INFERNO (New Perdition's Gate Omnibus Edition) Read online

  A voice in his ear interrupted his train wreck of thought.

  Rogue’s voice spoke through his receiver. “Nightstalker, you had better get back here behind the café.”

  Jason cupped his face in his hands and tried to get it together. “I’m on my way.” Walking away from the scene, having to leave Sarah’s body alone under that sheet, became the hardest thing he had ever had to do. Soulman’s funeral flashed through his mind, and Jason wondered if Sarah had family that would claim her body. He turned, forcing himself to leave, then ran through the restaurant to find the others.

  CHASE

  Hatter felt hands grab his body and pull him up from the ground. He felt his skin pulling away from the asphalt. Pieces of bloody gravel, embedded in his face, fell away as Nightstalker and Rogue heaved him up from the pavement. Hatter’s head was still throbbing from the pounding Solomon Gauge had given him.

  Jason shook him. “Are you all right, Hatter? What happened to you? Where’s Gauge?”

  “Gauge happened, sir.” Hatter moaned as he tried to stand on his own. He had been battered, but Jason just couldn’t believe the preacher had been responsible.

  “He came out of nowhere, boss. It was like he was expecting someone to intercept him. I’m telling you, boss, that preacher has been trained by somebody.” Hatter brushed the road dust and loose gravel from his face and uniform as his composure returned.

  Jason just looked at him. It didn’t make sense. Were these Christians training to fight now? It was not something they were known to do. In fact, when their suicide bombing campaign had been unleashed, back in 2091, it had been a complete mystery to everyone that these supposedly peace loving religionists had taken such action. Maybe all of that had just been a smokescreen and this was their true nature finally coming to the surface.

  “Where’s Wraith?”

  Hatter looked at Jason, puzzled. “Isn’t he with you?”

  Jason thought of Sarah again. Wraith had killed her. Where could he be? A voice came through his auditory receiver—Wraith. “Nightstalker, I’ve got the preacher cornered in a building downtown. He knows I’m tracking him and he’s armed.”

  “Send us a beacon, and we’ll be right there to assist.”

  The homing beacon blinked on each of their Contact Lens Displays along with a map of the city and the shortest route from each of their positions to the beacon. “We’re on our way, Wraith. Can you hold him in the building?”

  “I think so, but there’s another problem. The building was evacuated after I chased him into the lobby and gunfire broke out. Were on the tenth floor now, but Jerusalem police are surrounding the building.”

  “That could be a problem.” Jason cursed under his breath. “Just do what you can to contain the preacher and we’ll deal with the police as we have to.”

  “Copy.”

  Jason glanced at Rogue and Hatter. Both of them looked ragged. “I need you two up to snuff. Are you with me?”

  The two agents stiffened. “Yes, sir.”

  “All right then, let’s go.”

  Agent Wraith tried to calm his breathing, as he stood behind a support column in a room full of office furniture. A maze of cubicles stretched out before him, not the ideal setting for finding Gauge. This made the odds more even between them, and that made Wraith nervous.

  He was used to having the advantage in these sorts of situations. The advantage of his training, the advantage of surprise, he really didn’t care as long as he had the upper hand in some way. Wraith fully believed in fighting dirty. Dead men could keep their honor as far as he was concerned.

  Sweat dripped from his brow. Gauge had given him a good run so far. He was the only one on the team who knew this preacher’s past. The others weren’t privy to the information—not even Nightstalker. Wonderful timing by that suicide bomber. Intel should have alerted us. That horrible coincidence had cost them a clean kill, and put him in the position of chasing a very dangerous man through the city.

  Wraith turned his head, trying to peer around the corner of the column. Gauge had to be somewhere in the room. Just as Wraith peeked out, gunfire pounded into the corner of the column near his head. This guy is better than I thought. If he gets a clear shot, I’ve had it.

  Wraith had his capsule gun set to acid rain. He wanted a quick kill. It had been a good ten minutes since contacting Nightstalker and he wondered where they were. Wraith scanned the room, trying to catch any glimpse of his prey. To the far right, the elevator door opened. No! He got back over there without me hearing him!

