Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (17 page)

I comm, “Five shots, five kills, all from about eight hundred yards. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was an ExOps sniper.”

“I
do
know better,” Brando replies. “We're the only agency assets within thirty miles of here.”

We swing around a corner, barrel down an alley, and charge into a small street where Josef's idling taxi waits for us. I whip the back door open, and we dive inside. Josef floors it and accelerates up the street.

Brando comms, “My Info Coordinator confirms we're the only people in the area.”

“So who the fuck was that?” I comm. “The Sniper of Christmas Past?”

“My guess is it's someone from the Circle of Zion,”

I say, mostly to myself. “Somehow ‘the Sniper of Hanukkah Past' doesn't have the same ring to it.”

CORE MIS-ANGEL-3727

translated from
Der Pure
, March 2, 1981

Jewish terrorists attack Greater Germany!

Early this morning, a wave of bombings rocked Greater Germany and confirmed the fears so often espoused in this very publication: the Jews have declared war on decency and freedom! Once again, our kindhearted humanism has been repaid with hatred and violence.

More than fifty stores and offices were destroyed in last night's raids, all across the Reich. The attacks' tightly coordinated nature reveals that our Jewish problem is worse than ever, for the Jew has clearly enlisted a new ally: the bloodthirsty mobster and notorious genetic mongrel President Henry Jackson of the United States.

sHow long will we hardworking and honest Aryan citizens of Greater Germany submit to the whips of the CIA and their Jewish overlords? The Purity League demands these death-dealing fanatics be harshly punished! Our educated readers are urged to write to their government representative and call for swift reprisals against the menace lurking within our peace-loving borders!

Same morning, eight hours later, 11:39
A.M.
CET

Calais, Province of France, GG

I glide above Paris with my arms outstretched. The warm air washes over my face, whips down my shirt between my breasts, and passes over my stomach. I bank left to circle the Eiffel Tower. I flap my arms to gain some altitude and come in for a nice soft landing on the tower's observation deck.

A hawk circles lazily above, then dives straight at me. I reach for my gun, but it's not with me. Even if I had it, I couldn't wield it because I've been transformed into a mouse.

The hawk's black claws glint in the sun as the ruthless hunter stabs its knifelike talons into my little gray body. The bird's stone-hard beak opens and screeches—

“Scarlet!”

My eyes pop open, and my left hand grabs Li'l Bertha from under the pillow as my body launches itself out of bed. Someone gasps and falls backward away from me. My feet hit the floor in a firing stance, and I quickly sight my pistol around the room, ready to riddle my assailant into Swiss cheese.

Marie sits on the floor, eyes wide and hand over her chest. I'm in her little office on the third floor of her house. My body is slick with sweat under my T-shirt and panties despite the cool air. Patrick scurries in to see what's going on.

“Scarlet, please forgive me,” Marie exclaims. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

If I weren't so embarrassed, I'd laugh at the irony of my hostess apologizing to me when I'm the one who startled her so badly she fell over. Patrick helps Marie get up while I shut down my sidearm and sit on the edge of the bed. My nostrils flare as my breath whooshes in and out of my nose. I close my eyes and release some Kalmers into my blood to slow my pulse and help get into shape for dealing with a normal, everyday situation that doesn't demand I fight for my life.

Marie sits in her office chair. “I've never seen anyone wake up that way.”

My bed gently creaks as Patrick sits next to me, “It's her Enhances. I usually use my commphone to wake her. I've also found the smell of coffee brewing works.”

I look at my partner and continue my slow breathing exercise.

“Coffee, of course,” Marie says. “Yes, I can see she needs extra stimulation.” She watches me for a few moments and repeats, “I'm very sorry, dear. I really didn't mean to frighten you.”

“Don't worry about it, Marie. I'm sorry you had to see that.” I don't mention how my spastic wake-up act has been the last thing some people ever saw. Instead I say, “Did you get hurt when you fell?”

“Oh, I'm fine.” Marie waves her hand. “Next time I'll wake up your partner first. That way he can be the one who ends up on his backside.” We all laugh. Marie's smile fades as she leans forward. “But I do have something I need to talk to you two about.” She wrings her hands. “My sister Betti is missing.”

Marie's sister is an active part of the Floating Railroad. When Betti does an operation, she always calls Marie to let her sister know she got home safely. Marie never got that call last night, and there's been no answer at Betti's house all morning.

This situation illustrates a downside of decentralized organizations like the Circle of Zion. Last night's wave of bombings prompted the German authorities to declare martial law and a three-day curfew. The people involved in the Floating Railroad had no idea this was coming. Activists like Betti are now stranded wherever they happened to be when the lockdown kicked in.

Marie stands up and paces around the room, “I'd like your help to find my sister and assist her. My press pass will get me past the checkpoints, so getting out of Calais will be easy. I have to write a report on the bombings, anyway. What I'm worried about is entering Brussels with a vehicle full of runaway slaves. The guards will be on high alert, and if they do a search …” She leaves her thought unfinished.

“How does Betti normally do this?” Brando asks.

