Full Moonster

by Nick Pollota

  “Then we agree it is the key to this whole matter?” Raul asked, leaning on his wand.

  The chief gave him a stare to wilt flowers on wallpaper. “Was there ever any doubt?"

  “Sir! Anti-yes. Sir!"

  Having dealt with mages before, Gordon was unruffled. “Anyway, General MacAdams and the Phoenix team have been split in half. One section positioned near Cheyenne Mountain, in case the Scion try to infiltrate the base and start a nuclear war."

  “And the other half?” I asked.

  “Is currently at Camp David with the President. In case the Scion has any ideas of taking the boss hostage and offering his life in exchange for the Army destroying Chicago."

  My temples started to throb. Ye God, what a devious mind the chief had. But then, that's why he was in charge.

  “Who does that leave to guard headquarters?” Mindy asked bluntly, tucking throwing stars up her sleeve.

  Gordon looked at her without an expression. “Us,” he replied.

  That took a minute to sink in.

  “It's here?” I gasped, glancing around. “You moved Bureau HQ from wherever it had been to here?” I had trouble getting the words out of my mouth.

  “Saints preserve us man, are you mad?” Donaher demanded in a booming voice.

  All conversations stopped in the room and J. P. Withers started our way like an express train from Hell.

  “The purpose of the Bureau is to guard American citizens,” Horace Gordon stated coldly. “Our HQ has many devices and weapons which cannot safely or quickly be removed from the ... place that we used to occupy."

  “So you moved the whole base to exactly where the enemy thinks it is, so that we can better guard Chicago?"

  He seemed surprised at our reactions. “Of course. Contingency plans have been prepared in case we all die. But the best hope we have of not dying is to hit the Scion with everything we have."

  “And that includes me,” Withers whispered, a cold breeze moving silently around the man. He stood near, but not close to us, both of his hands tucked in pockets and the same cigarette smoldering away at the same length.

  Waving at the smoky air, Jessica gave a delicate cough. “Do you mind extinguishing that, please?” she asked politely.

  J.P. Withers stared at my wife and, for a second, I thought he was going to kill her. I started to swing the barrel of the Barret.

  “If it accommodates you, madam,” he relented. Drawing the smoldering butt into his mouth, he chewed for a moment and swallowed, wisps of smoke coming out his ears.

  Hoo boy.

  Carrying an Uzi, a centaur in a flak jacket galloped by and tossed a folder towards the chief. “Sir, report on the Idaho!” he said, then galloped away.

  Horace made the catch and flipped to page one. “Hmm, G2 reports the attackers as large muscular men with weird faces. They seemed to be almost bulletproof until the sailors and SEALS used our new plasma rounds. Henderson!"

  A young man appeared from nowhere. “Sir!"

  “Have somebody go check on any unusually large purchases of Nair, or other hair-removing solutions within the past week. Apparently, the werewolves are depilating themselves to hinder identification and confuse the issue. However, if they used a credit card, we might be able to trace the owner in time."

  “Aye, and don't bother,” Donaher said, dismissing the matter with a wave.

  Both Gordon and Withers stared at him.

  “Five will get you ten, that the stuff was bought on cards taken from the corpses outside Hadleyville."

  “You could be correct, Father,” the chief admitted. “But it never hurts to check."

  “On it, chief,” the lad said, and he was gone. Poof.

  Running a hand over his crewcut, Gordon turned to stare at the ready boards on the four walls. Red lights pinpoint the city in a dozen locations showing the presence of a firefight or mysterious explosion. Normally, didn't have too many of those here. This wasn't New York.

  “Damn, but the Scion is good. Too good,” Horace acknowledged, then added softly. “By God, we just have to be better."

  Amen to that.

  “Alert,” a woman calmly announced while gesturing over her crystal ball. The medium was in a white turban and flowing burnoose in a Niagara pattern. And I do mean flowing. I could hear the water splash. “Somebody is beginning a spell of summoning in East Cicero."

  It was amazing that she was getting anything on the ball. Took a medium a long time to establish the proper rapport with the mystical crystal. These folks had just been teleported in from our sister organizations around the world: The Farm in England, Sunshine in Israel, The Sons of Van Helsing in United Germany, Department 9 in Russia, Fantasamique in France, and Wally's Spook Club in Australia.

