Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (17 page)

"Ah, loonies,” a Chicago street cop noted clinically.

"Fanatics,” I corrected. “Doped on combat drugs which gives them twice normal human strength for this one night, then they die.” How else was I to explain paranormal strength? Say they visited the health spa regularly? Watched Arnold Swartzenegger movies?

The military was remarkably complacent during this, but I did notice a few generals dictating notes into pocket recorders. Futile. Any recording leaving this room would be instantly erased. Even if they had some secret lab invent the drug, we'd only steal it again like we did the last four times.

"Plus, Sid has special body armor that regulation police rounds will not penetrate,” I went on.

A few rueful smiles appeared.

"Nor will those illegal dum-dum rounds, or those 10mm Teflon-coated European bullets do shit to these guys."

The smiles abruptly melted.

I jerked a thumb towards the boxes of ammunition stacked along the wall. “However, over there are a few thousand rounds of Top Secret plasma bullets. They're steel-jacketed, hollow points with a liquid silver metal core. The rounds will easily go through the flak jackets and then explode."

"No shit?” a CIA agent asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No shit,” I informed her steadfast.

The DEA wino chuckled. “Cops with silver bullets. Hi-ho, Tonto! Away..."

Well at least they were thinking Lone Ranger and not werewolves. “How very amusing,” I said, in a voice guaranteed to tell them it was anything but funny.

"What's the timetable?” an FBI agent demanded, making notes in a pocket computer. “How long do we have to prepare before they attack?"

Although wearing a watch, I purposely glanced at the clock on the wall. “Roughly two hours, twenty minutes. They strike at midnight."

Eyes went wide, but only silence greeted my outrageous statement. My respect grew. In their faces, I could see the crowd weigh options and discard useless procedures. Evacuating the city was a laugh. The Bureau had tried that once when New York was in serious danger and more people died in the exodus than from the enemy.

"And this is the earliest you could inform us?” a National Guard colonel admonished furiously.

This time, I gave them a four-second pause. “Yes."

"This midnight deadline,” one of the CATs asked, “is it a lock?"

"Dead certain."

The US Army Intelligence operative smiled knowingly. “Sir, why don't we let them know that we know and maybe that'll scare ‘em off, or at least slow the bastards down a bit."

"Nice try,” I acknowledged. “But Sid does know that we know and doesn't give a good goddamn."

"They really think they can pull it off,” the Naval Intelligence operative said slowly. Her uniform proclaimed she was in the submarine corp. “Destroy all of Chicago?"

"To the ground,” I reiterated as firmly as possible.

A Green Beret colonel scratched his dimpled chin. “Or from the ground up,” he murmured thoughtfully.

That was an interesting idea.

"Two hours doesn't give us much time,” the CAT midget cop observed, lighting a pipe. “It's going to be a bitch following standard police procedure."

Knowing how cops think, I was prepared for this. “Fuck procedure,” I said bluntly. “Blow your covers, strong-arm suspects, enter houses without warrants, do whatever you have to."

The clock on the wall loudly clicked forward another minute.

"Because we're rapidly running out of time. And there are four million innocent people who have placed their trust and their lives in our hands."

"And when we find Sid?” the bag lady asked, checking the clip in her Glock 10mm automatic pistol. A callused thumb started ejecting rounds as a prelude to reloading.

This was no time to mince words. Not only might it get in the way, but being diplomatic could very seriously lower the high intensity of feeling I desperately needed to instill into this group. Especially that particular team of police officers. When the CATs prowled the city, street crime dropped like a rock.

"If you find them,” I said coldly, “blow their frigging brains out. We neither want, nor need prisoners.” Besides, I wasn't sure we could handle any.

A major in the Air Force Rangers stood up. “I am not thrilled by the concept of armed personnel running amuck in a major city with a government license to kill randomly."

You and me both, brother, so I spoke from the heart. “If you blow away some poor slob by accident, it will be a terrible shame. But accidents happen. However, if anybody, repeat, anybody uses this emergency as an opportunity to take a little personal vengeance they will answer to me and my people, who do not legally exist and have no board of inquiry to explain their actions to."

