“You mind not mentioning my name?” I said. “I really don’t want to get any higher on his shit list than I am.”
“I’ll do my best,” he answered, standing and leaving. “But I won’t make any promises.”
“Gee, thanks,” I called to his back as he strode from the room.
Five minutes later, I got a terse text from Goodhart to appear in his office, ASAP. I went upstairs and found Goodhart, Fred, and Jed all in the office, going over something.
“Jesse, good of you to join us,” Goodhart said. The look in his eye said he was not happy to see me.
“S’up?” I replied. Diindiisi and my mom had had a long conversation and had decided sarcasm would be listed as my cause of death at an early age.
“Fred mentioned that he had a conversation with you at breakfast,” Goodhart started.
His desk phone started ringing. He looked at it with disgust, then picked it up after checking the number.
“Goodhart. Yes. Yes. I see,” he said, looking at his computer. “Yes. I’ll have a team there in two hours, or as soon as I can.”
“Jesse, where’s your team?”
“Should be here. We’re supposed to be taking the afternoon course on The Care and Feeding of the Press, since we Escaped and Evaded it yesterday.”
“You’re E&E’ing it again. An issue has come up in Piccadilly that your team is uniquely qualified to deal with,” Goodhart replied.
“Fuck,” I replied. “What’s happening in Piccadilly?
“That was William Thomas on the phone. He says something is trying to break through there,” Goodhart replied.
“He can’t handle it?” I asked. “What makes my team ‘uniquely qualified’ for this mission?”
“No, he can’t,” he said as his computer pinged for an email. He read it, and the frown on his face deepened. “The email was from R&D. They want to know if Miskatonic University, Piccadilly, got approval for a Level Five spell. As for why your team gets the shitty end of the stick, Thomas describes the sky over the courthouse in downtown Piccadilly looking like ‘the shit you skim off lead when you’re reloading.’ Sound familiar?”
“A Level Five spell? The fucking president of the United States has to get congressional approval for one of those. Who’s our backup?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“Brute Squad,” Goodhart said. “Based on the report from Piccadilly, this is a maximum breakage situation.”
“If you don’t mind, we’ll tag along,” Fred said. “We’ve got a couple of spells that will let us handle communications, even if things get really questionable out there. Besides, you might need some quick onsite fabrication, depending on what’s trying to force its way into this realm.”
“Right, and thanks,” Goodhart said before turning to me. “You want more support than that?”
“Artillery would be nice, if we’ve got an L5 event,” I replied, sighing and running some quick calculations. “Seriously, though, until we know what’s going on, throwing more bodies at it isn’t a good idea. We driving, or…?”
“Support elements from your team will drive, along with a cleaning crew, and an IT/Commo support team, just in case. The aviation assets have been notified and will be ready when y’all reach the airport here in Austin,” he said, turning to face Fred. “How can we move your team?”
“The Forge can travel with the ground convoy,” Fred replied. “And if you’ve got room, my escort can ride in the choppers.”
“If need be, we can add a bird to the flight,” Goodhart said.
“It’s a two-hour drive for the ground team,” I said, looking at a map. “We’ll be on the ground an hour before they get there. Things could get interesting.”
“Once y’all exit the birds, Dragon and Night Stalker will remain onsite until they’ve got to come home or the ground team shows up, whichever comes first,” Goodhart said. “Hell, Bergstrom is the closet place you can get JP4 to that pimple on the ass of Texas.”
“What about mounting the probes and asking the governor or Uncle Sugar for a tanker?”
“Unless this is a major breakthrough, Dallas has nixed that for now,” Goodhart said, running his fingers through the thinning hair on his forehead.
“Oh, I do so love these kinds of missions,” Jed said. “Anything else?”
“Have a nice flight?” Goodhart said, smiling.
I walked out of his office and sent a text to my team. Jed was doing the same thing, while Fred ran off, bellowing names. It was going to be one of those days.
