“Sacramental Priority falls to Prince. This mission is about him. Secondary extractions on any other enemy Heaters or Flyers is authorized only after target Prince has been secured and has cleared the extraction zone. Good luck and God speed gentlemen. Let us pray.”
Again, Peni was puzzled by the religious slant to their covert operations team. He listened through the static as the man called Deacon recited the Lord’s Prayer. It didn’t sound right, metallic like that.
Peni was the only one who didn’t say Amen at the end of it. The pilot’s hands flitted as he crossed himself behind the toggles.
Killer altar boys.
After the prayer, the headsets went silent, and each man settled in to his own thoughts. The desert below them was brighter now. Heat from their engine wash battled with the Nevada sun for dominance.
The dry air was more bearable up high, off the scorched blacktop of the runway. Peni still wondered at how anyone had chosen to settle in such an inhospitable place.
Ufa, gamblers.
Already he missed the islands, where it was breezy and he could smell the surf. It was green there.
Here, it appeared as if the rainbow had been cut away, leaving only shades of brown, yellow, and the occasional pink. No green.
His thoughts turned again to the mission that he’d been press-ganged into. Life had always had ways of twisting strange things into his path, but this was crazy, even for him.
What he lacked in formal training, Peni thought he well made up for in common sense and old-fashioned toughness. In younger years, he’d done some very stupid things. But today, this, was a suicide mission.
Their target, “Prince” Deacon had called him, was one of the most recognizable people on the planet. Peni didn’t doubt that he was the enemy, but they had all seen the broadcasts and been briefed on the crowd that he’d gathered around him and his tower. “Enemy flyers” and “heaters” and “secondary targets” all boiled down to one thing.
Backup.
Hunter Valdez, alias Prince, the target Peni and his team were charged with kidnapping- had a lot of manpower.
What would the odds be? Ten to one? A hundred to one?
Probably worse.
He looked again at the men who would be watching his back. They cradled their guns easily, handled them with familiarity. Peni half reassured himself that they were well-trained, and tough. Not to mention a significant amount of years younger than him. A persistent sense of dread wrapped itself around one simple fact. These men were strangers to him, and he to them.
Peni sighed and rubbed his knuckles together.
It was not going to be a pleasant morning.
Las Vegas, Nevada
The odds were worse than he’d thought.
Even from a great distance, the mass of humanity gathered at Babel bore visible weight.
Peni half expected to hear Deacon’s voice come crackling over the headset and call off the whole exercise.
Instead, all that could be heard was the muffled whump whump whump of the chopper blades rushing them all toward danger.
The helicopters flew in pods of three.
A reinforcement of eight gunships joined them en route. As they roared between the spires and shining windows of Las Vegas’s playland architecture, Peni wondered if the enemy expected them.
Looming in the morning sun, growing rapidly, the tower’s smooth sides were a mirrored black. Down near the street level they reflected dull grayish doppelgangers of the neighboring buildings. Higher, the blackness was more complete, absorbing the sunlight almost.
Scenes of makeshift camps and tent cities put together by people whose homes or apartments or even whole neighborhoods had been rendered useless by the disasters surrounding the changes had been all over the news for many days now. Cameras would focus in on the dirty parts, the trash heaps and problematic latrines. To Peni, the images were reminiscent of the old commercials that asked donations for starving African kids.
There was a tent city at Babel too. But this one, at least from a distance, didn’t appear at all makeshift or dirty. The bivouacs and Quonset huts were arranged in tight rows, with rings of what looked like sandbags laid in neat perimeter lines. The whole scene bore an unsettling resemblance to a military encampment.
Perhaps Deacon had underestimated their foe.
There were so many.
On the ground, Peni’s new eyes dissected a beehive of activity. A whole throng set to scrambling by the sound and appearance of the approaching choppers.
Thunder sounded as they bore down toward Babel’s outer courtyards. The mirrored windows and neon marquees of lesser casinos and hotels rattled in the violent breeze stirred by whirring turbines.
What few civilians still braved the wild streets could be seen ducking behind cars and scurrying back to doorways as the helicopters stirred the garbage in the gutters, whipping up smashed straws and half glass bottles into mini-projectiles.
Peni was reminded of old movies he’d seen as a boy. The post-apocalyptic types where roving bands of vampiric scavengers and Mel Gibson-led rebels would battle one another for slim resources.
It was a frightening notion, that the infrastructure of modern America had reached a state of near-collapse in only a couple of weeks.
A lone man –dressed in the ragged mismatched uniform of homelessness- stood directly in the middle of the street with his shopping cart full of goods and saluted the soldiers as they thundered overhead. Behind his beard, a mad mouth moved.
Peni wondered what he had to say.
His attention returned to the matter at hand as the first sharp sounds of gunfire reached his super-human ears. Below, between the rows of tents, a force was gathering. They gestured and pointed. A surprising number of them held rifles. Not just held them, but pointed them in the direction of the invading choppers. Muzzle flashes were difficult to see in the harsh light of the Vegas morning, but the bullets flew all the same. A round whanged off of the fuselage under Peni’s feet, and through his headset, he heard the order issued in a robotic voice.
