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  “Uhh, Victor, sir,” Brando says, “we’re kind of on the lam. It might not be a great idea to come with us.”

  “Hah!” Victor’s voice booms. “Hunted, cut off, and on the run, eh?” He spreads his arms out. “Welcome to my world.” His big smile sweeps away much of the anxiety filling the room. “But Victor Eisenberg doesn’t go with you.” He draws himself up to his somehow impressive five foot seven. “You go with Victor Eisenberg.” He slings his satchel over his shoulder and points outside. “The Circle needs your help.”

  I glance over at Brando to see what he thinks. He shrugs and says, “Sure, why not? You know the region, and it fits our overall mission. Plus, if I were Fredericks, it’d be the last thing I’d expect.”

  We pack Marie’s field rations into our bags. Then she hugs us all good-bye, even Falcon, who just met her. She gives me and Brando an extra hug each. “Good-bye, young ones. Thank you so much for your help today.”

  “Thank you, Garbo. We owe our lives to you.”

  She waves her hand. “Pah, it was nothing. You are easy guests. Besides, having you here made me feel safer than I have in years.” She turns to Victor. “Do not let anything happen to them, Mr. Eisenberg.”

  He beams. “I think they will see to it nothing happens to me, Ms. Van Daan.”

  We say another round of good-byes in the garage. Marie tries to convince us to take her car. We politely say no thank you.

  She presses us. “How do you plan to get around?”

  Considering Marie is a CIA stringer and an underground slave smuggler, she can still be preciously innocent sometimes.

  “Marie,” I answer, “we’re Americans. If we need something, we’ll steal it.”

  This cracks her up. She’s still laughing as she waves good-bye to us and goes back inside.

  The four of us walk away from her brightly lit house and slink into the night. At the end of her street we turn toward the train station a few blocks away. Our first task is to get out of the area.

  A few minutes later we enter the train station’s parking lot, which is full of free cars.

  “All right, boys.” I rub my hands together. “Mamma wants leather seats.”

  CORE MIS-ANGEL-3922

  ANGEL SIT-REP: IRELAND. 22 February 1981

  Entire island aflame with rebellion. German resources strained beyond capacity. Local underground has high morale and many new recruits, most of whom have begun work to maintain an orderly transition to home rule.

  —Pericles, IO / Jade, L5 Interceptor

  35

  Three days later, Thursday, March 5, 1981, 5:11 P.M. CET

  Arras, Province of France, GG

  My ears ring, the ground shakes, and my stomach barely hangs on to the lunch I stole earlier today. The blast’s shock wave is so intense my entire body feels like it’s been flattened in a vise. The sky rains shredded concrete, shattered glass, and splintered steel beams. It looks mighty loud.

  When I was at Camp A-Go-Go, they taught me 90 feet from a deafening explosion is 210 feet too close. They didn’t go into why it’s too close, or if they did, I wasn’t paying attention. Either way, I find out now because I really go deaf. I also lose my sense of up and down, along with my ability to form coherent sentences and even single words.

  “Scarlet, you all right?” I can’t tell if it’s Brando or Falcon.

  “Yeh, shuzz kug thuff.” Fuck, I can’t even comm straight right now.

  “What?”

  “Ee’m oka!” Oh, forget it.

  We’ve begun our ROAR Tour through the former battlegrounds of World War I and brought the Rising to the Somme. Our venue today is the Staatszeiger regional supply depot in Pas-de-Calais. Victor met yesterday with the local head of the Circle of Zion, who recommended hitting this SZ installation to help disrupt the government’s response to the rebellion.

  This job began before dawn when we stole a trunkful of TNT from an SZ armory on the outskirts of town. I crashed the gate in our stolen Volkswagen, and Falcon shot the guards from a treetop two hundred yards up the road. He kept everyone suppressed while I loaded the ka-boomies into our car and tore ass back out through the front gate. It was basically a large-scale Smash ’n Grab. We transferred our volatile booty into another stolen car and ditched the first vehicle in an abandoned old barn a few miles north.

