Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (21 page)

Someone comms, “Scarlet, hold your fire. It's me.”

“Falcon!”
Thank God.
“Can you come help me with Pat—uhh, with Darwin?”

“Sure thing.” He parks at the roadside. A car door opens and thunks shut, then footsteps crunch across the dirt as Falcon runs to us.

“Damn!” he exclaims. “What happened?”

“I'll tell you later. Help me get Darwin outta here.”

“I can get myself there.” Brando turns over and climbs to his feet. His legs wobble like a newborn colt's. “Oof!” he exclaims as he bumps down onto the ground again. He looks at his legs, then at me and Falcon. “Well, don't stand there, you dopes. Help me up.”

We each take one of his arms and hoist our Info Operator onto his feet. The three of us lumber away from the wreck.

“Where's Victor?” I ask.

“He stayed behind to help the escaped slaves get to their next stop. Some Circle people are coming to transport them. Victor said he'd catch up with us after he found the people who betrayed them.”

“Man, I wouldn't wanna be
those
people,” Brando mumbles.

We make it to the car. Falcon holds the back door open. I gently lay Brando across the car's backseat while Falcon runs around and hops in the driver's seat. I situp front with him.

Falcon drives us away from the scene. It's still dark, but a faint hint of dawn has begun to break. My hand brushes something moist and sticky on my seat. I examine my fingers. They're wet and smell like blood.

“Shit! Who's bleeding?”

Falcon says, “Don't worry. It's from the Gestapo men you wasted.”

I quickly scan the car around me. Blood, broken glass, and bullet holes. “Oh,
that's
where you got this car.”

F-Bird smiles and says, “For now, anyway. We need to find a clean ride before it gets light out.”

Brando murmurs, “I vote for another Audi.”

CORE MIS-ANGEL-4399

ANGEL SIT-REP: SPAIN. 2 March 1981

Same night, 10:45
P.M.
CET

Thiepval, Province of France, GG

The titanic British monument at Thiepval was built on one of the bloodiest battlefields of World War I. My first thought was they'd made it this big to serve as a tomb for all the dead soldiers. But Patrick told me it would have be the size of the Empire State Building to house that many bodies.

Still, this mountainous heap of architecture is impressive. It juts past the surrounding gardens of white crosses like a brick-red volcano and looms high above the houses in the nearby town of Thiepval. The thing is covered with people's names, and the many pillars holding it up are labeled with letter-number codes. The last three characters in Kruppe's directions specify one of these pillars.

7 March 2300. Thiepval, 11A.

I lurk off to one side of the monument and watch pillar 11A, which stands under the main arch in the structure's center. My partners are positioned around the vicinity to form a surveillance box that monitors the monument, the graveyards, and the parking lot. This is a great meeting spot, and it's no wonder the competition chose it. You can hang around without drawing attention because here “suspiciously loitering” is indistinguishable from “thoughtfully brooding.”

After this morning's predawn game of whack-a-jerk, us three youngsters laid low until Victor rejoined us. He took us to one of his doctor friends in the area, who patched up my foot and Brando's cuts and bruises. Then we committed one act of grand theft BMW, shoplifted the shit out of another grocery store, and spent rest of our day establishing our game plan for Kruppe's meeting.

Brando, in the parking lot, comms, “Kruppe has pulled in.” A few moments later he continues, “Falcon, he's headed your way.”

Falcon comms from the opposite side of the monument, “I'll pick him up.”

“Victor, any competition out there?”

Victor replies from the far end of the park, “Negative, only a couple of kids running around.”

It's very quiet here, befitting the somber nature of a colossal monument to a lost generation, so when I hear laughter, it catches my attention. Two boys, grade-schoolers, are chasing each other up and down the main aisle between the fields of tombstones. Their parents are nowhere to be seen, so one of the park's visitors takes it upon himself to sternly shush the boys into submission. The boys sheepishly apologize and skulk away from the stranger.

Falcon comms, “I don't see him yet, Darwin.”

I return my attention to—

Damn!

—two men in front of my column! One is tall, and the other is short and very thin. They brush past each other, but their eyes don't meet. The tall one slides his hands into the pockets of his long wool coat and stalks in my direction. It's Kruppe. I turn away and study the list of names on my column. Kruppe's aftershave smells the same as it did in Calais.

“Darwin,” I comm, “they've made their exchange. Kruppe is returning to the parking lot.”

“Scarlet, follow Kruppe's contact. Victor, you too, please. Falcon, come back to the car. We'll take Kruppe.”

“Roger that.”

Kruppe's undersized message bearer is a greasy-looking toughie in a leather jacket. He slinks to the other side of pillar 11A. I cross under the main arch and follow Mr. Greaser's steps around the column. I casually move my head from side to side as though I'm appreciating the architectural dignity of—

He's not there.

