Armageddon Crazy

There was a definite chill in the air, but the way that he jogged on the spot, like a fighter warming up for the ring, was more from nervous energy than cold. A helicopter – it sounded like a Cobra – rattled overhead. Winters stepped lightly back into a doorway. He did not want to be seen by any kind of authority. He looked too much as if he was on his way to commit a crime, which, in some respects, he was. As the sound of the chopper faded, he emerged onto the sidewalk again. He peered anxiously up Broadway, but the early-morning streets were deserted. There were just the cardboard boxes in which the vagrants nested. One had a small garbage fire going in front of it.

There was the tiptap of high heels behind him, coming down.Twenty-sixth Street. It was a woman, walking unsteadily. At first, he could only see her in silhouette, but when she came into the glow of a lighted street lamp, her spandex pants, sequined tube top, and exaggerated shoes told him immediately that she was a prostitute, probably one of the bottom-rung street women who tried to scratch a living among the cardboard-box people. Her makeup was smeared, and she was having trouble focusing her eyes. It was obviously the end of a long evening. When she saw Winters, she increased the swing in her walk.

"You're up late."

Something really had to be done about the number of whores in the city and the shamelessness of their behavior, Winters thought. It seemed that, each time he looked, there were more of them, in more blatant states of seminudity. A serious crackdown was needed.

"What's the matter? Lost your voice?" She stopped in front of him. "Feel like a blow job to go to bed with?"

Winters eyes bugged out of his head. "I – I'm not going to bed."

It had taken him a second to gird his moral authority around him.

The prostitute shrugged. "So call it breakfast. Only cost you fifty."

There was a car coming down Broadway. Winters hissed at the woman. "Go away."

She planted her hands on her hips and looked drunkenly belligerent. There was a flower painted on her right cheek. "It don't cost nothing to be polite."

The car was close. The headlights were just two blocks away.

"Will you get out of here!"

Still she did not move.

"Who in hell do you think you are?"

The car went straight past. It was the wrong one. The prostitute was on a roll, her voice rising in pitch and volume.

"Think you own the street or something? What gives you the right to tell me what to do?"

A couple of vagrants were peering from their boxes. Winters wanted to tell the whore that if she did not shut up, he would arrest her. Of course he could not do that. He considered pulling out his gun and shooting her, but that would create its own set of problems. With the Magicians due at any minute, he had to content himself with vague threats.

"If you don't get away from me, you'll regret it."

"Oh, yeah? Who's go

"I'm warning you…"

"Don't be warning me, Jack. If you're so fucking righteous, how come you're out here at five o'clock in the morning?"

"You tell the bastard, Bernice."

Now the vagrants were joining in. Winters took a step toward the woman. At precisely that moment a black van came wheeling into Broadway out of Twenty-eighth Street, ru

"Get in."

The face of Bernice took on a look of horror. "It's fucking Dracula."

Winters scrambled inside. The door slammed, and the van accelerated away.

"What were you doing, Winters? Hiring on a little entertainment while you were waiting?"

The distorted electronic laughter was reminiscent of the sounds in an old-time video parlor. There were four other men in the back of the van, sitting on bench seats. They were dressed pretty much like him, except their heads were encased in the same visored helmets that had been worn at the first meeting. Their voices came through the same distorters. They all had.60 Mossbergs cradled in their laps. The nearest man indicated that Winters should sit down on an empty stretch of bench. Another Mossberg and a helmet were passed down to him.

"Take these, Winters."

The helmet was identical to the others except that it was a dull gray. He was clearly the novice on this job. He put on the helmet and dropped the visor.

"Test the distorter."

"One, two, test."

He sounded like the others. With the visor closed and the heavy Mossberg gripped in his fists, he experienced a sense of power greater than anything he had ever known. This was why he had joined the service. He was an anonymous and vengeful angel dispensing justice and death. These really were the final days.

There were no introductions. "Okay, Winters, listen up. I'm only going to say this once. This is your first mission, so you keep quiet and strictly run backup. You understand?"

"I understand."

He was cut down to a very junior avenging angel. The Magician went on.

"We are going to park outside an apartment building on Thirty-eighth Street. The woman Kline lives there. In ten to fifteen minutes, Carlisle will come out and we will take him. Alive. We want him alive. That is crucial."

"What about Kline?"

"We leave her alone, for the moment."

The driver was in a separate, partitioned front section. The partition was also used for racking a redscope and a heat surveillance sca

Carlisle

Harry Carlisle let himself out of the front door of Cynthia Kline's building, wondering about his chances of getting a cab so early in the morning. He had left before Cynthia, giving her a few minutes alone to get ready for work. He could not imagine what they were up to at Astor Place, calling her in at this hour. At first, he did not notice the black van. There was no reason why he should – it was just one more in the line of parked cars at the curb. It was only the sound of the rear door being wrenched open that made him turn and look at it. When the five armed men jumped out, his first thought was that it was a particularly elaborate mugging. Then he saw the visored helmets and the weapons that they carried, and he realized that it was something much more sinister and much more exclusively directed at him. He was still warm from Cynthia's bed and a little sleepy. He clawed for the.357 under his arm, but his reactions were slow. His fingers touched it, but suddenly there were five Mossbergs pointed at him. The voice was like that of a robot.

"Take your hand away from the gun, Carlisle, or we'll blast you where you stand."

The fact that they knew his name confirmed his worst suspicions. It was a deacon death squad. Pure terror clutched at his guts as he raised his hands.

They were all around him. The Magnum was removed from its holster. Hands grabbed him and threw him headfirst onto the hood of a parked car. His hands were pulled roughly behind him and a pair of old-style steel handcuffs were clamped onto his wrists. They were locked too tight, and the metal cut painfully into his wrists. With his arms immobilized, he was carried to the black van and thrown inside. He finished up on his knees on the floor of the van. The interior was loaded with high-tech snooper equipment, but he was given no time to look at it. They were far from finished with him. One of his captors grabbed the chain that linked the cuffs and pulled his arms hard up behind his back. The chain was clipped to hook into the roof of the van, and he was left hanging, knees bent and head thrust forward. The pain was excruciating. His hands were going numb, and his shoulders felt as if they were being dislocated.