Hammer of Angels

by G T Almasi

  I strap on my breathing mask and set sail for the world of pure imagination.

  * * *

  CORE

  MIS-ANGEL-1477

  DATE: February 4, 1981

  TO: The Office of the Front Desk

  FROM: Darwin-5055 (IO), Scarlet-A59 (L9 Interceptor), Raj-A10 (L9 Vindicator)

  SUBJECT: Operation ANGEL/Job Number G86

  Sir,

  We are pleased to report the Gestapo HQ in York has been destroyed. All captives were retrieved, including the mayor of York, Herr Brun. I’m sure you will receive an after-action report from Pericles and Jade, but let me state here that they executed their assignments with speed and precision. They were highly competent, and it was a pleasure to work with them.

  Per our orders, the devastation wrought upon the German secret police was comprehensive. Scarlet and Raj together accounted for forty-one Gestapo officers killed. Raj also inflicted significant structural damage to the facility itself. Scarlet took your “unlimited force” directive to heart and made a special point of leaving some of our victims in especially grim condition. The details of her actions are difficult to adequately describe in writing and may need to wait until you debrief us in person. Be assured the story of this attack will have every German official in England jumping at shadows for months.

  We will check in for new orders when we come out of hiding.

  Obediently yours,

  Darwin-5055

  16

  I’m in the mountain temple, sitting in lotus position and breathing chilled mist deep into my lungs. My blood heats the mist, and when I breathe out again, it floats around me like a warm cocoon, protecting me from the frigid winter night.

  The monk in the saffron robe strolls in and lifts me by my hair. It feels strange, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s like I’m a doll that’s been molded into this pose. He carries me outside and casts me off a cliff. I try to maintain my posture, but as my body bounces down the mountainside, I come undone, smash into the river below, and die.

  My father appears. He asks if we’re in heaven or hell, then hands me a rifle. He walks downrange and stands in front of the target. I fire at him, but he catches the bullets with his fingers and puts them in his pocket. Dad catches the last one in his teeth, spreads his arms, and says, “Tah-dahh!”

  I put down the rifle and join a procession of monks climbing a steep mountain path in their bare feet. I’m wearing a saffron robe. When we reach the path’s peak, the monks in front walk off the precipice into thin air. They do not fall. I try to hold back because I have not mastered this yet, but the monks behind me press forward and I fall over the edge.

  Finally, I realize this is a dream. I stick out my arms like wings and ride the air currents, swooping in wide circles. I coast past the floating monks. When they see what I’m doing, they glance at each other, then at me. They hold their arms out to fly and plummet to their deaths.

  I flap my arms and ascend to the temple. I land on the terrace and walk inside to the main room. The monk in the saffron robe sits in lotus position. He smiles at me. Without parting his lips, he says, “The egg opens, the body dies, but the spirit soars and lives forever.”

  17

  NINE DAYS LATER, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 12:55 P.M. GMT

  245 WESTBOURNE GROVE, NOTTING HILL, LONDON, PROVINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, GG

  London is like a ghost town. Martial law has the civilians locked inside their houses, while most of the cops and troops have been sent out to deal with all the chaos we’ve stirred up. Our Yorkshire insanity bomb is being matched by similar unrest in Wales, Ireland, and especially Scotland. The Scots aren’t a surprise. Those maniacs would rebel against gravity if they could find a way to keep their whiskey from floating away.

  As the Rising has gained momentum, our job has been made both harder and easier. The crackdown makes it more difficult to move around, but we have many more places to hide. There are a lot of Greater German citizens opposed to slavery, many of whom are willing to help us stamp it out by lending us their homes as safe houses. We even get fed, although I think the three of us are gonna turn into roly-poly sausages. When I asked if these people ever eat vegetables, Raj said that’s what all the beer is for.

  Even though London’s citizens can’t go out unless they have a pass, they’ve had it easy compared to the rest of Britain. During our week in Cryptville, the Circle extricated thousands of Jewish slaves and burned down hundreds of the buildings they worked in. The slave-based industries began grinding to a halt, along with the related businesses that supply the farms and factories, transport their output, and distribute it to markets and stores.

