After America ww-2

by John Birmingham

  "It is her!" one of them shouted. "She is here."

  She saw the shotgun start to rise, but it was too late for the shooter. Her PP-2000 was already at shoulder level, the wide black tube of the Reflex Suppressor unwavering as she squeezed the trigger twice. The weapon stuttered, and spent shell casings tinkled off the cold concrete walls as the men's white shirts were puffed and shredded by a small storm of 9-mm Parabellum. The gunman fell away, cracking his head on the wall and then the floor as he crashed down. The other spun backward into the stairwell again, forcing Caitlin to move a few steps forward, lower the muzzle, and put a finishing burst into his head, which came apart in spectacular fashion, spraying bright red sunbursts of blood and bone chips and gray matter everywhere.

  "So much for stealth," she muttered before stepping over the men and hurrying down the stairs, sweeping for more challengers as she went.

  They were already charging toward her, and these guys looked a lot more capable, all of them armed with hand cannons of some sort and moving as a fluid group, covering one another.

  Two single shots crashed out, echoing and caroming off the steel handrail.

  "Allahu akbar!"

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," she sighed.

  She worked quickly, covering the flight below with the machine gun, squeezing out a few bursts as she used her free hand to haul out the cigarette pack in which Gerty had hidden the small but powerful binary explosive. Caitlin stripped off the lid, pushed in the tab that allowed the two elements to mingle, set the rudimentary timer for seven seconds, and then calmly walked down the steps, firing off fast irregular volleys from the Russian gun, keeping the heads of her targets down until she rounded the last landing and tossed the small package down among them. She ducked back behind the shelter of the thick concrete steps as the bomblet exploded with a titanic crash that shook the entire building.

  All need for stealth and care now gone, she took out the second PP-2000 and advanced firing both weapons. The second, unsilenced gun roared with an earsplitting report that completely drowned out the sound of the first. As she swung around on the last flight of steps, she saw that two of the men had been caught by the explosion and killed instantly, one of them split from neck to groin as though gutted by a butcher and the other simply taken apart into four or five large pieces. A third man was crawling away from the shattered glass entry, and she stitched him up along the spine, finishing with a head shot as another bullet cracked past her ear.

  The fourth and final target had made it halfway to the footpath and was firing wildly over his shoulder. Two more bullets fizzed close by before she could draw a bead on him with the silenced gun. Before she could pull the trigger, his head disintegrated and his lifeless body tumbled over.

  She dived for the nearest cover, a concrete pillar.

  She scanned the darkness for the second shooter and heard the unmistakable growl of her BMW as it suddenly appeared in front of Fabia Shah's building with Dalby at the wheel.

  "Come on," he called out. "Get a bloody move on."

  She hurried down the steps as lights went on all over the street and a fire alarm wailed somewhere.

  "What… fuck?" was all she could manage as she dived into the passenger seat through the door he had leaned over to fling open for her.

  "Sorry," Dalby said. "Might have been fibbing about sending you out on your own." "What the fuck, Dalby!"

  She waited until he pulled out of the street before punching him on the shoulder. The Englishman drove at the speed limit and was careful not to draw attention to them with any reckless maneuvers. He had mounted a scanner on the dashboard, and they could hear emergency calls going out to the police.

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Monroe… Caitlin. But just as you were an undeclared asset, I'm afraid my presence here is, too. We're not inclined to take risks with our continental colleagues anymore."

  The shakes took hold of her as they drove along the street where she and Mirsaad had investigated the market stalls early that morning. No, she corrected herself. That was yesterday morning. She was having trouble keeping it all straight and was annoyed at her jittery unprofessional response to the ambush, or at least to the aftermath, including Dalby's unexpected intervention.

  "Seriously, I mean it. What the fuck are you doing here, Dalby? And what was the story with all the Universal Exports doublespeak before? What the hell kind of double-blind bullshit operation is this? Do you want al Banna found? Are they fucking serious about tracing the supply chains through here? What the hell is going on?"