  Gordon raised his wrist and spoke into his watch. It was larger than ours, more complex than ours, with a teenie-weenie TV screen and a printer. But then, he was the boss. “Roger's Rangers, there's a code three in East Cicero. Get the coordinates from Henderson."

  “Anytime, anywhere, mon Capitaine,” the watch said in stereo.

  In a puff of smoke, the group in the corner disappeared.

  “Alert,” an android called out from a satellite communications console. “FBI and the State Police are currently in hot pursuit of a tanker truck that has smashed through the barrier around the water purification plant in Joliet. Army has sent a flight of Apache helicopters to assist. Air Force Foxbats and Navy Tomcats are on route."

  “Peirpont!” Gordon snapped.

  An artificial man glanced from a radar console. “Sir?"

  “Watch that tanker. If it gets to within a hundred meters of the purification plant, have Finkelstein use some of our reserve magic and gate it to the Moon."

  “Say what?” chorused the whole room.

  Suddenly, Horace was very embarrassed. Damn well should be. Gate the werewolves to the Moon?

  “I meant that figuratively,” corrected our commander-and-chief gruffly, turning beet-red in the face. “Cast it into the corona of the sun. Any sun. Try for Betelgeuse, or Rigel."

  “Acknowledged!"

  “There's been an incident at the Grand Avenue ASPCA,” an elf technician reported, holding a receiver to his pointed ear. “Every dog and cat is gone."

  The screen on his board showed a detailed vector graphic of the downtown street corner. Interesting. The Bureau hadn't used combined technology and magic since the Atlantis incident, but I guess this was the time to pull out all the stops.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Gordon growled impatiently. He sat and a chair appeared underneath him. “Its just the Fringeworthy doing a pre-emptive strike."

  I couldn't stop myself from asking. “Who are they, sir?"

  He glared at me. “Beyond your security clearance, Ed."

  Did such a thing exist? Bummer.

  Tugging on the brim of his fedora, J.P. Withers lowered his hat until it completely covered his body, then touched the floor and was gone.

  “Alert!” another crystal ball gazer calmly announced. “SAC HQ has just ID'd a UFO high above I-80. Washington DC has NG'd a TNT ICBM, but OK'd a BZ-loaded SAM in an effort to KO the UFO."

  “Acknowledged,” Gordon snapped, loosening his collar.

  “What the hell was that?” Mindy asked confused.

  George got a sly expression. “Oh, just an initial report."

  I reached for my gun, but Jessica restrained me.

  “Later,” I promised.

  George blew a kiss.

  The centaur trotted close and stopped this time. “Sir, the King of the Sewers announces that all is normal in his domain."

  “Thank His Majesty for me,” Gordon said. “And ask him to please continue surveillance of the underworld."

  “Yes, sir."

  “Shaddup!” I barked at everybody.

  Although my brain was revving furiously, in some distant section of my mind I could vaguely discern that although Gordon was shocked at the behavior, he accepted it.

  “Sir?
” I started hesitantly.

  “Okay, what is it, Alvarez?” There was the unspoken promise that is better be good, or I'd be guarding the Haunted House at Disneyland for the rest of my life.

  “When we fought the Scion years ago in New York, and just recently in Ohio, they used Mack trucks, or tractor-trailer assemblies to haul weapons around."

  “If you got a point make it,” he said, crumlping a sheet of paper and tossing it into a wastebasket, where it flared into ash.

  “The Chicago underground,” I said succinctly.

  Faces cleared in comprehension. When the City Council of 1871 was rebuilding Chicago after the great fire, they had a brilliant idea. The underground. Not to be confused with the underworld of which we had more than enough, thank you. Summarily, it was decreed that trucks would not be allowed in downtown Chicago anymore. But in order that business could get their shipments, a subterranean copy of the main streets was built, so the trucks could deliver their goods directly to the basement of a building or store.

  However, since the trucking level was poorly illuminated at night and very isolated with few easy exits, the underworld was tailor-made for the Scion. Simply drive in a few hundred truckloads of explosives and blow up the city.

