Talon of Scorpio

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Talon of Scorpio Page 9

by G T Almasi


  “There he is.” Kennedy points across the short distance to a shadowed person lurking next to a stack of crates. Binga gently bumps into the wharf. “Off you go,” he says to us.

  I comm, “Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.”

  His smile practically glows in the dark. “Call me Jack, sweetheart.” We shake hands. “Good luck.”

  Patrick and I grab our duffels and hop off the boat onto the wooden pier. We approach the Greeter, a mysterious little person, layered in urban ninja gear: black hooded jacket, black pants, black boots. I can’t even discern this person’s gender; his or her face is completely shadowed. Our Greeter looks us over, turns, then jogs away without a word.

  We hustle along behind our silent guide. I try to catalog the unabridged encyclopedia of explosions, shots, and shouts raging across town, but they blend into a soup of chopped-up exclamation marks. I’m not familiar with the sonic signatures of artillery and bombs—and with good reason: I’m a spy, not a soldier. Most of the action seems to be off toward the center of Antwerp, near the town’s jumbo-sized cathedral.

  The three of us pass through a small plaza, down a narrow street of squished-together Flemish houses, past a big old windmill, and onto a cobbly street labeled Marinestraat.

  Citizen Ninja opens the door to a small brick row house. We follow him or her into a densely furnished parlor. A pair of overstuffed chairs face a tiny fireplace. The wallpapered walls are decorated with all manner of crafted knickknacks: crappy landscapes in huge frames, cutesy wooden signs bearing lame platitudes, and at least three cuckoo clocks, none of them working. A dark board holds a collection of souvenir keys from cities all over Europe. The keys jiggle back and forth in time with the racket from outside.

  Our escort switches on the lights and turns to face us. She pulls back her hood to reveal a familiar broad smile, big dark eyes, and dark hair drawn into a compact bun.

  “Guten Tag, mein lieben,” she chirps in German accented with her native Dutch. Hello, my dears.

  “Garbo!” We throw our arms around our old friend and give her a big double hug.

  From within our six-armed reunion, her muffled voice says, “I am sorry for the hook-and-dagger, but everywhere there are competitors.”

  I’m pretty sure she means “cloak-and-dagger,” but “hook-and-dagger” is much funnier. She’s still totally adorable. We untangle ourselves to look each other up and down. I haven’t seen Garbo since last February. Her real name is Marie Van Daan. She’s the journalist and CIA stringer who sheltered us after I’d been wounded extracting Victor Eisenberg from the Staatszeiger.

  “Marie,” I ask. “Since when are you a Greeter?”

  “Heh.” She waves her arm to indicate the noise outside. “Since Europe has risen against les Boches. There are many jobs to be done, and when I saw your names I snapped at the chance to see you again.”

  Garbo either means “snapped up” or “jumped at” the chance to see us. I remember her English being better than this, but she’s pretty amped and maybe her gray matter is a little preoccupied. She bustles into the apartment’s teeny kitchen where she begins to whip together a hearty meal.

  Patrick takes this opportunity to check in with ExOps. I shadow him in case something new has come into our mission file, but there’s nothing. Ideally, this means Heydrich is still on schedule for his inspection in Antwerp tomorrow morning.

  Brando doesn’t look happy, though. I whisper, “What’s wrong?”

  He says, “The last update was twenty-three hours ago.”

  That’s too long. I tap my fingers against my thigh and hold his gaze. With all the craziness outside, Heydrich’s arrival time has almost certainly shifted.

  I hold my hands out from my sides. Brando nods and shrugs. It looks like we’ll just have to wait.

  The metallic clatter of Marie’s cooking crests and stops, quickly replaced by a rapid series of clunks and clinks as she lays out dishes and silverware.

  “Dinner!” she calls.

  We squish into the wooden chairs around the little kitchen table and essen-essen. Eat-eat!

  The last time we saw Marie, we were leaving her house in northern France. She had prepared bags of non-perishable food for us to eat during our unpredictable travels, and thank God we had them. Living in a car made cooking impossible, and our nocturnal schedule meant by the time we stopped moving the eateries were all closed.