  After our morning raid, we went on a shoplifting spree at a big supermarket here in Arras. Commphones, teamwork, and professional espionage training are more than a match for the security measures at any civilian facility, so we treat these places as our personal pantries. My favorite is when Victor distracts the employees and guards with his impressive collection of German jokes while Falcon, Brando, and I stuff our pockets full.

  Ever hear the one about the Austrian who married his rooster?

  Vic breaks off his routine after the three of us waddle out the exit.

  We spent our afternoon hiding near this supply depot, waiting for the guards to change shifts. There’s always a lot of grab-assing during a changeover. Ironically, even though there are more of them, they pay less attention. We dashed through their perimeter, lock-picked a side door, and snuck down to the cellar. Without blueprints we had to guess about where to set our TNT, so we used all of it.

  Falcon escorted Brando back outside, where they got themselves into cover. I stayed behind to make sure nobody came downstairs and disarmed the bombs. Once the boys were ready to trigger the detonator, I ran for it. I really thought I was far enough away when I told my partner to light ‘er up. Apparently I miscalculated.

  The ground has stopped clobbering me, but I’m still too dizzy to walk. I crawl on all fours until a pair of hands tuck under my armpits and help me onto my feet. It’s Brando. He wraps one of my arms around his shoulders and lugs me away from the burning building. Falcon backpedals next to us. He’s drawn his pistol and covers our exit.

  My partner lugs me across a field to where Victor waits in our stolen Mercedes and puts me in the backseat. Then he slides in next to me. Falcon hops up front with Victor, who drives us away as fast as he can. The acceleration is the last straw for my poor stomach.

  Oh, God, here it comes!

  I get the window open just in time to puke all over the outside of our gigantic luxury motorcar. I flop back into my seat. My skin shimmers with a stinging sweat.

  Brando takes my hand. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Guh.” My mouth tastes like flat orange soda, stomach acid, and half-digested pretzels. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” At least my hearing has come back.

  Ahh, the glamour of a career in espionage.

  Victor studies me in his rearview mirror. “You don’t look well, Scarlet.”

  “All part of the act.” I take a slow breath. “How’d we do?”

  Brando says, “Well, half the building flew away. I’m not sure how many of the contents were destroyed, but we achieved our objective.”

  Falcon nods and quietly says, “That was outrageously rad.”

  The kid looks and sounds like my dad and he inherited my dad’s chops with weapons and technology, but he’s got his own way of expressing himself. Plus, he’s so much younger-looking than I ever saw my dad. These two aspects of my new teammate have made it easier for me to accept Falcon as an individual. Maybe my pre-cloning-era mind has decided Falcon is a long-lost cousin from my dad’s side of the family and left it at that.

  He’s got my family’s sense of humor, for sure. I came up with an acronym for Really Outrageous and Radical to tease Falcon about saying “outrageous” and “rad” so much. He loved it and christened Victor’s series of missions the ROAR Tour.

  Our tour’s goal runs parallel with the objectives of Operation ANGEL, namely, to foster an environment of fear, chaos, and confusion within the Gestapo and the SZ. Victor’s long-term intention is to spread the slave rebellion across as much territory as possible. His immediate objective is to give the Circle of Zion a head start on the Krauts. To this end we’ve been tactically
speed-blasting our way south from Calais.

  Brando has his eyes closed as he says, “Victor, what do you think? Should we go to Saint-Quentin or Amiens next?”

  “Whichever is closer.”

  “Saint-Quentin it is.” Brando opens his eyes and says to me, “Scarlet, do you think you can hold down some food?”

  “Maybe one of the biscuits we got from Marie.”

  My partner rummages in our stolen food cooler. Victor peeks in the rearview mirror again but not at me. He’s checking out whatever’s behind us.

  “Police!” Victor calls out.

  The rest of us spin in our seats. There’s a single police car following us with its lights flashing. I haul Li’l Bertha out of her holster while Brando clambers up to the front passenger seat and Falcon wriggles in back with me. Falcon and I open our windows and face backward.

  I comm, “Darwin, what do you think? Should we take them out or let them pull us over?”

