by Butcher, Jim
“Nice,” Susan said. She bounced up in the air experimentally, and smiled when her descent was slowed. “Very cool. Then we drink more to climb out?”
“Should make that slope a piece of cake,” I said. “But we’ll need to move fast. Potion will last us maybe twenty minutes.”
Susan nodded, adjusting the straps on the small pack she wore. “Got it.”
“Get close to me,” I said. “I can’t veil all three of us unless we’re all within arm’s reach.”
They did, and after a few seconds of focus and concentration, I brought up a veil around us that should hide us from view and disperse our heat signature as well. It wouldn’t be perfect. We’d still show up on a night-vision scope, to one degree or another. I was counting on the fact that men guarding a building that isolated could not possibly deal with problems on a regular basis. They’d have a very comfortable, reliable routine, which was exactly the sort of thing to take the edge off a sentry’s wariness. That’s just human nature.
I beckoned, and the three of us began approaching the facility. There was no fluttering from shadow to shadow, or camouflage face paint. The veiling spell took care of that. We just walked over the uneven ground and focused on staying close together. That part may have been more fun if Martin weren’t there.
We got to within thirty yards of the fence, and I paused. I lifted my staff, pointed it at the first sentry camera, and whispered, “Hexus.”
I wasn’t used to holding something as demanding as a veil in one hand while performing another working with the other—even such an easy spell as a technology hex. For a second, I thought I’d lose the veil, but then it stabilized again. The lights on the camera had gone out.
We moved around the perimeter while I hexed the other two cameras into useless junk, but just as I’d taken down camera number three, Susan gripped my arm and pointed. The foot patrol was moving by on their sweep.
“The dog will get our scent,” Susan said.
Martin drew a short pistol from beneath his jacket, and screwed a silencer to its end.
“No,” I half growled. I fished in the pocket of my duster and found the second potion I’d made while preparing for the trip. It was in a delicate, round globe of glass about as thick as a piece of paper. I flipped the globe toward the path of the oncoming dog and heard it break with a little crackle.
The two patrolmen and the dog went by the area where I’d left my surprise, and the dog snuffled the new scent with thorough interest. At a jerk of the lead, the dog hurried to catch up to the guards, and all three of them went by without so much as glancing at us.
“Dog’ll have his senses of smell and hearing back in the morning,” I murmured. “These guys are just doing a job. We aren’t going to kill them for that.”
Martin looked nonplussed. He kept the pistol in his hand.
We circled around to where the fence met the canyon wall, opposite the large parking lot. Susan got out a pair of wire cutters. She opened them and prepared to cut through when Martin snatched her wrist, preventing her from touching the fence. “Electricity,” he whispered. “Dresden.”
I grunted. Now that he’d pointed it out, I thought I could feel it, too—the almost inaudible hum of current on the move, making the hairs on my arms stand up. Hexing something with a microchip in it is simple. Impeding the flow of electricity through a conductive material is considerably more difficult. I pitched my best hex at the wiring where it connected to a power line and was rewarded with the sudden scent of burned rubber. Martin reached out and touched the fence with the back of his hand. No electricity burned him.
“All right,” Susan whispered, as she began clipping us a way in, cutting a wire only when the gusting wind reached a crescendo and covered the sound of the clippers at work, then waiting for the next gust. “Where’s that distraction?”
I winked at her, lifted my blasting rod, thrust it between links of fence in front of us, and aimed carefully. Then I checked the tower guard, to be sure he was looking away, and whispered, “Fuego, fuego, fuego, fuego.”
Tiny spheres of sullen red light flickered out across the compound and into the parking lot opposite. My aim had been good. The little spheres hissed and melted their way through the rear quarter panel of several vehicles and burned on into the fuel tanks beneath.
The results were predictable. A gas tank explosion isn’t as loud as an actual bomb going off, but when you’re standing a few yards away from it, it could be hard to tell. There were several hollow booming sounds, and light blazed up from the cars that had been hit as flames roared up and consumed them.
The guard in the tower started screaming into a radio, but apparently could get no reply. No surprise. The second camera had been positioned atop his tower, and the hex that took it out probably got his radio, too. While he was busy, Susan, Martin, and I slipped through the opening in the fence and made our way into the shadows at the base of one of the portable storage units.
A car, parked between two flaming vehicles, went up with another whump of ignition, and it got even brighter. A few seconds later, red lights started to flash at several points around the facility, and a warning klaxon began to sound. The giant metal door to the interior of the facility began to roll upward, just like a garage door.
The two patrollers and their temporarily handi-capable German shepherd came running out first, and were followed, in a moment, by nearly a dozen other guys in the same uniforms, or at least in portions of them. It looked like some of them had hopped out of bed and tossed on whatever they could reach. Several were dragging fire extinguishers, as if they were going to be useful against fires that large. Good luck with that, boys.
The moment the last of them was past our position and staring agog at the burning automobiles, I hurried forward, putting everything I had into the veil, trusting that Martin and Susan would stay close. They did. We went through the big garage door and down a long ramp into the facility.
