Hammer of Angels

by G T Almasi

  SUBJECT: Operation ANGEL progress report

  Dear Chairman Bush,

  I am pleased to report our agents are generating considerable discord for the Greater German authorities. I think it’s only a matter of time until the Reich asks for our assistance with the Jewish slave uprising, but we may find our plan to help extinguish this rebellion has a problem.

  As expected, there has been a marked increase in official acts of retaliation. One event from Wales deserves particular mention:

  Last week a German Army platoon raided a rebel camp in the forest outside Moulton, near Cardiff. It was a disaster for the German attackers thanks to the extra firepower provided by one of our Vindicator Levels. No rebels were captured while four German vehicles were destroyed and a dozen Wehrmacht soldiers injured.

  Next morning, the regional Staatszeiger commander sent a battalion of his men to Moulton with orders to sweep the town clean. Any resistance was met with immediate incarceration.

  An elderly woman who loudly voiced her disapproval was beaten by SZ troops. Townsmen who tried to intervene were shot. Women and children who ran to their aid or fled for their lives were also shot. The youngest victim was only four years old. Amateur photographs of this tragic event were anonymously sent to our embassy and are included for your reference. These images were also sent to every news outlet in Britain. They were strictly repressed, naturally, but the Circle of Zion published the pictures in their underground newspaper.

  I fear reprisals such as these will make it impossible for us to reverse public support for the rebellion. I’m beginning to doubt we can stop what we have started.

  Your humble servant,

  John J. Louis, Jr., American Consulate, London

  14

  SAME MORNING, 4:05 A.M. GMT

  GESTAPO HEADQUARTERS, YORK, PROVINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, GG

  Gestapo headquarters used to be the Yorkshire School of Fine Arts. The place has been converted from a stately, spacious temple of creativity to a twisted warren of tomblike offices and interrogation chambers. Airy studios are now dark, sterile hollows reeking of cigarettes, stale sweat, and chronic paranoia. The backup lighting provides such dim illumination that I need my infrared to distinguish what’s alive in this place from what isn’t.

  The hallways are lined with dozens of padlocked black filing cabinets. Reich officials are notorious for being fastidious about their records. It’s as though they don’t want to forget any of the bullshit they’ve pulled. Gaps in the otherwise solid wall of drawers indicate where we’ll find office doors.

  Li’l Bertha is clicked into my left hand, and my partner wears his optic-effects goggles. We sneak down the main hall, scanning for heat signatures. Jade was right. There are shimmering orange blobs upstairs, but the first floor is clear. This must be where all the younger field agents are stationed when they aren’t out on raids.

  The building has two stairways, one at each end of this corridor. Brando opens his X-bag and grabs what appears to be a pudgy tea saucer. It’s a proximity mine, one of two we have with us. We sneak forward and soft-shoe up the stairs to the first landing. I lay the mine down and push the red button on the top. The mine’s motion sensor will wait until I move away before it arms itself. Brando carries a remote control that’ll disarm the mine if we need to move it. He calls it his Mine-O-Matic.

  “Okay,” I comm. “Now what? Should we do the guards out front or go up the back stairs?”

  “Back stairs.” He pauses. “We have help out front.”

  “Is Jade done already?”

  “No, she’s headed north. This is a late addition…and he brought his Bitchgun.”

  “Raj is here?”

  “Yeah.” Brando has a glint in his eyes. “Let’s secure the rear exit, and he’ll nail anyone who comes out the front.”

  Raj is an ExOps Level 9 Vindicator, and the Bitchgun is his gigantic 50-mm grenade launcher. Last summer he directed the recovery mission to rescue my mother. Then, in October, when I snatched Winter, Raj helped me escape from Riyadh. Being in action together gave us a chance to adapt what had been a nasty, juvenile rivalry into a mutual appreciation society based on our shared enthusiasm for ass kicking.

  Brando and I run to the rear stairway and up to the second floor. I register three heat signatures in the first office on the right.

  Finally!

  I signal to Brando: We got three. He nods. I increase my neuroinjector’s Madrenaline flow until my scalp twitches. Then I approach the office of warm figures, take a deep breath, and kick in the door with a splintering crash.

