John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  Wade swung around as the phone buzzed. His face assumed various expressions as he listened. He kept nodding dazedly, then with a faint grunt of acknowledgment he put the instrument back.

  “Intelligence Department,” he announced. “A report has just been received that two hundred heavy bombing planes have been seen massed on an airfield near Dayton in Ohio.”

  “But—but we’ve no plane concentrations there!” cried the Air Ministry expert.

  “That’s the point,” Wade said slowly. “This news has been despatched to all defence points and the next orders will come from the Ministry of War. Those planes are not ours! That speaks for itself. They have been brought from some secret factory, probably underground, near Dayton. It is not coincidence that the Ropa Engineering Works is situated in Dayton, particularly since the Ropa works is owned by the Kronheim Trust. There are twenty Kronheim interests scattered in all parts of America. If one factory secretly produces two hundred planes the rest is simple arithmetic. Twenty factories—two hundred bombers each—four thousand planes! And not one of them ours!”

  “You mean,” Turner said slowly, “that we’re too late?”

  “Yes.” Wade thumped his desk helplessly. “This thing has been going on too long. We got wind of it too late. Tonight America finds the war right on her own doorstep.”

  “And of course our defence units will be asleep?” demanded the Air Ministry expert. “Our army will be paralyzed? We’ll let this attack be a walkover?”

  Wade walked wearily to the window and gazed outside on the dark bulk of the metropolis. “I don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I have no real idea yet how far the Kronheim virus has penetrated into our national system.”

  He shrugged, glanced at his watch. It was exactly midnight.

  “We’d better—” he started to say, then suddenly the office light went out. Coupled with the blackness outside the dark was pitchy.

  “What the devil—?” exploded one of the men. “What is it? Blackout regulation from the powerhouse? May be a fused lamp.”

  He had hardly finished speaking before a tremendous concussion, deep-seated and heavy, rolled through the night. Far away towards the harbours flames split the ebony darkness as masonry and steel went skywards in a ragged column. Not a moment later there was a second explosion of like force—and then two more. In the space of as many minutes no less than six fires were blazing in different directions, crimsoning the metropolis in lurid brilliance.

  “Sabotage!” shouted the air official hoarsely, staring out. “A given signal for sabotage! Explosives!”

  “Mane bombs,” snapped Turner, holding his wife tightly. “Mane bombs at a tremendous depth filled with super-powerful explosive.”

  “Any way of dealing with ’em?” Wade demanded.

  “Not that I know of. They’re a scientific product and the only two men who might have controlled them—Standish and Mane himself—are dead.”

  There was a sudden stir in the office. The officials left hurriedly for their various departments. Outside, pandemonium was rising. People were running and shouting, sirens were wailing. Out in the harbour ships hooted stridently.

  “Listen!” Rita Turner exclaimed suddenly. “Listen!”

  Above the rattle and din from below there came a dull beating, droning sound, growing increasingly louder—then in the centre of the city, right in the middle of the ring of fires, a bomb exploded with appalling violence.

  “It’s an air raid!” Rita screamed. “Bombing planes!”

  Wade and Val stared out of the window just in time to see a black fleet moving slowly across the starlit heaven… Another whine—and another tremendous explosion. A building in the distance belched outward and vanished in the smother.

  “Why don’t the defence units do something?” Rita shouted. “Why don’t they? There are no searchlights—no antiaircraft! Where is everybody? Are we to stand here and be shot at?”

  “Down!” Val snapped suddenly, and he pulled his wife and Wade to the floor violently. A second later a bomb exploded on the building opposite, rocked the Federal building and sent a cascade of glass hurtling across the office floor. Crackling flames roared to heaven from across the street and added their glare to the tumult.

  The bombing planes were clearly visible now, painted dark grey, with the European Ensign on wings and body. They were circling, intent on bombing New York and nothing else. And still there was no sign of antiaircraft fire or interceptor fighting planes.

  “Why?” Rita groaned, shuddering.

  “Obvious, isn’t it?” Val asked her. “Kronheim has obviously used Mane bombs to blow up the industrial and defence points of the country. The destruction of the power houses put out the lights. The air bases, the soldiers’ barracks, the mobile headquarters—all the lot mined and destroyed. Possibly he may have men of his own to take over the anti-aircraft units and they won’t fire on their own planes. The whole scheme is a masterpiece of deviltry.”

  “That’s how I figure it,” Wade breathed. “I knew tonight when I got that last phone call, that we were beaten. Those planes spelt the end. Beaten by a continent three thousand miles across the ocean. Maybe we deserve it.”

  “A few of the American defence units will be bound to get busy,” Val mused. “Not every defence sector and soldier in the United States can be incapacitated. That isn’t feasible. And the ships round the coasts—they’ll do plenty.”

  “Yeah? What? They can only shell towns, and that way they’ll kill more Americans than enemy.”

  “But terror bombing of civilians doesn’t decide a war! It demands land forces to seize a country.”

  “I rather think Kronheim will have thought of that,” Wade grunted. “First, terror bombing to smash morale—then his agents to hold key-centres which control light, water, electricity, phone communication, radio, air service, food. Huh! Get rid of the idea that you have to conquer a country with infantry, Turner. It can be done by clever planning when you’ve a brain like Kronheim’s.”

