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 Heinkel'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.
Harold Smith glanced once at Remo, his expression cross. Looking back to the fleeing German troops, Smith resumed firing.
At that moment the Master of Sinanju came racing into sight from the opposite direction. Seeing his pupil, he ran over to join him.
Chiun nodded. "You have found Emperor Smith."
"Sort of," Remo answered uncertainly. "Okay, Smitty, let me have it," he said gently.
Remo tugged the gun from Smith's hands, tossing it to the sidewalk. Smith immediately grabbed for the gun slung over his shoulder. Remo took that one, too.
"They're getting away!" Smith snapped. He started to give chase to the fleeing troops, but powerful hands restrained him. When he turned, he found the Master of Sinanju holding firmly on to his biceps.
"You are a valiant warrior, O Emperor. But the pinheads are undone."
"They're not getting away," Remo promised. "Not dressed like that. It's over."
Smith glanced from Remo to Chiun. All at once the fight seemed to drain out of him.
"Yes," he exhaled. "Yes, I suppose you're right."
Remo looked around the area. The street was a littered mess. Several bodies-both skinhead and civilian-lay about the roadway. Bullet holes riddled the walls. Shattered glass lay everywhere. Nearby, the wreckage of an Me-109E burned freely. Plumes of black smoke rose into the gray sky.
"Is this what it was like before?" Remo wondered aloud.
"No." Smith was in the midst of adjusting his tie. "It was far worse," he said tartly, brushing dirt from his sleeve.
"We've got to get these guys, Smitty," Remo said softly.
No one seemed to hear him. A thought had suddenly occurred to Smith.
"Maude! I left her in the Underground." He started across the street.
"I will accompany you," Chiun announced. He trailed Smith back to the subway entrance.
Remo stood for a few moments longer, staring at the wreckage around him. Smoke and fire raged, sirens wailed.
Before leaving home a few short days before, he had been struggling internally with his life as CURE's enforcement arm. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Maybe he couldn't stamp out every last bit of evil in the world, but that didn't mean he should stop trying.
Smith was right. Conrad MacCleary had been right.
"One man can make a difference," Remo declared firmly. He resolved at that moment, looking at the grisly results of a reviled, decades-old evil, that-in this case-one man would do just that.
There was no way these people were going to get away with this. No way at all.
Face resolute, Remo walked back into the street. He headed back up the roadway in the direction of the battle-ravaged Nelson Monument.
Chapter 20
While bombs rained down over London and historic buildings erupted in flame and collapsed into rubble, a lone van made its way up the Boulevard Invalides on the famous Left Bank in Paris.
It moved slowly in the afternoon traffic, traveling north toward the Seine.
The driver didn't wish to attract undue attention. To anyone who saw it, this should have been merely another government van. One of many.
It was an excellent cover. For this was Paris, where it seemed everyone had either a government job or was rudely interrupted on the way to real work by government employees whose duty it was to scowl at and deride those on whom they depended most. Namely the French taxpayers, of whom there was a dwindling force.
The van drove past the Musee Rodin on the right and the Musee de l'Armee on the left. It stopped short of the Quai D' Orsay, which ran parallel for a time with the Seine.
The driver cut the engine.
Four men climbed from the van-two from the back, two from the front. The two in the rear carried with them a long, flat dolly, which they set on four well-oiled wheels. A retractable handle was drawn out from beneath the handcart and clicked into place at its side.
Three of the men went to work hauling heavy boxes out of the rear of the truck.
The fourth man looked on. Doubtless he was a supervisor of some sort. In a country with a per capita deficit greater than that of the United States, there were many government supervisors.
At the direction of the older man, the group pulled their handcart of boxes to the nearest Metro entrance. They used the wheelchair-access ramp to roll their supplies down into the Paris subway system.
A gendarme near the gate spied them immediately. Instead of fleeing like men with something to hide, the group of four crossed directly over to the guard. They brought their cart with them.
"What is all this?" the policeman asked, indicating the boxes stacked on the wheeled conveyance.
"Traps. For the rats," said the oldest of the four men, in perfect French. Eyes at half-mast, he spoke as if it was an effort to talk. An unlit cigarette was pasted to his lower lip.
The officer sighed. "Finally. One ran across my shoe the other day," he said. He waved at the pointed tip of one polished black dress shoe. "Across the toe. When are they going to find a way to rid us of them?"