I comm, “Where the fuck is he?”

“You lost him?” Darwin comms back.

“Victor, do you see a skinny white male, dark hair, black leather jacket?”

“Negative, Scarlet.”

Christ almighty, did I just hallucinate that pinhead?

“Darwin, do you have eyes on Kruppe?”

“Yes, I have eyes on Kruppe. He got back in his car, and Falcon and I are following him in the Bimmer.” Darwin pauses, then switches to our private channel, “Alix, you okay?”

“Brando, I swear to God I saw this fucker!”

“I believe you, but …”

“Hang on,” I interrupt as Victor speed-moseys up to me. Then I hiss, “Vic, you really didn't see him?”

“No Scarlet, I didn't.” Victor looks like he wants to hit my nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Well, then where the fuck …”

Hang on.
Kruppe's real, and I could tell Kruppe saw this greaseball. The little butthead is real, and he
can't
have actually vanished. Wherever he is, he's still close.

I face the back side of pillar 11A and fire up my vision Mods. My infrared scores right away. One of the big square name panels has a glowing handprint on it. My millimeter-wave scanner shows me a hollow space behind the panel. The top of a curved flight of stairs peeks up from the floor inside.

“Darwin, there's a secret passage inside this column!”

Brando comms, “You've
got
to be kidding.”

“I'm looking right at it.”

Victor listens to us through his comm set, but he doesn't have Mods, so he can't see any of what I can. His expression has shifted from “You're incompetent” to “You're insane.” But when I push one of the names an inch into the panel, his face goes blank. As the edge of the panel swings away from the column to reveal the passageway, his mouth drops open and his eyeballs nearly bug out.

Welcome to ExOps, Vicberg!

I dart inside and quickly flit down the metal spiral staircase. Dim red lights illuminate my feet as I reach the bottom of the stairs. More red lights glow along the floor of a long, straight tunnel cut through packed earth. My upgraded hearing picks out soft footsteps down the corridor. My neuroinjector gooses me up on Madrenaline, and I race down the tunnel.

The greaseball hears me coming, but by the time he turns to see who I am, it's too late. I spear him like a bull goring a matador. We tumble past thirty feet of red lights before he pushes me off him. As he stands up, I collar him in a headlock. High-pitched gurgling rattles out of his throat as I bend backward to hoist him up until his feet point at the roof. Then I tip over backward and bludgeon Mr. Greasy into the ground head-first. His skull clonks against the floor, and his limbs collapse into a pile of spaghetti.

Victor rushes up the passageway. He takes in me and my vanquished competitor and gently shakes his head. “Americans,” he says as he untangles Greasy's arms and legs.

“I know, right?” I say. “Great pile driver, eh?”

Victor raises one of his eyebrows sardonically.

“Darwin, can you hear me?” I comm. No answer. We're too far underground.

Victor slaps Greasy's face to wake him up. Our captive mumbles something slurred and incoherent. Victor grabs the man by his armpits and heaves him into a sitting position against the wall.

After a minute, Mr. Greasy has regained enough consciousness for Victor to lay into him.

“What mission did you give Herr Kruppe?” he demands.

Mr. Greasy rubs the top of his head and growls in guttural German. I catch the word
“mutterfinken”
in there.
Motherfucker
.

Victor stands back from our captive and comms, “Scarlet, do something terrible to him.”

I step up and catch hold of Greaseball's arm. The fingers of my synthetic right hand wrap around his skinny forearm and crush it like a beer can until the bones break. He screams and cries.

Victor gets back in Mr. Greasy's face. “Well?”

Our slimy friend is a lot tougher than he looks. He spits on Victor's shoe.

Victor stands up. “Again, Scarlet. But much worse.”

I take hold of Mr. Greasy's arm again and forcibly rotate it in its socket. Ninety degrees gives me a satisfying snap, and 180 degrees produces a nasty, moist-sounding crackle. At 270 degrees his ligaments and tendons tear apart and provoke a loud, definitive pop.

The nitwit's shouting and shrieking are a lot louder this time, and Victor slaps his face. “Talk or she tears them all off!”

I comm, “You really want me to do that?”

Victor nods and comms back, “He is Gestapo.”

“Ah,” I reply.

But Gestapo or not, Mr. Greasy's pain threshold is somewhere below having his arm nearly wrenched off, and he passes out again.

“Fuck,” I say. “Sorry, Victor.”

“Do not worry. He will wake up.” Victor stands up and runs his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He looks around our subterranean setting and grunts, “Interesting.”

“What?”

“This tunnel is from World War I.”

Vicberg's army time included a bunch of military history classes, so he knows a lot about the trench warfare that stretched across France from 1914 to 1918. He tells me one of the tactics employed by both sides was to mine under the enemy's trench system, cram in an assful of TNT, and then blast the enemy to smitherooskies. Because of the war's ebb and flow, sometimes the project would be abandoned, which Victor guesses is the case here. After the war some of these tunnels and mine shafts became part of vast underground systems for smuggling.

