Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two] (15 page)

"
Da
,” Katrina sighed sadly, her ample bosoms heaving.

From the soulful expression on Mr. Renault's face, that particular problem might be solved for our Russian pal quite soon.

"As an alchemist,” Raul continued, “he could only nibble around the edges, getting a fleeting taste every now and then."

"So magic is addictive,” Mindy noted, thoughtfully massaging an old scar. “Similar to the adrenaline high of combat. Always leaves you wanting more."

"You better believe it,” Raul sighed, dropping heavily into a folding chair. “Did you know that in the history of the Bureau, eight wizards lost their powers and each committed suicide?"

A grim statistic, but fortunately our pal Richard Anderson was not counted in that somber list. Anderson retired with his powers and abilities intact, just unable to perform any major magic. But that happened at his advanced age. However I was staring to get the big picture.

"So Mystery Man would have done anything, even gamble with true death, for a chance at real magic,” I said, loosening my tie.

"No question."

"Great,” George grumped. “So now he's an ultra-powerful junkie."

As a butterfly tattoo rose into view on her cleavage, Katrina scratched it behind the ears and nodded. “Unfortunately, that is correct."

"But why did he steal the gaseous remains of the other two supernaturals?” Ken asked, pressing for details like a hound on the hunt. “And why not Goshnar?"

"Good taste?” George offered as a joke.

Tucking the tattoo away, Katrina snorted. “All chemist steal anything."

"So true,” Raul agreed. “They're infamous for being chemical and herbal packrats."

The slight mention of food made my stomach rumble announcing that lunch was becoming an imperative. Feed the belly to fuel the brain, as my mom always used to say. Tucking away my pencils, I put the talk on hold and shooed the team out of the projection room heading for the cafeteria. The corridors branched constantly in a complex maze, but the rich smell of food quickened everybody's step.

We found the cafeteria in a state of disarray, half of the tables were occupied and the rest were smashed. Apparently there had also been some fighting here. Probably just a spectral chef furious over what the cooks did to meat loaf here at the Academy. We still had some leftovers tucked into the walls of our RV as bulletproof shielding. Worked pretty good, too.

Noticing Patricia sitting alone at a table, I asked Jessica to grab me anything fried on toast with onions and ambled over to talk to the Healer. She looked like she could use a friend at the moment.

"Long time no see,” I asked, taking a chair. “How's your wife and my kids?"

Almost smiling, Pat wearily spooned a good pound of sugar into her mug of coffee. “I've been busy,” she said, taking a slurp, then adding more sugar. “There are so many wounded, so many more dead. I haven't done anything like this since that 1989 earthquake in San Francisco."

"You were there?"

"My team stopped the giant beetle that caused the quake."

"
Qui
?” I lapsed into Spanish.

She gave a sky smile. “I am not a student,” the Healer confessed. “I'm a field agent from Team Angel in Los Angeles, here to be a ringer in the final exam. You know, open inappropriate doors, get captured, head in the wrong direction, that sort of stuff."

Wow. Burton was even sneakier than I imagined.

"Well, I have friends in Frisco,” I said, offering the milk. It was refused. “Lucky a Bureau team was there."

"Yeah, lucky,” the gypsy said the word as if it had a bad taste. “Every night I wake to the screams of the civilians we couldn't save in time from the quake. Lucky."

I said nothing. There was nothing to say. This was an agent's burden, you accepted the load, went mad, or quit. Sometimes both.

With fierce strength, Patricia grabbed my arm. “Ed, I'd like to join your team for this mission."

"Why?"

"After having seen what that alchemist can do, he's gotta go down for the count. Terminate with extreme prejudice, and I want in."

Frankly, I was surprised. “Kind of rough talk for a Healer."

"My powers may be benign,” Pat snarled, “but not me, baby."

Wow, major personal dichotomy there. I seriously thought about the offer. “What about your home team?"

She smiled. “I already called Team Angel and its fine with Aki and Damon."

This was mighty tempting, but logic forced me to decline. “Sorry,” I said softly. “But I must say no. Every field team in the Bureau has been temporarily assigned to the Facility until the damage can be repaired. Gordon has given Tunafish the job of getting Mystery Man, and besides, I've already been assigned Sommers and Sanders. Eight is the most I can handle.” I offered a grin. “Any more and the tires might blow on the RV."

