“I’ll be honest with you, kids,” I said. “I have no fucking idea.”
Nobody spoke for several minutes after I admitted to having no clue how to stop the oncoming apocalypse. Finally, Watson pushed his chair away from the table and walked over to the small wet bar against one wall of the room. He poured himself a highball glass half full of amber liquid, then poured another one and brought it to me without a word.
“Sorry, ladies,” he said. “I have no idea what you drink, but having seen Mr. Harker’s home liquor stores when we were in Charlotte last week, I know him to be a man who appreciates a good whiskey. And barring the presence of that, this American swill shall have to do.”
I nodded my thanks, ignoring for the moment that fact that he had been in my apartment more recently than I had.
Watson rolled up the map, pushed the books of magical history to the side, and leaned forward, his elbows on the polished wood of the conference table. His glass cradled between his hands, he looked across at me. “It seems to me we will have to deal with a three-pronged attack from our adversary. Orobas will be at or near the ley line node to cast the spell. Then there will be someone—”
“Or something,” Gabby interjected.
“Thank you, Gabriella,” Watson replied. “There will be a force of some sort at the football stadium, and another at the concert hall. We will need to eliminate all three forces in relatively short order to avoid giving away our foreknowledge of events and losing the element of surprise. Does that sound roughly accurate?”
Once he started talked tactics, I revised my opinion of Watson in an instant. “Where did you serve?” I asked.
He started a little. “Afghanistan. Why?”
“You don’t talk like that unless you’ve been somewhere facing a determined and inventive opposition force.”
“What they lacked in resources, they made up for in knowledge of the area, improvisational ability, and dedication to their cause. I lost a lot of good men thanks to IEDs over there.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what that’s like, but I’ve seen a few wars, and they don’t get better as we get more efficient at killing each other, just bloodier.”
“True words,” Watson said with a little nod. “Now, back to the problem, or problems, at hand. We have an opposing force that will be entrenched in three positions, surrounded by civilians, and with weapons of nearly unimaginable power. And we need to dispatch all of them simultaneously without arousing undue suspicion from the local populace or constabulary.”
“Just another day at the office,” Jo said. “We do more impossible shit before nine a.m. than most people do in their entire lives.”
10
“Nothing here,” Watson said into his Bluetooth headset. He scanned the crowd below him through the scope pressed to his cheek. He wondered, not for the first time, why exactly Adam carried a hunting rifle with a scope in a hidden compartment in the back of his Hummer, but it seemed better not to ask. And it certainly came in handy in their current endeavor.
“Concourse looks clear, too,” Jo replied.
“I’ve got nothing except a couple dozen horny stagehands back here,” Gabby said from her position backstage.
“There’s nothing on the cameras,” Sparkles added.
“Hells,” Watson muttered. “Do we have any idea when this massacre is supposed to take place?”
“Harker thought around nine p.m. made the most sense. The concert will be in full swing, and the game will still be early enough that even if the Falcons are getting killed, most folks won’t want to leave yet,” Jo replied.
“I’ll never understand you Americans. Leaving a match before the last goal is scored. You call yourself fans?” Watson said. “Gabby, have you seen anything at all out of the ordinary?”
“Have you ever been backstage at a concert, Jack? Everybody back here looks out of the ordinary. I can’t tell if I’m at a tattoo convention or a meetup for middle-aged men with beer guts and ponytails. Wait a second, there’s something… never mind.”
“What is it?” Watson asked.
“There was a dude who was way too young and pretty to be backstage, but then he picked up a guitar. He must be with the band. What are you seeing?”
Watson took his eye from the scope and gave the crowd a broad once-over. He knelt on the catwalk high above the scoreboard and peered over the thousands of t-shirt-clad people beneath him. “I see an outlandish number of John Deere hats, quite an obscene amount of flannel, and absolutely no one wearing pants that aren’t at least a size too small. And that’s just the women.”
