Target: Point Zero (8 page)

Once inside the district, it was evident there were three main kinds of establishments in Badtown: beer halls, gambling dens and whorehouses. There was so much loud music blaring from these places, it all seemed to meld into one, crazed symphony. Many faces—either tough and broken-nosed or young, painted and innocent—peeked out of the shadowy doorways as the column passed by. Somewhere Hunter could hear a woman screaming. Or was she laughing? He couldn’t tell. That seemed apropos. Badtown was Las Vegas divided by Amsterdam, then multiplied by Bangkok, he decided. It oozed danger, lust and intrigue.

All the music stopped as the column of armored cars pulled onto the main street. The number of eyes staring out from the shadows increased a hundredfold. You could almost hear the sound of a few thousand bullets being slipped into a few thousand gun chambers. Hunter was beginning to think a half dozen ACs might not be enough.

But he had to give Orr credit—the guy knew how to make an entrance. The
Wehrenluftmeister
called the column to a halt in front of what Hunter understood to be the most dangerous, most disreputable beer hall in the city, a place called the
Shitzenhouzen.
It was a grand, rundown saloon built in the best American Wild West style, complete with bar girls, hustlers, shelves of cheap booze and of course, all kinds of weaponry.

Orr leapt out of the AC, waved his machine pistol around and had the
Volkspolizi
unit dismount. Each AC was carrying six troops plus the driver and gunner. Now this small army was assembling on the sidewalk outside the
Shitzenhouzen.
It was an impressive show of force—a large firearm and a uniform went a long way down here in Badtown. Hunter climbed out of the AC and cranked his own M-16F2 to life. Suddenly he wished he’d brought a pair of shades. The glare from the neon lights on the moist streets was that bright.

Orr went through the door to the
Shitzenhouzen
like a man shot out of a cannon. Hunter was right on his heels, along with twelve
Volkspolizi.
There were at least two hundred people in the place, many sitting around gambling tables, others lounging along the bar rail itself. There were many women around, too—all of them scantily clad, some even topless, in the best European tradition. Hunter followed Orr right up to the main bar, the sullen crowd parting reluctantly as they moved through. Most of the
Volkspolizi
were wearing regulation ski masks, for identity purposes. Orr, too, was wearing a face guard. Hunter, dressed in his black flights, a bandolier of ammo slung over his left shoulder, had his baseball cap pulled low to his eyes. He really didn’t want anyone recognizing him at the moment either.

Orr reached the bar and without missing a beat, dove across it, grabbed the biggest, toughest-looking bartender by the collar and dragged him right across the wet, beer-sticky top. The place gasped as the man fell to the floor only to be hauled to his feet again by Orr. The bartender started to say something, but Orr slapped his words away. The place closed in on them; Hunter raised his rifle slightly, purely on instinct. But Orr had the crowd in the palm of his hands.

The
Wehrenluftmeister
let go a stream of some language close to the bartender’s ruptured face. Part-German, part-Swiss, and part-Old English vulgarity, the bartender’s features dropped with every word. It was clear he wanted no part of Orr and the
Volkspolizi.
Obviously Orr was questioning the man about the escaped Works aviators but the bartender just kept shaking his head. He didn’t know where the hell these guys were.

“We’re tossing this place anyway,” Orr told him, first in loud and clear English, and then German, then Swiss. “We don’t want any problems. Neither do you…”

The bartender raised his hands as if to say: go right ahead. But Orr smashed his head into the bar anyway, knocking him out cold. Then with great flourish, he turned and barked an order to his men. In seconds, half the
Volkspolizi
were stomping up the stairs to the
Shitzenhouzen’s
second floor, while the other half was climbing down into its bunker-like basement-
cum
-gambling-hall.

Hunter turned back to Orr who was now coolly pouring a draft of beer into his kit tin, courtesy of a nearby spigot.

“All that yelling gets your throat a bit dry,” he told Hunter with a straight face.

They decided to split up. While Orr joined his men in the basement, Hunter went up the stairs; something was drawing him to the second floor of this place.

