Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (20 page)

Two days later, Saturday, March 7, 1981, 3:52
A.M.
CET

Saint-Quentin, Province of France, GG

Besides running low on my special ammo for Li'l Bertha, our biggest supply problem is we keep running out of cash. This doesn't matter for food or cars since we're not paying for them anyway. Hotel rooms and gasoline, however, are more of a challenge. Without direction from ExOps we don't know where most of our safe houses are.

On our first night out of Calais, we broke into an unoccupied motel room. It was a nice room, but we were so worried someone would barge in on us that we all slept like crap. We might as well have spent the night in the car.

Except it's too cold to sleep in a car in March, as we found out the next night. Victor has a lot of experience as a guerrilla, but he and his gang never stayed in cities. All of it was spent camped out in the woods, with occasional raids into a town for supplies. But the underground contacts Victor needs right now are in the more developed areas, and he never knows when they'll be available. So we make like hobos and sleep where we can.

The morning after our second restless night, during an all-star breakfast of stolen pretzels, I came up with an idea. “Let's find a store we're gonna rip off anyway, bust in after they close, and sleep in the back room or wherever. We'll scram before they open in the morning.”

My three stiff and grumpy colleagues agreed it was worth a shot. That night we slept in the small warehouse at the back of a big grocery store. This was better, but supermarkets open early and we barely made it out before the morning shift came in to make doughnuts and chop up dead animals.

Last night we finally found the perfect place: a gun shop. The building had a high-end civilian security system, but anything less than Fort Knox is cake for us. We parked the Audi out back, and three minutes later we were inside.

It was like spending the night in Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. Falcon took an older but good-condition Luger, and Victor lifted a nice pair of concealable Walther pistols. I was tempted by one of those big, square Mauser C96s, but then I'd lose all the targeting abilities of my dad's LB-505.

Fortunately, Li'l Bertha can use regular bullets when necessary, although I sense she feels like it's beneath her. Her gyroscopes shuddered a little when I manually locked her bore setting to fit the same 9×19-mm Parabellums as Victor's and Falcon's new toys.

We all loaded up on as many boxes of ammo as we could carry and racked out for the night. The sign out front said they didn't open until 10:30
A.M.
, which sounded great to me. I guess gun nuts sleep late when it isn't hunting season.

The Gestapo, on the other hand, never seems to sleep at all. The clowns based here in Saint-Quentin dick people around all day and drink all night. Then if they receive intel about runaway slaves or any other subversive activity, they do a predawn raid.

Today will be different.

Victor met with a couple of Circle people after we got into town and learned there's trouble on the Floating Railroad. A group of runaway slaves have been betrayed to the Gestapo. They're hiding in a nearby town called Péronne. Victor didn't say how it happened, but my guess is it was a nosy neighbor in the Purity League.

Here we face another disadvantage of working with an aggressively decentralized organization like the Circle of Zion. Vic's contacts weren't sure which house the runaways are in. Usually, only those directly involved in a smuggling operation know where the “stars” are kept. But tonight, someone else knows.

The Gestapo knows.

Brando and Victor worked out our game plan for this morning. We'll use the Gestapo's knowledge against them by tailing them to their raid. Then we'll fit them all for wooden overcoats.

The four of us huddle in our black Audi. We're parked across the street from the local Gestapo HQ. Victor wants us to switch cars every couple of days, so tonight's job will be our last in this car, which I'm sure the poor thing is glad about.

The vehicle looks like it's been inhabited by monkeys. The once-pristine floor and dashboard are now buried in food wrappers, magazines, newspapers, coffee cups, and soda bottles. Except for last night at the gun shop, we've basically lived in this car since we stole it outside Arras.

Brando, in the driver's seat, nods his chin toward the building across the street. “Here we go.”

Eight men emerge from Gestapo HQ and file into a pair of cars and a big box truck parked next to the building. Three men per car and two in the truck. The headlights stab through the early morning murk, their snarling engines stomp all over the peaceful late-winter silence, and the convoy of dickwads surges into motion.