The Healer accepted the rebuff with class. “Fair enough,” she acknowledged, and released my arm to sit back in her chair.

Arriving at our table with a tray of food, Jessica gestured at me with a steaming bowl of chili. Quickly I stood, my gut rumbling in impatience. “Gotta go. Take care, Ms.... say what is your last name anyway?"

This seemed to embarrass the Healer for some reason. “I am of true gypsy heritage,” she explained. “And we often don't have last names. Lineage is sometimes just a matter of opinion. I was going to use the name Gypsy, but the TechServ random name generator decided upon Ritter."

"Then take care, Pat Ritter. Call if you ever need help."

"Goodbye, Edwardo,” she said holding out a hand.

We shook and a pleasant electric sensation flowed up my arm, then over my entire body and I was no longer tired. My leg stopped hurting, my rib straightened and my broken nose slammed into place.

"That is to let you know what you're missing,” Pat said, walking away with her empty mug.

After a moment, I turned towards my team running stiff fingers through my hair and scratching the outside of my brain. Maybe we should have kept her. Ah well.

The report for Technical Services arrived while we were eating. That was fast even for the gang at TechServ. Unfortunately, there wasn't much we could use having garnished the more pertinent points: Caucasian, male, from North America, possible childhood stutter, average height and weight, right-handed. They also ran his fingerprints against the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and NSA files, but didn't find a match. Nothing odd there. Lots of folks weren't in the files; law-abiding civilians, master criminals, and Bureau 13 agents.

Too bad Mystery Man hadn't gone about barefoot. We caught more criminals from toe prints matched to their baby records from the delivery room of the hospital they were born in, than we ever did from fingerprints. Too many cheap TV shows had taught crooks the value of wearing gloves.

After lunch, we retrieved Amigo from the basement of Base Command, replaced our broken windshield and headed for home. There were a lot of magical and scientific devices in our Chicago apartment that we could use to try and find SuperFink ***1. With an amoral screwball on the loose armed with the Aztec Book of the Dead, there was no telling what mischief he could be planning. Just reading the table of contents made the sky rain stones for a week. Which simply drove the U.S. Weather Bureau out of its mind trying to explain.

Once we did find him, going to jail was not an option. There was a nice big grave already waiting for Mystery Man. It was the blast crater where Gil Lapin crashed his jumpjet and burned alive while trapped inside the wreckage. Horace Gordon and Bureau 13 wanted this guy stopped fast and that was fine by us. But my team was not going to make the same mistake twice.

He was coming back in a coffin, not handcuffs.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Upon receiving our report, Horace Gordon contacted every government law enforcement agency. The FBI, CIA, Secret Service, DEA, Treasury Department, the NSA, ATF, federal marshals, sky marshals, Texas Marshals, plus Army G2, Air Force Intelligence, Navy Security, SAC and NORAD each received a Hunt & Kill order on Mystery Man. An APB was issued to city, county, state and police across the continent, including Canada and Mexico. His picture and featureless fingerprints circulated via satellites and over wires. Our John Doe was listed as a homicidal maniac with rabies, heavily armed, addicted to PCP and totally insane. The police were strictly ordered not to even attempt an arrest, just shoot the suspect and burn the body.

We highly doubted that any ordinary cop could bring in the alchemist, but their efforts couldn't hurt, and if somebody did manage to pull off a miracle kill, we'd put the person in charge of Bureau 13, just for being the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the face of the earth.

Scowling at the tiny photo of Mystery Man on the clipboard, the traffic cop tore a ticket out of her summons book and handed it to George. The soldier's hands were knuckle-white on the steering wheel.

"Buddy,” the officer drawled. “I don't care if you're a member of the FBI, Mossad and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police combined. Speed in Chicago, and you get a ticket?"

"Once again, the safety of humanity is in the capable hands of Bureau 13,” Raul announced, as the police officer walked back to her patrol car.

"Aw shaddup,” George growled, throwing the transmission into drive and easing off the berm at a stately 55mph.

"Besides, you're still 412 to 2,” Jessica added with a grin.

