"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.