Hammer of Angels Read online

  Twenty-five minutes later the Gestapo convoy cruises into the town of Péronne. They pull onto a quiet street lined with small houses. The cars slow down and stop, and the truck parks behind them.

  Brando juices the accelerator and rolls down the windows. Victor, sitting behind him, hikes himself onto the rear windowsill so he’s positioned to fire over the roof. We skid past the truck and screech to a halt next to the two cars.

  Victor’s raucous fusillade catches the Gestapo agents still in their seats. Falcon and I open fire at point-blank range, and between the three of us we grind our six competitors into guacamole. I cram a new magazine into Li’l Bertha and get out of the car. Lights come on in a few houses. I stand next to the lead Gestapo vehicle, which has been transformed into a gruesome death cart by our 9-mm hurricane. Two of the three occupants have been blown out of their seats. Glass shards sparkle in the dim glow from the houses. Blood has splashed all over the interior, and a handful of teeth are sprinkled across the dashboard. The hoolies look plenty dead, but I fire a slug into each of their heads to make sure.

  Falcon sanitizes the second car while Victor runs toward the truck behind us. His job is to neutralize the driver, but the Gestapo son of a bitch has impressive reflexes. The driver shifts into reverse and floors it. The goon in the passenger seat sticks a pistol out his window and takes a few poorly aimed shots at us. The truck accelerates backward until the motor whines like a jet engine. The driver slings his big vehicle around so it faces back the way we came, jams it into first gear, and spits gravel at us as he speeds away. We try to shoot out the truck’s tires, but our bullets are blocked by the folded steel loading gate mounted on the vehicle’s tail.

  I jump in the Audi. “Darwin, catch those fuckers!” Then I comm, “Victor, we’ll be right back.” Brando cranks the steering wheel over and stomps on the gas. The rear tires burn a capital C into the pavement, and we take off after the Gestapo truck.

  We quickly catch up to the truck. My partner moves up on the rumbling vehicle’s left side. The Gestapo driver swerves into our lane and tries to push us off the road. Brando hits the brakes and moves directly behind the hefty roller.

  “I guess they saw us coming,” he calls out.

  Time for plan B.

  “Get us closer.” I hoist myself out the passenger-side window and crawl onto the car’s hood. Brando pulls forward and tailgates so closely that we move into the pocket of dead air directly behind the truck. I fling myself onto the truck’s back side. My feet find the top edge of the folded lift gate, and my right hand clutches onto one of the heavy door hinges. The wind whirls around the truck’s flanks and presses me against the metal doors. Brando moves the Audi to one side so he won’t run me over if I fall.

  I kick at the door latch, but it’s blocked by the gate. I dance my toes around until they hit the button that activates the lift. I ride down on the unfolding gate. A yellow-and-black sticker tells me not to do any of this shit while the truck is in motion. I’m gonna bet that sticker was not intended as in-flight reading.

  The loading gate now sticks straight out like a porch. I unlatch one of the rear doors and swing inside. Twin benches line the side walls, and twin rows of ring bolts line the floor. This is basically a supersized paddy wagon.

  A small window into the front cabin slides open and extrudes the business end of a sawed-off shotgun. The weapon belches fire and kicks itself back through the window. I dive under the blast, but my right foot seethes like it’s been bitten by a red-hot wasp.

  I draw Li’l Bertha and shoot a row of holes through the metal divider between the cab and the rear area. Her first bullet doesn’t seem to hit anything. Shots number two and three result in high-pitched screams. The fourth and fifth shots miss, but shots six through eight all produce somewhat lower-pitched cries of anguish. I swing to where the high-pitched noise came from and fire a tight circle of bullets. The screaming stops.

  The truck swerves. I hear a loud crunch, and the ride becomes exceptionally violent. I bounce around like a piece of popcorn until we slam into a solidly anchored obstacle. My body bashes into the bullet-pocked divider and—

  I wake up with a throbbing headache. Outside it’s very quiet except for a low groaning from somewhere. I crawl out past the truck’s twisted lift gate and drop to the ground.

