The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

TWENTY FIVE Venice

Mina leaped into the back of the vehicle. "I'd love it!"

Quatermain jumped in the front, taking the seat next to Sawyer. He looked at the young American with an appreciative smile. "Good idea. Wish I'd thought of it."

"I was watching you all in the car back at the London museum," Sawyer said, revving the engine. "Made up my mind back then that I wanted to take 'er for a drive."

As Dorian Gray climbed in beside Mina, she primly shifted her skirts away from him. Quatermain shouted at the cringing, uncertain doctor still on the towpath. "Jekyll, hurry man! Get in!" But the man froze, as if every alternative were equally miserable.

Captain Nemo stepped up to the drivers compartment and spoke to Quatermain as Tom Sawyer impatiently shifted the controls, anxious to be off. "I will need specific coordinates to launch my rocket. Our targeting must be absolutely precise, or we will cause even more damage than we hope to prevent."

"Can you track this thing?" said Quatermain, rapping on the side of the unusual car.

"Of course. I planned for all contingencies when I drew up my designs."

Quatermain pulled his flare gun. "Then launch when you see the flare! We'll lead you right to the bull's-eye."

With each passing minute, more Venetian buildings groaned and collapsed, continuing the devastating ripple of the chain reaction. The captain hurried off to the gangplank into the Nautilus. "Ishmael and I will make the preparations immediately."

Quatermain turned to Sawyer, slapping his palm on the control board. "Full power!"

The young man floored the gas — and the engine prompdy died, causing a moment of stunned shock. From the rear, Gray let out a quiet, disbelieving snort. Sawyer desperately tried to restart the engine, blushing and hiding his sheepish expression. "I, uh, think I killed it."

At the rear of the car, two of Nemo's uniformed crewmen tried to push the car forward, hoping the engine would turn over. Sawyer struggled with the controls, and the car's flooded engine coughed but refused to catch.

Quatermain realized that the last member of their team had not yet climbed into the car. "Jekyll! What are you doing? Come on!"

But the mousy doctor stood immobile, terrified of setting free his brutish alter ego. "I–I…"

With a new, violent blast, another building collapsed, this one nearer. Overhead, the stone bridge spanning the canal wrenched and cracked, but still clung together. Debris fell all around, pelting the hull of the Nautilus.

"We'll need Hyde!" Quatermain insisted. "Look around you."

Finally, the cars engine roared to life again, and Sawyer beamed in triumph, ready to go. But Jekyll remained helplessly frozen on the towpath. "No! Hyde will never use me again. I swear—"

"But without him, my dear doctor, what use are you?" Gray said with a taunting lilt in his voice. "Do you plan to apply bandages and iodine to our scrapes once we're all finished?"

"Just go," Quatermain said in disgust to Sawyer. "A damned inconvenient time for the man to have second thoughts about his purpose here."

The young American put Nemo's car into gear and they raced away, leaving Henry Jekyll alone with his fear, and Skinner — literally — nowhere in sight…

The car raced along up the narrow street, inches from the crumbling walls on one side and the canal edge on the other. Its six wheels held their traction, in spite of the rubble that continued to fall onto the roadway.

"All right!" Sawyer said, then whooped as they careened over a particularly large bump. "So… where am I going?"

Quatermain pulled out the map of Venice that Nemo had provided before dispatching the team. He squinted in the dim light as the car lurched and bounced, then he drew out his eyeglasses again. After adjusting them, the old adventurer could finally read the fine lines and letters on the map. "Right ahead, then a left turn."

"No, go right after the canal forks." Mina leaned forward from the back.

"— a left turn that will lead us into the Calle del Luna—" Quatermain continued, ignoring her.

"It's not the best way," Mina insisted. "I've spent some time in this city. That counts for more than any map."

"Good thing we're all on the same team," Sawyer muttered, then decided to listen to Mina after all. He hauled the car hard right at the fork, missing the center divider by a hairbreadth.

"Caution, boy!" Quatermain yelled.

Suddenly, bullets spanged off the car's hood, leaving silver starbursts of impact. Sawyer wrestled with the steering, screeched the car to a halt.

On the villa roof's edge overhead, a sniper sprinted away, grasping a long rifle. The silhouettes of other snipers rose up, materializing from behind nearby statues in the streets. They fired a hailstorm of bullets at the car.

Looking uncharacteristically furious, Gray kicked open the door to the car and leaped out. "Damn Skinner! He must've told them we were coming." Heroically, he pulled his cane-sword, slashing the thin silver blade in a menacing arc, and launched himself into the fray as the air filled with projectiles. "Just go!"

"Dorian, it's no use —" Mina shouted.

"Keep driving, lad!" Quatermain said.

Sawyer gunned the engine and swerved under the partial cover of a narrow colonnade, smashed through a column, bounced off a wall, and kept going. He let out another whoop, as if he was actually enjoying this.

Glancing back through the rear car window, Mina caught a last fleeting image of Dorian Gray savagely fighting the snipers man-to-man. His cane-sword was already slick and red with blood.

Quatermain tried to aim the modified Winchester that Sawyer had given him, but the passing stone columns broke his line of sight. "I can't get a clear shot."

Sawyer, wild with the moment, pulled two pistols of his own. "Then take the wheel!" He stood up, leaned out the door, and fired wildly as the unguided vehicle lurched along.

Quatermain grabbed the wheel, but with far less than his usual confidence. "Sit down, you buffoon! I don't know how to drive this thing." The car swerved, barely under control. Up ahead, though the end of the colonnade was approaching too swiftly, Sawyer hadn't slowed at all.

"Save your bullets, both of you — these men are mine!" Mina said with vengeance in her voice.

As Nemo's fabulous car emerged from the colonnade, bouncing and scraping, Mina sprang from the racing vehicle with superhuman agility. She flew briefly through the air and landed on a nearby wall, where she clung like a bat.

Setting his hot pistols beside him, Sawyer sat back down behind the wheel, looking even more enamored with the mysterious pale woman. "Did you see that? Did you see what she did?"

Left behind, Mina scrambled up the wall, finding tiny finger- and toeholds, moving with creepy agility. It was unbelievable.

"Keep your eyes on the bloody road," Quatermain said. "We've got our own part to do."