Complex
"I always think I've got it all
figured out, and then I live
another day, and everything
just gets more complicated."
-Scud, the Disposable Assassin
The plan, as Big Three understood it, was to take a group of sixty men to storm Dymatech's R&D facility and cause major disruption. Among those disruptions, he was to have civilians in the facility subdued, and any and all HAC members encountered wounded or, if necessary, killed outright. If Major Patriot was present, Big Three was to order a full-scale ranged assault on the Ultra Soldier, followed by an immediate retreat.
The henchmen would be teleporting in a mile north of the Dymatech facility in three of the old LAV's, which would put a tremendous strain on the teleporter equipment in the Nevada base. The assault vehicles would not, however, be making the trip back.
This was where the plan became too complex for the hulking Big Three to really understand. They were all being strapped with personal returner devices, as the unit that had gone to New York City had had. They were to retreat to the LAV's, which were pre-programmed to start tearing ass east after the henchmen were onboard to retreat. The henchmen would wait a minute, then use their returners. Any HAC troops giving chase would be hunting unmanned vehicles without being any the wiser until they gained ground and demolished them.
One of Big Three's top heavies was given this information by Kurtis Boe, who knew Big Three just wouldn't understand the finer details of the plan. The heavy assured Boe that he would stick with the big guy and explain things if he should get confused.
Lester and Abe, meanwhile, were busy going over the infiltration of Area 51 with the much smaller ten-man unit that would be sent there. Lester, unconsciously using his natural charisma and power of command, led these ten men through a step-by-step walkthrough of their operation, accounting for numerous contingencies throughout.
At first, Abe had suggested that the unit have a couple of specialists in computer systems and stealth operations go with, but Lester had nixed this idea. "They all have to have roughly equivalent skills in all facets and identical gear loadouts. That way, if anyone should be taken down, we don't lose a key player."
Cold and calculated, but Abe understood Captain Righteous's logic. As such, Boe had selected these ten for their overall adaptability and rounded knowledge in infiltration warfare. Hardened veterans all, and with enough demolitions, systems and combat knowledge to put any military unit to utter shame.
This team, led by Righteous, would be teleporting to a known blind spot on the perimeter of Area 51 ten minutes ahead of Big Three's group. If they remained undetected, Lester would radio in to Abe on a secure frequency, and Big Three's group, in the LAVs, would then depart.
When the LAVs arrived within one hundred yards of Dymatech, Big Three would radio in on the same frequency, and Righteous's group would begin their operation.
The overall mission rode heavily on the success of the misdirection. If the HAC caught on that they were being played, Lester and his group could quickly find themselves in trouble.
Lester hoped for the sake of the men he would be leading that Big Three and his company could hold off Major Patriot long enough.
Abe sat at a command console in the teleporter chamber, his back aching despite the heated pad pressed against him between the chair and his spine. He envied Lester his youthful spryness and strength, though he would never envy the man's mental faculties. He snorted derisive laughter as he thought, in a few years I'll be too senile to envy him anything!
The faded sweater and corduroy pants kept him snug enough, but for some reason he still felt chill. He wanted to just put it down to his age, but Aberdeen Tyrannus was a super-scientist, a genius of the highest order. As such, he was introspective enough to know that a large part of his chilliness was just nerves.
Lester's group came filing into the teleporter room then, and Abe got up with a grunt, right hand reaching back to rub automatically at the sorest part of his back. He couldn't shake the sensation that although they'd formulated a precise strategy for pulling off victory over the HAC and getting the last Freeze Ray component back, something was going to go wrong.
"Too many years spent losing," he muttered to himself. "All right," he said aloud, addressing Lester's group. "You men know the risks of this mission. By being here, you have already accepted those risks. The United States Air Force has its greatest security personnel stationed at Area 51, and although they are seldom held up as a shining example of the military's might, I need to remind you that they have the best toys. There may be defenses there that rival some of my own technology. Follow Captain Righteous's lead, obey his commands as you would mine, and your mission will be a success."
The ten men standing around Lester barely even blinked, and Abe took this as a good sign. Too hardened to be affected by pretty words, he thought. Good.
