Judgment Night [BUREAU 13 Book One] (21 page)

Inquisitively, I scanned the underground cavern as best I could. But there was nothing more to see, the destruction of the sla ... of the partisan city was complete. Must have been a nasty side effect of the illegal conjure. Magic had laws and breaking even a minor one was a dangerous act. Feeling ill at ease, I descended the ladder, gathered my pack and moved. But in the back of my mind, I wondered—if I had my briefcase, could I do the same thing? Kill myself to destroy the island? In painful honesty, I didn't know for sure. Just did not know.

For an hour I crawled, lost in thought, then I encountered a small cave-in. The ceiling was smashed, the collapsed soil completely blocking the tunnel. Swell. The ground was sandy in texture and the broken pieces of the tunnel sides appeared fresh. Getting a hunch, I used my compass and did some quick calculations. Yep. It was our work. The satchel charge we used had more effect then we supposed. It also meant I was almost under the wall.

Another hour passed as I dug with my hands, shoving the sandy soil behind and kicking it further down the tunnel. My gloves gave some protection, but I would have happily traded my pension for a shovel, or even an entrenching tool. Dripping sweat dampened my clothes and stung the bandaged cut on my neck. If there had been room, I would have removed my body armor. It was getting worse than a Swedish sauna in here. At one point, I tied a bandana around my head to keep the sweat from my eyes and was sorely tempted to try blasting with a grenade. But explosives are what caused the collapse and I had no desire to aggravate the problem. Handful by handful, I dug onward, finally making a breach large enough for me to wiggle through. As I cleared the obstruction, a kick from my boots made the ground collapse again, filling the hole.

Too tired to escape, I lay there and waited for the rest of the tunnel to fall, but the ceiling thankfully held. After a while, I took a grenade and buried it in the loose soil. A pistol would have been better, but I couldn't spare mine. As a fast exit was impossible, if something chased me down this passageway, I wanted a bit of insurance. Plan for disaster, reap success, Ben Franklin. Or was that Doc Savage? Damn, I always get those two guys confused.

Fifteen more minutes of crawling and I reached the end of the tunnel. In the chamber at the bottom of the ladder, I gratefully stood and stretched listening to my joints creak. Some water from the canteen and candy bar later, I was feeling fit for duty again.

Removing the flashlight from the barrel of my rifle, I shouldered the backpack and started climbing. At the top, a simple hinged panel offered an exit. For a change, the hatch was bolted closed from this side. How nice. I gave the bolt a drop of oil just to be safe, and eased it back slowly. Didn't make a sound, god love it. Carefully opening the hatch, exposed a split canvas curtain. Exiting warily, I parted the flap with my rifle barrel and stepped into a small empty tent, about the size of a summer cottage. A metal pole supported the umbrella top, the cloth walls were lined with wooden shelves and the open front bisected at waist level with a flat-topped counter. Reminded me of a carnival booth. Across the way, I saw a line of similar booths, the side of a tall brick building behind them. Maybe this was an alley market.

Keeping circumspect, I moved to the counter and looked about. Nobody was in sight. The ground was paved with asphalt, and remarkably free of the ever-present dust like outside. Shouldering my pack, I hopped over the counter, and worked my way stealthily to the front of the alley.

What confronted me was a major intersection, with sidewalks and the streets filled with a motionless traffic jam of weird three-wheel vehicles. There were street lights and traffic signs. Garbage cans and billboards. Glass and steel skyscrapers towered above me. It was bizarre. The place could have been any modern metropolis; London, Berlin, Miami. Yes, at last, I was in the city proper, and in very big trouble.

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The streets were packed solid with life-size statues of people, thousands, zillions of people. Men and women, young and old. In full color and exquisite detail, all with shockingly similar features: small noses, large jaws, blonde hair, black eyes and skin the color of honey. This was no race I knew. Mostly they were wearing short white togas and knee length flowing capes, but a few were in everything from full body black leather jumpsuits to something that resembled chainmail lingerie.

