Hard Magic (7 page)

Creeping forward, Sullivan could see a man sitting in the driver’s seat. He could just see the back of a balding head. The captain’s chair was empty. He went a little further around the corner, until he saw a second person, a woman with long blonde hair, at the radio operator’s station. She had her back to him and seemed intent on whatever she was listening to.

“All-points bulletin. The state police are just waiting for the storm to pass so they can get some biplanes up,” the woman said. She had a touch of an accent like some of the eastern European immigrants Sullivan had served with in the First. “They think we’re heading for Canada.”

“Good thing we had Heinrich kill the spotlights,” the driver said. “Canada? Please. That’s like they took Vermont and made a whole country out of it, only more boring, and without the good maple syrup.” His voice was deep and smooth, almost like a radio news man.

Sullivan couldn’t see Delilah, and she was the one he was worried about running into at close range. He stepped into the room and aimed his gun at the back of the pilot’s head.

The girl at the radio turned and spotted Sullivan. “Uh, Danny, we’ve got company.” Sullivan realized she was rather attractive, probably thirty, with her hair bounced up like they were doing in the new color picture movies. “There’s a large man pointing a Colt at you . . . and he looks
mad
.”

The pilot chuckled, but didn’t bother to turn. “No need to be rude, Jane. Hello there. My name is Daniel Garrett. You can call me Dan. Pardon me for not standing and greeting you properly, but we’re at two thousand feet and climbing and these winds are getting worse. I’m trying to keep from plowing this unwieldy beast into the ground and being the death of us all.”

“Is that a threat?” Sullivan asked. “Because I can get out and walk.”

Dan laughed. “Oh no, friend, nothing of the sort.” His voice was calming. Sullivan felt like this man was a likable sort, a real reasonable guy. “Please, lower that gun and relax. I’m trying to drive this pig here, and I could sure use a hand. I’m sure we can work out this misunderstanding.”

The Colt bobbed down. Yes, this was just a misunderstanding.
No big deal.
They could always sit down and talk it out over a drink. Dan seemed a decent sort. He reminded Sullivan of an old friend, not that he could think of who specifically.

The entire front of the cabin was glass, and Sullivan could see nothing but blackness. Then lightning struck and he could see again.

Sullivan frowned. He’d felt this kind of intrusion before, though this one was a lot more subtle, a lot more cunning. “You’re in my head.” The Colt came back up. “Get out of my head, Mouth.”

“You’re sharp . . .” Dan said. “I thought you Heavies were supposed to be dimwits.”

“Not all of us.” He kept the gun on the driver, but kept one eye glued to the blonde. In this crew, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started tossing undead flaming grizzly bears at him or
something
. “I don’t have time for your games—”

“No kidding,” said the girl. “You’ve got a three-inch laceration on one leg, a puncture in your hand, a minor concussion, two injured vertebrae in your lower back, and you’ve just picked up a nasty cold, though you won’t know about that until tomorrow morning. And you
really
need to quit smoking.”

Sullivan sighed. “I’m gonna ask this one time, then I’m gonna beat you until I’m bored. Where’s Delilah?”

A painted fingernail tapped his shoulder. “Right behind you, Jake.”

She’d been hiding between the pipes,
Sullivan realized as he Spiked, but Delilah had already been channeling her Power, increasing her strength tenfold as she grabbed Sullivan by the shoulders and slammed him through the duralumin bulkhead and out the side of the airship.

Didn’t see that coming,
Jake thought before blacking out, hurtling through the dark night.

***

It was the cold that finally brought him back to consciousness. Jake Sullivan gradually awoke, coughing at the bottom of a hole. He was on his back, soaked to the bone, encased in freezing mud. Water was falling down the hole, splashing him in the face, and every inch of his body ached. He was dizzy and wanted to puke, but he knew that was just the blood loss talking.

Not sure where he was, or how he’d gotten there, Sullivan pulled himself out of the mud. Roots and bits of rock were stuck in what was left of his clothing. His right hand still didn’t want to close, and he was surprised to find that he still clutched the Colt in his left, though when he looked at it, found that he only had the badly crushed frame. The slide was just gone. It looked like the magazine had exploded under the pressure and the magazine spring was dangling out the bottom like a half-gutted fish. Jake tossed the ruined Colt in the mud with a splash, saddened by the loss of such a good piece.