On reaching the top of the stairs, he found an extensive network of small hallways containing dozens of doors. The six
Volkspolizi
ahead of him were systematically pounding on each one of them, kicking it in if they didn’t get a response after two knocks. Hunter glanced into each of these open rooms, finding just about every sexual combination possible: man-woman; man-girl; man-woman-girl, woman-girl, girl-girl, etc. Each client looked drunker than the next, each
demimondaine
cuter and younger. None of them seemed too surprised to find a bunch of ski-masked men with huge rifles poking in on them—this sort of thing went on all the time in the
Shitzenhouzen.

The search quickly become tedious. Hunter’s instincts were telling him the escaped airmen were not up here; yet his gut was pushing him towards something that might be helpful in the search. He found himself climbing up a third set of steps, and after passing through a dark attic used to store liquor, ammunition and cocaine, stepping out onto the roof itself.

The
Shitzenhouzen
was hardly the tallest building in Badtown, but even from this height, the view was startling. The south district looked like an outline of neon, hellishly carved out of the deceptively peaceful circle of Clocks. It seemed the natural place for the escapees to hide. Beyond it lay the military bases, then the road out of town and finally the grand, twin-peaked mountain itself. It appeared huge from here, seemingly towering into the night sky by ten miles or more. It was so close, Hunter imagined he could reach out and touch it.

At its summit was the permanent glow from the nonstop battle, with a cloud of mist, blowing snow and smoke enshrouding the peaks themselves. The fighting seemed particularly intense on this calm, clear night. He was sure the light could be seen for hundreds of miles.

He drew his eyes from the terrifying beauty of the landscape and back to the matter at hand.

There were obviously no fire codes enforced in this part of Clocks. Hunter could practically step over onto the roof of the next building, and then to the one after that, and the one after that. The whole neighborhood was a clutter of old wooden structures, bedecked with brightly lit signs and enclosed in a maddening web of fire escapes and rickety ladders. Even someone with normal vision had no trouble seeing into any one of a dozen windows nearby, every one of them a Peeping Tom’s dream. Hunter’s extraordinary sight allowed him to pick up faces, eye color and even positions as far as three blocks away.

But right now he was looking down at the gravel roof around his boots. He gave the air a mighty sniff. What was that smell? He crouched down and saw a drop of dark red liquid; beside it was another, larger drop and beside that one, another. He concentrated his powerful vision on the still-wet fluid and took another deep sniff. His instincts had been right. It was blood.

Orr was suddenly beside him, his flashlight illuminating a crimson trail that stretched halfway across the roof.

“Could it be from an animal of some kind?” he asked Hunter. “A cat? Or a rat?”

Hunter took off his flight gloves and put his hand down close to a particularly large pool of blood. A half inch away from making contact, he could feel its heat.

“No, it’s human,” he confirmed. “Been here only two minutes, tops.”

Using Orr’s flashlight, he looked even closer. He could see hundreds of tiny swastikas swimming around in the small crimson drops. He pointed them out to Orr.

“So they
were
here,” the
Wehrenluftmeister
said. “They must have left when they heard us drive up.”

Hunter was suddenly back on his feet again. Without another word he checked the wind direction, then leapt over to the roof of the next building. Orr signaled two of his men to stay put, then he and three others jumped to the next building as well.

The hunt was on.

They followed the trail of blood for the next ten minutes—running full-out over the rooftops and up and down fire escapes. The blood became more voluminous the further they went. By the time they reached the twentieth or so building, the blood was so thick, it was covering most of the rooftop. Still they pressed on. Hunter always seemed to be three steps ahead of Orr and his men. They had only their eyes to guide them; Hunter had his eyes, plus his nose and ears working for him.

Finally they reached an alley that was just off the busiest intersection in Badtown, the convergence of
Buusterstrausse
and
Wolkthyss
Way. There was so much blood here it looked as if it had been applied by a thick paintbrush. A large old hotel dominated one side of the alley; a number of ladders led to its roof. Every one of them was absolutely coated with fresh, warm blood.

“Not a lot of people roaming around this part of town bleeding like this,” Orr told Hunter, still out of breath from their dash across the rooftops. “Someone gets cut down here every night, either that or goes home wearing a bullet. But I don’t think they’d be bleeding by the gallon…”

Hunter moved to the corner of the building and took a look out onto the main street. It was filled with hookers, gamblers and pimps. The hotel was the biggest structure around. The surrounding buildings were connected to its top by ladders and walkways, though most of these were twenty feet long or more.

