The Hammer Commission

by John Van Stry

  “Hey, pigface!” He yelled and it turned to look. Mark didn’t know the why of it, but insults, no matter how poor always drew a devil’s attention. So did swearing, fortunately he was good at both.

  “You looking for me? You want some of this?” He motioned to himself and stuffed the cross in his back pocket while letting out a few rather crude swear words. “What, you need an invitation scumbag? Why don’t you come down here and get some then? Or you gonna stay up there and cry in fear you little wuss?”

  It growled and jumped down to the ground, it was a Daralyth, another flying devil, but an order of magnitude in power over the Aerolyths. Probably here to make sure they did what they were told to and not forget the job, aerolyths were fairly stupid.

  But Daralyths were not. Mark had never seen an actual daralyth before, while not as powerful as the monstrosity that had attacked them in Paris, it was something that can quickly kill an unarmed human. It looked exactly like a gargoyle from the top of a cathedral, right down to the large claws, nasty fangs, and ridiculously oversized genitals. Its skin looked like it was made from granite, and it didn't flex like normal skin when it moved, it seemed to just bend rather stiffly making it look even more like stone.

  “I will kill you, then the other,” he growled. “Then eat the rest.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Mark said backing away from the plane. “All talk no action!”

  It jumped at him then, and he pulled the cross back out. “In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, I order thee back to the pits of hell!”

  It gave a loud, almost ear piercing shriek, and just as its claws reached him it dissolved in to a cloud of that noxious oily smoke and was gone.

  Mark looked back up then to see an Aerolyth fall to the ground. Judith had finally killed the first one and was shooting up the second. Mark turned the cross on the one she was shooting up in the doorway above him and repeated himself and it dissolved into smoke as well.

  “Put the gun away Judith!” He ordered and stuck his own in a pocket. He could hear siren’s as a bunch of vehicles approached them. They were on a very long runway of some sort and he could also hear screaming from the inside of the plane.

  “And let them get off. I think that’s the last of them.”

  He looked back up at her, she had a very wild-eyed look and the slide was locked open on her pistol.

  “Judith?” Mark yelled. “Judith!”

  She shook her head and stared at him.

  “Put it away; tell them to get off the plane. Okay?”

  She nodded and ten seconds later all the emergency slides deployed and people started coming off the plane like the devil himself was after them.

  Which really wasn’t accurate, because the devil was apparently after him.

  A humvee pulled up next to Mark then and an Air Force Sergeant leaned out the door and looked at the body of the first Aerolyth that Judith had shot up as it slowly dissolved.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  “You honestly don’t want to know.”

  He looked at Mark and then looked at his badge. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Mark watched as four more humvee’s pulled up, two stopping on either side of the aircraft. Three more MP’s had piled out of the one by him and were already corralling the passengers, moving them to the front of the MD-90, well away from the body and out of sight of the damage to the rear of the plane.

  “You guys do this kind of work often?” Mark asked the Sergeant. The other humvees were disgorging more MP’s who were also herding passengers.

  “Occasionally we get wounded passenger birds putting in, so the crowd control part is pretty standard. Haven’t seen the likes of this before.”

  “It needs to be kept secret.”

  “Well then you picked the right place to land. Now if you’ll just stand right there until the CO gets here, I’ve got work to do.”

  They were thorough, Mark gave them that. As he watched they sorted everyone into groups with the help of the stewardesses. They kept everyone from talking to each other and when the busses came out to pick everyone up he saw that a small group of people were separated even further into vans and a few into ambulances. They knew something had happened on the aircraft and he overheard one of the soldiers tell the crowd that for the purposes of the investigation that they had to separate the witnesses or the lawyers would crucify them in court. That seemed to settle people down rather quickly, people understood courts and lawsuits.

  Most of the people on the plane hadn’t seen what happened; they only heard the noise, and the gun shots. Same for the pilots. They were told a nice story about a crazed hijacker who was subdued, but then managed to break free and had to be shot when he grabbed a knife and started stabbing people or something like that.

  Of the few that actually saw anything, most of them refused to believe what they had actually seen; even most of those who were injured didn’t believe it. It wasn’t surprising, so many people refused to believe what they saw anymore; if it didn’t fit into their nice little made for TV world their mind just rejected it. Plus the sight of a devil, even a lesser one, can often mess with the mind of the unprepared. It had always been one of their greater powers.

  But the four stewardesses, two of the injured, one regular passenger, and the four MP’s who’d gotten there before the Aerolyth had completely dissolved, they knew what they saw and they believed it.

  “Okay officer Levin, let me get this straight.”

  Mark was sitting in a rather non-descript office decorated with pictures of the base and airplanes that he guessed had flown there. A picture of one of the space shuttles with signatures on it graced the far wall as well. Behind the desk was a full bird colonel, seated next to Mark was Judith who was still looking a bit shaken and was being nice and quiet. The Sergeant from the runway was there as well.

