Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (11 page)

Katrina brandished her invisible wand. “We shall bury them!"

"Thank you, Mr. Khrushchev,” George chuckled.

The Russian glared in return, then smiled.

"No,” I stated in a tone that brooked no further discussion. “The danger is too great. Lord knows what important secrets those Swiftian yahoos have already learned about the Bureau! Jessica saved our hides before, and we're not going to muck up the mission now by charging in unprepared. We'll find a way to stop the Scion. A trick, a trap!"

Everybody looked at me expectantly.

"Something,” I mumbled lamely.

"We always do,” Jess added, trying to be helpful.

Reclining contentedly in his swivel chair, Raul crossed his arms. “Okay, then shoot us the straight poop, boss man."

Furrowing my brow, I revved my brain to overload and thought like a sonovabitch. No ... no ... nyah, that wouldn't work either ... ah ... er ... um....

Silent during the rhetoric, Father Donaher sat hunched over, doing his rosary at record speed and starting to break into a sweat. Then he stopped, crossed himself and wet his lip.

"Yes,” Mike said in a strained voice, as he stared at the spinning ceiling fan overhead. “If only we knew of something that could help us. But say, if some priest had heard of such a ... thing in, oh, the confessional, for example, then he couldn't tell anybody about it."

"Even if he really, really wanted to,” finished the big priest with a pained expression.

Smiles abounded. We have a bingo.

"Hey, Mike,” I grinned. “How about we go stretch our legs in the parking lot outside and maybe have a friendly game of darts?"

Tongue between teeth, Raul was already digging about in his spell book and extricated a giant map of North America. We had done this before. Many times.

Pulling a brass-trimmed, red leather box from a voluminous pocket of his cassock, Donaher eased open the top. Nestled inside on a cushion of gleaming white satin lay three darts. The needle tips were engraved with Donaher's full name, the shaft made of African ironwood, edged with mahogany, and the fletching was of the neatly trimmed feathers of an American bald Eagle.

Daintily lift a dart into view, Donaher flipped it into the air and on the way down caught the point between thumb and forefinger. Mike flipped it again, and caught the dart underhand with a snapping wrist motion. Mindy couldn't have done better.

"Gosh, Ed,” the big Catholic priest said. “I'll be glad to play a game, but I'm really not as good at darts as I would like to be."

Ooh, watching a professional like him skirt around the Ninth Commandant was always a thrill.

The two of us played darts across four states, before we ‘needed’ a fresh map to replace the old one. Pretty soon, Mike and I were working on a street map of Kansas City, Missouri. With amazing accuracy, he laid a feathered pattern in the suburbs around a small estate owned by an old friend of ours. That is, if you use some new and twisted meaning of the word ‘friend'. Try arch-enemy instead.

Gathering the crew, we paid for dinner and took a cab from Zanesville to Columbus, sleeping the whole way. In Columbus, we purchased a brand new limousine using my disposal ID and fake American Express card listed under the name of Richard Tucholka. The credit card was good for any amount, but only for one purchase. Afterwards, the account would be paid in full by the Bureau and permanently closed.

Driving to Kansas City, sleeping the whole way, we traded the limo in on a used school bus, which was the closet thing to an armored assault vehicle it was possible to obtain on such short notice. It also helped to muddy our trail in case the Scion was still after us. Not an unreasonable assumption. Those guys could give bloodhounds a bad name.

Hitting a theatrical supply company, and a local hangout for devious criminal types, we purchased the few additional supplies needed to do this assignment and then took off to find some secluded place where we could work in peace.

Pulling into the lot of the ‘Lazy Eight Motel', Jessica got us four adjoining rooms, and the team trundled inside with our new equipment. Most of it was weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, silver ingots and a special purchase by me, for me. I was the only member of the team trained to handle the stuff. I might have no idea what Donaher was sending us after, but I had a pretty good hunch what I would have to do to get It.

As this mission was incredibly dangerous, and slightly illegal, I was going alone. The more people involved, the bigger a chance of failure. It was not a unanimous choice, and, in fact, I had to pull executive privilege. Something I had not done since that nasty incident in Columbia with the New Gods. But we knew whom that suburban mansion belonged too.