"Doctor, there's a good chance that our communications will be cut off once we're down inside the primary facility. Do the returners operate on similar wavelengths?"
"No, Captain, they don't. The returners function on a standard quantum dialation. They will function under any environmental conditions, so long as the core is intact."
Everybody checked their returner devices, wanting to ensure their equipment was sound. When everybody was looking with anticipation at Abe, the old super-scientist smiled. It was a simple act, putting on that smile, but to Lester, it made his once-foe look momentarily like a much younger man, one full of laughter and good company. It smoothed the cheeks, brightened the eyes, and made the wild mess of gray hair on his head seem carefree instead of careless.
Lester thought this, and marveled that two words for the same thing could have such differing connotations. He saluted Abe, who returned the gesture and activated the teleporter.
They were off and away.
Big Three was no genius, but he had enough presence of mind to know it. He certainly wasn't stupid, either. Thick-headed and ignorant in many aspects of the world, yes, he could admit to that.
His father had once told him that he's always known Big for a fool. Yet, his father was also quick to point out that the boy was frighteningly good with his hands. He excelled at anything mechanical with a savant's ease, and military combat was, for Big Three, the only more natural thing in the world.
In junior high, he'd joined an informal pseudo-ROTC program partnered with his school district. Young Waylon Jeffries (for so Big Three was named by his loving parents) moved through his high school years with ease, attending Basic Military Training for the Marines in the summer between his junior and senior years of high school.
One of the things the Marine Corps had identified as a strong suit for Private Jeffries was his marksmanship, which came in handy as he used a silenced sniper rifle while laying flat atop an LAV to take out the Dymatech property's lone patrolling sentry. He had first loaded a tranquilizer, but through the scope he'd seen the sentry's boots, recognizing them as standard-issue HAC foot gear.
Big Three wasn't very bright, but had on hell of an eye for detail. He waited until the sentry was out of plain view of the front of the building and switched to a standard round, taking off the top of the man's head with his shot.
The burly henchman clambered back down into the LAV with the other six men riding with him. Once again his years of training and natural combat instincts descended over his mind in an icy fog. Battle fever, he thought. It blows through, and I feel fine.
He pushed the side of his earpiece to activate the microphone. "Unit 3, pound forward from eastern approach, ram ready. Unit 4, west approach. Units 2 and 5, follow me in to the front. Unit 5, you will break around to south rear when we close to one hundred yards. Copy?" Every unit commander gave him the copy call, and he signaled up to his LAV's driver.
At the front of the assault vehicle, under the front plates close to the ground, a piston-activated battering ram thunked out and forward, swinging up to attach itself to the front of the armored vehicle. Flanking the rounded front of the LAV, two heavy-duty chain guns sprang out of their compartments, swerving back and forth as the driver readied the weapons system.
The LAV began its final acceleration to approach.
Major Patriot watched on the monitor as the LAVs approached, his body taut with anticipation. Waiting around at Area 51 had been torture. Here, he would have the chance to spill some blood, thus slaking his own thirst for conflict.
He hoped.
When the LAVs started to spread out, he gave one of his demolitions men a curt hand signal. The easternmost LAV was on a direct course for one of the few traps the HAC troops had been able to set before the expected arrival of Dr. Tyrant's forces. The demolitions expert clicked the button on a small remote in his hand, and the world outside erupted in hellish noise.
The LAV, caught in the direct upward thrust of the blast, was launched flaming skyward, and a new battle was now begun.
Big Three cursed himself for a fool. They'd known his people would be coming, and despite the shortness of time they'd had to prepare, one trap had caught his people already.
He spoke into his mic again. "Unit 3, report damage! Over!" There was static and something garbled, but he couldn't quite make it out. "Unit 3, say again, over!"
"I think we're out of it," came the crackling reply. "Javier and Collins are dead, I'm bleeding and burning up in here, and Rogers and Carmichael are getting the bottom hatch open. We're a burning turtle here, over."
Big Three immediately changed tack. "All remaining units, centipede in behind me! Retract rams and prepare for armed exit response, over!" As he said this last, one of his heavies grabbed a wide shield of blackened metal, positioning himself at the rear door of the LAV. "Mitch, Jahovah's Witness on the door!"