  Dalby had the decency to look abashed as he drove them out of the shariatown on a heading for the airport. Caitlin could hear sirens as the first responders sped toward Neukolln.

  "I apologize, I really do, Caitlin," Dalby said. "But needs must out when the Devil drives. I was not leading you astray when we spoke earlier, although I am sorry I could not reveal I was also in Berlin. We all have our histories, Caitlin, and I'm afraid I have quite a bit of history with this city. I'm not supposed to be here, ever."

  He didn't elaborate, and she didn't expect him to. They drove on as a fire engine and two ambulances sped past with sirens howling and lights flashing. Dalby ignored them and stuck to his route, which she was now certain was taking them in a great loop toward Tempelhof Airport.

  "I volunteered as your overwatch officer because I suspected something like this might happen."

  Caitlin bristled. "I do know how to do my job, you know, Dalby," she said, but regretted her tone. The man had put himself at great risk to help her and probably remained at risk as long as he was in Berlin. "Sorry," she said. "Can you just bring me up to speed with what's happening?"

  "What's happening is a rather amateurish attempt at distraction," he said. "We are now of the opinion that the attack on your family was not really personal. It was meant merely to appear as such, to make us imagine that Baumer had returned to Germany after escaping his confinement in Guadeloupe. Attacking your family, then drawing you to Berlin, where you could be ambushed, would play out as a rather neatly packaged revenge scenario had Baumer been able to call on sufficiently competent help. Fortunately for you, he wasn't. Partly because we suspect that having rebuilt his networks quite quickly from the refugee cohort, which has arrived here in great numbers these last few years, he committed the best of his people to New York."

  Caitlin shook her head and blinked away a moment of dizziness and nausea as they traversed the northern boundary of Tempelhof.

  "So what, you think he's gone into piracy now? That doesn't make sense. That's not the guy I went after back in 2003. He's a believer, not a crook."

  "Indeed he is," Dalby agreed. "And believers are always much more dangerous than your common garden-variety villains. That's why we've never lost interest in him. It's why, when he reached out to you through Richardson and his men, we were able to authorize this operation at such short notice and to resource it when there are so many calls on our resources because of New York. There are no coincidences, Caitlin."

  "You knew? All the time?" she asked quietly.

  Any other man who knew her would have immediately sensed the danger. But Dalby showed no sign of feeling threatened. Only tired.

  "No, we didn't. We had our suspicions. I certainly had mine. But suspicions are so common as to be a worthless currency in our trade, Caitlin. We can only know what we know, and until then anything is possible. Up until a few hours ago it was possible that you would actually be reassigned to the very, very important job of finding out where the street traders of Neukolln are sourcing their plentiful supplies of cheap toasters and Levi's jeans. It was only after you were ambushed that I was able to convince our lords and masters you had more important work to do."

  "In New York?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said as he turned off the main road and onto a disused concrete laneway that led to an open gate on the airport's northeastern fringe. A short distance beyond that a Gulfstream V stood ready on the tarmac with its engines spooled up and cabin lights di
mmed. Dalby pulled up as a man popped his head out of the hatchway just behind the cockpit and waved to them.

  "I'm sorry I couldn't give you all of the information to which I was privy, Caitlin," he said. "But I honestly did not have much, and information is one thing, meaning is another. We now have, I think, a much better understanding of the meaning of what has happened in New York and how it connects to what happened to you."

  "What is Baumer doing?" Caitlin asked as she struggled to maintain her temper.

  "He has taken his people to the New World," Dalby said. "There to build a new world for them."

  Caitlin was quiet for a moment as she took it all in: the deceit, the betrayals, the shifting agendas and interests. As much as the lines and details shifted and blurred, however, one thing remained constant. She had but one interest, finding the man who had used her family. That was worse, much worse, than imagining he had come after them as part of some intensely personal vengeance trip. He hadn't cared at all. Killing them meant nothing. It was a tactic to buy time, and not much time at that.