  The first Gestapo officer is directly in front of me, faintly lit by the red emergency lights. He’s yelling into his desktop phone to find out why the power is out. I’m so zooted that I have time to watch his face shift from angered annoyance to confused perplexity. The second expression is what he’ll wear into Kraut heaven since it’s the last thing he ever does. Li’l Bertha’s .30-caliber rounds tear through his chest and neck, knock him out of his chair, and ram him into the wall.

  The remaining two agents stand on the other side of the room, their arms crossed, waiting to find out when the electricity will be back on. They gape at the sudden demise of their officemate. I nail extra eyeholes into each of their foreheads. Blood schpritzes across the room and splashes my cheek.

  “Scarlet,” Brando comms, “there’s a guy in the hallway.”

  I scoot into the corridor. The dunderhead coming out of his office spots me and screeches something like: Holy sausages, who’s that crazy chick with blood all over her face? Li’l Bertha spits out a pair of slugs that rip the top of Screechy’s head off. It already looks like Dante’s Inferno in here, and we’ve barely begun.

  More doors open, toward the front. Four men behold the gore-streaked hallway and realize this power outage is no accident. Three of the bruisers retreat into their offices. One makes a break for it and pitches over as my next shot smashes into his neck.

  Now I have three competitors to clear out, each in his own office, two left and one right. Li’l Bertha’s infrared sensor labels them as Targets One, Two, and Three. I dive into the first left-side office. Target One is in here, desperately trying to open his gun locker. Instead of greasing him outright, I have Li’l Bertha ding a bullet into his spine. I catch him and hold him in front of me as I return to the hallway.

  We approach the second office on the left. My human shield screams in agony and leaves a trail of piss behind us. Inside, Target Two has armed himself and certainly hears us coming, but when his colleague comes through the door first, he holds his fire. Target Two’s hesitation earns him a complimentary .30-caliber face-lift.

  Brando comms, “Scarlet, that last enemy is coming your way.”

  I whirl and face the door, my right arm still clutching Target One. Target Three barges in already firing his pistol. I drop to the floor. Target One takes a round in his chest and collapses onto me. I press my feet against a desk and thrust myself out from under his body. I cannon into Target Three’s legs and knock him into the hallway. My pistol finishes off my stunned competitor with a blast through his heart.

  “Nice call-out, Darwin; thanks.” My thumb ejects Li’l Bertha’s depleted ammo pack. I pocket the empty, slap in a full pack, and rejoin Brando at the rear stairway. As we begin to move upstairs, a loud whump resounds from outside. The steps pulse under our feet, and flakes of plaster drift from the ceiling.

  “Raj, you all right out there?” My partner uses our team channel so I can hear it, too.

  “All clear, Darwin. The guards at the front entrance heard the commotion and tried to escape. I took them out, but now all of Yorkshire knows something is going on. Hurry up.”

  “Roger that. Floors one and two are clear. We’re moving to three.” We resume our ascent, then Brando comms again, “Actually, scratch that, Raj. Since you’ve engaged anyway, we’ll move straight to five. Brace for our competition on the lower floors to be flushed to your position out front. We’ll mine the b
ack stairs.”

  “Roger that, Darwin.” Even though Raj and I are both Level 9s, he’s senior to me because he entered the field first. But this is my mission, so he’s expected to follow reasonable direction.

  Brando comms just to me, “Raj is right. We don’t have much time. You go to the top floor, and I’ll set our mines here.”

  “What about the one we used out front?”

  He’s already bounding down the steps. “I’ll go retrieve it and reset it.”

  Damn. It feels wrong to separate like this, plus I don’t like my partner being so involved with the combat. I curse under my breath and run up the stairs.

  Our presence has clearly been noted. My infrared shows me the fifth-floor hall is filled with pistol-packing competitors edging toward the front and rear stairways. I hear them mumbling into the little commphones plugged into their ears.

  The Germans invented commphones almost thirty years ago, so they’ve had time to develop a lot of different models. Most police forces use the earplug model, like these clowns are using. Military personnel use a helmet-mounted system that’s essentially a ruggedized version of what telephone operators wear. High-end field agents like me receive the super-deluxe surgically implanted model.