"Roger that," his driver called back, pulling a switch. One hundred yards from the facility now, he brought the LAV's speed down. A missile port on the top of the LAV opened, and the weapon streaked forth ahead of Big Three and his units.
The resultant explosion brought a grin to his lips. "Let's ride."
The Major had to admire the discipline and speed with which Tyrant's people altered their strategy, flowing like water. He wasn't surprised, though; he suspected that Captain Righteous was in command of the oncoming force, and he would have the mentality needed to change in combat quickly.
"Everybody, get into positions," he said into his headset. Hunkered down in an office attached to the main R&D lab working on armors, Major Patriot itched to have his rematch with the outdated Ultra Soldier. This time, he would wring Captain Righteous's neck.
The explosion at the front of the facility shook the whole area, and was largely unexpected. He'd had men stationed by the front of the building. He wondered for a moment how many men had just died at Captain Righteous's command.
"I'll make you pay for that, traitor," Major Patriot snarled, checking the magazine on his rifle one more time. "Oh, how you'll pay."
The first three guards Lester's group had come upon never even heard them coming. With some minor adjustments made to the Stealth Suits by Abe, all eleven men were virtually invisible and silent. Potent sedatives were fired in tranq darts into the guards, and each man dropped without a sound.
Lester had brought the men through the northern perimeter of the Area 51 site, tossing them each easily up over the fencing around the area. The cameras nearby saw nothing more than a few playful kicks of wind puffing up loose soil and sand.
Those downed guards had, thankfully, all been out of sight of any cameras. Floating camera drones hummed about along with the fixed units, but these no more saw Lester's group than did any other.
The group reached a small outlying building on the open hardpan of the property and hunkered down behind it. Lester crouched in the center of the group, looking down but speaking just loud enough to be heard. "Okay, gentlemen, there are three possible sites here where the component could be located. You all remember what it looks like, right?" Fierce nods in the affirmative. "Good. Now, they still had it classified as 'Hero Action Committee Confiscated' last I knew. That's why we're assuming it could only be in one of three locations, because the HAC only has three small sites allocated to them here.
"We're going to break into two teams of four and one team of three, myself and two of you. Who has seniority?" Two hands went up. "Good. We'll be taking the site farthest from here. The other two teams will make for those closer two sites and sweep-and-search. If you lay hands on the component, double-click your commlink to let the rest of us know and get out."
Ten silent nods, then a flawless and unhesitant division into their teams. Lester led his two veterans south, crossing what looked outwardly like wide open spaces. He knew better, though. Dotting the landscape here and there would be short access ramps, camouflaged as sandy hillocks to the casual eye or skybound observations.
But Lester knew the layout of Area 51 quite well. He'd been out here numerous times on behalf of the HAC, transporting gadgets and gizmos used by supervillains for years. In one instance, he'd helped bring an alien bent on Earth's destruction to the base, a foul blue arachnid-like creature calling itself Femlik Galbracht, Colonizer Supreme of the great Kaltorik people.
This had turned out to be far from true. Under gruelling interogation and torture, Femlik had confessed to being a petty criminal from his home world on the run for killing the equivalent of a cop on his home world. His spacecraft had malfunctioned and wound up crashing into the northwestern woods of Montana.
If the Kaltorik ever found their way to Earth, the United States Department of Defense intended to hand him over as a sign of good will. Until then, a secure cell in the base's deepest levels was his home.
Lester found himself wondering how Femlik was holding up. He shrugged the question aside as his men neared the ramp he was taking them to, and he issued a sharp grunt to signal them to stop for him. AR-15 in hand, Lester approached the sand-covered ramp and descended.
A tan metal door stood at the bottom with a security badge reader next to it. He took the badge his team had plucked from one of the guards and ran it through, and a moment later the door whooshed open on an elevator. He swept in and motioned for his men to follow.
When they were all inside, one of the veterans pushed a button on his gear belt. The lights in the elevator flickered, then came back on somewhat dimmer than before. He pushed the only lit button, a green down arrow, and the elevator began its descent.
