“We plan for days and days, and when the time
comes, we proceed to improvise.” -Quicksilver
During their long trip to Nevada, Lester learned a good deal from Abe, and Abe from Lester. To begin with, Abe explained the Gray Strike Force, a little-known and extremely secretive division of the Hero Action Committee’s organization. They had no official listing on any records, answered to none of the other color-coded teams or commanders, and frequently had no other connection to the military outside of their enlistment with HAC.
Abe himself had only learned about the Gray Strike Force because of a fluke. During a consultation he’d partaken of with a fellow check-in parolee, a superhuman villain known only as The Bolt, Abe came across several old marble notebook journals. He took a peek inside of them, but could only tell from what little he’d read that the man seemed to feel persecuted. He also learned that The Bolt’s real name was Jeremy Silverman. The Bolt had invited Abe in to help him construct some security systems and monitoring devices, as he’d become increasingly paranoid, certain that he was being watched by someone with hostile intentions.
After setting up the hidden surveillance equipment, he’d returned a few days later to find Silverman holed up in his basement, unkempt, trembling, and half-raving like a lunatic. “They were here, Abe! I knew it, I knew it!” Abe had reviewed the video records from the hidden cameras and discovered that The Bolt was not imagining things at all. Several strange men in plain gray suits had been caught moving close to the house, one of them even entering The Bolt’s home and doing something in his kitchen cupboards.
Using scanning devices, Abe discovered what the man had been up to. The Bolt, though superhuman, still needed medications to keep himself healthy. Traces of someone else’s fingerprints were on Silverman’s medication box, the pills in his Wednesday and Thursday spots switched out for near-identical capsules filled with an exotic toxin that would, after just two doses, likely kill the superhuman.
The two once-villains laid a trap that Wednesday. Certain that these unknown strangers would want to check on their handiwork, Abe had disguised himself as Silverman with the use of a device of his own invention, called The Chameleon Field. Using short-range scanners, it produced an illusion of Silverman over him. Thankfully, he was about the same size as The Bolt, and so when he tucked himself into Silverman’s bed and covered himself with the sheets to the gut, he presented just the right image to anyone looking in at him.
The Bolt himself, along with two stealth assault drones Abe brought over, laid in wait on the roof of the house. At around two in the morning, an old Lincoln Continental rolled up out in front of the house, and three men in crisp gray suits and fedoras came stalking up to the front porch. One stepped onto the porch itself, while the other two split up and went around the sides of the house.
Abe could feel eyes upon him for a few seconds, before he heard a ‘thump’ and felt the house shake. He heard the metallic scraping of one of his stealth drones and then a wet, smacking sound through the window over the bed. A minute later, he heard grunting and the scraping, dragging of feet. Sitting up, he deactivated the Chameleon Field and turned on the bedside lamp as Silverman came into the room, dragging one of the gray suited men behind him by the ankle.
The interrogation yielded less information than they would have liked to get, but considering what they’d known before, any information was good to have. The agent they’d captured informed them that he identified himself as Gregory Ray Rose, or simply Agent Rose. His teammates had been known to him only as agents Tulip and Daisy. Abe thought this rather humorous and somewhat clever, though Silverman had reacted by sending a bolt of electricity through the man’s testicles.
That had loosened the man’s lips even further, though they still didn’t learn much. The Gray Strike Teams, Abe informed Collins as they jounced along in the transport, worked in teams of three, and three teams were joined together to form what their organization referred to as a Host. Each Host operated independently of the others, none of the agents knowing the identities or operative names of the other Hosts. In this way, the Gray organization, which worked indirectly with the rest of the HAC ground forces, operated in a splintered and autonomous fashion.
The Grays weren’t military in any way, the agent informed Abe and Silverman. Most of them had been recruited from different organized criminal outfits. Some had been elite henchmen prior to joining the Grays. A handful of others came from law enforcement agencies, and two that the captive agent knew of had formerly been professional hit men. All of this information Abe passed along to Collins, Big Three and Boe, the latter two men having joined them in one corner of the transport in seats bolted to the floor.
When it came to Collins’s turn to speak, he spoke to Abe and his two commanding officers about the operational guidelines and procedures of the modern-day HAC, as best he knew them. Having never heard of the Gray Strike Teams, Lester realized that what he knew of HAC’s operations might not be thorough enough to keep them one step ahead of the agency, but Abe assured him that any information he offered up could be put to good use.
Firstly, he revealed, the presence of a handful of Red Team members at the assault on Abe’s property was not standard. He also knew, from the equipment transport load outs, that there had been two distinct Green Teams present, also not standard operating procedure for an initial strike. Such was usually a tactic reserved for the second or third engagement in an anti-villain campaign. HAC, in other words, was already treating this situation as an ongoing conflict.
