Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm

by G T Almasi

  Our job tonight is simple. We need to blow a chunk out of the rail line to York while the nightly trash train passes over it. Taking out a group of container cars full of garbage will be appropriately disruptive without garnering the negative public reaction we’d get from derailing a trainload of businesspeople.

  The rhythmic passing of the commuter train fades as it enters town. A minute later, all the lights in the area blink out.

  The rebellion has begun.

  Miriam stands up and leads us across the field. Our muscles and joints protest vehemently. We’re all stiff from lying in a February ditch for ten hours. Fortunately, Brando and I are wearing high-tech long underwear beneath our plain brown pants and coats. We also wear those funny Scally caps, like kids who deliver newspapers in old movies. Miriam wears very worn-out boots, torn pants, and an ancient coat topped off by a brand-new, very official-looking policeman’s hat. It’s the closest we could get to a railway inspector’s uniform. Miriam will supervise her two “workers” as we make a “repair” to the rail.

  As we cross the field, Brando asks Miriam how she escaped to the Circle.

  “I was at a fish cannery in Hull when the Rabbi made contact. I told him about the factory’s routine, and he came up with a plan to help us escape. That night, our overseer—a real farbrekher with a thing for raping young females—came to the women’s shack. I cut open his neck with a can lid.” Miriam’s stories always get right to the point. “Then we carried his body to our master’s front porch, set fire to our shack, and hid in the warehouse. When die Teutsch came pouring out of their big house, the Rabbi snuck in and stole some rifles. He brought them to us, and we shot all the Germans.” Miriam points out a rut in the ground. “Watch your step.”

  While Brando watches his step, I ask Miriam, “What happened then?”

  “The Rabbi led us deep into the forests. Die Teutsch can’t see into caves or through thick tree canopy. They rely too heavily on their toys. We always hear their vehicles coming and make it dangerous for them.”

  “So you win these fights?”

  “No.” Miriam shrugs. “But neither do they.”

  We arrive at the tracks and get to work. My partner and I crouch over the rail while Miriam stands behind us. She smacks her hands together to resemble an indolent train company Unterführer trying to stay warm.

  Brando reaches into his portable warehouse and produces a six-volt battery, a coil of unshielded copper wire, and a block of C-4. I help him wire up the tracks so the wheels of a passing train will complete an electrical circuit and set off our bomb. We’ll damage the track and derail the train simultaneously.

  We return to our ditch-away-from-home and lie back down. It’s important to make sure our bomb actually goes off. If it doesn’t, we can’t leave it there to be discovered later. That would muster extra German security without the benefit of “creating a chaotic and hazardous situation,” per our orders.

  While it was light, we kept our hands over our mouths, partly to warm them but mostly to hide the little puffs of steam our breath makes in the winter air. Small details like that can make or break an operation. Now that it’s dark, we can risk talking a little.

  Brando goes first. “Miriam, who is the Rabbi? We’ve heard about him, but not from anyone who has actually met him like you have.”

  Miriam contemplates the stars. “The Rabbi is our heart and soul. He led us out of bondage, taught us to hide, to fight, and—most importantly—to survive.”

  She tells us the Rabbi was originally a slave in Holland. His master died and left in his will that his slaves should be released. This is extremely rare and creates some awkward situations, as there is no place in Greater German society for Jewish people. Those few who had been freed were deported out of the country.

  The Rabbi, however, disappeared underground and founded the first cell of an abolitionist network for escaped slaves. This network now spans all of Greater Germany. The escapees can leave Europe or stay and help fight slavery. Many opt to stay.

  Miriam stops talking and cocks her head to one side, her eyes pointed slightly upward. For a moment, this gesture makes her look like a Hollywood glamour girl from the 1920s. But that moment passes quickly—I don’t imagine Hollywood starlets having a Star of David tattooed around their left eye. Nor do I imagine them speaking Yiddish.

  “Ach!” she says, “Here comes the verkachta train. Get ready, my little meshugenuhs. It’s showtime!”

  We wriggle to the top of the ditch. Brando lets Miriam use our starlight binoculars, and I tell him what I see with my optic modifications.

