Cold wind whipped against his face as he ran past the tail a.s.sembly. Wind caught the dorsal tail, ?uttering it ferociously as he outpaced the rear of the plane.A line of ragged gra.s.s sprouted up before them. The end of the runway. Beyond that a threehundred-yard drop to the rocks below.

And Remo was running full out. Even if he wanted to, he doubted he could stop on time.

There would only be one chance at this.

The Gotha was pulling up into the air. Legs pumping crazily, Remo forced a single burst of furious acceleration. He leaped from the surface of the runway and spread-eagled himself on the bottom left wing of the large biplane.

The plateau surface suddenly dropped out from beneath him. Far below, frothy waves crashed against basalt rock.

The plane was airborne.

The Gotha tilted slightly, attempting to right itself. The engine whined in protest as the aged aircraft soared off over the English Channel.

Chapter 12.

Unlike most people whose lives were fraught with doubt, Helene Marie-Simone was certain of almost everything. The most recent thing she found herself being certain of was the fact that she didn't trust Remo and Chiun.

But she had learned the hard way back in Paris that she should trust certain aspects of the two men. Their hearing, for one.

If they said that they heard planes taking off from the plateau high above the rocky sh.o.r.e, then she was certain that was exactly what they heard.

The minute the two men had broken for the stairs, Helene had climbed down from the boat and raced after them.

They were the most agile climbers she had seen this side of the monkey house at the Paris Zoo.

The two men quickly outdistanced her, leaving her to huff and puff her way up the many ?ights of stairs to the top of the cliffs.

When she did ?nally reach the top, she was just in time to see Remo make a ?ying leap onto the wing of a departing Gotha G.V.

She thought she saw a streak of crimson that might have been Chiun's kimono splayed across the wing of a ?eeing Messerschmitt, but she couldn't be sure. Both aircraft dropped from the edge of the bluff and then ascended back up into sight farther out over the channel. They pulled into the sky in a whine of engines.

She could see neither man after that.

They had committed suicide. For however good their hearing might be, they would never survive perched like birds atop the wings of two ancient warplanes.

The rest of the planes were lining up for their turn in the air. Two more were about ready to tear off the edge of the cliff and soar into the pale blue sky.

They zipped past the burning ruins of a single plane.

The bouncing of the ancient ordnance aboard must have been the cause of its destruction, Helene surmised. Just as it had been in the truck back at the American Emba.s.sy in Paris.

And if a minor disturbance could destroy one plane, it could easily disable some of the others. Helene pulled her handgun from her pocket. Her lungs were raw as she ran down to the ?eld.

THE GOTHA WAS TEARING through the air at a speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

The wind pressed like a powerful ?st against Remo's chest. His T-shirt ?uttered crazily in the back. Short hair blew angrily around his head.

It was an old plane, but it had fallen into the hands of a tinkering hobbyist. Although it looked identical to the original model, structurally it had been greatly improved upon. Remo stood up on the aluminum lower wing. He held on to the hollow, lightweight metal support tubes that were strung between the upper and lower wings.

Mindless of the racing wind, he advanced on the c.o.c.kpit.

Remo's presence on the plane hadn't gone unnoticed by the pilot. Paul Niemlur had been startled by the sudden shift of weight at the moment of takeoff.

Concerned that the unexpected imbalance might upset his sensitive cargo, he had quickly moved to right the plane. It was only after he had leveled off over the channel that he dared look out at his left wing.

He could not believe what he saw.

The thin stranger with the deep-set eyes and abnormally thick wrists was strolling over to Paul across the wing as casually as a friend might step across the road in Paul's native Dusseldorf. Except the expression Remo wore was not that of a friend. It was the face of Doom.

Ever mindful of the payload he carried, Paul slowly tipped the plane to the left.

Remo didn't budge.

Paul edged the plane farther over, trying to dislodge the man on the Gotha's wing.

All at once something heavy shifted in the back. With a dangerous, instinctive quickness, Paul tugged the steering column level once more. He could feel the weight shift back to where it belonged.

He didn't have time for a sigh of relief. Remo was at the c.o.c.kpit dome.

Niemlur pulled at the authentic World War II Luger in its lovingly preserved leather combat holster at his hip. As he fumbled with the strap on the holster, he heard a horrid tearing sound all around him. He felt the sudden blast of cold air against his face. His eyes squinted and teared against the gale-force wind.

Turning away from the howling blast of air, he caught sight of the specially adapted bubble dome tumbling down the length of the fuselage. It bounced off the tail and disappeared into oblivion.

Even while this was going on, Paul had continued to fumble with his gun. The weapon was free by now.

He raised the Luger from beside his hip only to feel it being torn from his hand before he could even ?re.

