Hammer of Angels Page 3

  To protect our corruption case against Jakob Fredericks, Winter’s existence has to stay completely under wraps. He’s the one person who can prove Fredericks purposely sent my father into a trap. But our star fink is as good as dead if ol’ Jakob finds out about him.

  ExOps’s big cheese, Director Eduardo Chanez, told Cyrus to keep my mission strictly in-house. This meant no paperwork, no CORE entries, and no official meetings. He didn’t even tell the White House. Only a couple of his close contacts at the Department of Justice know we’re harboring a witness who can stick Fredericks in front of a firing squad.

  This is why President Jackson was totally blindsided when German Chancellor Honecker blusteringly declared that he wants Greater Germany to dump the U.S. and join the Pan-Asian Pact. Now America is facing the recurring Shadowstorm nightmare where three major powers team up and gang rape the fourth one.

  The U.S. must have an ally, and it won’t be Russia or China. Those creeps are still pissed about our presence in Japan and Korea. Our relationship with Greater Germany is crucial, and the effort to rescue it is being directed by Washington’s top strategist: SSC Director Jakob Fredericks. The fucker is considered so indispensable right now that we can’t even bust the bastard for treason. So “until we sort out this thing with Germany,” we’ve stashed Winter in a safe house out in the boonies. Hopefully, given some time, nobody will ask how in hell we got our hands on such a hot potato.

  Meanwhile, I’m still in the shit shack. Cyrus’s burning glower could melt bronze.

  Brando hesitantly says, “Sir, Scarlet and I may have uncovered something else.”

  Cyrus sighs, “Let’s hear it.”

  My partner takes a deep breath. “Director Fredericks’s career has a unique pattern. He’s made great contributions but has not been commensurately rewarded.”

  Our boss, still scowling, says, “Go on.”

  “He’s intelligent and experienced enough to direct a substantially larger office than the Strategic Services Council. Something like CIA, NSA, perhaps even the State Department.” Brando clears his throat. “However, he’s been kept from higher posts by his…uhh…lack of social skills.”

  Cyrus snorts but says nothing.

  “Also,” Brando continues, “his resentment toward his superiors is well known.”

  “Him and half of Washington.”

  “Yes, sir, but consider the way Director Fredericks handled the ExOps security breach eight years ago. He knew there were three competitive agents inside ExOps—Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio—who—”

  “Yes, Darwin. I remember,” Cyrus says irritably. “I lost a lot of good friends from the Russian Section, and Langley nearly shut us down. Make your point.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Patrick clears his throat again. “Virgo and Libra were captured quickly, which halted the leaks from the Russian Section, and then Fredericks broke off the investigation.”

  Cyrus’s glare broils us. “And?”

  “Sir,” Brando says quickly, “we think Jakob Fredericks is Scorpio.”

  A pregnant pause while Cyrus clasps his hands behind him. “You believe Scorpio was our most senior Front Desk at the time.”

  Brando and I both nod our heads.

  “I suppose this is why you’ve spent so much time in the library lately.”

  We nod our heads again. According to what we found in CORE, Virgo and Libra exposed all of our agents and informers in the USSR, many of whom were executed or remain in prison. The third mole—Scorpio—continued to pursue a separate agenda after the two Russian agents were packed off to Leavenworth.

  The Office of Security interviewed everyone at ExOps and discovered dozens of staffers who had briefly misplaced their IDs sometime in the previous year. The investigators determined that all of those IDs had been used to access classified data about the Asexual Reproduction Initiative before magically reappearing someplace like the cafeteria, a restroom, or out in the parking lot.

  Cyrus rubs his jaw. “I assume the Scorpio reports you read were sanitized.”

  “Yes, sir. No names.”

  “Well, let me tell you, then, since I was here when all that happened. After security started monitoring the traffic into CORE, they only tracked one query for ARI-related materials. By the time they traced it, the trespasser was already gone. That was the last we ever heard of Scorpio.”

  Brando asks, “Whose ID had he used?”

  Our boss fixes a stare at us to say, Guess who.

