Chapter 181: 180, Vienna Serial Shooting Incident, Snagging An Air France Pilot
Fang Wen and the other two left the Nazi gathering point, got in the car, and drove to the airport.
Upon arriving at the airport, the staff immediately came over to complain.
“It was agreed to be two days, already overdue, luckily no one checked.”
Indiana paid the extra expenses, and the other party immediately stopped complaining.
After they left, Fang Wen opened the hangar door lock and moved three boxes down from the Boeing 247 cargo hold.
Those were support-type weapons bought in France.
The model was: M1930 7.92mm Browning light machine gun.
Its prototype was the M1918 Browning automatic rifle, the best automatic rifle at the time.
Because the M1918 Browning automatic rifle used 7.62mm bullets, which were not suitable in China, Fang Wen did not purchase it in the United States at that time.
But when preparing weapons for this action in Paris, he unexpectedly discovered this one and was immediately attracted to it.
This was a copy produced by Belgium’s FN company, weighing 9 kilograms, fully automatic, with a fast-slow selector, fast rate of fire up to 600 rounds per minute, slow rate of fire 350 rounds per minute.
It could be said to be the most powerful light machine gun among 7.92mm bullets.
The three opened the boxes, loaded the machine gun with 20-round magazines, each with spare ammunition of 5 magazines, fully ensuring firepower.
After doing this, Fang Wen instructed: “These weapons are prepared for emergencies, and will only be used in two situations: 1, the gang takes the items but doesn’t hand them over to us; 2, the gang fails and local hidden security personnel appear. If it doesn’t happen, that’s the best.”
After speaking, he exchanged some ideas with Lin Shuiwang and Indiana on shooting during car travel, to cope with shooting in case of pursuit.
Until 11 p.m. at night, they returned to the hotel.
One night passed, at 7 a.m., Indiana left early to contact the gang.
Lin Shuiwang guarded the stairwell on the seventh floor, waiting for the other party to leave.
Fang Wen went downstairs, checked the vehicle, refueled, and bought three portions of Vienna breakfast.
Waiting at the hotel entrance.
There was no one on the street, very quiet.
Half an hour later, Indiana returned and explained the situation.
“They sent five people, with weapons, three went in, two guarded outside.”
Fang Wen nodded and gave one portion of breakfast to Indiana.
After a while, Lin Shuiwang came out.
He got directly into the car, panting: “The Japanese should be coming out soon. When they were waiting for the elevator, I ran down the stairs.”
As he was speaking, two Japanese walked out of the hotel and headed toward the restaurant 200 meters away.
They had an extra password box in their hands.
The car slowly drove and stopped outside the restaurant street. The three covered their faces with handkerchiefs.
After a while, Junkers’ trader came over, also carrying a box.
After he entered, the gang members hidden in the dark made their move.
Five people came out from various places, two guarding the restaurant door, the other three swaggered inside.
Moments later, gunfire came from inside, continuous.
After a while, the gang members who made the move rushed out.
One of them was covered in blood, supported by a partner, and the two handbags were in another one’s hands.
But they did not cross the road to hand the boxes to Fang Wen and the others. One of them stretched out both hands and shouted: “Our man is injured, double the payment.”
Lin Shuiwang’s face turned cold, about to lift the M1930 7.92mm Browning light machine gun he was holding.
That thing, as long as mounted on the car window, strafing, all five gang members would be done for.
“Don’t move.” Fang Wen spoke to stop him.
From the mechanical perception perspective, he saw someone rushing over.
The car immediately started and drove forward.
The people who suddenly appeared behind clashed fiercely with the gang.
Obviously, these were the transaction’s protectors, arriving after discovering the situation.
Indiana analyzed: “Probably Nazi action troops. Now Junkers is completely taken over. They don’t dare expose themselves in Austria, will leave immediately after taking the items.”
Just as he said, the Nazi action troops had much better marksmanship. The five gang members were shot into sieves, and the items were taken by them.
This group got into two white sedans and sped away.
Only then did Fang Wen step on the throttle and accelerate to follow.
The appearance of the Nazi action troops gave Fang Wen a better idea: mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. Wait for them to get far from the hotel area, then take them out, and when returning, no one would know it was related to him.
The car accelerated in pursuit, and Fang Wen stated the plan.
“I will accelerate past those two cars. Lin Shuiwang, you shoot through the car window, just pull the trigger for level shooting. Indiana, you break the rear window and provide covering fire. Trust me, this is much simpler than me doing aerial shooting while piloting aircraft.”