  Wraith darted out from behind the column with his weapon in firing position and headed for the elevator door as it began to close. It closed just as he reached the area in front of the doors.

  He saw that the ascending indicator was lit up. There were two elevators side by side sharing the same controls. Wraith reached for the up button and noticed the plastic shattered with a sticky drop of liquid clinging to it and pieces of a capsule shell suspended in the liquid.

  Gauge had shot the button with a capsule instead of pushing it. He wasn’t in the elevator! Something struck his neck just above his collar. Wraith turned as the throbbing wound quickly gave way to darkness. He saw Gauge’s head over the top of one of the cubicle partitions with his weapon trained on target. Everything went black.

  Jason, Hatter and Rogue ran through the police line into the building where Wraith was chasing Solomon Gauge. They had blended with the police officers in perceptor disguises as Special Tactics Unit officers. At the appropriate time, they left the other officers on the fifth floor, heading for the tenth. The special unit, dressed in more of a combat uniform than a patrol officer’s attire, would follow standard procedure with a floor by floor search until they could find the perpetrators. Jason hoped that would give his team enough time to find Wraith and neutralize Solomon Gauge.

  Wraith’s beacon still pulsed on Jason’s display indicating life, but he hadn’t responded to Nightstalker’s attempts to contact him. Wraith had noted in his earlier communication that Gauge was armed, and Jason half-hoped the preacher had managed to kill Wraith for killing Sarah.

  Nightstalker and his men pounded the stairs, trying to get to Wraith’s beacon position on the tenth floor. They passed nine and came to the stairwell door for the tenth floor. Jason made sure his weapon was ready before slamming through the heavy metal door into the adjacent room looking for a target.

  Solomon Gauge picked up the unconscious agent’s capsule gun and slipped it into the holster for his own. He knelt next to the man and reached for the agents left forearm. Gauge tapped on the man’s arm. Wraith’s appearance as an Israeli man melted away, leaving a Caucasian man in a black special ops uniform lying on the floor in his place.

  Where Gauge had tapped on the man’s forearm, there appeared a small contoured digital control pad. “That’s what I thought.” He examined the wound on the agent’s neck—a clean entry puncture with a tranquilizer capsule. This agent would be out for hours and would probably be apprehended by Jerusalem police officers while still in this condition.

  Solomon stood up again, just as the stairwell door on the opposite side of the room burst open, revealing what appeared to be Special Tactics officers. The lead man spotted him and started firing. Solomon ducked again as small explosive capsules slammed into the metal elevator doors behind him. Large holes pocked the doors quickly. Acid Rain! These aren’t police officers!

  Gauge rolled across the thinly carpeted floor to the adjacent stairwell, kicking it open from his ground position. He sped through the doorway and got to his feet, heading for the roof by way of the stairs.

  Jason gave a signal to Hatter and Rogue with his left hand as he fired with his right at the man who had been standing at the far end of the room in front of the elevators. A room full of partitioned office cubicles stood between them and their target. Hatter and Rogue split away from Nightstalker, entering the maze of cubicles, rapidly making their way toward the far end of the room and Wraith’s be
acon signal.

  Jason saw the stairwell door open and made his way cautiously but quickly, just in case it was a trick to lure him into thinking the man had taken the stairs. When he got to the last partition wall before the elevators, he peeked out with his weapon and found Wraith on the ground. Strangely enough, the agent lay fully exposed in his perceptor combat uniform.

  Seeing the way clear and being able to hear his men plodding up the other rows toward him Jason moved cautiously toward Wraith on the ground and immediately noticed the wound on his neck just above his collar. It looked like a tranquilizer entry wound. Jason confirmed it with a quick breathing and pulse check—Wraith was alive, but unconscious.

  Hatter and Rogue emerged from two other pathways through the partitioned cubicles, spotting Wraith with Nightstalker kneeling next to him. “He’s all right. Gauge took the stairs” Jason motioned toward the door.