  London is mostly offices and shops, so there aren’t nearly as many slaves here. The raids, firefights, and bombings sweeping the rest of the country haven’t affected the capital too severely.

  Until now, that is. It’s not like we’re here to sell insurance.

  Our next Job Number is a good old-fashioned jail break. It’s based on intel acquired from our new CIA stringer, Karl Brun. After we spirited Brun away from the Gestapo, he revealed that the Germans had captured one of our persons of interest, Victor Eisenberg.

  Herr Eisenberg is the forty-something former Wehrmacht colonel who led a famous raid on the Bergen-Belsen slave labor camp outside Hanover. Eisenberg’s commando squad, recruited from his former troops, freed the enslaved workers and torched the facility. This action was the genesis of his reputation as a fearless guerrilla leader, which he cemented by fighting his way south through the heart of Germany and into the Alps. He was dubbed the Hammer of Iron for his hard-hitting tactics and because Eisenberg means “Iron Mountain” in German. The man possesses the military training, leadership skills, and aristocratic family connections that have made him a VIP in what became the Circle of Zion.

  Before this, Eisenberg was a decorated Wehrmacht officer with a sterling record built by defending the Fatherland’s eastern border from the Great Red Threat. These tours of duty brought him into regular contact with forced labor camps. The inherent cruelty of the Reich’s slavery system sickened him, and he silently vowed to eradicate it.

  After Eisenberg did his twenty years in the army, he retired and began to write passionate articles about the moral corruption of slavery. Through this he became the de facto spokesman for the fledgling abolitionist movement. Eisenberg’s portrait in our job folder shows a handsome face with eyes sparkling with intelligence and determination. His blond swept-back hair has a touch of gray at the temples. The file says he’s 5'10", not short but not quite the typical Übermensch height of six-foot-whatever.

  When the Rising broke out here in Britain, Eisenberg traveled across the English Channel to assist and rally the rebels. Despite Eisenberg’s experience as an underground fighter, he was captured by the German police as he crossed over from Holland. The Fritzes planned to ship him to a Berlin prison where he’d have time to reconsider his loyalties.

  Then we pulled our Gestapo extermination mission in York, and everything changed. The German government decided to make an example of him and scheduled his execution for March 1, fifteen days from now. This will be soon enough to drive the lesson home while giving the authorities time to assemble a large turnout as a show of force. They also moved Eisenberg from his cozy Kensington jail cell to the Tower of London and surrounded him with SZ troopers.

  Our job is to bust him out. It’s two weeks until his execution, but we can’t risk staying in one place that long. Cyrus’s mission brief gives us three days. We can use whatever in-place assets we see fit, and we are again authorized to use unlimited force.

  However, today’s task requires brains, not brawn. We need to plan how we’re gonna break into the Tower, learn where the prisoners are kept, and find out what kind of resistance we can expect. To do that, we need more intel about the ancient fort than we have right now. This is why I’m finally meeting Grey today.

  Grey is one of those mysterious Infiltrators we have at ExOps. We’ve never met even thou
gh I’ve had two adventures because of him. The first was when I swiped his Creep ’n Peep and had to fight my way out of the dictionary’s entry for clusterfuck. The second was when Trick and I fried a captured competitor to death while Grey broke into the Manhattan offices of the CIA.

  We’ve been told not to bother trying to contact him. Grey will find us. So here we wait, rambunctiously playing cribbage on a coffee table in our Notting Hill safe house. Brando and I are sharing a bedroom while Raj goes stag next door. It’s been a little awkward rooming with someone I’m not involved with, but that’s the field protocol for Levels and IOs.

  When Raj isn’t reading or sleeping, he hangs out with us. The three of us talk shop, maintain our gear, or play cards. Moving by night and hiding by day has left us some time to kill. Raj saw us playing cribbage one afternoon and joined in.

  Card games are way more exciting with Raj playing because he either wins big or goes bust. There’s no in between. After years of playing with Patrick the human calculator, it’s refreshing to play against someone I can genuinely beat sometimes. During a hand, Rah-Rah rubs a religious necklace his mother gave him for luck. When I asked him who the patron saint of card players is, he said, “Are you kidding? Kenny Rogers!”

