Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (6 page)

"Hey, Kathi, can you conjure some military defoliant?” George asked, removing the tape from the handle of a thermite grenade clipped to his belt. I approved. The time for subtly was over.

Lovingly, Katrina caressed the short soldier's grim face, making his expression noticeable soften. Ah, young lust. Messy, but romantic.

"
Da, babushka
,” she purred. “But maybe can do better than that. How far is to town?"

"Hadleyville? About half a mile."

Katrina and Raul started mumbling to themselves in that secret wizard way that only lawyers in a courtroom could duplicate.

"You've never done it before,” Raul warned.

She shrugged. “
Da
. But you good teacher."

The mage gave a cocky smile. “Yes, I am. Okay, go for it."

"Mindy!” Katrina called, her staff starting to visibly pulse with power.

Sword in hand, the slim woman turned from slicing apart a particularly determined bit of ragweed. “Yeah?"

"I will be point."

"Be my guest,” Mindy said waving her forward.

After consulting her pocket spell book, Katrina adjusted her top then started chanting and spinning her staff in the manner of a drum major's baton. Steadily, the speed increased until the wand was only a blur. Then the Russian mage removed her hand and the steel length continued to twirl in place, going faster and faster, until into the rod hummed from the sheer raw velocity of its violent rotations.

"Forward!” Katrina boomed in a Voice of Command, and the staff levitated towards the town.

As the smear advanced, everything in front of us was instantly reduced to flying splinters and dust. Some of the greenery tried to make a run for safety, but each was annihilated. The saps. Single file, we followed the wizard and her wand, staying in the trail of bare dead earth of her wake.

Occasionally, some fanatic bush would try to run close anyway, and we shot it to pieces. Brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘crabgrass'.

As the team progressed, I could only catch an occasional glimpse of the street beyond the row of houses. There did not appear to be any wrecked vehicles or bodies, but I wasn't sure. Definitely a lot of damage to the buildings. Maybe this whole incident was only a horticultural experiment gotten entirely out of control, or a lunatic killer wearing a bad toupee. Intelligent werewolves? Nyah.

Exiting the forest, Katrina reclaimed her staff and allowed Mindy to take point again. Only dried mud, gravel and a flimsy wire fence stood between us and Hadleyville. We moved closer. It was a hurricane wire fence, topped with an array of thin wire resting on insulated posts.

"Electrified?” Mindy asked, furrowing her brow.

"Detection wire,” I answered. “Works on proximity, same principle as the warhead on a missile. However, with two mages near by it should be dead."

Boldly, I touched the wire and nothing happened. Just like with radios, TVs, computers and guns, mages were just a wet blanket on the fire of technology. Whenever we had to use a commercial airline, getting Raul and Katrina past the security scanner was always a royal pain in the butt. Banned under official edict, we weren't ever allowed to visit Dulles Airport anymore. Plus, I don't even want to think about the problems we experienced getting cable TV installed!

Set in a sturdy iron-pipe framework, a simple hinged door with a commercially purchased lock barred our use of the fence. A key lock? Trying not to laugh, I reached for a lock pick in my shirt, but Mindy cut off the restraining bar with a swipe of her sword. The metal pieces tumbled to the ground, the ends mirror bright. Raul scanned for magical runes, while George checked for booby traps before we swung the gate aside. It was clean. Beyond the fence was a wide expanse of plush lawn, deep green and smooth as a billiard court. Or was that a pool table? Golf course? Cricket? Aw, sports were not my forte.

With her sword in hand, Mindy started through the fence.

"Freeze,” George growled, his eyes reduced to mere slits.

Everybody went motionless.

Silently chewing the inside of his cheek, George stared at the manicured lawn. “Ed, got an EMS with you?"

I patted my hip. “Of course."

"Do a full spectrum scan, will ya?"

What an incredible paranoid the man was. But then, that's how you survive in the Bureau. I once got bit ‘where the sun don't shine’ because I thought a banister was safe to sit on. I had been very wrong.

"Natch,” I said in agreement, holstering a gun.

Reaching into the jacket of my sports coat, I removed a portable electromagnetic scanner and started a general sweep of the lawn. The readings went off the scale.

"Land mines,” I cursed, returning the device to my coat.

