Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (8 page)

Same morning, 3:45
A.M.
GMT

Gestapo Headquarters, York, Province of Great Britain, GG

Six guys play basketball on the frigid cobblestones. One team of three has blond ponytails, while the other team has short buzz cuts. A ponytail sinks a bank shot for two points. The ball leaves a red smear on the backboard. The Buzzes inbound, but one of them misses the pass, and the ball rolls toward me and stops at my feet.

It's a human head.

The head winks and whispers—

“Scarlet!”

The gruesome basketball game fades into foggy wisps that float away down the murky York street.

“Scarlet, you all right?” Brando asks. His brow is knitted in concern.

I shake my head to clear my vision. “Yeah, I'm fine.” I shudder, but not from the chill.

My partner presses his mouth into a thin line. He waits.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Yes, I was having another spell. But I'm fine.”

“All right. Well, get ready.” He turns to Jade and Pericles and whispers, “Here they come.” Brando has been keeping watch with his millimeter-wave radar scanner in one hand and his starlight scope in the other.

We're across from a big hardware store, which in turn is right next to Gestapo headquarters. Jade and I recheck our weapons and gear. We both attach silencers to our pistols. Jade closes her eyes, and her expression reveals intense concentration. Her nostrils flare as she gets herself psyched up. She opens her eyes.

I comm, “Ready, Jadey?”

“Ready, A-J.”

A convoy of black cars and paddy wagons drives past our alley. Their tires rumble over the cobblestones before they fade into the black Yorkshire fog. As senior Level, my place is on point, so I move out first. My partner is in my hip pocket as we scuttle across the street. Pericles is behind him with Jade holding the rear. Our little murder club skitters behind the hardware store and approaches the Gestapo building's ominous, somber exterior.

We pause to scan ahead, then Brando and I both spot them. Two guards on the roof, talking quietly and surveying the street out front.

Brando comms to the team, “Two targets, up high.”

We might be able to sneak by them, but if those jackasses catch sight of us and back away from the edge of the roof, our difficulty setting will go up to insane.

Fuck it. It's time for some unlimited force.

I comm to Jade, “You take the one on the right.”

She nods and cocks her LB-502. I set Li'l Bertha to match Jade's .30-caliber ordnance and take aim. “Now,” I comm. Two slugs spit into the night and simultaneously drill through two heads. The wind swallows the sound of two bodies hitting the roof. We wait for a few seconds, then slink up to the chain-link fence surrounding our objective.

Brando digs out a small pair of bolt cutters and goes to work on the links. Pericles, Jade, and I scan the area with night vision, infrared, and radar. All clear for now. As important as this compound is, the security is so inward-facing that it's relatively easy to break into. The only guards left outside are at the front door, but they mostly act as parking security. Back here it's only a poorly lit, fenced-off alley and the cracked concrete backyard of a five-story building with bricked-up windows.

“Team Two, in you go.” Brando has cut a hole big enough for Jade and Pericles to slip through. They cross the alley to a padlocked bulkhead we've been informed leads down to the basement. One of our Circle of Zion contacts worked here as an electrician before he was dismissed for “unpatriotic tendencies.” This could mean he did anything from pissing off a panzer general to picking his nose in public. Such is life in the Reich.

“Team One, we're in,” Pericles comms to me and Brando. I check my watch. Less than a minute. He's quick with a pick.

It's time to spread out so we can survey a broader area. Brando stays near the hole he cut in the fence while I pussyfoot across the yard to the building's far side. I've barely settled in when one of the guards from out front walks around the corner and ambles toward me. I scrunch back into a row of trash cans and point Li'l Bertha at his face.

“Darwin,” I comm, “there's a guard coming.”

“Has he seen you?”

“I don't think so, but—”

“Do
not
kill him, Scarlet, unless you absolutely have to.”

“But—”

“No, Scarlet! He'll be missed at his post.”

The guard stops three feet away from me. He slips his hand into his coat and retrieves something metallic. A gun? My left index finger tightens on Li'l Bertha's trigger. The guard tips his head back and holds the metal thing to his mouth.

Oh, for God's sake.

“Scarlet?” It's Brando. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” I hold my breath and concentrate on not budging a muscle while I slowly comm back. “The son of a bitch is having a nip.”

The guard puts his flask back in his coat pocket and returns up front. I exhale and thank god he didn't come back here to take a piss.