  The instant I land, a scalding shock lances through my right leg. I yell and put all my weight on my other foot. While I wait for my neuroinjector’s Overkaine to kick in, I take a moment to get oriented.

  We’ve collided with a stone wall set forty feet from the road. The truck is trashed. Its cargo box is bent like a used burger container, liquid drips from the undercarriage in three places, and two of the wheels have fallen off. I limp around to the driver’s side to check the Gestapo thugs. One of them is mashed under the passenger-side dashboard, his head at an impossible angle to the rest of him.

  Está muerto, Jim.

  The driver’s-side windshield has been blown out like a glass fountain. I walk to the truck’s front. Herr Stunt Driver sprawls on the ground, covered in blood. His eyelids twitch and his nostrils flare as he breathes. I draw my F-S knife, slit his throat, and gouge a Star of David into his face. My vision flickers on and off a few times like a strobe light. The black flashes make me so dizzy that I almost pass out again.

  From the truck’s far side, a car horn blares and startles me out of my swoon. I shamble around the mangled vehicle. My foot stings, my head pounds, and I ache everywhere, but that all evaporates when I see the crushed Audi. It’s a disaster. Most dramatically the truck’s rear axle has ripped through the car’s roof, broken the steering wheel, and mashed into the horn button.

  Patrick!

  I bound to the passenger-side door and peer inside. My partner is slumped on his side, and his eyes are closed.

  “Patrick! Can you hear me?”

  His eyes flutter. “Alix? What…happened?”

  “Hang on; lemme get you out.” The door is bent and won’t open. I rip it off its hinges. The Audi’s roof settles even further, and the seats begin to crumple under the pressure. I reach inside, extract Brando from the jumbled, honking mess, and ease him to the ground.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  He inhales slowly. “I’m okay,” he says. “Just…had the wind knocked out of me.”

  “Patrick, that can’t be right. Stay still.”

  I fetch his X-bag from the Audi, sling it over my shoulder, and bend down to examine my partner. His limbs are straight, and he’s not bleeding. His breathing is strained, but his pulse is steady and his pupils aren’t dilated.

  “Heaven help me, you really do seem fine.”

  “Yeah, but I think we need another car.”

  The Audi’s axles are broken, the windows are dust, and the roof is trying to limbo under the floor covers.

  “Uh-huh, we definitely need another car,” I say. “Can you walk?”

  “Gimme a sec.” He gingerly moves his arms and legs back and forth. Then he turns his head toward the street. “Do you hear that?”

  A vehicle approaches. Its lights are off, so all I see is a dark gray smudge that slows down and stops at the roadside. I take cover behind the Audi and aim Li’l Bertha at the sound.

  “Scarlet, hold your fire. It’s me.”

  “Falcon! Can you help me with Pat—uhh, with Darwin?”

  “Sure thing.” The car door opens, and his footsteps thump across the dirt toward us.

  “Holy shit!” Falcon exclaims. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Help me get him outta here.”

  “No, no,” Brando says. “I can walk.” My partner heaves himself upright, tips over, and falls to the ground with an oof!

  “All right, forget it,” he grumbles. “Help her get me outta here.”

  Falcon and I each take one of his arms and lift him to his feet. The three of us scramboozle away from the wrecks.

  “Where’s Victor?” I ask.

  Falcon says, “He
said he’d catch up with us after he found the assholes who tipped off the Gestapo.”

  Brando drawls, “Glad I’m not those assholes.”

  We make it to the car and carefully deposit my woozy partner into the backseat. I scootch in next to him while Falcon gets behind the wheel and starts the engine. My hand skims something slippery as I pull the door shut. I examine my fingers. They’re wet and smell like blood.

  “Shit, who’s bleeding?”

  Falcon steers the car toward Saint-Quentin. “Don’t worry. It’s from the Gestapo creeps we wasted.”

  I scan the vehicle’s interior. Riddled upholstery. Smashed windows. Teeth.

  “Ah,” I say. “We’re in that car.”

  “Yeah,” F-Bird says. “We’d better find something else before it gets light out.”

  Brando puts his head on my shoulder. “I vote for something armor-plated.”