“Contact! Return Fire”
The racket was incredible.
Even the howling prop turbines couldn’t compete with the violent resonance of gunfire in the close space of the helicopter’s passenger bay.
Monks gritted their teeth and sighted down barrels with both eyes open. Three-shot bursts marched across the marble and concrete patterns of the tower courtyards. Lead and burning exhaust poisoned the air. Hot wind made all that much hotter.
More shots pinged off of the helicopter’s armor.
The rounds fired by Peni’s companions ricocheted far less often.
Instead they tore tiny vicous holes in the chests and limbs and heads of the guerilla fighters below. Men and women collapsed like marionettes with cut strings. Some of them gasped and writhed. Others, the ones head-shot, simply slumped and lay still as their own red blood pooled beneath them.
Peni had seen people die before. It was no less unpleasant each time though.
More orders were issued, crackled words only half attended-to through the roaring chaos. Finally a few key words broke through and Peni was roused into action.
“Flyers are go.”
He didn’t think, he didn’t hesitate, knowing enough to realize that those things would only slow the mission and allow fear to build in him and the others. If one of the bullets whizzing through the air was meant for him, so be it.
Peni launched himself out of the open bay, arms spread in a swan dive posture. Free-fall pulled him away from the copter instantly.
He let the air buffet his face. Then he flexed something, and the wings that he counted on were there, carrying him smoothly toward the tower. The encampment below erupted again, more shouts.
More gunfire.
Now the hail of bullets came at him; and the score of others like him.
The ‘Flyers’ had orders to stay close to their KC escorts, and the covering fire provided. Peni dove directly beneath th
e chopper he had just vacated.
A cluster of six quick-made guerillas knelt on one of the walkways leading to the doors of Babel.
They fired inexpertly at the aircraft and at him. He felt heat, and once, a tugging sensation at his wing. Orders be damned, Peni dismissed the idea of hovering beneath a helicopter and waiting to be shot.
Like a wrecking ball, he tore through the center of the group. The three that didn’t scatter were left broken and unconscious. The others dove out of his way, spinning again to send bullets chasing after him. Peni flew on, driving for the tower’s first ring of balconies.
Monks aboard the escort copters continued to fire into the crowds. The harsh sulphuric stink of spent shells now mingled with the coppery tang of blood. Wind drove the foul mix up into Peni’s nostrils.
Despite his years of crime -of hurting others and being hurt himself- he had never seen anything like this.
All around, bodies that had seconds before been people lay spreading their fluids across the ground. To his left, one of the other Angels went down clutching her stomach. Swarms of enemy ground forces moved frantically to engulf her. Her support team responded immediately, snaking a black rope down out of the helicopter. Even as the weighted end chunked heavily onto the bloody concrete, a soldier zipped down like a firemen on a pole. Belaying himself with one hand and firing suppressing rounds with the other, he landed next to the woman’s prone form, trying in vain to avoid tromping her feathers underfoot.
The dark stain on her stomach looked wet, thick.
The black-clad rescuer shouldered his weapon to scoop her up. He threw her over his shoulder and turned back to the rope, where a clip harness waited that would whisk both of them back up into the relative safety of the copter.
Peni couldn’t hear anything over the chatter of gunfire and weighty beat of the chopper turbines, but he could almost feel the agonized screams emanating from his gut-shot comrade.
He prayed the pair would make it back aboard the chopper, but could no longer offer his attention.
The balconies where he headed were now filling with resistance. Milling enemies equipped with more weapons.
Worse, some of them mounted the hand rails and launched themselves into the heated morning air. Dark wings, like ink stains in the sky, carried them out from the tower. There were many more of them than Peni had expected, so many more than the handful that made up the assault team.
He gritted his teeth at the odds, swooping upward to meet the first wave of them.
Two came for him.
Shirtless and sweating, they dove toward Peni with wicked intent. He dodged the first, and crashed headlong into the other. They locked arms and tumbled at breakneck speed toward the unforgiving pavement. With a grunt, Peni shoved against the other man’s slick chest to create space between them. The small opening was enough, and he beat his immense wings once, gaining just enough purchase on the turbulent air to halt his own downward momentum. He reached out both hands to clinch his enemy’s head and drove a wide knee into the grimacing face, letting gravity do the work. The Fallen soul lost consciousness and slipped away. Lax maroon wings offered little help as a parachute.
Peni could hear just the hint of crunching bone as his opponent crashed to the ground.
No time for gloating though, more and more of the enemy flyers cluttered the breezy skies.
Peni and his friends were called Angels by some, and these others, with their dark, muddy-hued wings, looked very much like their opposite.
Demons, or Gargoyles.
They shouted and gestured with frantic, angry purpose. Their eyes shone wet with rage and cunning. They stank and sweat and bled in the hard morning. Peni fought upward through them. They spit in his face and swore at him, and he gritted his teeth at them and tore their wings.
With frightening precision, his new friends aboard the helos picked off the airborne and grounded enemies. The Monks’ bullets helped to even the score, clearing a path for him through the sky and keeping the masses at bay.