As if frozen in time, the stationery throng went off in all four directions of the intersection and into the distance. It was as if the entire population of the city had piled into the street and been zapped into mannequins. But what really caught my attention, was that each held a wizard's wand or staff pointed at the dome overhead. A nation of mages. Zounds. No wonder Satan Department rose these guys from their millennium old watery grave. They could conquer the world before lunch. No problem.

Almost imperceptibly, the people near me began to turn their eyes in my direction. Jumping Jesus! They weren't frozen in time, only tremendously slowed and still conscious. Quickly, I moved away. Yet wherever I went, if I stood still for more than a minute, they started to notice me and turn. Had to keep moving and find a place to think.

Dashing round a corner, I inadvertently bumped into an old woman sporting a leering grin and holding a long silver staff.

In extreme slow motion, she started to fall to the ground. Turning, I snatched a cape off a nearby man and placed it under her to cushion the impact, when I saw a necklace of polished human finger bones about her scrawny neck. Little bones, like those of a child. With a curse, I kicked the cape into the street. Let the bitch drop.

Good thing George wasn't here, or else, he would have simply mowed down the entire population with that assault cannon. Which might not be such a bad idea, except that we simply didn't bring enough ammunition to do the job properly.

Stepping out of sight into an alley, I tried to decide what to do. Okay, I was in the city. What next? I could search the city to locate and destroy whatever was raising the island. Should be pretty easy to identify. The thing must be enormous. Or I could try and find my team. That would give me much needed personnel and equipment. Their captors would surely knew where the machine was, what the machine was and how to reverse the process.

Sounded good, but time was against me. Unfortunately, my friends could be anywhere. This was a complex metropolis and totally confusing. I glanced at my watch. Only four hours till the killer cloud got too close to America and the Pentagon would launch the nuclear missiles. I decided to allot one hour to search for the team, before turning my attention elsewhere.

Then it occurred to me that with this many wizards, magical items should be abundant. I tried my sunglasses and was delighted to find that the dome blocked the majority of interference from the cloud and they could now function properly. Cool. Maybe I could steal something that would help in the search.

Moving briskly through the crowd, I spotted hundreds of personal items that registered magical; shoes, hats pins, rings, spiked ben wa balls, whips, dildos, nearly every damn one with an aura as black as their owner. Not born stupid, I wasn't touching any of that stuff. Along the way, I encountered a possible solution to my problem, the aura of the item was green, laced with black. Neutral, leaning towards evil, but not pure evil like the rest. Still, I decided against it. Too dangerous. The only way to survive in this business was calculated risks, not wild gambles.

Since I had to dig my way in, I assumed the Satan gang used the front door. So I started my search at a mammoth edifice near the gate, but that proved to be only a tavern. A mirrored bar lined one wall and plush velvet seats curved in tiers to face a pit in which lay a big dartboard that had the outline of a human in the center. Feeling ill, I departed posthaste.

Taking a chance, I went directly to the tallest skyscraper, an impressive glass monolith in the center of the city. But there were no stairs and, of course, the elevators didn't work. Or, maybe they did, but even slower than usual. Disgruntled, I moved on.

An elegant white sandstone building looked important, but proved to only be a gymnasium. I was surprised at the advanced design of the exercise machines. Guess there were only so many ways to get buff.

In the main room was a pool large enough to land our seaplane, and it was filled with a group of buxom mermaids frozen in their struggle to operate a lock on a grilled gate that lead to a run-off canal. Their long cascading hair was the loveliest shade of green, while their large breasts were firm and high, with two nipples each. Most likely they were only concubines or harlots, I reasoned. Stark naked except for a few pieces of jewelry, it was blatantly obvious that the mermaids were true females, because they only sported scales and fins from the knees down. But more importantly, the shapely backsides were scarred by whip strokes and broken chains dangled from their necks. Trying for a mass escape, eh ladies?

Glad to help, I put a water-proof map of New York in the hand of one emerald haired lovely, gave another my switchblade and shot the lock to bits. An enemy of my enemy is my friend. Ever so slowly, they started to move their eyes towards me. I smiled politely, bowed and moved onward. Then I returned to my search.