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
With planning and everything, it still took the better part of an hour for the ‘search and rescue’ teams to get from QMG headquarters to Bergstrom. Wednesday Austin traffic was its usual bitch, and for all the frenzied building of toll roads, no one’s built one out to the airport, so we ran lights and slalomed through traffic like a bad cop movie. It was a sign, albeit a bad one, of how serious things were when troopers from Texas Department of Public Safety overtook us and escorted us to the airport.
There’s this scene in Top Gun where they’re walking down the flight line with their helmet bags and parachutes and looking all cool and shit to stirring music, high fiving each other. That definitely wasn’t us when we got to the general aviation side of Bergstrom. We looked like the Three Stooges, laden like pack mules, and I swear I heard “Yakety Sax” playing in the background. Only the dwarves looked comfortable in their gear.
There had been some command decisions made while we were on the way to the airport as well. The Blackhawks had their refueling probes mounted, and there were a pair of Texas National Guard Apaches parked next to them, rotors slowly turning. Dragon was waiting on the tarmac for me, and her crew chief hustled my team from the vehicles to her bird.
“Father,” she shouted over the whine of jet turbines. “Been a few changes that Goodhart didn’t want to put over the air.”
“I can see that,” I shouted back.
“Apparently the weather in the area has gone to shit—Fortean phenomenon on top of a sky that looks like it’s about a minute from spouting tornadoes, or whales, or whatever. The Department of Public Safety commander out there called the governor while you were on the way over here and ripped him a new asshole.”
“That bad?” I asked, watching the crew chief check his door gun.
“Worse. The Governor activated the 147th Attack Wing out of Ellington, so we’ll have drone support. He put the 149th Attack Wing out of Kelly on five-minute standby, so if the Apaches can’t handle whatever is in Piccadilly, we’ll have tactical air support as well.”
“Holy shit,” I whistled. “What the hell did DPS tell the governor?”
“I don’t know, but Captain Betros,” she pointed to the lead Apache, “told me he was weapons free from the time we crossed into London County. He also said the governor told him, personally, if the decision was use the ammo or worry about the budget, fuck the budget.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly. You want to get on the bird?”
“We got a rendezvous point with the ground element?” I asked, swinging my pack off my back.
“Yeah, the Van Helsing Gas N’ Go south of town,” Dragon replied, walking toward the cockpit.
I strapped in next to Fred, who was wearing a helicopter crew helmet with microphone. The crew chief handed me one, and I put it on and checked the mike.
“Stand by,” came through the earphones.
The turbines’ whine built to a shriek, and the rotors blurred into a disk above the bird.
“Dragon to Dragon Element and Sledgehammer Elements, radio check.”
“Night Stalker, reading you five by five.”
“Broomrider, reading you loud and clear.”
“Sledgehammer element, reading you clear.”
“Dragon to all elements, we are cleared for takeoff.”
One of the Apaches rolled forward and lifted into the air, climbing quickly to cruising altitude. We rolled out be
hind it, rising with a stomach-turning lurch before dropping into a nose down cruising position.
Fred tapped my arm and held up three fingers. I switched my headset and mike to the internal channel.
“I hate these fucking things,” Fred said by way of preamble.
“Beats walking or rowing,” I replied.
“True. You get any more data?”
“Apparently the governor is losing control of his sphincter. Beyond that, nothing. And I can’t pull out my laptop here—nowhere to plug it in,” I said, gesturing around me.
“Yeah,” Fred rumbled. “What’s the plan?”
“Until I see what conditions are like, I don’t have one,” I replied.
I could hear him laugh over the thunder of the rotors beating the air into submission.
“Fucking sounds like Beijing all over again, Marine.”
The crew chief nudged me and held up two fingers. I switched to the command channel.
“Malone here, send it.”
“Malone, this is Jody,” Jed said. “Artist (Michelangelo) sends that Elvis has left the building with the ground team.”
“Roger that, hold one,” I replied, flipping back to channel three.