Bodies relaxed. They now understood that this was not to be a free-for-all, but a deadly serious gambit to save a city from extinction. Step One: save Chicago. Step Two would be to justify our actions to a population still sucking in air.

"Alert,” a Secret Service agent said, touching his ear. “There has just been an attempt to seize control of the USS:
Idaho
while on a training cruise in Lake Michigan."

"The
Idaho
?” an NSA field agent snapped. “That's an antique!"

The CIA operative frowned. “But secretly armed with Tomahawk nuclear missiles."

Shocked murmurs engulfed the room.

"You know about that, huh?” the Navy admiral asked.

The master spy gave a grim nod.

"As of five minutes ago, a squadron of Apache helicopters in a joint operation with Air Force Blackbird stealth bombers has sunk the
Idaho
with concentrated missile fire,” the Secret Service agent continued. “Rescue operations by the Coast Guard are proceeding for the crew."

The Navy SEAL touched his ear. “The warheads are safe. My people have them."

A SWAT captain crossed himself. The CIA took the bottle of whiskey from the DEA wino and downed a healthy shot. I agreed with the sentiment. Dear God, oh dear loving God, the fight for Chicago had already begun hours ahead of schedule.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Two seconds later, the meeting was over, with everybody politely and nicely filing out of the room so that they could start unleashing their hordes of destruction. When I was alone, I touched the shiny new bracelet on my wrist and Jumped to the top floor of the Sears Tower, or whatever they were calling it this week. The building changed it's name more often than a professional gold-digger.

In a lemon scented flash, I appeared inside a pentagram made of yellow marking tape on the carpeted floor. On every side I was banked by sandbag walls bristling with machine guns, arbalists, microwave beamers and other assorted deathdealers.

Feather plume flying, a medieval knight in full armor holding a Glock .45 pistol lowered her weapon. “Hey, its Ed!” she said in relief.

In a chainmail bikini, a wizard with an acid filled waterpistol clicked off a safety. “It only looks like Ed,” he growled. “Password or die!"

"Horatio,” I said fast.

He scowled. “Cerberus."

"Balder."

"Right,” I said finishing the litany of famous guards.

A section of the sandbags moved backwards on hidden rollers and I scooted free. I shook hands with some folk I knew and was given a Kirlian security badge. It visibly glowed with my normally hidden aura. Also had my name and thumbprint.

Following the markers on the floor, I moved through the bustling crowd of humans and supernaturals, nearly getting trampled by Claremont the gorgon and his lovely wife, Boom.

Passing another checkpoint, I was scanned by a team of folk holding a machine that resembled a leaf blower and was finally admitted into the main conference hall of the Tower which was now temporarily converted into our War Room.

Going through the double sets of sliding doors, I stepped into Madhouse Central. Dimly illuminated, the four walls of the big room displayed vector graphics of the different sections of Chicago. Moving colored dots, triangles and other assorted geometric figures indicated police, possible monster attacks and Bureau Teams.

Clustered on the floor were banks of control boards filled with radar screens, thermographs from orbital Keyhole satellites, rainbow swirls of chemical readouts and the dancing light show of Kirlian television. A very recent invention, it had already stopped two transdimensional invasions and gotten four talk show hosts fired and/or jailed.

Far against the back wall, an assortment of staggeringly beautiful women were busy stripping off their street clothes. Two busty women with flmaing redhair were yanking off evening gowns, a buxom Latina was removing a cop uniform, and an Oriental goddess was peeling off a lacy nurse outfit. As each item came away, a hidden arsenal of miniature weapons was exposed taped to the satiny acres of skin.

Quickly, the buck-naked bevy of babes squeezed into patent-leather commando jumpsuits which couldn't possible show more anatomical details if they had been made of thin air. Now dressed for combat, the female warriors yanked open a trunk and pulled out even more tiny weapons, along with clip-feed bazookas, spiked magic wands, chainsaw-garrotes, exploding bolos and vampire boomerangs. These ladies did have a taste for the strange and unusual. They were the ThunderBunnies, the sole Bureau 13 team for the entire state of Texas.
Yee to the haw
.