There's a creaking sound from the rear of the building. I swing Li'l Bertha over. The bulkhead door has opened. Pericles exits first and holds the hatch open. Then a long line of people skedaddle as quietly as they can from the door to the hole in the fence where Brando keeps watch. I recognize one rotund figure as Karl Brun, the former mayor of York.

I take a final glimpse toward the front of the building. No more booze-swilling guards creeping off for a nip. I move toward the back door. So many people stream out it looks like a clown car. Finally the last person emerges, closely followed by Jade.

She comms, “All captives away. Pericles and I will get them to the Circle.” Jade tips her head toward the bulkhead. “I took out the guards in the basement. You wouldn't believe what they did to some of these people.” She follows the released prisoners. “The first floor looks clear, but I picked up a lot of heat signatures upstairs.”

“You mean a lot of dead men.”

Jade looks back and smiles. “F.U.C.K. 'em up, A-J.” Then she turns and disappears through the fence.

I face the building's back entrance. My mind flashes with gruesome images of Gestapo atrocities while Brando runs from the fence to my position. He tucks in behind me and gives my shoulder a squeeze.

I grit my teeth.
It's magic time.

CORE MIS-ANGEL-1388

Same morning, 4:05
A.M.
GMT

Gestapo Headquarters, York, Province of Great Britain, GG

Gestapo headquarters used to be the Yorkshire School of Fine Arts. The place has been converted from a stately and spacious temple of creativity to a twisted warren of tomblike offices and interrogation chambers. Airy classrooms and studios are now dark, dank cubes reeking of cigarettes, stale sweat, and chronic paranoia. The lights are on, but they're so dim I still need my infrared vision to distinguish between what's alive in this place from what isn't.

Reich officials are notorious for being absolutely fastidious about their records. It's as though they don't want to forget any of the bullshit they've pulled. The hallways are lined with dozens of padlocked black filing cabinets. Gaps in the otherwise solid wall of cabinets indicate where we'll find office doors.

Brando and I sneak down the main hallway and scan for heat signatures. I've got Li'l Bertha clicked into my left hand while my partner grips his handheld infrared scanner. Jade was right. There are shimmering orange blobs upstairs, but the first floor seems to be deserted. This must be where all the younger field agents sit when they aren't out on raids.

Halfway down the hall Brando comms, “Let's conk these elevators out.”

I poke the up button to call an elevator, and hop on the first car that arrives. I use my synthetic right hand to pry the control panel away from the wall. Then I reach behind and rip the panel from its frame in a shower of sparks. Out of service.

Back in the hallway, Brando hits the up button for me. When the second elevator car opens, I rinse and repeat. Now we only have to cover two stairways, one at each end of this main corridor.

Brando opens his X-bag and grabs what appears to be a pudgy tea saucer. It's a proximity mine, one of two we have with us. These little mines don't produce a lot of physical damage, but they scare the holy hell out of people and encourage them to find another route. We creep forward and sneak up the stairs to the first landing. I don't want to alert the guards out front until we're ready. I lay the mine down and push the red button on top. The mine's motion sensor will wait until I move away before it arms itself. Brando carries a special remote control that'll disarm the mine if we need to move it. He calls it his Mine-O-Matic.

“Okay,” I comm. “Now what? Should we do the guards out front or go up the back stairs?”

“Back stairs.” He pauses. “We've got help out front.”

“Is Jade done already?”

“No, she's headed north. This is a late addition … nice. He brought his Bitchgun.”

“Raj is here?”

“Yeah.” Brando has a glint in his eyes. “Let's secure the rear exit, and Raj will nail anyone who comes out the front.”

We return to the first floor and run to the back stairway. I lead us up to the second floor, where my infrared vision displays three heat signatures in the first office on my right.

Finally!

I flash field signals to Brando with my right hand:
We got three.
He nods and hangs back in case someone comes from the rear staircase.

I increase my neuroinjector's Madrenaline flow until the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Then I approach the office of warm blobs, take a deep breath, and kick the door in with a splintering crash.

The first Gestapo officer is directly in front of me, on the phone. I'm so zooted up that I've got time to watch his expression change from angered annoyance to confused perplexity. The second expression is what he'll wear into Kraut heaven since it's the last thing he ever does. Li'l Bertha's .30-caliber standard slugs tear through his chest and neck. The impact lifts him out of his chair and rams him into the wall.