  Marie knows we can’t talk about our mission, so she fills us in on what she and her sister Bettie have been doing. The two women had been active in the underground railroads, smuggling slaves out of Greater Germany. Now the sisters help former Jewish slaves reintegrate into European society or emigrate to the American haven of Cuba. Marie’s day job as a journalist has kept her busy writing articles about Madhouse Europe. She’s also been harvesting a bumper crop of intel for CIA’s Intelligence Department. Considering our spy-biz connection, it’s sort of funny how little shop we talk.

  Which is not to say the evening lacks for talking. I’m quickly reminded that Marie is an incredible chatterbox. An hour later I could swear she hasn’t inhaled once. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. When I come back out, Patrick stands with one finger gently held up toward our Greeter.

  “Something new?” I comm.

  “Yeah,” he comms back. “Our target has advanced his timetable.”

  “Is von Stauffenberg with him?”

  “No.”

  Good. I can go in weapons hot.

  I comm, “So when do we kick off?”

  Patrick says, out loud, “Right now.”

  He dashes into the bathroom while I grab my SoftArmor and pull it over my head. I wrap my two-pistol harness around my shoulders. Pat down my guns. Cover all this with my red leather jacket and jump into my boots. The toilet flushes and Brando emerges to take his coat from me.

  Marie has leaned back in her chair to watch us throw ourselves together. “If I could get ready that quickly,” she says, “I’d be an hour early for everything.”

  We laugh, give our friend a quick hug, then dash out the front door.

  “Thank you!” we yell.

  “My pleasure, little ones,” she calls back. “Good luck!”

  We clatter down the stairs to the street. So many greetings and goodbyes, stressful days and sleepless nights, not to mention our endless plots, schemes, and plans that hardly ever work out the way we think they will.

  God help me, I love it so.

  —DARE: HIGHLORD—

  8 SEP 1981

  SITUATION IN EUROPE

  From: John F. Kennedy, American ambassador to Ireland

  To: George H. W. Bush, XIC

  CC: William Webster, DCI

  Sir,

  A state of war exists between the Reich’s government in Berlin and the anti-government coalition led by Markus Wolf.

  Both combatants have heavily engaged their respective air forces. The Luftwaffe’s strength dwarfs the Kriegsmarine’s air capacity, but the German Navy has made the most of their carriers’ mobility to strike from unexpected directions. After exploiting their surprise, the outnumbered naval pilots lead their aggressive Luftwaffe opponents into anti-aircraft fire from the carrier groups’ support vessels.

  Luftwaffe commanders are tightening their pilots’ pursuit directives to reduce losses of aircraft over hostile waters. The Kreigsmarine cannot remain on the defensive forever, and a blockade would starve their allies as well as their opponents.

  Additionally, Greater Germany’s Provinces have taken this opportunity to reassert their sovereignty. Normally, the provincial militias would barely be noticed, but all of the Reich’s resources have been absorbed into the fight against Wolf’s rebellion. As such, the locally led groups have occupied many of their smaller urban centers. For now, the Provinces’ capital cities remain in Berlin’
s control with the exception of Munich, where Wolf has taken charge of the entire region.

  My office recommends that the U.S. intervene to stabilize the Continent. Please find attached further material from our sources in several of the contested areas.

  Sincerely,

  —JFK

  —DARE: HIGHLORD—

  3 SEP 1981

  REFUGEE CRISIS

  Control,

  The rapidly escalating conflict has displaced millions of people. There is no “front,” per se, as the fighting is happening everywhere. Refugees clog roads in both directions, often fleeing from one war zone into another.

  These displaced persons lack medical care, shelter, and sanitary facilities. Their plight already represents a profound public-health crisis. The foundering Reich cannot meet this challenge alone.