  I wait a few paces below the fifth floor and press myself against the wall. When the closest toughie approaches the corner, I surge upstairs, karate-chop his gun out of his hand, whack Li’l Bertha against his temple, grab his throat, and spin him around so we both face the same direction. Li’l Bertha prods into his ribs. Herr Toughie is a lot taller than me, so I have to stand on tiptoe to see over his shoulder.

  I propel my strangling bullet sponge into the hall. There are eleven schmoes in here, all of whom pivot and point their pistols at me.

  Toughie croaks, “Nein! Nicht scheissen!” Don’t shoot! His buddies hold their fire and take cover behind filing cabinets and doorways. Gunfire chatters from outside, punctuated by several larger booms that jiggle the floor like Magic Fingers. More plaster falls from the ceiling. Cracks appear in the walls. Raj must be fighting the pinheads trying to escape from floors three and four. I hope Brando is okay.

  I snarl in Toughie’s ear, “Tell ’em to drop their guns. They won’t get hurt.” He does what I say. At first nothing happens, so I tighten my grip on his throat and growl, “Wieder!” Again! An explosion echoes from the back stairway. Brando must have reset his mines. It feels like an entire platoon is attacking instead of just the three of us.

  My prisoner repeats himself, but the racket from downstairs is so loud that even I can’t hear him. Then one of the younger Gestapo agents takes a shot at me. So much for prisoners. I stay behind Herr Toughie while Li’l Bertha blind-fires a long burst of medium-caliber Incendiaries into the crowded corridor.

  The hall resonates with the cries of combusting dickazoids and the snarling snaps of disintegrating architecture. The world suddenly tips over a few degrees. I lose my balance and stumble sideways. Herr Toughie sinks to the wobbling floor.

  “Darwin, I think this place is coming down. Get up here and grab your intel.”

  Brando streaks past me and charges into the commandant’s office.

  I run after him. “Raj! What’s going on out there?”

  “Scarlet, Darwin, be advised we’ve inflicted structural damage on the facility.”

  My partner runs to a blocky steel safe in the corner.

  “Hey,” I comm, “whaddaya mean we, Rah-Rah?”

  “Well,” Raj answers, “maybe I meant I, but either way it’s—”

  The shaking floor plunges a foot, dropping right out from under us. Everything in the office—including me and my partner—hangs suspended in midair for a split second. Then the office furniture pummels the deck like a metal monsoon. The desks and cabinets gouge the linoleum tile and the safe craters itself into the ground.

  Brando squats in front of the half-buried steel box and resumes manipulating the combination dial.

  I shout, “Darwin, forget it. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  “Hang on,” he yells, “I’ve almost got it.”

  Li’l Bertha vibrates in my hand. I glance at her targeting panel in my Eyes-Up display.

  Someone’s behind me!

  I lash out with a reverse roundhouse kick that smacks a Gestapo agent in his stomach. He grunts and falls away. Li’l Bertha perforates the sneaky sucker’s knee, thigh, hip, and chest. He corkscrews into the dust-filled hallway. I jump on top of him and crush his larynx with my mechanized right hand. I push off from my dying victim and swing my sidearm around to see who else feels like a hero.

  It’s a disaster area. Gestapo agents sprawl with multiple injuries from gunshots, burning chemicals, flying debris, a thirteen-foot length of collapsed wall, or in some cases all of the above. The choking air reeks of burned flesh and roasted building. The corridor isn’t even square anymore. The ceiling has separated from the wall, and the floor is tipping over on itself.

  “DARWIN! Let’s go!”

  “I’m inside. Gimme a sec!”

  I don’t think we have a sec.

  But he wasn’t kidding. It really is only a second later when he zings out of the office, his arms full of file folders and data pods, and hightails it for the front stairs. He disappears into the dust cloud. I take off after him.

  The building swings and bounces us from one wall to the other as we sprint down four flights of stairs. We rush outside into the street, closely followed by a hot cloud of smoke as Gestapo HQ collapses into a crumbling heap.