“She uses one of the trucks from our family's business.” Marie tells us Betti left her home in Brussels last night to retrieve a small group of escaped Jewish slaves from a farm out in the Belgian countryside. She normally brings the runaways to her office, where she hides them in a storage room upstairs. Then she sets up the next leg of their journey out of Europe. This time, though, Betti got snagged by the crackdown. The longer she's gone, the harder it gets to explain what she was doing.

“What do you think?” I comm to Brando.

He doesn't answer, but I can tell he heard me. He holds up one finger and gently nods his head.

“Is he all right?” Marie whispers to me.

I point at my head and say, “He's talking to HQ.”

Marie sits back to wait. I tune in to Brando's comm call in time to hear his Info Coordinator say, “… CIA has confirmed Garbo and her sister are VIAs. You and your partner should undertake all reasonable measures to ensure their continued contributions to our information stream.”

Well, well. Very Important Assets. Marie and Betti are hot shit back in Langley.

Brando asks his IC to hang on a second and says to Marie, “We'll definitely help. The question is how. Shooting up a checkpoint isn't exactly within our rules of engagement.”

“What if it's manned by SZ?” I ask.

“No, I go through checkpoints all the time,” Marie interjects, “and they're always manned by regular police.”

“Even during martial law?”

“This time, certainly.” Marie answers. “The Staatszeiger will be fully occupied investigating the bombings. But the police will be on edge, and we must assume they will search a large truck.”

Brando takes off his glasses and polishes them with the tail of his shirt. He
hmms
to himself. He's got an idea.

“Smoke,” he says as he puts his glasses back on. “You're right. The cops will search us, so we won't even try to pass through normally. We'll smoke 'em out and then dash through.” Brando runs the plan past his boss, who approves it on the spot. I sit and admire my partner's braininess until I realize we don't have any smoke grenades.

When I point this out, it becomes clear to me Brando has lost his mind. He turns to our hostess and asks, “Marie, do you have any Ping-Pong balls?”

CORE MIS-DATA-DAVID-519

Floating Railroad, Midnight Railroad

An escaped slave in Greater Germany has three choices, all of them dangerous: sneak into the Soviet Union, cross the Atlantic, or remain in Europe and join the Circle of Zion. Trying to pass as a free citizen is not an option because all slaves are clearly marked with a facial tattoo, typically a Star of David around one of their eyes.

Approximately half of all German citizens openly oppose slavery. Some of these people have established an underground network of like-minded activists who conspire to escort fugitive slaves out of the Reich. In Eastern Europe the collected efforts are referred to as the Midnight Railroad, while in Western Europe they are called the Floating Railroad.

For the escaping slaves and the citizens who help them, both routes are long and perilous. The penalty for helping or hiding a slave is a heavy jail sentence. Anyone convicted of coordinating a group that aids in the escape of a slave is sentenced to death by decapitation.

Same day, six hours later, 5:47
P.M.
CET

Outside Brussels, Province of Belgium, GG

The Belgian countryside rolls past my window as the sun sets behind us. We ride in Marie's bright orange Volkswagen Beetle. The spluttering little car bravely maintains a speed of 120 kph, or about 75 mph. Vast brown and green fields stretch to the horizon and nuzzle up against the skirts of the absurdly tall cloud formations they have in this part of the world.

I turn my head from the passing landscape. “Marie, any word from Victor?”

“He's been … delayed up north,” she says vaguely, “but he should be back soon.”

Brando leans forward from the backseat. “Does he need help? I could find out if we have anyone in his area.”

“He'll be fine.” Marie smiles to herself as though the idea of Victor Eisenberg needing help is amusing. “He was very unhappy about getting captured in London. I think it's
die Teutsch
who need help wherever he is.”

“Has Victor been in touch with you?”

“Not directly.” Marie's eyes sparkle. “But he sent a message to those of us who know what to listen for.”

I comm to Brando, “Has ExOps heard anything about Victor?”

He comms back, “Nothing that's definitely about him. Holland is rumbling up to a full-scale rebellion, but that's not the only place north of here.”

Brando asks Marie, “Why are reporters permitted such freedom of movement during the curfew?”

“The authorities find out more from us than they do from their military news sources.”

No wonder our cover is working so well. Marie's press pass, the fake IDs for me and my partner, plus a very official-looking heap of professional audio/video gear have allowed us to breeze through the checkpoints outside large towns like Dunkirk, Brugge, and Ghent. Brando and I pretend to nap or fiddle with the cameras while Marie does all the talking. Our instant road trip has been blessedly uneventful.

Except for the schmuck on that nice little BMW motorcycle.

I spotted the motorcyclist thirty minutes out of Calais, and he's ridden behind us ever since. He
could
be coincidentally going to Brussels—it is a big city, after all—but he's remained the same distance behind us for three hours. Plus, who the hell rides their motorcycle in March? I commed to Brando about him, and my partner agreed the guy is definitely Somebody.

Marie has been chattering away about … actually, I lost track a few minutes ago. She realizes we aren't listening and asks, “What are you two looking at?”

