“So far, so good,” Hercules whispered as they came together at the checkpoint. “Now the fun really begins.”
“You all know what you have to do,” Cookie said, checking the load on her gun, “so let’s do this.”
Hercules watched as the women melted away into the darkness, following Cookie and Trixie, the code-breaker, as they made for the nearest guard-post.
JINX FROZE AT the sound of tramping footsteps and crouched down in the lee of the canvas-covered truck. Keeping her breathing deep and slow to still her racing heart, she listened intently as the footsteps passed by her and receded into the distance, heading in the direction of the inner courtyard.
Once she was sure she could go about her business again undisturbed, she let out her breath noisily, rose to her feet, and tried the passenger door of the cab. It wasn’t locked, but then nobody inside Castle Frankenstein would have suspected anyone already inside the castle of wanting to steal one.
Climbing inside, she pulled the door gently shut behind her, listening as the door catch caught with a click, and then slid across to the driver’s seat. She was almost disappointed when she pulled down the sun-visor and the keys to the ignition fell into her open hands. She had been secretly hoping she was going to have to hot-wire it.
DINA HUNG BACK by the gate, laying out a length of fine fishing line, looping it around the supports of the checkpoint itself before attaching it to the firing pins of a pair of grenades at each end.
The trap set, she ducked between the serried rows of parked vehicles that filled the outer courtyard of the castle. Crouching down in the lee of a jeep, she secured a device of her own invention – comprising a couple of sticks of dynamite, a length of primer cord and a remote trigger – under a wheel arch. The trigger itself was safely stowed within the harness she wore like a waistcoat, along with half a dozen small, short-fuse grenades.
Brushing a stray strand of dark hair out of her face, Dina moved on through the darkness, looking for another suitable place to set a booby-trap.
“HEY, WHAT’S –” WAS all the guard managed to say before Hercules brought the butt of his pistol down hard across the back of his head. With a stifled groan he slumped forwards onto the Enigma terminal.
Cookie pulled the unconscious man from his seat and hurriedly hauled his body under the table while Hercules moved back to the door to keep watch, Luger in hand.
Trixie filled the now vacant position and set to work, her fingers moving in a blur of speed. One security barrier was breached after another as the code-breaker’s counter-cyphers systemically overcame the Enigma engine’s defences one at a time.
“I’m in,” Trixie declared triumphantly a few minutes later, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose again.
“Well done!” Cookie said, giving her a well-deserved pat on the back. “Now pull up a schematic of this place and find out where the good doctor’s being kept.”
EASING OPEN THE door in the east wall, Dina peered into the gloom beyond. She could see very little. She waited a moment longer, listening, but she could hear nothing, either. Stepping through into the passageway beyond, she was hit by a waft of surprisingly warm air.
Closing the door carefully behind her, she set off into the dirty orange light cast by a string of naked electric bulbs, following them until she entered a room smelling of damp rust. It was unpleasantly humid within the chamber, which seemed stifling after the chill night she had left on the other side of the door.
Thick steel pipes, orange with rust, ran the length of the wall and ceiling, penetrating the walls and floors of the castle above like the roots of some pernicious iron weed; but they all emanated from one source.
Following the winding course of the knotted pipework, Dina came at last to a sweltering basement, empty apart from a huge boiler the size of a house. The furnace that would have to be kept stoked in order to keep it in operation must have been another level deeper, but this would do perfectly.
Listening to the hiss of venting steam and the drip of condensation – and for anything that would betray the presence of another human being there with her – Dina set about planting her explosives.
HERCULES WATCHED WITH barely hidden awe as the svelte cat burglar shimmied up a drainpipe and clambered in through a window above the arched gateway.
The Enigma device had told them what they needed to know – that Doctor Jekyll was indeed being held within the depths of the castle, in the dungeons beneath the thirteenth-century keep – and they now needed to gain access to the inner courtyard and the buildings beyond.
Cookie and Trixie waited in the shadows on one side of the gate, whilst Hercules hid himself on the other.
Moments passed. The longer they waited, the more anxious Hercules felt. Had Cat run into some kind of trouble?
With a sharp rattle and a click, the door set into the gate opened. Hercules tensed, his finger on the trigger of his pistol.
A heart-shaped face appeared, ghostly white within the deeper shadows of the gateway.
“Are you coming or what?” Cat hissed.
MISSY WATCHED COOKIE and the others disappear through the door in the inner courtyard gate through the sights of her Lee-Enfield rifle. Unlike the guard she had replaced in the look-out post, her attention was focused wholly inwards at the castle courtyard.
She would be ready, no matter how the mission went. Either she would be picking off German soldiers, as Cookie and the others made their escape with the shape-changing doctor in tow, or she would be laying down covering fire for her companions if it all went tits up.
And right at that moment, Missy couldn’t be certain how things would pan out.
THE LAST OF the devices secured to the side of the massive boiler with the aid of more fishing line, her harness empty apart from a few hand grenades, Dina made her way back through the warren of tunnels and passageways. Ever watchful, she followed the traps she had laid, like Hansel and Gretel after a trail of breadcrumbs, back the way she had come to the entrance and out of the east wing.