  “You were on an airplane when some sort of ‘thing’ attacked it.” The colonel continued, “This thing dissolved on the runway before the eyes of my Sergeant here. I’ve got a crowd of people waiting to be taken back to the airport, and another smaller group you want held back and you’re not telling me why?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “And you also have a diplomatic passport, and a sealed diplomatic pouch that I’m not allowed to open, both issued by Rome.”

  “Yes Sir,” Mark nodded.

  “How does a diplomat end up an officer of Interpol? Isn’t that a bit of a contradiction?”

  Mark smiled, “Rome is very small as I’m sure you know Colonel. Some of us have to take on multiple tasks. We do not have the manpower to assign people to be officers as well as to be official representatives to Interpol. So some of us are assigned to double duty. I’m sure if you check you will find that all the documents and badges here are genuine.”

  “Oh I’ve already checked, Officer Levin, and the speed with which your status was confirmed was nothing short of amazing. Apparently there are people in the State Department that are familiar with you, though they did not go into detail. Our own intelligence agency here on base however has not been so responsive.”

  “So you are not the base Commander then?” He asked surprised.

  “No, I am in charge of Base Security. The Base Commander has better things to do than deal with minor issues such as this.”

  “I see.” He thought about that for a moment. He needed to call in a debrief team to deal with the people who knew what they had seen. He also needed to get out of here before the next attack came.

  “Colonel, I hate to pull rank on you but I’m afraid I must. I demand to see the Base Commander; I demand that he be immediately told of my request. And I feel confident that if you do not tell him of my demands that you will regret it.”

  “Colonel Jackson Sir, if I may Sir?” The Sergeant spoke up.

  “Yes Sergeant?”

  “Colonel, I think that the officer here may have a valid point.”

  “Really Sergeant?” The Colonel looked surp
rised.

  “Sir, I have three men talking to the Chaplin right now and to be honest I’m wishing to be over there with them. Whatever that thing was, its momma didn’t grow up here.”

  “I see. Dismissed Sergeant, but keep yourself and your men on the Base until further notification.”

  “Yes Sir!” The Sergeant saluted and left the room.

  The Colonel picked up the phone, “General Torres please.”

  Mark sat there with Judith and listened to one side of the conversation, it was brief and to the point.

  “Well apparently I’m to do whatever you tell me to do Officer Levin,” Colonel Jackson said as he hung up the phone. “So what would that be?”

  “Okay, I need to use a phone; I need you to keep those off the plane who witnessed what happened isolated from everyone until my people can deal with them. And I need a car and to get out of here as fast as possible.”

  “I can do better than that. I have an osprey that can fly you anywhere you want.”

  He thought about that. “I think that should do.”

  “Okay, make your phone call and I’ll go tell the duty crew to warm the bird up.”

  “Don’t you have anymore questions?” Judith said finally joining the conversation. Mark guessed the shock had worn off at last.

  “Around here when your boss tells you to stop asking questions, we stop asking questions Officer Keen. Now excuse me.”

  Mark made the call when the Colonel left and told them where he was, and who to contact and that he wouldn’t be here in ten minutes, so not to try calling him back. They promised they’d have a team on the way within the hour. Twenty minutes later they took off and he told the pilot where to take them. They were now bound for Las Vegas, he just wanted an airport, or anyplace, that had some sort of rental car available.

  “Why Vegas?” Judith asked.

  “To see the King,” He said thinking that maybe this should have been his first move instead of trying to go to Paris. No one would expect it, even if they knew.

  “Don’t you mean the Pope?”

  Mark laughed, “I’ve never met the Pope! You won’t ever either most likely. No, if anyone can help right now, it would be the King.”

  “The King?” Judith looked confused, “There aren’t any Kings in the US.”

  “Oh but there is,” Mark said wondering if he’d be happy or mad to see him. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms the last time Mark had seen him.

  “What’s he the king of?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  6

  He dug the official report of what had happened in Paris out of his bag and gave it to Judith to read, it was going to be a long flight, and he settled down for some rest. He told the pilots not to file a flight plan, which they were happy to do surprisingly. Saying something about a ‘license to steal’ or some such.

  When they finally got there the pilots put them down at the military part of the airport, and they were able to get a lift from there over to a rental agency where Mark paid cash to avoid any record of the transaction on his credit card. That could too easily be read later by people he probably didn’t want to know that he had come here. Ten minutes later they were in a nice sedan driving down the strip.

  He glanced over at Judith as she looked out at the casinos as they turned into a road leading out of downtown Las Vegas. “You know how you watch those movies where the hero always makes a dumb mistake, and you’re saying ‘hey, you idiot! How can you do something that stupid!’ and you say to yourself how you wouldn’t do anything that idiotic?”

  Judith nodded and answered “yes” while watching the signs as he drove down the back road, probably wanting to be sure she could remember the way back out of here he guessed

  “Well the fact is, you usually know something the hero doesn’t. Or the hero was an idiot but the director wanted to heighten the tension, or maybe the director was an idiot. Hell most people are idiots these days and probably wouldn’t even notice the problem you saw coming.

  “Anyway, what it all comes down to is this. We’re dealing with monsters, devils, demons, and things even worse than that. Every time you go to deal with one, or meet one or kill one you should be thinking ‘Hey you idiot! How can you do something that stupid!’” He turned and looked at her a moment before returning his eyes to the road.

