Westminster Bank

Chapter 47: Chapter 43: Bus Hijacking

The passengers on the bus sat in their seats, heads in their hands. Through the windows, the sound of sirens wailed amidst the passing streetscape, accompanied by the thrum of helicopter blades from above.

A police negotiator in the helicopter was calling on the robbers to lay down their arms and surrender, promising leniency and rehabilitation.

The robbers’ response was a flash of fire from the muzzles of their pitch-black guns.

The helicopter pulled up and circled, and the negotiator’s furious curses could be heard from the loudspeaker he hadn’t had time to switch off.

Outside, chaos. Inside, dead silence.

Baron took a minute to assess his and the bus’s current situation.

Five masked robbers had hit a bank and were being pursued by the police. By pure chance, they had ended up on this bus, whose sign read: LONDON TOWER – WATERLOO STATION.

And for some reason Baron couldn’t fathom, he had woken up on this very hijacked bus.

As far as he could see, he had two options.

First, he could reveal his abilities as a Law Enforcer, eliminate the robbers, and flee before the police and other Law Enforcers discovered him.

Second, he could use the Chain of the Imitator to play the part of a kidnapped passenger and wait for the police to rescue him. The problem was, that might take too long, and he could be subjected to the Time Death Judgment before he even made it to the Inner Side.

Speaking of the Time Death Judgment...

Baron remembered something important. He lowered his voice and asked the blond man next to him, who also had his head in his hands, his face obscured, "What’s today’s date and time? The year, month, day, and hour?"

"Brother Constantine, you’re awake!" the blond man said, pleasantly surprised. "I thought you were dead from your injuries. I was about to take you to the funeral home for cremation."

Jack wasn’t lying. Baron saw him actually produce a cremation request form. Baron’s name was already filled in, and Jack was listed as his half-brother.

’So if I’d woken up any later,’ Baron thought, ’and hadn’t been claimed by the Time Death Judgment, I would have been claimed by your cremation judgment instead.’

Baron asked what had happened after he passed out.

Jack said the story started back on the Inner Side, with a ship in a bottle—the White Pearl—that he’d haggled off an old Indian witch. It was a legendary pirate story from the Caribbean Sea...

Baron cut him off. "The highlights. The robbers have noticed you."

Jack looked up. Sure enough, the robbers’ gazes were sweeping over his lion’s-mane-like blond hair.

Jack behaved himself. He lowered his head and explained that he happened to be drinking (and hitting on women) in Lambeth last night, and this morning, he had found the unconscious Baron in an alley.

Baron seized on the key phrases "last night" and "this morning" and whispered, "You still haven’t answered my first question. What time is it right now?"

"What do you mean, ’what time is it’? That’s a strange question, Brother Constantine..."

Jack saw the look in Baron’s eyes and decided to answer honestly. "November 20th, 1987..." He glanced at the clock on the bus. "7:43 in the morning."

’November 20th, 1987. So I crossed over yesterday.’

Baron’s heart sank, but then came a realization. ’The Prole Regression Day happened once every three days. It seemed that roughly four days in Prole were equivalent to one day in Britain.’

Outside the window, the sirens and police announcements started up again:

"To the robbers on the bus, this is New Scotland Yard. We regret to inform you..."

The robbers paid them no mind. They used the bus’s external PA system to issue an arrogant reply to the police, stating that they would now estimate the distance between the bus and the police cars. For every foot a police car advanced, they would kill one passenger.

At this, Jack muttered that with over thirty people on the bus, if they really did that, the police cars would be at a negative distance by now.

The next thing he knew, he was being dragged forward by the robbers. They pressed him against the window, a gun to his temple, and yelled, "See this? This is what happens when you defy us!"

The trigger was pulled. A flash of fire. The deafening gunshot boomed through the external broadcast. Passengers screamed. In the passenger seat of the police car, the officer in charge slammed his fist on the dashboard. Every dead hostage was another obstacle in his career path.

He watched the blond man’s head slump lifelessly out the window, clenched his fists, and swore to make these robbers pay.

Then, the blond man lifted his head, patted it with a look of utter confusion, and got back up inside the bus.

The police chief and every officer who witnessed it stared with wide eyes, completely baffled.

Only the reporters and police in the circling helicopter managed to get a glimpse of what had happened through the window.

The helicopter pilot radioed his superior, reporting that it looked like a passenger had snatched a robber’s gun and was now fighting them inside the bus.