  “There it is, coming out of Strensall.” The train chugs toward Haxby. When the engine passes over our little present, a flash of light is closely followed by a sharp bang.

  A derailing train is quite a thing. For starters, it’s deafeningly loud. The ground shakes from the clamor of a host of hundred-ton frying pans clanging together. Little bits of debris land all around us. One of them plops into the dirt in front of my face. It’s a sheared-off rail spike, ripped out of its socket. I slip it into my pocket.

  Metallic groans and shrieks echo across the field as the train cars crumple into their new earthy homes. Miriam cackles to herself in a language I’ve never heard as we exit stage left.

  08

  Two days later, Tuesday, February 3, 1981, 5:10 A.M. GMT

  Office of the Bürgermeister, York, Province of Great Britain, GG

  Don’t forget to look up.

  One of my professors at Camp-A-Go-Go gave an entire lecture on our human tendency to watch for danger by scanning left and right. What I remember from his explanation is this two dimensionality has something to do with our prehistoric lives on the flat savannas of Africa. His class was called Hiding in Plain Site. The professor’s next lecture was about exploiting our lateral tendency. We explored all sorts of ways to sneak around security systems based on this one idea.

  Thus, the Spider was born. Hiding on a ceiling is great since it affords an unobstructed view of the room and allows an agent to attack their target from a completely unexpected direction. The trick, however, is the stick. Not all buildings lend themselves to this move. Luckily for me, the town hall in York has got lots of fancy moldings and decorative flourishes inside and out I can use as climbing handles and perches.

  Getting in here was easy. From the building’s back alley, I leaped up to a second-story ledge and jimmied a window open. Then I lowered a line down to my partner and held on while he climbed up. A CIA schematic of the building, sprinkled with notes from one of the janitors, guided us straight to the office of York’s mayor. Brando picked the lock, and we were inside.

  I feel like a gargoyle. My feet are jammed into a corner molding while my hands press against the ostentatiously decorated ceiling. Brando has crawled under a big couch in front of the mayor’s heavy wooden desk. It’ll take him a few moments to get out of there, but he doesn’t need to make a big entrance like I do.

  05:30. It’s been a hell of a couple days. The Fritzes responded to our opening salvo by imposing martial law all over England. Our rail bombing has already resulted in mass arrests among the Jewish slave populations and German dissidents around Yorkshire. The mayor of York is in charge of these roundups, which is why we’ve made ourselves an early appointment with Herr Bürgermeister to dissuade him from killing the people caught in the raids.

  Once we pull this operation, everyone who works in this building will be prime suspects, whether they’re antislavery or not. Miriam has already evacuated the Circle sympathizers to the Rabbi’s camp up north.

  05:35. My drugs keep coming out of balance. Right now my system is carrying an excessive amount Madrenaline, and my skin feels like it’s vibrating. My mind is hyperaware, but I can’t focus. I take few deep breaths, close my eyes, and try to calm down. This doesn’t work, so I have my neuroinjector dose some Kalmers—a little—to try and find equilibrium.

  As usual there’s a lot riding on our mission, but this time it
feels more personal. We’ve spent over a week in-country with these people. We know their names, and we’ve seen their scars. Slaves always get the crap beaten out of them, and Europe’s Jews are no exception.

  Miriam told us one story I’ll never forget. Her first master, a big fat German factory owner named Günther, used to house his slaves in an old shipping container behind his facility down in Hull. Günther’s factory was right on the harbor, so it was simple to get raw materials in and slave-produced items out.

  One night, old Günther was reviewing his accounts. His business insurance had gone way up because the local Circle of Zion cells were actively sabotaging the region’s industry. Earlier that month a nearby clothing company had been attacked. Circle activists dumped a shipping container of raw cloth into the harbor, and then spirited the factory’s slave labor force away in boats. Günther bitterly saw he was now required to carry so much additional coverage for his slaves that—should they accidentally die—the insurance payout would be higher than the cost of replacing them.

  Which gave him an idea.

