Aces Abroad wc-4

by George R. R. Martin

Quick as a teleport Gimli was across the room. He swept Wilfried off his feet with a transverse kick and straddled his chest, pummeling him. Shroud and Scrape hauled him off.

  Wifried was holding his hands up before his face. "Hey, hey, what did I do?" He seemed almost in tears.

  "You stupid bastard!" Gimli howled, windmilling his arms. "You're no better than the rest of the fucking nats! None of you!"

  "Comrades, please-" Molniya began.

  But Gimli wasn't listening. His face was the color of raw meat. He sent his companions flying with a heave of his shoulders and marched to Aardvark's side.

  Puppetman hated to let Gimli off like this, walking away clear. He'd have to kill the evil little fuck someday.

  But survival surmounted even vengeance. Puppetman's imperative was to shave the odds against him. This was the quickest way.

  Tears streamed over Gimli's lumpy cheeks. "That's enough," he sobbed. "We're taking him for medical attention, and we're taking him now." He bent down and looped a limp furry arm over his neck. Shroud glanced around, eyes alert above the bandage wrap, then joined him.

  Comrade Wolf blocked the door. "Nobody leaves here."

  "What the fuck are you talking about, little man?" Ulrich said pugnaciously. "He's not hurt that badly."

  "Who says he's not eh?" Shroud said. For the first time Hartmann realized he had a Canadian accent.

  Gimli's face twisted like a rag. "That's shit. He's hurting. He's dying. Dammit, let us go."

  Ulrich and Anneke were sidling for their weapons. "United we stand, brother," Wolf intoned. "Divided we fall. As you Amis say."

  A double clack brought their heads around. Scrape stood by the far wall. The assault rifle he'd just cocked was pointed at the buckle of the blond terrorist's army belt. "Then maybe we just fell, comrades," he said. "Because if Gimli says we're going, we're gone."

  Wolfs mouth crumpled in on itself, as if he were old and had forgotten his false teeth. He glanced at Ulrich and Anneke. They had the jokers flanked. If they all moved at once…

  Clinging to one of Aardvark's wrists, Shroud brought up an AKM with his free hand. "Keep it cool, nat."

  Mackie felt his hands beginning to buzz. Only the touch of Molniya's hand on his arm kept him from slicing some joker meat. Ugly monsters! I knew we couldn't trust them.

  "What about the things we're working for?" the Soviet asked.

  Gimli wrung Aardvark's hand. "This is what we're working for. He's a joker. And he needs help."

  Comrade Wolf's face was turning the color of eggplant. Veins stood out like broken fingers on his temples. "Where do you think you're going?" he forced past grinding teeth.

  Gimli laughed. "Right through the Wall. Where our friends are waiting for us."

  "Then leave. Walk out on us. Walk out on the great things you were going to do for your fellow monsters. We still have the senator; we are going to win. And if we ever catch you-"

  Scrape laughed. "You gonna have trouble catching your breath after this goes down. The pigs'll be crawling all over you, I guarantee. You're such total fuckups I can smell it."

  Ulrich's eyes were rolling belligerently despite the rifle aimed at his midsection. "No," Molniya said. "Let them go. If we fight everything is lost."

  "Get out," Wolf said.

  "Yeah," Gimli said. He and Shroud gently carried Aardvark out, into the unlit hallway of the abandoned building. Scrape covered them until they were out of sight, then swiftly crossed the room. He paused, gave them as much of a smile as chitin would permit, and closed the door.

  Ulrich hurled his Kalashnikov against the door. Fortunately it failed to go off. "Bastards!"

  Anneke shrugged. Clearly she was bored with the psychodrama. "Americans," she said.

  Mackie sidled over to Molniya. Everything seemed wrong. But Molniya would make it right. He knew he would.

  The Russian ace was cake.

  Ulrich swung around with his big hands tied into fists. "So what's going to happen? Huh?"

  Wolf sat on a stool with his belly on his thighs and hands on his knees. He'd visibly aged as the thrill of high adventure ebbed. Perhaps the exploit he'd hoped to cap his double life with was going sour on his tongue.

  "What do you mean, Ulrich?" the lawyer asked wearily. Ulrich turned him a look of outrage. "Well, I mean it's our deadline. It's ten o'clock. You heard the radio. They still haven't met our demands."

