Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (20 page)

Startled by the outburst, I stomped on the gas pedal and the limo lurched ahead. This time nobody moved an inch to accommodate us and I had to skillfully maneuver around the military obstructions until we reached clear road.

I almost pressed the supercharge button but stayed my hand. The road beyond was blown to pieces. Blast craters made the stretch resemble a flat colander. I was impressed. Unable to move beyond their appointed position, the Army had blasted the Scion every inch of the way as they fled. How nice to deal with professionals!

The stout limo jounced through endless craters until we reached an eight foot tall, triple wire fence surrounding the place. Actually, it was three fences laid atop each other. The outer two were plastic coated, while the middle carried enough voltage to achieve the Tesla effect, if necessary. And yet torn through that formidable barrier, the resilient gate, and concrete guardhouse was a hole big enough to herd elephants.

Rolling through the breach, we skirted around a flatbed truck loaded with concrete pylons. A crude but effective battering ram. Damn their efficiency!

Beyond was a chained dog run. Scattered inside were the remains of what resembled German shepherds. As there was no time, or place, to go around, I accelerated the limo and tried to ignore the meaty bumps we rolled over. Mike said a brief prayer as we passed by. Jessica looked as if she was going to be ill.

There still remained one defense for the nuclear reactor. I hope it worked.

Straight ahead was a three story brick building. Offices. To the north was the two hundred foot tall fluted ceramic structure of the cooling tower. It was what people saw wafting into the sky as they hastily drove past a nuke powerplant. Geez, it was only warm water vapors, about as harmful as a daydream. To the south was an encased area filled with power transformers directly connected to an array of metal skeleton towers, the high-voltage transmission lines which feed the electricity into town.

In the midst of this stone and steel grandeur, dominating the landscape, was a huge smooth concrete dome. The emergency containment vessel. Resembling an inverted granite soup bowl, it completely covered the main reactor building, so that in case of a core meltdown, the cloud of radioactive steam couldn't escape.

What about Chernobyl?

The communist government had tried to save money on the plant and didn't bother to erect a containment vessel.

Bad move.

Yowsa.

Cars from the parking lot had been driven into a circle around the plant. The limo smashed the little things aside, with no more difficulty than the Scion werewolves had climbed over them. Beyond was a collection of broken sawhorses that had once offered meager defiance to the adamantine beasts. But no human corpses, as there wasn't a living soul in the whole complex. Had the Scion noticed?

The front doors had been locked, and the handles linked together with plastic shipping straps, tough as leather. The plastic had been snapped like taffy, and the doors completely ripped free from the thick alloy casing frames. Could even a werewolf do that?

So far our watches had remained silent. I pressed the test switch and was satisfied that the Geiger function was working. But if these babies start clicking, well, even magic can only heal so much. What the hey, I had a lot of friends waiting for me in Heaven, and all of my enemies were in Hell.

Gingerly as possible, we stepped through the shattered windows, wary of the jagged glass daggers ringing our entrance. Inside, the whole lobby was blackened by fire, and charred lumps of meat announced that a few of the Scion had died from the land mines hidden under the plush carpet. Turnabout was fair play.

Three hallways branched out from the lobby, one was blocked with office furniture in a crude barricade. However, I knew from experience that the map on the wall behind the receptionist's desk was subtly wrong. The security in these places was tight as our own, and had been beaten.

"Diversion?” Raul asked, jerking a thumb.

Moving silent as a dream, Mindy was already at the hallway, prodding the furniture scraps with her sword. “Yep, the reactor is this way."

A lumpy shape blotted the floor in shadow.

"Twelve o'clock high!” I cried, firing a Magnum at the overhead lights.

In a spray of broken tiles, a huge creature dropped from the ceiling to bounce off the receptionist's desk and land on a decorative glass table. The top instantly shattered beneath the impact of the heavy being, slashing its scaled legs to ribbons. Ha! I always knew those things were dangerous. Wait a minute, a scaled werewolf? It was a gargoyle!