  As Miriam tells it, one night she and her fellow laborers were in their unlit, rust-covered container, trying to sleep. They were woken by a heavy tractor growling to life outside. A loud clang at one end of their metal living quarters woke up the few slaves who’d managed to remain asleep. Many of the box’s inhabitants stood up, but when the floor shifted, most of them fell right back down. The vibrating shipping container screeched over concrete as the roaring tractor shoved them past the loading bays. Chips of paint and flakes of old metal rained down on the people inside.

  Miriam pounded on the door until her whole world tipped over. Screams ricocheted through the darkness, followed by silence. They weren’t being pushed anymore, but they weren’t sitting still, either. One voice guessed that perhaps their masters had simply relocated them. Then another voice said he felt like they were floating. Finally, a third voice, farthest from the door, confirmed what Günther had done.

  “Water! There’s water coming in back here!”

  Miriam was crushed against the front door as people pressed forward, bellowing in terror. The sea flooded in through the rusted-out floor at the rear of the container, and their floating coffin tipped onto its back end. Miriam grasped the door handle as her fellows slid and tumbled down to what had been the rear and was now fast becoming the bottom of their tomb. A ferocious battle broke out as everyone tried to stay on top, their hands and feet slashing out in blackness to gain a few extra seconds of life.

  The cries and thrashes became weaker and fewer until they finally stopped. Miriam hung from the steel box’s top, in water up to her chest. She prayed and prepared to die. She took one big breath, then another, and another. The water had stopped rising. The container had come to rest on the harbor’s bottom, standing on its end with the top few inches still exposed. Although the door was locked, there were enough holes and cracks that air could still flow inside. Miriam floated among the corpses for seven hours until the next morning, when Günther had his crane operators retrieve the container.

  When they found Miriam still alive, Günther transferred her to his cousin’s farm outside of Driffield so he could write off his slaves as a total loss to his insurers. He also didn’t want Miriam contradicting the details of his story about being raided by the Circle of Zion. Günther’s cousin in Driffield, by the way, is the lummox who got his neck sliced open with a plate. Miriam had clearly had enough of slave life.

  05:50. I shift my weight a little and try to stretch my legs out. My drugs have finally balanced out, so my skin has stopped trying to move to another ZIP Code. I mentally review my assignment for the umpteenth time. It’s a straight-up snatch job, featuring the extra thrill of being deep in enemy territory and surrounded by bad guys. I’d check in with Brando, but we’re on comm silence. Besides, he’s probably proving some obscure mathematical problem like E = mc to the square root of pluribus unum.

  Footsteps echo in the hallway and get louder with each step. A key clicks in the office’s lock. I look at my father’s watch.

  06:00. The door opens beneath me. A plump little man waddles in and shuts the door. He crosses the dimly lit office to the desk. He turns on the desk lamp, and a pool of light pours onto his face. The man wears a suit and tie, and his hair is neatly trimmed. I zoom in with my enhanced vision and compare his face to the picture in my mission briefing. He’s my target.

  Air Traffic Control, this is flight A59 requesting permission to land.

  I pop a sharp dose of Madrenaline and vault across the room. My back scrapes the ceiling for a second until I begin my descent.

  Roger, flight A59, you are cleared for approach.

  The pudgy Bürgermeister has just settled in his chair when I cannonball into his lap. The impact reduces his wooden chair to its component boards and fasteners. He crashes to the floor while I roll to my feet. I body-slam him and fire my knee into his groin, which elicits a noisy response. I stifle him with my hand over his mouth. The mayor yells into my palm while Brando slithers out from under the couch. My partner rushes over to us, digs into his X-bag, and plucks out his egg-shaped drug-injector gadget. Its name is Drug Optimization System: Epidermal, or DOSE for short. We used to stab people with plain old hypodermics, but last year we got these high-tech jobbies that speed things up considerably.

  My partner injects a load of knockout juice into Chubbo’s leg. The effect is almost instantaneous. Our target goes limp. In fact, he stops moving altogether.

  “Jesus, Darwin. Did you kill him?”

  “Of course not, he’s only paralyzed. Temporarily.”

  “How long is ‘temporarily’?” I stand up and brush myself off.