The next phase, he informed them, would be the introduction of waves of other teams, each colored division represented by at one team except or the Greens, who would always come in two or three teams, being the lowest-ranked division. If more than three engagements occurred, however, they would only see Green Team One, a group of sixty heavy infantrymen, all of them hardened war veterans.
Past seven engagements, however, and the Green Teams would disappear, replaced entirely by Purple, Blue and Red Team forces. Each color division had a specialization, Lester informed them. The Greens were infantry and heavy infantry. The Purple Teams specialized in technological warfare, including a non-combat splinter division composed of hackers, programmers, and engineers who devised weapons, armor, and support equipment for the rest of the organization. For Abe’s particular style of villainy, they were perhaps the most troublesome. He remembered once, back in the late 80’s, when someone unknown to him had cracked the security of his computer systems, and stopped his plans in their tracks. Lester chuckled and informed him that he’d probably been hit by the Purple Team’s civilian sector.
The Blue Team was a swift-moving group, specializing in hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, traps and environmental combat. They, Lester revealed, were his favorite teams to work with. Though their specialization implied a certain haste and brashness, all of the Blue Team agents were calm, composed, and thoughtful. They, of all of the HAC forces, were the least likely to kill without good cause. The Blue division, along with the Green division, hosted most of the field medics within the organization.
The Red Team comprised itself of specialists only, Collins continued. Heavy combat specialists, snipers, reconnaissance and forward strike teams, and infiltrators, men and women who could cut through the crap and get to a villain in short order. Some of their members made heavy use of combat enhancement technology created by the Purple Teams, and to devastating effect. Some infiltrator squads made the use of other forces unnecessary against lower-tier villains.
Lester finished his account by naming off the various members of the HAC high command, as well as naming a few of the operations officers who seemed to be on the fringe of the organization. These men he knew the least about, though one, Colonel Brant Chambers of the United States Army, gave him an overall ill feeling. “There’s something about Chambers that always struck me as off.”
“How do you mean, sir,” Kurt Boe asked, sipping at a can of Coke.
“I’m not sure exactly how to put it,” Lester replied, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “He’s not the sort of man who seems comfortable in his uniform. It’s almost like he’s an actor playing the part of a military man for the first time after spending a long time doing Shakespearian theater.”
“So, he seems like an imposter,” Abe suggested. Lester nodded, because that was the exact word that had always come to mind when Collins caught sight of the colonel. “I’m sure Farris has a contact or a mole somewhere in the organization. He might be able to find out more information for us, if it’s even necessary.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it for now,” Lester said. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you about, and it’s a lot more important to us. It’s about the Freeze Ray.” Abe cleared his throat, looking up and thanking one of Big Three’s men for bringing him a cup of coffee made with a small kitchenette area of the mobile command center. “Abe, when I turned it over to my superiors at HAC, I told them the device had been broken.”
“I remember hearing about that when I was locked up,” Abe replied slowly, taking a sip of the coffee. It was sludge compared to what he was used to, but caffeine was caffeine, so far as he was concerned, and he’d never been fond of soft drinks. For now, it would have to do. “What of it?”
“It was never broken,” Lester said quietly. Abe could barely breath, his chest constricting. Was this the sort of break they needed? Or was Lester about to reveal that things were even more complicated than they needed them to be right now? “I remember looking at it as you were struggling against the restraints I slapped on you in your command lab, and it occurred to me that the device could be disassembled into three separate parts.”
“I designed it that way for compact transport,” Abe said.
“Well, I split it into its three parts,” Lester said quietly. “I took the central core to HAC, and they had no idea. They didn’t even care. The only major problem is that the power core was in that central part, and from what you’ve told me, we need that before we can do anything. The two parts I kept hold of can be replaced, can’t they?”
“No, they can’t,” Abe replied quickly. “I made certain that each part had a bit of that meteorite material in it, so that each component was irreplaceable. Lester, by doing that, you actually made all of this a bit easier for us. It means that HAC only has one thing we need to get at from a position of weakness,” Abe said, feeling a bit more animated, more excited. “Where did you wind up putting the other two pieces?”
“Well, one of them is in my old headquarters in New York City, in Manhattan,” Lester replied. “I haven’t been there in four or five years, but that’s where I keep all of my old operations equipment, preserved for historical purposes. The other part, the handle and loading chamber, I gave to my younger brother for safekeeping. He lives in a town southwest of Minneapolis, place called Burnsville. He works at a casino up in that area.”