They rode down for only a minute when the elevator stopped and whooshed open. Lester and his men were looking down a narrow thirty foot corridor, terminating in a blast door. On either side stood two HAC operatives, each wearing a red armband. Their weapons were raised, but they looked confused.
Now came the moment of truth, Lester thought. He slowly eased himself out of the elevator booth, followed by his two men. The HAC agents were both now taking slow steps forward, seeing only an empty elevator that had, quite mysteriously, come down on its own.
Lester could tell that these two men, rattled by their strange predicament and surroundings, were nonetheless on top of their game. They kept their weapons ready, visually sweeping every surface of the tiny hallway.
It was the quick thinking of one of the veteran henchmen that carried them in that moment. The plain-faced trooper took a step back toward the elevator, reached back in, and hit the 'up' arrow, whipping his arm back out and around before the elevator could close on it.
Lester and the second henchman slowly flattened themselves against the wall opposite their crafty companion. The foremost of the two HAC guards took a step back and turned his head to speak over his shoulder. "Fetch Joey from inside. I want him to take a look at this thing, see what's going on."
The other trooper nodded brusquely, swiped his own key card through the reader next to the blast door, and stepped through when it popped open. The commanding guard came forward, weapon held down, and stood mere inches away from the Stealth Suit-adorned Captain Righteous.
Lester took him down with a single ridge-handed blow to the back of the neck. It wasn't as graceful a move as martial arts films often portray; it was more of a savage bashing near the base of the skull, causing a grunt from the victim, a squirt of urine into their breeches, and then the boneless collapse of the body.
Lester's stealth field had flickered out and come back into effect almost instantly. No alarms had been raised, but that wouldn't last long. He led his two men rapidly to the still-open blast door and through into a large, boxy chamber in which dozens of crates were stacked. A lowered section of the chamber presently held the second guard, speaking with another HAC operative, a younger man wearing lighter gear, a purple armband, and holding himself up on a table upon which stood several odd-looking instruments.
None of them was the Freeze Ray component, but Lester knew it could still be in one of those crates. Two other guards, both wearing blue armbands, sat at a card table to their right, smoking cigarettes and playing poker.
"Go on, Joey," one of these was saying. "The kid's nervous. It's either you go check it out or he gets his mommy," the Blue Team guard said in a childish, teasing tone. Lester had known plenty of pricks like this man in his life. They were the sort of men who expected to live lives of being on top, and never topped themselves.
He had a rude wake-up call for that fellow in mind. He hand-signaled to his two men to take positions in the room, and walked silently over to the card table. When he was within reaching distance, he tapped his left foot twice, deactivating his Stealth Suit.
His comrades were a split second behind him. The Blue Team joker almost shrieked at his sudden appearance, though his game partner was much more reliable. That worthy started to rise up and reach down for his sidearm, and Lester gun-butted him in the temple. He swept around the table and pressed the barrell of his gun against the joker's neck.
"Nobody fucking move," he snarled.
They had trussed up the four guards and the technician down in the device testing area of the chamber, and were pawing through the seventh crate when Lester heard a rapid double click in his earpiece. Somehow, he had assumed that his team would be responsible for finding the Freeze Ray component.
Still, he thought, a win is a win. He activated his returner, and vanished from Area 51.
Dymatech R&D Headquarters, Texas. There, the efforts of Dr. Tyrant's people were not going nearly so well. When the front of the facility had been blown out, the dire nature of the coming battle hit home for the HAC troops inside, and they responded with equal savagery.
Despite avoiding being riddled with bullets by staying behind his heavy's mobile shield, Big Three had been having a hard go from the moment they entered the complex. He and his units quickly got behind cover when they entered, but the HAC troops quickly came rushing from further into the facility to engage them. Their first salvo included a grenade thrown behind the henchman carrying the mobile shield.
That poor man had been blown apart, a red, ashy stain on the fallen shield. Big Three, only fifteen yards away, had been lacerated in a few places by shrapnel. He blind fired several bursts at the HAC troops, managing to clip one man in the throat, others scattering for cover.
