Free Target: Point Zero by Mack Maloney

followed Orr right up to the main bar, the sullen crowd parting reluctantly as they moved through. Most of the Volkspolizi were wearing regulation ski masks, for identity purposes. Orr, too, was wearing a face guard. Hunter, dressed in his black flights, a bandolier of ammo slung over his left shoulder, had his baseball cap pulled low to his eyes. He really didn’t want anyone recognizing him at the moment either.
    Orr reached the bar and without missing a beat, dove across it, grabbed the biggest, toughest-looking bartender by the collar and dragged him right across the wet, beer-sticky top. The place gasped as the man fell to the floor only to be hauled to his feet again by Orr. The bartender started to say something, but Orr slapped his words away. The place closed in on them; Hunter raised his rifle slightly, purely on instinct. But Orr had the crowd in the palm of his hands.
    The Wehrenluftmeister let go a stream of some language close to the bartender’s ruptured face. Part-German, part-Swiss, and part-Old English vulgarity, the bartender’s features dropped with every word. It was clear he wanted no part of Orr and the Volkspolizi. Obviously Orr was questioning the man about the escaped Works aviators but the bartender just kept shaking his head. He didn’t know where the hell these guys were.
    “We’re tossing this place anyway,” Orr told him, first in loud and clear English, and then German, then Swiss. “We don’t want any problems. Neither do you…”
    The bartender raised his hands as if to say: go right ahead. But Orr smashed his head into the bar anyway, knocking him out cold. Then with great flourish, he turned and barked an order to his men. In seconds, half the Volkspolizi were stomping up the stairs to the Shitzenhouzen’s second floor, while the other half was climbing down into its bunker-like basement- cum -gambling-hall.
    Hunter turned back to Orr who was now coolly pouring a draft of beer into his kit tin, courtesy of a nearby spigot.
    “All that yelling gets your throat a bit dry,” he told Hunter with a straight face.
    They decided to split up. While Orr joined his men in the basement, Hunter went up the stairs; something was drawing him to the second floor of this place.
    On reaching the top of the stairs, he found an extensive network of small hallways containing dozens of doors. The six Volkspolizi ahead of him were systematically pounding on each one of them, kicking it in if they didn’t get a response after two knocks. Hunter glanced into each of these open rooms, finding just about every sexual combination possible: man-woman; man-girl; man-woman-girl, woman-girl, girl-girl, etc. Each client looked drunker than the next, each demimondaine cuter and younger. None of them seemed too surprised to find a bunch of ski-masked men with huge rifles poking in on them—this sort of thing went on all the time in the Shitzenhouzen.
    The search quickly become tedious. Hunter’s instincts were telling him the escaped airmen were not up here; yet his gut was pushing him towards something that might be helpful in the search. He found himself climbing up a third set of steps, and after passing through a dark attic used to store liquor, ammunition and cocaine, stepping out onto the roof itself.
    The Shitzenhouzen was hardly the tallest building in Badtown, but even from this height, the view was startling. The south district looked like an outline of neon, hellishly carved out of the deceptively peaceful circle of Clocks. It seemed the natural place for the escapees to hide. Beyond it lay the military bases, then the road out of town and finally the grand, twin-peaked mountain itself. It appeared huge from here, seemingly towering into the night sky by ten miles or more. It was so close, Hunter imagined he could reach out and touch it.
    At its summit was the permanent glow from the nonstop battle, with a cloud of mist, blowing snow and smoke enshrouding the peaks themselves. The fighting seemed