Abe felt a shiver work through his body. If they worked quickly enough after arriving at his base in Nevada, they could have two of the three components of the Freeze Ray in their possession in less than a week. He would have to get in touch with Farris again, though, because the skeleton crew he’d received would not be large enough to fully staff and defend the base, let alone split into operational field units. And he’d have to ask for at least six or seven engineers, because the base would require all sorts of updates and upgrades. The drones he had there were at least twenty years old, and completely out of date, and none of the perimeter defenses would be up to snuff.
In short, he had a lot of work to do, and very little time or resources to do it all in. They would have to lay low until he got more henchmen, at least, which put them behind the sort of schedule he wanted to be on. Still, he had Lester now, and the old superhero, with whom he was truly starting to feel completely at home with, might help make things a lot easier.
Time, he thought, will tell all.
The Leader reviewed the report in his hands, faxed to him from a small office supply shop in the operational zone. He read through it quickly a fourth time, committing the information to memory before taking a match and setting the pages on fire, dropping the pages into a metal waste basket to burn harmlessly into useless ashes. Such was the way of the Leader and his Grays.
No emails, no text messages, and no cellular phone calls. That was the basic tenet of communication for the Company. For their personal lives, such things were fine, but each one of the Grays knew that the needs of the Company came first and foremost; to try and do otherwise would be akin to signing one’s own death warrant.
The Fox Host had completed its work simply and efficiently. Bantor, being the fool that he was, would believe the field report he received from his follow-up investigation team. Evidence at the scene would now show that Tyrannus’s forces had begun the fatal battle, fired that first live round. Everything would look as the Leader wanted it to look. No questions would be asked, and with the fax destroyed, there was no evidence remaining that any report had been sent, so long as his agent on the other end did the same with the original.
He’d called agent Franko earlier to ensure that no witnesses would present a problem. Everything had been handled in the standard fashion. The Leader regretted having to kill capable Red Team members, but they couldn’t be allowed to report their run-in with the Gray Team, especially since two separate teams had been utilized.
The Leader thought over the situation. He’d overheard someone speaking with Michael Pitch, informing the field commander that he would be taking a team after Tyrannus. That’s good, the Leader thought as he lit a cigar in his office. Pitch is more than capable. He’ll hand pick only the best to go after Dr. Tyrant and Captain Righteous. The Captain would be a huge problem, however, and Pitch himself had some ethics that might prove troublesome. There could be need for someone from Sierra Host to get involved there. Perhaps, he thought, my top agent.
The Leader puffed out a couple of huge clouds of smoke, leaning back in his thickly cushioned chair and putting his feet up on the desk. He would have to keep a close eye on Erin Bantor for the next few days. What the head of the Hero Action Committee decided to do would influence the Leader’s next step. He only hoped that Bantor wouldn’t do something foolish.
“I don’t understand, sir,” Michael Pitch said, looking at the report from the field. “I thought the engagement was going to be non-lethal.”
“That’s what we had hoped for,” Bantor replied, pacing in front of his desk. “We don’t know where Tyrannus and Collins are now, or where they might go. We have a list of all of Tyrannus’s old facilities, but they’re all being monitored closely. No activity.”
“It could be he had another hidden base,” Pitch said, reaching forward and setting the report on the congressman’s desk. “What sort of team am I to put together, sir?”
“You can have your choice of agents,” Bantor said. “Thirty total men, five non-combat agents from the Purple division. They might be able to help you pinpoint Dr. Tyrant’s new location. I also want you to know that I’m sending Major Patriot with you,” Bantor said, coming to a stop after walking back around behind his desk. “Select your men, then meet with the Major at Andrews Air Force Base. He’s already there, waiting for your team.”
Pitch saluted the congressman, then showed himself out. Something was wrong about the entire situation, he thought. The report had been clean, clinical, and straightforward. Nothing about that bothered him. No, what stuck out for Pitch was the idea that Aberdeen Tyrannus had apparently authorized live fire, a notion that screamed ‘falsehood’ in Michael Pitch’s mind.
Before leaving the HAC headquarters, he would speak with someone he trusted a lot more than Erin Bantor. He would get a different perspective, hopefully one with a far more critical eye and deeper thought process. Pitch spent twenty minutes speaking with that man before departing entirely, on his way to the HAC barracks to select his squad. He had no idea that he’d spent that twenty minutes speaking with the Leader of the Grays, and no idea that a fax would soon be sent from the Leader’s office to a sergeant’s office in Andrews Air Force Base.
That fax gave the order to kill Michael Pitch.
The drone driving the transport vehicle sent a message back to Abe that the convoy would arrive in Nevada in seven more hours at their current pace. The old super-scientist thanked the drone for its input, then turned to Collins. “You and I won’t make the trip ourselves from here,” he said, sending an order to all of the transport drones to pull the convoy off the road. Collins, curious, held still until the vehicle came to a complete stop.
