by Nick Pollota
That's why I put it there, he agreed.
Put what where?
Arching an eyebrow, George looked at me as if I was retarded. My magic bracelet.
Ah. Guess I was out of sync today. The bracelet only required contact. You could swallow it and the bracelet would still work.
Yep, thought Mindy. When our captors were busy. entertaining themselves, George waited until they were in a cluster and then hit the bastards with a flamelance. Fried most of them where they stood. The two that survived, Jessica mindblasted.
Entertaining? I asked. My heart was pounding in my chest and I wasn't sure I could handle hearing the details.
Richard answered. Apparently, Big Bird had brought them the plane and Hassan's body. They were furious over a fellow Arab working against them and decided to ... punish the traitor.
I could sense their repulsion and got the picture. Feh.
They mostly did it just to psychologically soften us, noted George pragmatically. Old interrogation trick.
Disgusting.
But effective.
A brutal thought swirled from Mindy. Before the chief agent died of his burns, I made him eat it.
Eat what? I asked.
Mindy gave me a hard stare. I made a fast mental note to never, ever, piss this lady off. So how did you find me?
Richard talked to the spirit of a dead Satan Department agent and we discovered we had to get to the coliseum, pronto. So we climbed to the observation platform above the city library and had to get rid of a reverse vampire.
Reverse ... its what killed that water-balloon guy in the forest.
Bingo. The monster injected blood into you, liked sunlight, garlic had no effect and was fatally attracted to the good Father. But once we hammered the stake out of its heart, he died quick enough.
Hammered the stake out?
A telepathic nod. When we tried to use the optical telescope mounted in the observatory, we found the creature's nest inside, with another blood bloated Satan Department agent laying in the straw. The dolt had a drained laser pistol in his pudgy hand.
Fool.
Richard agreed. A concentrated light beam weapon would only heal, not hurt, a reverse vampire.
Did you take the weapon? I asked eagerly.
Yes. I take all useable weapons. Why?
I have the spare power magazine from the guy in the forest! Jess, take us back!
* * * *
In a melting dissolve, we were back in the temple. As the team scooped out the place, a sudden thought came to me. One dead, one violated, said the genie. But both were Hassan. The gjinn had been having a bit o’ fun at my expense. I hoped a horse stomped on his foot at the rodeo. Wonder if anything else he said could have alternate meanings?
“Yes!” Jessica said aloud. “He told you ‘defeat lead to victory,’ not, ‘defeat leads to victory.'”
I arched an eyebrow. “What possible difference is there?”
In response, she pointed. There between the gargantuan, three toed, feet of the gray giant, was a little tiny man-size door. Defeat ... da feet. I hate genies.
“His goodbye joke,” the telepath said aloud.
“For the last time, who are you strangers?”
Almost forgotten about our mutant host there. He didn't sound particularly angry, but then our conversation had taken only a second, as it was conducted at the speed of thought.
Clearing my throat to speak, my watch sounded. Thirty minutes to go. No time to waste chatting. I had my team and the location of the door. Time to boogey.
Subserviently, I smiled. “Excuse us, King Odin,” I said calmly walking towards the door underneath him. “But there is trouble on the mountain and we must take our leave.”
A double-scowl distorted his faces. Rudely, the big guy didn't even say, “None may use that door, foolish mortals!” He just launched a lightning bolt from his foreheads. The crackling discharge hit the marble floor in a blinding explosion and as the smoke cleared, there stood a dozen crystal humanoids, their flat plane skin as transparent as glass.
The hollow interior of the first was filled with a swirling white powder. The insides of the second crawling with buzzing hornets. The third was topped off with a red-white liquid that resembled molten steel. Others held: worms with snapping teeth, a blood skeleton, a fire demon, a storm cloud with eyes, boiling oil, winged piranha fish, cobras, tarantulas, scorpions and a big one appeared to be empty. Yeah, right.
George raised his assault cannon, then lowered it. Shooting these guys would be an incredibly bad idea.
“Abraham Lincoln!” I shouted, knowing it was our only hope.