His ?ngers were numb. His wrist ached from the wrenching force that had ripped the gun away. Paul saw that the man on the wing was now holding his weapon.

"You won't be needing this!" Remo announced over the buffeting wind.

With a ?ick of his wrist, Remo tossed the Luger into the Gotha's slipstream. Paul saw the gun ?ying backward, like the dome. It clunked off the rear of the plane and fell to the sun-dappled water of the English Channel some four hundred feet below.

"Time for twenty questions!" Remo was forced to shout even though Paul was only a foot away. "Let's start with who you work for!"

The German decided that politeness was the best way to respond to this lunatic, particularly considering the capabilities he had so far displayed. Unfortunately, though he wanted to speak, he couldn't bridge the language barrier.

"Entschuldigen Sie?" Paul said with a polite shrug.

"Oh, c.r.a.p," Remo griped. "Do you speak English?"

"Nein," Paul admitted with a helpless shrug. The wind continued to howl against his exposed face. His ruddy cheeks had grown bright red in the bitter gale. He had turned his right ear against the wind. It ached. "Great," Remo grumbled.

He peered over the c.o.c.kpit and down the alley created by the Gotha's long wingspan. Half a city block away, the Master of Sinanju was climbing along the fuselage of the Messerschmitt. As the old man slid along the upper part of the plane, his crimson robe ?uttered like a crazy ?ag in a hurricane.

Remo could kick himself sometimes for not trying harder to learn some of these languages. Chiun understood German. The Master of Sinanju would have to be the one to ?nd out what was going on.

In the meantime the best Remo could do would be to turn this one plane back to Guernsey.

"Back," Remo ordered. He twirled his hand around in the air and pointed back in the direction of the Channel Island.

Paul seemed to get the idea. He nodded agreeably. The Gotha's control panel looked pretty straightforward. Paul was drawing the U-shaped wheel to the left to begin his arc back to sh.o.r.e when there was a sudden, furious whine of engines from the south. Both Remo and Paul turned in time to see a lone Bf-109F Messerschmitt tearing down towards them from an alt.i.tude of ?ve hundred feet. Sunlight glinted off the plane's gleaming sh.e.l.l as the pilot opened ?re from the wing-mounted machine guns.

Two dozen holes ripped through the nose of the Gotha from a spot just behind the propeller to an area a fraction ahead of the c.o.c.kpit.

When the attacking plane opened ?re, Remo immediately grabbed on to the lip of the open c.o.c.kpit for support and vaulted over to the other side of the plane. With the sudden shift of weight, the Gotha angled downward on the right.

The movement shifted the hundred-pound bombs in their bays at the center of the plane.

Sweating in spite of the wind, Paul tugged at the steering column to straighten out the listing plane. As he did so, he scrambled for the radio microphone. "Nein! Nein!" Niemlur screamed over the radio. The pilot in the other plane wasn't listening. He had torn over the wings and cut sharply back. Swooping around, he made another stra?ng run from the rear.

A hail of lead tore through the air around them. The old plane was peppered with fresh wounds, these near its tail. Miraculously none of the explosives in the back was detonated.

The Messerschmitt continued ?ring on the slower plane, stopping only as it buzzed over the upper wings of the Gotha.

Remo saw its gleaming underbelly as it soared above them. He glanced at the huge magazine case on the wing near him. There was another on the other side. Jutting out at the front of each of the upright boxes was a single machine-gun muzzle.

"How do you work them?" Remo asked, pointing at the guns.

Paul only shrugged, frightened and confused.

The Messerschmitt had broken off the attack for the moment. Spying Chiun sliding across the fuselage of the other plane, the pilot took a stra?ng run at that aircraft. The radio squawked with another panicked German voice as the Messerschmitt opened ?re.

Chiun dodged the bullets by simply letting go of his grip. The wind grabbed his kimono and ?ung him back toward the tail section of the plane. He grabbed hold again as the shadow of the attacking warplane pa.s.sed over the midsection of Chiun's plane.

The bullets had missed the explosives stored aboard the aircraft, but they had caused damage nonetheless. Acrid smoke began pouring from the engine, ?lling the air behind it with a widening cloud of oily black.

With a pained hum the plane began losing alt.i.tude. Like a shark smelling blood in the water, the attacking Messerschmitt swooped around for another pa.s.s.

Remo had no time to worry about the language barrier. He grabbed Paul by the back of the neck. The pilot went as rigid as a board.

Remo manipulated the German's neck muscles expertly. Paul responded like a marionette. The pilot's hands gripped the half-moon steering wheel and tipped the Gotha into an angled dive.

One of the bombs broke free of its mooring in the rear of the plane. It tumbled forward into the bulkhead directly behind them with a crash. Somehow it failed to explode.They were closing in on the attacking plane.

