Avenging Angel

by Frank Rich

  "I'll get changed," Tanya whispered, and retreated to the bathroom.

  Britt walked over to the table to look at all the weapons. "You know, Jake, there's a lot of innocent girls like Tanya all over the City."

  "I know of one or two," I said.

  "They need to be protected just like her." She picked up one of the Colt .45s.

  "That's my job," I said, seeing what she was getting at. "I'm not going to run out, Britt. I know what has to be done. Besides, I have my own score to settle."

  Britt stared at me until Tanya came out. She'd changed into a drab gray jumpsuit, but the makeup was still on. We sat at the table and went over my plan.

  Britt would come along in case Dash refused to expose himself until he was certain Britt was alive. She'd stay in the car until I personally came over and got her. After I got the drop on Dash, I'd squeeze names and information out of him. Then I'd execute him and take his money. We'd use the hundred thousand and Crawley's money to fund the resistance, and I'd assassinate the people revealed as key leaders by Dash. Simple and easy.

  "I want to help."

  I looked at the source of the voice. Tanya hadn't said a word until then. "No," I said flatly.

  "I'm not trying to be a hero, Jake. You don't know what's going to happen and you might need an extra gun."

  "Because I don't know what's going to happen is why you're not going," I said. "This is not a cowboy movie, and you're not a cowboy. People are going to get killed, and you're not going to be one of them. This is a dangerous game, and if you lose, you die."

  "That's why you need me there," she pressed.

  "That's why I don't want you there. I'm not going to have your death on my conscience." I leaned across the table and pointed a finger at her. "Do you realize how uncertain the afterlife is at this time? There are rumors flying around that God is stomping mortal souls like invading mice, that hell is amok with power-crazed sinners. And there's a crazy killer-evangelist out there with a gang of one hundred fanatics ready to rend you limb from spiritual limb!" I leaned back in my chair. "Believe me, your soul is much safer down here."

  "But if you lose down in that garage, it won't matter if I get killed anyway," Tanya pointed out. "If you lose, I'll die by nerve gas, food poisoning, or roundups later. I could help you win."

  I slapped my hand on the table. "N-O spells no." A fly buzzed around in the silence.

  Britt's soft voice pushed the quiet aside. "She's right, Jake, and you know it. We need all the help we can get. Quit trying to be the Lone Ranger."

  "But I am the lone Ranger."

  "I'll be Tonto!" Tanya volunteered.

  I covered my face with my hands. How could I argue against logic like that? "All right," I said. "But on two conditions. First, you do everything I tell you to do, and…" I handed her a pile of black cloth"…you wear this."

  Tanya eyed the cloth. "What's that?"

  "It's spider-silk body armor. A bulletproof vest."

  She took the vest and inspected it. "Okay."

  "Put it on under a jacket so they don't see you're wearing it and aim for your head."

  She nodded. "Are you going to wear one?"

  I shook my head.

  "Why?"

  "Because," Britt explained, "he thinks he's protected by God."

  "That's right," I affirmed.

  "He's shooting his way to Heaven," Britt went on. "He kills people so they can deliver his messages to Jehovah."

  "No, I like to think the people I kill go to hell," I said. "But you're fundamentally correct. My friend Moses Perry says everybody has their own way of getting close to God. For some it's prayer, for others it's celibacy and suffering. For Moses it's getting tanked on cheap wine. For me it's liberating the souls of the misguided. It's not necessarily right — it's just the way it is. I'm God's hit man."

  Britt regarded me silently for a minute. "Sometimes I think you're serious."

  I smiled and winked at her. "Sometimes so do I."

  Tanya said, "Is this Moses guy the same one who's leading the wino crusade today?"

  "The very same. In fact, it's already started. We'll have to allow time for the detour." I checked my chrono. It was a quarter to two. "I want to get there early, so we better get going."

  27

  The ruin of the Sundowner Hotel was at the other end of Hayward, which made for a long drive. I decided to take Hayward for as far as it would allow. Unlike well-maintained and libertine Hayward, Marshall and all the other north-south avenues were rife with militia checkpoints and potholes. I also wanted to see how the crusade was progressing.