“We need a call sign for your element,” I said to Fred.
“Forgemaster.”
“Roger that. FYI, Sola Stellus is with the ground team,” I said.
“Oh, this is going to be so much fun,” Fred said as I switched back to channel two.
“Jody, Malone.”
“Send it.”
“Forgemaster is informed of Elvis’ location. He thinks having some music will make the party better.”
“Tell him I concur. Jody out.”
“Malone out,” I said, switching back to channel one to listen to the chatter between the pilots.
It’s one hundred and thirty-three miles from Austin to Piccadilly. It takes between two and two and a half hours, depending on who’s driving, to cover that on the ground, and ‘cruising’ in a Black Hawk it takes about an hour.
“Descending,” Dragon called over the radio. It was the only warning anyone got that we’d reached the London county line.
We went from five hundred feet to nap-of-the-earth flight, and the pilots almost firewalled the engines. If Disney or Six Flags could figure out how to recreate the joy of flying a hundred and fifty miles an hour, skimming under the high-tension wires, they might have a ride I’d enjoy.
“Sledgehammer Lead, Dragon. Contact, eleven o’clock, high.”
“Roger, Dragon. Sledgehammer-2, target is yours.”
The second Apache roared past and swung left.
“Sledgehammer-2 to all elements—target is…holy shit, it’s a griffin; I think that’s what you call it.”
“Roger that, Sledgehammer-2, you are weapons free.”
I strained, looking over my shoulder, trying to follow the action. Far off to the left I saw an explosion in the air.
“Yes! Target is down,” Sledgehammer-2 reported.
“Sledgehammer-2, rejoin formation.”
I turned back in time to see something rising from the ground.
“Contact, starboard,” I reported, slapping the crew chief to get his attention.
“What the fuck, over?”
A grey mass was rising toward us.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the fuck is that?” Fred asked.
“Who the fuck knows?” I replied. “London County is so full of potential magic, it could be the dreams of zombies that’s taken form.”
“Live fire!” the crew chief shouted, the barrels on his minigun blurring before spitting fire into the mass, which collapsed in on itself.
“Fuck, I hate unknown shit!” Fred said.
“I’m not a fan myself,” I said as the bird banked, giving the crew chief a better shot at the collapsing mass. “Break, break. Malone to Dragon, are we in contact with Defender?”
“Roger. ETA two minutes,” Dragon replied
I looked ahead again. The Gas N’ Go was visible. It also looked like a fort in a bad western. Vaguely human shapes surrounded it, and fire stabbed at them from between cars.
“Fuck, looks like they had to circle the wagons,” Fred said.
“Hot LZ! Hot LZ!” Dragon called over the radio.
Sledgehammer One and Two swept forward, engaging the targets around the Gas N’ Go, mowing down huge swaths of them.
“Malone, heads up, we’re going to come in over the roof,” Dragon said.
“Roger,” I said, punching the quick release on my harness as we slowed to hover over the roof of the Gas N’ Go. As soon as we stopped moving, I jumped from the bird, turning to catch my ruck. Fred came down next, and I could see my team dropping onto the roof. Dragon moved away, and Night Stalker, not to be outdone, dropped Jed’s team on the porte cochere covering the gas pumps before rotating slightly and engaging the horde that was again attacking the walls.
Just to show that they weren’t simple humans, the dwarf team riding Broomrider fast-roped to the ground.
“Fucking showoffs,” I muttered.
“Glad y’all could join us,” Cletus Van Helsing shouted over the thunder of helicopters, guns, and explosions.
“Where’s William Thomas?” I replied, slapping him on the back.
“Downstairs. He got a little beat up retreatin’ from town,” Cletus said.
“Right,” I replied, dropping down the hatch into the store below.
Thomas was propped up on a table in the diner section of the Gas N’ Go, his legs both swathed in air splints.
“Jesse! Good to see you, man,” he called as I walked into the store.
“What the fuck, William?”