Cannibal restaurant, kindergarten brothel, hospital-from-hell, obscene museum, tacky shopping mall, miniature golf course, my fruitless search continued until the buzzer on my watch sounded. Enough. This was impossible. They could be anywhere within the cubic kilometers of this huge megalopolis. A needle in a haystack was a cinch compared to this. You could always sit on the haystack, or set it on fire and sift through the ashes. I debated setting off a grenade and letting Satan Department find me, but couldn't take the risk. If they managed to capture the whole group, what chance did I have fighting them alone?

Stupidly, I had been depending upon running across a clue leading to their whereabouts: the sound of gunfire, screams, drops of fresh blood, a disruption in the jammed streets, even a trail of cookie crumbs. It had been a foolish hope, and now I had to accept the fact that I was alone.

Quickly, I checked my watch. Two hours remaining. Time was running out and without Jessica or Richard to pry the information I needed from these living corpses my options were dwindling to a precious few. Perhaps, I was now ready for a desperate gamble.

Retracing my way to an earlier corner, I explored the torpid crowd until I located the petite woman with a puckered acid scar. In the standard toga, minus cape, she was intent upon holding her iron wand at the dome. Hanging tantalizingly from her belt was my new goal. According to the rules of magic, lacking permission, the old owner had to be dead before I could take possession. As I stood there working up my nerve, her hostile gaze started to lower towards me. Fast, I shot the iron wand out of her hand as it turned my way. Tumbling through the air, it hit the chest of an outrageously fat man dressed in tiny pink bikini briefs. The wand clung to the sagging rolls of spotted flesh and crackling ethereal discharges slowly crawled over his corpulent body. In spurts, steam began to hiss from his ears as his brains began to boil.

Blood had yet to flow from the ruined hand of my target, but her face showed the pain and shock. Despite the foul nature of her people, I really hated to do this. Felt too much like kicking a cripple, but I was committed to the plan by now and couldn't stop. Besides, it was my world or hers. Plus ... oh hell. Pumping two rounds into her face, I put another two into her chest aiming for the heart. With any luck, death would be instantaneous.

As her body began its leisurely journey backwards, I holstered the pistol and slashed at her belt with my combat knife. Sluggishly, the cloth strands separated, the ends casually drooping. Inch by agonizing inch, the magic lamp started to slid off her belt. Made of tarnished brass, the enclosed reservoir of the oil lamp was the size of a shoe, with a looped handle on one end, a short up-curved spout at the other and the words ‘rub me’ on the side. Such an innocent object. Only my Bureau glasses told the truth. It had an aura powerful enough to sink a battleship.

As it cleared the end of the belt, the lamp dropped in normal speed to clunk on the sidewalk. Snatching my prize, I took off at a run, jockeying through the crowd like a fullback dribbling the puck towards the hoop with bases loaded. Or however that goes, I'm not much of a sports fan.

Three corners later, I saw a shop with an open doorway and dashed inside. The establishment proved to be a leather goods store, with mostly whips and underwear on display. The proprietor, or rather the person I believed to be the proprietor, was a muscular man with beard and moustache. He was in the process of tripping over a chair as he headed for the street. I side-stepped the airborne fellow and went to the rear room. As hoped for, it was his workshop, shelves filled with tanning supplies, delicate knives and stretching racks. Pulling up a chair, I sat and got ready to do my battle of wits.

Considering the age of the island, roughly 5,000 years, this was a genie before the reign of King Solomon, Master of the Gjinn. Thus it would not have to follow his rules on three wishes. One might be all I would get. So it had to be correct the first time. Wording would be very important. According to the Bureau manual, a wish with the word ‘and’ was considered two wishes.

If you asked a good genie for immortal life and untold riches, it might give you both. A neutral genie would only give you the first, or nothing. Improper wording voids the wish. An evil genie would happily give the immortality part and then, as a lark, also make you blind, deaf and paralyzed, so you could suitably enjoy forever. Yes, genies were swell folk. Tons of fun at parties.

According to my glasses, this gjinn was neutral, slightly favoring evil. Not quite as dangerous as playing jump rope in a mine field, but pretty darn close. My sole hope was that five thousand years in the lamp would seriously slow him down. Male, or female, the gjinn had to be a bit stir crazy after being confined for that long a period.