by G T Almasi
“Darwin, we’re down under the monument.”
“What? I bzzt barely bzzt-bzzt.”
“HANG ON! I’ll come up!” I run to the stairs and return to the ground level. My hand finds the switch that opens the panel.
I peek outside. Brando and Falcon are right in front of me, but they’re facing the other way.
“BOO!”
The boys both jump a foot. Falcon spins toward me with his hand on his pistol. Brando leans forward with his hand on his knees.
“Crap!” my partner gasps.
Falcon grins and laughs. Naturally it reminds me of my father’s laugh, and a frightsicle courses down my throat.
“That was outrageous.” Falcon jovially bumps my shoulder as he enters the secret chamber. He walks down the stairs. His voice echoes from below, “Man, this place is rad.”
I pull Brando inside the column and close the panel behind him. “Gotcha good, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, yeah. Real good.”
As we descend the stairs, I ask, “What happened to Kruppe?”
“He drove to Thiepval’s town hall, showed his ID, and went in past the gate. It’s like a fortress: armed guards, barriers, spotlights, the works. There was no way Falcon and I could infiltrate the place without more prep, so we came back.” He wraps his fingers into mine when we reach the bottom of the stairs. We hold hands until we rejoin Victor and Mr. Greasy, who have been joined by Falcon.
The Gestapo courier has woken up again. He tries to scoot away from me as I approach. Victor says, “Scarlet, give him a scare.”
I latch on to Mr. Greasy’s uninjured arm.
“No!” he bawls. “Please, no!”
“Then talk, Herr Ludwig,” Victor intones.
I guess this sucker has a name. But he still doesn’t want to spill the beans. I say out loud, “Anybody want a wing?”
“No!” Herr Ludwig shouts. Tears stream from his eyes.
Victor whacks Ludwig’s face. “TELL ME!”
“I…I dare not. They will, they…” Herr Ludwig descends into unintelligible blubbering.
Victor plants his hands on his hips and sticks out his chin. “Scarlet, I want you to—”
“Wait.” It’s Brando. “Let’s use this.” From his X-bag he produces a pair of needles, each connected to a heavy little box by long coiled wires.
I say to Falcon, “You better back up, F-Bird. This gets real messy.”
Herr Ludwig’s face has turned white as a sheet. He’s so scared of those infamous needles, I swear the jagoff has stopped moving at a molecular level.
“Seems like our messenger here knows about the Thackery Procedure,” I comm.
Herr Ludwig’s attention is riveted on Brando’s hands, and the crying blaggard finally tells us what we want to know. “Reims!” he peals. “Kruppe is going to Reims!”
“Why Reims?”
Our captive’s eyes are locked on the needles. Brando wiggles them back and forth and repeats Victor’s question. “Why-y-y Reims?”
“La Jeune.” Herr Ludwig chokes out. His eyes roll from side to side. We’re losing him again. “Michel La Jeune. In Reims.” He passes out and slumps into his jacket.
“Michel!” Victor exclaims, looking at his watch. “And Kruppe has the lead on us. Hurry, my friends. We must go.”
Brando stuffs the Thackery needles in his X-bag as we tear-ass toward the exit. “Victor, who’s Michel?”
“Michel La Jeune is a very good, well-connected man who runs an important safe house in Reims. He must be protected.”
We scurry up the stairs, pour out of the secret panel, and gallop to our car. My foot is starting to sting again, and Brando notices me limping. He opens the car’s front passenger door and says, “Falcon, how about you show us what you can do behind the wheel?”
The kid grins broadly and hops in the driver’s seat while Victor and I climb in behind him. F-Bird cranks the ignition, floors the gas, and lays a pair of black stripes across the parking lot. We hang on tight while Falcon races out of town.
“Well,” Victor yells over the car’s wailing engine, “we know he can do that!”
38
NEXT MORNING, SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 7:02 A.M. CET
REIMS, PROVINCE OF FRANCE, GG
“This can’t be the place,” I say from the rear seat of our BMW. I lean across Victor’s lap to see out his window. Falcon hunches behind the wheel, and Brando sits next to him.