His words gave the two courage.
Lin Shuiwang opened the car window and mounted the gun body.
Indiana raised the gun and smashed the rear window glass.
It was just ten seconds past.
Seeing they were ready, Fang Wen accelerated sharply.
The opponents were driving Mercedes-Benz 200s, while Fang Wen was driving the Audi R-type “Ruler”.
Their speeds were similar, the difference being the Ruler had an eight-cylinder engine with astonishing burst power.
In mechanical perception state, the car completed extreme acceleration and rushed past in one go.
Just before passing the first Mercedes-Benz 200, Fang Wen shouted: “Shoot.”
Lin Shuiwang pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The automatic rifle unleashed all 20 bullets in one go.
In the instant the Ruler overtook the Mercedes-Benz 200, all hit.
A row of ballistics made the people in the car instantly hit, immediately veering to the street side.
At this time, Indiana began covering fire.
He was very calm, adjusted the fast-slow selector to burst mode, and shot different positions in the car.
By now, the car had reached behind the second machine.
Lin Shuiwang and Indiana had just fired their bullets and were changing magazines.
Fang Wen forcefully grabbed the M1930 7.92mm Browning light machine gun flat on his legs, rested the muzzle on the window frame, and directly pulled the trigger.
A rain of bullets shot out level, penetrating the body of the second Mercedes-Benz 200 and blooming inside.
In this shooting posture, the recoil was all on Fang Wen’s right arm, the gun body’s recoil hitting his arm painfully, but he endured it.
By this time, Lin Shuiwang and Indiana had also finished changing magazines, and bullets continued to pour.
A total of 5 magazines’ strafing caused devastating attack.
The two cars stopped at the roadside, no more movement.
Fang Wen parked the car, Lin Shuiwang and Indiana got out, approaching carefully with pistols.
One per car, the result was no survivors. Such close-range light machine gun level strafing, with no reaction time, no one could evade.
After finding the items, the two immediately returned.
Lin Shuiwang looked unwell, probably having seen a gruesome scene. Indiana was quite calm.
Fang Wen secretly sighed: such things always require a process. When he first strafed the Japanese Army from an airplane, he felt it too; it would slowly adapt with time.
He started the car and did not return to the hotel, but accelerated all the way out of the city, drove the car into the Danube in a remote place, then cleaned up before returning to the city.
The three returned to the hotel already in the afternoon. From the hotel entrance, they could see people still investigating the restaurant 200 meters away.
There were many onlookers for such an incident. Fang Wen calmly asked the watching waiter: “What happened?”
The waiter responded with interest: “I heard two Japanese and one German were dining in the restaurant and encountered a robbery. During the struggle, the robbers shot and killed the two Japanese, and the German was seriously injured. After taking the items, they ran into another group outside, and those people killed all the robbers.”
“So complicated?” Fang Wen pretended to be surprised.
“There’s more.” The hotel manager supplemented in English: “The people who killed the robbers got into two cars, were chased on the road, and directly all shot dead with heavy weapons. The shooters were masked, got out to check, and took away the two boxes the robbers had grabbed.”
“Is that so. They must have been fighting over those two boxes, which contained very valuable items.” Fang Wen analyzed.
“That’s what I thought too.” The waiter responded.
Ending the conversation, Fang Wen, Lin Shuiwang, and Indiana carried the boxes into the hotel and went straight upstairs.
On the sixth floor, the three entered 604. Fang Wen took the box from Lin Shuiwang and checked the haul.
He first opened the one without a password; inside were full of information.
Should be the information on G.38 and k37.
This information was temporarily useless to Fang Wen, after all, China’s current aircraft manufacturing foundation was even weaker than Japan’s, impossible to produce the airplanes in the information for now.
Moreover, just having technology wasn’t enough; the entire industrial foundation was needed.
Fang Wen didn’t know if he could manufacture fighter jets in the future; he didn’t think much and switched to the next box.
The second box had a password lock; this thing was impossible to crack brute-force.
Fang Wen used a dagger to cut open one side of the box, directly exposing the contents.
Unlike expected, there was no gold and jewelry inside.
Also many paper items.
The top one was an agreement.
The agreement content was unexpectedly a Southeast Asia colony division plan.
According to the agreement.
Japan and Germany would divide the South Asia and Southeast Asia regions controlled by Britain, France, America, and the Netherlands.
According to the agreement, British India, British Burma, French Vietnam belonged to the Weimar Republic.
The rest of the Southeast Asia regions went to Japan.
Looking at this agreement, Fang Wen found it amusing.