My team gave assorted noises of displeasure, but we kept it relatively clean, since Donaher was present.

"What kind of mines?” Katrina asked, a touch of fear marring her lovely face.

The big priest stared at her aghast. “Saints above, lass! What kind? The kind that go boom. Are there any others?"

"Who cares?” Raul stated cavalierly, the tiny bells on his yacht moccasins chiming a merry two o'clock. “We're mages. The mines won't go off when we walk on them. Katrina and I will blaze a path for the rest. Okay?"

As the only ex-soldiers in the group, George gave me a weary glance, and I returned the look with proper embellishments. Civilians!

"Wrong, Mr. Wizard,” George explained. “Some mines explode when you step on them. Others when you get near. And others detonate when you step on some other mine yards away. Plus, a few wait after being stepped on and then explode later."

Blinking hard, Raul turned paler than usual. “Good gods, why?"

"A delayed blast gets more of the invading group by exploding in the middle of them."

There was a long pause. “Oh,” he said softly.

"And some first ignite a small charge to shoot the huge secondary charge into the air so it explodes in your face,” I added succinctly.

"Or your groin,” George snarled as a curse. “I know a couple of soprano Marines who can testify to that. They're called Bouncing’ Bettys."

"The land mines, not the Marines,” he quickly corrected.

Morally outraged at the very concept, Father Donaher hawked to spit at the minefield, then paused in reflection, and swallowed instead. Wise move.

"So how do we get past them? Circle round to the main road?” Jessica asked, turning along the fence. Suddenly, the bushes and trees in that direction went very still. “No. Never mind. That's probably even better protected than this side exit."

"We could crawl along on our hands and knees probing the soil with a knife like they do in the old war movies,” Mindy suggested eagerly, drawing a foot-long butterfly knife from inside her shirt.

"Knifing may work, may not,” George growled, pulling the arming bolt on his M60 machine rifle. “But this definitely will."

In a thunderous roar, the weapon began spraying a stream of armor-piercing rounds into the ground, the big .30 bullets chewing a path through the manicured grass. A few meters away the soil exploded in a geyser of flame. Then a bit further out a dark metallic oval boomed into the air and then exploded at chest level. There was another of those, two more geysers and the bullets began impinging on the wooden fence. In a spray of splinters the clapboard collapsed offering us a path through to the town.

Releasing the trigger, a ringing silence engulfed us and for a moment everybody worked their jaws to try and stop the echoes in our ears. Wow. Dolby sense-a-surround, eat your heart out. Even the animated forest seemed temporarily stunned. However, I had been watching the town during the bombardment, and not a window curtain stirred, nor a light blinked on. Hadleyville appeared totally deserted. Yet, somehow, I had the feeling that we were not alone. Maybe it was only ghosts.

On the other hand, what the hell was this place? Augmented humanoids, animated trees, high tech proximity sensor wires, and a Whitman's Sampler of land mines. What had we stumbled upon here, a lost Bureau 13 base?

Obviously thinking along the same line, Mindy made the same observation aloud, Katrina asked for an explanation, and Jessica obliged. In the summer of 1977, an unknown foe had decimated the Bureau, killing 90% of our operatives in less than four hours. We still had no idea who, or why, it was done.

Only slightly less important than the identity of the mysterious foe, was the fact that a lot of files were lost in the aftermath, including the locations of hundreds of our secret hideouts. Mostly small boltholes, some only hidden rooms on the 13th floor of hotels, the covert locations were used as emergency hideouts and surveillance blinds. On rare occasions, a Bureau team relocated a lost base. The sites were usually deserted, sometimes with the bones of the original Bureau agents trapped behind magical doors that would no longer function. But once we discovered a bolthole turned into a foul nest for Cherubs of Hate, and another occupied by Tibetan Imperial Blood Slugs, the demonic escargot using Bureau 13 equipment and weapons to seek revenge on the staff of a local French restaurant. I shuddered at the memory of their illustrated menus. It was enough to make a grown man become a vegetarian. Feh. We reclaimed each base, but it was never fun.

In pensive thought, I ran a hand through my hair and scratched the outside of my brain. Could this be one of those scenarios? Was Hadleyville a lost Bureau location? Battling hell spawn armed with our own weapons was every agent's worst nightmare. Correct. Every sane agent. However, it was our job.