He checked, and found that he was totally out of Power, utterly drained, and feeling unbelievably weak. It took him nearly ten minutes to crawl to the top of the hole, finding purchase on severed roots and bits of leaking pipe. Finally he crossed the top, where he discovered five splintered railroad ties and one side of a railroad track that had bent into a U before shearing. On top of that was the broken floor of an empty freight car, and above that was a perfect Sullivan-shaped hole through the freight train’s metal roof.

That’s a first
, he thought as he crawled out from under the railcar and rolled onto his back into a puddle. He was in the middle of a train yard. The North American logo was right over his head. He’d fallen two thousand feet, blasted through a train car, dug an impact crater, and still nothing felt broken. Somehow he’d used up the last of his Power unconsciously before impact. He must have gone
real
dense. He hadn’t known he could do that, but then again, he didn’t routinely fall off blimps.

A shape appeared. “Looks like we got us another filthy hobo.”

There was a second voice. “I’ll fetch my beatin’ stick.”

Sullivan grunted. It was gonna be a long night . . .

Chapter 3

As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse. Behold the failed America, a culture steeped in rot, their magics used publicly in the streets, without control, even allowed to the despicable Jew.

—Adolph Hitler,

Final Munich speech before his arrest

and execution by firing squad,
1929

Chicago, Illinois

The paper didn't have much more
about the theft of the UBF dirigible. There had been a small article about how it was found abandoned in a field in Missouri the day before yesterday, but nothing new today. The headlines were mostly about the upcoming election, and FDR was talking about some New Deal, which just smelled a little too much like what the Marxists in Europe were shoveling for Sullivan’s tastes. A group of his fellow veterans had gathered in Washington as what they were now calling the Bonus Army. Some anarchists were going on trial for something or other, but those assholes were always causing trouble. Besides that, the rest of the front page was about how the Bolsheviks had signed a new pact with the Imperium and the Siberian Cossacks to divide up Manchuria. The embargo was forcing the Japs to use hydrogen in their airships, but other than the inconvenience, they were busy as could be taking over everything in the Eastern hemisphere. The sports page was still going on about the baseball scandal, after the Yankees had been caught illegally using magic to hit more home runs, and the boxer he’d put $5 on to win last night had gotten knocked out in the second round.
Figures . . .

The door opened. “We’re ready for you.”

Sullivan carefully folded the paper, put it back on the table, adjusted his tie, and entered the conference room.

“So, how are you feeling, Mr. Sullivan?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. Mostly he was feeling angry. Lied to, cheated, used . . . and that wasn’t even counting the physical injuries he was still recuperating from. His back hurt, headaches were making it hard to sleep, his right hand still wouldn’t close all the way, he had itchy stitches in his leg . . . and he was fighting a miserable cold. So overall, Jake Sullivan was in a lousy state, but when the man asking the question was also the man that had the power to put you back in prison, it did bring out a certain level of politeness.

“Fine, Mr. Hoover, sir. I’m doing fine,” he lied. The bandage around his hand gave him an excuse not to shake J. Edgar Hoover’s hand.

“Excellent,” the Director of the Bureau of Investigation said as his assistant pulled a chair away from the table for Sullivan. It was at the far end of the conference room. “Have a seat. We were just discussing your actions in the Jones’ case.”

Hoover was a stocky man. His eyes were quick and a little too crafty, and he spoke too well. Sullivan had never liked him, and had developed an instinctive distrust from the first time they’d met in Rockville.

Purvis looked uncomfortable. His arm was in a thick cast. The Fade had broken it in two places with that club. Cowley and the other four agents from that night were also present, as well as a couple members of Hoover’s entourage and a grey-haired secretary who was poised to scribble some furious shorthand.

He was too much of a professional and a gentleman to speak badly about his superior to somebody like Sullivan, but it was obvious that Purvis didn’t like Hoover much. It was understandable. Purvis worked his ass off and had busted some of the most dangerous Active criminals there were, but Hoover was always the big hero in all the papers. And now the special agent in charge of Chicago looked real uncomfortable since his boss had felt the need to hop a dirigible and fly all the way here from Washington to get a personal debriefing.