Victor leans forward from the backseat and says, “Let's go.” Brando starts the Audi and follows the Gestapo vehicles.

Falcon sits in back with Victor. I turn to the young guy and whisper, “Ready to be outrageous?”

His smile shows white in the predawn gloom. “Don't forget radical.”

We met this kid less than a week ago, and it already feels like we've worked together for months. He and I recheck our pistols and our SoftArmor. Victor glides his matching Walthers out of the pockets of his black wool coat and holds them in his lap. Then he puts his comm set on his head, and transmits, “Comm check.”

“Check one,” I comm.

“Check two,” Brando sends while he maintains a block or so of distance between us and the convoy.

“Check three,” comms Falcon.

“All comms five by five.” Victor finishes the sequence. He's not ExOps, but his age, his military experience, and the fact that these are his missions put him in a natural leadership role.

Saint-Quentin is big enough to have streetlights, but they're all concentrated in the compact town center. Within a few minutes we're out in the countryside, and the black night wraps around us like a shroud. My partner switches off his headlights, and I help him get his starlight scope on. The device fits into a band that wraps around Brando's head, so his hands are free for perfectly sensible things like driving at night with no lights on.

Twenty-five minutes later the Gestapo convoy stops in front of a row of small houses outside of Péronne. Brando hits the gas, and the Audi accelerates like it's been kicked in the butt. Falcon and I each open our passenger-side window. Victor hikes himself out his window so he can fire over the roof. Brando skids us past the truck and screeches to a halt next to the two cars.

The Gestapo agents all still in their seats. Our guns grind them into guacamole. I cram a new magazine into Li'l Bertha and get out of the Audi. I stand next to the lead Gestapo car. Lights come on in a few houses.

My night vision shows me the riddled bodies of three men. Our 9-mm ordnance has blown them all onto their sides and even scattered some of their teeth onto the dashboard. I fire a slug into each of their heads to make sure they're as dead as they look.

Falcon sanitizes the second car while Victor gets out and turns toward the truck behind us. His job is to neutralize the driver, but the Kraut son of a bitch has reacted much faster than we expected.

The big vehicle reverses up the road. Before Victor can draw a bead on him, the driver slings his truck around so he's facing away from us. The diesel engine wails as the driver gets out of there as fast as possible. Falcon runs after the truck and shoots at the wheels. Unfortunately, this truck has a hydraulic steel loading lift attached to its rear. The folded lift unintentionally acts as a bullet shield, and Falcon can't take out the tires.

I jump back in the Audi. “Darwin, catch those dickheads!” Then I comm, “Victor, take Falcon and hide somewhere. We'll be right back.” Brando cranks the steering wheel over and floors it. The rear tires spin like a 200-horsepower laundry machine and leave a smoking J stripe as my partner whirls us around and takes off after the Gestapo truck.

We're in a high-end sports car and the truck bozos are in a truck, so we catch them in less than a minute. We move up on the rumbling vehicle's left side. I get ready to shoot the driver, but he swerves into our lane to try to push us off the road. Brando hits the brakes and slides over, directly behind the big roller.

“I guess they saw us coming,” he says.

Time for plan B.

I say, “Get us closer.” Then I hoist myself out the passenger-side window and crawl onto the car's hood. Brando pulls forward and tailgates so closely we move into the pocket of dead air directly behind the truck. I fling myself onto the truck's back side. My hands snag the top of the cargo area, and my body slaps against the metal doors. My partner moves the Audi to one side so he won't run me over if I lose my grip.

My dangling feet find the folded lift gate's top edge. I kick at the latch that holds the doors shut, but the lift is in the way. I dance my toes around until they hit the button that activates the lift. I ride down on the unfolding gate. A yellow-and-black sticker tells me not to do any of this shit while the truck is in motion. I wonder if the vehicle's manufacturer anticipated this situation ever actually coming up.

The lift gate now sticks straight out, like a back porch. I open one of the rear doors and pop inside. Twin benches line the walls, and twin rows of ring bolts line the floor. This is basically a deuce-and-a-half paddy wagon for rounding up escaped slaves.