  We cruised down Hayward with the top down, Britt and I in the front and Tanya stretched out in back. The clouds were breaking up, and the sun peeked through. A trail of smashed bottles and passed-out winos marked the passing of the crusade. As we got closer to the ragged formation, more and more of the fallen faithful lay sprawled in the street. I steered around them, accelerating when I hit clear patches. Ten minutes later we caught sight of the rear of the march two hundred meters ahead. I stayed on Hayward even though gangs of stragglers made for slow going. Some of the winos gave us the mean eye, but I knew the really militant crusaders were all at the front of the pack. We crept within one hundred meters from my office.

  "Take a side road," Britt commanded.

  "I want to drive by my office and check something. We have time."

  We moved at walking speed. Five minutes later we came abreast of the wino saint, and I stopped the car and looked up at the windows of my office. They were intact, which meant I hadn't received a visit or they'd somehow gotten around the grenades. I felt disappointed.

  Something caught my eye. I wasn't sure at first because the sun blinded me. I closed my eyes for a moment, then looked again. Tiny black specks were moving in the sky from the west. I asked for my binoculars, and Britt handed them from the glove box. I turned them to the sky.

  "Bird-watching?" Britt asked.

  "You could say that," I said. I focused the binos, and the black specks became black shapes. I dropped the binos into my lap and threw the Olds into Reverse. The tires squealed, and I twisted my body to look behind me, maneuvering around lurching winos. When I shot past an intersection I slammed on the brakes, geared into Drive, then hurtled down the side street. The car fishtailed and threw equipment around in the backseat but held the road. I patted the dash affectionately. The karma was right.

  "Hey!" Tanya yelled from the backseat. "What's going on?"

  "He's just trying to impress us with his driving prowess," Britt said, holding on to the door as we swerved down another side street. "One of those male ego things."

  I spared each of the girls a glance. "Is it working?"

  "No!" they shouted in unison.

  "Fine, then," I said, and pulled over in front of a house five blocks off Hayward with a shriek of rubber. I jumped onto the hood and scanned the sky with the binos. I found the shapes moving toward Hayward. I could just barely hear them, like the distant buzzing of insects.

  "What's that noise?" Tanya asked.

  "Rotor blades," Britt said. "Helicopters."

  "A special kind of helicopter," I added. "They're AH-90 attack machines. You can tell by the high-pitched jet whine in the background."

  A line formation of eight AH-90s formed above the south end of Hayward, not far from where Tanya lived, hovering thirty meters above the rooftops like a cluster of dragonflies. One started moving down Hay ward, and the others followed in single file toward the rear of the fifth great wino crusade, their sleek insectlike profiles made obese by rocket pods. I couldn't see the crusaders for the buildings, but when the choppers got within what I estimated to be a half kilometer from the tail of the crusade, the pilots kicked in the jets and the aircraft screamed toward their prey.

  "They're attacking the crusade!" Tanya yelled.

  The stuttering whoosh of hundreds of rockets leaving their pods lashed the air, trailed closely by the static thunder of explosions.
<
br />   "They're murdering them!" Tanya added, her voice disbelieving.

  "No, they're depopulating them," Britt corrected.

  "Aren't we going to do something?" Tanya said, and I knew she was addressing me.

  "Not much we can do," I said without taking my eyes from the binos. "Except provide them with another target."

  The attack helicopters made two more rocket passes then a goodbye pass with speedguns, electric Gatling guns that churned out six thousand rounds a minute. Raking the wounded no doubt. Then they clattered away and the show was over.

  Nobody said anything until we'd driven ten blocks down side streets. I wondered if the reclamation vans had moved in yet.

  "Well," I said. "It would appear they've decided to skip the subtleties and move right into open slaughter."

  "But why?" Tanya asked numbly from the backseat.