Sullivan had sat out in the hall for that part. He wasn’t one of them. In fact, he was a convict, a low-class criminal dirtbag. He’d heard how some of these men spoke about him. They thought he was just a dim-bulb Heavy that they could bring in once in a while to smack around some Active hooligan they couldn’t handle. Sure, there were a few Gs who treated him with respect, like Purvis and Cowley, or the Treasury guy Ness, but most of the others were openly hostile.

From the beaten feel of the Chicago agents, it looked like Hoover had given them a good ass chewing. “We were just telling the Director about your bravery—” Purvis started to speak, but Hoover scowled hard and Purvis shut his trap.

Hoover coughed politely before continuing. “These men were impressed by your actions, Mr. Sullivan, but I, on the other hand, am a bit let down.”

Sullivan raised a single eyebrow.
Oh, this ought to be rich.

“When you were released from Rockville
early
, you made an agreement that you would assist the government in capturing people like you . . . And my understanding is that you now wish to
stop
helping? Do I have that correct, son?”

Sullivan was pretty sure he was about the same age as Hoover, and he didn’t cotton to being called son. “Yes, sir. That is correct, sir.”

Hoover didn’t like that answer, so he stopped and picked up a piece of paper and began to tap a golden pen on the table in front of him as he pretended to study it. His frown made the other agents shrink a bit. “You’ve been a valuable asset, one which Inot prepared to lose.”

“With all respect, sir, my agreement with you and the warden was that I would help arrest five Active murderers.” Sullivan held up his bandaged hand and began to count. “Tommy Gun Smith in Philly, Jim McKinley in Kansas City, the Crusher in Hot Springs, the Maplethorpe brothers in Detroit, which
should
count as two, and Delilah Jones was the last, and I did everything I could to catch her.”

Hoover nodded. “So a Heavy
can
count. I see we’ve got us a jailhouse lawyer here, gentlemen . . .” The members of Hoover’s entourage laughed. The Chicago agents knew better. “You want math, Sullivan? I’ll give you math. Jones got away. So that makes four.” Now Hoover held up his hand, thumb curled in. “And you did not manage to arrest the Maplethorpe brothers.” Hoover lowered a chunky finger. “You gunned them down, in the streets, in broad daylight. Maybe you’re right. They should count as
two
.” He lowered another finger.

“They didn’t leave us much choice, sir,” Agent Cowley stated. “I was there. They came out shooting and—”

Hoover glared at the agent. Purvis shook his head angrily. Hoover had ended men’s careers for far less than interrupting him. Cowley wisely backed down. Hoover turned back to Sullivan. “So by my calculations, that means you owe me
three
more arrests.”

The big man’s nostrils flared, but he kept his outward cool. “That wasn’t the agreement.”

Hoover leaned back in his chair. “Tolson.” He opened his hand, held it out, and one of the functionaries immediately stepped forward and placed an open folder in it. “Thank you. This is your agreement, Mr. Sullivan. Let me educate you for a moment. An agreement is a contract between two men that is legally binding. Except that’s the rub. You’re not a man, you’re a
convict
. So . . .” Hoover pulled out a sheet of white paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it at Sullivan. It fell short and rolled to a stop right in front of him. “The agreement says whatever I say it says. You
will
help arrest Delilah Jones, and you
will
do whatever else I tell you to do. Lincoln freed the slaves, but he never said anything about the convicts.”

Sullivan just sat there, staring at that crumpled piece of typing paper. His anger fed the Power in his chest, and he thought about just reaching across the table and Spiking Hoover through the floor; then he could pull the pile of smashed guts and pulverized bones up out of there, launch it through the ceiling and spray it as a red rain over downtown Chicago . . .

But he didn’t, because despite what the jury had said, Jake Sullivan was not a murderer. Sure, he was a killer, he’d lost count of how many lives he’d ended in the war and in fights in Rockville, but he wasn’t a murderer. There was a
difference
.