Hearing this, the police chief’s heart, which had just settled, leaped back into his throat. Fighting armed criminals? That passenger had some serious guts!

Next, the sound of flesh-on-flesh combat echoed from the bus’s external speakers, accompanied by the robbers’ curses and the passengers’ screams. Then, the cursing and screaming stopped abruptly, replaced by a continuous, terrifying series of gunshots.

It was as if the chief’s heart, already hanging by a thread, had been grabbed and used as a jump rope, yanking him up and down.

"What’s the situation inside the bus?"

He tried to keep his voice steady as he radioed the helicopter, hoping the casualty numbers wouldn’t make Britain infamous worldwide.

He already had a feeling this rescue mission might be the end of his career, which lent his voice a gentleness it usually lacked.

The transmission from the helicopter was staticky for a moment, followed by the pilot’s uncertain voice:

"Chief Smith, it looks like... the passenger who took the gun has beaten all the robbers down."

Smith was silent. "You don’t have to console me. Just give me the estimated number of casualties."

"Chief Smith, I’m telling the truth! It really looks like the passenger beat them all down," the pilot insisted.

Smith raised an eyebrow. This was an active mission, not a coffee break. The helicopter pilot wouldn’t joke about something like this.

"Sir, the bus is slowing down."

Officer Li Ang, who was driving, alerted Smith. Smith looked up and saw the bus slowly coming to a halt. Suddenly, powerful, energetic music blasted from the vehicle’s speakers.

It was The Beatles’ 1963 hit, "I Saw Her Standing There."

Then, the bus door swung open. Unconscious robbers tumbled out, followed by the surviving passengers, who embraced and cried with relief.

The advance police unit on the ground counted heads and, after confirming no hostage casualties, erupted in cheers.

The passengers cheered too, jumping for joy around two men.

One was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, who the police inexplicably found incredibly handsome. (Constantine had used the Chain of the Imitator.)

The other was the blond man from before. The one who, when he was about to be executed, had supposedly said, "This is all part of the plan," and was now being hailed as the second hero.

The blond fellow soaked up the crowd’s cheers. A cigar was clamped in his mouth, a bottle of rum had appeared in his hand from nowhere, and he grooved to the music from the bus speakers, pulling an excited female companion into a cheek-to-cheek dance and shaking the rum over the crowd’s heads.

He looked nothing like the pathetic figure who’d had his head pressed against the window by the robbers moments earlier.

The police officers muttered among themselves. Wasn’t the hero the passengers were talking about the plain-looking middle-aged man? What was with this blond guy, making out with female passengers and popping champagne...

Li Ang said excitedly, "Sir, they’re saying there were no hostage casualties! The rescue operation was a complete success!" freeweɓnovel.cѳm

Even though the police had contributed next to nothing, as long as no hostages were hurt, it was a win.

At the very least, Scotland Yard’s reputation among the citizens of Great Britain was safe.

And he, Li Ang, was proud to be an officer of Scotland Yard!

"Li Ang, how many times have I told you? Don’t call me ’Sir’," Smith said, putting on his sunglasses. "Call me Sergeant Smith."

"Use my title when we’re on the job, you fool."

Smith got out of the car, clapping as he walked toward the saviors who had rescued his career.

As he clapped and got closer, he felt that something wasn’t right.

"Hold on."

He walked straight past the heroic Baron and stared at the tall, blond man. "Have we met somewhere before?"

Jack, who was busy getting handsy with a pretty passenger, said, "You must have me confused with someone else, Officer Smith. I’m a perfectly law-abiding citizen, a bona fide citizen of the Great British Empire. My ancestors paid taxes to Buckingham Palace back in the day."

Smith nodded. He had just turned to coordinate the scene when he realized something was off.

How did this blond guy who called himself Jack know his name?

He searched his memory for a moment, and an image of a wanted poster froze in his mind. His face went pale. "That’s the Divine Thief, Jack Tang! Get the officers to stop him!"

It was too late. He heard the sound of an engine starting. The Divine Thief was herding the just-rescued passengers back onto the bus.

The doors closed. Jack pulled on a mask, hopped into the driver’s seat, and started a new getaway with a bus full of passengers.

Destination: Waterloo Station!

...

But the hero of the hour, Baron, had been abandoned on the street. He looked at the Great Britain police force scrambling in sudden chaos, scratched his head, and figured he should probably just hail a cab.