Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm Read online

  Twenty-five minutes later the Gestapo convoy stops in front of a row of small houses outside of Péronne. Brando hits the gas, and the Audi accelerates like it’s been kicked in the butt. Falcon and I each open our passenger-side window. Victor hikes himself out his window so he can fire over the roof. Brando skids us past the truck and screeches to a halt next to the two cars.

  The Gestapo agents all still in their seats. Our guns grind them into guacamole. I cram a new magazine into Li’l Bertha and get out of the Audi. I stand next to the lead Gestapo car. Lights come on in a few houses.

  My night vision shows me the riddled bodies of three men. Our 9-mm ordnance has blown them all onto their sides and even scattered some of their teeth onto the dashboard. I fire a slug into each of their heads to make sure they’re as dead as they look.

  Falcon sanitizes the second car while Victor gets out and turns toward the truck behind us. His job is to neutralize the driver, but the Kraut son of a bitch has reacted much faster than we expected.

  The big vehicle reverses up the road. Before Victor can draw a bead on him, the driver slings his truck around so he’s facing away from us. The diesel engine wails as the driver gets out of there as fast as possible. Falcon runs after the truck and shoots at the wheels. Unfortunately, this truck has a hydraulic steel loading lift attached to its rear. The folded lift unintentionally acts as a bullet shield, and Falcon can’t take out the tires.

  I jump back in the Audi. “Darwin, catch those dickheads!” Then I comm, “Victor, take Falcon and hide somewhere. We’ll be right back.” Brando cranks the steering wheel over and floors it. The rear tires spin like a 200-horsepower laundry machine and leave a smoking J stripe as my partner whirls us around and takes off after the Gestapo truck.

  We’re in a high-end sports car and the truck bozos are in a truck, so we catch them in less than a minute. We move up on the rumbling vehicle’s left side. I get ready to shoot the driver, but he swerves into our lane to try to push us off the road. Brando hits the brakes and slides over, directly behind the big roller.

  “I guess they saw us coming,” he says.

  Time for plan B.

  I say, “Get us closer.” Then I hoist myself out the passenger-side window and crawl onto the car’s hood. Brando pulls forward and tailgates so closely we move into the pocket of dead air directly behind the truck. I fling myself onto the truck’s back side. My hands snag the top of the cargo area, and my body slaps against the metal doors. My partner moves the Audi to one side so he won’t run me over if I lose my grip.

  My dangling feet find the folded lift gate’s top edge. I kick at the latch that holds the doors shut, but the lift is in the way. 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 wonder if the vehicle’s manufacturer anticipated this situation ever actually coming up.

  The lift gate now sticks straight out, like a back porch. I open one of the rear doors and pop inside. Twin benches line the walls, and twin rows of ring bolts line the floor. This is basically a deuce-and-a-half paddy wagon for rounding up escaped slaves.

  At the cargo area’s far end is a small window into the front cab. That small window slides open and extrudes the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. The shitheads up front must have heard all the racket I made getting in here.

  The shotgun belches fire and kicks itself back through the window. I dive forward under the blast and hit the floor. My right foot catches some buckshot and seethes like it’s been bitten by a red-hot wasp.

  I unsheath my pistol and spin around so my feet face forward. Li’l Bertha methodically shoots a row of 9-mm holes through the metal divider between the cab and the cargo area. My first bullet doesn’t seem to hit anything. Shots number two and three result in high-pitched screams. My fourth and fifth shots miss, but shots six through eight all produce somewhat lower-pitched cries of anguish. I swing back to where the high-pitched noise came from and fire a tight circle of bullets. The screaming stops.

  The truck swerves. I hear and feel a loud crunch from the right side. The ride becomes exceedingly violent. I bounce around like a piece of popcorn until we strike a well-anchored obstacle. My body bashes into the bullet-riddled divider and everything goes black.

  I wake up, and groggily check my watch. I’ve been unconscious for about two minutes. Everything is very quiet except for a low groaning from outside. I get up, crawl out the truck’s rear end, and climb down to the ground.

  The moment I land, a spear of pain lances through my right foot. I cry out and stand on my other foot while I get oriented.

  We’ve crashed into a stone wall set forty feet from the road. I limp around the left side to check the Gestapo thugs. The passenger is in the truck cab, scrunched under the dashboard. He’s got four or five bullet holes in him, and his head is at an impossible angle to the rest of his body. The windshield on the driver’s side is smashed out like a glass fountain with a person-size hole in the middle.