  "This plane is one of ours. It will take you to a small airfield in upstate New York, where you'll transition to a military craft for insertion into New York. You'll be jumping in, I'm afraid, hopefully just before dawn over there. You're rated for HAHO operations, as I understand. You'll find all of the equipment you need at the other end," Dalby said.

  "I won't need any equipment," she said. "I am going to kill him with the same hands that held my baby after he tried to take her from me."

  41

  Texas Administrative Division McDonald Lake was a small, brown, roughly triangular patch of brackish water hidden away in a thicket of dense forest a mile or two southeast of where Texas 155 crossed the Farm to Market Road 321. The woodlands, closely woven with black hickory, cedar, elm, sugarberry, and bunch grasses, enclosed a large fenced clearing where the cattle could graze safely without any danger that they might be observed by road agents. Miguel was also hopeful that the vegetation might smother some of the noise that always attended a herd, even now, late at night, with the animals content to stand around occasionally tearing mouthfuls of feed from the earth but mostly settling down to sleep.

  A hard chill had returned with nightfall, and both he and Sofia were well wrapped up inside thick lamb's wool jackets. Both still wore their riding gloves, however, rather than thicker winter mittens, just in case they should suddenly have need of their weapons. Miguel still carried his Winchester and Lupara despite an offer from the Mormons of an assault rifle from their armory. The cowboy acknowledged the greater firepower and range of the M16s, but he preferred to work with a tool that felt as familiar in his hands as his reins. Sofia still carried her Remington, but now she also carried an M4 carbine she had picked up from one of the agents in Crockett. She had trained with the M16, a similar weapon, when they had first arrived in Texas and had taken to training with the carbine for half an hour at the end of each day.

  They crunched across a small patch of gravel, the remnants of an old walking track that wound through the clearing. Miguel could hear the sound of the cattle splashing through the mud and water at the edge of the lake as they took a late-night drink. At the other end of the clearing two dark silhouettes, Adam and Ben Randall, patrolled the far edge of the herd. The cattle dogs, Red and Blue, kept pace with Miguel as he walked.

  "Papa," she said quietly as they made their rounds of the herd.

  "Yes, Princess," said Miguel in a low voice. Part of him was listening to his daughter, but part of him was constantly alive to the possibility that danger might be nearby.

  "The men who killed all those people back in that town…"

  "The road agents, in Palestine."

  "Yes," said Sofia. "Do you think they are nearby?"

  Miguel gave her shoulder a squeeze in the dark. "I hope not," he said. "But I think not, too. I think they would have been on us by now if they were near."

  He could tell his daughter was not encouraged by the answer.

  "We shall be fine," he added for her benefit. "If we are careful and vigilant, they will not surprise us as they did those settlers. And if they try, we shall give them the same treatment we gave those pirates when they attacked us on Miss Julianne's boat. You do remember that, don't you?"

  "Of course, Papa. I was not a baby, you know. I even helped that day with the dressings and the ammunition."

  Miguel grunted as he gave her a pat on the back.

  "Yes you did, little one," he said. "You were very brave. All of the family was."

  They both fell into a mournful silence then. Miguel pressed his lips together and shook his head as if in that gesture of denial he might somehow negate all that had happened. But, of course, there was no magic in the world. They simply trudged around the edge of the forest, occasionally squelching through a cowpat, unseen in the dark. Miguel felt Sofia's fingers reach out for and entwine with his.

  "I miss Mama," she said. "And little Manny, and Abuela Ana, and…"

  "I know, I know. I miss them all, too, every minute of every day, and while I sleep and when I wake. But I still have you, Sofia, and you I will not have taken from me."