“What did you have in mind,” he asked as Abe ordered a henchman to open the back of the transport. The door slid up on its track smoothly, and the loading ramp whirred as it extended to the ground along the old dirt road they were on.
“I have a single-use teleporter device on the third vehicle,” Abe said, hurrying along down the ramp a few paces ahead of Collins. “I can program it to take us to George’s office in Seattle, so we can get more henchmen. I’m sorry, but we need more manpower, and the drones I’ve got in Nevada are in need of replacement. That won’t happen without engineers to help.”
“This is an all-out campaign now, isn’t it,” Lester asked as they stepped to the back of the third transport vehicle.
“What was your first clue, Lester? When a bunch of HAC soldiers in full combat gear opened fire on my men, or when the first corpses hit the ground?” Lester flinched at the harshness of Abe’s question, but he couldn’t blame the once-villain. Everything that had happened thus far had come as the result of decades of antagonism between Abe and the Hero Action Committee. Lester knew that in the last twelve years of Tyrannus’s career as a supervillain, his forces had taken a far worse beating than the HAC teams sent after him. The fatality rate by then had been a single HAC agent for every twelve henchmen killed in battle, a ratio unheard of in other villain/HAC engagements.
Abe went out of his way to preserve the lives of even his enemies; HAC, on the other hand, had seen fit to become more aggressive with every passing year. “I’m sorry, friend,” Lester muttered, shaking his head. “I know this must be difficult for you.” Abe turned and looked long and hard at the powerful hero in his scale-like armor, and though the set of his expression held stern, he replied softly.
“It has been hard, yes. But life has ever been hard for men of greatness, such as you and I. Now come along. You and I are going to Seattle. Boe will lead the rest to the Nevada base, an we’ll get there with George’s help after we convince him to give us more manpower. We’re going to need it.”
Few things came together as expected, in the sergeant’s experience. The fax he’d received from the Leader gave him his instructions quite clearly, and he would follow them to the letter. Still, he could never have guessed that the Leader would break his own established protocols this way.
The last paragraph instructed him to hold onto the printout until he could show it, and the orders themselves, to the other operative on the grounds of the base. Once acknowledged by that man, the fax was to be destroyed, and the target waited for patiently. There had to be a careful methodology employed in disposing of the target, but it had to be done under tight time constraints. The sergeant himself already knew that the target would be expected to arrive within five to six hours, a complete and battle-ready contingent with him. Separating him from the rest of his unit would be tricky; finding a way to explain his failure to return to them would be far more so.
With the fax folded and tucked into the lower leg pocket of his BDU pants, the sergeant hopped into his Humvee and drove from the base’s north side to a small building that housed an on-base gym and fitness center for the resident enlisted and officers serving at Andrews. He parked the big black SUV at the front of the building and headed inside, his stride measured but forceful. The set of his eyes, his brow creased and jaw locked tight, cast an air of ‘get out of my way’ around him. Useful, considering his being rushed. While he hadn’t checked ahead to make certain, the sergeant had spent more than enough time learning how to figure people’s habits over time.
He was only four strides into the building when he glanced over at the check-in sheet on the counter, slowing his pace just long enough to read over the last few names scribbled down. Sure enough, the man he was looking for was here. Too long at this work, he thought. Maybe I can retire in a year or so, be done with all of this nonsense. Not that he really minded the job; working for the Leader had been nothing if not beneficial for him, especially financially. He simply had come to the realization that working with all of these superheroes and supervillains over the years, crazies and weirdos all, had become increasingly hazardous to his health.
The operative he’d come looking for had his own special equipment in the basement of the fitness center, an area cordoned off only by word-of-mouth, for which the sergeant also let out a silent thanks in his mind. He descended the stairs to the basement, where a man who looked to be built like a six-and-a-half-foot mixed martial arts fighter stood, a set of pulley grips in his hands. Chains reached up from the grips, up over a pair of counterbalance wheels, down into two small holes in the floor.
From having been to this basement before, the sergeant knew that each chain had been attached to square, one-ton weights under the floor. The level beneath the basement was reserved for only equipment and the two or three specialists, as well as key personnel, such as the sergeant himself, who serviced it. The man before him did two more pulls before looking up and taking note of the sergeant, letting the pulleys go slowly.
Two more exceptions to the rules, the sergeant thought. He and I serving the Leader, both of us military men. But I’m not really an exception, am I? I was selected before the Leader made that rule. This man, he’s the exception, the lone aberration. And I have to work with him. The sergeant kept his expression neutral, flat, and held the faxed sheet of orders to his powerful colleague.