A steady rain of broken glass cascaded down the sides of the enormous black tower as the mirrored black windows were chewed to bits.
Peni saw at least three of the Angels go down, under gunfire or to the overwhelming arms and teeth of the swarming enemy. Their passings were illuminated by a strange ethereal light.
A disturbing number of the opposing force lay twitching and bleeding for their trouble. Within Peni’s line of sight, on the ground or the balconies, scrambling mercenaries slipped and crashed in the slicks of blood left by their fallen comrades. Many more lay scattered beyond his peripheral.
Still, Peni and his invaders were on the verge of being overwhelmed by the sheer number and fearless ferocity of the enemy. They swelled beneath and all around in dark masses of sweat and focused hatred.
A twinge of doubt picked its way into his mind when he saw the first Blackhawk go down.
It didn’t explode as the blades scored deep gouges into the marble and concrete courtyard of the tower. Instead, the fuel tank ruptured and gouted a slick of flaming liquid. The crew of Monks aboard went running like scarecrow candles, engulfed in orange flame. Cruelly, the flying Demons chased them and taunted their last moments. The Angel assigned their chopper swung back to help, and was set alight himself. His wings burned quickly, reduced to ash by the heat. Still, he ran after the chopper pilot and tried to smother the flames that danced all across the man’s back and legs. They rolled away from the burning fuel, but it was too late for the pilot.
Peni wondered how far the saving power he and the others possessed could be stretched as he watched the man whose wings were now just burned stumps collapse in a heap.
Lying still, he looked more charcoal than person. A wink of circular light appeared above his head, illuminating the inevitability of his passing all the more clearly.
Peni talked himself out of going to his erstwhile companion. It was too late.
He had a job to do.
Babel.
Wheeling wide and moving as erratically as possible to make himself a difficult target, Peni dove to land on the tower.
A man with a handgun shot him at point blank range as he alighted on the first balcony.
An instant later the man’s jaw was torn away, shot by the support sniper aboard Peni’s helicopter. Brain and bone misted across the tower windows in a fine spray of gore.
The Monks were good.
Peni stole a glance back at the chopper that had carried him this far. All three of the soldiers stared intently back at him, fingers twitching on their triggers. They would follow him inside if they could.
He hadn’t given them enough credit. His own misgivings about going into battle with unfamiliar allies were unwarranted.
These men were soldiers, accustomed to personalizing their duties. Moreover, they were a special breed that appeared to be rooted in religion. Or at least in faith.
They prayed before battle, they put stock in miracles, and they fought with Angels.
These men believed in what they were doing. They believed in Peni and the others.
At the very least they’d held up their end of the deal. The Monks got him onto the tower in relative safety.
For the Monks, and all of the Sleepless Knights, this mission was much more dangerous than for their ‘Flyers’. Their margin of error was paper thin. A bullet wound for them was not just that, but a real threat to life.
With his own fresh wound stinging, and with fresh purpose, Peni battered his through two more defenders of Babel.
The way their flesh gave in to his assaults was unpleasantly familiar.
Balconies on this part of the tower were meant to be part of a restaurant. Inside, the dining room was furnished with heavy tables and ornate chairs, a Romanesque theme. He ducked through the doorway, while the ‘Clergy gunmen covered him, cutting down the enemies that moved to pursue.
Deacon had shown them all schematics during the mission briefing. Intricate and painstakingly detailed maps
of every shaft and duct and corridor inside the tower. Too much to memorize. Still, Peni knew where he had to go, and where he would find his target. There was really no need for maps or directions.
Valdez - their target- considered himself the king. In this castle, there was only one way to go to find the king.
Up.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Superheated air and molten glass chased Peni up the elevator shaft. The bazooka shell had surprised him. And barely missed blowing him in half..
Should have taken the stairs.
Lulled into a false sense of security by the relative tranquility he discovered once reaching Babel’s inner corridors -and thinking that the mercenaries and Fallen were all concentrating on the fight outside- Peni had made a considerable amount of noise wrenching the heavy glass doors off of an elevator car to gain access to the shaft. He had just climbed through the maintenance panel into the shaft’s inner workings when a pair of surly looking men in jeans and Babel t-shirts two sizes too small appeared at the end of the hall. One of them shouldered a mini-grenade air gun and unleashed an HG-86 at him.
The propelled grenade detonated just as he cleared the access hatch and leapt into the stale, greasy air of the vertical shaft. He rode the burning updraft as best he could.
The scalding breath of more launched ordinance burned his feet and melted the synthetic fibers of his pants, adding acrid stink to the already stuffy air. A stench like burning hair added to the morass. Burning feathers.
Peni outpaced the licking flames and strove upward until stop-springs and cable mounts appeared out of the darkness and he realized he couldn’t go up any further.
He’d passed so many levels, elaborate displays of art, wild animals, surrealist dreamscapes. It seemed as though there was no taste Babel didn’t cater to.
Still, his inner sense of direction had a hard time believing that this shaft had carried him all the way to the top. Through the thick glass walls, he could see ornate hallways of marble and doors. Endless, repetitive doors that cloned themselves again and again. Nothing else.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 33