Matt Reilly Stories (5 page)

Nathan
Black instantly awoke. Since he had only been in a light coma, his death inside
Time Tours had simply woken him up.

‘Shit!’
he growled. ‘They got me. They’re guarding the portal.

There’s
no way in.’

Tad
Ellis went white. ‘What are we gonna do now?’

‘Wait
a second…!’ the tech at a viewing console called.

‘There’s
someone else in there. In
Superstar
. At the EEP. But it’s not a computer
entity. It’s…it’s a
guest
 signature. It’s Mitchell Raleigh.’

Mission:
Superstar

Mitch
peered out from his booth, eyeing the body of Nathan Black, dead at the top of
the stairwell.

Suddenly,
a fat figure stepped into view, and all the WWII troops immediately stood to
attention.

It
was Humbert Hughes. And with him was—

Laura.

Her
face was tear-stained, her eyes red.

She
was still dressed in her glittery opening-night dress.

Hughes
growled at her: ‘This was the man they sent to rescue you and to abduct me.

Not
to be.’

He
threw her to one of his men. ‘Take her the Tower. 24-hour guard.’

Laura
was hustled away.

Then
Hughes said to his paratrooper captain: ‘Keep two squads stationed in this
chamber. Cover the portal. Kill anyone who comes out of it.’

Hughes
swept out of the belltower.

Those
paratroopers who remained there never noticed the two tiny figures dangling by
their fingertips from the parapet of the belltower, three hundred feet above
the ground.

Mitch
Raleigh and Pi.

The
Rescue Part I

‘They’re
taking her to the Tower of London,’ Mitch whispered, still hanging from the
belltower. ‘Once she’s there, we’re screwed. We’ll have to snatch her en
route.’

‘But
how?’ Pi asked.

Mitch
peered down the side of the belltower. After a few minutes, he saw the tiny
figure of Laura emerge and get shoved into an open-topped Army jeep. Hughes
followed shortly after, climbed into a limousine. Both cars were surrounded by
a motorcade of several tanks and a few turret-mounted Allied and Nazi jeeps.

‘You
got a parachute?’ Mitch asked.

‘I
am required to wear one at all times.’

‘Directional?’

‘Of
course.’

‘Room
for two?’

‘Of
course.’

‘Then
let’s do some rescuing,’ Mitch said, swinging over and grasping Pi around the
waist. ‘Bombs away.’

And
with that, Pi let go of the parapet.

In
the Control Room

‘Oh,
Christ! Raleigh just fell from the top of the belltower...’

Everyone
in the control room froze in horror.

The
Rescue Part II

Mitch
and Pi plummeted down the side of the belltower, the building’s vertical wall
rushing by them in a blur of speed, before—WHACK!—a square-shaped parachute
blossomed above them, issuing from Pi’s backpack.

And
suddenly they were gliding downwards at a steep angle heading for—

Hughes’s
now-moving military motorcade.

The
gun-turrets on two of the escort jeeps opened fire, but Pi fired back with his
(far more powerful) pulse rifle, and with one shot, blew one of the jeeps to
kingdom come. A second shot sent the other jeep careering off the road and into
a shop window.

Then
a Nazi Panzer tank swiveled its canon turret, readying to fire, but this time
it was Raleigh who responded, awkwardly shouldering his rocket launcher and
firing it at the beast.

The
rocket lanced through the air before it slammed into the tank, incinerating it.

Pi
then zeroed in on the jeep carrying Laura, guiding the directional parachute
toward the fleeing car.

The
parachute came over the speeding jeep and while Pi took out the two men
guarding Laura with two brilliant headshots, Mitch then leaned down and kicked
the driver clear out of the jeep. Then he dropped into the passenger seat while
Pi released the chute and landed in the driver’s seat and took the wheel.

Pi
spun them around, and headed back for Westminster Abbey, the rest of the
motorcade in hot pursuit.

They
skidded round a corner, shot past Parliament. Big Ben towering above them.

Mitch
turned to Laura, ‘Hey there—’

He
cut himself off, disturbed by a shocking sight in the distance.

An
entire army of Allied and Nazi troops was crossing the Parliament Bridge,
coming right for them!

It
was at least 40,000 men: on foot, on jeeps, in tanks and on motorbikes.

‘We
need to buy some time,’ Mitch said, thinking fast. ‘Pi, what’s the most
powerful RPG you’ve got?’

Pi
pulled a rocket-propelled grenade from his belt. It had a glowing purple light
on it. ‘Liquid plasma. Blows big.’

Mitch
took the plasma grenade and loaded it into his rocket launcher. Then, from the
passenger seat of the speeding jeep, he aimed it at Big Ben. ‘I can’t believe
I’m going to do this...’

He
pulled the trigger.

The
plasma grenade shoomed out from the launcher and slammed into the exact middle
of Big Ben just as the jeep zoomed past the historic tower.

Impact.
Explosion. A starburst of bricks and glass blasted outwards from the historic
clocktower.

Then,
like a slow-falling tree, Big Ben began to fall.