A set of brilliant blue eyes locked on the sergeant’s own. “Give me an hour, and I’ll have it figured out. Come see me at the armory south entrance then, sergeant.” The man handed the fax sheet back, snapping off a quick wave of the hand to dismiss the sergeant. As the sergeant climbed the stairs out of the basement, he thought to himself, It makes sense that he dismiss me. Superhero or not, Major Patriot is a major, and rank means everything.
When Abe had tossed the thin metal disk on the ground, Lester Collins worried that the device wasn’t functioning. However, the disk quickly expanded with various collapsible plates spreading out, and soft yellow lights glowed up from each plate. A small controller pad popped out of the front of the device, which Abe used to program in the precise coordinates of George Farris’s headquarters for the International Henchmen’s Union. Using satellite imagery, he made a few small adjustments to place Lester and himself in the large Zen garden in the center of the complex.
“Step on up,” he said to Collins. Abe stepped onto the disk with him, and with the push of a button and a flare of lights, they disappeared from the side of the old dirt highway. Kurt Boe walked over to the disk from the back of his transport, staring down at the device in awe. He’d known for a long time, all of his life, actually, that Aberdeen Tyrannus was a genius. He’d never dreamed he’d have the chance to see, first-hand, the super-scientist’s handiwork.
Boe smiled, and wondered what his parents would have said about his position now. After eight years spent burning his way up the ranks of George Farris’s organization, he could now speak with Dr. Tyrant anytime he wanted.
He only wished his mother and father could see him now.
When Lester’s vision came back to normal, and he could see once again the world around him, he realized that the sun had already been fast on its way to setting. Whatever happened here at the Henchmen’s Union, he and Abe likely wouldn’t get to the Nevada base until at least an hour past nightfall. That, of course, assumed that Abe could get his old friend to give him more help without any incident.
Abe, being accustomed to the use of teleporting technology, could presently see and hear as normal, so he caught out of the corner of his eye the flickers of movement that would normally have put Lester into a combat-ready mode. Only a few seconds later, Abe felt a grin slowly curl his lips, as Lester did go into a defensive posture. His sight had cleared, and the dozen or so resident henchmen swarming into the walkways surrounding the garden weren’t exactly trying to mask their movements.
All of them looked like Lord Claw’s old troops. Abe didn’t know it, but Lester’s mind raced at that moment with possibilities. He wondered if any of these henchmen were old enough to remember him, because the sight of the insignia on their black upper-body tunics awakened a long-forgotten memory for him. Those were bad days, Collins thought. Horrible days. Days I wish I could take back.
Abe’s grin began to fade as he realized that the armed shinobi warriors were not sheathing the various weapons they had drawn, despite his presence next to Lester. “Hey now, boys, it’s me,” he said to the foremost henchmen, only their narrowed eyes visible to him beneath their solid cloth facemasks. “Dr. Tyrant. George sent me a skeleton crew early this very morning,” he said, and took a moment to catch his breath. He could hardly believe that so much had happened, and all in about twelve hours, a little less. His entire life had become a bad comic book again.
At least I’m aware of it now, he thought. One of the henchmen barked a sharp order in Japanese from the rear of the group, and as they parted, Lester and Abe watched an older, white-haired gentlemen, dressed in the sharp, crisp blue uniform of a Japanese officer of the Second World War approach them in a wheelchair. In his left hand he steered the chair with a control stick; in his right hand was a pistol, which he held trembling in his lap.
“Aberdeen,” the wheelchair-bound man breathed, his eyes locked on Collins.
“So, George, you do recognize me,” said Abe, adjusting his glasses and then folding his hands behind his back. “What’s with all the hostility?”
“The hostility,” Farris asked quietly, finally turning his head to face Abe, his eyes glittering on the edge of panic. “That, my old friend, would be because you’ve brought Captain Righteous into my sanctum. You’ve brought the very man who put me in this chair for life!”
It had been a bad couple of years for the Hero Action Committee when mid-1976 rolled around. Captain Righteous, though not the only superhero at the organization’s disposal, was certainly the most utilized. He’d only been an active agent for a few years, but he was the only one who answered wholly and completely to the HAC command.
As such, the scientists who’d helped engineer the Ultra-Soldier experiments were shocked when their higher-ups demanded they find a way to get Righteous refreshed and ready to go out into the field again. He’d finished a campaign against a villain calling himself Pojok the Mighty in March; by early April, HAC already wanted him to go after the nefarious Lord Claw.
But the Ultra-Soldier had been worn down. In 1975, from July to December, he’d gone out on fifty different mission assignments, all of them involving heavy hand-to-hand combat. In mid-January of 1976, he’d been sent after Pojok’s forces. Fifty-eight days, and he’d been fighting almost every single one of them. Even with his armor suit, his ranged weaponry, and his skill in melee combat, the Ultra-Soldier was just burned out.
