Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two] (16 page)

"He's crotchety, but the local kids love him. Especially at Halloween."

She gave a fleeting smile. “A most valuable commodity, then."

"At least for PR purposes."

Silent as a sigh, the elevator opened to our floor. For anybody else, it would have very loudly dinged. Our private lobby had a plush red carpet to help hide fresh bloodstains and a pleasing abstract wallpaper which disguised bullets holes with amazing success. A Japanese landscape triptych adorned the wall and a couple of chairs offered hospitality to waiting guests. Of course, the chairs closed like a vise on the occupant when commanded.

While George and the students stood guard, Jessica slid the middle section of the triptych aside to peek into the apartment, I ran a security check, Raul performed a simple Sense Evil spell, and Mindy got the mail.

"Apartment is clear."

"No physical intruders."

"Ethereal vibrations are harmonious."

"Our subscription to TV Guide has expired!"

After consoling my friend, I drew a pistol, unlocked the front door and eased it open with foot. The hallway was empty with the lights on. But then, we always leave the lights on. Day and night. George took point, with Mindy doing a cover sweep and we entered the living room. Spreading out in a standard defensive pattern, we waited until Raul stuck his head into the aquarium and asked our fish for a status report.

"Is this really necessary?” Katrina asked, brushing back her flowing profusion of golden blonde hair.

Sword in hand, Mindy frowned. “Do you know what we found here once waiting for us?"

"Nyet,” Katrina replied in stolid Russian.

"Nobody else either. But it tried to eat the lot of us."

She frowned. “Ah. Understood."

Raul surfaced, bone dry, but with a length of seaweed caught behind his ear. I decided not to tell him. “All clear,” he announced, and everybody relaxed.

Dragging his leash, Amigo headed straight for the kitchen, and two seconds later his empty food bowl began to rattle against the refrigerator. As it was his turn, George shouldered his weapon and followed.

"Don't forget the sandbox,” Mindy added. The swinging kitchen doors cut off any possible retort.

Basically in a square format, the apartment had a fancy brick fireplace occupying the entire north wall of the living room, and set before it were three tremendous couches bracketing the hearth. The dining room, kitchen, pantry, laundry, armory, and emergency exit were towards the east. Southward was a blank wall, behind which were Raul's magic library, our InfoNet Cray SV 5 computer, gymnasium and trophy room. To the west was a door-lined corridor that led to our individual bedrooms. Only recently had we removed the dividing partition between mine and Jessica's quarters to form a honeymoon suite. Lord, knows where we'd ever put a nursery.

A what?!

Oh, nothing, dear. Nothing
.

"Only thing missing is a batpole,” Ken joked, glancing around the place.

In artificial panache, Raul kicked a scuffed section of the baseboard and a hidden panel swung out from the wall exposing a polished bronze pipe.

The giant student gave a rue smile. “I stand corrected."

"But it only leads to the jacuzzi,” Raul apologized.

With a loud thump, Ken deposited the luggage to the floor. “What should we do first, sir?"

"Check the date,” I said, striding to the library and flipping pages on our astrological calendar. Yep, the summer equinox was only two days away.

"So?” Ken asked, squinting at the ceiling as if he could see the sun overhead.

Taking a seat on a couch, Kathy crossed her long legs at the knee, her white silk dress hitching to a scandalous position. “Aztec's worshipped sun. Book is strongest at solar crossing."

The folding partition to the kitchen separated and George appeared. “This timing is too perfect,” he said popping the top on a beer can. “Stealing the book only days before its yearly power surge?"

"Never trust the obvious,” Raul remarked, scratching at his green draped ear. He extracted the seaweed and glared at me.

"Laying a false trail to mislead us?” Ken suggested. “When he actually plans on hiding for several months before using the book? While we exhaust ourselves running around in circles?"

"A possibility,” I noted, starting to pace. “But I have never known any junkie who waited before hitting themselves with a fix. And that is what Mystery Man is, a junkie. A magic addict."

Getting a hangar from the closet, Jessica hung up her holster and slid the taser into a recharging bracket. “Or perhaps,” she postulated. “He believes that we'll never stop him quickly enough even if we do find him."