  "It was too good of an opportunity to pass up," I conjectured. "I mean, here was a chance to get rid of most of the City's winos in one big ka-bang. That's what the plan is all about, weeding out the unproductives. Winos aren't known for their productivity."

  "I think it was a statement, too," Britt said. 'To let everyone know they're not fooling around this time."

  "Besides, who's going to care that they wiped out a bunch of tramps?" I added. "Not too many people in the City. No one in the burbs. They're liquidating one element at a time, like the Nazis did in the 1930s."

  "There were Nazis back then?" Tanya asked.

  "They've been around for a long time. And now they are coming back in style." Above Hayward, columns of black smoke twisted their way into a patchwork sky, and I looked at them thoughtfully. "It's funny."

  "What's funny?" Tanya asked.

  "When I talked to Moses the other day. He told me he was going to take his people all the way to the end this time, all the way to the promised land. I'd thought he'd meant to the end of Hayward, but he hadn't meant that at all. I think he knew this was going to happen, maybe that's what the Lord told him. When he said the promised land, he meant Heaven." I looked at columns of smoke lifting to the clouds. "I hope they made it."

  28

  Whenever I looked at the area around Dostoyevski and Hayward, the word forsaken always sprang to mind. A fire had swept through the area over a decade ago during the anarchy that had followed the corporate collapse, razing four square blocks. Since then, no one had seen fit to rebuild the area or even clean it up. One of the more prominent victims of the blaze was the Sundowner Hotel, once the largest and grandest hotel in the City. Prime Minister Joe Strummer of Great Britain had stayed there once, back when men followed different flags.

  Now it didn't look so grand. Four stories of compacted rubble still stood above ground, but the other eight stories had taken a dive onto the south lawn. On the north side, the entrance to the underground garage had been left relatively unblocked. On Friday and Saturday nights the garage's four levels served as a sinister lover's lane for the young and daring, with representatives from a local gang charging a toll for entry. At three o'clock Tuesday afternoon the place was deserted.

  I parked just inside the garage entrance and walked back outside with Tanya, carrying the binos, shotgun and demolition bag.

  She watched as I squeezed two kilos of plastic explosive into a long fissure in the concrete overhead support beam of the garage's entrance. I pushed electrical primers attached to radio receivers into the glob of claylike explosive. The explosion wouldn't be enough to seal the entrance completely but it would stop any vehicles from getting in or out. I led Tanya to a defendable vantage point atop a pile of rubble twenty meters from the entrance.

  I took the binos from around my neck and handed them to her. "Keep an eye out with these. If they come from the direction of the sun, be careful not to flash them with the lenses. When you see them, stay down. It's very important that they don't see you. If any vehicles try to follow the first car in, turn this switch." I gave her the radio detonator and showed her the switch and which way to turn it. "Turn it when the front bumper lines up with the entrance. Then hightail it back to your flat the best way you know how."

  Tanya nodded and I went on. "Remember to stay low so they don't see you. But if they do and you can't run away, take this." I unslung the Myers auto shotgun from my shoulder and handed it to her. "And shoot them. Just point it at them and hold down the trigger and it'll do the rest."

  Tanya eyed the big gun suspiciously. "Does this thing kick?"

  "Naw," I said. "It has a big recoil spring in the stock. It'll be loud but don't let that throw you. Just point it like you'd point your finger and pull the trigger. Got it?"

  She smiled and hefted it as if it was an old friend. There was a purr of engines from the road, and I pulled Tanya down with me. I peeked over the rubble. A caravan of powder blue vans cruised down Hayward, heading south. I counted thirty of them and checked my chrono. It wasn't twenty minutes since the strike.

  "They're sure not wasting any time," Tanya spit out.

  "They're not sentimentalists. Probably figured twenty minutes was enough time for the mourners."

  "Won't the survivors attack them?"

  "You kidding? They'll probably fight each other over the rewards. That kind of carnage is going to add up to a lot of plastic."

  The last van hummed by and we stood up.

  "Now," I continued, "if only one car goes in, listen for a car coming out. If you hear a car coming and it isn't honking its horn, turn the switch because it's not us. If Dash's car comes out, then that means I lost and it's up to you to drop the entrance on top of him."

