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Chapter 65 – Don’t You Know That …Alex cringed. “Another giant monster? But this one stuck a woman in a washing machine?”
Willow said, “Okay, it’s not giant like your tarantula —”
“They weren’t mine.” Alex couldn’t help the shudder that ran down her back. Because those giant spiders? Eww!
“— but it’s a big scarred thing maybe pro-basketball-player-sized, and it’s rampaging around some town in New Jersey, and there’s a toxic waste dump there, let me check … Oh, my God, you won’t believe this, but there’s like FOUR toxic waste dumps in this one town and one of them accepts radioactive waste no questions asked! What is wrong with these people?”
Alex asked, “How do you stick someone in a washing machine? I mean, do you give ’em a swirly?”
Willow said, “Umm, it wasn’t in her house. It was at a dry cleaner. So the washing machine was enormous. And it may have used toxic solvents, too, like perchloroethylene. And … I guess it’s a guy instead of a monster, because he would’ve needed to be smart enough to figure out how to open and close and operate that washing machine, too. So maybe … a really big guy? With lots of scars?”
Alex asked, “What else has he done besides push a woman into a washing machine? Because that sounds like jerky high school pranks, other than the whole ‘getting horribly killed’ thing.”
Willow said, “Well, if it’s the same guy, he’s ripped heads and arms off people and smashed them into jam.”
Alex winced. “Ripped heads off people? How strong is this guy?”
Willow said, “Nobody knows. But I’m guessing it’s somewhere between you and Azure Crush.”
Alex complained, “Willow, that’s not helpful at all! That’s like saying your height is somewhere between ‘the plane boss the plane’ and ‘honey I blew up the baby’.”
Willow winced. “Sorry, but I don’t have more. I mean, the police reports look like they got reported by a couple drunk guys and then typed into the system by Captain Hook. This is like the worst police reporting system on the planet.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Alex apologized. “I guess all this stuff is making me … crabby.”
Willow said, “I’m sorry I don’t have anything better than that. All I got is a really big man-shaped thing that’s scarred all over. And is strong. There aren’t even any police traffic cams or city security cameras I can tap into, and there isn’t even anything on YouTube or Tumblr or anything to look at, and somebody should’ve at least taken a couple snapshots with their phone and posted it on their Facebook page and then got it linked to StumbleUpon, but I got bupkis.”
“Bupkis?” Alex checked.
“Umm, yeah. Bupkis. It’s Yiddish. It means ‘nothing’. And that’s what I got so far. At least I got a great video of Jack telling me how great the cake is and then finding out it’s chocolate zucchini cake. And the thing with your dad is hilarious.”
Alex said, “Yeah, Dad complained a bunch, but then he was eating more cake after we watched TV.”
Willow frowned some. “My mom and dad liked it, too. But I told them I was seeing someone, and Dad’s pretty upset Jack isn’t Jewish, and Mom’s pretty upset he’s a lot older than me, and they’re both really liberal so they’re upset he’s in the ‘military-industrial complex’ and it’s not like I can ever tell ’em why I met someone like Jack or what I’m really doing with most of my time nowadays. Mom thinks I’m just ‘acting out’ because Larry Ellison stomped all over me and her cousin stabbed me in the back over the business, so now I can’t tell her about not being a virgin anymore, or making love with Jack, or going to meet his son and the SRI people, or saving the world, because she’ll think I’m ‘acting out’ some more. Secret identities suck.”
Alex cautiously suggested, “Umm, you know Terawatt could fly down and visit them and thank them for all the help their daughter is providing in saving the world from evil …”
“Oh, no!” Willow panicked. “No no no no! That would be of the bad! No superhero-y stuff! I sort of brought you up in conversation, and Mom lectured me for like twenty minutes on pathological behaviors and people stepping outside sociological boundaries and behaviorist theories on vigilantes and … and … Well, it was awful. I think it would be way worse if they knew about you and the superheroine dealie.”