Now that was an unpleasant thought. Ceasing my walk to nowhere, I clapped hands for attention. “Okay people, time is short, so let's divide into three groups. Jessica and I will do a nationwide scan of any unusual occurrences trying to form a pattern."

"Sounds good,” Ken acknowledged, cracking his knuckles. The simple action made the muscles in his arms ripple and flow like waves on a lake. Stallone, eat your heart out.

"Raul and Katrina, as our resident mages, you'll hit the books. Try to find something, anything, on the contents of that damn Aztec manual. If we know what Mystery Man is doing, then we can outguess him and lay a trap. But we have got know what the hell is going on!"

"I may have something on that,” Raul remarked cryptically, rising to his feet and starting for the library. “Let's go, Sommers."

The buxom Russian seemed mildly perturbed by our constant use of her last name, but there was a good reason. The Bureau lost recruits at a frightening rate and calling new people by their last names helped us maintain a psychological distance from them and thus lessen the pain of their demise. This was a most unforgiving business.

As they departed into the lab, I went on. “George, Sanders and Mindy get the tough job. I want you three to try and concoct some kind of weapon we can use against the alchemist: containment, stun, cripple, confusion, anything. No holds barred. Got it?"

"Check.” They headed for the arsenal on the other side of the kitchen. George had assisted in laying out the floorplans.

As I palmed the south wall, it broke apart to reveal our quietly humming Cray 4 SVG mainframe InfoNet computers. The free standing, cabinet-style, data processing units that composed the central core of the computer were staggered about in the room in the exact same order as the tissue folds of a human brain. For some reason it improved both speed and memory. Heck, we'll use anything that works.

Reaching the main terminal, Jess took a seat at the fast-feed video monitor and set the dial to maximum speed. “Normal routine?” she asked. “I'll do radio, television, and cable. You hit the magazines and newspapers?"

Typing away on a keyboard, I confirmed. “S'okay. But beside the usual things, bizarre robberies, mysterious deaths, that sort of stuff. Be sure to watch for any rocky rain storms."

"Gotcha."

We began. As the team had been on the road for over a month, there was a ton of backlog to sift through. But Jess and I were old hands at this. Anything of interest was shunted into a hold file for later review and correlation. Luckily, it seemed to have been a fairly quiet summer in America. There was a report of cubist flying saucers in New Jersey. That was nothing. Probably just the Venusians again stealing more of our toxic waste, God bless'em. But I made a note of it. The Loch Ness monster had been sighted by a drunk in Lake Ontario. Phooey. Nessie lived in the Bermuda Triangle these days. Elderly woman attacked by vampire in Atlanta, Georgia. The police already had the guy, just a nut with a razorblade glued to his incisors.

Bunker ***14 at the Picakinny Arsenal in Pennsylvania reports an unusually large shortage of weapons in storage. I wonder what was the normal shortage of weapons? The IBM research lab in Silicon Valley, California hints that it was robbed early this morning, but refuses to divulge details for fear of making the company stocks drop on the market. Accessing an FBI report on the matter, it appeared that a 12 ton steel door to the IBM vault was removed by bare hands. I typed in a priority request for a copy of the fingerprints and an immediate cross-reference to the prints of Mystery Man in the file of the Bureau. Might be a lead.

Indian ghost in mansion in Rhode Island scared an old man to death. Goshnar mugged and killed in Manhattan by street gang. So the blob had escaped! Giant robot spotted in Alaska, but that was just the Pentagon's giant robot on another test run. The big mechanical jerk was terrified of toasters for some reason. German U-boat sunk by Mormon fisherman in the Great Salt Lake. Hmm. Goshnar killed in Philadelphia by a convention of science fiction fans. A tornado stole a farmhouse in Kansas. What again? Goshnar run over by an ice cream vender's truck in Mississippi. When will he ever learn? Amelia Earhart's luggage arrived at Midway Airport, Gate A-4. Well, it's about time. Man arrested in Reno for cheating at casino, gambler declares he wasn't cheating, but simply knows what numbers and cards will win. Psychic? A possible recruit. I annexed it for headquarters. A weeping Goshnar surrenders to Bureau team in Los Angeles. Ha.

