Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (7 page)

Same morning, 3:40
A.M.
GMT

Circle of Zion camp, Yorkshire, Province of Great Britain, GG

I comm, “Rabbi, this is Scarlet. Come in.” Among the equipment we've smuggled in and distributed are walkie-talkies that can be recharged with a small hand-cranked generator. We gave some to the Rabbi and showed him how to tune them to our comm frequency. They're only effective for short-range communication, but they're perfect for this type of situation.

The heat-blob person is 400 yards away, but it's so dark he or she can't see us. I take a few steps away from Brando and aim my father's watch toward our guest. I flash the watch face's light, twice slow, then twice fast. The heat blob puts on a burst of speed.

My commphone activates. “This is Rabbi. Go ahead, Scarlet.”

“Sir, I've got an unknown person inbound, and I hear helicopters.”

“Can you tell if they're coming here?”

“Affirmative.”

He broadcasts to the other walkie-talkies. “Attention, fellow mice. The cat is returning in force. Disperse and we will regroup via our usual channels.”

Time to vamoose. Brando throws the shrubbery away from our tent and yanks our packs out while I roll up our sleeping bags. My partner begins to fold the tent's aluminum frame. Our ExOps trainers insisted we be able to bug out of a bivouac in less than one minute. We finally figured out the only way to do this is to keep anything we aren't wearing stowed in our big backpacks all the time. All we need to do is strike the tent and bundle up the sleeping bags.

While my partner finishes getting us ready to leave, I pull out Li'l Bertha and run toward the incoming person. My gun's sensors see something big and metallic, but it doesn't fit the profile of a weapon. Then I realize—it's a bicycle. The helicopters' racket is loud enough I can yell, “Hey, over here!”

The cyclist calls out, “Rabbi?”

“No, he's busy.” I aim my pistol at the stranger. “Who goes there?”

The figure pedals toward me and stops. “You are the American?” My night vision reveals the perspiring face of a young blond-haired woman. She speaks with the same German-British accent as Miriam.

“Yeah, that's me.”

She breathlessly asks, “I must be sure. How many home runs did Babe Ruth win?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Well,” she pants, “that is not what I expected, but I suppose only an American would answer in that way.” She brushes a sweaty lock of hair off her face. “I am Greta, a friend of Arvid's. I live not far from here. The Gestapo down in York forced Mayor Brun to tell them what little he knew to help them discover his abductors' location.”

Crap.

“Did Arvid say how many troops are coming?”

“He said five helicopters from York took off in this direction.” Greta leans over her handlebars, huffing and puffing. “He was not able to see what the helicopters carry.”

I comm, “Darwin and Rabbi, we've got five packages coming in, contents unknown.”

Brando comms back, “Roger that.” The Rabbi doesn't answer. Hopefully he's already gone.

I say, “Thanks, Greta. You'd better get out of here.”

Without another word, Greta spins her bike around, stands on the pedals, and presses as hard as she can.

I turn and hustle back to my partner. “Darwin,” I comm, “how we doin'?”

“The Rabbi's people are mostly away. We're packed up, but we have the element of surprise and I've got an idea.”

“Surprise? The Krauts found
us
, remember.”

“Not exactly,” he says. “The Germans think they've found a camp of lightly armed runaway slaves with no military training.”

“Right, ‘cause that's what they
have
found.”

“They don't know about you.”

“Ahh, I see.” Goose bumps dance onto my arms. “You want me to give 'em the F.U.C.K.?”

Brando recites a line from our orders. “‘You shall create a chaotic and confused situation wherever possible.'”

Story of my life.

“Plus,” he continues, “I think we can blame it on the Russkies. They're the first people Germany blames for everything, anyway. I'll ask my boss to falsify some comms reinforcing that tendency.”

“Sounds good,” I comm. “Let's do it.”

The German choppers are over our heads. They slow down to find a landing spot. Their rotors make the air thrum and the trees shimmy. Those helicopters are our main target. My challenge will be to wreck the machines and harm as few of the Wehrmacht troops as possible. The German press and public will eventually forgive anti-slave activists for destroying some pieces of war equipment. But if we kill any of these regular army dudes, it'll be a very different story.

There's a natural clearing about a hundred yards north of where Brando has our gear stacked. One of the choppers circles the clearing to set up their approach. I dose a tall drink of Madrenaline and speed toward their intended landing zone.

I get there as one of the choppers touches down. Airmobile troops bound out from both sides and boogie to the tree line. A second helicopter floats down next to the first. More troops pour out, some before the skids even touch the ground. Officers bellow commands to their men and lead them to cover.

I approach the first helicopter from its rear, taking care to avoid the tail rotor. The second bird is to my left, so I cut right. I approach the right-side pilot's door, rip it open, and punch the pilot square in his mouth. Then I flip open the buckle of his safety harness and drag him out by his head. I draw Li'l Bertha, climb into the aircraft, and riddle the control board in front of the pilots' seats with .30-caliber Explosives. This bird ain't goin' nowhere.