  Wade got slowly to his feet and glanced up at the planes as they droned to the east of the fire-racked city.

  “They’ve headed away for the moment,” he said. “Now’s our chance to get moving. Safest place is down the subway at the corner. Come on.”

  He wrenched open the door and the two fled after him through the deserted smoke-filled building. In two minutes they had reached the street, found it packed with struggling, shouting people, some of them with blood streaming down their faces, others searching frantically amidst fallen debris.

  “Down here!” Wade snapped—and the three of them joined the mad, jostling throng crushing down the subway entrance.

  *

  The spirit of Dr. Mane must have viewed the results of his self-sinking bomb with bitter condemnation. Timed to perfection and released at the vast depth specified by Kronheim, they performed their appalling work with crushing thoroughness.

  In dozens of key points the industrial and defensive centres of the United States crashed inwards into raging mines of smoke and flame. In other parts whole army training grounds and national militia headquarters vanished into the earth. There were cases where spouting jets of lava hurled from below killed and maimed far more people than the actual bomb disaster. As Kronheim had planned, none of his agents was caught. Once they had started their particular lot of bombs sinking they vanished to take their place somewhere else in the merciless machine of domination now fully under way. In the main the agents scattered to anti-aircraft units to force the Americans in charge to hold their fire. Kronheim was counting on air power and destruction of defences for his first move, and the power of agents for the second and decisive blow.

  Through Canadian radio the world heard of the sudden onslaught on the United States in stunned amazement or Satanic delight, depending on who was the listener. In England, still holding its own with a rigid defence system and inexorable control of aliens, there was literal peace and quiet compared to what was happening in America.r />
  But London voiced its horror through Parliament as the American destruction went on unabated. An R.A.F. air fleet would leave at once to lend assistance.

  Kronheim had waited for the move. Through his network the word was passed on. England had depleted itself to aid America: now was the time to strike them a crushing blow. Agents began to move secretly through the ports despite the inexorable attention of the Customs…

  The United States, assisted after the first few hours by all the strength of Canada, who poured her air force over the borders, fought madly to regain balance from the sledgehammer blow but, relying on the theory that lightning attack is the key to victory, Kronheim pressed on. His planes continued their onslaught. Destruction rained from the sky on every big city. Still exploding Mane bombs took charges of all points of opposition. Canada, her attention diverted, failed to detect agents at work with further bombs within her own borders.

  The United States’ anti-aircraft units came into action at last—but agents controlled them. Not European but Canadian planes were shot down. Here and there a Kronheim bomber was destroyed by surviving anti-aircraft crews: here and there death or victory fighters, both American and Canadian, plunged to the attack. Futilely.

  By day, by night, through hours that seemed hewn out of Hell itself, the battle raged, Kronheim directing operations by radio from his specially devised underground shelter far under the now demolished Trust edifice.

  Little by little the remaining fighters for democracy realized they were struggling against an all-powerful enemy. Depleted in airplane supplies by reason of the European conflict draining their resources they had not the reserves necessary to keep up with Kronheim and his hidden factories. As fast as a Kronheim plane was destroyed two appeared to take its place.

  Of the French and British planes sent over the Atlantic only half the number arrived. The rest were intercepted by European long distance fighters and enemy warships placed in the Atlantic for such an offensive.

  Two weeks passed. The intensity of the battle began to cool off. Dead and wounded thousands lay in the smoky skeleton ruins of the American cities. Those who were still alive crept about helplessly in blank fear of what was coming next. There seemed to be men marching everywhere now: death from the sky seemed to have ceased. Just men, armed, with grimly determined faces.

  Many of them were Americans obeying new orders. They sent the wounded to makeshift hospitals and had the dead loaded into trucks. But everything they did seemed to be at the point of the gun, and the dazed civilians obeyed because there was nothing else for it. What did seem significant was that all the men wore armlets—the armlet of European power.

  CHAPTER IV

  CAMP 4

  Val Turner and Rita, hungry and exhausted, were wandering with the rest of the survivors through the bomb-shattered metropolis when armletted officials at last caught up with them. What had happened to Stanley Wade was problematical. Probably he was dead. The destruction of the subway had sent Val and Rita pelting for safety through a crumbling inferno of bricks and steel. They had a confused memory of living through a nightmare of explosions, of missing death or serious injury by inches, then finally of a gradual abatement in the onslaught. By the time they were captured they were too weary, physically and mentally, to speak.

  With hundreds of others they were thrust into a ruthlessly ransacked store doing service as a prison. Perhaps it was days, perhaps weeks, during which they were fed on dry bread and water. Then one by one their dispirited colleagues were drafted off by the armletted men to parts unknown. Finally it came to their turn.

  “Names?” the official inquired briefly.

  Val gave them coldly and the man consulted his list. His eyes seemed to brighten a little.

  “Our Commander must see you immediately.”

  “Kronheim, eh?” Val’s smile was cynical in his blond beard.

  “Naturally. Get moving!”