Although not telepathic, Mr. Renault's thoughts were plainly readable from the expression on his face. I was surprised he would talk that way about a lady in her presence.

Shunting out of Bangor-Maine onto Rt. 80 west, we took Interstate 94 to the Dan Ryan Expressway, where Mr. Renault briefly reacquainted us with the local constabulary. Afterwards, we actually obeyed the traffic laws. It was a nice change. I had never known those green/brown blurs alongside the road were trees.

Taking the Wacker Avenue Exit, we wiggled through the downtown traffic and took Dearborn Road until reaching a modest building in the middle of the block. Home. Our new members did not seem impressed with its innate grandeur, so I started the standard introductory spiel.

Since no field agent knew where our main headquarters was, each team operated independently. Everybody's home base had to be a fort, sanctuary, armory, supply dump, refueling station and information processing station. It made for interesting structural designs. Once in Roanoke, Virginia we had been forced to apprehend a demonically-possessed Bureau mansion and blasting our way into another agent's home base was not something I would ever like to have to do again. Their robotic lawn jockeys damn near killed me, and to this day, Amigo will not go anywhere near a velvet painting of Elvis.

The six-story structure before us was an old warehouse converted into an apartment complex. We did the conversion. The warehouse had an antique wrought iron framework, which our mages polymorphed into chrome steel. Then workers poured concrete for the floors and walls, which some friendly gremlins then reinforced with titanium netting.

Afterwards, the outside of the building was hung with a foot of tough Italian marble and we bricked the interior walls. The windows were three sheets thick: glass, Armorlite, plexiglass. It never got cold in the winter, and for Chicago, that was saying something.

Every external door was wood sheeting over plate steel, cushioned with xytel plastic inserts and braced by four oversized hinges. The locks were Bureau specials, and the interior doors were six inch thick African ironwood. Termites broke teeth on the stuff.

Now an apartment building in downtown Chicago with no tenants would have caused talk. So we did rent out the lower floors, to a family of deaf-mutes and a Heavy Metal rock band that liked to practice at odd hours. Nobody ever investigated any strange noises coming from our place.

Once we had gotten a deadbeat who refused to pay his rent and invited us to take him to court. Publicity is the last thing we wanted, so after a brief visit by some friends that Raul conjured at midnight, Mr. Deadbeat was gone by morning. Since then, we have had few problems.

Our team lives on the fifth floor. The forth and sixth levels were jam packed with cinderblocks, sensors, concertina wire, bear traps and Claymore mines. We called the layout a safety sandwich. There was a heliport on the roof, but after what occurred to our last helicopter, the Bureau was rather loathe to give us another. Hey, accidents happen. Personally, I think the new Statue of Liberty looks even better than the old one.

Now the students were impressed.

Narrowly missing a crunch between a Mack truck and a taxi, George drove the RV along an inclined ramp into our subterranean parking garage. Flipping a switch on the dashboard, the armored door rumbled into the ceiling, we entered, and it noisily descended behind us.

To the left was the vehicle repair bay. To the right, parking spaces containing a sleek black sports coupe, a battered red pick-up truck, a white limousine, a station wagon, a sleek speedboat dry-docked on a trailer hitch and a flock of bicycles. Ever spot was filled, except one. We took that.

"Others park here?” Ken asked, stooping to get out of the van. Both his and Katrina Sommer's suitcases were held in a single hand.

"Nope, those are all ours,” George said proudly, hefting his 30 lb banjo from the RV. “Never can tell when you're going to need additional transportation."

"Of appropriate demeanor,” Mindy added.

Pressing a button on my key chain fob, a piece of the wall dissolved to expose a door. The team trundled inside to the stairs and elevator. We took the lazy way.

In the lobby, there were two elevators; one for the tenants, another for us. Theirs went from ground level to the third floor. Ours went from the roof to the sub-sub-basement were we kept a bomb shelter.

"There is a ghost there, no?” Katrina asked.

Adjusting the leash about Amigo's neck, Raul told her correct. “Old Pirate Pete, a buccaneer from the Spanish Mane. He keeps ordering pizzas and stiffing the delivery man."

"Why not exorcise the spirit?” Katrina asked suspiciously.