Alex grumbled, “That’s not fair! You’re doing major superheroine stuff, too, and you’ve saved tons of people, and most of Arizona! Your parents are … jerky.”
Willow just kind of stared at her keyboard. “Maybe I’m not the daughter they wanted.”
Alex snapped, “That’s crud! You’re great! You’re smart and you’re wholesome and you’re pretty and you’re hard-working and you’re dedicated and you’re saving the world, too! And you had to put up with a jillion tons of crud when you were younger, and you still turned out great, and you’re a good person! And you didn’t even lose your virginity until you were nearly twenty-five! If the only thing they care about is you marrying some Jewish guy they have to like first, then they’re just big losers, because they should care about you being happy!”
Willow started crying, and it was really painful to watch. She said, “You’re a great friend, Alex. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
But Alex knew it was all her fault. If Terawatt hadn’t dropped into Willow’s life, Willow wouldn’t be dating Jack, and she wouldn’t be doing save-the-world stuff that she couldn’t tell her parents about, and she’d still be a virgin, and everything else. Alex felt lousy after Willow signed off.
A few minutes later, Alex’s Terawatt phone went off. Maybe it was Willow and she could apologize!
It was Jack. “Tera, we’ve got a problem in New Jersey. Are you free?”
She said, “Sure, but don’t you have enough manpower for this guy Willow was talking about?”
Jack said, “Yeah, if we assume we know everything this thing’s got, which — as you know — is a really bad assumption to have to make. The mayor of this dipstick town’s trying to call out the freaking National Guard, and it’s either us or a full-sized National Guard combined arms battalion. And that means shitloads of tanks and mechanized infantry and mortar platoons and sniper sections, and a ton of other stuff you really don’t want loose in urban ‘Joisey’. General Hammond’s boss stepped on the state governor calling out the Guard and ordered us to go instead. I’m choppering in with Klar right now, along with Mister Iowa and Action Girl.”
She didn’t ask where Jack heard the phrase ‘Mister Iowa’, because she was pretty sure it was from Willow, either directly or through Jack’s IT guys. Alex said, “I can be at Camp Atron in half an hour, or Edwards in a couple hours.”
Jack said, “Good. We’re gonna try something new and insane. In … approximately thirty-eight minutes, your Blackbird with the modded canopy is going to do a touch-and-go at Camp Atron. Their runways aren’t long enough for an SR-71 to land and then take off again, but they’re definitely long enough to do a long touch-and-go with a few seconds at maybe ninety or a hundred miles an hour. You’ll have to match speed to land on the canopy, then you’ll have a couple seconds to ooze into the cabin while the plane picks up speed again and you’ll need to get that port shut and sealed tight before the plane’s at serious altitude.”
“Jack, I don’t know if I can do that …”
He said, “Look, we can try this half a dozen times, if we have to. But you can fly at about ninety while you’re morphing, and even if you misjudge by ten or twenty miles an hour, you can take that hit pretty easy. I’ve seen you slam into stuff, y’know. I’ve even been the stuff you slammed into. Then you just have to blu-urp through the port and you’re in. I think it’s our best shot at a fast pick-up for you.”
It sounded pretty crazy, but Alex had done weirder stuff. And she’d timed it so she landed on top of trucks going down the interstate at way over a hundred before … “You know, maybe this can work.”
Jack smirked through the phone. “Of course it can work. I came up with it!”
She would have felt better about it if he’d said Willow had come up with it. Or Hermione. Or Sam. But she didn’t say so. She said, “Roger that. Thirty-eight minutes at Camp Atron.”
“Thirty-seven, now.”
She hung up and flew right over to her gym bag. Yep, all packed. She shoved her tablet and phones and chargers into their carrying case and shoved that in the gym bag, too. Then she grabbed the gym bag and flew downstairs. “Mom? Mom!”
“What, honey?”