On May 18th, 1976, the chemists assigned to the effort stumbled upon a breakthrough; by taking a sample of Captain Righteous’s blood, they discovered that his body didn’t use any more adrenaline than a normal person would. This meant that they could draw some of the chemical from him and process it, so that he could be given an injection of his own natural adrenaline any time he wanted or needed it.
On May 22nd, 1976, HAC-developed combat drones were set against Captain Righteous after he’d been given a dose of adrenaline taken from his own body. The aggression response had kicked in less than a minute after he’d taken the shot; the chemist who’d administered the chemical barely had time to escape the testing grounds before Righteous loosed a war cry and began tearing the machines apart with his bare hands.
On June 19th, 1976, an adrenaline-fueled, hazy-minded Lester Collins, known to the world as Captain Righteous, had gotten hold of the target he’d been aimed at by the Hero Action Committee, and snapped the man’s spine over his knee like a dry twig.
“I don’t remember much of it,” Lester said, finishing his story as Abe and Farris sipped sake from white and blue cups in the center of the Zen garden. Abe and Collins had lowered themselves to the ground as soon as Farris had made his proclamation, the super-scientist taking his cue from Lester. As soon as his butt hit the ground, Lester told Farris that he remembered reading the field reports after that long, hazy year came to a conclusion. He’d rattled off the information as best he could remember it, adding in his own dry narrative here and there. “But I do remember what finally made me realize I had to stop taking the adrenaline. I’d been in the middle of a battle against Peter Laef’s henchmen, and I pulled the syringe out of my belt. When I looked up, I saw that some of those men and women were little more than boys and girls, high school or college-aged kids, really. And there I was, about ready to just rip them apart without a second thought. I tossed the needle and beat them all pretty badly, but I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve tried as hard as I could not to again since then.”
“There are times when it cannot be avoided, though,” Farris rumbled thoughtfully.
“Yes, that’s true,” Collins replied. They looked together up at Farris in his wheelchair, sipping his tea quietly and keeping his eyes locked dead ahead. He said nothing, bringing the small cup down from his lips with minimal movement. When he finally turn his attention towards his guests, his eyes fell first upon Lester Collins.
“Mr. Collins,” George Farris said quietly. “I forgive you.” The words came out slowly, carefully measured vowels clearly pronounced. He then turned his head, looking to Abe. “Aberdeen, my old friend, I will help you. Fortunately, Kurtis Boe, who I sent to you already, had already compiled a list of henchmen units who should be sent to you, in the event you needed them.”
“He must’ve thrown that together pretty quickly,” Abe said, coughing afterwards.
“Not at all,” Farris replied. “Mr. Boe has updated a deployment list for you for the last four years. He specially requested he be sent to you if the need should ever arise, even if he was assigned at the time to another client.” Abe raised an eyebrow at Farris, his curiosity piqued.
“Any idea why?”
“No, Abe,” Farris said. He turned his wheelchair around with the control stick, handing off his cup to a nearby operative, who bowed and sprinted away. He motioned for Abe and Lester to follow him out of the garden towards the main building. “When you get back to where you’re going, you may want to ask him about it. I’ve inquired, but he never opened up to me about it.”
The interior of the main building possessed none of the cultured, refined appearance of the external grounds or central garden/courtyard, but instead was laid out like an enormous military facility. Tall, wide corridors of slate gray or drab green walls, colored arrows with signs indicating different sectors of the facility, and alarm klaxon triggers set every couple of dozen yards. Armed guards, some in the gear of shinobi, others in the equipment layouts of paramilitary forces, patrolled in groups of three as they passed through.
After a series of twists, turns, and a few ramps going deeper into the facility, the trio finally arrived in George Farris’s central command chamber. Here, with the exception of several high-tech hanging walls upon which control panels had been installed and the buzz of electronics, the classical Imperial Japanese flare made a resurgence to the eye. This is what the war rooms of feudal warlords must have looked like, Abe thought, peering around the expansive chamber appreciatively. Very nicely executed, old friend.
“Gentlemen, allow me,” Farris said, rolling himself up to a long, narrow bamboo table, set at the height of his own knees for ease of use. He opened a small Sony Vaio sitting on the table, tapped in a handful of commands, and then clicked his mouse several times. With a grin, he looked up at Abe. “The coordinates of your base?” Abe rattled off the numbers for him, and Farris entered a few more commands into his system. “As simple as that. Everybody on Mr. Boe’s list no already en route from your initial group shall be prepared to depart in two hours’ time. Until then, I recommend you both make use of the transporter’s ready-room to catch some rest. I will come rouse you when all is in readiness.” With that, George Farris grunted a command to a nearby shinobi, who smartly saluted Captain Righteous and Abe, then led them to a nearby study, replete with luxurious, antique couches for laying back upon, and a fully stocked refrigerator and attached bathroom with handicap access.
