Chapter 73

Róisín and I were tracking a terrorist suspect, not our normal modus operandi by any means, but we’d been tasked to do it by Mage Morgana at the behest of Mage Hermione. Hermione had somehow got word through diplomatic contacts that the Coalition were aiding and assisting a group of mundane terrorists to attack the government of the United States. Normally even if we had word that a terrorist attack was planned, we wouldn’t necessarily bother telling a mundane government, unless it also affected our interests; that was the nature of the accords we had with them, we were not to interfere. With rumours of the Coalition involved, naturally we did take an interest, but as far as Mage Hermione’s people were concerned, they could not find any trace of a Coalition link, other than word from Mage Cornelius that there was one. Hermione had ‘bumped’ it upstairs to Morgana to see if she could shed any light on the situation and she’d palmed it off to Róisín and I as we weren’t constrained by the Department of Magical Regulation and their accords with various governments in North America, meaning we had permission to read the minds of mundanes.

Morgana doubted it was anything more serious than setting off a few car or truck bombs outside government offices or where a Mage lived, but she did want us to see if we could entrap any Coalition agents involved and send them off to Kurukshetra where Artello’s device could be used to remove all Coalition ‘taint’ and re-program them into useful members of Mage society ... well, a good few anyway, a lot of them were simply beyond redemption and disposed of humanely.

Róisín and I were trying to track down a man called Mohamed Atta on whom we’d been given information that we believed could lead us to the Coalition mission specialist who was overseeing the operation. As we had no idea where he was or what he looked like we were trying to trace another compatriot of his called Nawaf al-Hazmi. Our problem there was tracking him down; we simply had no idea where to start. We knew he’d entered the States in Los Angeles and then moved to Phoenix, Arizona where Mage Hermione’s team had lost him and weren’t permitted to go around reading the minds of mundanes. As we represented the Council, we had no such constraints, save only that we were expected to report each instance to Morgana and have it validated by the Seer group that no harm was done.

On September 9th 2001 Róisín and I were rooting around an apartment in Mesa, Arizona looking for clues. We’d already scanned the minds of others in the area.

“I think we’re going to have to use a time mirror to see where they went next,” I sighed.

“I think you’re right, John,” she agreed. “We’ve had precious little luck since they were tracked from Los Angeles. I haven’t a clue what they’re up to, other than their attempts to take flying lessons.”

Using a time mirror was easy enough, getting permission to use one, not so much, but I had to give Morgana credit, she gave preliminary permission immediately and told us she’d sort out the ‘paperwork’ later.

All the mirror could show us was that a compatriot of al-Hazmi took some flight refresher training whilst staying with our suspect and a forwarding address in Falls Church, Virginia.

“Again the flying lessons and that bunch of videos on passenger jets. Do you think he’s planning a hijack, John?” Róisín asked.

“It’s a standard terrorist tactic,” I mused. “Though why he feels the need to have people around him who know how to fly is beyond me.”

“Possibly in case the flight crew take them somewhere else?” Róisín thought out loud.

“As good an explanation as any in the limited time we have to explore his past,” I replied.

“We’ll head off to Falls Church in the morning and see what we can find then,” Róisín nodded as we packed away our equipment and went off to the motel room we’d rented.

The following morning we ported into Falls Church, Virginia and began our so far fruitless investigation. We felt at least we were close to a resolution, though again we were forced to use a time mirror and it was at this stage we got our first clue as to who was behind the goings on with the suspected terrorists.

“That’s Mage Edward, the Coalition Assassin Prime, along with Mage Constable,” I said as we watched the silent images moving on the silvered surface.

“This is serious, John. Mage Morgana only sent us on this job because she thought it to involve minor players,” Róisín stated.

“I know. Time to call for back-up,” I sighed. “What the hell?”

The screen suddenly fuzzed and faded out, something I hadn’t thought possible, save only with Higher Power interference.

“Take it back, John. We can re-observe at least,” Róisín requested.

It took twenty minutes to re-do the calculations to get the position of the Earth and the position of the room back to the same time in the past that we had been observing before. We watched again as Edward and Constable addressed the men in the room and then handed out something to them all.

“Null amulets,” I said as I zoomed in. “They activated them and that’s what interfered with the tachyon flow.”

“Where did they get the amulets from?” Róisín asked, concern written all over her face.

“Don’t know, but, they are definitely ones I constructed,” I said as I moved the paused mirror back and forth around the amulets.

There was a mild displacement of air as Morgana, Arch and Thea ported in and both Róisín and I gave them a formal greeting.

“Odd,” was all Morgana said as I explained what we found as well as doing another re-calculation for the time mirror to allow the senior Mages to view the Coalition Mages.

“Wish we could get sound on these things,” Arch groused.

“Well, in theory...” I began.

“Forget it, John. It’s bad enough you fiddling with a view,” Morgana warned.

“Yes, my Mage,” I replied with a grin.

“Scan the whole room and let’s try and see where they went,” Morgana ordered.