No matter how you look, the Japanese got the better deal.
British India, British Burma, French Vietnam were good, but separated by so many countries across the Mediterranean Sea. What Britain and America truly valued was the oil in the Persian Gulf.
To occupy those places, Germany would have to take the Persian Gulf; that difficulty meant giving it was as good as not.
Besides this agreement, there was a stack of bearer bonds; this was the root of the transaction.
A total of 700,000 US bonds, possibly not the full amount, like a deposit.
Bearer national debt bonds were hard currency, exchangeable for anything, another gain besides the aircraft design information.
After looking at these items, Fang Wen proceeded to profit sharing for the action.
He took out two stacks from the 700,000 US Dollar bonds and gave them to the two.
“100,000 US Dollars each, as remuneration for this time.”
Indiana received it with a face full of joy. To transfer back to the US mainland, he not only spent his savings and profit sharing but owed Fang Wen a big favor; he was broke. With this money, at least he didn’t have to worry about no emergency savings.
Lin Shuiwang pushed the bonds back.
“I don’t want it, use it to fight the Japanese. The money you gave last time is enough for my mother to live comfortably in retirement.”
Fang Wen nodded, took back the bonds, and took out that agreement to give to Indiana.
“Take a look at this.”
After Indiana read the agreement, he couldn’t help smiling: “They thought too well, fundamentally impossible to achieve.”
Even an intelligence officer like Indiana didn’t believe it.
Fang Wen knew that in the future, the two, along with Italy, would form the Axis powers and launch a crazy war against the world.
He replied: “Report this agreement upward; maybe they will think it has intelligence value.”
“But if I report it, how to explain the source?” Indiana couldn’t help asking.
Yes, if this agreement was reported, whether effective or not, this action would be full of flaws.
Fang Wen couldn’t help thinking of the article he published in the newspaper last year; no one believed what it described even now.
Let alone this seemingly fantastical plan.
After all, even by the end of World War II, Japan hadn’t completed everything in the plan, and Germany never occupied British India.
Thinking this way, Fang Wen felt relieved.
To keep this action secret, he found a place to burn the agreement and boxes, destroying the evidence.
Then sneaked into 705 and retrieved the wireless eavesdropping device.
After everything was done, the three stayed overnight in Vienna and calmly accepted the police officer’s questioning.
No one suspected them.
There was no one on the street that day; the Japanese who saw the car, the gang, the Nazi action group all died. The only survivor was the Nazi employed at Junkers, who never contacted Fang Wen and them from beginning to end; even if cured, he wouldn’t know what happened.
The next day, the airplane took off from Vienna airport and returned to Paris.
Fang Wen returned to Paris and stayed another week.
This week, to recruit a batch of pilots unemployed due to the establishment of Air France.
These pilots were newly unemployed, didn’t mind overseas work much, and agreed with the generous salary.
Fang Wen’s recruitment requirement was only one.
That was being able to pilot Boeing 247 and d.332.
This requirement had some difficulty; both airplanes had the best performance in current civil aviation, with much higher requirements.
He used co-pilot operation testing in the same aircraft.
If not knowing this batch of pilots had relatively rich piloting experience, Fang Wen wouldn’t dare use this testing method.
After a series of tests, the technically best batch of pilots was selected.
In partner flight tests with Fang Wen, they could all perform qualified flight operations; later, just need more familiarity with the two models.
This batch of pilots satisfied Fang Wen very much; he decided to start Asia-Europe flights immediately upon returning home.
Thus, the return trip of the first Asia-Europe 80-day round-the-world journey began.
Two airplanes waited at the airport runway side.
One Boeing 247, one d332.
Fang Wen piloted the d332, passengers: flight attendant Cheng Dayou, passenger Bai Zeshan, Gu Xingzuo, Dai Shimiao, Lin Shuiwang, Indiana, and 3 French pilots.
On the Boeing 247 side, piloted by a pilot named Paul, also carrying 4 pilots.
The two airplanes would fly in formation, taking off together, with Fang Wen as lead aircraft leading ahead, Boeing 247 keeping 300 kilometers per hour to follow behind.
This was equivalent to completing an Europe-Asia flight, also providing some piloting experience in advance for future Asia-Europe route flights.
Thus, the two airplanes took off from Paris, transited in Rome, transited in Ankara, transited in Tehran（Indiana got off）, arrived in Kabul.
But upon arriving here, a local major event occurred, forcing Fang Wen to stay one more day.
The old king passed away.
To sign the route transit agreement, needed to meet the new king.