Abe sat on one of the couches, took his heart medication, and lay back. He thought he might be too jittery to fall asleep, but two minutes later, he proved himself wrong.
Commander Michael Pitch gazed out of the window of the rear seat of the Jeep transporting him onto Andrews Air Force Base, a storm brewing in his mind. Before leaving D.C., he’d been approached by Senator Wolfe from the HAC’s commanding council, and what the junior Senator said to him made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want any part of this mission. Orders were orders, but a good soldier knew when to question them.
The junior Senator simply wasn’t convinced that Tyrannus was wrong, or lying about the situation with the polar ice caps. While neither he nor Pitch could be said to even come close to understanding the science of it all, they both knew that Aberdeen Tyrannus was not an idiot, and not one to lie about scientific data. For a man whose entire criminal career had been predicated on his technical and scientific genius, it simply wouldn’t fit his profile to do so. Whenever Dr. Tyrant had bragged to the HAC about a device he’d just invented to insure their total destruction, the device was wholly real and functional.
HAC just always got the drop on him before he could use device X, Y or Z against them.
Added to this was the Senator’s concrete certainty that Captain Righteous would never turn villain, and once again, Pitch was inclined to agree with the politician. The solution that Pitch arrived at while being driven to the base was simple; he would speak with Major Patriot, use his own knowledge of Righteous and the superhero’s record of service as a way to break the ice and get this new Ultra-Soldier to see that he and the Senator had the right of things in this case.
He’d heard through the grapevine that while Major Patriot was a brute, the superhuman agent wasn’t a moron. Top of his class at West Point, excelling in every field of study a soldier or scholar could achieve while in the ranks of the United States Army. A high-caliber officer with standards of efficiency and the ability to cut through the crap in a hurry. He’s my one good shot at putting an end to all of this insanity before it gets worse, Pitch thought. And if Bantor still wants us to do the op, I’ll just have to put him out of his misery. This shotgun works on villains of all kinds just fine, he thought, patting the weapon slung across his lap.
When the Jeep finally pulled to a stop outside of a squat house on the base’s south end, the driver hopped out and opened the commander’s door for him, snapping off a smart salute. As he was about to climb back in, a previously unseen sergeant came from the deep shadows at the front of the house and told the private to take a hike. A cigarette cherry glowed in the night, and Michael Pitch thought for a moment he recognized the NCO.
“Sergeant, I’m here to speak with Major Patriot,” Pitch said quietly.
“I understand, sir. He’s inside right now, having a talk with congressman Bantor,” the sergeant said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “You can head on inside.” Pitch thanked him, and headed up to the darkened doorstep. He didn’t knock; as the ranking officer on base now, outside of any generals present, he needn’t bother. Pushing his way inside, he found himself stepping into a small entryway, to the left of which was a living room. There, dressed in black and gray urban camouflage BDUs, was the hulking Major Patriot. He stood with his back to Pitch, facing a television atop which sat a webcam. On the screen was congressman Bantor, dressed for his evening in a sweater and red-and-white checked pajama pants.
Behind the congressman was a quiet, homey little living room. Or rather, it looked homey at first, until Pitch took a few loud steps into the room to announce his presence, so as not to spook the superhuman Major. Upon further inspection, he could tell that most of the furnishings in the congressman’s living room were antique, and likely quite expensive. Typical political dog, he mused.
“Ah, commander, I see you’ve arrived,” Bantor said. Patriot turned to face him, hands still clasped behind his back, and Michael Pitch finally got to see this new Ultra-Soldier face-to-face. What he saw was a man with the sort of granite countenance that one might imagine the Vikings of old had chiseled out of granite, in honor of the All-Father or his son, the mighty Thor. “And just in time. Major, you’ll brief the commander en route?”
“I will, sir,” said Patriot, not looking away from Pitch as he offered his hand. Pitch let go of his shotgun with one hand, letting the carry strap hold the weapon aloft for him. Patriot didn’t pinch down too hard, but Pitch could tell there lay brutal, savage power pent up in those enormous paws. When he let go, his hands immediately adjusted his weapon grip out of protective instinct.
The television screen went blank, then changed automatically to a late-running baseball game. “What’s going on, Major?”
“A new development, sir. It seems Dr. Tyrant was quite serious about letting the Hero Action Committee know the errors of its ways. He’s deployed a battalion of combat drones to a small woodland area just north of us here. Someone may have leaked the location of our deployment to Tyrant earlier today.” Pitch nodded briefly, watching the Major swiftly leave the living room and come back with a heavy green duffel in each hand. “You and I will rendezvous with a forward scouting party about five miles north of the base, and then proceed from there.”