Summoning some pluck, I eased back the hammer on both Magnums. “Come on gang, let's go visit beautiful downtown Hadleyville."

In battle formation, we crept across the backyard and angled round the side of the house. That was when we realized why the perspective had been wrong on the building.

There was no front. Or more correctly, the entire front of the home had been squeezed into the rear. Smashed? The building was only about a foot thick, similar to a Hollywood false front used in a movie. Yet the whole structure was there. Just compressed.

Before moving past the house, Mindy eased her sword out into the front yard and wiggled it about. When nothing happened, she proceeded onward and one by one the entire team boldly tagged along. In passing, I noticed that the windows weren't even broken, and from somewhere inside, a light was still shining.
Aye carumba
.

Looking uptown and down, we could see that every house on this outer block was mushed the same way. The street was bare of cars, and the homes on the other side seemed okay, just odd somehow. As if it was difficult to focus my vision on them.

"Oh, Raul?” Katrina sang out, just as I was about too.

Thoughtfully, the mage scratched his head with his wand. That made me nervous, but then I relaxed when I realized that he was only doing it to aid the thinking process. Raul often went into itching fits when in the immediate presence of evil magic. This odd tendency of his had saved our butts more than once.

"Possible. If Hadleyville is indeed the source of that ethereal explosion,” the pale wizard conceded at last. “such a reaction as this is, theoretically, possible."

Stepping over a pile of smashed plaster ducks, Donaher held his pocket microscope pen to an accordioned window.

"Could there be survivors?” Katrina asked hopefully, squinting into the darkness. For a moment her eyes glowed red to let her see in the infrared spectrum.

"No way,” the Catholic priest stated flatly. In perfect harmony, the inside light flickered and the faded away. Bummer.

Ahead of us stretched a flat green lawn and a smooth black drive way made of macadam. Dividing the two was a path of irregularly spaced blue Virginia flagstone. We took the path.

Reaching the sidewalk, I observed that the street was completely empty of cars, and incredibly clean. The black asphalt seemed brand new, just like the driveway, without a Popsicle stick, leaf, or newspaper in evidence. Nor any potholes. That was suspicious as potholes were the official state animal of West Virginia.

With George and Katrina at the flank position, Mindy stepped off the curb and onto the street, her eyes constantly moving in search of danger. But as her sneaker touched the hard macadam, the material parted in a watery manner, and she instantly sank out of sight.

[Back to Table of Contents]

I moved as never before. Dropping my guns on the crumpled lawn, I insanely reached out, grabbed a hold of the lowering blade of Mindy's sword and bracing myself with both legs, yanked backwards with every ounce of strength I possessed! Searing pain filled the universe beyond imagination and I fainted.

Trembling and sweaty, I came awake sitting on the grass with an oily black form lying nearby. It was roughly human-shaped, with the bloody end of a sword sticking out of one end. Chanting wildly, Raul lowered the end of his staff and a steamy discharge bathed the deadly quiet form of our friend. For a moment, the body was completely masked, then as the billowing fumes dispersed, Mindy appeared. Groaning mightily, she struggled to sit upright.

"Blah,” she said, and spit black onto the sidewalk. Like a living snake, the ebony fluid undulated along the concrete and into River Street.

As the team gathered close, I glanced at my hands. There was a pink line across each palm, and on every finger in a staggered pattern. When I closed my hands, the pattern joined to form a straight line. Carefully, I flexed my hands expecting agony, but everything felt fine. There was no pain.

"You have the good Father to thank,” Jess said, offering a hip flask.

Unscrewing the cap, I took a healthy swallow. Ah, ten-year-old, blended, Kentucky whiskey. Now that was a Healing spell.

"Thank Donaher for what?” I asked, returning the flask.

She stuffed the container into her camera bag. “Katrina magically healed your wounds, but when one of your thumbs was rolling away, Mike made a catch just before it reached the street and sank."

Wow, talk about giving a fellow a hand. As I struggled to my feet, an amazingly clean Mindy came over, grabbing my coat lapels, and proceeded to administer a kiss that could only be measured in amperes of high voltage. Something around the gigawatt range.