  I walk to the truck’s front. The driver lies on the ground past the truck’s grill. He’s unconscious, but his eyelids flutter 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 I almost pass out again.

  A car horn beeps from the truck’s far side. It scares me out of my skin, but it clears my head. I shamble around the big vehicle. My foot stings like a motherfucker and I ache everywhere, but I forget all of that when I see the black Audi crushed under the truck.

  Patrick!

  I bound onto the car hood and look in through the broken windshield. My partner’s eyes are closed, and he’s pinned by the car’s roof, which has collapsed under the big Gestapo vehicle.

  “Patrick! Can you hear me?”

  He mumbles, “Scarlet? What … happened?”

  “Hang on, I’ll get you out.” I squeeze under the truck and try to bench-press it. Nothing happens. I slam as much Madrenaline as I can and try again. The truck budges, but even pumped up on speed, I’m nowhere near strong enough to heft it.

  I climb off the car and heave open the passenger-side door. The Audi’s roof is mushed so low it presses on the seat’s headrests. I grab the passenger seat, rip it off its mounting, and drag it out of the car. I crawl inside and carefully extract my partner from the mangled mess. I turn him onto his back so I can curl his legs around the fractured steering wheel and splintered center console. I gently ease him to the ground.

  “Patrick? Can you talk?”

  He coughs, then inhales slowly and deeply, “Yeah,” he wheezes. “I’m okay … just had the wind knocked out of me.”

  “No way, Patrick. It’s gotta be more than that.” I reach into the backseat for his X-bag, throw it around my shoulders, and bend down to examine my partner.

  His limbs seem straight, and he can move his fingers and feet. His breathing is strained but steady, his pulse is good, and his pupils aren’t dilated.

  “God help me, you seem fine.”

  “I guess the car took most of the impact,” he says, “but I think we need another ride.”

  The Audi’s wheels are broken off their axles, the windows are all shattered, and the roof is trying to limbo under the floor covers. “Uh, yeah, I think so, too. Can you stand?”

  “Gimme a sec.” He cautiously moves his arms and legs back and forth. Then he cocks his head. “Do you hear that?”

  A car drives up the road. The lights are off. My night vision shows me a dark gray smudge against a slightly darker gray background. I take cover behind the Audi and aim Li’l Bertha at the sound. The car slows down.

  Someone comms, “Scarlet, hold your fire. It’s me.”

  “Falcon!” Thank God. “Can you come help me with Pat—uhh, with Darwin?”

  “Sure thing.” He parks at the roadside. A car door opens and thunks shut
, then footsteps crunch across the dirt as Falcon runs to us.

  “Damn!” he exclaims. “What happened?”

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

  “I can get myself there.” Brando turns over and climbs to his feet. His legs wobble like a newborn colt’s. “Oof!” he exclaims as he bumps down onto the ground again. He looks at his legs, then at me and Falcon. “Well, don’t stand there, you dopes. Help me up.”

  We each take one of his arms and hoist our Info Operator onto his feet. The three of us lumber away from the wreck.

  “Where’s Victor?” I ask.

  “He stayed behind to help the escaped slaves get to their next stop. Some Circle people are coming to transport them. Victor said he’d catch up with us after he found the people who betrayed them.”

  “Man, I wouldn’t wanna be those people,” Brando mumbles.

  We make it to the car. Falcon holds the back door open. I gently lay Brando across the car’s backseat while Falcon runs around and hops in the driver’s seat. I situp front with him.

  Falcon drives us away from the scene. It’s still dark, but a faint hint of dawn has begun to break. My hand brushes something moist and sticky on my seat. I examine my fingers. They’re wet and smell like blood.

  “Shit! Who’s bleeding?”

  Falcon says, “Don’t worry. It’s from the Gestapo men you wasted.”

  I quickly scan the car around me. Blood, broken glass, and bullet holes. “Oh, that’s where you got this car.”

  F-Bird smiles and says, “For now, anyway. We need to find a clean ride before it gets light out.”

  Brando murmurs, “I vote for another Audi.”

  CORE MIS-ANGEL-4399

  ANGEL SIT-REP: SPAIN. 2 March 1981

  The situation here on the Spanish peninsula 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, 10:45 P.M. CET

  Thiepval, Province of France, GG

  The titanic British monument at Thiepval was built on one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War I. My first thought was they’d made it this big to serve as a tomb for all the dead soldiers. But Patrick told me it would have be the size of the Empire State Building to house that many bodies.