The tunnel has been maintained, probably first by the French Resistance back in the 1940s and now apparently by the Gestapo for sneaking rat-faced shitbirds like Mr. Greasy around the town of Thiepval.

“Scarlet,
bzzt
did
bzzt-bzzt
guys go?” It's Brando. His signal is weak, but I still catch the stress in his voice.

“Darwin, we're down under the monument.”

“What? I
bzzt
barely
bzzt-bzzt
.”

I max out my commphone's volume. “HANG ON! I'll come up!” I run up the tunnel and ascend the stairs. I find the switch that opens the panel from the inside.

I peek my head out. Brando and Falcon are right in front of me, but they're facing the other way. I draw in a huge breath.

“BOO!”

They both jump six inches. Falcon spins toward me with his hand on his pistol's holster.

Brando leans forward with his hand on his knees. “Jesus!” my partner gasps.

Falcon's mouth splits into a wide grin, and he laughs. Naturally it reminds me of my father's laugh, and as usual a shiver courses over my back, down my arms, and across my wrists. I clench my hands to make it stop.

“That was outrageous.” Falcon jovially bumps my arm as he enters the secret chamber. He walks down the stairs. His voice echoes from below, “Man, this place is rad.”

I pull Brando inside the column and close the panel behind him. “Gotcha good, didn't I?”

“Yeah, yeah. Real good.”

As we descend the stairs, I ask, “What happened to Kruppe?”

“He drove to Thiepval's town hall, waved his ID, and went in past the gate. The place is like a fortress: armed guards, barriers, spotlights, the works. There was no way Falcon and I could get in there without more prep, so we came back here.” He takes my hand in his when we get to the bottom of the stairs. We hold hands until we get close to Victor and Mr. Greasy, who have been joined by Falcon.

The Gestapo courier has woken up again. He tries to scoot away from me as I approach. Victor comms, “Scarlet, give him a scare.”

I rush to Mr. Greasy and latch onto his uninjured arm like I'm going to dislocate that one too.

“No!” he shouts. “Please, no!”

“Then talk, Herr Ludwig,” Victor intones.

I guess this sucker has a name, after all.
But he still doesn't want to spill the beans. I say out loud, “Anybody want a wing?”

Herr Ludwig cries inconsolably. His mouth gapes open, and tears stream from his eyes.

Victor punches Ludwig's face. “TELL ME!”

“I … I dare not. They will, they …” Herr Ludwig descends into unintelligible blubbering.

Victor looms over his prisoner. He plants his hands on his hips and sticks out his chin. “Scarlet, I want you to tear pieces off him off until—”

“Wait.” It's Brando. “Let's use this.” From his X-bag he produces a pair of needles, each connected to a heavy little box by long coiled wires.

I put my hand on Falcon's arm. “You better back up, F-Bird. This gets real messy.”

Herr Ludwig's face has gone white as a sheet. He's so scared of those big needles I swear the jagoff has stopped moving at the molecular level.

“Looks like our man here knows about the Thackery Procedure,” I comm.

“He should,” Victor answers coldly. “The Gestapo invented it.”

Herr Ludwig's attention is riveted on Brando's hands. This time when he opens his mouth, it isn't to scream or curse. It's to sing like a canary.

“Reims!” he peals. “Kruppe is going to Reims!”

“Why Reims?”

Our captive's eyes are locked on the needles. Brando wiggles them back and forth and repeats Victor's question. “Why-y-y Reims?”

“La Jeune.” Herr Ludwig chokes out. His eyes flutter. We're losing him again. “Michel La Jeune. In Reims.” He passes out and slumps into his jacket.

“
Mein Gott,
” Victor exclaims. “I know Michel!” Victor looks at his watch. “And Kruppe has the lead on us. Hurry, my friends. We must go.”

Brando stuffs the Thackery needles back in his X-bag as we all light out toward the spiral stairs. “Who is this person, Victor?”

“Michel La Jeune is a good man and very well connected to our cause. Garbo told me he now runs a safe house in Reims. He must be protected.”

We scurry up the stairs, burst out of the secret panel, and gallop to the car.

Falcon comms, “Can I drive?”

I comm back, “I think I'd better—”

“No,” my partner comms. “Scarlet, your foot is injured, and driving won't help it.” He opens the front passenger door. “Let's see what Falcon can do behind the wheel.”

Falcon grins broadly and pops in the driver's seat while Victor and I climb in back. The kid fires up the ignition, floors the gas, and lays a smoking pair of black stripes across the parking lot. We all hang on tight. Falcon slides us onto the main street, and we thunder out of town.