  “These things are dangerous, even the little ones can kill you if you’re not careful. Any mistake you make could be your last, or conversely, you might do everything right and still find yourself gutted and being eaten by a monstrosity that even H.P. Lovecraft wouldn’t have come up with on his best nights.

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “No, not really.” She sighed, “Other then telling me not to fuck up.”

  Mark laughed, “Oh you’re going to fuck up, you’re going to fuck up royal, that’s why you’re here. I’ve checked your records, you are without a doubt a first class major league fuck up. You’ve fucked up more things than they wanted to put in your records, you’ve fucked up everything you’ve been involved with since you joined the police force back in Portland, and I suspect you were a first class fuck up even before that!”

  Judith turned to him scowling, "Sure I've made a lot of mistakes and had some bad breaks, it wasn’t always my..." She stopped suddenly when she noticed he was pointing a gun at her, a cocked one. She blanched.

  “Don’t go telling me it wasn’t your fault or any of that other shit. None of that matters in this business. If it rains, if a cloud covers the sun at the wrong moment, if you flip heads instead of tails, it’s all your fault."

  The gun went off with a loud bang, making Judith's ears ring. She blinked and touched her side, looking for the wound. When it came up clean and she noticed she hadn’t been shot, she looked around a little frantically and couldn’t find a bullet hole anywhere. She looked up at him then and noticed he had put the gun away.

  “Blank. Wanted to see if you’d piss your pants or not.”

  “What!” she yelled at him, “You did that as a joke?”

  “Not a joke!” he yelled back, “I had to know.”

  “What, if I could be scared?” She was still yelling.

  “No," He lowered his own voice back to a conversational level. "I know you can be scared. We all can be scared. I had to know if you’d show it. Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Because you needed a new partner and I volunteered!”

  “No, because you’re a fuck up and you’re expected to fuck up and get us both killed. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “Oh please. Don’t give me that shit.”

  “Look, I don’t have time to debate it, either start listening to me or when the time comes there won’t be a blank in that gun, understand? I told you what to do on that plane and again you didn’t do it! Instead you wasted a lot of ammo, made a bigger scene than necessary and you were very lucky that Daralyth didn’t decide to come after you.”

  Judith looked at him, he glanced at her again and saw the change in her expression as she suddenly realized that he just might do it. For a moment he looked like a very hard man. Very hard.

  “Jake and I were set up; we were both supposed to die. I got lucky, I got away. Do you think whoever set us up isn’t going to try and set you and me up?”

  “But the finding in that report said it was a fluke!”

  “There are no flukes in this business. We’re on the front lines of a war that’s been waging for tens of thousands of years. They don’t make mistakes. There aren’t any flukes. We’re dealing with Heaven and Hell here, and all that lies in between. You’d better remember that.”

  She thought about that a moment. She still found it hard to believe all these things existed. She hadn’t seen a devil before yesterday. He had apparently. Lots of them.

  “So what do I do?” She said looking straight ahead out the windshield again. They were in some sort of neighborhood now, though it was obviously a very rich one. It was all
estates, trees, and high walls instead of the dry Las Vegas rocks and desert.

  “Say your prayers every night, go to church, try to do your best, avoid evil people and evil things. No one expects you to be perfect or not sin, but at least make the effort to live a good life, the Big Boss in the sky likes that – he can forgive you quite a lot as long as you show your faith, believe in him, and make an effort to be a good person.”

  “The ‘Big Boss’?” Judith looked a bit bewildered by that.

  “Yeah, you know, God? The one who when you get down to it is the one we really work for? This isn’t a fantasy, as much as you might think it is so far. We’re the good guys, we work for Heaven and God, no matter how indirectly. If your faith is strong, you’ll see signs of it. Trust me, you can’t miss it,” he said thinking back to when he’d used the cross and later when he’d had his visitation with Jake in the Church.

  “We’re not expected to be perfect or not to sin, this is a rough job and it takes rough people, not the pious or meek. Doing this job is our demonstration of our faith. We’re just expected to keep that faith and as long as you do, you’ll never be abandoned. That’s not to say you won’t suffer or die, and maybe even die horribly...”

  Judith felt a little queasy as he said that, thinking about the crime scene photos and his former partner.

  “… but God will be there for you.”

  She nodded, “Okay, go to church, say my prayers, have faith, be good. That it?”

  “No, one other thing, and this is important too so work on this one.”

  “What?” She was perplexed by this, it sounded like he was about to give her the secret handshake or something similar.

  “Get a sense of style going, and stick to it. Act it, live it, don’t forget it.”

  Judith looked at him and laughed nervously in disbelief. “A sense of style? You’re joking right?”

  He shook his head and turned into a driveway pulling up to a heavy metal gate. “No, I’m not. Any demon or monster that doesn’t attack you right away is going to want to talk with you, maybe even deal. If they think you’re just another human, they’ll never take you seriously. But if you have a sense of style, like a movie character, Indiana Jones, Charlie Chan, James Bond, and of those, they’ll take you seriously.”