From the rust-red gloom of the electric-lit passageway, she ducked into the darkness that would lead her back to the castle’s outer courtyard.
The blinking of the lights within the passageway startled her almost as much as the clatter of guns being aimed and primed.
Three soldiers had her in the sights of their rifles. Slowly raising her hands above her head, she gingerly turned her head in an effort to see behind her. Three more soldiers blocked the other end of the passageway.
“Bollocks!” she swore under her breath.
“THIS WAY,” HERCULES whispered, beckoning the other three forward.
The heavy oak doors barring the way into the corner keep of the castle were before them now.
As the armed foot patrol passed by their hiding place, turned and proceeded to make their way back towards the west wing of the castle, Hercules led them out of hiding and right up to the deep-set doors. Having evaded the last patrol, nothing now stood between them and the keep.
He tried the door. It remained firmly shut. Glancing at the door jamb he registered a combination lock built into the doors.
“Damn!” he hissed at the darkness.
“Don’t worry,” Trixie said, suddenly at his side, “I can do this.” Crouching down in front of the lock she set to work, one ear pressed against the mechanism as she manipulated the tumblers with her fine fingers.
“Quickly,” Cookie hissed from her hiding place behind a barrel a few paces away. “They’re coming back.”
“Did you hear that?” Hercules hissed, crouching down beside the code-breaker. “The patrol’s already on its way back.”
“I heard,” Trixie whispered curtly. “Now, if you’d just let me get on with my job we might actually be able to get through these doors before the patrol gets here.”
Hercules said nothing but shuffled over to the piles of crates where Cat crouched, waiting to pounce.
“There,” she whispered, leaning in close o
ver his shoulder, her breath warm in his ear.
“I see them,” Hercules returned – the heady aroma of the woman’s hair sweet in his nostrils – and took careful aim. If their plan was about to go all to hell, then he would do everything in his power to get the girls out of this nest of Nazis alive.
There was a dull click and he heard Trixie proudly announce, “We’re in.”
With a sigh of relief, Hercules returned to the porch, where Cookie and Cat joined him, the former pushing open the door with the muzzle of her machine gun.
Light bled out into the darkness beyond. Hercules winced, his eyes closing against its brightness.
Hercules was the first to see the object of their rescue mission, bound to a chair in the middle of the tapestry-draped hallway beyond.
It took him a moment longer to realise that the doctor was not alone within the hallway. From every archway and alcove protruded the muzzle of a pistol or a rifle or a machine gun, all aimed at the keep’s threshold.
“Damn!” he cursed, half under his breath, as his companions stifled gasps of shock and alarm. “I knew it had all been too easy.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Of Mice and Men
FOR SEVERAL LONG moments nobody moved, as both sides faced each other down, guns poised and at the ready, between them a wan-looking Doctor Henry Jekyll.
A figure stepped out of the shadows, his boot heels clicking on the stone flags of the ancient hall. He was dressed in the uniform of a colonel as well, only his was in a markedly better state than Hercules’.
“Hercules Quicksilver, I presume,” the man said, in flawless English.
Hercules could see that Jekyll was looking at him, his face pale and drawn as he mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”
Hercules scowled. “You would appear to have me at a disadvantage,” he returned, keeping his gaze and his pistol targeted on the colonel. He heard the clatter of other guns in the room being cocked, and knew that they were pointed at him.
“In more ways than one,” the German officer said, a wry smile curling his lips. “I am Colonel Kahler, commandant of this facility, but such details are unimportant right now. What I want to know is what you are doing here.”
Hercules glanced at Cookie. She met his gaze, eyes wide with fear, pupils dilated from the rush of adrenalin now coursing throughout her body.
“Ah,” the colonel said, noting their exchange, “whatever it is you’re planning I suggest you forget it. You can’t get away. There must be – what? – at least twenty guns on you. Such a strategy – whatever it might be – would surely be suicidal.”
Hercules looked at Cookie again, reassuringly, urging her to stay calm. Understanding his intention, Cookie nodded.
He turned his head to check on the others. Cat met his gaze, her lips pursed, whilst remaining perfectly still, but Trixie was another matter.
Hercules could see her panicked look and tried to catch her eye. But it was all to no avail.
Even as he was about to tell her to calm down, the woman whimpered, turned and bolted.
“Hold your fire!” Kahler commanded, then calmly raised the Mauser HSc that was suddenly in his own hand. “I could do with the practice.”
Hercules’ face fell and he turned, throwing himself after the fleeing Trixie, diving at her legs in an attempt to rugby-tackle her to the ground, even as the single pistol shot rang out in the confines of the stone-walled entrance hall.
He brought her crashing to the floor, but from the lamp way the girl landed, without so much as a grunt, he knew with a sinking feeling that Kahler’s shot had found its mark.
She was already dead.