  "No problem," she said, unable to hide the quaver in her voice.

  "If that happens or I don't come out of there by the time it gets dark, go home." I took out my wallet and handed her the four hundred creds inside. "Take this and hop a cab to your parents' house. Don't stop by your place, don't stop to think, just get a cab to the burbs. Okay?"

  "Okay, Jake. You're always giving me money."

  "Believe me, if I don't come out of there, I won't be needing it." I turned over a chunk of rubble and pawed at the sooty bottom. I rubbed the black ash on her cheeks, nose and forehead. "This is the best makeup you can wear right now," I said.

  She forced a smile. I stepped back and looked her over. The spider-silk vest hung from under her jacket like a skirt, almost touching her knees, and the shotgun was about five sizes too large. With her ash-smudged face she looked like a little girl who'd just finished helping mom clean the oven.

  I kissed her one time, hard, on the lips, and said, "Don't worry, blue eyes. Everything will be fine, and afterwards we'll go dancing." She nodded and I headed down the rubble hill, feeling like hell.

  I glanced back once before I got in the car. She stood looking at me from atop the black rubble rather forlornly. I waved at her to get down, and she crouched in the rubble. She smiled as if we were playing hide-and-seek.

  I got inside and started the engine. Turning on the headlights, I drove down the ramp.

  "Don't worry, she'll be okay. She's a tough kid," Britt said.

  I looked over at her. "You read me just like a paperback book, don't you?"

  "More like a comic book."

  "Captain Avenger?"

  "Daffy Duck."

  I quacked and she actually laughed.

  "You don't seem very nervous," I observed.

  "Why should I be? You're the one who's going to get shot."

  "You make me feel so good inside when you talk like that. When we park can we cuddle in the back?"

  "Fat chance."

  "You're right. Your father might catch us."

  The Olds revealed its secret identity as a Cyclops, and the garage was completely without lighting. Rusted hulks littered each level, and in the glare of the single eye they looked haunted and mournful. The place reminded me of a tomb.

  "I wasn't positive whose side you were on until now," Britt said.

  I looked over at her dark form. "Couldn't you tell by the ha
ircut?"

  "No, I mean, I didn't know if you were on our side or your side."

  "Well, I used to be just on my side — it's the safest way to play it. But I guess hanging around with certain people can sway you. Like Crawley swayed you."

  She laughed. "Crawley? We had an organization on the Hill long before I met him. It's still there. Young people who know what's going on and want to do something about it."

  "Is a girl named Marlene one of those young people?" I asked.

  I sensed she was staring at me. "Yeah," she said. "How did you know?"

  "Just a hunch."

  "Her brother Robert started the whole Hill resistance."

  I choked on disbelief. "Robert Peterson? That's her brother? He's the Hill rebel ringleader?"

  "Doesn't look the part, does he? He's a good man once you get to know him."

  "Everyone says that. Suppose it must be true."

  We glided down the ramp to the fourth level and parked near the east wall between two rusted Fords. I killed the headlight, and the inky darkness swallowed us whole. We sat for a moment, listening to each other breathe. I checked the luminous face of my chrono. It was three-thirty.

  "Britt, there's something I want to ask you."

  She released an exasperated sigh as if she'd been dreading the moment.

  "When we met in the St. Chris," I continued, undaunted, "the first phone call you made was to set up an ambush, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," she said after a moment.

  "And the call you got inside confirmed the ambush. Then, when we got outside, you made the call that called it off. Am I right?"

  She answered me with silence.

  "Why?" I asked. "Because you wanted to do the job yourself, or because…"

  "Because I wanted to sleep with you? Is that what you actually believe?"

  "Am I wrong?"

  I heard her shift in her seat and I could feel her eyes on me, but she didn't breathe a word.

  "Well," I said. "I guess I better get out there and take up position."

  "That wouldn't be a bad idea."

  "Yeah. You know, I just might not come back from this one."