“Go ahead,” Martin said. He hurried to a control panel on the wall and whipped out some kind of multitool. “I’ll shut the door.”
“As long as we can get it open on the way out,” I muttered.
“Yes, Dresden,” Martin said crisply. “I’d been doing this for sixty years before you were born.”
“Better drop the invisibility thing, Harry,” Susan said. “What we’re looking for might be on a computer, so . . .”
“So I’ll hold off on the magic until we know. Got it.”
We went deeper into the facility. The caves ran very deep back into the stone, and we’d gone down maybe a hundred yards after moving about four hundred yards forward on a spiraling ramp. The air grew colder, to the ambient underground average.
More than that, though, it gained a definite spiritual chill. Malevolent energy hovered around us, slow and thick like half-frozen honey. There was a gloating, miserly quality to it, bringing to my mind images of old Smaug lying in covetous slumber upon his bed of treasure. That, then, was the reason the Red Court had hidden its dark treasures here. Ambient energy like this wasn’t directly dangerous to anyone—but with only the mildest of efforts it would protect and preserve the magical implements jealously against the passing of time.
The ramp opened up into a larger area that reminded me of the interior corridors of a sports stadium. Three doors faced us. One was hanging slightly open, and read, QUARTERS. The other was shut and read, ADMINISTRATION.
The last, a large steel vault door, was labeled, STORAGE. A concrete loading dock with its edges painted in yellow and black caution stripes stretched before us, doubtless at just the right height to make use of the large transport van parked nearby.
Oh, and there were two guards standing in front of the vault door with some hostile-looking black shotguns.
Susan didn’t hesitate. She blurred forward with nearly supernatural speed, and one of the guards was down before he realized he was in a fight. The other had already spun toward me with his weapon and opened fire. In his rush to shoot, he
hadn’t aimed. People make a big thing about shotguns hitting absolutely everything you point them at, but it ain’t so. It still takes considerable skill to use a shotgun well under pressure, and in his panic the guard didn’t have it. Pellets buzzed around me like angry wasps as I took three swift steps to my left and threw myself through the open barracks door, carrying me out of his line of fire.
From outside, there was a crack of something hard, maybe the butt of a gun hitting a skull, and Susan said, “Clear.”
I came out of the emptied barracks nonchalantly. The two guards lay unconscious at Susan’s feet. “God, I’m good,” I said.
Susan nodded, and tossed both guns away from the unconscious men. “Best distraction ever.”
I went to her and eyed the door. “How we getting through that?”
“We aren’t,” she said. She produced a small kit of locksmith tools and went to the administration door, ignoring the vault completely. “We don’t need their treasures. We just need the receipts.”
I’d learned a little bit about how to tickle a lock, but Susan had obviously learned more. Enough so that she took one look at the lock, pulled a lock gun from her kit, and went through it damned near as fast as if she’d had a key. She swung the door open and said, “Wait here. And don’t break anything.”
I put my hands behind my back and tried to look righteous. A smile lit her face, fast and fierce, and she vanished into the office.
I walked over to the barracks. My guns had been riding with the rest of my contraband when it got buried in Lea’s garden, and I didn’t like going unarmed on general principles. Magic is pretty damned cool when things get rowdy, but there are times when there’s no replacing a firearm. They are excellent, if specialized, tools.
Two seconds of looking around showed me a couple of possibilities, and I picked up a big semiautomatic and a couple of loaded clips. I tucked them into a pocket of the duster. Then I picked up the assault rifle from its rack and found that two spare magazines were being held in this socklike device that went over the rifle’s stock.
Rifles weren’t my forte, but I knew enough to check the chamber and see that no round was in it. I made sure the safety was on and slung the assault rifle over my shoulder on its nylon-weave strap. Then I went back over to administration and waited outside.
Susan was cursing in streaks of blue and purple and vermilion inside. She appeared a moment later and spat, “Nothing. Someone was here first. They erased everything related to the shipment less than three hours ago.”
“What about the paper copy?” I asked.
“Harry,” Susan said. “Have you ever heard of the paperless office?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s like Bigfoot. Someone says he knows someone who saw him, but you don’t ever actually see him yourself.” I paused. “Though I suppose I actually have seen Bigfoot, and he seems like a decent guy, but the metaphor still stands. Remember who owns this place. You think someone like the duchess is a computer whiz? Trust me. You get to be over a couple of hundred years old, you get copies of everything in triplicate.”
Susan arched an eyebrow and nodded. “Okay. Come on, then.”
We went in and ransacked the office. There were plenty of files, but we had the identification number of the shipment of magical artifacts (000937, if it matters), and it was possible to flick through them very rapidly. We came up all zeroes, again. Whoever had covered up the back trail had done it well.
“Dammit,” Susan said quietly. Her voice shook.
“Easy,” I said. “Easy. We aren’t out of options yet.”
“This was the only lead we had,” she said.
I touched her arm briefly and said, “Trust me.”
She smiled at me a little. I could see the strain in her eyes.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before the cavalry arrives. Oh, here.” I passed her the assault rifle.