  He picked up an AKM, jacked a round into the chamber. "Can't we kill the son of a bitch now?"

  Anneke laughed like a ringing bell. "Your political sophistication never ceases to amaze me, lover."

  Wolf hiked up the sleeve of his coat and checked his wristwatch. "What happens now is that. you, Anneke, and you, Wilfried, will go and telephone the message we agreed upon to the crisis center the authorities have so conveniently established. We've both proved we can play the waiting game; it's time to make things move a little."

  And Comrade Molniya said, "No."

  The fear was gathering. Bit by bit it coalesced into a cancer, black and amorphous in the center of his brain. With each minute's passage it seemed Molniya's heart gained a beat. His ribs felt as if they were vibrating from the speed of his pulse. His throat was dry and raw, his cheeks burned as though he stared into the open maw of a crematorium. His mouth tasted like offal. He had to get out. Everything depended on it.

  Everything.

  No, a part of him cried. You've got to stay. That was the plan.

  Behind his eyes he saw his daughter Ludmilya sitting in a rubbled building with her melted eyes running down blister-bubbled cheeks. This is at stake, Valentin Mikhailovich, another, deeper voice replied, if anything goes wrong. Do you dare entrust this errand to these adolescents?

  "No," he said. His parched palate would barely produce the word. "I'll go."

  Wolf frowned. Then the ends of his wide mouth drew up in a smile. Doubtless it occurred to him that would leave him in complete control of the situation. Fine. Let him think as he will. I've got to get out of here.

  Mackie blocked the door, Mackie Messer with tears thronging the lower lids of his eyes. Molniya felt fear spike within him, almost ripped off a glove to shock the boy from his path. But he knew the young ace would never harm him, and he knew why.

  He mumbled an apology and shouldered past. He heard a sob as the door shut behind him, and then only his footsteps, pursuing him down the darkened hall.

  One of my better performances, Puppetman congratulated himself.

  Cake.

  Mackie beat his open palms on the door. Molniya had abandoned him. He hurt, and he couldn't do anything about the hurt. Not even if he made his hands buzz so they'd cut through steel plate.

  Wolf was still here. Wolf would protect him… but Wolf hadn't. Not really. Wolf had let the others laugh at him-him, Mackie the ace, Mackie the Knife. It had been Molniya who'd stood up for him the last few weeks. Molniya who had taken care of him.

  Molniya who was gone. Who wasn't supposed to go. Who was gone.

  He turned, weeping, and slid slowly down the door to the floor.

  Exhilaration swelled Puppetman. It was all working just as he had planned. His puppets cut the capers he directed and suspected nothing. And here he sat, at breath's distance, drinking their passions like brandy. Danger was no more than added poignance; he was Puppetman, and in control.

  And finally the time had come to make an end of Mackie Messer and get himself out of here.

  Anneke stood over Mackie, taunting: "Crybaby. And you call yourself a revolutionary?" He pulled himself upright, whimpering like a lost puppy.

  Puppetman reached out for a string, and pulled.

  And Comrade Ulrich said, "Why didn't you just go with the rest of the jokers, you ugly little queer?"

  "Kreuzberg," Neumann said.

  Slumped in his chair, Tachyon could barely muster the energy to lift his head and say, "I beg your pardon?" Ten o'clock was ancient history now. So, he feared, was Senator Gregg Hartmann.

  Neum
ann grinned. "We have them. It took the Devil's own time, but we traced the van. They're in Kreuzberg. The Turkish ghetto next to the Wall."

  Sara gasped and quickly looked away.

  " An antiterrorist team from GSG-9 is standing by," Neumann said.

  "Do they know what they're doing?" Tach asked, remembering the afternoon's fiasco.

  "They're the best. They're the ones who sprang the Lufthansa 737 the Nur al-Allah people hijacked to Mogadishu in 1977. Hans-Joachim Richter himself is in charge." Richter was the head of the Ninth Border Guards Group, GSG-9, especially formed to combat terrorism after the Munich massacre of '72. A popular hero in Germany, he was reputed to be an ace, though nobody knew what his powers might be. Tach stood. "Let's go."

  Mackie's left hand cut right down Comrade Ulrich's right side from the base of his neck to the hip. It felt good going through, and the kiss of bone thrilled him like speed.