  * * *

  CORE

  MIS-ANGEL-4399

  ANGEL SIT-REP: SPAIN. 2 March 1981

  The situation here in Spain is growing unstable, especially in Andalusia. German reinforcements from Madrid are sufficient to control the local outbreak, but now the north is unprotected. Expect further news tomorrow.

  —Ghost, L12 Infiltrator

  37

  SAME NIGHT, 5:51 P.M. CET

  THIEPVAL, PROVINCE OF FRANCE, GG

  The titanic British monument at Thiepval was built on the Great War’s bloodiest battlefield, where almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed in a single day and over a million men died in a matter of months. At first I thought this monument was a mausoleum for the dead from those battles, but Patrick told me that many bodies would fill the Empire State Building.

  Even so, this heap of bricks is stupendous. It juts from the surrounding gardens of white crosses and rises high above the houses in the nearby town of Thiepval. Names of dead soldiers swarm over practically every surface, including the many supporting pillars. One of these pillars is specified by the last three characters of Kruppe’s directions:

  7 March 1800. Thiepval, 11A.

  I lurk off to one side of the monument and watch pillar 11A, which stands under the central arch. My partners are positioned around the vicinity to form a surveillance box that monitors the monument, the graveyards, and the parking lot. This is a great place for meetings because treacherously skulking is indistinguishable from pensively brooding. This also makes it a great spot for spying on meetings.

  After this morning’s predawn game of whack-a-jerk, us three youngsters laid low until Victor rejoined us. He took us to a partisan doctor he knows in the area, who patched up my foot and Brando’s cuts and bruises. Then we committed one act of grand theft BMW, shoplifted the shit out of another grocery store, and spent the rest of our day resting up for Kruppe’s meeting tonight.

  Brando, out in the parking lot, comms, “Kruppe has pulled in.” A few moments later he continues, “Falcon, he’s headed your way.”

  Falcon replies from the opposite side of the monument, “Understood.”

  “Victor, any competition out there?”

  Victor replies from the park’s far end, “Negative.”

  It’s very quiet here, befitting the somber nature of a colossal monument to a lost generation, so when I hear laughter, it catches my ear. Two boys, grade-schoolers, chase each other up and down the main aisle between the fields of tombstones. Their parents are nowhere to be seen, so one of the park’s visitors takes it upon himself to sternly shush the kids into submission. The boys quiet down.

  Falcon comms, “I don’t see him yet, Darwin.”

  I return my attention to—

  Damn!

  —two men in front of my column! One is tall, and the other is short and very thin. They brush past each other, but their eyes don’t meet. The tall one jams his hands into the pockets of his long wool coat and stalks in my direction. It’s Kruppe. I turn away and study the list of names on the column in front of me. Kruppe passes directly behind me. I recognize his aftershave from Calais.

  “Darwin,” I comm, “they’ve made their exchange. Kruppe is walking to the parking lot.”

  “Roger that. Scarlet, you and Victor follow his contact. Falcon, come to the car. We’ll take Kruppe.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kruppe’s message bearer is a greasy-looking runt in a leather jacket. He slinks to the other side of pillar 11A. I cross under the main arch and follow Greasy’s steps around the column. I casually move my head from side to side as though I’m appreciating the architectural dignity of—

  He’s not there.

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  “You lost him?” Brando comms.

  “Victor, do you see a skinny white male, dark hair, black leather jacket?”

  “No, Scarlet.”

  Christ almighty, did I hallucinate him?

  “Darwin, do you have eyes on Kruppe?”

  “Yes. He returned to his car. Falcon and I are following him in the Bimmer.” My partner pauses, then switches to our private channel, “Alix, you okay?”

  “Brando, I swear I saw this fucker!”

  “I believe you, but…”

  Victor speed-moseys up to me. His face is shadowed beneath his coat’s hood.

  I ask, “Vic, you really didn’t see him?”

  Victor shakes his head. He looks like he wants to hit my nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Well, then where the fuck…”

  Hang on. Kruppe’s real, and he definitely saw this greaseball. The little butthead can’t have actually vanished. Wherever he is, he’s still close.