“Welcome to a pop country concert, Watson,” Jo said, chuckling a little into her headset. “Wait a second, that’s not right…”
“What is it?” Watson and Gabby asked simultaneously.
“There’s a service door open,” Jo replied. “I’m going to go check it out.” She said nothing for a couple of tense moments, then came back on the line. “There’s a stairwell going down behind this door. I’m going to head down and take a look.”
“Wait for us,” Watson said. “I can be to you in just a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah, me too,” Gabby added. “Don’t think you’re going to get to go kill stuff without me there.”
“Okay, first, have you ever considered therapy? Like, a lot of it. And second, fine, I’ll wait. I’m beside the restrooms at Section 114.”
“On my way,” Gabby said.
“There in a moment,” Watson added. He made one more pass over the crowd through the rifle’s high-powered scope; saw nothing more than excessive consumption of overpriced and watery beer, poor fashion decisions, and even more poorly thought-our hairstyles; and put the gun back in the soft case Adam supplied. He walked down the catwalk, tucked the gun and case behind a large breaker panel, and descended a short ladder to the spotlight booth. A befuddled stagehand looked up from his phone as Watson stepped into the small space.
“What are you doing up there, man? You’re not supposed to be here…” The young man looked from Watson to his headset hanging on the safety rail several feet away. Watson pointed to his chest at “MAINTENANCE” embroidered there over the name “Steve” in script.
“There was a circuit breaker needed replaced. Lights flickering in the bathroom in one of the skyboxes. Sent me up here to take care of it. I been up there for like an hour messing with it.” Watson’s southern accent wasn’t great, but it looked like it was going to be good enough to get past one bored stagehand.
“Oh, alright,” the spotlight operator said. “Well, you better get down, then. My call light’s blinking, so I guess the show’s about to start.” He picked up his headset, clicked a button on his belt pack, and said, “Spot 3 on headset.”
Watson gave the man a little wave and slipped past him to the metal ladder that took him to the steady concrete of the last row of the upper level. He wasn’t as fast on a ladder anymore—only having one foot that felt the rungs made him proceed with caution—but he managed.
Three minutes later, he joined Gabby and Jo beside the concession stand.
“You leave Adam’s gun up in the rafters?” Gabby asked.
“Had to,” he replied. “Couldn’t exactly go carrying a hunting rifle through the concourse with twenty thousand people around, could I?”
“You obviously don’t know the country music audience,” Jo said. “That’s the door.” She pointed to a door across the wide expanse of tile and glass with “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” on it in big letters. The white letters on a red sign left absolutely zero doubt as to who they were directed at.
“You think our quarry might be down those stairs?” Watson asked.
“That’s the best option I’ve found,” Jo said.
“I think she’s probably right,” Sparkles said over their earpieces. “Those stairs lead down into the maintenance tunnels, and the only better place to plant a bomb for maximum carnage is underneath the stage.”
“I checked th
ere,” Gabby said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” The others stared at her. “What?” she protested. “I made friends with one of the stagehands.”
“Is he still alive?” Jo asked.
“Of course! I don’t go around indiscriminately killing… Oh screw it, I can’t even say that with a straight face. But yes, this one is alive.” Gabby grinned, then continued. “Unconscious and tied up inside a wardrobe case that isn’t slated to get opened until their next show in Baltimore, but alive.”
“Why do I even ask?” Jo rolled her eyes. “Let’s get down there and see if we can find this bomb.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a bomb?” Gabby asked.
“How else would you kill everyone in this arena?” Jo fired back.
“Acid in the sprinkler system would be a good start. Incendiary devices scattered throughout the seating area, then bar the doors. Wouldn’t be as efficient, but could lead to more mayhem. I could also just release a couple dozen demons, or a couple of machine gun teams, although I think Jack would have seen those from the catwalk. A biological agent in the beer could take out a good half the crowd, and if we used a contact poison on the doors and seat arms, we could make sure we got everyone that way…”
“You’re truly disturbed, did you know that?” Jo looked at her teammate with a look of mild horror on her face. “Do you sit around dreaming up ways to kill thousands of people in one shot?”
