Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm

by G T Almasi

Brando streaks past me and charges into the commandant’s office. I run after him and comm, “Raj! What’s going on out there?”

  “Scarlet and Darwin, be advised we’ve inflicted some major structural damage on the building. You’d better get out of there.”

  My partner runs to a big safe in the corner.

  I comm, “Hey, Rah-Rah, what do you mean we inflicted structural damage?”

  “Well, Shortcake,” Raj answers, “maybe I meant I, but either way—”

  The shivering floor plunges a foot, right out from under us. Everything in the office—including me and my partner—hangs suspended in midair for a split second like a cartoon. Then the office furniture showers the floor like a metal monsoon. Heavy things like desks and cabinets gouge out shallow pits and spray the room with chips of tiles and concrete. The safe craters itself into the suffering floor.

  Brando squats in front of the half-buried safe and resumes spinning the combination dial.

  I shout, “Darwin, forget it. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  “Hang on,” he yells back. “I’ve almost got it.”

  Li’l Bertha vibrates in my hand. I glance at the targeting data panel in my Eyes-Up display.

  Someone’s behind me!

  I spin and leap. My right foot lashes out in a roundhouse kick that smacks a Gestapo agent in his stomach. He grunts and backs up a step. I pull my pistol’s trigger and swing it up from my hip. Li’l Bertha perforates the sneaky sucker’s knee, thigh, hip, and chest. The clown whirls around like a broken toy and crumples into the dust-filled hallway. I climb on top of him, roll him face up, and crush his larynx with my mechanized right hand. I push off from my strangling victim and aim my sidearm around to see who else feels like a hero.

  The corridor is a disaster area. It’s not even square anymore. The walls and ceiling don’t connect, and the floor is slowly tipping over on itself. The Gestapo agents sprawl in various states of traumatic injury. Some have been shot, some have been hit by falling debris, and some are buried under a thirteen-foot section of collapsed wall. The choking air reeks of burnt hair, gunpowder, and the acrid stench of roasting building materials.

  Oh, boy.

  “BRANDO! Let’s go!”

  “Wait, I’m inside. Gimme a sec!”

  I don’t think we have a sec.

  But he wasn’t kidding. It really is only a second later when my partner bounds out of the office with his arms full of file folders and data pods. He hightails it for the front stairs. After a few steps, he disappears into the dust and smoke. I take off after him.

  The building swoons back and forth, and we bounce from one wall to the other as we barrel down four flights of stairs. I take the lead in case we meet any Gestapo agents, but it seems like they’re all in postmortem meetings right now.

  Brando and I burst through the front door into the street, closely followed by a hot cloud of smoke and dust as Gestapo HQ collapses into a shattered heap.

  My partner comms, “Raj, hold your fire! We just came out the front.”

  Raj answers, “Don’t worry. I’m engaged up the street. The Gestapo raiding party is trying to get back to their headquarters.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Not if you two can exit the area right now.”

  Brando replies, “We’re out and away. Break off now.”

  “Roger that,” Raj comms.

  I lean over to Brando and yell, “You go ahead! I have one last thing to do.”

  “No way! We’ve got to—”

  “It’ll be quick. I’ll catch up.” I flit back to the churning dust cloud that surrounds the disintegrating Gestapo HQ. My infrared vision reveals the still-warm bodies of the agents Raj killed.

  I yank my F-S fighting knife out if its holster. I roll one of the dead agents onto his back and aim my blade at his face.

  Something to remember me by.

  CORE MIS-ANGEL-1393

  Cyrus,

  I snared this signal as it was sent from London to Berlin:

  “Gestapo York liquidated. Yorkshire has gone dark. Situation in England degrading rapidly. Send reinforcements and instructions.”

  I think I can guess which Interceptor you sent up there.