The whole staff of a Houston brothel had been violently introduced to the world of the supernatural when a client had turned out to be an incubus, a sex vampire, and these ladies of the evening had to become the impromptu defenders of a sleeping town and save the population from being ... ah, enjoyed to death, by him and his female counterpart, a lesbian succubus. The battle of the sexes raged until dawn, and by sunrise the Bureau had a new team, battered and bruised, but victorious. Now that was a story worth telling and re-telling around the fireplace at yawn AM in the morning. Just send the kids to bed first.

Near them was a somber crowd of men and women in neat black suits, and black hats, the combat rabbis of Team Macabee. Some of the older men had beards and long sideburns with the fringe at the belt. A lot of the women wore yarmulkes, those brimless skullcaps. But tonight each was armed with an Uzi machine pistol and draped with bandoleers of ammunition clips, including the cabalistic mage. Unable to use the weapon because of his magic, the mage carried the Uzi merely to fool the opposition and as a spare for the fighters. Good thinking, actually. The Bureau jokingly referred to them as the American Mossad. Their information gathering system on the supernatural was so efficient that sometimes they informed HQ about a coming problem, instead of vice-versa. Also, although they didn't like it, Macabees would work on the Sabbath. What could be more holy than saving lives?

The sad expressions on the team tonight was directly attributable to their missing telepathic leader who died with the rest of the mentalists when the Hadleyville Hotel detonated.

Off by themselves as always, bandaging wounds and drinking Healing potions was our infamous gang of bad boys, Roger's Rangers. The Boston team broke rules that hadn't even been written yet, but they always got their monsters. However, civilians had this nasty habit of getting dead by standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing the Ranger's did had any effect on this constantly happening. Some agents believed them to be cursed.

"Hey, Rangers!” I called out in passing.

The group pivoted with weapons at the ready, then relaxed when they saw it was only me.

"The
Idaho
?” I asked.

Wet and bloody, they nodded.

"Good job."

The eight Rangers shrugged.

Next came the Los Angeles based Team Angel. Their leader was a wild haired man named Damon who posed as a science fiction author. His lieutenant was a dashingly handsome computer journalist only known as Aki. Finnish, I think. I waved hi to a beautiful woman in a low cut gypsy gown of a thousand colors. Pat smiled in return and touched her nose. We both grinned at the private joke.

However, levity faded when I noticed somebody standing over in a corner all by himself. A slender pale man dressed in a dark suit, white shirt with a white tie. He was smoking a pungent cigarette and had his hat pulled so low over his face that only a pair of eerie transparent blue eyes were visible beneath the snap brim.

It was the legendary J. P. Withers, who sometimes called himself John Sanders, supposedly the very first Bureau 13 agent recruited back in 1861. It was rumored that he was immortal and slightly insane. Plus, he had this very bad habit of using explosives when diplomacy would have done the job, or using ten sticks of dynamite when one would have sufficed. Overkill wasn't his modus operandi, it was his philosophy of life. Rare indeed was the situation which warranted the summoning of J.P. and I was of the personal opinion that Horace Gordon was secretly terrified of the man. If man he was. However, Withers was on our side. Well, mostly.

In the center of the room, talking on two phones at the same time was the chief. Horace Gordon was a giant of a man, large and muscular with gray crewcut hair, and a barely healed scar across his throat. That was new. He was dressed in black military boots and a tan NASA jumpsuit. A double holster about his waist supported a Bedlow laser pistol on the left and a short golden wizard wand in the right. How he could safely mix magic and technology was beyond my understanding. Around his neck was an amulet on a silver chain that pulsed with a protective aura of blue anti-magic.

Then I found my own team, gleefully in the process of looting the collection of folding tables bowing under the weight of the massive assortment of weapons and magical supplies piled on top.

"Hey,” I offered as greeting.

With cries of delight, they scampered close and hugs were received. Nothing like a good hug to help lower the tension.

Freshly scrubbed and looking like spring, Jessica was in denim pants, white shirt and denim short jacket. She had a double-barrel taser stun gun at her belt, an Uzi slung over her shoulder and was arranging medical supplies inside a field surgery kit. The necklace of Me was where it should be, dangling between her breasts and glowing contentedly. I would too.