His instincts were telling him that if these were the enemy aviators they were chasing, then they were hiding somewhere inside the hotel. He slipped back into the alley for a quick confab with Orr. The
Wehrenluftmeister
and his men would attempt to get in by the front door to the place. Hunter would try the back.

He moved even deeper into the alley and quickly located a fire escape that led all the way up the hotel’s seventeen floors. He began climbing, past many uncurtained, brightly lit rooms, all of them containing even more acts of unspeakable sex and/or. perversion within, and soon gaining the top of the building. It was here he found the first aviator.

The man was lying face down in an ocean of his own blood, his legs and feet covered with mud and oil. His throat had been slashed—by his fellow airmen, Hunter suspected. He held his unprotected hand over the fresh corpse. It had shaken its mortal coil some time ago, he guessed, and had been dragged this long way just so Hunter and the others would follow.

A distinctly disturbing chill ran through him now. He checked his M-16’s ammo load—as always it was filled with tracer rounds. Making his way to the rooftop door, his spine began tingling—warning him that he had to be careful. Strange things lay ahead. He nudged the door open with the snout of his gun and peered inside. A long dark hallway stretched before him.

He stepped inside, closed the door and began feeling his way along the corridor, a formation of crows flying strange maneuvers just above his head. Unlike the rest of the building, the top floor was not rocking and rolling. The silence up here was almost eerie. He reached one door; it was locked and dark inside. He tried the next one—it, too, was locked but its door knob was warm and sticky. The third door was a quarter of the way open. A thin shaft of candlelight was falling out of it.

Hunter opened this door all the way. Inside he found one of the most beautiful females he’d ever set eyes on.

She was sitting on the edge of a large bed, wearing a skimpy negligee. She was blond, probably not yet twenty, maybe not yet eighteen. Her face was simply radiant, almost angelic. It seemed to be glowing in the darkened room. She smiled slightly when she first saw him, as if she couldn’t help herself. Her nipples, fully visible through the skimpy clothing, immediately went hard, too.

Hunter had no more blood trail to follow, but that wasn’t important anymore. He knew the surviving aviators were close by—possibly right behind the partially opened door. But first things first. He was still studying the beautiful girl.

“What’s your name?” he asked in a whisper.

“You mean you don’t recognize me, Hawk?” she replied.

Her question caught him off guard. He took an even closer look. Those eyes, those lips, those breasts, those legs. Yes, he
had
seen them all before—a long time ago, in the cramped cabin of an aircraft carrier. Push-pull. Push-pull. He remembered now—her name was Emma.

What happened next Hunter had only experienced a couple of times before in his life. It sounded like such a tired expression, but time did indeed stand still. His eyes locked on the young girl, his mind flashed in reverse. Three years ago, nearly four. He was in the Med, tracking the first super-criminal to go by the name of Viktor. A major war was imminent in the Middle East and Viktor’s hand was in every aspect of the coming battle. Hunter joined a bunch of British adventurers and helped them tow the disabled aircraft carrier USS
Saratoga
to the Suez Canal where jets launched from its deck halted the advance of Viktor’s invading armies. Along the way they’d saved a group of young call girls who wound up staying with them for the entire voyage east. One of them was Emma, a dead ringer for his true love, the beautiful, elusive, Dominique. Emma and Hunter had been close.
Real
close.

And now she was here, back in his life. But under such strange circumstances!

Suddenly his entire body began vibrating; jolts of electricity were running up and down his spine. Danger was all around him—he could
feel
it. And now, he had to get ready to stop it.

It took some doing, but Hunter forced things to start moving again. Time sped up. Emma was still smiling at him, but in a slightly different way. It was a signal; he knew what it meant. He took a step to the right and ducked—a stream of bullets passed over his head a microsecond later. Falling to one knee. Hunter raised his M-16F2 precisely sixty-two degrees from the floor and squeezed off two shots. Both went through the head of the armed man who’d shot at him from the shadows. His body fell heavily right in front of Hunter. There was no doubt he was one of the Works aviators.