  Yours,

  —Grey, Infiltrator

  15

  Same morning, 5:10 A.M. GMT

  Haxby, Province of Great Britain, GG

  Normally after such an overtly destructive operation, we would spirit ourselves out-country as fast as frickin’ possible. But the annihilation of an entire Gestapo headquarters and the escape of all their prisoners have put the whole country on full-time lockdown. No movement is allowed anywhere, anytime. Fortunately we planned for this, and with help from our Circle pals, we’ve got a terrific hiding place. Terrific as long as we don’t move too much, breathe too much, or think too much.

  We’re hidden in an underground tomb in the Haxby graveyard. It’s the crypt of an abolitionist family whose matriarch actually lives up to her Christian ideals. The matriarch’s name is Dorothy Harrington, and Dorothy’s ancestors have done us the favor of allowing their remains to be moved into smaller containers so we non-decomposed people can use their previous resting place as our little honeycomb hideout.

  Honeycomb is a good word for it, too. All of us have been interred in big stone tombs in the crypt’s deepest chamber. I asked Brando why it wasn’t good enough for us to simply camp out inside the crypt. He told me the Germans might think to investigate a mausoleum like this one, but they are extremely unlikely to open every grave in England. So here we are, Brando, Raj, and I, buried alive in Yorkshire while the entire German Army scours the country for us.

  Getting Raj squared away was a real challenge. These old body boxes are built to last until Judgment Day, but they’re small. People were a lot shorter two or three hundred years ago, and Raj is 6'5" and weighs over 300 pounds. We solved this problem by breaking the bottom out of the largest sarcophagus. Then the three of us dug a big hole for Raj to lie in and dragged his box over him. Brando and I then hopped into our own coffins and prepared our stasis feeds.

  It’s the same kind of stasis feed I was on last year when they packed me and Trick’s body into a wooden casket together and shipped us out of Zurich. It’s a semi-stasis that slows the subject’s pulse, breathing, and digestion without stopping them. This state is induced with a bottled intravenous drip of a chemical cocktail developed by ExOps’s Med-Techs. What little air we need comes from a big can of compressed oxygen connected to a mask strapped to our faces.

  We’ll be here for a week. When we wake up, we’ll receive instructions for our next Job Number. Until then our bodies can rest and heal up. I came through our mission without a scratch, but both Brando and Raj were wounded during last night’s adventure.

  Raj got hit by flying stonework from the building. He has nasty bruises on his shoulder and both legs, but he’ll be all right. Brando almost got blown up by one of his mines. He was resetting it on the back stairs when a few baddies charged down to make their escape. Brando doesn’t deploy with a weapon—IOs never do—so he had to use his Mine-O-Matic remote control to detonate the mine as the Gestapo goons ran over it to get to him. They absorbed most of the blast, but my partner still got hit in the face with some fragments. The wounds themselves aren’t that big of a deal. We patched him right up. The big deal is how being bandaged out in public would make him 100 percent more likely to be stopped and questioned. Hopefully he’ll mend well enough this week that the cuts on his face won’t be so noticeable.

  I strap on my breathing mask and sail off to never-never land.

  CORE MIS-ANGEL-1477

  Date: February 4, 1981

  To: The Office of the Front Desk

  From: Darwin-5055 (IO), Scarlet-A59 (L9 Interceptor), Raj-A10 (L9 Vindicator)

  Subject: Operation ANGEL/Job Number G86

  Sir,

  We are pleased to report the Gestapo HQ in York has been destroyed. All the captives were retrieved, i
ncluding the mayor of York, Herr Brun. I’m sure you will receive an after-action report from Pericles and Jade, but let me state here that they executed their assignments with speed and precision. They were highly competent, and it was a pleasure to work with them.

  Per our orders, our devastation wrought upon the German secret police was as complete as possible. Scarlet and Raj together accounted for forty-one Gestapo officers killed. Raj also inflicted significant structural damage to the facility itself. Scarlet took your “unlimited force” directive to heart and made a special point of leaving some of our victims in as grim condition as possible. The details of her actions are difficult to adequately describe in writing and may need to wait until you debrief us in person. Be assured the story of this attack will have every German official in England jumping at shadows for months.

  We will check in for new orders when we come out of hiding.