We spent most of the day hopping back and forth between the room and various places in the USA including Las Vegas, Patterson and New Jersey until finally we tracked him down to a room in the Pin-Del Motel in Laurel, Maryland. We were tired, frustrated and above all annoyed. We’d had to use the time mirror in all the locations before and after our main suspect was there because of the Null medallions he and a few of his compatriots were wearing. In one case Thea had to lip read the Arabic conversation the others had in a meeting they had in Las Vegas as a result of which we broke into an empty room at 8am on the morning of September the 11th.

“Get the mirror set up, John,” an exasperated Morgana ordered. “The rest of you search the room to see if we can find where they went next.”

The mirror unfortunately showed nothing of the terrorists, they were all still wearing Null medallions; however Róisín found a credit card transfer stub telling us our suspect had booked himself onto a plane for Los Angeles.

“We’ll get them when they arrive, assuming they don’t hijack the bloody thing,” Morgana sighed. “Who’d have believed mundanes could have led us such a merry dance.”

“I still have no idea what they hope to achieve, my Mage. Nor have the suspects we were tracking given us a clue as to whom the Coalition are directly dealing with,” I replied.

“I’ll contact Mage Hermione, get some of her people in to help,” Morgana stated, nodding her head then suddenly frowned. “I can’t contact Hermione; in fact I can’t get in touch with anyone in the Bureau.”

We all sent our minds out to New York to check but were interrupted by a message from Mage Simone carrying a Council high priority overlay.

‘All Mages in the Department of Magical Regulation and any Council Mages in the North American continent, please be advised to go to maximum security protocols until further notice. An attack has been made on the Department’s offices in New York and until we have further details we advise extreme caution on the part of all Mages!’

“New York, now!” Morgana commanded and we all ported out following her trace to an apartment kept aside (I presumed) to allow an emergency teleport into the city.

“My Mage, look!” I said horrified, pointing to the windows where we saw the World Trade Centre twin tower explode into flame.

“Oh my God! That’s where the Department of Magical Regulation is based!” Morgana cried out, her legs giving way. Arch rushed forward to hold her up.

Róisín, Thea and I ported down onto the street in an utterly reckless move and began running as fast as we could towards the towers. We could already feel a massive Null field set up around the buildings and I figured that’s how the Coalition had prevented the Mages inside from leaving or defending themselves. Because of the pandemonium in the streets it took us a lot longer to approach the buildings than we liked. Almost half an hour had passed by the time we finally reached the edge of the Null field. At that moment one of the towers collapsed and we barely had time to shield up and also protect a few escapees in doing so.

We were joined at that moment by Arch and a plainly grief stricken Morgana as we began to look for the interlinked control glyph that held the Null field.

“Has to be in either one of those basements attached to the underground Mall,” Arch pointed out on a mental image he sent us.

Leaving Róisín and Thea with Morgana, Arch and I split up and went looking for the control glyph. I was fortunate enough to find it immediately but unfortunate enough to find Mage Constable still there waiting to ambush any Mage sent to remove it. As soon as I appeared he opened up with an Uzi 9mm sub-machine gun. Fortunately he was a lousy shot. Even at full auto all he managed to do was wound me in the arm and hip and then had to duck for cover as I opened up with my own Glock and, although I missed, the shards from the resulting destruction of brickwork clearly hurt him.

“You can’t escape,” I taunted him.

“You know nothing,” he snarled, unleashing another hail of fire in my direction.

“I know you’ll pay for what you’ve done today,” I snapped back, reloading my Glock.

“Faugh! Simplicity itself,” he sneered. “We’ll soon take out all your offices and you won’t be able to stop us.”

Whilst he was boasting I’d managed to crawl carefully, leaking blood, to a position where I might just be able to take him out. My wounds were stinging but not life threatening, nevertheless, if he tried to run, there was no way I was chasing him. Glancing around a pillar I could just catch a glimpse of him as he craned his head upwards to see where I was hiding. I snapped two shots off at him, hearing him scream before the sounds of running alerted me to his retreat.

Hauling myself to my feet I limped through the basement until I found the controlling glyph for the Null field and destroyed it, feeling the field collapse over the area it controlled and allowing me to heal myself. At this point Thea ported in beside me to assist in the healing and after a minute or two we set off tracking Mage Constable.

“Do we know how many?” I asked a white faced Thea.

“Seventy three Mages including Mage Hermione and Mage Constance, as well as the four Seers on duty we believe,” Thea replied.

“Dear God!” I sighed.

“Mostly it was her diplomatic staff; the other offices only had small cadres on that site. Mage Helen from the San Francisco office is temporarily in charge and the other Bureaus are sending help,” Thea explained. “The Council has a backup plan for such events, even if we hoped never to have to use it.”

“Got his spoor, he hasn’t tried to teleport out yet, which is odd. Then again if he did, we’d stop him,” I stated as we both headed quickly to where Constable was hiding. “Careful he’s armed too,” I added redundantly.

“Not alone either,” Thea noted.

“Must think he can add to the death list,” I said grimly.

“We’ll see,” said Thea as she reached into a pocket universe and produced a ‘flash-bang’ which she activated and hurled into the corridor that we’d tracked Constable to.

We both dived around the corner only to see the retreating back of Constable as well as two Coalition Mages. We also caught a massive explosion as a booby trap went off and Thea was barely able to shield us from the heat and flying debris.