  My partner comms, “Raj, hold your fire! We just came out the front.”

  Raj answers, “Don’t worry. I’m engaged up the street. That Gestapo raiding party is trying to return to their headquarters.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Not if you can exit the area right now.”

  Brando replies, “We’re out and away. Break off now.”

  “Roger that.”

  I call over the pandemonium, “Darwin, you go ahead! I have one last thing to do.”

  “No way! We’ve—”

  “It’ll be quick. I’ll catch up!”

  I run into the dust cloud churning around the ruined headquarters. My infrared leads me to the still-warm bodies of Raj’s victims. I yank my F-S fighting knife out of its holster, push one of the dead agents onto his back, and aim my blade at his face.

  Something to remember me by.

  * * *

  CORE

  MIS-ANGEL-1393

  Cyrus,

  I snared this signal as it was sent from London to Berlin:

  “Gestapo York liquidated. Yorkshire has gone dark. Situation in England degrading rapidly. Send reinforcements and instructions.”

  I think I can guess which Interceptor you sent there.

  Yours,

  Grey, Infiltrator

  15

  SAME MORNING, 5:10 A.M. GMT

  HAXBY, PROVINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, GG

  Normally, after such an overtly destructive operation, we would spirit ourselves out-country as fast as frickin’ possible. But our complete annihilation of York’s Gestapo has put the entire territory on full-time lockdown. No movement is allowed anywhere, anytime. Our Circle pals anticipated this and set us up with a terrific hiding place. Terrific so long as we don’t move too much, breathe too much, or think too much.

  We’re hidden in a spacious, well-kept crypt in the Haxby graveyard. Carved letters over the entrance identify this as the Harrington family necrominium. The earliest tenants are from the days when having a horseless carriage meant you could only travel downhill and a common cause of death was receiving medical care from your barber. The clan’s matriarch—a staunch abolitionist—relocated the remains of her older, bonier ancestors so their five-star hole in the ground can serve as a honeycomb hideout for us.

  Honeycomb is a good word for it, too. We’re in the deepest chamber, ensconced in heavy stone caskets. I tried convincing my partner that we could just unroll our sleeping b
ags on the ground, but he shot me down. Brando admitted the authorities are unlikely to open every grave in England, but he said they might investigate a large burial vault like this one. So here we are, Brando, Raj, and I, buried alive in Yorkshire while the German Army scours the country for us.

  Hiding Raj was a challenge. These old body boxes are built to last until Judgment Day, but they’re small. People were a lot shorter two or three centuries ago. Raj is 6'5" and weighs over three hundred pounds. We solved this issue by breaking the bottom out of the largest sarcophagus. Then the three of us dug out a space for Raj to lie in and dragged his box over him. Brando and I then got into our own coffins and prepared our stasis feeds.

  It’s the same kind of stasis feed I was on last year when they packed me into a pine box with Trick’s body to ship us out of Zurich. It’s a semistasis that drastically slows the subject’s heartbeat, breathing, and digestion without stopping them entirely. This state is intravenously induced with a chemical cocktail developed by ExOps’s Med-Techs. What little air we need comes from a can of compressed oxygen connected to a face mask.

  We’ll be here for a week. When we wake up, we’ll receive instructions for our next Job Number. Until then our bodies can rest and heal. I came through our mission without a scratch, but both Brando and Raj were wounded during last night’s adventure.

  Raj was hit by flying stonework from the building. He has nasty bruises on his shoulder and both legs, but he’ll be all right. Brando, however, nearly got blown up by one of his mines. He was resetting it when a few baddies charged down to make their escape.

  Info Operators don’t deploy with a sidearm, so he had to use his Mine-O-Matic to detonate the mine as the Gestapo goons ran over it. The blast took a bite out of everybody, crippling the competitors’ legs and lacerating my partner’s face.

  Brando says his wounds sting like hell, but they aren’t too deep, and they should heal just fine. What’s not fine is that he’ll attract all the wrong kind of attention if he goes out in public with bandages and cuts on his face. Hopefully, he’ll mend well enough while we’re here that his injuries won’t be so noticeable.