Werewolves in Texas are actually just big wolves. I put a maybe by that. Satanic cult in Delaware had a gunfight with the local police. The cult lost. Hurrah for our side. Axe murderer about to be fried in the electric chair in North Dakota swore he would return from the grave to seek revenge. Then a special notice appeared saying that the Bureau team, Roger's Rangers, had stolen the body, burned it to ash and sealed the remains upside-down in cement. Way to go, Rangers! Time travelers in Toronto, vegetarian vampires in Vermont, moon men in Memphis, poltergeist penguins in Panama, hellhounds in

Hollywood—how had anybody noticed?—and smooth, sexy, slinky, silky, succulent, succubae slayers in Seattle. Sigh. Groan. Eye drops. Coffee.

Sorting, sifting, searching, the hours swiftly passed. Tons of data deluged us, with Jess and I heroically struggling to separate grain from chaff. So much of this input was the result of drugs, hoaxes or just plain lack of common sense. Where the heck was the real bad guy? I was starting to feel like an overworked Private Investigator again. Digging through mounds of rotting garbage to find that single crumpled theatre receipt that blows the lid off a million dollar art smuggling ring. Ah, the good old days.

No daydreaming
, Jessica sent gently.
Get back to work, dear
.

Slave driver.

The city was dark outside when the intercom announced dinner. Listlessly, we shuffled into the dining room and fell upon the food like purple fungus from Betelgeuse. By unanimous decision, the meal was quiet. I could almost hear the mental wheels grinding.

During desert, I decided to give the aching brains a rest and lead the conversation off on a tangent. Always a favorite subject, we discussed initiations into the Bureau; my bloody rescue, George's heroic stance in the jungles of Viet Nam, Raul's rather explosive discovery that he had been a mage his entire adult life, Mindy's hilarious tale of daring-do at the World's Fair and how Jessica had boldly strode into a Bureau 13 divisional headquarters having found the covert organization all by her telepathic self.

In awkward stages, Katrina recounted how she became a mage during an all-naked performance of Brigadoon, the disastrous aftereffects and her subsequent defection to America. I knew that the FSB, Federal Secret Service, secretly had a nameless anti-supernatural section, but they indiscriminately killed non-humans and had absolutely none on their staff. Rather prissy of them, in my opinion. Even the hated KGB had occasionally used demons as field agents.

Rather embarrassed, Lt. Colonel Sanders refused to divulge his story, saying it was Alpha coded and not privy for general disbursement. Sorry. Given the sign from me, Jess tried a soft read on the man, but she got a flat nothing. Another natural telepathic block, same as Englehart. She said it was like trying to read a rock or an animal. Oh well. When I next got the chance, I'd slip some truth serum into his tapioca.

After piling the dishes in the sink, I ordered my yawning team to call it a night. Sleepy minds made mistakes, which we could not afford. Katrina and Sanders got our two spare bedrooms. I activated the alarm system, turned on the automatic defenses, set the scanning perimeters for the computer and went to bed with my wife. Sleep came fast, but troubled dreams disturbed my rest.

Four hours later, all hell broke loose.

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Shouting in alarm, I tumbled to the floor with blankets wrapped about my feet and Magnum in hand.

"What? Who? Were?” I demanded at the darkness in my perfect impersonation of a frightened cub reporter. The noise sounded again. It was the red alert klaxon from the Cray computer.

"Let's go,” Jess said, pulling a robe on over her flannel nightshirt and grabbing a taser from the bedside table.

Dashing through the living room, I easily avoided the strategically placed hassock that seemed to love shins and placed my palm against the south wall. Silently as a sigh, the wall parted. Hitting either side of the opening, we listened for a second, and then I charged in as Jess kept me covered.

Nattily attired in red woolen longjohns and fluffy bunny slippers, Raul was standing impatiently in front of our Top Secret laser printer. His hands were hovering above the controls, almost touching the switches, but not quite. Raul knew better. Our printer could use its beam of condensed light for more things than just printing.

Suddenly appearing behind us was George, sporting an Uzi machine pistol and wearing striped pajama bottoms. Next came Katrina, her wooden staff at the ready and tastefully draped in a matching striped pajama top. So they were collaborating already, eh? Maybe it was time to start calling her Katrina, then.

Leaping into the middle of the room, Ken landed on tiptoes, dead silent and absolutely stark naked except for his Thompson .45 machine gun and a Bowie knife. I do admire a man who had his priorities straight.