  I grumble, “Fredericks.” My partner and I check each other to see if we’ve grown big cartoon donkey heads.

  Cyrus returns to his desk chair. “And before you ask, he was at Camp David with President Nixon. He didn’t realize his ID was missing until he tried to return to his office later that night.”

  My boss stretches his arms toward the ceiling. “So I’m afraid Fredericks is not a likely Scorpio suspect.” A couple of his joints crack as he extends his hands over his head. His armpits are dark with perspiration. “I’ve always thought it was Russia or China trying to jump-start their cloning program by stealing it from us.”

  “The same way we stole ours from Germany?” I butt in.

  Cyrus scrutinizes me for a moment. “You have been doing your homework. Yes, exactly.” He opens one of his desk drawers. “Fredericks has more than enough clearance to access ARI, but he wouldn’t waste his time. He knows as well as I do that we’re a long way from getting involved with cloning again.” Our boss nods toward Brando. “Despite the positive results achieved.”

  Brando lowers his eyes to his lap. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Your efforts are commendable—” Cyrus pulls a pair of file folders out of his desk drawer. “—but Scorpio is a mystery for another day.” The drawer shuts. “There are more pressing matters to attend to.” He passes the files to us. “Scarlet, this should keep you out of trouble for a while.”

  My partner and I each grab a folder. The cover reads “Top Secret: Operation ANGEL.”

  Cyrus rises from his chair and paces across his office. “This is the largest covert action I’ve ever seen. Every section’s Front Desk will contribute all available resources. That’s Russian, Chinese, American, and, of course, our German Section.”

  Brando peeks inside his mission brief.

  “Scarlet, you and Darwin will travel to York in northeast England. There you will establish contact with an underground resistance group called the Circle of Zion. This is a great opportunity for you two, but make no mistake. The country’s fate hangs in the balance. Our cousins in Berlin must be diverted from joining the Pan-Asian Pact, and the appeal of such an alliance to Moscow and Beijing must be undermined. We can’t fabricate the proper situation from outside Germany’s borders, but we can induce it within them.”

  Meanwhile, Brando’s eyes have almost bugged out of his head.

  Cyrus stops pacing. Then he knocks our socks off. “ExOps has been ordered to incite a slave revolt inside the Reich. And you’re going to start it.”

  Oh, my God!

  It’s the job of a lifetime! I turn, dumbfounded, to my partner. His mouth has flopped open, and I think he’s stopped breathing.

  * * *

  CORE

  MIS-ANGEL-006

  DATE: 20 January 1981

  TO: All Directors and Operations Coordinators

  FROM: Office of the Executive Intelligence Chairman

  SUBJECT: Operation ANGEL

  FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

  Mission Parameters

  The goal of Operation ANGEL (Affected Naturalization of Germany’s Enslaved Labor) is to preserve America’s alliance with Greater Germany. It will temporarily destabilize the Reich by instigating a revolt among the slave population in Europe, beginning in England. This rebellion will be supported by America’s clandestine community until our embassy in Berlin persuades Germany to rejoin the North Atlantic Alliance. At that point, our prorebellion support will cease.

  Long-term success of the insurgency is undesirable, but to achi
eve this diplomatic goal, our deployed field agents must develop a convincingly chaotic situation. You will withhold our true purpose from your operatives and direct them as though this uprising is to actually succeed.

  Background

  This situation has been brewing for months. On 3 October of last year, agents of Extreme Operations Division severely damaged a Carbon installation in Zurich. News of this event was not happily received by our opposite numbers in the Reich, but they suppressed the story to maintain Carbon’s minimized media presence.

  Three weeks later, a thermobaric cruise missile fired from a U.S. Navy ship annihilated a terrorist base masquerading as a research facility outside of Riyadh. All the lab personnel were killed, along with fifty members of a visiting German Youth troop. This story was carried by every news outlet in Greater Germany.

  Four days later, Chancellor Erich Honecker declared he would sever Greater Germany’s alliance with the United States.

  That same day China loudly renewed her demand for the United States to transfer control of Korea and Japan to the Nationalist Republic of China.