The remaining two agents sit at a desk to the left. They spin to see what's happening. This presents me with a juicy pair of foreheads. I nail extra eyeholes into each of them. Blood schpritzes across the room and hits me in my face.

“Scarlet,” Brando comms, “you've got a goon in the hallway.”

I scoot back into the corridor. The lummox coming out of his office spots me and screeches unintelligibly. I assume he's saying something like
Holy sausages, who's that crazy chick with blood all over her face?
Li'l Bertha spits out a pair of slugs that rip the top of Screechy's head off and slosh its contents onto the wall behind him. It already resembles a scene from Dante's Inferno in here, and I've barely gotten started.

More doors open, toward the front. Four bruisers look into the hall and quickly realize what's happening. Three retreat into their offices. One makes a break for it and pitches over as my next shot smashes into his neck.

Now I've got three offices to clear out: two left and one right. Li'l Bertha's infrared sensor labels my targets as One, Two, and Three. I dive into the first left-side office. Target One is in here, desperately trying to open up his wall safe. He's really thin, and this gives me an idea. Instead of greasing him outright, I have Li'l Bertha pop a bullet into the base of his spine. I catch him before he drops and hold him in front of me as I go back out to the hallway.

Target One's light build means I can lug him around with one arm. We approach the second office on the left. My human shield screams in agony and leaves a trail of piss behind us. Inside, Target Two has armed himself and certainly hears us coming, but when his colleague comes through the door first, he holds his fire. Target Two's hesitation earns him a complimentary .30-caliber face-lift.

Brando comms, “Scarlet, that last enemy is coming your way.”

I spin around and face the door, my right arm still clutching Target One in front of me. Target Three barges in and fires his pistol. I let go of my shield and slip under his shot. The slug gets Target One in the chest and knocks him backward onto me. Target Three aims at me, but my Madrenaline gives me time to switch to plan B. I press my feet against a desk and spring out from under Target One. My body cannons into Target Three's knees and wipes him out. I roll into the hallway, aim my pistol back into the office, and hammer a half dozen shots into Target Three's stunned body. The bullets bowl him across the floor and into Target One.

“Nice call-out, Darwin, thanks.” My thumb ejects Li'l Bertha's nearly depleted ammo pack. I pocket the empty, slap in a full pack, and rejoin Brando at the rear stairway. He and I begin to move upstairs, but before we get there, we hear a loud
whump!
from outside. The stairs tremble under our feet and streams of plaster dust tumble from the ceiling.

“Raj, you all right out there?” My partner uses our team channel so I can hear it too.

The big man comms back, “All clear, Darwin. The guards out front heard all the screaming and tried to bug out. I took them out, but now everybody in Yorkshire knows something is going on. Hurry up.”

“Roger that. The first and second floors are clear. We're moving up to floor three.” We resume our climb, and then Brando comms again: “Actually, scratch that, Raj. Since you've engaged anyway, we'll move straight to the fifth floor. Brace for our competition on the third and fourth floors to get flushed to your position out front. We'll mine the back stairs.”

Raj replies, “Roger that, Darwin.” Raj and I are both Level 9, but he graduated from Camp first and therefore has more seniority than me. This is
my
mission, though, so Raj is expected to accept reasonable direction.

Brando comms just to me, “Raj is right. We need to get out of here soon. You go to the top floor, and I'll set our mines on the back stairs here.”

“What about the one we used out front?”

He's already bounding down the stairs. “I'll go retrieve it and reset it.”

Crap.
It feels wrong to split up like this, plus I don't like my Info Operator getting so involved with the combat aspects of our mission. I curse under my breath, turn, and bound up the stairs.

Our presence has clearly been noted. My infrared vision shows me the fifth-floor hall is full of tensely postured men with pistols drawn, edging toward the front and back stairways. I hear them mumble into the little commphones plugged into their ears. The Germans invented commphones almost thirty years ago, so they've had time to develop a lot of different models. Most police forces use the earplug model, like these clowns are using. Military personnel, like ExOps's Squaddies, use a helmet-mounted system that's essentially a ruggedized version of what telephone operators wear. High-end field agents, like all us Levels and Info Operators, get the super-deluxe model wired right into our brains so we don't even have to speak to use them.

I stop a few steps from the top and press myself against a wall. I wait for the closest toughie to come around the corner, then I surge upstairs and karate-chop his gun out of his hand. I whack Li'l Bertha against his temple, then grab his throat with my right hand and spin him around so we both face the same direction. Li'l Bertha jabs into his back. Herr Toughie a lot taller than me, so I have to stand on tiptoe to see over his shoulder, but he provides solid cover.