  Horace Gordon rubbed his chin. “Damnation, you could be right, Edwardo. Hey, ThunderBunnies!"

  “Sir!” a busty blonde vision of loveliness responded, loading an ammo clip into a portable M-35 mini-rocket launcher. The damn thing resembled a honeycomb with a trigger, or an old-fashioned pepperbox packed with high-tech firepower. Nasty thing. I owned two of them, myself.

  “Go check the undercity,” Gordon said, jerking a thumb at the wall map. “I'll send along a dozen or so black-and-whites and a squad of Green Berets to assist. The ID code is: Krakatoa. Response: Vesuvius."

  The blonde jacked her weapon into ready status and gave a dimpled smile. “Gotcha, sugar,” she purred and turned for the exit.

  Close behind followed the rest of the Thunderbunnies, similarly armed with Atchinson automatic shotguns, Heckler Koch G-11 caseless machine guns, O'Neil gauss rifles, and their exotic goody bag of lethal ironmongery.

  “Sir,” I objected. “Team Tunafish is perfectly ready to go."

  “Have a rest,” interrupted the chief. “The Bunnies are gone already. You've been on this from the start. Take the next hot spot."

  “Alert,” called out a voice. “There has been a perimeter breach at the Commonwealth Edison nuclear power station."

  “A China Syndrome,” growled George, slamming a fresh clip into his Colt .45 automatic.

  The dreaded China Syndrome scenario. A terrorist attempt to force a meltdown at the local nuclear reactor and smother Chicago in a deadly cloud of radioactive steam. A super Chernobyl! Yeah, sounded like something the Scion would go nuts over. Almost as good as nuking us, or poisoning the water supply. Thank God this wasn't Denver with a hundred billion gallons of Hoover Dam looming overhead.

  “Henderson!” Gordon bellowed. “Who do we have on ready status?"

  “Nobody, sir,” the young man answered from behind a humming array of laser printers hard-wired to a crystal ball. Hey, maybe that was how Wall Street stockbrokers controlled the market. “Macabees are out handling a disturbance at the City Armory, Angels are investigating a massive influx of burglar alarms at the Museum of Science and Industry."

  Horace grunted. “Accepted. Tunafish, get!"

  That ended our break. Hastily, we gathered supplies and I felt the first cold rush of adrenaline with the prospect of battle. Yet as I shouldered the massive Barret, I got a gut instinct felling that the attack on the museum was actually a greater threat to Chicago than the possible nuclear meltdown.

  How is that possible? Jessica asked.

  Neither my mind nor gut knew. Could another piece to the puzzle of the Scion have just dropped in our laps, only we were too busy to see it? What could the Scion of the Silver Dagger possibly want in the Museum? On the other hand, what couldn't you do with a warehouse full of technology and information?

  Hmm.

  Hmm.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  An express elevator reserved for Bureau teams took us down twelve hundred feet to the parking garage in the sub-basement. Moving fast, we chose an El Dorado stretch limousine; eight tons of armor plate, and bulletproof windows. Painted a non-reflective dead black with all of the chrome removed, while not quite as impressive as our old RV, the luxury car would blend into the surroundings better. Stay low and keep moving, that was my motto for the month.

  A huge pentagram had been spray painted on the corrugated steel of the garage door. As we approached, the design shimmered into a picture of the Eisenhower turnpike. With me at the wheel, we raced into the magical gateway and neatly merged with west-bound traffic. I don't think anybody even noticed us.

  At ninety miles per hour, we crashed through the flimsy toll barrier and rocketed along a secondary street, wildly zigzagging through traffic. Of course, we had wanted to teleport directly to the nuclear power station, but apparently defensive wards had been cast around the place, sealing it off from intrusion. Our mages were trying to batter down the mystical jamming, but in the meantime we readied our weapons and put the pedal to the metal.

  Taking another side road, we hurtled into the country. Farms and crops gave way to weeds and forest. A few miles later, the limo moved past the minor obstruction of some yellow rubber cones and we found ourselves facing a more formidable barrier: a roaring assortment of dump trucks, steamrollers, graders, mixers, generators, and the supremely important coffee wagon.