  More when I hear it,

  —Garbo

  15

  SAME EVENING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 8:04 P.M. CEST

  FORT VAN MERKSEM, ANTWERP, PROVINCE OF BELGIUM, GREATER GERMANY

  Our heavy front bumper sweeps the locked gate aside like a cobweb. I keep the gas pedal on the floor and careen up the missile facility’s driveway. The sentries’ gunshots are drowned out by our truck’s bellowing diesel engine.

  My arms wrench the steering wheel from left to right as we skid around a corner. “I didn’t know Volkswagen made tractor-trailers!”

  Brando doesn’t answer. He peers into the spotlit night rushing toward us. “Next gate, seventy-five yards.”

  German Luftwaffe troops pour into the road ahead and block the gate. We stare down a row of rifle barrels. All of them flash. The shots rip the windshield out of its frame. Patrick and I duck under the mangled sheet of safety glass as it falls into the cab. I hold the wheel straight and our hungry bumper clanks through another barricade.

  We’re inside the complex, surrounded by the old fort’s walls. At the north end is a low concrete bunker with a steel door. The rest of the space is dominated by a twelve-foot-tall, thirty-foot-thick pillar that juts from the earth like a colossal molar.

  I park next to the big tooth and jump out of the truck. “Yoo-hoo, I’m home!” I unholster my pistols and crouch next to the pillar. A squad of the guards we blew past run into the fort. Li’l Bertha’s target sensor lights up, and she picks off two troopers before the rest dive for cover.

  Brando kneels next to me. “We wanna get in that bunker.”

  I exchange fire with the guards. “One sec. I’ll finish these suckers off.”

  The ground shudders, briefly, and the guards stop shooting. The dirt beneath our feet jounces once more, stronger this time. My heat sensor displays our opponent’s orange silhouettes crawling out of cover and running back the way they came.

  “Hah! Scared ’em away.” I stand up. “Come back and fight, you pussies!”

  A deep rumble issues from below the fort. The ground shakes again, and this time it keeps shaking. Cascades of dust fall from the molar’s sides.

  My partner says, “I’m not sure they ran away from you.”

  A beam of light blossoms from inside the pillar and stabs a hole in the dark sky. Heat shimmers in the brightness.

  I say, “What the fuck is this thing?”

  Patrick’s eyes open wider and wider. “A blast shield.” He reaches into his X-bag for his handheld millimeter-wave radar. I scan the surroundings with infrared, but everything is cold blue. I switch my vision to radar and follow along with Brando’s description of what he sees belowground.

  “Here we go. Missile silo…extensive bunker complex…” He scans some more. “Makes sense. You’d need shelter from—”

  The light grows in intensity and casts a harsh shadow across my partner’s face. He yells something, but the sudden howl from inside the blast shield is so loud I can’t hear him.

  He comms, “From a launch!”

  Every language-processing cell in my brain shrieks the same thing:

  Get inside the fucking bunker!

  We run to the cement bulkhead. I spin the ring on the pressure door and yank it open. Within, a long set of white stairs leads deep underground. Patrick runs inside, rests his backside on the handrail, and slides below. Amber lights in the gray ceiling flicker across his head as he recedes into the depths.

  Outside, the pointed, black-and-white rocket roars out of the blast ring. I swing myself inside. A massive wall of flame hurtles out of the missile’s engines, sweeps across the fort’s interior, and slams the door shut. In the split second it takes me to crank the ring to its locked position, the door becomes scorching hot. I let go, leap backward onto the handrail, and plunge away from the gate to hell. At the bottom of the stairs, I fall off the rail and roll into my partner’s legs.

  The thunder outside changes to the sound of a Nebraska-sized bedsheet being ripped in half. After a few moments, the rocket’s rumble subsides to a dull thrum.

  The lights switch from amber to white. Brando pulls me to my feet, then checks his X-bag.

  “Anything busted?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so.” He slings his bag over his shoulder. “No wonder Heinrich moved his schedule forward.”

  “To oversee the launch?”

  “Yeah.” He starts down another staircase, farther underground. “I wonder where it’s going.”