  There’s a rap at the door. Raj lumbers over and peeks through the peephole while I take Li’l Bertha out of her holster.

  Raj comms, “It’s Mr. Christie.”

  I hold my pistol below the coffee table’s edge. Raj opens the door to reveal the building’s ancient yet tireless caretaker. Mr. Christie wheels in a service cart draped by a white and red striped cloth, loaded with covered dishes, glasses, and bottles of sparkling water. We ask for the fizzy stuff so we can have belching contests. Mr. Christie guides the cart inside, and we distribute the goodies all over the table. The old man swivels his cart around, accepts a tip from Raj, and trundles away.

  I return my sidearm to her holster and tuck into my chow. Then a dude I’ve never seen before walks out of our bathroom. He has dark gray hair and a thin 5'6" frame. Li’l Bertha leaps into my hand again and aims at—nothing. A trickle of dust drifts down through her sights. I look up. The little fucker is stuck to the ceiling like an insect. The dust has been displaced by his fingers, which have clawed right into the plaster. I shift my aim upward, and—I swear to God—he vanishes.

  Don’t tell me I’m having a spell, not in front of Raj.

  I say, “Raj, do you see this?”

  “Affirmative.” He draws his sidearm, an LB-503, and swivels his head all over the room.

  “Darwin, what the hell is happening?” My partner doesn’t answer me. He’s still sitting on the couch. Actually it’s more like he’s rolling on the couch, laughing his ass off. “Relax, guys, it’s okay,” he comms.

  At this point both Raj and I have full doses of Madrenaline pumping through us, so relaxation is out of the question. The gray-haired man appears on the couch right next to Brando. The prowler grabs my sandwich, takes a bite, puts it back, and disappears again.

  Now I’m really pissed off. Nobody fucks with me when I’m eating. I override my neuroinjector’s normal doses and flood my bloodstream with Madrenaline. My skin feels like it wants to crawl out the window, but I’m as fast as I can be. Time slows down so much that it might as well be standing still. Brando is frozen in the middle of wiping a tear from his eye while he exhales a laugh. Raj isn’t completely motionless. He’s on Madrenaline, too, so his head gently turns from side to side as he searches for the intruder.

  A shadow moves in front of the windows. I spin around and glimpse—barely—the gray-haired man running on the walls with a shit-eating grin on his face. Jesus, this son of a bitch can practically fly! He “disappears” by moving so fast that you can’t track him. I anticipate where I think he’ll be in a few microseconds and throw myself into Mr. Invisible’s path. He bashes into me and wipes us both out. We skid across the floor and knock over a side table. A heavy lamp and a heap of empty beer bottles crash all over us. My G.I. Joe kung-fu grip grabs Mr. Invisible’s ankle so hard that I almost rip his foot off. I climb his body until he’s pinned to the floor.

  “Got…you…FUCKER!” I bark in his face. My captive doesn’t respond because now he’s laughing, too. I dose some Kalmers to bring time to normal speed.

  Brando stops cackling long enough to say out loud, “Good to meet you, sir. That’s Scarlet on top of you, and the big fella over there is Raj.” He pauses, then says, “Guys, meet Grey.”

  * * *

  CORE

  PER-S33–034

  Grey

  Position: Level 13 Infiltrator

  Full Name: Terrence H. Steadman III

  Summary: Grey’s family has been part of America’s clandestine community for three generations. His father and grandfather both graduated from Yale University and worked at the CIA as strategic analysts. Grey followed his seniors to Yale but decided to pursue a more physically active role in America’s intelligence apparatus. Rather than apply for a desk job at Central Intelligence, he joined the upstart Extreme Operations Division as a field operative.

  Grey’s exceptional agility, intelligence, and interpersonal skills make him a perfect Infiltrator. Grey has achieved a Level promotion for every year he has worked at ExOps, a rare feat. Many Levels consider themselves to be doing well if they earn a promotion every twenty to thirty months.

  Most of Grey’s missions are carried off with little to no violence at all. The quieter his Job Number goes, the more successful he considers himself. He is, of course, still a Level and is entirely capable of executing rapid and lethal attacks as needed.