  Ulrich's arm fell off. He stared at Mackie. His lips peeled back away from perfect teeth, which clacked open and closed three times like something in the window of a novelty store.

  He looked down at what had been his perfect animal body and shrieked.

  Mackie watched in fascination. The scream made his exposed lung work in and out like a vacuum cleaner bag, all grayish purple and moist and veined with blue and red. Then his guts started to spill out the side of him, piling over his fallen rifle, and the blood rushing out of him carried away the strength that kept him standing, and he dropped.

  "Holy Mary mother of God," Wilfried said. Puke slopped from a corner of his mouth as he backed away from the wreckage of his comrade. Then he looked past Mackie and yelled, "No-"

  Anneke aimed her Kalashnikov at the small of the ace's back. Fear knotted her finger sphincter-tight.

  Mackie phased out. The burst splashed Wilfried all over the wall.

  Molniya stood with hands on knees and his back against the side of a stripped Volvo, pulling in deep breaths of diesel-flavored Berlin night. It wasn't a part of town in which. strangers cared to spend much time alone. That didn't concern him. What he feared was fear.

  What came over me? I've never felt like that in my life. He'd fled the apartment in a bright haze of panic. No sooner had he stepped outside than it evaporated like water spilled on a sun-heated rock in the Khyber. Now he was trying to collect himself, unsure for the moment whether to carry on with his errand or go back and send a couple of Wolf's vicious cubs.

  Papertin was right, he told himself. I've gotten soft. IFrom above came a familiar heavy stutter. His blood ran like freon through his veins as he raised his head to see fireflashes dancing on chintz curtains two stories up.

  It was all over.

  If I'm not found here, he thought, then maybe-conceivably-the Third World War won't happen tonight.

  He turned and walked away down the street, very fast.

  Hartmann lay on his side with the floorboards throbbing against the bruise they'd made on his cheekbone. He'd kicked the chair over as soon as things started happening.

  What in hell's name went wrong? he wondered desperately. The bastard wasn't supposed to talk, just shoot.

  It was '76 all over again. Once again Puppetman in his arrogance had overreached himself. And it may just have cost him his ass.

  His nostrils buzzed with the stink of hot lubricant and blood and fresh moist shit. Hartmann could hear the two surviving terrorists stumbling around the room shouting at each other. Ulrich was dying in wheezes a few feet away. He could feel the energy running-from him like an ebb tide.

  "Where is he? Where'd the fucker go?" Wolf was saying. "He went through the wall," Anneke said. She was hyperventilating, tearing the words out of the air like pieces of cloth.

  "Well, watch for him. Oh, holy Jesus."

  Their terror was stark as crucifixion as they stood trying to cover all three interior walls with their guns. Hartmann shared it. The twisted ace had gone berserk.

  Someone shrieked and died.

  Mackie stood for a moment with his arm elbow-deep in Anneke's back. He took the buzz off, leaving his hand jutting from the woman's sternum like a blade. Blood oozed greasily around the leather sleeve on Mackie's arm where it vanished into her torso. He enjoyed the look of it, and the intimate way what remained of Anneke's heart kept hugging his arm. The fools hadn't even been looking his way when he slipped back through the wall from the bedroom, not that it would have helped them if they had. Three quick steps and that was it for redheaded little Comrade Anneke.

  "Fuck you," he said, and giggled.

  The heart convulsed one last time around Mackie's arm and was still. Putting a slight buzz on, Mackie pulled his arm free. He swung the corpse around as he did so.

  Wolf was standing there with his cheeks quivering. He brought up his gun as Mackie turned. Mackie pushed the corpse at him. He fired. Mackie laughed and phased out.

  Wolf emptied the magazine in. a shivering ejaculation. Plaster dust filled the room. Anneke's corpse collapsed across the senator. Mackie phased back in.

  Wolf screamed pleas, in German, in English. Mackie took the Kalashnikov away from him, pinned him against the door, and taking his time about it, sawed his head in two, right down the middle.

  Riding in the armored van with the particolored lights of downtown Berlin washing over her and the faces and weapons of the GSG-9 men who sat facing her, Sara Morgenstern thought, What's come over me?

  She wasn't sure whether she meant now or before weeks before, when the affair with Gregg began.

