James Axler - Sky Hammer

“We can’t,” Wethers stated. “See? They are both under radio silence.”

“Why?”

“They found their targets much sooner than expected and have engaged the enemy.”

Kurtzman narrowed his gaze. Damn! The teams were wasting valuable time taking out these minor dangers to America when the sky was literally about to fall down on everybody. Hours wasted. Time gone. Time they didn’t have to spare.

Kurtzman clamped his mouth shut. He knew the current enemy action was merely “cleanup,” but if the teams were in the middle of a firefight, any distraction at exactly the wrong moment could get all of them killed. There was nothing to do but wait, wait for them to finish the missions they were on.

“Come on, guys, shake a leg,” Kurtzman whispered. “Move it.”

Chicago, Illinois

The classic rock music of Peter Frampton was blaring over the wall speakers of the control booth. Lost in thought, the blurry DJ was staring out the window of the Sears Tower, and it took quite a while before he finally noticed the jingling instrument.

“Yellow!” he drawled, removing the handrolled cigarette from his mouth. The smoke was sweet and pungent, and highly illegal. “This is WQQQ, all radio, all the time. What can I do for you?”

“Pay close attention, Jew, or everybody dies,” a garbled voice spoke.

The DJ went very still at that and dropped the joint into a nearly empty beer bottle on the sound board. It hissed out of existence.

“What did you just say?” he asked, flipping a switch to record the conversation. Having worked his way up through the ranks, the DJ had started in the news department and knew the sound of a scrambled voice when he heard it. Lots of kooks and nuts called up stations proclaiming everything imaginable, from women sighting Elvis on a UFO, to men claiming to be an alien’s baby. But nobody ever had the coin to get a voice scrambler. That alone meant big bucks, and money plus crazy always spelled trouble.

“I said shut the fuck up, Moses, or we’ll bomb your little shithole of a station just to make the other kike radio stations pay attention. Understand?”

In the control booth, a union technician perked up in his chair at the sound of the voice, and quickly started punching numbers into a red phone dedicated for outside calls only. The DJ tried to wave the man from calling the police, but the engineer paid him no attention.

“My apologies, sir,” the DJ muttered. They thought the radio station was Jewish? The owner of the radio station was a Norwegian, Dave Linderholm, and he had no idea who owned the Sears Tower.

A crackle of static and the voice returned.

“Mind your betters, pig. Now, the wall in Palestine was destroyed by the American Liberation Strike Force,” the distorted voice continued. “And we…”

“Do you mean, the wall in Israel?” the DJ asked, confused.

“Shut up! There is no such country!” The phone crackled. “All of that land belongs to Palestine!”

“Even the parcels they sold to the Jews?” the DJ asked quickly, pointedly trying to egg the caller into saying something that would be banned on the air. That always helped the ratings, and sweeps week was coming up.

“Zion propaganda! Now, unless American ZOG pulls all of its troops back to U.S. soil, our next target will be the UN building!” There was a click and the line went dead.

Quickly shoving another recorded cassette of early heavy metal into the board, the DJ rushed into the engineering booth.

“What a freaking loon,” the DJ exhaled, running nervous fingers through his wavy crop of hair. “Did we get everything?”

“Loud and clear.” The engineer smiled, patting a digital CD recorder on the board. “By the way, what’s a ZOG?”

“Zionist Occupation Government.”

“What’s Zionist?”

“Tell ya later. Did we get a trace on the call?” the DJ asked hopefully, looking at the bewildering display of readouts, gauges, lights and meters. He was the talent, not a freaking atomic brain.

“Sure. It’s useless.” The engineer sighed. “The call came from a rest stop on Route 95, outside of Camden, right over the river in New Jersey.”

Clever. Stop your car, make the call, drive away before anybody can get there.

“Could it have been a fake phone location?”

“For people with a voice scrambler? Sure.” The engineer leaned back in his chair, the springs squeaking in protest. “So what now? Call the news director, or do we sell this directly to CNN?”

“We?” the DJ asked, stressing the word.

“I have the only tape, dude,” the engineer said, patting the recording machine.

The DJ glared at the machine, then shrugged. “Fifty-fifty?”

“Done.” The engineer grinned, extended a hand, and the two men shook.

“So who would you call?” the DJ smiled.

“The FBI, man,” the engineer stated with a wave. “These crank yankers might be the real thing.”

The DJ laughed, then he heard the reverberating drum roll of a Metallica song fading away and rushed back to his board to shove in a commercial for acne cream. When it was over, he shoved in the longest running song he could find, which bought him thirty minutes. Time to contact CNN and get a big check!

Heading back to the engineering booth, the DJ paused at the sight of the 9/11 wall poster of the Twin Towers. Vaguely he seemed to remember that everybody had lots of hint and clues about the forthcoming attack, but nobody had told the FBI.

“Aw, shit.” the DJ sighed and picked up a phone. “Hello, Operator? Please give me the phone number for the Philadelphia division of Homeland Security.” He paused. “Yes, ma’am, this is an emergency.”

“What are you doing?” the engineer demanded, horrified, rushing out of the booth.

“Doing the right thing. We’re ratting these assholes out, and I hope Homeland puts ’em in a cell down in Gitmo. With extra rolls of film.”

The engineer rolled his eyes heavenward. “That guy on the phone was right. You’re an idiot.”

“That may be,” the DJ said, feeling oddly patriotic. “But if you have any porn on the computer, better start purging. Homeland might check it out, and this dump needs you.”

“Sure, who else would work for these wages?” The engineer snorted rudely. Then he returned to the booth and started hastily accessing files on the station’s PC to delete them like crazy.

Trevose, Pennsylvania

“WHAT IS A ZOG?” Zdenka Salvai asked as her commander got behind the steering wheel.

“Something Nazis talk about,” Bella Tokay replied, tucking away the voice scrambler, then starting the stolen car.

The vehicle had been obtained outside of a strip club on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden, located just over the bridge from Philadelphia. Few people told friends that they were going to a strip club, thus they were safe to kill. The owner of the vehicle wouldn’t be missed for a long time. Perhaps days. Eventually his body would be found; a corpse inside a plastic garbage bag soon filled it with fumes, and the bags often popped like balloons. It wasn’t the optimum way of disposing of a body, but it was sufficient for today. They needed only a few hours.

The redhead lit a fresh cigarette. “I hate Nazis,” she stated, puffing out every word. Her long fingers were stained yellow from the constant cigarettes and her teeth were the same. But few men ever noticed that, their vision rarely rising above her ample cleavage. Between her knees was a large object covered with a blanket. Some sort of metallic hose could be seen sticking out from underneath, and there was the faint smell of jellied gasoline.

Tokay laughed. “As do we all,” he agreed, releasing the brake and heading north on Route 1. Bethlehem was far away, but they had plenty of time. On the seat next to the man was a newspaper, the checkered grip of a compact machine gun barely visible beneath it.