Kevin Anderson - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Dante stood, waiting for more detailed orders. "Should I tell the men to prepare for a pitched firefight?"

"Nothing so troublesome, Lieutenant. I'll provide a distraction to cover our exit. I think it will be rather impressive."

The Fantom glanced up to the hangar's next level and gestured to one of his loyal henchmen who stood on the iron steps above. The soldier tossed down a sleek and complicated rocket-launching weapon. The masked leader shrugged his cape out of the way, shouldered the weapon, and cocked the firing pin.

"Are you mad?" the German scientist cried upon seeing the rocket launcher. "This place is full of hydrogen gas!"

"Exactly." He turned to Dante. "Get Herr Draper to safety please."

Shouting into his radio box, Dante sounded the retreat. Leaving the corralled factory prisoners waiting for rescue from the incensed German army, the invading soldiers in British uniforms beat an orderly withdrawal from the main work area.

The masked leader swung the weapon to bear on the space behind them, where the six enormous zeppelins hovered by the yawning open doors of the hangar. Shouting curses at the English, the Kaiser's reinforcements swarmed through the front doorway, demanding that the British troops surrender.

When the oncoming German soldiers were halfway across the hangar, running directly under the dirigibles, the Fantom fired the heavy rocket launcher.

"Nein!" Karl Draper shouted, his face filled with horror. Dante pushed him impatiently ahead.

Whistling, sputtering, and buzzing as it flew, the rocket trailed a control wire behind it. The Fantom studied the trajectory like an expert skeet shooter and adjusted his aim to put the nearest zeppelin in the crosshairs. He couldn't possibly miss.

The wire-controlled rocket angled up and tore through the side of the gas-filled airship, then detonated. Though a single spark would have been sufficient, the Fantom found this extravagant method more dramatic and satisfying.

Contained within baffled chambers of the huge lighter-than-air dirigible, the rich hydrogen gas erupted in incinerating flames. The explosion sent out shock waves powerful enough to knock the rushing German soldiers flat. Many of them caught fire, like living candles, screaming as they burned and fell to the hangar floor. The trapped factory workers and defeated guards tried to escape, but the flames rolled forward like fiery floodwaters from a burst dam.

A wave of flame spewed from the first dying zeppelin and ignited its nearest counterpart, triggering a catastrophic chain reaction that leaped from one zeppelin to the next. Soon, the entire Valkyrie Works were in flames.

The Fantoms' silver mask caught and reflected the dazzling firestorm. He admired the holocaust he had triggered. Quite impressive.

Then he turned and followed his men, thoroughly satisfied with how well he had stirred the hornets nest.

A dry savannah wind blew along dirt roads lined with single-level stores, huts, and merchant stalls. A few natives loudly hawked overripe fruits and vegetables from produce carts. The smell was thick with rot, manure, and sweat. It seemed inconceivable that a person might choose to live here unless he had absolutely no other options.

Sanderson Reed looked at his surroundings with disdain, waving his straw hat in front of his face as much to chase away the odors as to cool himself. He was a pallid bureaucrat in his late twenties; to him, traveling so far from home was an unpleasant chore instead of an adventure.

"Nairobi. The big city… according to the map of Kenya." He made a snorting sound.

According to the briefing M had given him, this was little more than a glorified, boggy watering hole for the Maasai people. Not exactly civilization. Reed wished he was back in London. For all its faults, at least that city had culture.

Hearing him mutter, the dark-skinned driver of the wagon turned to him. "Sorry, sir? Did you say something, sir?"

"Nothing worth repeating. So, where is the Britannia Club? Are we almost there?" The drive had been as interminable as it was unpleasant.

"Almost there, sir." The wagon creaked ahead down to the end of the dirt road, finally stopping beside several horses tethered to a hitching post. With a sad attempt at pride, the driver gestured. "Here it is, sir. The Britannia Club. Nairobi's finest, sir."

With a sigh of dread, Reed looked at the rundown building. "I was afraid you were going to say that." He shook his head.

The Club was certainly one of the largest and sturdiest stuctures in all of Nairobi — but that wasn't saying much. The grounds had gone to seed, making the weeds indistinguishable from the once-tended flower beds. Union Jacks drooped from poles like dead fish, engorged with humidity. The heat and flies and squalor seemed to sap the life from even the flag of the British Empire. He doubted M would have approved.

As the patient driver waited, Reed climbed gracelessly out of the wagon. "Don't wander off," he said.

"No, sir."

Stepping toward the Britannia Club, the bureaucrat wrinkled his nose as he glanced over at a rundown graveyard nearby. "Couldn't they have picked a better place to put a club? On another continent , perhaps?"

Reed climbed the porch steps and entered the open front door; as many flies seemed to be wandering out as venturing inside. Not a good sign. He took a moment to assess the surroundings, observing the details of the room with a sour frown.

The Britannia Club spoke of weary, faded glory, a time when Cecil Rhodes and intrepid explorers had seen the dark continent as a treasure box to be unlocked. Allan Quartermain had personally done much to foster that impression on gullible English schoolboys who were hungry to read tales of adventure.

The walls were crowded with a hodgepodge of stuffed animals, tribal shields, stretched pelts of striped and spotted animals, and dusty portraits of forgotten English adventurers. Ivory tusks hung from the rafters.

The club was full of the empire's dregs, old men awash in gin and memories. They sat around at the tables snoring, playing cards or checkers, or endlessly repeating stories of their past escapades.

A black valet stepped up to meet him. "Good afternoon, sir. May I help you? A drink perhaps?"

"I'd prefer information." Reed explained who he was looking for, and the valet, showing no surprise at all, gestured in the direction of a red-faced fellow in his mid-sixties, who — from all appearances — probably spent more time drinking than adventuring.

Anxious to finish his assignment and catch the next steamer back to England, Reed briskly approached his target. A second man sat at the table, brooding and silent, probably drunk. Reed ignored the companion, now that he had found his mark.

"Excuse me, gentlemen?" He waited for them to look up at him with bleary eyes. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing Allan Quartermain?"

The red-faced man grinned at him with discolored teeth. "You do, sir. Indeed you do!" A breath heavy with the sour juniper of bad gin wafted up to him. "Only, it's Quatermain . Bloody press always misspells my name. Never asked them to print my adventures anyway, and then they can't even spell my name right."

"You're not… at all what I expected," Reed said, disappointed. But then, so far everything about Africa, Kenya, Nairobi, and the Britannia Club had also been a disappointment. But M had been very specific about this man.

"I presume you're another traveler, got it into your head to sample the dark continent? And while you're at it, why not hunt down old Allan Quatermain and have him tell his adventures, eh? Well, I've heard that one before, and I certainly welcome the company." Jovially, the red-faced man nudged his quiet companion. " He's not much of a conversationalist."