  Obediently yours,

  —Darwin-5055

  16

  I’m in the mountain temple. I sit in lotus position and breathe chilled mist deep into my lungs. My blood heats the air, and when I breathe out again, it floats around me like a warm cocoon, protecting me from the frigid winter night.

  The monk in the saffron robe strolls in and picks me up by my hair. It feels strange, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s like I’m a doll that’s been molded into this position. He carries me outside and casts me off a cliff. I try to maintain my position, but as my body bounces down the cliff face I come undone, smash into the river below, and die.

  My father appears. He asks if we’re in heaven or hell, then hands me a rifle. He walks downrange and stands in front of the target. I fire at him, but he catches the bullets with his fingers and puts them in his pocket. Dad catches the last one in his teeth, spreads his arms, and says, “Tah-dahh!”

  I put down the rifle and join a procession of monks walking up a steep mountain path in their bare feet. I’m wearing a saffron robe. When we get to the path’s peak, the monks in front walk off the cliff and into thin air. They do not fall. I try to hold back, I have not mastered this yet, but the monks behind me press forward and I tumble over the edge.

  I finally realize this is a dream, but I don’t wake up. I stick my arms out and sail like an eagle. I make wide circles, riding the air currents until I sail past the monks standing in thin air. When they see what I’m doing, they turn to each other. Then they look back at me. They hold their arms out to fly, and they plummet to their deaths.

  I flap my arms and ascend to the temple. I land on the terrace and walk inside to the main room. The monk in the saffron robe sits in lotus position and smiles at me. Without parting his lips, he says, “The egg falls, the body dies, but the spirit soars and lives forever.”

  17

  Nine days later, Saturday, February 14, 1981, 12:55 P.M. GMT

  245 Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, London, Province of Great Britain, GG

  London is like a ghost town. Martial law has the civilians locked up in their houses, while most of the cops and troops have been sent out to deal with all the chaos we’ve stirred up. Our Yorkshire insanity cocktail has been mirrored by similar unrest in Wales, Ireland, and especially Scotland. The Scots aren’t a surprise. Those maniacs would rebel against gravity if they could find a way to keep their whiskey from floating away.

  As the Rising has picked up speed, our job has gotten both harder and easier. The crackdown makes it more difficult to move around, but we have many more places to hide. There are a lot of Greater German citizens opposed to slavery, many of whom are willing to help us stamp it out by lending us their homes as safe houses. We even get fed, although I think the three of us are going to turn into big sausages. When I asked if these people ever eat vegetables, Raj said that’s what all the beer is for.

  Even though London’s citizens can’t go out unless they get a pass, they’ve had it easy compared to the rest of Britain. During our week in Cryptville, the Circle sprang thousands of Jewish slaves and burned down hundreds of the buildings they worked in. The slave-based industries ground to a halt, along with the related businesses that supply the farms and factories, transport their output, and distribute it to markets and stores.

  London is mostly offices and shops, so there aren’t nearly as many slaves here. The raids, firefights, and bombings that have swept the rest of the country haven’t affected the capital too heavily.

  Until now, anyway. It’s not like we’re in town to sell cookies.

  Our new Job Number is a good old-fashioned jail break. It’s based on intel acquired from our new CIA stringer, Karl Brun. After we spirited Brun away from the Gestapo, he revealed that the Germans had captured one of our persons of interest, Victor Eisenberg.

  Herr Eisenberg is the forty-something former Wehrmacht colonel who led the famous raid on the slave labor camp at Bergen-Belsen, outside Hanover. Eisenberg’s commando squad, recruited from his former troops, freed the enslaved workers and torched the facility. This action was the genesis of his reputation as a fearless guerrilla leader, which he cemented by fighting his way south through Germany to the Alps. He was dubbed the Hammer of Iron for of his hard-hitting tactics and because Eisenberg means “Iron Mountain” in German. The man possessed the military training, leadership skills, and aristocratic family connections that made him a VIP in what eventually became the Circle of Zion.

  Before all this, Eisenberg was a decorated Wehrmacht officer with a sterling record built by defending the Fatherland’s eastern border from the Great Red Threat. During these tours he became painfully familiar with the institutional slavery driving the powerful German economy and vowed to change it.