“Nah, but it’s something to pass the time on the toilet. I got tired of Angry Birds. Let’s go.” Gabby walked across the crowded concourse, opened the door, and started down the stairs. A security guard spotted her and started in that direction, but Watson intercepted him.
“I got her, man,” he said, pointing to his jacket. “She’s a… new friend, if you get my drift.” He put a lascivious waggle into his eyebrows. The guard laughed and slapped Watson on the back, then walked off.
Watson followed Gabby down the stairs, drawing his Glock as he did so. Jo slid into the stairwell last, shrugging out of her long duster and dropping it to the floor, then pulling her hammer from the ring on her belt.
“No more Wyatt Earp cosplay?” Gabby said with a smirk.
“You try carrying around a three-foot hammer and see what your wardrobe looks like,” Jo grumbled.
“I’m good with my leather jacket,” Gabby replied. “It hides the girls perfectly.”
“The girls?” Jo asked. “I don’t think that jacket does much to minimize your boobs.”
Gabby reached under her arms and drew a pair of pistols from well-concealed shoulder holsters. “Yeah, but if people are looking at my boobs, they aren’t looking at the girls.” She turned the nickel-plated Colt 1911 pistols so they glinted in the light of the stairwell. “This is Thelma,” she said, holding up the gun in her right hand. “And this is Louise.” She gestured with the left-hand gun. “My new girls. I had a friend deliver them to the hotel this afternoon.”
“You have a friend who runs a firearm delivery service?” Watson asked.
“You don’t?” Gabby replied. “Let’s go shoot something. I want to try these ladies out.”
The trio descended the stairs into the basement of the building, then spread out in three directions as they entered the larger area below ground. The basement was a huge area directly under the basketball floor, with huge concrete pilings holding up the rest of the building and a network of pipes and electrical conduits snaking overhead.
“Dennis, can you hear me?” Watson whispered into his earpiece. There was no reply from the disembodied computer wizard. Watson pulled out his cell phone and saw NO SERVICE at the top of the screen. Swearing under his breath, he slid the phone back into his pocket.
He looked across the room at Jo, then over at Gabby, then focused his attention on the middle section of the room. He moved across the room, dodging behind pieces of equipment and pallets of program books and plastic beer cups in a crouch, a position made more difficult by the fit of his prosthetic. After all these years, Watson moved with barely a limp, but some positions were very painful to walk in, and stooping down to make a smaller silhouette was one that made his stump rub painfully and the straps bind in uncomfortable ways. He stopped, pressing his back to a pillar, and massaged his thigh. Not for the first time, he cursed the IED that took his leg below the knee and the lives of two of his squad mates.
Momentary pity party over, he took a deep breath and stepped around the concrete support. His eyes caught a flash of red up ahead and at his two o’clock, and he moved in that direction. He slid from shadow to shadow, ducking behind pillars to conceal his progress. Moving slowly cost him time, but he reached the pulsing red LED barely a minute later nonetheless.
“Fucking hell,” he whispered, looking at a block of C4 the size of a loaf of bread sitting on the floor next to the central support pillar. Glancing around, Watson estimated them to be almost exactly at center court, where an explosion would take out most of the floor seats and weaken the entire structure considerably. The amount of explosive material staring at him would certainly bring down a good chunk of the floor above them, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the building.
The device was an ugly thing, nothing like the elegant bombs on the television shows. There was no convenient countdown timer on the front of the device. Watson had no idea what was supposed to trigger the explosion, just that he had to stop it.
“This would be a lovely time to have studied munitions,” he muttered to himself. “My uncanny skills at interpreting contract clauses are somewhat less than useful here.”
“I’ve got something.” Jo’s whisper cut through the still air. Watson looked in her direction, then started running her way as he heard a muffled oof from his right. He looked back at the bomb, hoping that he could devise a way to stop it by the time he got back. Or he could just get killed by whatever Jo was fighting. That would save him a lot of headache.