HEARING THE CRACK of the lone pistol shot, Missy found the doors to the keep through her sights in time to see Trixie fall through the open double doors and down the steps beyond, Hercules clinging to her legs. Hercules remained where he was, laying half on top of her as Cookie and Cat ran hell-for-leather out of the keep, diving for cover behind a carefully stacked pile of barrels and tarpaulin-covered boxes. Hercules finally scrambled after them himself, but Trixie remained where she was.
With Trixie framed in the sights of her rifle, the code-breaker’s body splayed like a rag doll across the steps, Missy was forced to blink away the hot tears that were now obscuring her vision, so as not to lose any potential targets.
And barely two seconds behind the others came the enemy. Sniffing away her tears, Missy took aim and opened fire.
A German soldier fell screaming, a bullet through his knee. The second made not a sound, Missy’s shot punching straight through his left eye. The third was hurled backwards as a round took him in the chest.
Missy lined up her sights on another burly specimen and pulled the trigger, only to be met by a hollow click.
Her face impassive, she let the rifle fall from her hands – thudding against the rough-hewn boards of the sentry post – and took hold of the paddles of the Czechoslovak mounted there. Taking hold of it in both arms, with a roar of grief and frustration, she tore the bolts holding it to the floor free of the warped wood and yanked the weapon round so that it now pointed into the inner courtyard of the castle.
Soldiers were swarming out of the keep now, like furious, scalded ants. Taking a deep breath, she vented her grief and pain on the Nazis as she opened fire, shredding bodies in a lethal lead bullet-storm.
“TAKE OUT THAT gun-emplacement,” Kahler said, snatching a glance through the open doors. “Deal with it!”
Two men hurried forward at his command, carrying a sturdy metal tube between them. As the first crouched down on one knee, still within the shelter of the doorway, his companion loaded a missile into the tube, patted the other on the shoulder and took a step back.
“Fire in the hole!” the launcher’s operator announced and Colonel Kahler covered his ears. With a sound that Kahler felt through his feet, the rocket launcher fired.
The missile shrieked across the courtyard, corkscrewing its way towards the watchtower, trailing dirty smoke.
Moments later it reached its target and the storm of bullets abated as the gun position was consumed by a ball of greasy smoke and hungry, promethean flame.
“NO!” DINA SCREAMED as the top of the gatehouse blew apart. The explosion had made her captors jump too, but she was too shocked to make the most of the opportunity.
“Weitergehen!” a gruff voice behind her growled, making the point plain by shoving his gun barrel against her spine.
Dina took a stumbling step forwards.
“Hände hoch!” the officer shouted.
Pulling herself up straight, suddenly numb at having witnessed her friend’s death, she kept striding forwards, proud, determined, not letting the Germans think for one minute that they had beaten her.
The command came again, louder this time, and the ever-present gun barrel prodded at her arms, trying to push them upwards. “Hände hoch!” She put her hands on top of her head.
As the soldiers marched her towards the gate dividing the two courtyards, Dina heard an exchange of gunfire from the other side. It was the staccato crack of carefully selected shots, as opposed to the white noise roar of the bullet-storm Missy had unleashed into the killing ground of the inner courtyard.
A firm hand suddenly pulled her to a halt as a pair of soldiers ran ahead of her, the two members of her escort taking point, ducking down behind the open door set into the inner courtyard gate and following the gun battle in an attempt to pick their own targets. Carefully, the two marksmen took aim.
With a sooty cough, one of the trucks from amongst the throng parked behind them roared into life. Headlights lit up the courtyard as the truck turned towards the inner gate, the soldiers throwing up their hands against the magnesium glare.
GERMANS SCATTERED BEFORE the speeding truck like rats before the rising tide.
“You don’t get away that easily, you Nazi bastards!” Jinx snarled, as she hauled the steering wheel around, turning the truck towards the archway, and
put her foot to the floor.
She had seen what had happened to Missy and knew that the plan was no longer in operation. Priority one now was to get the rest of them out, as quickly as possible.
The last to realise what was going on were the two gunmen who were already half through the door in the gate as the truck caught up with them. Jinx was aware of a sudden scramble of movement, but they were too late.
The was a crack and another soldier went spinning from the bonnet as she clipped the wretch with the bumper, sending him whirling out of the way, his gun flying from his hands and shattering one of the truck’s headlights into the bargain.
The gate disintegrated around her as the truck smashed through it, splinters and pieces of planking flying in all directions. Men howled as they were skewered by the splintery shrapnel, or screamed as they fell under the truck’s wheels, or grunted, winded, as they bounced off its bonnet.
AS HER GUARDS scattered before the speeding truck, Dina made the most of the second opportunity fate – or rather Jinx – had presented her with, and sprinted for cover.
But as she made a break for it, one last desperate soldier, reacting on instinct and not knowing what else to do, made a grab for her, focusing on the last orders he had been given – the only thing he had left to hold on to in this suddenly uncertain world. Desperate fingers snagged the harness she was wearing and snagged the loop of a firing-pin as the man lost his footing and fell.
JINX DUCKED DOWN inside the cab, still clinging onto the steering wheel, as the windscreen shattered above her under the torrent of machine-gun fire that greeted her arrival.
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