Turning their attention to killing-the-leader in the chair, Richard began to chant the word “tunafish” nonstop. Drawing the Veri pistol, Father Donaher boomed a Navy flare directly into Odin's face, the sizzling impact almost lost in the giant's scream of rage and pain. George stitched him with caseless high explosives. Mindy shot him in the throat with a poisoned arrow, and I pumped my last 40mm grenade into his exposed groin. I don't fight dirty, I fight to win.
Purple hands clawing at his ruined face, Odin howled and lightning randomly crashed everywhere, forming crystal warriors on the roof, the walls, atop his own knee. There were hundreds of them, maybe a thousand, and they all started marching straight towards us.
“Siagon Bug-out!” I cried.
Retreating for the door, the team dodged lightning bolts as best we could, dashing between the waddling crystal warriors. Richard waved his staff in a complex pattern and a heavy braided net fell over six of the things, binding them together. Jessica grabbed her forehead and stared. Nothing. Donaher shot a group with Holy Water. They got wet. George started throwing canisters of tear gas, vomit gas, stun gas, and BZ hallucinogenic. Bastards seemed to like the stuff. Mindy tried a Kung-Fu nerve pinch on the neck of one filled with army ants. It took a swing and almost busted her jaw.
More lightning. More crystal warriors.
Fumbling with the mechanism, I paused to launch the last LAW at Lord Odin, but he had a magical shield erected and the streaking rocket vanished in mid-air without a trace.
As we reached the door, Odin the Odious began to swing a foot in our way, so Mindy shot the floor with an incendiary arrow. Flame erupted and the foot jerked away from the wave of heat. Up close, we could now see that a prominent lock on the marble door barred our exit. A short burst from George's assault cannon blew that to smithereens. With a creak, the bedraggled door swung aside. At top speed, we charged through the flames and into the blackness beyond.
SIXTEEN
...and we stepped onto a stone ledge high on the side of Mt. Lympus. Raw stone was to our right, and on the left was a parapet.
Over the stone railing we could see the domed city far below spreading out like a museum exhibit, with the rest of the island lost in the distance. We must have been transported a hundred miles in a split second. As the team spread out in a standard defense pattern, a cold sea wind ruffled our hair and my skin began to prickle at our nearness to the gray cloud. Whew, smelled like Jersey in the summer.
I moved away from the door to try and get a better look around when from the other side of the parapet a hideous iron gorgon hopped into view. Its skin was a uniform dull gray, with fiery red light beaming from its mouth and misshapen eyes.
“Halt!” the monster commanded. “To pass me, you must first answer a riddle!”
“Come again?” Mindy gasped in shock.
“Yes, a riddle! A mighty tree, small in size, digs and digs, for a tasty prize.” The metallic beast leered expectantly. “Answer or perish. What am I?”
“Dead meat,” Donaher said stroking the shotgun and firing. The storm of double-ought buck blew the gorgon off its perch and it tumbled over the edge with a very surprised expression.
Mindy patted the priest on the shoulder in congratulations. This wasn't a frigging game, we were here on business.
Glancing over the edge, I watched the creature bounce off several rocky ledges, losing an
arm here, a leg there. It was flapping its iron wings like crazy, but still quickly dwindled into the distance becoming a tiny speck hurtling towards what was certainly going to be a most uncomfortable meeting the dome over the city.
Rejoining the crew, I noted that the ledge we stood on was part of an impossibly long flight of stairs that disappeared into the mists below, and extended to the distant snowy peak of the huge mountain. Slinky heaven. Zigzagging across the steep slope, each level of the stairway was adorned with a towering statue of a rampart griffin made of bluish ice. More guards, had to be. This Odin was going to give paranoids a bad name.
Why can't we ever get an easy assignment? Like that time when a mad wizard at Stonehenge cast a spell to bring down the moon to destroy the world. We arrived just as he was finishing the conjure so I chanced a hip shot with my Magnum from 200 meters. The bullet got him directly between the eyes and as he slumped over, the massive release of ethereal power stored within him exploded into the nighttime air, a burning lance of hellish destruction that radiated away harmlessly to have absolutely no effect on anything. It was a freak occurrence, but we sure remember it fondly.
“Wonder what the answer was?” George said, hitching his bulky weapon to a more comfortable position, while he surveyed the area for more dangers. At the moment, we were in the clear.