  My partner responds, “If a close encounter goes wrong, they’ll have seen all our faces and we’ll have to kill them. You’d better put on those bandanas and shoot out their tires.”

  Falcon and I each slide a striped bandana out of our hip pockets and tie them on to our faces, like bandits from a Western. Falcon puts on a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes.

  “Ready?” he comms.

  “Ready,” I comm back. “I’ll hit the front passenger side.”

  “Roger. I’ll take out the driver’s side.”

  We both lean out our windows and take aim. The police car has pulled up close behind us, so this shot will be easy. I dump a .45-caliber slug into the passenger-side front tire. Nothing happens. I fire a second bullet, and the tire’s center tread splits wide open and the steel wheel clanks onto the road. A second later Falcon’s shots pop open the driver-side tire, and the entire front end of the police car dives onto the pavement in a shrieking cloud of sparks.

  Time for a quick exit and a new ride. We’ve compared notes and figured out I’m the best getaway driver in the group. I’ve got the most biorobotic upgrades, and I’ve spent so much time at the track I could be a traffic cone.

  Victor slows down while I climb up front. I scoot onto his lap and take the controls while he slides out from under me. Brando gives Victor his seat and transfers himself to the back with Falcon, who has left his bandana on in case he needs to provide cover fire. I floor the accelerator and leave it there. We flash down the freeway so fast we could probably outrun a small airplane.

  Brando spots a service station at the next exit. Our car’s brake pads cook down to nothing as I sling us off the highway and into the station. By now it’s five-thirty P.M., and the place is closed. The parking area around the garage is filled with vehicles in for repairs. I park our Mercedes behind the low building, and we fan out across the parking lot to find our next ride. Victor swaps the Mercedes’s license plates with another car. Then he casually strolls toward the road to keep watch.

  “This Opel seems like a good one,” Brando comms.

  Bah, Opel. We can do better than that. Then I see a gorgeous black Audi sedan with alloy wheels. There isn’t any visible damage. Maybe it’s in for a something optional like a tune-up. I try the door. It’s open.

  “Boys, over here!” I slip into the front seat and hunt for keys. Sun visor? Floor mat? No dice. I slip my hand under the dash and rip the ignition wires out of the lock. Brando and Falcon chuck our bags into the Audi’s trunk. I get the ignition hot-wired and the big engine growls to life. My partner gets in front with me while Victor and Falcon sit in back.

  I slide my seat forward and adjust the mirrors as I pilot us out of the lot. Brando directs me back to the A26, and our ROAR Tour is off to bring our crime spree—uh, I mean the Rising—to Saint-Quentin.

  CORE MIS-ANGEL-4271

  ANGEL SIT-REP: HOLLAND. 1 March 1981

  The news from England has inspired local Circle of Zion cells to launch a sabotage campaign. Train yard bombed in Amsterdam, airplane hangar burned in Rotterdam. A good start.

  —King, L16 Vindicator

  36

  Two days later, Saturday, March 7, 1981, 3:52 A.M. CET

  Saint-Quentin, Province of France, GG

  Besides running low on my special ammo for Li’l Bertha, our biggest supply problem is we keep running out of cash. This doesn’t matter for food or cars since we’re not paying for them anyway. Hotel rooms and gasoline, however, are more of a challenge. Without direction from ExOps we don’t know where most of our safe houses are.

  On our first night out of Calais, we broke into an unoccupied motel room. It was a nice room, but we were so worried someone would barge in on us that we all slept like crap. We might as well have spent the night in the car.

  Except it’s too cold to sleep in a car in March, as we found out the next night. Victor has a lot of experience as a guerrilla, but he and his gang never stayed in cities. All of it was spent camped out in the woods, with occasional raids into a town for supplies. But the underground contacts Victor needs right now are in the more developed areas, and he never knows when they’ll be available. So we make like hobos and sleep where we can.

  The morning after our second restless night, during an all-star breakfast of stolen pretzels, I came up with an idea. “Let’s find a store we’re gonna rip off anyway, bust in after they close, and sleep in the back room or wherever. We’ll scram before they open in the morning.”