I jab my pistol at the remaining pilot and bark, “
Raus! Schnell mutterfinken!” Get out, motherfucker!

I read “SCHMIDT” printed on the pilot's coveralls while he frantically unbuckles his harness. Pilot Schmidt throws himself out the door and runs toward the second chopper.

I chase Schmidt across the small clearing. The second bird's engine whines up a full octave as Pilot Schmidt bounds on board. I hurl myself at the big side opening. The chopper takes off so fast the craft's floor slaps up into my chest. My feet swing in the air for a moment until my toes find the landing skid. I push off and roll inside.

Herr Schmidt has seen more than enough of me and cowers in terror by the other main door. Up front, the pilot on the right draws his sidearm. Li'l Bertha sights in. One of her .45-caliber slugs carries away Pilot Right's pistol, pieces of his hand, and all of his moxie. The injured man screams while the mess at the end of his arm squirts blood all over the control panel and windscreen.

I leap up front, clench another knuckle sandwich together, and smash it into Pilot Left's face. While he drifts off to dreamland, I hop onto his lap and take the controls. I'm not an expert at flying helicopters, but I know the basics. My right hand clutches the cyclic stick, and my left hand grabs the collective controller. I twist the throttle to zero and force the collective down. The bottom drops out of the world as we free-fall back to the clearing.

The aircraft smashes into the ground. Our thunderous impact sets off a chorus of warning lights and wailing sirens. Beneath the high-pitched screeching is the drumbeat of metal grinding itself into scrap. The tachometer spiked when the main rotor blades snapped off. Without their wind resistance the engine has nothing to do but spin like a Tasmanian dreidel.

Poor Pilot Schmidt bails out again and runs toward the woods. I unbuckle the remaining pilots and shove them out their doors. Then I jump out.

“Darwin, we good?”

“Fantastic. The clearing isn't big enough for more than two choppers at once, so the other three can't land to help.”

I gallop out of the clearing the way I came in. Once I'm back in the trees, I turn and unload a volley of Incendiaries into the engines of the two helicopter-shaped doorstops.

I haul ass back to where Brando has our gear stashed. He's already there, strapping on his pack and his X-bag. I shoulder my bag and we vanish into the shadowy woods. When we're a safe distance away, we turn and watch the burning helicopters for a minute. Two huge explosions light the forest up like lightning. The German troops are sharply silhouetted as their rides blow up in their faces.

If I were a Girl Scout, I'd have to rewrite their slogan as “Take only pictures, leave only blazing helicopters.”

CORE MIS-ANGEL-212

Next morning, Thursday, February 5, 1981, 3:30
A.M.
GMT

Gestapo Headquarters, York, Province of Great Britain, GG

We lurk in the shadows like a pack of coyotes waiting for the shepherd to go home. Our four sets of eyes beam from a gloomy alley up the street from Gestapo headquarters in York. This alley is a block away from the town hall where Brando and I snatched Mayor Brun two days ago. Now we're here to spring the forty or fifty people caught in last night's roundups. Ironically, one of those people was Mayor Brun.

York is a small city. The place occupies less ground than Washington's National Mall. The old town is a charmingly disorganized heap of bricks and cobblestones dominated by a towering cathedral called the Minster.

The Germans, like the English before them, use York as a central location for controlling northern Britain. Before the war, the town hall was one of the only official buildings. Then the Reich converted most of the schools, meeting halls, and even the theater into government offices. The Gestapo moved into a long, low rectangle of stone that used to be a fine arts academy. The first two floors are original and fit in with the street's Olde England vibe. The top three floors were obviously added much more recently by some blind, piss-drunk bureaucrat with absolutely no sense of style.

This is one of the most feared buildings in England. Streetlights strike the facade at odd angles and obscure its shape instead of revealing it. A razor-wire-topped fence circles the property, but the razor wire slants inward to keep prisoners from escaping. Nobody tries to break
in
to the Gestapo.

My mission brief made it clear we can use “unlimited force” against Gestapo officers. Apparently the secret police are so reviled—even by Greater German citizens—that the suit-and-ties back home aren't worried about us turning popular opinion against the Rising by liquidating as many Gestapo creeps we can.

A puff of wind shoves tiny icicles into my eyes. A voice behind me whispers, “Shit, I'm fucking freezing.” It's Jade, the other Level on this job. She snuggles up against her Info Operator, a quiet, thin, brown-haired twenty-two-year-old named Pericles.

Even though Jade is a couple of years older than me, I'm senior to her since I graduated from Camp A-Go-Go before she did. At Level 5, she's also four Levels junior to me, but that doesn't matter too much tonight as our assignments are so different. Jade and Pericles are here to conduct certain people to safety while Brando and I are here to ferry certain other people to the Great Beyond. Jade's an Interceptor like me, but her Skill Ratings lean toward sneakier missions, more like an Infiltrator. This contrasts with my Skill Ratings, which skew toward the bada-boom things a Vindicator does.