  These events occurred during an election year and severely damaged President Reagan’s approval ratings. Democratic challenger Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson made significant gains. Two weeks later Mr. Jackson was elected president.

  Upon taking office last week, President Jackson immediately initiated his combination of liberal domestic programs and aggressive foreign policy. In his first presidential press conference he condemned Greater Germany’s plan to “betray” the North Atlantic Alliance and threatened dire consequences should they follow it through.

  ANGEL is a harbinger of those dire consequences.

  05

  NEXT AFTERNOON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 3:46 P.M. EST

  EXOPS TRAINING FACILITY, MARYLAND, USA

  “Scarlet, ten left,” Brando’s comm-voice says, “and stay down.”

  I dog it ten yards up Main Street, crouched so low that I’m almost doubled over. Then I hit the deck. My heavy breathing blows little puffs of dust off the floor. Dirt sticks to my sweat-soaked face. I blink the salty grime out of my eyes.

  A turret pops out from a plastic bush on the left and noisily expels a stream of rubber ordnance. I drop to the ground. Li’l Bertha locks on to the bullet-bot, and I pull the trigger. Her lightweight practice slugs ping off the turret’s metal shell, which signals the Training Control Center, Ya got me, pardner.

  Brando comms, “Next station, sixty right, fly-by.”

  “Fly-by” is IO slang for “don’t stop moving,” so this next part will be something extra hairy. I spring to my feet and pump my legs for sixty feet. A bright light flashes from a little house on the right side of Main Street. As I swivel to fire on this target, the floor plunges out from under me. I have just enough momentum to grab the far edge of this insta-pit before my body smacks into the chasm’s wall and knocks the wind out of me.

  Oof!

  My partner comms, “C’mon, Scarlet! We’ve only got thirty seconds for the last station.”

  That’s easy for you to say, Darwin. I pull myself out of the pit and wheeze on down the road.

  “Okay, last one. Three hundred straight ahead, top speed.”

  I ignore my burning lungs and jet to twenty-something miles per hour. My limbs swing faster and faster, and my hair flutters in the wind. I can hit high thirties with Madrenaline in my blood, but we’re required to complete this training unit without my Enhances. Each run-through is different, and I’ve blown it three times already. This is the closest we’ve come to beating this sequence.

  Brando comms, “Twenty seconds!”

  Ahead of me is a clear path to the finish line. All I need to do is jog to it and—

  Wrong.

  Three bullet-bots drop from the roof in front of me. They bounce on long rubber bungee cables. Each bot emits a thin red laser beam. All three beams point at my chest, and the bots fire a volley of rubber bullets.

  Li’l Bertha tries to find the bots while I leap away from their bullets and laser beams, but her target indicator is blank.

  “Darwin, what’s happened? Why can’t I lock on?”

  “They’re jammers. You’ll have to—”

  I charge the leftmost bot.

  “—find a way around them.”

  The left bot locks on to me as it swings to the bottom of its arc. I throw myself at it and grab the bungee cable above its body. The bot hoists me toward the roof. I swing like Tarzan and wrap my bot’s cable around the other two bungees before I let go at the bottom of the next bounce.

  The bots are still live, but now they can only point in a fixed direction. I avoid the static laser beams and dive across the finish line with less than a second to go.

  “Yes!” Brando shouts. “Made it!”

  I flop onto the ground. My view from Gaspville Junction shows a very high curved roof supported by metal trusses, like an airplane hangar.

  “Terrific,” my partner comms. “Now for the driving test.”

  Sure. Whatever. “Gimme a minute.” It takes a minute anyway, since he has to bring the car around.

  A vehicle coasts up next to me and stops. I peel myself off the ground. Man, I miss my Madrenaline. Brando switches to the passenger seat, and I pour myself behind the wheel. Something must have happened to our previous training vehicle, which was a beat-to-shit black-and-white Dodge sedan, probably a former police cruiser. This new car, a white BMW two-seater convertible, is quite a hot little number. The relatively few dents and scrapes tell me this sexy momma hasn’t seen much track time here yet. While we coast to the start line, I take in the gorgeous tan interior.