As the snarling beast struggled to free itself from the ruin of the table, the seven of us formed a firing line with our backs to the wall, not the open mouth of the tunnel. Jessica's machine pistol sprayed a deadly combo of lead, steel and the new plasma rounds at the animated stone monster. Annoyed, the beast hissed its defiance and vomited a stream of acid-based enzymes. A golden ray from Raul's wand diverted the stream in midair. The poison hit a computer terminal which began dissolving. An arrow from Mindy bounced off an eye of the gargoyle. Donaher hosed the beast with liquid fire. Katrina gestured and shackled its mouth shut.

With a fiendish grin, George snicked off the safety of his Masterson Assault Cannon and started pounding the gargoyle with armor-piercing HE rounds. Slammed into the plastic mock-up of the nuclear furnace, the gargoyle was held motionless under the furious onslaught of caseless HE. A perfect target.

Holstering the .357 Magnum, I leveled the Barret, took aim and squeezed the trigger.

At first, I thought the rifle had jammed and exploded on me. Mentally, I braced myself for the pain of the searing shrapnel tearing me to bloody gobbets. Then I realized the gargoyle had no head.

"Nice shot,” George complemented.

"Thanks,” I said loudly to hear my own words. My hair hurt from the concussion of the rifle, and my ears were numb. Did this thing actually fire a bullet, or did the noise level simply smack things to death?

"Now that,” Raul panted breathlessly, pointing to the motionless statue on the floor, “is no werewolf!"

"Faith, lad, we called in friends,” Father Donaher said, adjusting the sizzling pre-burner on his weapon. “Apparently, so did they."

"But why?"

Grimacing sourly, George tapped his rifle. “What kind of ammo we carrying?"

"Silver,” I answered and the light bulb clicked on. “Which will do nothing special to a vampire, ogre or medusa!” Our other ammo was miles away at the Sears Tower. Bloody marvelous.

Levering in a fresh round, I then shouldered the massive Barret. “That was just a guard. Come on, I'm on point. Raul on rear. One meter spread. Let's go!"

Hurriedly, we started down the central hallway when a siren outside began to wail. Loud enough to rattle the broken window, the steam whistle keen did not need Jessica, our universal translator, to decode its dire message.

"Meltdown,” Mindy breathed.

In relief, we smiled.

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"Yes!” I cried, raising a clenched fist in victory.

Jessica and Mike shook hands. George and Raul did a high five. Mindy hugged Katrina to the evident surprise of the big Russian actress. Even her butterfly did a little jig.

"Let's go get ‘em!” George shouted brandishing his M60/banjo.

Scrambling more than running, we hurried along the central hallway. This was our big chance. Destroying the nuclear powerplant was such an obvious ploy that precautions had been taken. Every city which possessed a nuke, also had a full-scale working model of the plant in which to train new personnel. It was an exact duplicate, with the proper pipes hot or cold, live steam in the turbines and the floor vibrated. Completely draining the magic from a fully charged mage, the Bureau switched the two buildings. The real powerplant had been rendered invisible and was a hundred feet to the west. This was the model. Perfect bait to finally capture a werewolf.

But if the Scion deduced the truth and managed to find the operating plant, Chicago could very quickly get blowtorched off the face of the Earth. A sobering thought. The fake alarms never stopped or slowed.

Turning a corner, we faced a set of double-doors with a gaping hole in their middle, closing off the hallway. The team paused when Mindy spotted a tripwire and George deactivated the Claymore mine attached. Just a gift from the Scion.

Beyond those doors was another set, and then more. Finally, we reached a more formidable portal. The door was a seamless slab of highly polished alloy. There was no lock, handle, window, keypad, keyhole, card slot, sensor pad or dial. Lying on the floor was a very dead technician. Jessica faced a corner and vomited.

In the wrong place at the wrong time, the poor man had been brutally killed. I took off my FBI jacket and draped it over as much of him as possible.

"Damn beasties must be on the other side of this wee door,” Father Donaher reasoned, radiating Irish anger hotter than his flamethrower.

"Okay, how do we get past this?” George demanded, panting slightly from our brisk run.

"Nobody does,” I said, shifting the cushioned strap of the Barret rifle. “Obviously, the whole plant has undergone primary lock down!"

"Which means?” Mindy demanded, poised on her toes with her sword in both hands, ready for action.