One of the younger henchmen lobbed a flashbang across the entryway, bouncing into a hallway entrance on the left side of the room. The resulting bang and flash elicited shouts from multiple unseen HAC troops, and a handful of Big Three's people swept from cover towards their disabled enemies.
Big Three covered their crossing with nine other men, picking off three soldiers coming out of the right-hand hallway to try and halt their progression. When those three fell, the remaining henchmen split evenly and darted forward, weapons ready.
The smell of cordite, blood, and scorched concrete filled the air as Big Three moved to the right hallway, his nerves taut as a wire. He could hear the suffle and clop of heavy combat boots in retreat down the corridor, around a blind corner. He reached into one of his gear pouches on his belt and brought out a small handheld mirror, then edged to the corner so he could get a look in the mirror.
What he saw wasn't unexpected, but it did present its own set of problems. Another corridor, which opened out after thirty or so feet into a rounded vestibule. There were a few heavy-looking lab tables and a rolling chalkboard in view, and enough guns aimed down the corridor to arm a decent-sized street gang.
Across the mouth of the corridor, one of his men from the other team was doing the same thing. Big Three hadn't heard any gunfire from the other hallway; he assumed they'd subdued their enemies who'd been hit with the flashbang in a silent fashion.
Silence wasn't going to help much here. Big Three silently wished he'd thought to grab a few of the Stealth Suits for three or four of his men on this mission, by he quickly dismissed the idea. He didn't have that equipment, so there was little point in thinking about it.
Time to take a gamble, he thought, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a glove. He stuck this in a knife, and pushed it slowly out into the mouth of the corridor.
Rapid automatic weapons' fire screamed down the hallway, one bullet breaking the knife in half, tearing the glove away. He nodded to himself, then pushed away from the wall and crept back to one of his heavies, a thickly bearded lumberjack-looking fellow name of Thompson.
"Suitcase," Big Three said. Thompson grunted and shrugged off the large black rucksack slung on his back. Big Three undid the string tie, reached in, and drew out a heavy black leather suitcase. Something metal clanked around inside as he set it down on the floor. He popped the hasps, and a wire-rigged dual-barrel collapsable chain gun sprang up. Two long bandoliers of ammunition lay under it, and in the opened lid sat a small glass sensor.
There was also a small black remote, which Big Three scooped up. There was only one button on it, and he'd only need to push it once to get the device started. Big Three gently pushed the automated weapon back to the corner, then shoved it out into the mouth of the corridor and hit the button.
The weapon hummed as it fired three opening shots, at which point the motion sensor kicked in. The first three shots hit only lab tables, but it caused the HAC troops to flinch and fire back. Now given a frame of reference, the programming in the suitcase gun's onboard system took over, and it howled as bullets flew.
The device didn't simply throw bullets in a hailstorm, though. Dr.Tyrant had installed a limiter into the program, so that it wouldn't waste ammo. Two shots from each chamber for each movement in range of the sensor, no more. If it needed to be switched off, Big Three needed only to hit the remote's button again.
He intended to let the suitcase gun run its course. There were shouts of alarm and grunts of pain, and after nearly a full minute, the suitcase's ammo ran out, and Big Three led his men in a charge around the corner.
As a precaution, he stopped them halfway down the corridor and lobbed a grenade behind one of the heavy lab tables. The resultant explosion flung the table and two hiding HAC troops to one side, chunks of wood, marble, bone, flesh and uniforms soaked in blood trailing like streamers at a parade.
"Fun," Big Three commented. "Form up two groups. Group one, with me into the west wing. Group two, east wing. Engage for one minute then retreat to LAVs. Break!" The two groups were roughly evened out between skirmishers and heavies, and Big Three led his group through double doors leading west from this central vestibule.
He kicked his way into yet another corridor, this one flanked on both sides by work labs filled with running, hiding, panicking engineers and civilian researchers. One of these, a man in blue work coveralls, thought himself brave, storming out of a lab with a wrench held high, screaming as he ran at Big Three.