  After Eisenberg did his twenty years in the army, he retired and began to write about the inherent moral corruption of the German slavery system. He became the de facto spokesman for the fledgling abolitionist movement through his passionate articles. Eisenberg’s portrait in our job folder shows a handsome face, eyes sparkling with intelligence and determination. His blond swept-back hair has a touch of gray at the temples. The file says he’s 5'10", not short, but not the typical Ubermensch height of six-foot-whatever.

  When the Rising broke out here in Britain, Eisenberg traveled across the English Channel to assist and rally the rebels. Despite Eisenberg’s experience as an underground fighter, he was captured by the German police as he crossed over from Holland. At first the Fritzes planned to ship him to a Berlin prison where he’d have time to reconsider his loyalties.

  Then we pulled our Gestapo extermination mission in York, and everything changed. The German government scheduled his execution for March 1st, fifteen days from now. This will be soon enough to make an example of him while giving the authorities time to assemble a large turnout as a show of force. They also moved Eisenberg from his cozy Kensington jail cell to the Tower of London and surrounded him with SZ troopers.

  Our job is to spring him out of the Tower before his execution, so technically we have two weeks. Since we can’t risk staying in one place that long, we’ve realistically got about three days. We can use whatever in-place assets we see fit, and we are again authorized to use unlimited force.

  However, today’s task requires brains, not force. We need to plan how we’re gonna break into the Tower, learn where the prisoners are kept, and find out what kind of resistance we can expect. To do that, we need more intel about the ancient fort than we have right now. This is why I’m finally meeting Grey today.

  Grey is one of those mysterious Infiltrators we have at ExOps. I’ve only had two things to do with him. The first was when I swiped that Manhattan Job Number from him last May. The second was when Trick and I were Grey’s security backup while he broke into the CIA’s Manhattan office during our investigation of the Darius Covenant. We’ve been told not to bother trying to contact him. He’ll find us.

  So here we wait and play cribbage on a coffee table in our Notting Hill safe house. Brando and I are sharing a bedroom while Raj goes stag next door. It’s been a little awkward
rooming with someone I’m not involved with, but that’s the field protocol for Levels and IOs. Besides, even though Raj and I get along better now than we did a year ago, there’s no way I’m bunking with him.

  When Raj isn’t reading or sleeping, he hangs out with us. The three of us talk shop, maintain our gear, or play cards. Moving by night and hiding by day has left us some time to kill. Raj saw us playing cribbage one afternoon and joined in.

  Card games are way more exciting with Raj playing because he either wins big or goes bust. There’s no in between. After years of playing with Patrick the human calculator, it’s refreshing to play against someone I can genuinely beat sometimes. During a hand, Rah-Rah rubs a religious necklace his mother gave him for luck. When I asked him who the patron saint of gamblers is, he said, “Are you kidding? Frank Sinatra!”

  There’s a rap at the door. Raj lumbers over and peeks through the peephole while I slide Li’l Bertha out of her holster.

  Raj turns and comms, “It’s Mr. Christie.”

  I hold my pistol in my lap, below the coffee table’s edge. Raj opens the door to reveal the building’s ancient yet tireless caretaker. Mr. Christie wheels in a service cart draped by a white and red striped cloth, all loaded up with covered dishes, glasses, and bottles of sparkling water. We get the fizzy stuff so we can have belching contests. Mr. Christie guides the cart inside, and we distribute the goodies all over the table. The old man turns his cart around, accepts a tip from Raj, and trundles away.

  I return Li’l Bertha to her holster as we tuck into our chow. Then a dude I’ve never seen before walks out of our bathroom. He has dark gray hair and a thin 5'6" frame. My pistol leaps back into my hand, and I take aim at—nothing. A trickle of dust drifts down through my sights. I look up. The man is stuck to the ceiling like an insect. The dust has been displaced by his fingers, which have clawed right into the plaster. I shift my aim upward and—I swear to God—he vanishes.