“Oh, you know, the usual shit. Some kid over at the U decided his classes weren’t interesting enough, so he found something on the internet and, well, here we are…” he trailed off as Fred came through the store. “Where’d you get the dwarves?”
“Slow week in Austin,” I replied as one of the dwarves came over and held a low-voiced conversation with the medic who was keeping an eye on the wounded. “What’d you do to your legs?”
“Eh, nothing that won’t heal. Fucking griffin came through the rift where the spell opened and tossed a Chevy at me.”
“That’s wonderful. Where’s the rift?” Jed asked.
“Jed. Damn, Goodhart must have thought something serious was happening around here if he turned you lose. The rift is where the monument was. Always told the town fathers that hunk of stone was a bad idea, but what the fuck do I know?” William said.
“The monument?” Fred asked with a puzzled look.
“Yeah, back in the fifties or so, the town fathers got on a real beautification kick—they thought something big was going to happen here in Piccadilly, rather than the usual occult shit,” a portly figure in a khaki sheriff’s uniform replied, walking up. “So they hired some art major from the U here to design a monument to the founders of London County, and placed the damn thing on a ley line nexus.”
“The U?” Diindiisi asked. She’d led the team down from the roof.
“The only branch of Miskatonic goddamned University found outside of the state of Massachusetts,” the county mountie answered with a grunt. “Usually they’re quiet, but every once and a while one of the non-Euclidean geometry majors over there gets bored and designs something that would make Escher weep tears of blood, or one of the Anthropology majors gets into the ‘Forbidden Tomes’ section of the library and copies a spell or three. We usually call that a Piccadilly Saturday night.”
“We’ve got a lot of odd happenings here in London County,” William said with a grin. “Yours truly included.”
One of the dwarves came over and handed me a handset. Just a handset. I’ve worked with stranger magic than dwarven.
“Malone here.”
“Malone, this is Dragon. We’ve driven off the attackers for now, but we’re getting low on fuel and ammo. I’m going to send Sledgehammer Element back to re-
arm and refuel, along with Night Stalker. When they’re back on station, I’ll lead Broomrider off to do the same.”
“Roger. Good luck.” I said.
“Dragon, out.”
I handed the dwarf the handset, and turned back to William. “Our air support is bugging out for now. What are we up against?”
“Not sure, to tell the truth,” William replied, scratching his leg at the edge of the splint. “Been a bit of a clusterfuck so far. Bubba has a team in town at the post office; they were trying to extract folks downtown and were stuck at the post office, protecting the shelter. Last I heard from the U, they’ve gone into lockdown and activated their wards, so anything trying to cross onto their property is exploding messily. Have you heard from your people, Kent?”
“Yeah, they’ve got most of downtown clear,” the sheriff said, dropping into a chair next to William. “Whatever the hell is there isn’t really fighting them on it—just letting them pull back to the appointed shelters.”
“You’re gathering people in one place?” Fred asked, beating Diindiisi to the punch.
“Yeah,” the sheriff replied. “Look, weird shit happens in this town, so there’s a plan in place for it. If it gets too bad, we gather everyone into the shelters and ride it out.”
“If we’re dealing with Abzu and his minions, those shelters could be a bad idea,” Diindiisi said with a frown.
“Bad idea? How?” the sheriff asked. “We can’t have people running around in an emergency here. The last time we had a big rift open here, we got monsters from the tentacle dimension. I’ll just say that things were not pretty, between the calamari monsters eatin’ the women and rapin’ the men.”
“We’re not sure it’s Abzu,” I said, ignoring the sheriff for a moment. “The only evidence of that is the color of the sky over the rift.”
“What about the griffin?” Diindiisi replied.
“I was trying to ignore that,” I replied with a grimace. Technically, you could call it a grin.
“We need a sample of the dead from the last attack, then,” she said, striding out the door, followed by the rest of her team.
Blood Moon Eclipse (The Shadow Lands Book 2) Page 6