“That’s thoughtful of you,” she said, smiling more widely. Her hands went over the weapon, checking the chamber as I had, only a lot more smoothly and quickly. “I didn’t get you anything.”
I turned and eyed the moving van, then went back to its cargo doors. “Here. Open this door for me?”
She got out her tools and did it in less time than it took to say it.
There were several long boxes in the van, standing vertically, and I realized after a moment that they were garment boxes. I opened one up and . . .
And found a long, mantled cloak made from some kind of white and green feathers, hanging from a little crossbar in the top of the garment box. It was heavy, easily weighing more than fifty pounds. I found a stick studded with chips of razor-sharp obsidian in there, too, its handle carved with pictographs. I couldn’t read this particular form of writing very well, but I recognized it—and recognized that it was no ancient artifact, either. It had been carved in the past few decades.
“This is Mayan ceremonial costume,” I murmured, frowning. “Why is it loaded up on the next truck out . . . ?”
The answer jumped at me. I turned to Susan and we traded a look that conveyed her comprehension as well. She went to the front of the van and popped it open. She started grabbing things, shoving them into a nylon gym bag that she had apparently found in the truck.
“What did you get?” I asked.
“Later, no time,” she said.
We hurried back up the ramp to Martin.
The big door looked like it was having a tug-of-war with itself. It would shudder and groan and try to rise, and then Martin would do something with a pair of wires in the dismantled control panel and it would slam down again. I saw guards trying to stick their guns beneath the door for a quick shot, but they wound up being driven back by Martin’s silenced pistol.
“Finally,” Martin said as we came up to him. “They’re about to get through.”
“Damn,” I said. “I figured they’d be firefighting longer than that.” I looked around the barren tunnel. I was tired and shaking. If I were fresh, I would have no trouble with the idea of slugging it out with a bunch of guys with machine guns—provided they were all in front of me. But I was tired, and then some. The slightest wavering in concentration, and a shield would become porous and flexible. I’d be likely to take a bunch of bullets. The duster might handle most of them, but not forever, and I wasn’t wearing it over my head.
“Plan B,” I said. “Okay, right. We need a plan B. If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”
Susan let out a puff of laughter, and then I turned to her, my eyes alight.
“We have a great big truck,” Susan said.
“Then why didn’t you list that among our assets?” I said, in a bad British accent. “Go!”
Susan vanished back down the tunnel, moving scary-fast.
“Martin,” I said. “Get behind me!”
He did, as I lifted my left arm and brought up a purely physical shield, and within five or six seconds, the door had lifted two feet off the ground and a couple of prone shooters opened up on the first thing they saw—me.
I held the shield against the bullets as the door continued to rise, and they exploded into concentric circles of light spread across the front of the shield’s otherwise invisible surface. The strain of holding the shield grew as more of the guards opened fire. I saw one poor fellow take a ricochet in the belly and go down, but I didn’t have the time or the attention to spare to feel sorry for him. I ground my teeth and hung on to the shield as the guards kept a constant pressure on it.
Then there was a roar of large engines and Susan drove the cargo truck forward like some kind of berserk bison, charging the group of guards blocking the road out.
Men screamed and sprinted, trying to avoid the truck. They made it. I didn’t need Martin to tell me to move, as the truck slammed into a turn, throwing its rear end in a deadly, skidding arch. We both sprinted for it in the confusion and flung ourselves up into the cargo compartment, which Susan had thoughtfully left open.
One of
the more alert guards tried the same trick, but Martin saw him coming, aimed the little pistol, and shot him in the leg. The man screamed and fell down as the truck picked up speed. Susan stomped the pedal flat, and metal and razor wire screamed as she drove through a section of the fencing and out onto the open valley floor. She immediately turned it toward our escape point, and the truck began to bounce and rattle as it raced away from the facility.
After that, it was simple.
We went back to our ascension point, drank our watered-down flying potions, and bounded up the rocky face of the valley wall like mountain goats. Or possibly squirrels. Either way, it made the eighty-degree incline feel about as difficult to handle as a long stairway.
“Harry,” Susan said, panting, as we reached the top. “Would you burn that truck for me?”
“My pleasure,” I said, and dealt with the cargo truck the same way I had the cars in the parking lot. Thirty seconds later, it huffed out its own explosion, and Susan stood there nodding.
“Okay,” she said. “Good. Hopefully that makes it harder for them to do whatever they’re going to do.”
“What did you find?” Martin asked.
“Mayan ceremonial gear,” I said. “Not focus items, but the other stuff. The props. They were on the truck to be shipped out next.”
Susan rustled in the nylon bag and held up a sheet of paper. “Bill of lading,” she said. “Shipment number 000938. The next outgoing package after the original shipment, and it was initiated two days after the focus items went out.”
Martin narrowed his eyes, thinking. “If it was going to the same place as the first shipment . . .”
“It means that we can make a pretty good guess that wherever it’s going, it’s within two days’ drive,” I said. “That gives the vampires time enough to get the first shipment, realize that some things got left out, and call in a second shipment to bring in the missing articles.”
Martin nodded. “So? Where are they?”