  The two men immediately moved on to the stairwell door. One of them covered it with his gun while the other kicked it open. No one stood on the landing. They proceeded through the door and up the stairs.

  Jason reached for Wraith’s forearm control unit, and tapped the button to resume his last selected perceptor disguise. Wraith’s unconscious form wavered then resumed the appearance of an Israeli man. If the police got this far, they would only find a normal looking man—a victim of crazed, gun toting terrorists. Jason got up and headed after the others through the stairwell door.

  Hatter and Rogue were already several floors up the stairs in pursuit of Gauge. Jason heard his men taking the flights in great leaps. Jason peered up through the central space where the stairwell looped around and saw hands on handrails, two near each other and one much higher. Jason started to follow them up then a thought came to him. This preacher has been a step ahead of us, so far. Why would he automatically head for the roof only to be trapped there? He has to know that the police are searching through the building, but if he isn’t afraid to take us on face to face, like he did with Hatter and Wraith, then he probably wouldn’t be that concerned with the police either.

  Jason backtracked through the stairwell door, through the room, leaping over Wraith, who was still unconscious on the floor. Jason went back to the other stairwell—the one they had come up initially. He had thought about what he might do in Gauge’s situation and he knew he wouldn’t just run straight up to the roof.

  There were two sets of stairs that ran the height of the building on opposite sides. With fifty stories to run through, Gauge had a lot of opportunity to double back on Jason and his men if he decided to. The best way to do that was to get to the other set of stairs.

  Jason thought for a moment about Hatter and Rogue. In their furious chase up the stairs, they could easily lose sight of Gauge, whose lead on them was strong. They would not realize they were bypassing the man if he ducked onto a floor, running across to the other stairwell. The elevators would most likely have been stopped by the police by now, so they were useless. Jason started to climb the stairs, but with much more caution and much less noise.

  He only managed to get up twenty floors before he heard something above. Instantly, Jason stopped, flattening his body against the wall. He set his perceptor tech for transparency and remained motionless with his weapon aimed up at the next stair landing.

  A heavy door closed several flights up. He heard footsteps echoing off of the walls. I knew it. Here he comes, trying to double back on my men and head for the street again. Jason felt cocky now. Gauge wasn’t going to get away from him that easily, not after causing Sarah’s death.

  Jason kept his breathing smooth and his pistol steady, waiting for the preacher to come into view. Then he saw him. Gauge plodded down the steps with less noise than expected and came into view. He hadn’t noticed a nearly invisible Jason in the stairwell with his weapon trained on him.

  Jason squeezed off several quick shots of acid rain which blasted right through Gauge into the wall beyond, pocking it with small craters as the concrete exploded away into fragments that clattered around the stairwell.

  Solomon Gauge kept jogging down the stairs unhindered, as though nothing had happened at all. Jason moved into the man’s path and his fears were confirmed. Gauge’s image moved right through him and kept going. Jason became furious. Hologram!

  A tiny image projector hovered down through the space between the spiraling stairs. It remained nearly invisible, giving off only a ripple of light refraction as it moved. Jason grabbed the device and crushed it in his hand.

  The steps he’d been hearing were actually Solomon Gauge ascending the steps on this side. This preacher was still ahead of everything they did. Gauge had already bested two of his men and had kept on going without a scratch. Who is this guy?

  Jason gritted his teeth and ran up the stairs. He’d never had a target do this to him before. Jason started to wonder if Hatter was actually right about the man being trained. Maybe the Christians really were capable soldiers. Even more likely, Gauge had been trained by some other world power and had defected to become a part of the Christian’s underground movement.

  Hatter’s voice came through Jason’s receiver. “Boss, Where are you?”

  “I’m following Gauge inside the opposite stairwell, still heading for the roof.”