  I slowed at the approach of a large burly woman in faded denims, a sweaty work shirt, and an unbreakable plastic yellow hardhat. However, there was a suspicious bulge by her right ankle, almost exactly the correct shape and position for a .22 automatic pistol. The preferred weapon for undercover police officers.

  “Road's closed, mack,” she yelled. “You got to circle round and take Hinkle Road."

  Bringing the limo to a halt, Jessica and I exchanged smiles. It was a good lie. There was no such street as Hinkle and you couldn't circle round. Just trying would get anybody hopelessly lost. Which should deter any sane person, maybe even news reporters. But then I noticed the nervous look on many of the operators’ faces, and that two had fresh bandages on their throats and legs.

  The Scion had been here.

  As the annoyed foreperson stopped outside my door, I gave the woman a fast once-over with my sunglasses. Through the Kirlian-sensitive lenses I could see that her aura was human. The matter had never really been in doubt, but when on assignment, it's better to take nothing for granted. The ancient Scottish saying of, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ only earned you a coffin in the Bureau.

  With fingertip pressure, I hit the button to lower the slab of Armorlite which served us as a window.

  She frowned. “Hey, jerk. I told you to scram."

  “Cerberus,” I said.

  She paused. “Horatio."

  “Balder."

  Nodding, the foreman placed two fingers into her mouth and gave a sharp whistle. In ragged harmony, the motors of the trucks and graders started with a roar, and the construction equipment dutifully parted to form a slim passageway between their massed tonnage. Taking it slow, I eased the limo through the leviathan gauntlet and moved on down the road.

  A few miles later was a squad of state police cars in a standard broken H pattern blocking the road. Maybe fifty cops were present, a good dozen of them in full SWAT uniforms of flak jackets, combat helmets, and holding M-16 rifles. Even the K9 Corp was present, hard-muscled German shepherds walking in tight formation at the heels of their human partners. There was even a bomb disposal truck and a waiting ambulance. Wooden sawhorses adorned with flashing red lights completed the ensemble of authority.

  On the berm were four smashed police cars that resembled the losers in a demolition derby. One had windows coated with something red. I decided not to look too
closely.

  Stepping in the middle of the roadway, a ton of muscle in a state trooper's uniform held out a palm to stop our approach. The other hand rested ominously on the scarred butt of his HK 9mm. Lowering the window, I extended an arm through the opening to display my commission booklet.

  He was properly unimpressed. “Thanks for coming, but we already captured the escaped prisoners."

  “Cerberus,” I stated impatiently.

  His eyes narrowed. “Horitio."

  “Balder."

  There was a pause and he moved towards the HK.

  “Right,” I hastily added, and he relaxed. Whew. Different checkpoints, different codes.

  Removing his hand from the proximity of his gun, the officer took the mike from his shoulder rest and chatted for a few seconds. Three of the four cars in the H moved out of our way. In passing, it was plain that forth would never go anywhere again except the junkyard.

  “What hit these guys?” George asked frowning.

  Jessica was vague. “Somewhere between forty and fifty enemy troops in bulletproof fur coats."

  “Bulletproof!” Father Donaher cried, touching his cross. “You mean the new plasma bullets didn't stop the werewolves?"

  Holding the amulet of her necklace, Jessica listened to secret thoughts. “The rounds haven't arrived yet. Too many delivery points and only so many people who can be spared to do the task."

  “Swell,” I muttered, stomping on the gas. “Just swell."

  The road went serpentine for a mile, probably a landscaping ruse to help hide the evil power plant from rabid environmentalists, and then straightened. Now facing us were four mammoth Abrams tanks, their gigantic 120mm cannon lowered to exactly car height. The colossal military machines were backed by mobile artillery, TOW missile launchers, howitzers with crates of linked 40mm shells standing open and ready for immediate use, .50 machine guns, bazooka teams, Bradley Assault vehicles, and dozens of Hummers with stanchion mounted 10mm electric mini-guns.

  I hit the brakes.

  Wounded troops were everywhere. Stumbling towards the waiting medical choppers with the help of a friend, or lying on stretchers and moaning in pain. Spent shell casing covered the ground like brass snow, and the charred wreckage of two Apache helicopters lay partially hidden in the weeds.