Fatally
wounded in its middle, the great two-hundred-foot-tall tower toppled across the
roadway, hitting the ground with a momentous crash. The famous clock at the
summit of the tower shattered into a million pieces as it hit the bitumen.

And
now the tower lay across the roadway, like a giant fallen tree, blocking all of
Mitch’s pursuers, exactly as Mitch had planned.

Laura
looked sideways at Mitch. ‘You totally enjoyed doing that.’

They
headed for Westminster Abbey.

The
Abbey

They
hit the Abbey at a sprint, clambered up the stairs, came to the chamber at the
top of the belltower...

...only
to find Humbert Hughes and his team of Nazi SS assassins waiting for them.

‘I
knew you’d come back here,’ Hughes sneered. ‘It’s the only way out. You’ve
fought gamely, Mr. Raleigh, but while I need Miss Bush, I have no need for
you.’ He turned to one of the Nazi men. ‘Sturmbann-fuhrer. Kill him, please.’

The
Nazi raised his Luger and fired.

Mitch
had no time to react.

The
gun went off, just as a blur of colour swept in front of Mitch and he suddenly realised
that Pi had thrown himself in front of him, and taken the bullet!

The
Nazi captain was stunned. So was Hughes.

Mitch,
however, seized the opportunity and snatched an acid grenade from Pi’s belt,
pulled the pin, threw it. Then he yanked Laura down through the stairway hatch.

Bam—splat!

The
grenade went off, sending a powerful splatter of stinging sulfuric acid
spraying throughout the confined space of the belltower.

Screams
followed.

Mitch
burst up through the hatch, Remington shotgun booming, taking out the
acid-scarred Nazis on every side.

Humbert
Hughes had also been hit by the acid grenade. He lay crouched in a corner of
the chamber, hands clawing at his eyes.

‘My
eyes!’ he screamed. ‘My eyes!’

Mitch
leaned close and spoke...in German:

‘Herr
Hughes, come with me. The author is dead and we have the girl. But we must get
you to a field hospital. Come, let me guide you.’

Blinded,
Hughes took Mitch’s hand and allowed himself to be lead...willingly...into the
Emergency Exit Portal in the corner of the chamber.

With
Laura beside him, Mitch closed the booth’s door and hit the big red button
marked: EMERGENCY EXIT.

The
chamber flashed white.

Back
in the Real World

Mitch
Raleigh’s eyes sprang open and he sat up from his dentist’s chair with a lurch.

Then
he vomited.

A
Time Tours technician helped him stand. ‘Welcome back, Mr. Raleigh. You’re a
goddamn hero.’

Indeed
he was. The drama of Time Tours’s launch, and Mitch’s role in saving the
President’s niece, featured in news bulletins around the world. His delighted
publisher could not have asked for more publicity.

Humbert
Hughes would end up in a psychiatric facility.

Time
Tours would go back into research and development.

Mitch
ended up watching the news broadcasts with Laura and her family in Dallas.
There he saw himself on the TV being asked: ‘So, Mr. Raleigh! Mr. Raleigh! Will
you be taking another trip on Time Tours again?’

‘Not
for a while,’ he’d replied.

As
it happened, Mitch would indeed return to Time Tours—several times, in fact—to
meet up with his new friend, Pi, the man who had thrown himself in front of a
bullet for Mitch.

Of
course, by then Pi had been fully regenerated in the computer world of Time
Tours. He had even had Mitch’s latest book installed in his programming so they
could discuss it.

________________

_________________

Empire
State Building

100th
Floor

New
York City, 6:50 a.m.

There
came a shrill electronic
beep
as the masked intruder removed the small rectangular
case from its recess beneath the desk’s clear-glass top—and suddenly the clock
was ticking.

Twenty-five
minutes.

The
response team would be here in four.

The
intruder wasted no time.

As
he strode toward the office’s corner windows, he slid the rectangular glass
case into a small chest-pack hidden underneath the front of his black jacket.

He
came to the north-east-facing windows, where he was met by a view of midtown New
York City.

It
looked like a mountain range of skyscrapers—all cluttered and crowded. He saw the
top of the Chrysler Building, its crystalline pointed peak shimmering in the
dawn.

The
iron-lattice Queensboro Bridge and the wide expanse of the East River hovered
in the background beyond the Chrysler. In the concrete jungle
in between
the river and the Empire State, the keen tourist would find Grand Central
Station, fashionable Fifth Avenue, and on the banks of the River itself, the UN
building.

Nice
view
,
the intruder thought. As one would expect of a member of the US Federal Reserve
Board.

The
intruder, however, didn’t stop to admire it.

He
just drew a silenced Sig-Sauer pistol from his thigh holster and blasted one of
the corner windows to smithereens. Then—100 storeys up, 1000 feet off the ground—he
leapt out through the hole and the chase began.

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OFFICIAL
STAMP 046-24 --DOCUMENT NOT DELIVERED

(7
DECEMBER, 1941) --DESTROY ALL COPIES --DESTROY ALL COPIES

–-DESTROY
ALL COPIES –-DESTROY ALL COPIES