Annoyed, I thumped the armored portal. “Meaning that nobody gets in until the President personally commands the Atomic Energy Commission to send the step down code."

"But this is only the model."

"Which functions exactly as the original!"

Donaher whipped out his pocket cellular phone.

Reaching out a pale hand, Jessica closed the phone. “We'd never reach the White House quickly enough."

Separated from capturing our enemies by only a meter of reactive metal alloy. It was infuriating!

In an unprecedented move, George spit the gum out of his mouth. “Okay, the front door is locked. How about a side window? Or we could do the old Santa Claus bit with a chimney flue."

"
Nyet
,” Katrina said in a ghostly voice, her eyes glazed. A wizard's inner sight is often a wonderful thing at times. This was one of them. “Scion did not pass door."

"Eh?"

"What?"

Impulsively, I glanced around. “Then where are they?"

"Ohmigod,” Jessica breathed, staring at the floor.

Although most of the dead man was covered with my darkening suit jacket, the mangled remains of his arms and legs were horribly apparent. I did a double take when I saw what my wife had noticed. Wholly intact, his undamaged left arm was fully outstretched, with a single finger pointing to the west, towards the real plant. Yikes! Not murdered, but tortured!

George took Raul by the shoulder, “Horta, get us out of here!"

With a furious expression, the mage stomped his staff upon the floor. Nothing happened, except that the body was gone and the meltdown alarm was strangely quiet.

"This is the real power plant!” Father Donaher gasped in understanding.

Proudly, Raul kissed his wand. “Wizard's got to see where they teleport and what could be better than a full scale model?"

"How nice,” I acknowledged hastily. “Mindy, carve that door to pieces!"

"No need,” she said pointing upward. “Look."

We craned our necks. There was a gaping hole in the ceiling above us, continuing for several levels. Beyond that, even with maximum augmentation from my sunglasses I saw nothing.

"They did a bypass,” Katrina breathed in admiration.

Brushing back his wild crop of red-hair, Father Mike raised an eyebrow. “The defenses of the main control center were too great?"

Pulling the bolt on her Uzi machine pistol, Jessica scoffed. “No way. But if anybody tries to force entry, the whole plant shuts off with overrides. Then the Scion could never get the meltdown they want."

"But out here?” Katrina asked confused. “What can werewolves do outside reactor?"

Yeah, what could the Scion do out here? Any computer commands from the office building had to be routed through the main control booth and would be easily deleted by the technicians. No important equipment was external of the containment shell. And without computer guidance, the only place a meltdown could be forced was the main reactor. No,
in
the main reactor.

"Merciful heaven, they're headed straight for the core!” Father Donaher cried almost dropping his shotgun. “Going in from above!"

"Brilliant!” I reluctantly agreed.

Craning his neck, George was croggled. “Through the containment shell? Its ten meters thick!"

But the ploy made sense. They would encounter no real security devices, or defenses on the outside of the building. There was only thirty meters plus meters of ferro-concrete to pierce and they were home free.

Faintly in the distance, I heard another explosion from the perimeter. Just another rabbit, or the Scion trying to escape after finishing the sabotage? Suddenly, a soft horn began bleating. The actual meltdown alert? Hoo boy.

Crouching low, Mindy jumped and pulled herself onto the next level. “Come on!” her voice cried. “It's an easy climb!"

Yeah, right.

Gesturing and chanting, Katrina tapped our miscellaneous footwear with her wand and we each raised a leg and carefully placed a shoe on the wall. With a lurch, the team lifted the other foot and now stood on the curving dome, our bodies perpendicular to the ground. In standard attack formation we raced the three stories to the roof. Flying would have been faster, but this was a magic minimum mission. How many additional battles would we have to fight tonight?

Stretching endlessly above us was the containment vessel. A quarter million tons of formed, pre-stressed concrete reinforced with every artifice available to modern science. Spiraling around the dome was a series of dots, bare bolts indicating where the access ramp leading to the top had originally been, but removed for this emergency.

But high off to the side was a dark unidentifiable splotch. Sky to my left, rooftop to my right, we scampered forward. If the military was watching us through binoculars, somebody was asking for aspirins right about now.