“There it is.” Geneva pointed. She folded up the map she’d stolen from Michael. The concrete building was easy to recognize. It was set back from the road, surrounded by a ten-foot chain link fence topped by razor wire. A motorized gate blocked off the entrance: tall, black, metal. It had a speaker box next to it. Nobody in sight. No signs of any kind, not even a “No Trespassing.” If she didn’t know better, she’d say the place was deserted.
Lanny slowed the Bronco down. “And how you suppose we going to talk our way through that gate? Hmm? Tell you what, they see a brother and a goth chick knocking on their door, they just gonna start shooting.”
“They’ve already seen us.” She cranked down the window and leaned out. She aimed the pulser at the speaker box. “Ram the gate.”
“Say what?”
“Do it. Now. Before they get a chance to go to plan B.” She braced her arm on the side mirror and fired. The white pulse beam lit up the speaker box from within. Sparks fountained down from the edges of the gate. “Go, go!”
The Bronco’s engine revved up. Geneva pulled back inside and buried her face in her arms.
The crash shuddered through the whole truck. The seat belt choked her. Metal clanged and crumpled. Tires hissed for a second over metal and then squeaked on pavement. Lanny let out a high-pitched whoop.
Geneva looked up over the dash, through the cracked windshield. They were inside the compound. The Bronco charged around the end of the building, where a flatbed eighteen-wheeler was parked. Two men in mechanic’s jumpsuits crawled out from under the cab. One of them unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled out a black pistol.
Lanny turned the Bronco around the corner, and the men dropped out of sight. A row of loading docks stretched along the back of the building. The one in the center had an asphalt ramp leading up from the ground to the door. Geneva pointed at it. “That’s our way in.”
Lanny slowed down as he got closer to it. “I don’t know, girl. We run into that, be like hitting a brick wall. And you know they going to be waiting on the other side.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.” She undid her seat belt, knelt on the plastic console between the seats, and reached down to lift up the blanket covering their stuff. They had piled the AK-47s and metal ammo boxes on the floor of the Bronco. She dug out one of the AK-47s and held it out to Lanny. “Here. You know how to use one of these?”
He looked at it like it would bite him. “Oh, hell no.”
“Then pull over there. Right there.” She pointed to a spot about a hundred feet from the ramp. “Park it.”
“Man, those cats be coming around the corner any second now.” He swung the Bronco around so they were facing the building.
Geneva clicked the AK-47’s charge lever from safety to full auto, snapped a round into the chamber, and put it in Lanny’s hands. “Careful of the trigger. Before you shoot, pull it tight against your shoulder. Hands on the wood, not on the metal. Squeeze with your whole hand and let go. Quick bursts.” Michael’s words, coming out of her mouth. They made her think of summer afternoons, the four of them out in a dry field somewhere, Gabe and Raph smoking cigarettes, Michael with his arms around her, pressing the heavy, ugly rifle against her shoulder. The smell of hot metal and Michael’s cologne.
She blinked the memory away. Raph was dead. Gabe and Michael were gone. What the hell was she doing here?
Her arm throbbed where Michael’s bullet had gone through.
She lifted her good arm, feeling like she was in a dream, and pointed at the corner of the building. “Stay alive, will you? Watch out for me.” She reached down and flipped the blanket back the rest of the way. Her backpack was there, holding the black box all wrapped up in stealth fabric. But she ignored it for now.
The biggest thing they’d found in the Ukrainians’ stash was some kind of NATO anti-armor rocket. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, something in between an old bazooka and the little green LAWs Michael had once shown her. It was shiny dark green, almost black, with black rubber cups on either end, like thick octagonal plungers. She lifted it up by the strap, wrestled it into the front of the truck.
“Where the hell you going with that?”
“I’m going to huff, and I’m going to puff.” She climbed down out of the truck and slammed the door. “Cover me!” She ran a few yards and knelt down.
At least everything was labeled. A big red plastic toggle switch said SAFE FIRE and a button next to it said TRIGGER FIRE. A black-and-white label at one end said FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. Good to know.
The loading dock door at the far end whined open. The one at the other end started right after it. Guys in business suits knelt down and poked guns out through the opening. From the Bronco, the AK-47 clattered to life, unsure, stuttering.