A stream of smoke continued to pour from the lead aircraft. Through the hazy black fog, Remo could no longer see the Master of Sinanju.

The pilot of the ?rst Messerschmitt had cut back toward sh.o.r.e as his plane descended. The rock face of Guernsey's south sh.o.r.e rose up like a deadly stone barrier directly ahead of them.

They were within range of the attacking plane. Without help from the pilot, Remo would have to guess at what the ?ring mechanism was for the machine guns. Scanning the c.o.c.kpit, he found what he was looking for. It was a single stick with a ?at b.u.t.ton embedded in the tip.

Delicately shifting the muscles in Paul Niemlur's neck, Remo had the German release one hand from the steering column. Helpless to do anything to stop Remo, Paul gripped the stick in his right hand. Remo had him stab down against the b.u.t.ton with his thumb. Nothing happened.

Up ahead the Messerschmitt seemed to take its cue from Remo's plane.

The instant Paul had depressed the ?ring b.u.t.ton, the aircraft up ahead opened ?re on the damaged and smoking lead plane. The bullets tore violently into the fuselage of the ?rst plane.

One or more of the small leaden projectiles must have come into contact with the ordnance stored aboard the front plane. As Remo struggled to work the machine guns on his own plane, the lead aircraft erupted in a blinding ball of orange-white light.

Shattered bits of steel launched backward. Small shards pinged off the propeller of the Gotha.

Remo dodged the spray even as he searched the sky for bodies.

There was no sign of Chiun. What remained of the plane the Master of Sinanju had been atop belched ?re and smoke as it raced down into the waters below.

It crashed atop the waves a moment later. Furious, Remo glanced around the c.o.c.kpit of the Gotha. He found a small toggle switch on the dashboard marked in red. He reached over Paul and ?ipped the switch.

The attacking Messerschmitt had remained before them throughout the spectacular crash, but once the lead plane was down it began pulling up into the sky, exposing its back to them. Remo could see the pilot grinning victoriously in the c.o.c.kpit.

Remo cranked a knot of muscles on Niemlur's neck.

The Gotha's huge wing-mounted machine guns with their stacks of ammunition burst to life.

The bullets caught the Messerschmitt square in the c.o.c.kpit. The gla.s.s that didn't shatter was sprayed with the blood of the pilot as the projectiles ripped through the body of the plane.

The aircraft had been perched on its tail like a dolphin clearing the water. But now, with no one to guide it, gravity quickly took hold of it.

Spiraling out of control, it screamed back to earth. It crashed into the ?rst cl.u.s.ter of rocks that stabbed out from Guernsey into the English Channel.

Remo was surprised that the island was so close. He had little time left to work.

Paul seemed relieved that the ordeal was nearly over. That relief turned to shock as Remo turned his attention away from the crashed Messerschmitt back to the Gotha.

"Auf Wiedersehen," Remo said to Paul, summoning up what little German he knew.

He reached into the c.o.c.kpit and ripped out a handful of wires. For good measure he wrenched at the steering column.

It came free like a half-loose tooth. Tendrils of wires still connected it to the rest of the plane. Remo didn't have time to complete the job. The rock wall of Guernsey loomed larger before them. Hoping he had done enough, he dropped the broken steering column onto the pilot's knees. Turning, he leaped backward, off the wing of the plane.

At the point when his feet left the wing, the aircraft was only about ?fty feet above the channel. Remo sliced into the cold waters a few seconds later. Kicking sharply, he broke through the surface just in time to see the crippled Gotha crash directly into the cliff face of the island.

The impact propelled the payload of six hundred-pound bombs forward into the rear of the c.o.c.kpit. The explosion was ma.s.sive. It blew up and back in a huge plume of ?re and smoke. In slow motion the charred remnants of the aircraft broke away from the wall and fell to the sea. Minutes afterward huge slabs of loosened basalt rock continued to sheer away from the cliff wall, crashing down to the rocks below. Bobbing in the cold water, Remo didn't exult in the scene. A sick feeling clenched his belly. Chiun was out there somewhere. In what condition, Remo had no idea. However, he couldn't help but think the worst.

He was about to head back out to sea to begin his search for a body when a familiar squeaky voice called from the nearby rocks.

"Do you intend to splash about like a lazy walrus for the rest of the day?"

Remo turned his head in the direction of the voice. Relief had ?ooded his soul when he'd heard the ?rst tones.

The Master of Sinanju stood on the strip of black rocks that jutted like a crooked ?nger from the unforgiving sh.o.r.e. The old Korean was dripping wet.

"You're okay!" Remo called over. His voice was a mixture of joy and relief.