  I activate the suite of Mods and Enhances I call Manhattan Radar Mode. Extra-sensitive hearing, infrared vision, millimeter-wave radar, a dose of Madrenaline, and my pistols jacked into my WeaponSynch pads. I move into the lead and brandish my bullet-belchers ahead of me.

  We reach the bottom of the next set of stairs and stand before another pressure door. As I move to twist the locking ring, it unlocks itself. The door opens. We’re nose-to-nose with an absolutely stunned Luftwaffe lieutenant. I rush forward and clock him over the head. He drops like a brick. Behind him stands a line of officers.

  The first fink is our target, General Heydrich! His long, ratlike face sprouts a row of bared teeth the color of dirty dishwater. I ram Li’l Bertha through Heydrich’s grungy chompers and blast the back of his head off.

  The dead man’s feet come off the floor. His body flops into the lummox behind him, who cries out in shock. Punx’s first disk slices Herr Lummox’s guts open and passes through the next three jackasses in line. The four startled bozos fall like bowling pins while the rest run for their lives.

  I jam the girls back in their holsters, unclip two frags from my belt, then rip out both pins at once. I hurl the flat, disk-shaped bombs into the narrow hallway at my competitors’ feet and slam the hatch shut. The blast is so compressed it makes my ears pop. I pull the door open again. What I see might qualify as the Guinness World Record for Most Efficient Grenade Toss.

  Brando looks over my shoulder. “Holy shit!” We count the heads, connected to a body or otherwise. Splattered all over the passage are the remains of nine Luftwaffe men.

  I’m about to christen myself Mayor of Smugville when something clunks on the floor behind Patrick. He grabs my jacket and shoves me into the gore-splashed hallway. My chest skids on the wet floor. Brando lands next to me just before the gatehouse guard’s grenade explodes.

  Fragmented shards ricochet into everything in sight, including us. Blood drips across my eyes. I roll over and point Li’l Bertha in our attackers’ general direction. I grant her permission to fire by herself, and her radar-guided gyroscopes do the rest. She pulls my arm up, left, then right, all while her heavy grip bucks against my palm. Her .50-caliber slugs tear our attackers limb from limb.

  Salty heat dribbles down my cheek into my mouth. I roll onto my side and spit at the wall. A dark-red blotch splats against the cinder blocks and streams to the floor.

  “Darwin, you hit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, too.” I rub
my eyes. “Can you walk?”

  “My legs are okay. I caught some shit with my head.”

  I roll to my knees. “Your least vulnerable spot.”

  “Very funny. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  My enhanced hearing picks up approaching voices and footsteps.

  “Company’s here,” I comm.

  “This way,” my partner comms. He leads me farther into the bunker. Our shoes skid around on the gruesome mess. Patrick holds his radar device in front of him.

  I blink a few times and wipe my face on the sleeve of my jacket. I still can’t see well. “Where are we going?”

  “My radar shows another way out.”

  We weave through spartan rooms and halls until we arrive at the bottom of another flight of stairs. The voices and boots have followed us through the bunker. The soles of our shoes pong the metal steps as we race up the steep incline. At the top, we encounter a heavy steel door mounted in the ceiling. I spin the lock open. After we climb outside, I throw a grenade back the way we came and drop the hatch shut.

  Brando’s radar has delivered us into a tidy green cemetery, about a hundred yards from the rocket fort. The muted bang from below is swallowed by the raging battle around the city. We casually speed-walk away from the bunker’s back door.

  Nothing to see here, Volk. Go about your kreiging.

  An ambulance tears past us, siren whooping. Another ambulance zooms by, then two more. Each flashing vehicle wheels into the semicircular driveway in front of a tall building down the street. Their lights flicker off the windows like Vegas neon.

  We approach the building. It’s a hospital, its front drive jammed with ambulances, police cars, and even a few taxis. We slow down to peek into the emergency room. The place is swamped with victims of the fighting.

  I turn to say something to Patrick and only now notice that he’s pressing his left palm to the side of his head. Blood runs down his neck and into his shirt.

  “Brando,” I say. “You’re bleeding.”

 

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