  Still, this mountainous heap of architecture is impressive. It juts past the surrounding gardens of white crosses like a brick-red volcano and looms high above the houses in the nearby town of Thiepval. The thing is covered with people’s names, and the many pillars holding it up are labeled with letter-number codes. The last three characters in Kruppe’s directions specify one of these pillars.

  7 March 2300. Thiepval, 11A.

  I lurk off to one side of the monument and watch pillar 11A, which stands under the main arch in the structure’s center. 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 meeting spot, and it’s no wonder the competition chose it. You can hang around without drawing attention because here “suspiciously loitering” is indistinguishable from “thoughtfully brooding.”

  After this morning’s predawn game of whack-a-jerk, us three youngsters laid low until Victor rejoined us. He took us to one of his doctor friends 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 rest of our day establishing our game plan for Kruppe’s meeting.

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

  Falcon comms from the opposite side of the monument, “I’ll pick him up.”

  “Victor, any competition out there?”

  Victor replies from the far end of the park, “Negative, only a couple of kids running around.”

  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 attention. Two boys, grade-schoolers, are chasing 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 boys into submission. The boys sheepishly apologize and skulk away from the stranger.

  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 slides 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 my column. Kruppe’s aftershave smells the same as it did in Calais.

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

  “Scarlet, follow Kruppe’s contact. Victor, you too, please. Falcon, come back to the car. We’ll take Kruppe.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kruppe’s undersized message bearer is a greasy-looking toughie in a leather jacket. He slinks to the other side of pillar 11A. I cross under the main arch and follow Mr. Greaser’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.

  I comm, “Where the fuck is he?”

  “You lost him?” Darwin comms back.

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

  “Negative, Scarlet.”

  Christ almighty, did I just hallucinate that pinhead?

  “Darwin, do you have eyes on Kruppe?”

  “Yes, I have eyes on Kruppe. He got back in his car, and Falcon and I are following him in the Bimmer.” Darwin pauses, then switches to our private channel, “Alix, you okay?”

  “Brando, I swear to God I saw this fucker!”

  “I believe you, but …”

  “Hang on,” I interrupt as Victor speed-moseys up to me. Then I hiss, “Vic, you really didn’t see him?”

  “No Scarlet, I didn’t.” Victor looks like he wants to hit my nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Well, then where the fuck …”

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

  I face the back side of pillar 11A and fire up my vision Mods. My infrared scores right away. One of the big square name 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 up 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 doesn’t have Mods, so he can’t see any of what I can. His expression has shifted from “You’re incompetent” to “You’re insane.” But when I push one of the names an inch into the panel, his face goes blank. As the edge of the panel swings away from the column to reveal the passageway, his mouth drops open and his eyeballs nearly bug out.

  Welcome to ExOps, Vicberg!

  I dart inside and quickly flit down the metal spiral staircase. Dim red lights illuminate my feet as I reach the bottom of the stairs. More red lights glow along the floor of a long, straight tunnel cut through packed earth. My upgraded hearing picks out soft footsteps down the corridor. My neuroinjector gooses me up on Madrenaline, and I race down the tunnel.

  The greaseball hears me coming, but by the time he turns to see who I am, 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. As he stan
ds up, I collar him in a headlock. High-pitched gurgling rattles out of his throat as I bend backward to hoist him up until his feet point at the roof. Then I tip over backward and bludgeon Mr. Greasy into the ground head-first. His skull clonks against the floor, and his limbs collapse into a pile of spaghetti.

  Victor rushes up the passageway. He takes in me and my vanquished competitor and gently shakes his head. “Americans,” he says as he untangles Greasy’s arms and legs.

  “I know, right?” I say. “Great pile driver, eh?”

  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 man by his armpits and heaves him into a sitting position against the wall.

  After a minute, Mr. Greasy has regained enough consciousness for Victor to lay into him.

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

  Mr. Greasy rubs the top of his head and growls in guttural German. I catch the word “mutterfinken” in there. Motherfucker.

  Victor stands back from our captive and comms, “Scarlet, do something terrible to him.”

  I step up and catch hold of Greaseball’s arm. The fingers of my synthetic right hand wrap around his skinny forearm and crush it like a beer can until the bones break. He screams and cries.

  Victor gets back in Mr. Greasy’s face. “Well?”

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

  Victor stands up. “Again, Scarlet. But much worse.”

  I take hold of Mr. 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 provoke a loud, definitive pop.