“This is where La Jeune is based,” Victor says, glancing at his watch. Navigating around all the German checkpoints made this drive take much longer than he’d hoped.
“Dang.” Falcon nods. “Who’d ever search for the Resistance here?”
We’re in front of the monstrously tall and outrageously decorative towers of Reims’s Cathedral of Notre-Dame. The facade contains so many statues and stone carvings that it could be a thirty-story wedding cake. We’ve been using this thing as a landmark since we were on the highway, but I never thought it was our destination.
Falcon drives down a side street and pulls into the private lot of a small office building. One of the best things about riding around in stolen cars is not caring where we park. Go ahead and tow it, fuckos. It’s not ours anyway!
My partner pivots around in his seat so he can see me. “How’s your foot?”
“Sucks.” My right foot is swollen from the buckshot pedicure I got in Saint-Quentin.
Brando says, “Maybe you should stay here.”
“No way.” I open my door. “We’ve never met this so-and-so, and I might have to shoot him for ya.”
Brando gives me a look and follows me out of the car.
Victor fills us in as we cross the plaza in front of the Cake. “I know La Jeune from Holland. He was in the Dutch Underground during the war. He is effective at what he does, although I think he has become too vocal in his opposition to the Reich’s policies.”
This is a good one coming from a man who’s about as discreet as a rockslide. My partner drily says, “Victor, isn’t that like poop holding its nose at shit?” Incredibly, this is a real German saying.
“Ha.” Victor smiles. “Perhaps it is, but we each have our roles. Mine is to be the voice of the Resistance. This defines the range of what I am capable of contributing. Monsieur La Jeune could contribute much more if he stayed—how do you Americans say?—below the radar.”
We finish crossing the plaza and approach the Cake. The front doors are so tall, even the Jolly Green Giant wouldn’t bump his head. A sign lists the cathedral’s hours and mass times. It opened only a few minutes ago, with today’s first service fifty-five minutes from now.
We enter the dimmed interior and take a moment to let our eyes adjust. Sunlight filters through the extravagant stained glass windows and melts across the polished floor and soaring stone pillars like Technicolor butter. A few people sit or kneel in the pews, deep in contemplation. Our footsteps echo down the massive central nave. The sound seems to resonate forever.
We go to the visitors’ desk and ask for Michel La Jeune. The ancient old woman behind the counter goggles at us through thick-lensed glasses. “More of you?” She points her bony finger at a small door beside the first chapel on the left and cackles, “Michel must be having quite a party.”
Oh, crap.
Brando quickly leads us toward the chapel. The door abruptly swings open. Four tense men parade out of the narrow stairway beyond and shoulder past without looking at us. They’re neatly dressed in button-down shirts and sport coats, but the first thug is a bit of a slob. His coat is rumpled, and his tie has a goopy food stain on it. When the fourth man walks past me, I turn my head away. He’s Johannes Kruppe.
I comm on our team channel, “Darwin, do you recognize that white-haired bastard?”
Victor isn’t wearing his comm-set, but he sees our expressions. He discreetly holds his palm out to us, then points at himself.
Kruppe separates from the other three men and heads for the cathedral’s front door. Without another
word, Vic follows him. The rest of us exchange glances.
Spontaneously, my partner and I both whisper, “Okay, bye, Victor!”
Falcon snickers at the two of us parroting each other. We watch the remaining three palookas as they walk up the center aisle toward the main altar.
Brando comms, “Scarlet, you’d better follow them. Falcon, come with me.”
Falcon and I simultaneously answer, “Roger that,” and smile. Spending a week in a car together has all of us talking like Huey, Louie, and Dewey, where we start and finish one another’s sentences.
Brando and Falcon plunge through the small door next to the chapel. I clasp my hands behind my back and try to look unthreatening as I tag along after the sport coats. They’ve reached the hugely ornate altar, where the middle aisle crosses the side transepts. One of the sport coats is a real geezer; he could have kids older than me. The other young dude, the one with no food on him, is built like a pile of brick shithouses.
The trio struts onto the central riser. Geezer slithers behind the altar and bends down, out of sight. Shithouse and Slobbo keep watch. I pretend to study the ceiling’s intricate stonework while my feet edge closer to their position.