Dr. Mathais Bolt was a medical doctor, licensed psychotherapist, millionaire, philanthropist, wizard, necromancer, murderer, litterbug and leader of the Brotherhood of Darkness, a lunatic cult dedicated to conquering the world. Probably so those losers could get dates for Saturday night, and avoid paying taxes. Who knew? They were as nuts as the Scion, only less efficient.

The Brotherhood of Darkness had never been a serious threat to the Bureau, or the world in general, even though Dr. Mathais Bolt was the best ... er, make that the most powerful, necromancer in the world. On the other hand, some of the members of the Brotherhood were smart. Too smart. So the only way to handle them was to give the loonies all the information they could handle, but make them positive it was totally false. Reverse psychology was what the gang in Strategy & Tactical called it. Field agents called the process ‘polishing the mirror'. With the help of my friends, I began the process.

Stripping naked, I hit the shower and scrubbed myself painfully clean. Then I carefully dyed my black hair the color black. Next, I smoothed a clear suntan lotion on my normally dusky hands and face. I slid on a padded corset, and slipped on shoes with hollow heels twice the thickness of regular shoe heels. Getting dressed in brand new cloths, clear non-magnifying contact lenses went into both eyes, and lastly, I removed my wedding ring, using a tanning cream to color over the pale band on my finger. Then placed the ring back on.

Carefully, the gang scrutinized me from head to toe. Perfect!

To a casual observer, I appeared as always. But, to a trained observer, I was obviously in disguise. My hair color had none of the minor color differences of natural hair. Obviously it was dyed. The same with skin tone. I was wearing contacts, so black was not my natural eye color, and I had an old scratched wedding ring with no pale skin band underneath. Plainly false. Shoe lifts meant I was short. And the padded corset indicated I was fatter than appeared, and was trying to hide the weight.

Plus, I had a bulky Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver in a shoulder holster build for a slim automatic pistol. Nobody would switch holsters, so a Magnum was obviously not my standard gun.

I had just successfully polished the mirror. I looked exactly like myself, only nobody would believe it. That is, nobody smart, which is what I was counting on.

Padding to the main bedroom, the gang was waiting for me. Raul was chanting over a coffee pot filled with a foul smelling brew, Jessica was loading a hypodermic syringe.

Tossing my necktie over a shoulder, I unbuttoned my shirt and lifted my body armor. The material was soft as silk, and could stop anything this side of an elephant gun.

"This may hurt,” Jess said, wiping my amazingly muscular torso with an alcohol swap.

"Do I get a lollipop afterwards?” I asked.

Gently as possible, Jessica impaled me. Ouch! “Sure. But only if you don't cry."

Tried my best. Whew. Who makes those things? Nazi war criminals? Then my skin went numb as the novocaine took effect. Ah, much better.

As Jess stepped aside, Katrina moved in to sketch a diagram on my chest. Kind of tickled, actually. Then Raul took her place, and used a brush to paint over the outline. Even through the novocaine, I could feel the occult brew sizzling into my tender skin. Goodbye, summer tan.

"Is this going to leave a scar?” I demanded, when he finally allowed me to lower my body armor.

"Gosh, I hope so,” Raul said, pouring the rest of the concoction into the sink. The enamel began to peel off.

I stopped my buttoning. “What! Why?"

"That will make it last longer,” Raul said honestly, tossing the brush into a waste can. A piece of old newspaper flared into ash.

"Swell. Thank you, Mr. Wizard."

Doffing an imaginary plumed hat, Raul did a sweeping bow. “At your service, sahib."

After checking the load on my Magnum, I bowed my head as Father Donaher did a little prayer over me, lifted a pants leg as George strapped on an ankle holster and accepted a fistful of pens from Mindy. She had personally filled and primed each, thereby greatly reducing the chance of a dysfunction. Katrina poured some powders into my shoes, a potion in my mouth, and a lotion down my back. My chest burned, my head ached, and I was starting to feel a bit slimy. Yuck. The things I do for America. Then Jess gave me a glass of water and some extra-strength aspirin. God, I love that woman.

After issuing some detailed instructions to the gang and receiving a priority kiss from Jess, I went outside, hailed a cab, went downtown, bought another car, and drove boldly to the known headquarters of our hated enemies.