I propel my strangling shield into the hall and yell, “Hey! Assholes!” There are eleven schmoes in here, all of whom spin around and point their pistols at me.

Herr Toughie croaks, “
Nein! Nicht scheissen!
”
Don't shoot!
The other bruisers hesitate and take cover behind filing cabinets and in doorways. Gunfire chatters from downstairs, punctuated by several larger booms that shake the floor like Magic Fingers. More plaster dust falls from the ceiling, and thin cracks appear in the walls. Raj must be fighting the pinheads trying to escape from floors three and four. I hope Brando is okay.

I put my mouth next to Herr Toughie's ear and snarl in German, “Tell them to drop their guns. They won't get hurt.” Toughie does what I tell him. At first nothing happens, so I tighten my grip on his throat and growl, “
Weider!
”
Again!
An explosion echoes from the back stairway. Brando must have gotten his mines reset back there. The timing is perfect because it makes it feel like the building is under attack from an entire platoon instead of just the three of us.

Herr Toughie repeats himself, but the racket from downstairs is so loud even I can't hear him. Then one of the younger Gestapo agents takes a shot at my face.
So much for prisoners.
I take cover behind Herr Toughie while Li'l Bertha blind fires a long burst of medium-caliber Incendiaries into the crowded corridor.

The cacophony is deafening. The hall resonates with a staccato concert of blasting gunfire, shrill howls, ricocheting bullets, flopping bodies, and booming explosions, all of which grates against an ominous background of deep groans and shrieking cracks from the jiggling walls, floors, and ceilings.

The world tips over a few degrees. I lose my balance and stumble sideways. Herr Toughie slides out of my grasp and collapses to the wobbling floor.

I comm, “Darwin, I think this place is coming down. Get up here and grab your intel.”

Brando streaks past me and charges into the commandant's office. I run after him and comm, “Raj! What's going on out there?”

“Scarlet and Darwin, be advised we've inflicted some major structural damage on the building. You'd better get out of there.”

My partner runs to a big safe in the corner.

I comm, “Hey, Rah-Rah, what do you mean
we
inflicted structural damage?”

“Well, Shortcake,” Raj answers, “maybe I meant
I
, but either way—”

The shivering floor plunges a foot, right out from under us. Everything in the office—including me and my partner—hangs suspended in midair for a split second like a cartoon. Then the office furniture showers the floor like a metal monsoon. Heavy things like desks and cabinets gouge out shallow pits and spray the room with chips of tiles and concrete. The safe craters itself into the suffering floor.

Brando squats in front of the half-buried safe and resumes spinning the combination dial.

I shout, “Darwin, forget it. Let's get the fuck out of here!”

“Hang on,” he yells back. “I've almost got it.”

Li'l Bertha vibrates in my hand. I glance at the targeting data panel in my Eyes-Up display.

Someone's behind me!

I spin and leap. My right foot lashes out in a roundhouse kick that smacks a Gestapo agent in his stomach. He grunts and backs up a step. I pull my pistol's trigger and swing it up from my hip. Li'l Bertha perforates the sneaky sucker's knee, thigh, hip, and chest. The clown whirls around like a broken toy and crumples into the dust-filled hallway. I climb on top of him, roll him face up, and crush his larynx with my mechanized right hand. I push off from my strangling victim and aim my sidearm around to see who else feels like a hero.

The corridor is a disaster area. It's not even square anymore. The walls and ceiling don't connect, and the floor is slowly tipping over on itself. The Gestapo agents sprawl in various states of traumatic injury. Some have been shot, some have been hit by falling debris, and some are buried under a thirteen-foot section of collapsed wall. The choking air reeks of burnt hair, gunpowder, and the acrid stench of roasting building materials.

Oh, boy.

“BRANDO! Let's go!”

“Wait, I'm inside. Gimme a sec!”

I don't think we have a sec.

But he wasn't kidding. It really is only a second later when my partner bounds out of the office with his arms full of file folders and data pods. He hightails it for the front stairs. After a few steps, he disappears into the dust and smoke. I take off after him.

The building swoons back and forth, and we bounce from one wall to the other as we barrel down four flights of stairs. I take the lead in case we meet any Gestapo agents, but it seems like they're all in postmortem meetings right now.