  I face the rear of pillar 11A and fire up my vision Mods. My infrared scores right away. One of the engraved panels has a glowing handprint on it. My millimeter-wave scanner shows me a hollow space behind the panel. The top of a curved flight of stairs peeks from the floor inside.

  “Darwin, there’s a secret passage inside this column!”

  Brando comms, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m looking right at it.”

  Victor listens to us through his comm-set, but he can’t see what my vision Mods let me see. His expression has shifted from “You’re incompetent” to “You’re insane.” But when I press one of the carved names and the panel swings open, he’s flat-out stupefied.

  Welcome to ExOps, Vicberg!

  I dart inside and swoop down the spiral metal staircase. Dim red lights illuminate my feet. At the bottom, more red lights shine along the floor of a long, straight tunnel cut through packed earth. Soft footsteps recede up the corridor. My neuroinjector stokes me and I race after Kruppe’s courier.

  The greaseball hears me coming, but by the time he reacts, it’s too late. I spear him like a bull goring a matador. We tumble past thirty feet of red lights before he pushes me off him. When he scrambles to his feet, I collar him in a headlock. High-pitched gurgles rattle from his throat as I arch my back, lifting him until his shoes are off the ground. Then I fall backward and bludgeon Mr. Greasy into the ground head-first. His limbs collapse into a pile of spaghetti.

  Victor rushes up the passageway, takes in me and my vanquished competitor, and sighs. “Americans.” He bends down to untangle Greasy’s arms and legs.

  “I know, right? Great pile driver, huh?”

  Victor raises one of his eyebrows sardonically.

  “Darwin, can you hear me?” I comm. No answer. We’re too far underground.

  Victor slaps Greasy’s face to wake him up. Our captive mumbles something slurred and incoherent. Victor grabs the numskull by his armpits and heaves him into a sitting position against the wall. By the time I’ve finished going through his pockets, Mr. Greasy is conscious enough for Victor to lay into him.

  “What mission did you give Herr Kruppe?” he demands.

  Our captive rubs the top of his head and growls in guttural German. I catch the word “mutterfinken.” Motherfucker.

  Victor stands back from our captive and says, “Scarlet, do something terr
ible to him.”

  I catch hold of Greaseball’s arm. The fingers of my replaced right hand wrap around his skinny forearm and crush it until the bones break. Much screaming ensues.

  “Well?” Victor shouts.

  Our slimy yardbird is a lot tougher than he looks. He spits on Victor’s shoe.

  “Again, Scarlet. But much worse.”

  I grab Greasy’s arm again and forcibly rotate it in its socket. Ninety degrees gives me a satisfying snap, and 180 degrees produces a nasty, moist-sounding crackle. At 270 degrees his ligaments and tendons tear apart and emit a loud, definitive pop.

  The nitwit shrieks louder this time. Victor smacks his face. “Talk or she rips it off!”

  I comm, “You really want me to do that?”

  Victor shrugs, “He’s Gestapo.”

  “Ah,” I reply.

  But Gestapo or not, Mr. Greasy’s pain threshold is somewhere below having his arm nearly wrenched off, and he passes out again.

  “Damn,” I say. “Sorry, Victor.”

  “Do not worry. He will wake.” Victor runs his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He surveys our subterranean setting and grunts, “Interesting.”

  “What?”

  “This tunnel is from World War I.”

  Vicberg’s army time included a bunch of military history classes, so he knows a lot about the trench warfare that stretched across France from 1914 to 1918. He tells me one of the tactics employed by both sides was to mine under the enemy’s trench system, cram in a heap of dynamite, and blast the enemy to smitherooskies. Because of the war’s ebb and flow, sometimes the project would be abandoned, which Victor guesses was the case here. After the war some of these excavations became part of underground smuggling routes.

  The tunnel has been well maintained, presumably by the Gestapo, so rat-faced shitbirds like Mr. Greasy can sneak around without anyone seeing him.

  “Scarlet, bzzt did bzzt-bzzt guys go?” It’s Brando. His signal is weak, but I still catch the stress in his voice.