  There was a moment of silence. Jason imagined Hatter and Rogue looking up through their stairwell, trying to see, or hear, Gauge then looking dumbfounded at one another. Their pride would be smarting right now. “Nightstalker, I’m sorry, man—”

  “Don’t worry, Hatter, he tricked me over here, too.”

  “I knew that guy had to be trained professionally.” Hatter sounded glad for his opinion to be vindicated.

  “Just keep moving toward the roof and we’ll corner him there.”

  “Copy that.”

  It was a good thing agents had to remain in tip-top condition. Otherwise, a fifty story building would have given him a heart attack, by now. When Jason came near the roof, he heard the heavy door ahead being kicked open.

  He quickened his pace, straining against the aching in his legs and his lungs. By the time he reached the door, Jason heard the loud crack of acid rain capsules exploding against metal and stone on the roof. Rogue’s voice hammered in his ear. “We’ve got him, sir! He’s pinned down on the roof!”

  “Rogue, is my access door clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Gauge is well away from it. We’ve got him pinned down behind some satellite uplink equipment.”

  Shots rang out in staccato on the roof as his agents kept Gauge cornered. Jason maneuvered through the door, spotting Hatter and Rogue. He fired across the roof on Gauge’s position. Gauge returned fire sporadically, but appeared to be using tranquilizer capsules only.

  That wasn’t what Jason would have expected from a bloodthirsty terrorist, especially when he was defending himself from an assassination attempt. He could have killed Hatter and Wraith easily, but he hadn’t done it.

  Rogue and Hatter stood a good thirty yards from Jason’s position behind the access door overhang. A small object sailed over the equipment where Gauge was hiding, landing in front of Rogue and Hatter’s hiding place.

  The object flashed like a sun, causing Jason, and the other agents, to wince from the blinding splendor of it—flash grenade. Solomon Gauge took advantage of the opportunity, jumping out from behind the uplink equipment.

  He ran toward Hatter and Rogue’s position with a large automatic rifle blazing. The noise was loud, much louder than capsule guns, startling them. They all lunged instinctively behind obstacles, realizing that this man had more firepower than they had realized.

  Jason noticed something—no ricochet. He ducked out then shot Gauge—nothing. The man still stood there, firing his weapon at Rogue and Hatter, screaming like a banshee. Jason made sure his aim was correct then fired three more acid rain capsules. Just as he thought—another hologram!

  Jason ran out from his cover past the maniacal Gauge hologram which never took notice of him. He rou
nded the satellite uplink equipment, preparing to kill Solomon Gauge. Nothing but air remained. Motion caught Jason’s eye as he scanned the area for his target.

  Jason ran to the edge of the roof and saw a lone parachute careening away from the building. He raised his capsule gun and tried to zoom in on the target, which was mostly obscured by the parachute’s billowy canopy. His CLD, coordinating with the infrared gun sight, flashed Out of Range.

  Frustrated, he fired anyway with seemingly no effect. Jason lowered his weapon and turned to his agents. Rogue and Hatter emerged, bewildered by the fact that a perfect representation of Solomon Gauge, in hologram form, still stood before them, blasting away with his automatic weapon—a demon-possessed mirage.

  Jason walked behind the image and reached down to retrieve a device lying inconspicuously on the ground. When he picked it up, the image of Gauge wavered and disappeared with a button push. Silence prevailed on the roof, except for the high wind howling around the three agents.

  Hatter scratched his head, puzzled. “Nightstalker, what just happened here?”

  Jason looked at the small hologram projector in his hand, barely stifling a laugh. He looked at Hatter and Rogue with a grin spreading on his face. “We just got spanked by a harmless preacher, fellas.”

  WRAITH

  Fearing more terrorist attacks, the Israeli Defense Forces had been summoned to the area. They had since assumed command of the situation in the Lynwood Towers building. On the tenth floor, there had been an apparent fire-fight with light arms.

  Currently, twelve soldiers kept the floor secure while others swept through the rest of the building. One man had been found near a set of elevators. He remained unconscious with a small capsule wound on the back of his neck, but this was no ordinary denizen of the office corps normally found working in the building.