Leaning heavily on his wizard staff, Richard curled a lip. “Toothpick.”
“Sounds right. How did you know?” Jessica asked.
“Stupidest answer I could think of. Riddles are for morons.”
“No argument there.”
A martial arts cry sounded and I turned to see Mindy flip a crystal warrior back through the magic portal. Crap! I had hoped they would lose interest once we were out of the throne room. Gesturing frantically, Richard shouted something and a brick wall sealed the entrance. Then he added a cinderblock wall, and a rickety picket fence.
“That should hold them for awhile,” Donaher stated, thumbing fresh rounds into his weapon.
“Bloody well hope so,” Richard panted. “I'm nearly drained. Don't think I could levitate a balloon.”
Suddenly, a savage pounding sounded from the barrier and the fence quivered.
“Double time, harch!” I shouted.
We took off at a sprint, and actually made it halfway to the top before I called a halt. Thinking about the crystal warriors had given me a brilliant idea. I only hoped it worked.
“Michael,” I said. “Get the briefcase.” From below I could still hear a muffled pounding on the sealed door. Determined little things. Must get paid by the hour.
“What ever you're doing, make it fast,” George warned, pointing the Masterson Assault Cannon down the stairs at the barrier. “Cause those bastards will be here in a New York minute!”
“Minute is all I need.” Dropping his haversack, Father Donaher passed over the case and I whipped off my bandana. “Mindy, cut me!”
Her knife flashed and blood welled from a shallow gash on my forearm. Gritting my teeth, I soaked the cloth in the blood, then tied it firmly about the handle trigger till I heard the telltale click. “Richard, turn the cloth into glass.” I ordered.
“Why?” he asked, looking askance.
“Just do it, mister!”
“But I'm so weak ... ah, that's why the blood sacrifice.” A visible nimbus of light formed around the mage as he summoned the last dregs of power. Then Richard thumped his staff on the bloody rag and it ever-so-slowly turned into a band of glass. Wasting no time, I punched the activation code into the combination lock and hurled the case off the side of the mountain. It sailed through the air like an imported leather frisbee and went neatly over the edge of the cliff.
“This is for Raul!” I shouted, shaking a fist at the unseen city of mages. “Choke on it!”
Her eyes going wide in disbelief, Jessica stared at me. Ed, you didn't just—
“Better believe it, babe,” I answered grimly. “Move with a purpose, people! Ten seconds and counting!”
Immediately, the team started racing up the broad staircase. The higher we went, the colder the air got and the slippery the icy steps became, yet we never fell. This is exactly the kind of scenario that US Army boots were designed to handle. Well, okay, maybe not the exact situation. Then again, who invented these things? Could have been one of us, in the future, traveling into the past, to help save the present. I've seen it happen before. That's how we got free cable.
Bounding along effortlessly, Mindy asked, “Hey chief, why the rigmarole with the handle?”
“The Snoopy is a suicide weapon,” George explained panting, his unshaven face red with the exertion of hauling the heavy backpack of ammo. Caseless or not, a couple of thousand rounds of anything slowed you down. “The atomic device detonates when you release the handle. Very 1960's Cold War sort of thing.”
Stroking an upper lip where his magnificent moustache used to be Father Donaher muttered something about the Pentagon and the seventh level of Hell. Wasn't that the one reserved for idiots?
Mindy merely grunted. “So when the briefcase hits the dome and the glass breaks—”
Blinding light erupted from below the cliff as if a million flashbulbs went off, and seconds later a thundering hurricane rushed upward carrying a barrage of shrapnel that heralded the goddamn loudest boom I ever heard. The whole island shook. Loose stones rolled down the mountain, and the stone stairway cracked apart into a million pieces, entire sections breaking away to start slipping down the slope. An avalanche of snow rushed past us, and I turned about to see the newly exposed summit of the mountain. Now in plain sight was an undersea diving bell positioned on top on the rocky peak. A 20th century diving bell covered with Arabic writing.
Even as we fell to the vibrating steps, I cheered in victory. If that wasn't our goal, the source of new magic from Satan Department, then it would do until we found the real one.