Big let his rifle hang by its strap and punched the courageous engineer so hard in the mouth that two of the man's teeth stuck in his leather tipless gloves. The engineer fell over with a dumbfounded glare in his eyes, blinking up at the hulking commando. "Stay down," Big rumbled. The engineer just nodded and eased his head to the floor.
A bullet smacked into the heavy kevlar gear coat Big Three wore, knocking the breath out of him as a welt immediately began to form over his stomach. He went to one knee, and three skirmishers quickly stepped in front of him and gunned down the HAC agent by the end of the hallway. The group pressed onward again, Big Three now in the midde of the group.
When they burst through the doors at the end of the hall and into a spacious, clean white lab chamber, the front three skirmishers were each shot cleanly and precisely in the head. Big Three saw past them even as they dropped, and in an office opposite the doorway, he spotted Major Patriot, looking one-eyed over the sight of a rifle.
Big pressed through his men as they took up position and started laying on heavy suppression fire. There were fifty feet of mostly open floor between his men, slowly spreading out in a line as they kept up their firing, and the office in which Major Patriot now crouched for cover.
Taking a knee, Big Three whipped his own bag around and pulled out four flat silver disc-like devices. He tossed them about the floor between himself and the office, throwing the last one right in front of the narrow office door. He'd seen the video of the New York assault; heavy gunfire wouldn't stop Major Patriot.
Having appeared to agree with Big Three's precaution, Thompson took out his own proximity mines, clicked them on, and tossed them onto the floor between the henchmen and the office.
"Keep firing, one more salvo," Big Three cried out. His men were disciplined to a fault. As soon as they ran out of ammo all, they reloaded in perfect unison and started to form up again.
Major Patriot stood up from behind the desk in the office, a cruel, sadistic smile on his face, his own rifle hanging forgotten at his side. He brought his arms up defensively in front of his face, and started around the desk to come for Big Three and his men.
"Retreat," Big Three barked, and his men took off. He, however, remained standing where he was until the Ultra Soldier stomped up too close to the proximity mine by the office door. The explosion, a banshee roar echoing like a call in a cave, vibrated Big Three's skull, not unpleasantly. Through the smoke, he could see Major Patriot getting slowly, groggily back to his feet.
"Come and get me, hero," Big Three muttered, turning and retreating down the hallway. The engineer still lay dazed on the floor, and as he thundered past, Big Three laughed at the sound of a second explosion.
Confusion abounded, but overriding that confusion was a white hot rage, and it was this that propelled Major Patriot to his feet after the second and third proximity mines caught him in their blast.
He threw himself in a simian leap across the room, landing in a crouch at the mouth of the hallway. Blood was streaming out of his gashed and burned forehead, and although his own armor suit was tougher than Captain Righteous's, a couple of burns and impact bruises already laid claim to his legs.
Speaking of Righteous, where was he? Had he been with another strike team? The Major tried to recall the faces he'd seen on the monitors, and with growing frustration, he realized that none of them belonged to Lester Collins.
If Righteous wasn't here, and Tyrant wasn't here, then this entire assault operation was being led by someone lower on the chain of command. From what Patriot knew of the superhero/supervillain world, there was usually one main reason to perform such an op; as a diversion.
As he charged down the hall, weapon back in hands, a sinking feeling settled over Major Patriot.
The Major rode in the gunner seat of the Hummer leading the chase after Dr. Tyrant's LAVs. The battle had been heavily one-sided thus far; twenty-eight slain HAC agents, five henchmen dead. The HAC troops brought along for this operation weren't rookies, either. Most were Blue Team members, and a few were Red Team. How they had been taken down so easilly, Patriot didn't know.
But he did know this; very soon, he would be in position to shoot out the anchor plates on the rear LAVs right treads. He lined up his shot, took it, and whooped as the vehicle careened off the road.
His own driver whipped the Humvee over, and Patriot, the driver, and their two fellow HAC troops got out, storming toward the LAV, weapons chattering for a second before they reached the rear loading doors of the vehicle.
Patriot held up his rifle, motioning for one of his men to pull the doors open. When the HAC agent did, they all just stared blankly for a long moment.
Major Patriot's howl of rage scared off wildlife for twenty miles around.