  “This stuff is new. Our Med-Techs cooked it up special for us, but it hasn’t exactly been tested.” Brando stands up and rifles through the mayor’s desk drawers. “It won’t kill him. They assured me of that.”

  Let’s hope so. I bend down and grab Chubbo’s hands. Then I turn around, hoist him onto my back, and start to carry him out of the office. We’re halfway across the room when the door glides open. My heart nearly stops as a young woman sneaks in. She faces backward to make sure nobody outside sees her. She wears a tarty little black dress, stockings and high-heel pumps.

  I drop the Mayor and pounce her like a gorilla attacking a banana salesman. I clamp my hand over her mouth and pin her against the wall. I whip out my pistol and hiss, “Stille!” Be still!

  The Tart whimpers, then falls silent when I press Li’l Bertha’s barrel against her cheek. Hot breath from her nostrils passes across my fingers.

  Brando says, “Scarlet, don’t kill her! Remember our orders.”

  The woman’s legs tremble against mine. “Fine,” I say, “but what the fuck do we do with her?”

  “I’ll take care of her.” Brando comes up behind us. He administers a DOSE of snooze-fast into her arm. Tarty is transformed from a stiff statue of terror to a limp leaf of boiled spinach in nothing flat. The woman droops forward and plops onto the floor.

  I turn to my partner. “Swell, now what? I can’t carry them both!”

  “You get the target, and I’ll take the woman. She’s small.”

  “Darwin, who’s going to check our flanks? Let’s leave her.”

  Brando crouches next to Sleepy Tart and hikes her over his shoulders. “No, I think she’ll help us make our target an offer he can’t refuse.” He stands up and heads for the door. “But we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Fine. I pick up Herr Bürgermeister again and follow Brando down the hall. The town hall is still silent except for our new friends’ feet scraping the floor as we drag them back toward the window we climbed in an hour ago.

  I drop to the back alley. I turn to look up at my partner. He makes sure I’m ready, and then he rolls Herr Mayor of York out the window. Two hundred pounds of sausage-fed German blobbiness flops into my arms and damn near rips them off. Sharp pain lances through my Modded elbows and knees.

&
nbsp; “You all right? That looked like it hurt,” Brando comms.

  “Yeah, no shit. He’s a fuckin’ blimp.” I lay Bürgerpüdge down, then hold my arms out and waggle my fingers. “C’mon, gimme the fraulein.”

  Tarty weighs less than I do, and catching her is much easier. My partner climbs down to join me and our floppy friends.

  Ground floor: tools, guns, kidnapped Krauts.

  Brando stays with our captives while I run out front to the street. Our getaway driver is in place, waiting in his truck a block away. I point my father’s watch in his direction and flash the light, twice fast, then twice slow. The truck engine starts. I hoof it back to the building’s rear, passing my partner as he lugs the Bürgertart toward our pickup point. I boost the mayor onto my back and haul him after Brando.

  The truck parks next to town hall, and the driver gets out. He’s an antislavery activist named Arvid who delivers milk to supermarkets by day and runaway slaves to the Circle by night. He also takes advantage of his circuitous delivery routes around Yorkshire to gather intel on German police activity.

  Arvid helps us dump our guests into the back of his truck. We jump in after them, and Arvid shuts the doors behind us. While Arvid accelerates away from the town hall, Brando secures Mister and Mistress Mayor.

  06:04. Not bad. We’d hoped to get out of there in less than three minutes, but four minutes is acceptable considering what a giant improv we had to pull when that woman snuck in.

  Brando tapes balls of cloth into our captives’ mouths, and then we climb up front with Arvid. The truck’s cabin is warm and smells like hot coffee. Arvid lifts a plastic mug out of a cup holder and gives it to me. I slide the top open and take a swig. The coffee burns my throat a little, but the heat feels good. I hand the mug to my partner, who holds it under his nose to let the warmth wash over his face.

  We jounce up one of York’s narrow streets from Ye Olde Days, our tires rumbling over well-worn cobblestones. Timber-framed houses pass so close on either side that I feel like we’re being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste. We emerge from the old part of town and glide onto a modern two-lane highway.