  He stopped next to a small cluster of longhorns that lowed gently and moved away as soon as they saw the dogs. Miguel turned to his daughter and placed both hands on her shoulders. It was good to see her mourn, show some emotion over the loss of their family. For far too long she had been a stranger to him, cold, forbidding.

  "I know that some days it is very hard to go on. Sometimes it seems pointless," he said. "But that is not what they would want, Sofia. Your mother especially; she would want me to get you safe away from here so that you might grow up and continue the family. In the end that is all that matters. Not me; my time is almost past-"

  He felt her shoulders tense up under his hands but shushed her before she could protest.

  "No, it is true. I am not old, not like some of your uncles were, but the family part of my life is over. It has been taken from me. But your life lies in front of you. We will endure this, Sofia. We will survive, and you will rebuild our family, and you will make sure that all of those Peiraros to come know of those who preceded them. That is what God has planned for you. For me… well, for now there is you to look after. And when I have you safe, then we shall settle our score with Blackstone and his men. That is what God means for me to do, Princesa."

  Leaves rustled in the evergreen trees, and branches creaked as a cold wind blew up from the south. Miguel resumed their round of the herd, opening his senses to the night again, listening for the telltale sounds of men nearby and not hearing them.

  "Adam really likes Sally, doesn't he?" Sofia said without warning.

  The vaquero was glad of the dark night that hid his smile.

  "That is only natural," he said. "They have traveled together, and they are of the same people. I suspect hitting him with your rifle butt in Crockett did not improve your chances."

  Sofia laughed. "Maybe, maybe not."

  Miguel searched for and quickly found the distant silhouettes of the Mormon boy and the giant engineer. They were on the far side of the clearing. He kept his voice down.

  "It is good you make friends with Adam and the others," said Miguel. "We need each other out here. But our paths will part somewhere in the future. You should remember that, too."

  He was unsure what to say next. This was the sort of discussion Sofia would have had with her mother or grandmother not so long ago. Miguel would simply have stood in the background scowling and polishing his rifle to put the fear of God into any potential suitors. Now he found himself having to play a role for which he was entirely unsuited. When he thought of Sofia, the age she was, and all the changes that would come as she grew from a young girl into a young woman, he felt himself even more wretchedly alone than before. Perhaps one of the Mormon ladies could help with such things, at least for now, while they shared the trail.

  Any further discomfort was forestalled by the return of
Randall and young Adam. They cut across the clearing, a half-moon lighting their way. A few of the cattle protested at their passage, but mostly they moved aside. Ben Randall was a massive shape in the dark. He towered over his smaller companion, cursing softly and muttering as he tripped on an unseen obstacle. Of all the Mormons, he was the most likely in Miguel's experience to cuss like a normal person.

  "Hey," said Sofia.

  "Hey," Adam replied.

  "We all good?" Randall asked.

  Miguel scowled into the inky blackness of the forest that surrounded them. "Good? No, I would not say that."

  Instantly, Randall seemed more alert, his back straighter, his presence more watchful. "Why? You see something, hear something?"

  "No, and that is the problem. I see and hear nothing, which might mean there is nothing to fear. But I do not like feeling my way through the dark like a blind man in a roomful of traps. I will not be happy until we know for sure where the men who killed the settlers have gone."

  The big man sighed, and his shoulders dropped a little.

  "I'm with you on that," he said. "Ever since we buried those poor people, it's like I've been feeling someone's eyeballs staring at the back of my neck. Not a pleasant sensation, no, sir."

  They began a slow, careful walk to the northeast, following the path of one of the remnant trails that led off to the farmhouse a mile or two distant, where the rest of their companions had settled down for the night. It was a solid structure with good clear lines of fire all around. It would be easily defensible.

  "We should have scouts," Adam said, glancing meaningfully at Sofia.

  Miguel agreed with him, but aloud he said, "There are few of us to spare. Where would we look?"

  Adam surprised him by answering, "We don't need to look everywhere. We just need to know that the route we're taking is safe."