Briefly, I again wondered what Donaher thought was so damn important?

Strategically, I parked my car a good block away from the mansion, stopping directly under an old oak tree whose spreading branches offered a pool of shadows from the overhead street lamps. Every little bit helps.

Dominating the street was a brilliantly illuminated billboard announcing that this was the headquarters of The Brotherhood, a non-profit, charitable organization, and equal opportunity employer.

Openly, the Brotherhood was a publicly chartered organization dedicated to the study of magic, parapsychology and the occult science. Their agent provocateurs never went anywhere without a lawyer, which made for interesting firefights. They actively sought the company of news reporters and protected themselves with the continued association of innocent civilians, a dirty trick that worked much too well.

Their Kansas City base shared land with a unique orphanage for the blind and a training center for the physically handicapped. Both of these noteworthy institutions were supported by the blood money of the Brotherhood. Totally unconcerned with the welfare of these trusting people, the Brotherhood looked upon them merely as protective coverage. This way, the Bureau couldn't simply drop a plane full of napalm upon the mansion as these sister organizations would also be destroyed. The matter had been discussed in detail.

The Brotherhood of Darkness was sneaky, tricky, and damn annoying. They used our own laws against us. If I tried to strongarm my way in, a horde of lawyers wearing pinstriped polyester would descend, each loudly demanding to see my search warrant, holding order, writ of habeas corpus, FBI badge, driver's license, fishing license, birth certificate and anything else they could think of. If trouble occurred, a TV news team would be there within minutes.

I couldn't bluff my way in or use force. With all of their magical and technological defensives, I couldn't sneak inside. That left only one remaining option. The most dangerous and difficult of all. Knocking on the front door and asking for admittance.

Strolling across the street, I noted that the fence was made of brick and about six feet tall, which was exactly as high as the law allowed. But topping the brick was an additional two feet of iron picket fence, crested with shiny swirls of concertina wire. Hardly more than an endless razor blade, concertina wire would slice through leather gloves, and the hands inside, with frightening ease.

Halogen light clusters, which are very difficult to shoot out, dotted the double fence every eight meters. There was only one gate, big, heavy and made of stainless steel painted a non-descript black. There were no hinges. The massive two-ton slab of metal was lowered and raised from the concrete apron of the driveway by a set of hydraulic motors big enough to lift the fence, much less the gate. Of course, there were armed guards.

Standing brazen in a cute little brick gatehouse, whose inner walls I knew were plated with Soviet Army reactive armor, was a man and woman in baggy uniforms carefully designed to hide the body armor underneath. Openly, the pair carried Ruger .38 service revolvers. Legal, if kind of wimpy. But in the arms locker of the gatehouse was a nasty assortment of military deathdealers, and a large cache of thermite bombs powerful enough to fry God. Pitbulls watched from stout steel chains, but those were no danger as long as the leash held.

As I came close, the woman started talking into a hand radio, video cameras swung my way, and the man rested his thumbs in his belt so that his hands were closer to his pistol.

"Good evening,” I said politely, offering my hand.

Hesitantly, he took it and we shook. The goof.

"Sir,” he replied stiffly.

Radiating innocence, I beamed a smile. “I would like to see Dr. Bolt, please. Is he in tonight?"

"Do you have an appointment?” the man asked, reclaiming his hand. Too late!

"No,” I said honestly.

"Then I am sorry, sir, but Dr. Bolt is a very busy man,” apologized the guard. “Perhaps if you called his secretary in the morning for an appointment?"

Hell would freeze first, bucko. “I'm afraid the matter can not wait,” I said amiably.

The woman was on the radio again.

"And you are, sir?” asked the man asked, a hand resting on the wide leather belt, only inches away from his gun.

Casually, I reached inside my sports jacket and withdrew an amazingly clean FBI commission booklet. The badge was real and the card showed my picture. But there the identity process ended.

"Special agent Emmanuel Rodriguez,” I stated. “Federal Bureau of Investigation."

The guards grew more attentive. The Brotherhood could not know for certain, but I was sure they harbored notions who the Bureau was a subdivision of.