  My three stiff and grumpy colleagues agreed it was worth a shot. That night we slept in the small warehouse at the back of a big grocery store. This was better, but supermarkets open early and we barely made it out before the morning shift came in to make doughnuts and chop up dead animals.

  Last night we finally found the perfect place: a gun shop. The building had a high-end civilian security system, but anything less than Fort Knox is cake for us. We parked the Audi out back, and three minutes later we were inside.

  It was like spending the night in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Falcon took an older but good-condition Luger, and Victor lifted a nice pair of concealable Walther pistols. I was tempted by one of those big, square Mauser C96s, but then I’d lose all the targeting abilities of my dad’s LB-505.

  Fortunately, Li’l Bertha can use regular bullets when necessary, although I sense she feels like it’s beneath her. Her gyroscopes shuddered a little when I manually locked her bore setting to fit the same 9×19-mm Parabellums as Victor’s and Falcon’s new toys.

  We all loaded up on as many boxes of ammo as we could carry and racked out for the night. The sign out front said they didn’t open until 10:30 A.M., which sounded great to me. I guess gun nuts sleep late when it isn’t hunting season.

  The Gestapo, on the other hand, never seems to sleep at all. The clowns based here in Saint-Quentin dick people around all day and drink all night. Then if they receive intel about runaway slaves or any other subversive activity, they do a predawn raid.

  Today will be different.

  Victor met with a couple of Circle people after we got into town and learned there’s trouble on the Floating Railroad. A group of runaway slaves have been betrayed to the Gestapo. They’re hiding in a nearby town called Péronne. Victor didn’t say how it happened, but my guess is it was a nosy neighbor in the Purity League.

  Here we face another disadvantage of working with an aggressively decentralized organization like the Circle of Zion. Vic’s contacts weren’t sure which house the runaways are in. Usually, only those directly involved in a smuggling operation know where the “stars” are kept. But tonight, someone else knows.

  The Gestapo knows.

  Brando and Victor worked out our game plan for this morning. We’ll use the Gestapo’s knowledge against them by tailing them to their raid. Then we’ll fit them all for wooden overcoats.

  The four of us huddle in our black Audi. We’re parked across the street from the local Gestapo HQ. Victor wants us to switch cars every couple of days, so tonight’s job will be our last
in this car, which I’m sure the poor thing is glad about.

  The vehicle looks like it’s been inhabited by monkeys. The once-pristine floor and dashboard are now buried in food wrappers, magazines, newspapers, coffee cups, and soda bottles. Except for last night at the gun shop, we’ve basically lived in this car since we stole it outside Arras.

  Brando, in the driver’s seat, nods his chin toward the building across the street. “Here we go.”

  Eight men emerge from Gestapo HQ and file into a pair of cars and a big box truck parked next to the building. Three men per car and two in the truck. The headlights stab through the early morning murk, their snarling engines stomp all over the peaceful late-winter silence, and the convoy of dickwads surges into motion.

  Victor leans forward from the backseat and says, “Let’s go.” Brando starts the Audi and follows the Gestapo vehicles.

  Falcon sits in back with Victor. I turn to the young guy and whisper, “Ready to be outrageous?”

  His smile shows white in the predawn gloom. “Don’t forget radical.”

  We met this kid less than a week ago, and it already feels like we’ve worked together for months. He and I recheck our pistols and our SoftArmor. Victor glides his matching Walthers out of the pockets of his black wool coat and holds them in his lap. Then he puts his comm set on his head, and transmits, “Comm check.”

  “Check one,” I comm.

  “Check two,” Brando sends while he maintains a block or so of distance between us and the convoy.

  “Check three,” comms Falcon.

  “All comms five by five.” Victor finishes the sequence. He’s not ExOps, but his age, his military experience, and the fact that these are his missions put him in a natural leadership role.

  Saint-Quentin is big enough to have streetlights, but they’re all concentrated in the compact town center. Within a few minutes we’re out in the countryside, and the black night wraps around us like a shroud. My partner switches off his headlights, and I help him get his starlight scope on. The device fits into a band that wraps around Brando’s head, so his hands are free for perfectly sensible things like driving at night with no lights on.