?at 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."

"Fine with me. As long as we've got the blame thing settled."

Chiun frowned with his entire face. "Get out of the way, General Patton."

As Remo ducked back, Chiun bounded up onto the roof next to him. Red kimono skirts settled around pipe-stem legs.

"How many did you get?" Remo said as they slid stealthily away from the edge of the roof.

"Two.""Three for me. I took out a couple more from up here. Aside from Conrad Siegfried downstairs, that should be it."

Chiun stopped dead. "Siegfried? Who told you that was his name?" he demanded. The look in his hazel eyes was furiously intent.

Remo was taken aback by Chiun's jarring att.i.tude change.

"No one," he said. "It was just a joke."

The old man eyed his pupil with suspicion. Detecting no visible deceit on Remo's part, he at last nodded.

"Very well."

Chiun began moving away across the roof. Remo hurried to keep up.

"What was that all about?"

"There is no time for idle conversation, O Plan King. In case you have forgotten, we are standing atop a giant boom device. We must ?nd a way inside that does not result in our untimely arrival in the Void."

As they slid along the steel roof, Remo spied what looked like a square hatch near the rear of the building. He touched Chiun on the sleeve.

"I have a plan," he said with a smile.

MICHTLER DIDN'T WANT to think about what was going on outside. He'd heard the gun?re to his right a few minutes before.

He immediately dropped to the wooden ?oor, covering his head in his meaty hands.

He didn't care how foolish he looked, nor did he consider the utter pointlessness of this gesture of selfpreservation, given the amount of explosives that were stored around him.

The gun?re ended abruptly. It was proceeded by an even more frightening calm.

No one came to tell him that the two men were dead.

Michtler climbed unsteadily to his feet. He glanced up at the far rear wall of the hangar. A single red light shone down out of the darkness. Beyond it was the trapdoor to the roof.

Turning away from the light, he looked back toward the entrance.

Until the actual moment his Luger was ripped painfully from his huge hand, Michtler had no way of knowing that Remo and Chiun had slipped into the hangar through the of?ce door during the split second he had turned away.

"I still say we should have used the roof door," Remo complained.

"Need I remind you that, had this pastry-fed Hun managed to ?re a single shot, we would be having this argument in the company of my ancestors?" the Master of Sinanju declaimed, as if affronted by the mere idea.

It took the big German a moment to realize what was going on. Like a great lumbering dinosaur, Michtler turned on the intruders.

He sent a huge ?st toward Remo's head. There was a horrid sound of crunching bone. Again it was another moment before Michtler realized that the noise hadn't come from the skull of the man he thought he had just punched but rather from his own hand.

The German howled in pain as he stuffed the ?st with its four shattered ?ngers into the safe haven beneath his left armpit. He dropped to his knees on the wooden ?oor. The boards creaked beneath him.

Hands tied tightly behind her, Helene watched the drama playing out before her in amazement. "How-?" she gasped once Michtler was subdued.

"Clean living, baby. By the by, do you actually get paid for this spy stuff?" he asked as he tossed the German's gun out the hangar door. "You're really bad at it." He wrenched apart the ropes that bound her to the chair.It was as if she hadn't heard him.

"There are not enough bombs here," Helene announced, standing. Her face was urgent.

"There's plenty for me," Remo replied.

"No. There was much more than this stolen from the bases," she insisted. "This is only a fraction of what is missing."

"You're admitting they were stolen now, hmm?" Remo said with a superior smile.

"We must get back to France at once," Helene insisted. She glanced from Remo to Chiun, hoping the men shared her sense of urgency.

When she looked at Chiun, she saw that the Master of Sinanju was peering up into the distant corner of the large room where the single red light glowed from the shadows: "We are being observed," the old man said. Remo glanced up at the stationary camera on the wall. He had felt the hum of electronic equipment upon entering the building but had been too preoccupied with Helene and Michtler to locate the source. The single red eye peered angrily at them.

Remo turned his attention back to Hans. "Okay, Colonel Klink, who's running-?"

He never had a chance to complete the thought. There was another hum of electronic equipment from somewhere beneath their feet.

All four of them heard a single metallic click, followed by a steady hiss.

An oily yellow mist began seeping up through dozens of knotholes in the pitted wooden ?oorboards. The short hairs on Remo's exposed forearms telegraphed the danger before the mist reached their small group.

"Mustard gas!" Remo snapped. Chiun had sensed the hazard, as well.

"If you wish to save that one, you must hurry," he said sharply. With that the Master of Sinanju hauled Helene up off the ?oor.

Dodging bursts of the deadly chemical agent, he raced toward the open hangar door.

The largest cloud had poured up through a hole near the kneeling Hans. His eyes bulged as he clawed at his constricting throat.

Remo was forced to reach in through the cloud to grab the big German. He immediately felt an intense burning sensation on the ?esh of his bare forearm.

Pulling Hans free of the mist, Remo held him at arm's length as he raced out the door.

CHIUN WAS a hundred yards away from the hangar before he even began to slow down. When he sensed that they were free of the danger zone, he turned, depositing Helene on the gra.s.sy ?eld. Remo ran across the tarmac to meet him.

As he ran, Remo's body worked double-time to slough the deadly toxin from his skin. By the time he reached the others, he was in no danger. Even so, the area where the chemical had touched ?esh was a bright cherry color.

"You are well?" Chiun asked, concerned.

"I'll be okay," Remo said. "Which is more than I can say for him."

Hans Michtler was dead, his fat tongue jutting from between thick lips. Remo dropped the German's body to the gra.s.s.