The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

TWENTY SIX Venice

Inside the Nautilus's brightly lit rocket room, huge machinery moved a rocket from its pallet to a firing tube. Diligent crewmen did their work without panic, accustomed to drills and having had plenty of experience in previous adventures.

Nemo barked orders at Ishmael. "Tune the tracer to the car's frequency. The rocket must be ready to fire as soon as we see their flare."

The first mate activated the tracer unit on the rocket rooms wall, adjusting it until a sequence of lights shone green. The tracing device began to plot the car's position as an ink trail on a cylindrical map roll. "There he is, Cap'n."

The fresh line zigzagged and jittered, showing Tom Sawyers weaving path through the streets of Venice.

Impacts rang on the hull in an echoing sequence of booms, as if an army was trying to batter its way into the floating Nautilus. Two of Nemo's crewmen dashed out, ready to fight against the Fantom's minions — but there was no enemy other than the surrounding structures, breaking apart and raining chunks of masonry onto the vessel. The crewmen ducked, shielding their heads.

More debris pelted the exterior of the submarine vessel. The polished gold trim and white ceramic plates were scraped, scuffed, stained. The arched bridge overhead groaned and splintered, ready to fall entirely at any moment.

"The buildings are coming down! We must away!" shouted a terrified crewman.

Nemo scrambled into the crows nest, rising high to where he could view the city through a complicated binocular instrument. He watched as the sinking of Venice progressed. "No, we will stay, and we will do our job."

Yet he still saw no sign of Quatermain's flare.

A ceiling had collapsed, and fresh rubble blocked the door of the secret conference room. Three of the guards had already been killed, and the world leaders clung together like frightened children beneath the heavy table.

When the floor cracked and greenish-brown water began oozing up from between the tiles, they realized they were trapped.

"The Building! She is sinking!" the Italian said.

Leaving their empty bottles of wine on the floor, the representatives scrambled out and sloshed through the deepening pools toward the exit. The German climbed onto the heavy table and stood there like the commander of a navy ship.

"We can't get out." The British ambassador stood with water rising past his ankles. "Bloody hell."

The bearlike Russian joined the German on the table. Since it was the only dry and sturdy place, the other representatives joined them. "We are lucky this table is well built and strong, like Mother Russia!"

The wood groaned in protest and wobbled as the last of the world leaders pulled themselves onto it.

While the water deepened on the floor, empty wine bottles floated like defective glass fishing boats; they slowly filled, then sank with a gurgle.

"Perhaps this would be a good time to resolve our differences," the Spanish ambassador suggested.

Leaving the colonnade and the tangled canals behind, the six-wheeled car screeched onto a wide street.

"There, ahead," Quatermain said, gesturing out his side of the car. "It's a straight shot from here."

On villa rooftops on both sides of the cobblestoned street, a swarm of the Fantom's snipers rose ominously, took their positions, readied their deadly rifles.

"Straight shot for them, maybe," Sawyer said, "a gauntlet for us."

But the snipers weren't the only figures visible. A liquid shadow, Mina Harker raced along in eerie silence above their heads, finding impossible perches, clinging to the walls like a nimble spider as she moved.

Quatermain pointed, nodding with unexpected admiration. "Not at all. The vampire has us covered."

Sawyer set his jaw, grasped the controls, then roared forward into the deadly targeting zone. Nemos amazing car entered the gauntlet just as Mina attacked the snipers.

She took them completely by surprise, a blurry wraith of dark, jittery motion. Gunshots rang out, most of them fired in desperation and terror. The vampire woman pounced from man to man along the roofs edge, slashing and ripping. One moment she was air-borne, the next skittering to another victim. Her claws and teeth flashed in the moonlight and the growing fires of explosions and destruction. For all her beauty and grace, she no longer looked remotely human.

At breakneck speed, Sawyer lurched the car along the exposed street, picking up speed past the deadly snipers. The vehicle would have been a clear target for a rain of gunfire — if one set of the Fantom's killers hadn't been so suddenly preoccupied with their own survival.

But the snipers on the opposite side of the street took aim and opened fire on the racing car, shattering cobblestones, puncturing the metal sidewalk and roof.

From the villas high rooftop, Mina lifted her delicate chin, opened her bloodied mouth, and keened a bone-chilling note. Her piercing cry shot through the night sky, audible even above the loud explosions and roars of collapsing buildings.

From the darkness, a shadowy swarm answered her summons.

A huge flock of black-winged bats swooped through the night like a cloud of angry hornets. In a squeaking storm, hundreds and hundreds of bats descended in a flurry to engulf the snipers on the opposite roofline.

Mina continued the slaughter on her side of the street, while her winged pets savaged the overconfident snipers on the other side. It all happened so shockingly fast that the Fantom's men were not even aware of their danger until each screamed and wheeled around in turn, their throats torn open, eyes slashed, faces cut.

Three frantic men screamed and flailed, trying to drive away the flood of ravenous bats. They stumbled and fell from their high perches to strike the street far below with a wet, cracking sound…

Holding on for dear life in the shuddering car, Quatermain peered through the bullet-pocked front windscreen to a wide canal at his right — and was astonished to spy the Fantom himself.

Helmeted henchmen were escorting the masked man toward a creaking dock. An armored gunboat floated in the canal beneath the walkway. The Fantom turned his silver-covered face to take in a last glance of the fires and continuing destruction he had brought about, then with a swirl of his black cape, he stepped onto the pier.

The old adventurer meaningfully placed his flare gun on the dashboard. "Sawyer, remember the flare! You know when to launch it." He snapped open the door of the racing vehicle. "I'm counting on you."

"Wha—?" the young agent said, taking his eyes from the obstacle course he was driving.

"I cant protect you this time, boy. I'm off." Quatermain clenched his jaw and braced himself. "This enemy's mine."

Then he was out of the car, taking the landing with a roll, while Sawyer careened onward at full speed. Before he could feel the pain of bruises and torn skin, Quatermain climbed to his feet and set off at a run toward the canal and the Fantom's gunboat.

Sawyer cursed and looked ahead. In just a matter of moments, Dorian Gray, Mina Harker, and now Allan Quatermain had all deserted him. running off to their own adventures. He glanced at the thick-barreled flare gun. "Heck, I wasn't even supposed to be part of this group."

Then his eyes suddenly filled with fear. Just ahead, the sequence of collapsing buildings had started to cross the path he drove. The buildings direcdy in front of him began to slump and sink.

Tom Sawyer let out a loud whoop, then gunned the gas and raced into the jaws of the beast.

Ishmael stood in the rocket room of the Nautilus, watching as the tracer pen plotted Sawyers position. The car wove through the streets of Venice, heading to the center of the spreading waves of destruction.

High atop the crow's nest, Nemo lowered his binocular device, grabbed a voice tube that was connected to the extended metal framework, and yelled down into the rocket room, "I believe he's almost there. Be ready to launch!"

Ishmael rested a callused, oil-stained finger on the red firing button.

Just then, the damaged bridge spanning the canal above the submarine collapsed. Support beams and chunks of stone crashed down in a landslide of rubble onto the vessel's plated hull. The first mate stayed at his post in spite of the electrical panels that sparked and exploded in the rocket room.

"We'll be smashed apart!" cried a crewman. Other men rushed in to shut down live circuits and douse the fires before they could spread.

"If the Cap'n says we stay, then we stay," Ishmael said, glowering.