She said, “Mom, I’ve got a Terawatt emergency, and I’m leaving in ten minutes. Can you fix me a couple roast beef sandwiches with a cold-pack?”
Her mom said, “Oh, my gosh, is that Colonel O’Neill never going to stop this?”
She said, “Mom, he gave me the option of saying no. But now we’ve got some kind of super-powered monster guy in New Jersey.” She cut herself a humongous slice of Willow’s cake and started eating.
Her mom looked like she wanted to wring her hands. Or burst into tears. Instead, she walked into the kitchen and started making roast beef sandwiches on the big hamburger buns Alex had just picked up the other day. She said, “Alex, I know this is important, but … what about your life? I mean, what about school? And college? And a career? And a real life with a husband and kids and things?”
Alex said, “I’m gonna make it work. I promise. But this kind of stuff? We have to handle it. If we don’t …”
Her mom whimpered, “I know. There was a special news report on you. They said … They talked to a scientist, some biophysicist or something, Dr. William Lee, and he said you’ve probably saved between a hundred thousand and four million lives, and saved hundreds of millions of dollars of property and buildings and such.”
She turned bright red. “William Lee? Balding, big glasses?” Her mom nodded. “Mom, Bill Lee works for Jack. You can’t believe what he says.”
Her mom said, “I’m gonna believe him a lot more than that idiot on talk radio who’s claiming you don’t even exist and you’re a government plot to trick the American public!”
She should’ve known loonies like that would turn up, sooner or later. She said, “You can’t pay any attention to some insano who probably wears a colander on his head all the time to keep secret mind-control satellites from beaming thoughts into his head.”
Her mom snorted with amusement, but said, “It’s not fair. You’re risking your life out there, and these … idiots think they can say these things … If Willow hadn’t lectured me on protecting your secret identity, I probably would have called that guy up and given him a piece of my mind.”
She swallowed a big mouthful of cake and flew over the table and gave her mom a huge hug. “You’re the best mom anywhere. Willow’s mom is being a total jerkhead about her dating an older man who isn’t Jewish, and her mom has this weird thing about superheroes being violent loons, so she can’t even tell her parents what she’s really doing.”
Her mom hugged her back and asked, “How long are you going to be gone this time?”
Alex admitted, “I have no idea. I mean, Jack has this new plan to get me to the East Coast super-fast, so if everything goes perfect, I could be home in time for dinner. Or it might be a couple of days.”
Her mom frowned. “How can you possibly get back and forth that fast? The space shuttle?”
Alex asked, “You remember the SR-71 Blackbird? The super-cool spy planes the Air Force used to have?” Her mom sort of nodded. “Well, they still have two. Both of ’em have a seat for a passenger, in case the Air Force needs to move an important general around the world super-fast. Jack has one of them modified so I can fly in and out of it without opening the canopy. It’s gonna fly into Camp Atron and I’m gonna hop onboard and morph inside before it takes off again, and an hour later I’m in New Jersey.”
Her mom’s mouth dropped open, and then closed a little, and then went open again, and then a little closed.
“Mom, you have guppy-mouth.”
Her mom clamped her mouth shut, then said, “When Colonel O’Neill said he was taking care of you, he wasn’t kidding, was he?”
Alex said, “He takes care of his people, even if they’re not officially under his command. Like finding a great home for Hanna, and finding a place Grover can stay even though he’s stuck forever being invisible, and like that. And he’s been really nice to Willow.”
Her mom scowled a little. “He’s really too old to be dating Willow.”
Alex said, “That’s what he said, too. I think Willow’s pretty determined not to let him get away.”
Her mom asked, “Just how determined?”
“Umm, maybe more than I wanna talk about?”
Her mom got that pinched look and she said, “Maybe I need to have a talk with that girl.”
Uh-oh. Alex didn’t know what to say to that. “Mom? Don’t hurt her feelings, but sometimes she’s a little TMI when it comes to Jack. Jack’s trying to be the ‘moving slow in the relationship’ guy, and Willow … isn’t.”