Jo was trading kicks and hammer blows with a pair of six-foot demons. They were all teeth and claws, with no real strategy. Jo dodged, jabbing with her hammer and using the handle to block more than swinging it the traditional way.
Gabby stepped out from behind a pillar and fired off four quick shots into the backs of the demons. They went down in a heap, and Jo smashed their skulls to gravy with her hammer. Watson turned back to the bomb, ringing ears now adding to his distraction.
“What did you… oh, shit,” Jo said as she came over to Watson’s side.
“Oh shit, indeed,” the Brit said as he knelt in front of the device, looking in vain for something as simple as an OFF switch.
“Do you know how to disarm that thing?” Jo asked.
“No bloody clue,” Watson admitted.
“Then get out of the way and go find the other charges,” Gabby said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Watson looked up at her. “You know how to disarm a bomb?”
“I’m not just a pretty face, Jacky-boy. I spent a year doing underwater demolitions while I was looking for a sea serpent in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“There are sea serpents in the Gulf of Mexico?” Jo asked.
“Not anymore” was Gabby’s simple reply. She holstered her pistols, took Watson’s spot in front of the device, and pulled a small multi-tool from her belt. “There are probably four more devices just like this, set to go off about thirty seconds after this one blows. That would pretty much guarantee the whole building comes down. There might be some perimeter bombs for the first responders, but I doubt it. Orobas wants to maximize death toll, not instill maximum long-term fear in the population.” Watson looked down at the woman with new eyes. The wise-cracking Harley Quinn-inspired psychotic was gone, and in her place was a smart, capable woman who was an expert in her craft. The wild-eyed grin she usually wore plastered across her face was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a wry smirk.
“Yeah, I’m like an onion, Jackie-boy. I’ve got layers. Now go find those other bombs while I figure out whether it’s the red wire or the blue wire.”
Watson nodded to Jo, and they split up. Jack headed off to one side of the arena’s underbelly, his pistol in one hand. It took only a few moments to locate the other devices, and by the time he returned to Gabby’s side, she had removed the detonator and separated it from the plastic explosive.
Jo walked up just as Watson did. “I found two more bombs,” she said.
“As did I,” Jack replied.
“Okay,” Gabby said, showing them the electronics in her hand. “Now, we’ll split up and take them all out faster. All you need to do is cut the—” Her words died in her throat in a strangled gasp as she clutched her neck.
“What’s wrong?” Jo asked as Gabby dropped to her knees.
Jack looked past the stricken woman to see a slight man holding his arm out toward Gabby, his hand in a choking motion. He drew his pistol, but a blur of black crashed into him, and he tumbled to the floor under a ball of hair and teeth. Jack let the gun fly, concentrating on the monster atop him.
He used his momentum to carry himself and his assailant over in a tumble, shoving against the thing’s body to create some separation. Jack let out a yell as razor-sharp teeth clamped down on his arm, and their skid across the floor came to bone-jarring halt against a massive concrete support pillar. Watson stared at the thing chewing on his arm and saw it was some type of dog, or wolf, or wolf-demon. Whatever it was, it had his left arm in its mouth and was worrying it like a chew toy.
Jack swung around until he could get his right hand near the thing’s head and started punching. He quickly abandoned that idea when he found the skull as hard as the concrete he was writhing on. Claws ripped at his chest and belly, and Jack was very glad he had kept his wool coat on when they descended into the basement; otherwise the creature would have disemboweled him. Blood ran freely from the creature’s mouth, and blood and spit splattered Watson’s face.
He finally contorted himself around enough to reach his pocketknife and flipped the small Gerber knife open. Jack jammed the knife into the dog-thing’s eye, then withdrew the short blade and did it again. He repeated the process several times, feeling the jaws clamp down ever tighter on his forearm with every stroke, until finally, with one last great thrust, he heard a soft crunch as he pierced the beast’s brainpan and drove the knife into its brain up to his fist.
Heaven Can wait: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Page 7