“We're being followed,” Brando answers.

She says, “The motorcyclist in the black helmet?” Garbo can multitask with the best of them.

“Yes. He's been there for a while.”

“Well, that won't do at all,” Marie says. “We're almost there.” She downshifts from fourth to second and sends her car lurching forward. She floors the gas for a moment, then takes her foot off the accelerator. Her little Volkswagen bucks like a bronco. Marie furiously runs the shifter all over the tree: third, fourth, second, and back to fourth. Her savage shifting would roast the transmission right out of a lot of the cars I've driven, but the Orangemobile takes it in stride. All this insane abuse fires a series of loud backfires from the tailpipes.

“She's pretending the car is stalling!” I comm.

“Yah, no kidding.” My partner literally has his hands full in the backseat holding all the hopping audio/video gear in place. “I think I'm gonna puke.”

Traffic flows around us as the heaving Orangemobile slows to a pathetic 35 mph. Marie clicks on the hazard lights while she hyperextends the car's gearbox. There's no way our motorcycle friend can stay back there without making it obvious he's following us. He moves to the far left lane and roars past. I snap a series of images of him with my retinal cameras.

Even through his full-face helmet I can tell he's young, maybe even younger than me. He's on a BMW R80G/S with a custom bag attached to the front fairing. The first thing I think about the bag is you could pack a nice rifle in there.

“Was that him?” Marie calls over her self-inflicted wild revving circus.

“Yes!” I shout back.

We pass a sign reading B
RUSSELS: 10
KM
and another that says A
SSE
, T
ERNAT
, H
ERFELINGEN
.

She shifts into third and, blessedly, leaves it there. “Good. This is our exit.” Marie swerves off the highway and onto the exit ramp. I grab the Jesus strap. The equipment in back shoves Brando off his seat and buries him on the floor.

The exit ramp leads to the N285, a smaller road that arrows through several farming villages. As we cruise by the compact, weathered farmhouses, I reach into the backseat and extricate my partner from under the heap of cases.

“Thanks,” he groans. “Hey, Garbo, where'd you learn to drive like that?”

“My first CIA case officer,” Marie chirps. “We were followed while he was training me, and he used that technique to make it impossible for the person to remain behind us.”

“Remind me to send the CIA a thank-you card,” Brando grumbles.

Marie turns onto another road at a town with the hilariously unpronounceable name of Borchtlombeek. The little road morphs into a rough dirt track that leads to a sprawling white farmhouse set on a low hill. Our car jounces through some spectacular potholes. I need both hands on the dashboard to stay in my seat. My partner desperately tries to control the hopping equipment pile.

Marie parks her car between the white farmhouse and a big black barn. A large delivery truck looms in the shadows next to the barn. We clamber out of the car and take a minute to stretch our muscles. The cloud of dust created by our entrance floats past us and leaves a thin layer of beige grit all over our clothes and Marie's vehicle.

The truck's side has O
PEKTA
emblazoned over an illustrated crowd of jam jars and sausages.
What the heck does Betti's company make again?
Marie rushes into the house. A moment later she's talking with another woman. Both of their voices gabble away in something like German, except a lot of the words are different. They speak so fast I miss most of it, but I do catch one thing.

I comm, “What's Marie talking about? Who's Margot?”

Brando purses his lips and comms back, “I don't know. They seem to have special names for each other. Betti just called her sister Anne.”

We follow Marie into the farmhouse. Once we're inside, the sisters go back to calling each other Marie and Betti. We take their slip of the tongue and file it away. You never know when you'll need leverage with someone.

Marie introduces us. “Betti, these are two new friends of mine. They offered to help get you back home. The young lady is Scarlet, and her partner is Darwin.”

Betti smiles and shakes our hands. “Pleased to meet you. Thank you so much for escorting my sister all the way out here.” The sisters bear a strong resemblance to each other, but Betti is taller, wears glasses, and has a quieter presence than her energetic younger sibling. Betti introduces us to the farm's grizzled owner, who gruffly shakes our hands and shyly mumbles something in German.

Betti leads us out into the evening gloom and walks to the barn. The runaways are hidden up in the hayloft. Betti calls out to them, and they descend a thick wooden ladder. I'm about to ask where their belongings are when I realize what a stupid question that would be.
They're slaves.
They have nothing except one another.

There are four of them: two women, an adolescent boy, and a girl who's still a toddler. One woman holds the girl in her arms, and the other woman tries to get the boy to hold her hand, but he keeps slithering his fingers out of her grasp. They're all thin and grubby from the road. Each of their left eyes is surrounded by a Star of David tattoo. The women's faces have lost some color from the constant stress and anxiety, but the firm set of their mouths shows their determination.

We help the escaped slaves into the back of the truck and slide the door shut with a rattling bang. Betti climbs into the truck's driver seat, and Marie, Brando, and I get back in Marie's citrus car. I swear her VW is so bright, it glows in the dark. Our two-vehicle convoy drives back out to the highway and heads for Brussels.

No sign of motorcycle boy. But that only means I don't see him.