  18

  SAME AFTERNOON, 1:30 P.M. GMT

  245 WESTBOURNE GROVE, NOTTING HILL, LONDON, PROVINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, GG

  Raj and I dawdle on the little porch outside our room and wait for our doses of Madrenaline to dissipate. Brando kicked us out here when he heard all the colorfully gory threats we blustered at Grey.

  I take in a lungful of keen English air. “Fucking douche bag.”

  Raj grunts, “Yeah. That was a stupid stunt. I’m tempted to report him.”

  For once I’m glad my bulky teammate is such a stickler for process and procedure. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Grey outranks me,” Raj says.

  “So what?”

  “So we’re not allowed to file disciplinary reports on our superiors.”

  “What?” My voice rises. “Why not?”

  “Think about it, Scarlet.” My blank expression prompts him to continue. “We could try to accelerate our promotions by clearing senior Levels out of our way.” He lets that sink in and then says, “Besides, Grey is one of the best Infiltrators we have.” Raj’s dark eyes take in the compact streets and leafless trees of Powis Square. “Maybe I’ll informally mention it to the Front Desk.”

  My partner comms, “Scarlet, Raj, if your systems have recovered, why don’t you come in so we can review what Grey has for us.”

  We walk inside. Brando and Grey sit next to each other on the couch. I get a better look at Grey now that he isn’t moving so fast. He’s older than the rest of us, I’d say around thirty. Part of his speed is an illusion created by the active camouflage system all Infiltrators have. It reflects what’s around them and renders them nearly invisible. Grey is also exceptionally lightweight and acrobatic, so his running-on-the-walls trick was real. It just wasn’t the only reason we couldn’t see him.

  Grey says, “Hey, you two, I apologize. I was only spoofing you.” He speaks with a fancy-sounding accent, like a combination of Cary Grant and Bobby Kennedy.

  “Sir.” Raj’s tone is tightly clipped. “With all due respect, that stunt didn’t reflect well on your rank or your reputation.”

  I jab my thumb toward Raj. “Yeah, what he said. What were you thinking, playing slap and tickle with Interceptors and Vindicators? You’re lucky we didn’t tear the entire fucking house apart to nail you.”

  Brando holds his hands up. “Okay, okay, enough! T
his is my fault. Grey commed me to say he wanted to make a memorable entrance. We’ve been under a lot of strain, and I thought it would be funny for him to ride in on Mr. Christie’s cart and try to hide in the bathroom. Next time, I’ll remember how focused you are on food.” This is a knock that two Levels like Raj and me were taken by surprise. Maybe it’s a good idea Raj isn’t filing a report about this. None of us seem very smart right now.

  Raj sits in a chair. “Fine. Point taken.”

  I grab my defiled sandwich and—senior to me or not—plop it in front of Grey. Then I reach for a fresh one. Our gray-haired guest shrugs as if to say, “It is right and just that I’ve been stuck with this sullied grub.”

  We dig into lunch again. Grey talks while we eat. Once he starts rattling off the torrent of information he’s collected from all around England, we forget about his stupid entrance.

  “The Krauts have been taken entirely by surprise in the north. The smoking crater you left in their intelligence apparatus will require months to fill in with new assets and case officers.” He takes a big bite of sandwich and continues as he chews. “That’s if they can even acquire new people to work there. I’ve heard rational men spreading rumors of a Jewish ghost returned from the dead to slake its thirst for German blood. That’s probably a result of your knife work, Scarlet. Carving Stars of David into those imbeciles was a nice touch.”

  Raj raises his brows. He never entered the Gestapo HQ, so he didn’t know about that part.

  Grey continues. “The unrest in Yorkshire is absorbing a massive number of German troops and police, most of them from London. This has created an interesting opportunity for us.” Grey comms us a set of files. I open mine in my Eyes-Up display. A map of London superimposes itself over my view of the room. The map has three bright markers on it. “The blue mark is where we are now. The green mark will be your drop-off and pickup point under Tower Bridge in the Thames River. The red mark is where Victor Eisenberg is being held, in the Tower of London. I’ve made contact with the Tower’s Ravenmaster, and we’ve worked out a plan.”