Dark Star. Don Pendleton

Davidson?” Henzollern asked uncertainly.

      The man grit his teeth. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough fuel for three, so he must stay behind.”

      “I’ll take care of it, sir,” she said, pulling out the MP-7 and checking the clip.

      “No, a commander must handle such things himself,” the colonel countered, gliding sideways toward the old uranium mines. “It is a matter of honor.”

      “I’m sure he would appreciate the gesture.”

      “Oh, I doubt it highly,” the man chided. “But as a soldier, he would understand the necessity, and that is enough.”

      The dark plume of smoke rising from the burning truck made an excellent guide back to the landing site, and the X-ship hovered over the area for only a few seconds, before streaking upward into the starry black of space.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       London, England

      Ethereal mist moved over the Thames River like a living thing, the ancient stones lining the shore weather to the consistency of polished marble from the endless decades of wear. Far at the bottom of the river, covered in layers of silt and mud, the decaying pieces of German war planes warmly rotted alongside the remains of the vaunted Spanish armada from another century.

      Rising majestically over the murky waters, Tower Bridge was an imposing Victorian edifice. The massive Cornish granite blocks had been intricately carved by master masons from another era, and the two great Gothic towers that stood on either side of the center span resembled something from legend, beautiful, dominant, eternal.

      High overhead, the perpetually gray sky rained slightly, then stopped, merely to start once more as if it had forgotten what happened just moments earlier. On the busy sidewalks crossing the ancient bridge, only the tourists cried out in annoyance, or dashed about struggling to open their newly purchased umbrellas. The locals simply ignored the drizzle, the same as they did the blaring car horns from the streaming traffic, or the thick reek of diesel fumes from the fleets of double-decker buses.

      “Ah, just like home!” A tourist smiled, deeply breathing in the smog. “God, I miss New York.”

      “Are you insane? How can you think about Manhattan when we’re standing smack in the middle of London!” his wife gushed happily, both of her hands full of shopping bags from Harrods department store. “I mean, look at this, Harold! We’re actually standing on London Bridge!”

      “London Bridge,” he said slowly, tasting the words. “As in the old song, ‘London Bridge is falling down…’?”

      “Exactly! Isn’t it exciting?”

      “London Bridge,” the man said slowly, smiling.

      Several of the people passing by tried to hide their amusement at that, but an elderly barrister stopped alongside the gawking couple. Lord love a duck, bloody Americans didn’t know a lorry from a lavatory!

      “Excuse me, old chap,” the barrister said, resting his umbrella on the sidewalk with a flourish. “But this is most certainly not London Bridge.” He flipped the umbrella upward to point at the two massive structures at either end of the span. “See those? This is Tower Bridge.”

      “Not London Bridge?” the wife asked, hoping this was some sort of joke.

      “No, ma’am, honestly, it is not.” The barrister used the umbrella again to point upstream. “See there? The next bridge is London Bridge.”

      “Are you sure?” the husband asked warily.

      “Absolutely.” He smiled tolerantly.

      Just then the clouds parted and fire descended from the sky.

      Realizing what was happening, the SAS operative posing as a barrister started to go for the gun under his jacket, then changed his mind and shoved the two tourists over the side of the bridge in a desperate effort to save their lives.

      The shocked husband and wife were still falling when the X-ship arrived to hover above the bridge, its exhaust washing over the granite slabs to ignite people and vehicles. Screams and explosions filled the roadway, the SAS operative trying for his weapon just before vanishing in the incandescent fury of the rocket engines.

      On the roof of the South Tower, an iron-bound door slammed open and a dozen Special Forces soldiers charged into view, working the arming bolts of their Enfield L85 assault rifles. Rushing to the parapets of the castelated tower, the troopers took aim and fired streams of 5.56 mm hardball bullets upon the huge ship below them. But the hail of bullets only bounced harmlessly off the steeply sloped sides of the smooth hull.

      Desperately, the soldiers raked their gunfire along the scarred, white hull, searching for a window, or a hatch, anything that might yield a vulnerable point to the flying mountain. But the seamless X-ship seemed to be a single homogenous artifact, immutable and indestructible.

      Seeing the futility of the assault, the lieutenant swung up an XM-18 grenade launcher and started pumping high-explosive rounds at the giant machine. But again, the 40 mm shells ricocheted off the smooth hull before detonating, doing no damage at all.

      “Get clear!” a sergeant bellowed, swinging up a Stinger missile launcher. The brains in Whitehall had deduced how the X-ships were protecting themselves from the heat-seekers, and new software had been hastily written and loaded into the minicomputer of the antiaircraft Stinger. It was no longer a guided missile, but a deadhead, a simple rocket that would fly true until it ran out of propellant. All he had to do was to get close and—

      “Bugger me!” the sergeant snarled as the distance to the X-ship appeared on the viewfinder. The damn thing was too close! The tower was two hundred feet tall, but the X-ship was well over a hundred itself, and hovering several yards off the bridge. A standard Stinger needed a hundred yards to arm the warhead and the X-ship was less than one third of that distance!

      Gamely trying anyway, the soldier fired the rocket, and it slammed into the side of the X-ship only to shatter into pieces and fall tumbling into the ocean of boiling flame covering the bridge.

      The unit’s lieutenant stared hatefully at the steel invader. Then he paused. Was it made of steel? A chap from the RAF said that space shuttles, and the like, had a sort of heat-proof glass shield covering the nose as protection. By sheer necessity, the material was rough and tough, built to take incredible punishment. However, it was breakable.

      “Aim for the nose!” the officer bellowed over the unimaginable noise of the engines. “Bust the heat shield and it’ll melt trying to lift off. That’s the weak spot! The top!”

      Focusing their attack on the crest of the cone, the British soldiers got off only a few bursts before the X-ship incredibly started to rise and a monstrous wave of volcanic heat-searing fumes poured over the parapet, stealing the air from their lungs.

      Coughing hard, the soldiers were driven back inside the South Tower and hastily slammed the ancient iron door shut.

      “Mother of God,” a corporal wheezed, barely able to form the words, while another man bent over the iron railing at the top of the granite stairs and nosily lost his breakfast. Struggling to pull in a breath, none of the others blamed the poor sod a bit. That was the closest any of them ever wanted to get to hell. A few more seconds of that and they all would have keeled over.

      Suddenly the streams of heat came from around the thick door, eased away, and a great silence filled the tower.

      Never pausing in the reloading of their weapons, the troopers listened hard, but they could only hear the piteous wails of the wounded and the crying civilians mixing with the crackling of the burning cars and trucks.

      “Did it leave?” a private asked, thumbing a 40 mm shell into the grenade launcher of his L-85 assault rifle.

      “Bleeding hope so,” another man snarled, then hawked and spit in the corner. “God, I can still taste the stink!”

      “Silence!”