  My partner sees how impressed I am with our new wheels. “Drug bust,” he says.

  Ah, of course. Sometimes when ExOps helps local cops, they let us keep the perpetrator’s ride. If the D.C. SWAT team can’t take care of a situation or if the FBI is in over their head, Director Chanez will send one of his Levels out with them. It never takes long after that. Regular crooks can’t compete with a million-dollar murder machine designed to help topple whole governments.

  “Think there’s any cocaine left in this baby?”

  Brando turns up the heater. “Nah, the mechanics probably found it all.”

  I position the Cokemobile on the start line. In front of us, a pair of titanic hangar doors grind open. My partner riffles through his instructions and nods to me when he’s ready.

  I comm, “TCC, Scarlet and Darwin in position.”

  The Training Control Center comms, “Roger that, Scarlet. Arming the tree. Go on green.”

  The tree is a tall pole supporting a vertical series of lights; red on top, yellow in the middle, and green at the bottom. Right now the top lights glow crimson, holding us in place. I press the clutch down and shift into first gear. My right foot floors the gas and holds it there.

  Reds, yellows, green!

  I slip my left foot off the clutch pedal. A white cloud of tire smoke billows behind us as we screech off the line. The tachometer redlines, I shift into second, and we bound out of the hangar. The sun smacks me in the face, and my vision Mods adjust their gamma to compensate.

  I holler, “Yeee-hahhhh!!!”

  As we tear-ass up the first straightaway, Brando feeds me his pace notes. “Turn One. Left, one-zero-five in, long sweep, nine-five out.” This means we should enter this long sweeping left turn at 105 miles per hour and exit it at 95.

  The Cokemobile rockets to a buck ten before I tap the brakes to initiate a spectacular power slide around Turn One. I countersteer and wallop the gas before we’ve even passed the corner’s apex. Cokey leans into this scandalous driving like a drunken businessman doing the motorboat between a hooker’s tits.

  Oh, I am totally getting one of these honeys.

  We thunder out of the curve. My partner yells, “Turn Two. Right, six-zero in, opens, eight-zero out.” When Brando says “opens,” he means the turn gets broader as we go around.

  I twist the wheel
ninety feet away from the corner and downshift from fifth to third to transfer the car’s weight forward. Overloading the front tires like this makes Cokey plow into the curve. When we’re almost at the pavement’s outer edge, I stomp the gas and pull the car’s center of gravity onto her rear wheels. The unloaded front tires suddenly grip tighter than a Scotsman’s wallet and whip us through Turn Two.

  “Turn Three. Right, seven-zero in, opens, seven-five out. Jump at apex.”

  I hook us into Turn Three with my right toes on the gas and my right heel on the brakes. My left foot peppers the clutch as needed to keep our revs up. I’m doing great until we pass the turn’s midpoint, where a nasty bump kicks Cokey into the air and ruins my driving line. The car flies sideways and lands inches from the outside edge. I overcorrect, and the Bimmer tilts onto her two left wheels. Brando and I both lean the other way. I jiggle the wheel left to put us on all fours, but now we’re headed off the track.

  I haul up the emergency brake, crank the steering wheel right and then left, then shove the e-brake down again. This throws us sideways. I look over my left shoulder to see where we’re going.

  God almighty, we’ll be lucky if there’s any rubber at all on the tires after this one. My training has ingrained into me—when dealing with an all-out mental-patient driving disaster like this—do not slow down. If I even breathe on the brakes right now, we’ll spin out of control. I bury the gas pedal and hold my breath. Brando clings to his door handle for dear life.

  We exit Turn Three at seventy-nine miles per hour in a massive cloud of scorched rubber.

  “Hah!” I wipe sweat off my forehead. “What’s next?”

  We’re doing so well that I only need to drive like Maniac Junior for the rest of the lap. We come off Turn Eight and enter the main straightaway, ready for Lap Two.

  We receive a comm from the Training Control Center. “Scarlet and Darwin, switch seats. Lap Two will be a target lap.”