We picked up Jade and Pericles from Arvid's dairy. I have no idea how they were transported to Yorkshire, and if I asked them, they wouldn't tell me. We compartmentalize our contacts and sources in case any of us are captured by the Fritzes, but everything else is fair game. Brando and Pericles spent the drive back to York syncing their intel. They looked so serious I suggested they do a Vulcan mind meld. Jade laughed, held up her fingers in a V shape, and said, “Live long in jodhpurs.”

While the boys transferred their mungobytes of data, Jade and I compared our gear. Her sidearm is the sturdy and reliable .30-caliber Lion Ballistics LB-502. We've got a lot of the same Mods and Enhances, except for our defensive systems. I'm protected by my reinforced skeleton and my SoftArmor vest, and I use Madrenaline to help me evade incoming gunfire.

Jade doesn't need any of that. She's equipped with an amazing radar grid called Vapor. The Vapor Mod senses incoming objects like fists and bullets and zaps instructions to her muscles to slip her body out of harm's way. Vapor makes Jade almost impossible to hit and plays into her stealthier mission style.

At 5'8" Jade is four inches taller than I am. This is why she can sprint faster than me, although my deeper Madrenaline reservoir means I can maintain my maximum speed for greater distances. She would beat me in the quarter mile, but then I'd catch her before we'd run a mile. We bench-press identical loads and reps. Our matching stats for in-field vertical leap illustrate the small price I pay to be nearly indestructible. I'm naturally lighter than Jade, but my defensive Mods are heavier than hers.

She's very pretty. Her father's family is from Norway and her mother is from Thailand, so Jade has a gorgeous combination of black hair, fair skin, and ice-blue eyes. Her face is kind of round, with almond-shaped eyes and very long eyelashes. She and I dress similarly: black cargo pants, dark sneakers, and a jacket over a couple of thin sweaters.

Her attractiveness would bug me if I hadn't forbidden myself to get involved with this Patrick. Why should I care that this other Interceptor is so good-looking, right? Another reason I'm not jealous of Jade was her reaction when she saw Li'l Bertha.

“Holy shit!” she blurted. “What are you doing with a 505?”

I shrugged, like,
aw shucks
, but she pressed me on how I'd gotten my hands on such an advanced weapon. By then, we'd arrived at our sparsely furnished safe house in Haxby. I looked around the room conspiratorially. Brando and Pericles were silently engrossed in a game of speed chess on Pericles's magnetic travel set.

I leaned in close to her. “Can you keep a secret?”

Jade smiled, slyly peeked over both shoulders, and nodded her head.

“She used to be my Dad's.”

“You've got Big Bertha's pistol?”

“Wait, how do you know about him?” I said.

“Scarlet, everybody at Camp knew about your father.”

“You went to the one in Maryland?” I ask.

“Yup.”

“When were you there?”

Jade looked at me like she thought I was kidding, then saw I was serious. “Same time as you,” she said. “We used to call you A-J, remember?”

Oh, wow.
I'd forgotten some of the kids at AGOGE used to call me that. One of our teachers was a stuffy and proper old gentledoof who called attendance with his students' full names. He'd bellow, “Miss Alixandra Janina Nico!” and I'd raise my hand. To spite him we came up with the shortest possible nicknames for each other. Mine was A-J.

I couldn't remember being in class with Jade, but she didn't seem fazed by my absentmindedness. She was a little starstruck by my reputation and dazzled by my amazing gun. I held back from telling my new gal-pal how Dad woke up my pistol's AI and turned Li'l Bertha into the world's first sentient firearm. I'm not exactly supposed to have this insane weapon in the first place, and I don't need Jade bugging Cyrus about why her sidearm isn't a smart gun too.

Then it was my turn to gush. I'd been instantly envious of Jade's Vapor Mod. The Med-Techs began offering it right after ExOps had my skeleton plated, and Cyrus refused my request to undo the plating so I could get the radar grid installed instead. He said I couldn't combine them because the Vapor system requires the user to be as light-boned as possible. He also pointed out it wouldn't protect me from explosions or long falls like my standard defensive Mods can.

But I'm still fascinated by the Vapor Mod, and I got Jade to let me check it out. I stood directly in front of the girl and tried to smack her, anywhere. Nothing! Not one hit. She dodged everything. I even bull rushed her, but Jade instantly sidestepped out of my way and let me bash into a rickety old table full of expensive spy crap.

All this commotion finally distracted the boys from their chess match. We huddled together on the floor and wolfed down dinners from unheated ration tins and went over our options. I forget who mentioned it first, but from this conversation came the fabulous idea of pulling a daring rescue mission at Gestapo headquarters.

CORE MIS-ANGEL-1030