At the cargo area's far end is a small window into the front cab. That small window slides open and extrudes the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. The shitheads up front must have heard all the racket I made getting in here.

The shotgun belches fire and kicks itself back through the window. I dive forward under the blast and hit the floor. My right foot catches some buckshot and seethes like it's been bitten by a red-hot wasp.

I unsheath my pistol and spin around so my feet face forward. Li'l Bertha methodically shoots a row of 9-mm holes through the metal divider between the cab and the cargo area. My first bullet doesn't seem to hit anything. Shots number two and three result in high-pitched screams. My fourth and fifth shots miss, but shots six through eight all produce somewhat lower-pitched cries of anguish. I swing back to where the high-pitched noise came from and fire a tight circle of bullets. The screaming stops.

The truck swerves. I hear and feel a loud crunch from the right side. The ride becomes exceedingly violent. I bounce around like a piece of popcorn until we strike a well-anchored obstacle. My body bashes into the bullet-riddled divider and everything goes black.

I wake up, and groggily check my watch. I've been unconscious for about two minutes. Everything is very quiet except for a low groaning from outside. I get up, crawl out the truck's rear end, and climb down to the ground.

The moment I land, a spear of pain lances through my right foot. I cry out and stand on my other foot while I get oriented.

We've crashed into a stone wall set forty feet from the road. I limp around the left side to check the Gestapo thugs. The passenger is in the truck cab, scrunched under the dashboard. He's got four or five bullet holes in him, and his head is at an impossible angle to the rest of his body. The windshield on the driver's side is smashed out like a glass fountain with a person-size hole in the middle.

I walk to the truck's front. The driver lies on the ground past the truck's grill. He's unconscious, but his eyelids flutter and his nostrils flare as he breathes. I draw my F-S knife, slit his throat, and gouge a Star of David into his face. My vision flickers on and off a few times like a strobe light. The black flashes make me so dizzy I almost pass out again.

A car horn beeps from the truck's far side. It scares me out of my skin, but it clears my head. I shamble around the big vehicle. My foot stings like a motherfucker and I ache everywhere, but I forget all of that when I see the black Audi crushed under the truck.

Patrick!

I bound onto the car hood and look in through the broken windshield. My partner's eyes are closed, and he's pinned by the car's roof, which has collapsed under the big Gestapo vehicle.

“Patrick! Can you hear me?”

He mumbles, “Scarlet? What … happened?”

“Hang on, I'll get you out.” I squeeze under the truck and try to bench-press it. Nothing happens. I slam as much Madrenaline as I can and try again. The truck budges, but even pumped up on speed, I'm nowhere near strong enough to heft it.

I climb off the car and heave open the passenger-side door. The Audi's roof is mushed so low it presses on the seat's headrests. I grab the passenger seat, rip it off its mounting, and drag it out of the car. I crawl inside and carefully extract my partner from the mangled mess. I turn him onto his back so I can curl his legs around the fractured steering wheel and splintered center console. I gently ease him to the ground.

“Patrick? Can you talk?”

He coughs, then inhales slowly and deeply, “Yeah,” he wheezes. “I'm okay … just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“No way, Patrick. It's gotta be more than that.” I reach into the backseat for his X-bag, throw it around my shoulders, and bend down to examine my partner.

His limbs seem straight, and he can move his fingers and feet. His breathing is strained but steady, his pulse is good, and his pupils aren't dilated.

“God help me, you seem fine.”

“I guess the car took most of the impact,” he says, “but I think we need another ride.”

The Audi's wheels are broken off their axles, the windows are all shattered, and the roof is trying to limbo under the floor covers. “Uh, yeah, I think so, too. Can you stand?”

“Gimme a sec.” He cautiously moves his arms and legs back and forth. Then he cocks his head. “Do you hear that?”

A car drives up the road. The lights are off. My night vision shows me a dark gray smudge against a slightly darker gray background. I take cover behind the Audi and aim Li'l Bertha at the sound. The car slows down.