  How strange, how very strange. How could I have ever have thought I loved… him? I feel nothing for him now. But that wasn't really true. Where love had left a vacuum an earlier emotion was seeping in. Tainted with a toxic flavor of betrayal.

  Andrea, Andrea, what have I done?

  She bit her lip. The GSG-9 commando riding across from her saw and grinned, his teeth startling in his blackened face. She was instantly wary, but there was no sex in that smile, only the self-distracting camaraderie of a man facing battle with both pleasure and fear. She made herself smile back and nestled closer against Tachyon, sitting by her side.

  He put his arm around her. It wasn't just a brotherly gesture. Even the prospect of danger wasn't enough to drive sex wholly from his mind. Oddly she found she didn't mind the attention. Perhaps it was her acute awareness of how incongruous they were, a pair of small gaudy cockatoos riding among panthers.

  And Gregg… did she really care what happened to him?

  Or do I hope he never leaves that tenement alive?

  The screaming had stopped, and the buzz-saw sounds. Hartmann had feared they might go on forever. He gagged on the reek of friction-burned hair and bone.

  He felt like something from a medieval fable as painted by Bosch: a glutton presented with the fullest of feasts, only to have it turn to ashes in his mouth. Puppetman had drawn no nourishment from the terrorists' dying. He'd been nearly as terrified as they.

  A humming, coming closer: Moritat, The Ballad of Mackie the Knife. The mad ace was locked in killing frenzy now, stalking toward him with his terrible hand still dripping brains. Hartmann writhed in his bonds. The woman Mackie had impaled was a dead weight across his legs. He was going to die now. Unless…

  Bile surged up his throat at what he was going to do. He choked it back, reached for a string, and pulled. Pulled hard. The humming stopped. The soft tocking of clogs on wood stopped. Hartmann looked up. Mackie leaned over him with glowing eyes.

  He pulled Anneke off Hartmann's legs. He was strong for his size. Or maybe inspired. He pulled Hartmann's chair upright. Hartmann winced, dreading contact, fearing death. Fearing the alternative almost as much.

  His own breathing nearly deafened him. He could feel the emotion swelling within Mackie. He steeled himself and stroked it, teased it, made it grow.

  Mackie went to his knees before the chair. He unfastened the fly of Hartmann's trousers, slipped fingers inside, tugged the senator's cock out into the humid air and fastened his
lips around the glans. He began to pump his head up and down, slowly at first, then gaining speed. His tongue went caduceus round and round.

  Hartmann moaned. He couldn't let himself enjoy this.

  If you don't it's never going to end, Puppetman taunted. What are you doing to me?

  Saving you. And securing the best puppet of all.

  But he's so powerful-so… unpredictable. Involuntary pleasure was breaking his thoughts into kaleidiscope fragments. But I've got him now. Because he wants to be my puppet. He loves you, the way that neurasthenic bitch Sara never could.

  God, God, am I still a man?

  You're alive. And you're going to smuggle this creature back to New York. And anyone who stands in our way from now on will die.

  Now relax and enjoy it.

  Puppetman took over. As Mackie sucked his cock, he sucked the boy's emotions with his mind. Hot-wet and salty, they gushed into him.

  Hartmann's head went back. Involuntarily he cried out. He came as he had not come since Succubus died.

  Senator Gregg Hartmann pushed through a door from which the glass had long since been broken. He leaned against the cold metal frame and stared into a street that was empty except for gutted cars and weeds pushing up through cracks in the pavement.

  White light drilled him from the rooftop opposite, fierce as a laser. He raised his head, blinking.

  "My God," a German voice yelled, "it's the senator." The street filled up with cars and whirling lights and noise. It didn't seem to -take any time at all. Hartmann saw magenta highlights struck like sparks off Tachyon's hair, and Carnifex in his comic-book outfit, and from doorways and behind the automotive corpses appeared men totally encased in black, trotting warily forward with stubby machine pistols held ready.

  Past them all he saw Sara, dressed in a white coat that was the defiant antithesis of camouflage.

  "I… got away," he said, voice creaking like an unused door. "It's over. They-they killed each other."

  Television spotlights spilled over him, hot and white as milk fresh from the breast. His gaze caught Sara's. He smiled. But her eyes drilled into his like iron rods.

  Cold and hard. She's slipped away! he thought. With the thought came pain.