Pitch followed the Major outside to the Jeep, where the sergeant already sat behind the wheel. Didn’t want to raise the alarms by having the private do the driving or ask questions, Pitch thought. As soon as the Major was in the back seat with him, the sergeant pulled away from the front of the house and sped towards the base’s north gates. The gates swung open long before they pulled up; haste was the order of the day, it seemed.
When they’d driven about four miles north, the sergeant slowed the Jeep and pulled off of the main road, onto an old dirt path leading into the edge of the woods. When he was a couple of hundred yards into the trees, the sergeant killed the lights and parked the Jeep. “We’re here, sirs,” he said stiffly. “I’ll wait here in the event we need to evacuate the zone quickly.”
Pitch and the Major hopped out of the Jeep, and the moment they did, Pitch sensed something out of place. Coming around the front of the Jeep, he glanced quickly over at Patriot, who stalked quietly next to him north along the path, his hands clenching into fists and loosening again. Where’s his gear bag, Pitch thought. Where are the perimeter guards? Who was that sergeant?
Too late, he realized the entire emergency situation was a ruse. Too late, he realized that congressman Bantor on the television in Major Patriot’s living room hadn’t been wearing his glasses, yet had seen him quite clearly on his computer or matching television screen. Too late, he thought about the quality of Bantor’s voice, how it had been too nasal.
Too late, he whipped himself to his right, raising the shotgun’s barrel towards Patriot’s head. The superhuman agent had already brought his left hand around, though, grasping the end of the barrel and crushing it shut like so much Play-do. What happened next was the sort of thing one seldom saw outside of a forensic science-based crime drama show.
When Michael Pitch pulled the trigger on his 8-gauge combat shotgun, with the barrel pinched down like it was, a series of split-second events took place. First, the concussion force and power of the burning gunpowder rocketed back toward him at the speed of sound. The back of the weapon splintered apart, and fragments of the slugs and weapon speared through his arms, shoulders, chest, neck and face.
Several bits of the backfire ripped across and through his forehead, tearing the flesh away in a ragged flap, the tail piece plunging into his left eye, reducing it to a sac of pulpy white mush. The burning gunpowder scorched a jagged hole in his throat and jaw, the edges dribbling both blood and melting flesh. Staggering back a step, the already-dying Michael Pitch’s arms dropped, but the ruptured weapon was fused to his ruined right hand, along with the carry strap, melted into his flesh. His lips, frothy with blood and chips of pulverized teeth, slid about wetly as he managed to voice his final words on the mortal coil. “What’s that smell,” he asked, just before falling forward in a ragged heap to convulse on the ground. The only mercy for Michael Pitch was that a fragment of the backfire’s carnage cut a streak through the part of his brain that controlled pain response; he felt nothing for the full six minutes it took for his heart to give out from shock.
When the commander’s bladder and bowels voided, Major Patriot and the sergeant rolled his body onto a tarp, which they then wrapped around the body and loaded into the back of the Jeep. When they arrived in the dead of night at the small graveyard that the Major had chosen earlier as Pitch’s final resting place, they were let in by three stout men in plain gray suits. Driving through the silent grounds, the sergeant stopped finally after a couple of turns along the unpaved pathway that wound around and through the property. Three more men in gray suits, standing by a mound of freshly removed soil and a gaping hole in the ground, waited for them.
The Major and sergeant hopped out and carried Pitch to the grave. An empty casket lay in the bottom; it was one of the many empty military coffins lowered into the ground in the area, and thus served as a perfect location to dispose of the Leader’s problem. Half an hour later, as the last bit of dirt was pressed down atop the grave, Major Patriot looked at the inscription on the headstone. Here lies Lieutenant Christopher Penders, USMC, it said. January 17th, 1981 – August 4th, 2012. The unfortunate Marine’s empty casket had only been lowered into the ground a week after his announced death, and here, three days later, a body was in the box.
“Too bad about the demotion,” said the sergeant quietly. The Major’s icy glare turned to regard the other man for a moment, his eyes glinting with the shine of murder.
“Show some respect,” the Major rasped. “He died serving his country. Sometimes, even the best soldiers have to die, for the benefit of this proud nation. I would have preferred an honorable fight, but the Leader’s orders must not be obeyed.” The Major’s jaw worked like he was chewing on something for a moment, then clenched as he snapped off a salute to the headstone. “Come on, sergeant. Let’s get back.”
By the time the two soldiers in the Jeep had gotten back to the cemetery’s gates, none of the grey-suited men were in sight.