Frantically crawling together, Richard joined hands with Donaher and Jessica. The three began to hum tunelessly and the air around us filled with a sparkling rainbow of colors as the lethal wave of gamma radiation wave was neutralized. The gesture was appreciated, but dying of cancer was not our most pressing problem at the moment.
The mountain was still trembling when the radiation finally faded away and we struggled to our feet. The team looked haggard, but there was no time for a rest. If we won, the team could relax later. Heck, I'd buy them a deluxe week in Euro-Disney. Nice short lines for all the rides. But if we lost, there would be an infinity of profound sleep in the pine box motel.
“A briefcase nuclear charge,” Donaher growled, straightening his cap. “I suppose it was necessary.”
“Abso-freaking-lutely,” I replied grimly,
“So much for Odin,” Mindy agreed. “Even a small nuke will just ruin your day.”
“Then its over?” Jessica asked hopefully, lowering the barrel of her M16. “We've won?”
I started to answer when I spotted the ice griffins bounding down the stairs towards us, their icy fangs bared for battle. Right behind them was an army of snowmen rising from the pristine white blanket covering the ground, hundreds of ice spears and glittering axes in their pudgy mittens. Checking the other direction, I saw the crystal warriors swarming out of the magic portal, the brick and cinder block wall smashed into rubble.
“Don't break out the champagne quite yet, babe,” I said, spinning around and triggering a short burst from the M16 at the diving bell. But the deadly wreath of perfectly imbalanced tumblers merely chewed up some of the fat snowmen blocking the way. Damnation, they must know why we were here, and were acting as a living shield. We had to get closer. A lot closer.
Father Donaher gasped and I turned around again fast, my weapon at the ready. Then I gasped, too.
Rising into view from below was the dark top of a mushroom-shaped cloud. Even as we watched, the fierce thermal currents from the expanding dust shroud pushed away the magical cloud cover and clean pure sunlight came streaming through the
widening hole. Ah, sweetness. Then my watch beeped with the ten minute warning. Never rains, but it pours.
“Hold off the attack!” Jessica shouted into her wristwatch, fiddling with the controls. “Bureau, do you copy? Hold off the missiles!”
There was no answer, only static. The hole gave us a brief window to the outside world, but this close to a nuke storm we might as well yodel for all the good a radio would do. But wasting precious seconds, we each tried our watches anyway, just in case, and got zero results.
Now what?
“Cheech and Chong!” I ordered, and my team raced toward the diving bell. That was the key.
Pausing for only a split second, Father Donaher let the rest of us pass by while he whispered a short prayer in Latin to bless a satchel charge and then laid it reverently on the stairs. Then the big priest took off like a Wiccan leaving Texas. We were three levels away when the C4 charge cut loose, the strident blast only a pop compared to the nuke, but the detonation shattered an entire section of steps.
Slapping in a fresh clip, I fired a few rounds at the trapped crystal warriors as they gathered on the other side of the smoking hole and made rude gestures. A few tried to go around and immediately slipped on the icy slope, sliding out of control straight down the mountain and sailing majestically over the cliff into the heart of the mushroom cloud.
“Your mother was an ashtray!” Mindy shouted.
Good one. Just then a shadow engulfed us from above, and I spun around already firing. I had expected this. Big Bird had arrived. The misshapen form of the jabberwocky was bristling with claws, beaks, tentacles, horns, stingers, wings, heads, jaws, teeth, fangs, tusks, and every orifice dripped saliva, green ooze and some really icky stuff, too. The team cut loose with their weapons, sending a hellstorm of lead and silver at the winged wonder. Hissing, barking and screaming all at the same time, the jabberwocky soared away from us bleeding from a dozen minor wounds. After reloading, we quickly started running up the stairs once more. Yards counted now, maybe it was time to switch tactics.
Without pausing, I tossed Richard the crossbow pistol, but kept the laser gun. Flipping the safety with the tip of my knife, I easily broke off the poisoned needle that popped out to stab my finger. Ah, Satan Department was so predictable. The tiny digital meter on the handle displayed the Arabic symbols for nine and eight. Was that 98%, or 89% charged? Actually, either way was okay.