  “And you call yourself an American!” Val whispered, clenching his fists. “By God, if ever there was a traitor—”

  “Not every man in America is a democrat,” the official retorted. “Policies change, and with them—people. Now move!”

  “Come on,” Rita urged. “You can’t argue with a gun, Val…”

  He hesitated and then shrugged his heavy shoulders. The official piloted them through files of wearily standing men and women to a part of the city that had been Wall Street. Entering by an inlet of steel and concrete they passed through a narrow passage and so finally to a wide underground room with its own little power house for light and radio.

  Kronheim sat at his desk. It was littered with maps and papers. At the rear stood the scrub-headed Angorstine, his lips pouting cushions. The electric clock on the wall made an ungodly halo for his skull.

  “The Turners,” announced the guard briefly, then with a salute he turned and went out.

  Kronheim looked up with his icy blue eyes. His lips smiled.

  “So you did not die after all,” he murmured. “Well, how truly remarkable! And, in a way, most providential.”

  “You can skip the build-up, Kronheim,” Val snapped.

  Kronheim still smiled. “I gave special orders that if you were found alive you were to be brought to me. Your—er—honesty in giving your own names has saved you from a firing squad, probably. Practically all enemies of the new regime are being lined up and shot.”

  “What’s different about us?” Val blazed. “Neither of us have anything in common with you and your bunch of cut-throats. I speak for my wife, of course, as well as myself.”

  The girl nodded her head slowly.

  “Shooting,” Kronheim said, “is the quick way out. It is due to you, Turner, because you escaped prison regime by reason of the recent change in American affairs. I am a just man, however. I have decided you shall return to prison, but certain new regulations will be enforced upon you. Your wife, because of her complicity with you in getting your rightful sentence of death commuted to life sentence, will also go to prison… I don’t want to kill you because I think it a fitting punishment that you should live long enough to see the changes that are going to come to America…

  “All over this country labour camps are being set up. Those capable of work will be drafted to them. The new European America will be built…and you two will help to build it! Every time you stumble the lash will remind you that there can be only one master and one mind. You will realize that you are one of the masses—you will even remember perhaps that you both tried once to cross me! You were both prepared to die for democracy. Perhaps that chance will still be yours.”

  Both Val and Rita kept silent. They were appalled by the vision that had risen before them—the scene of a free America trampled underfoot by merciless oppression.

  “So you have nothing to say?” Kronheim asked in surprise. He got to his feet and pointed to a vast world-map on the wall. “See how we are progressing?” he inquired, his eyes glinting. “Through war we have gained half of Europe. France and Spain are being broken down by the Mane bombs. Other bombs are at work in Southern Europe and in Russia. America we have already mastered: Canada will be next. Great Britain is cracking. Once it was said that world conquest was impossible…Maybe it was right at the time: it was the Mane bomb that made such a cause possible. One scientist gave us the world—the world of power, the control of Mankind to certain tasks, which is as it should be. Free thinking is a dangerous weapon for the masses. They do not know how to use it.”

  If Kronheim expected a furious outburst from Val he was disappointed. Instead Val said, “And you think we’re going to lie down under it? You’re idiot enough to believe you can rule everything and meet with no opposition? O.K.—try it! Dr. Mane gave you bombs…but perhaps that wasn’t all he gave you.”

  “Meaning?” Kronheim snapped, a memory of Standish flashing across his brain.

  Val only smiled through his beard. Kronheim snapped his fingers.

  “Take them out. Labour duty. Camp 4.”
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  He watched them go, in the grip of soldiers, then Angorstine said:

  “You’re not letting that fool Turner upset you, surely? If we have been allowed to get this far by whatever is supposed to hold the world in its fist it is sufficient assurance that we are right. Might is right! We have proved it. Look here…”

  With a satisfied smile he handed over a typewritten sheet.

  “The Mane bombs are working everywhere,” he breathed. “Naples is undermined, so are most parts of London. The capitals of the Orient, of the Far North and South. India. The Day is very near, Kronheim.”

  “What’s this?” Kronheim asked curtly. He did not seem to have heard a word of his aide’s lustful vaporings. He was looking at a totally different report.

  “That?” Angorstine looked surprised. “Why, nothing. Just the details of a lava flow from near San Francisco. One of the Mane bomb pits started it.”

  “It did, eh?” Kronheim’s eyes narrowed. “We hit a volcanic seam?”

  “Possibly. One runs right under America near Frisco. Had a lot to do with the 1906 earthquake, I understand. But what of it—?”

  “I want a geologist,” Kronheim said slowly. “I don’t care what term he’s serving, who he is, but get one. There are some things I want to know right away. Give the order to the camps, too. Find somebody with a good physiography knowledge.”

  “But—”

  “Get one!” Kronheim yelled.

  Angorstine frowned and went out scratching his head. An echo of the murdered Standish was ringing through Kronheim’s barbaric brain.

  *

  A week went by in Labor Camp 4 before Val and Rita fully realized what they were up against. Though separated during working hours they found ways and means, as did the others, of getting together in the off hours. The guard made no attempt to stop the union. There was no way of escape from within the railed enclosure anyway. Electrification of all barriers was possible at a moment’s notice.