Brando comms, “Scarlet, do you have eyes on those men?”
“Affirmative, Darwin.”
“Well, keep your distance. Michel La Jeune has been shot through the head and had one of his arms torn off.”
Jesus. I gently backpedal up the aisle, gazing at the massive rose window over the entrance. I’m only a few yards away from Slobbo when something on his person emits a sinister metallic click.
Madrenaline whips into my blood, Li’l Bertha skips into my hand, and the floor drops away from my feet. Slobbo fires the first shot, but he’s aimed too low. His bullet streaks under me. My pistol spits a slug at his face. He shifts laterally and nearly slips out of the way. Instead of hitting him in the center of his nose, where Li’l Bertha was pointed, her shot smashes into the edge of Slobbo’s eye socket. The bullet takes a weird bounce and comes out his cheek while his face collapses in a bloody cloud of bone fragments.
I land on the altar’s platform, close to Shithouse, who bum-rushes me. I barely have time to sidestep his lunge. I dose more Madrenaline as he charges by. I try to whack him in the back of his head, but he spins around, blocks my punch, and takes a big swing at me.
Fuck! Why am I so slow?
I juke away from Shithouse’s haymaker and sweep a roundhouse kick at his legs. He leaps over my attack and counters with a front snap kick at my chest. I roll backward, get to my feet, and shoot at my competitor’s stomach.
Wait. I’m not slow.
Shithouse dodges Li’l Bertha’s shot before it’s left her barrel.
They’re incredibly fast.
“Darwin! These fuckers are Levels!”
“Can you evade them?”
“Negative! I’m too close. Falcon, get up here!”
“On my way, Scarlet.”
Geezer joins the party and fills the air with bullets while I fend off a flurry of martial-arts attacks from his younger colleague. The noise is spectacular. Gunshots in this space sound like cannon fire and nearly drown out the screaming civilians.
“Scarlet,” Victor comms, “what’s going on?” He’s put on his comm-set. “Should I return?”
My defensive gymnastics trick Geezer into shooting Shithouse in the shoulder, but the tall drink of lumber is so cranked up that he doesn’t even flinch.
“Stay out of here, Vicberg,” I comm. “These assholes are too—”
Shithouse’s fists and Geezer’s bullets overwhelm my situational awareness, and I trip backward off the riser and topple to the floor. Shithouse tries to stomp me with his size fourteen critter crushers. I roll out of the way like a hot dog on a skillet.
Another gun opens fire. It’s Falcon, from the back of the church. Shithouse ducks under the kid’s first volley. The distraction lets me stagger my opponent with a karate chop to his ankle. My hand balls into a fist to smash this blockhead’s kneecap into cookie dough.
Shithouse exhales sharply. I look up. There’s a hole in his left temple. He sways like a ship’s mast in a storm. Something rips through his neck, then most of his nose vanishes, and finally a hunk of his lower jaw breaks off and clatters to the platform.
“Got him!” It’s Falcon. The kid’s aim is fucking incredible.
By the time my towering competitor timbers to the floor, the structural integrity of his skull has been so severely compromised that his head shatters like a vase in a rubber bag. A pool of gray and red liquid splooshes out.
Geezer has seen enough. He hurdles his dead colleagues and sprints past me toward the cathedral’s exit.
I get to my feet. “Brando, Falcon! The last one is coming your way!”
“Roger that. We have the exit blocked.”
Our adversary’s speed and agility defy his years. He evades a shot from Falcon and changes direction so abruptly that it’s like he’s on rails. The fleeing agent streaks through a doorway into the south tower, where he mounts a flight of stone stairs. I charge after him, with Falcon right behind me.
We vault up the steps. I’m only a few paces behind Geezer, but the stairway’s spiral is so tight that I can’t shoot him. Our footsteps’ racket is joined by the gasps of our heavy breathing. I flash back to my Eiffel Tower chase last year. There’s no way this pig has a parachute, too.