Geneva hoisted the rocket onto her shoulder. Pain jolted up and down her injured arm. She sucked in her breath. No time for pain.
The sights were plain open metal, a half circle with a peg in the middle. She lined them up on the door at the top of the ramp.
Bullets sparked off the asphalt around her. She couldn’t look. Couldn’t breathe. She felt the plastic toggle switch, the smooth depression of the round button.
She clicked the plastic toggle switch. Nothing happened.
For a split second, she panicked. If the rocket was a dud, she and Lanny were as good as dead.
Then the tube kicked on her shoulder and a white jet of smoke screamed out. Blinding her. Burning her eyes. Throbbing in her ears. Smelled like burned eggs.
The rocket streaked away toward the door. The noise seemed to last forever.
*
Mitch watched the vault door anxiously, expecting it to hiss open any moment. “I thought angels were all harps and halos, Christmas carols. Stuff like that.”
“How very secular of you,” Michael said.
Mitch wasn’t sure what that meant, but Michael’s smart attitude was starting to piss him off. “Look, just give me a straight answer, here. What is the Archangel, exactly?”
Michael sagged against a wall of metal drawers, each one blinking with sleepy blue lights. He reached across the narrow aisle and fumbled with a drawer latch. “There are worlds outside ours, Mitch. Outside the boundaries we know of as life and death. A few years back, certain very brilliant people figured out a way to cross that boundary.”
“Scientists,” Mitch said, “in Russia.”
Michael inclined his head. “Historically, this is not the first Archangel to wind up in our world. But this time, we brought it here on purpose. And found out too late we couldn’t contain it. Worse, the Archangel knows we created a key to unlock the door between worlds. With that key, it can destroy us. You, me, everything. Our very existence, snuffed out.”
“With that black box,” Mitch realized out loud. “So what is it?”
“What’s inside it, you mean. Something very similar to what powers these.” Michael pulled the drawer open. Lying inside it, on a grid of foam rubber, was something about the shape of a shotgun, only shorter and about three times as thick. It looked like it was milled out of a single block of bare metal, then polished to a mirror finish. It could have been part of a jet engine.
Mitch had never seen anything like it. Its features were so smooth, it was almost a kind of sculpture, not intended to be touched with bare hands.
A grim smile spread over Michael’s features. He reached into the drawer and picked up the weapon in both hands. He admired it for a moment before he slid his hand around this grip. “Now this,” he whispered, his breath puffing in the air, “this changes everything.”
“Tell me it’s not radioactive or something.”
Michael gave him a measuring look and then shrugged, as if he’d made up his mind about something. “It’s a Cerenkov device. There is radiation involved, yes, but not the kind you’re thinking of.”
“I don’t know. Pretty much any kind of radiation I can think of is bad. What’s it do?”
“It kills angels.” Michael unplugged a power cable from the gun and closed the drawer. He marched down to the far end of the chamber, moving with a purpose.
“You okay to walk?” Mitch followed close behind, ready to reach out and grab him if he stumbled. “You’re not going to fall over and nuke us, are you?”
“The drugs they used are mostly short-term,” Michael said over his shoulder. “I’ll live.”
Mitch looked at all the drawers lining the walls. “There’s gotta be, what, twenty of those guns in here?”
“We’ll take this one and leave the rest.” Michael pulled open an access panel that was bordered in red-and-black diagonal stripes. The panel had a label on it, but Mitch couldn’t read it from where he was standing.
“Shouldn’t we take—I don’t know—four or five?”
“We’ll need the rest to buy us time.” Michael reached inside the panel and pulled a series of metal pins on rings out of a line of switches. When all the pins were out, he went down the line of switches again, throwing each one with a loud snap. As each switch went over, a red digital readout next to it started counting down from two hundred.
Mitch pointed at the numbers. “What happens when those hit zero?”
Michael closed the panel and hefted the thick Cerenkov gun. “We’ll be long gone by then.”
An explosion crashed outside. The floor shook with the force of the blast, feeling like an electric buzzer going off beneath Mitch’s feet. Wreckage pelted the roof of the vault like distant rain. Michael glanced up at the ceiling, looking worried. The lights crackled and died, leaving them trapped in the darkness with the ticking red numbers.
“Let me guess,” Mitch said. “Not part of the plan.”