Geezer’s footsteps stop echoing. I pop into the bright European sunshine as my opponent launches himself over a railing toward the cathedral’s other tower. He flies across the gap between the spires, grabs a hunk of decorative stonework, and sticks to the tower like a fly. Then he swings himself around the corner onto the structure’s east face. I can barely see the crazy old shitbird through all the carved festoonery as he jungle-gyms down to the cathedral’s main roof.
Falcon runs past me and swoops after our competitor. The kid purposely lets himself plummet a little ways before he grabs a carved stone handhold. He wants to cut the enemy agent off, but Geezer has a big head start.
“F-Bird, keep on him and I’ll cover this side.”
Falcon speedily crab-crawls down the tower’s ornamented facade. There’s no time for me to make a normal descent. I climb over the rail and drop straight down, inches from the face of the tower. My hands grab and release swirly stone elements to help slow my fall. Before hitting the roof, I latch onto a sneering gargoyle and rip the thing out of its mount.
I land hard on all fours. My right foot throbs like it’s being stabbed with red-hot needles as I dive away from the crumbling stonework.
“Darwin,” I comm, “our target has descended the north tower to the main roof.”
“Roger, Scarlet. I’m already in the car.”
“Great; stay close. We’re gonna need a fast pickup.”
“Understood.”
I comm, “Hey, Vic, any sign of your old school chum?”
Victor replies, “Negative, Scarlet. I broke off when the shooting started. Kruppe can wait.”
“All right; whatever you say, Vicberg.” Then, “Falcon, where’d our target go?”
“He’s across the roof from you, running toward the back of the building.”
I dose a bunch of yummy chemicals and scamper down my side of the roof. “Is he ahead of me?”
“Affirmative,” Falcon comms. “He’s already at the far end, above one of the flying buttresses.”
“Copy that. I’ll cover him here. Can you take position out front?”
“On my way.”
I make it to the transept. My feet tap-dance their way around all the corners and bring me to the Cake’s semicircular rear section. Flying buttresses splay out like a fan.
Victor comms, “The target is on the ground outside the northernmost chapel.”
“Roger that, Vic.” I charge past the buttresses until I’m over the last chapel. “F-Bird, where are you?”
“Out front, coming to cover the north side.”
Meanwhile I’m stuck up here. I’m about to repeat my falling-leaf routine when I notice a thick black power cable. The heavily insulated wire links the cathedral to a telephone pole down in the street.
I run at the cable and leap off the roof. My metal-and-plastic right hand wraps around the wire, and I soar down it like a zip line. Before hitting the telephone pole, I let go, fall to the pavement, bounce across the road, and bash into a parked car.
Ow! My bruises are getting bruises, but at least my foot has gone numb. I comm, “I’m on the ground. Anybody have eyes on the runner?”
“I see him,” Falcon answers. “North side, running toward the front of the church.”
Man, it’ll be a pisser if we wind up right back where we started after all this dogging around. I hobble across the street and finally catch sight of Geezer. He’s halfway to the front, but Falcon has a bead on him. F-Bird’s shots ring out. I add Li’l Bertha’s firepower to the mix.
We both aim low. Now that we have Geezer in a pincer, we’ll try to take him alive. The man’s legs collapse under him as our bullets crash through his shins and ankles. He rises to his knees and draws his pistol. These people never give up! I take aim for a kill shot, but my target doesn’t aim at Falcon or me. He points his weapon at his own head.
“He’s gonna off himself!”
A figure flies out from behind a parked car and pounces on our injured enemy. It’s Victor! He tries to disarm the suicidal German. Eisenberg may be a great fighter, but he’s way out of his league. Geezer grabs Victor’s neck and slams him to the ground like a plush toy.
I crank a ton of Madrenaline, hurtle up behind Geezer, and plow into him so hard that we pitch over Victor and spill onto the sidewalk. The exceptionally durable German agent lands on his face and finally stops moving. A thin trickle of blood leaks out of his ear.
Meanwhile my battered body sprawls on the sidewalk and rides out a nasty bout of emotional recoil. My head spins like a cat in a dishwasher while my hands and feet bang out a fast dance beat on the brick sidewalk. I inhale large gulps of air but forget to exhale. One of my eyelids begins to flicker. I hold it still and try to push myself off the ground.