Alex left her mom standing there looking kind of shocked, and she stuffed the sandwiches into an insulated bag, which then went into one end of the gym bag. She went silvery and dived into the gym bag to change into Terawatt, and then she pulled the gym bag into her silvery morph.
She said, “Bye Mom!” and flew into the garage. A quick telekinetic tug to pop open the secret hole in the wall, and she was puddling down to the stormwater system. In less than two minutes, she was an aerodynamic, silvery shape flying toward Camp Atron at six hundred feet up.
She got to the tarmac at Camp Atron about five minutes ahead of the Blackbird, so she stayed silvery and hovered in the air way past the south end of the more north-south runway, just waiting to try something she wasn’t really sure she could do.
And then the SR-71 was coming in like a dart. Like a rocket-propelled dart. They had incredible acceleration, but slowing down wasn’t really their strong point. She tried to judge how fast it was going and when she needed to start along the runway to be at the right part of the runway at the right moment, but she knew she was going to be taking a guess.
The first time, she started out a little too late, and the jet was having to speed up and take off again before she got to the canopy. Crud! But she knew she was really close on the timing, so she just had to leave a little bit earlier the next time.
The Blackbird took off, soared upward, made a leisurely circle, and came in again. This time, she was maybe a little ahead of schedule, so when she slapped against the canopy the jet was still doing about a hundred twenty. Okay, that kind of stung, but it wasn’t too bad, and she went right into the little round port. The pilot cranked the Blackbird up as soon as she started flowing in, so he was already taking off again by the time she was inside and sealing the little portal back up.
The pilot said, “Welcome to the SR-71, Terawatt!”
She stayed silver and said, “I’ll be staying like this so I won’t be using any oxygen or needing a pressure suit. Just head for New Jersey.”
He nodded. “That’s what my flight plan says, ma’am.”
* * *
Jack waited until the helicopter was about to land. He spoke into the comms. “Klar goes with me, we’ll take the Hummer waiting for us below. You two stay in the chopper and start search patterns. Finn, you direct everything until you hear from me. Action, you follow Finn’s orders to the letter. If he tells you to jump out of the chopper into a lake, you do it. If he tells you to run away from the target, you do it. Capisce?”
Finn nodded crisply. Hanna said, “Yes, sir. Can I try to talk him into alternatives?”
“Yes. But no matter how convincing you think you are, at the end, he calls the shots, and you follow his lead. Even if you think he’s wrong. Got me?”
Hanna nodded slightly. “Yes, sir.”
Jack hopped out of the chopper and waited for Grover to clamber out after him. He sat in the driver’s seat and waited for Grover to hop into the back seat. Then he turned the ignition and headed out. “Okay, first thing, we’re gonna go have a charming chat with the mayor and the chief of police. The picture our IT guys sent me makes the mayor look like a beachball with a mustache, so I can hardly wait. But I want to know what the heck they think they’re doing calling out a National Guard armored battalion for a guy who mugged a little old lady.”
Grover asked, “So you want me to ‘suit up’?”
“Or in your case, ‘suit down’.”
Grover said, “The pavement’s plenty hot, but this is still gonna be better than winter work.”
Jack said, “Well, I don’t think you can operate in a heavy rain, or in heavy snowfall, or in standing water or a snowpack, just because you’ll be visible then, or at least traceable.”
Grover said, “Well, I’m still working on that problem, sir. But I’ve had some really promising results, and I think I’ll have something workable in another few weeks.”
Jack nodded. “That would be handy.” He kept driving, following the GPS directions to the mayor’s office. He could hear Grover moving around in the back seat, undressing.
Grover asked, “Do you think Hanna’s going to follow directions this time?”
Jack grimaced. “If she doesn’t, she’s out. She can work her way through high school and then West Point or Annapolis and start all over again with us, but that’ll take her six years minimum. And if it takes her six years to learn how to follow orders, then that’s what she’ll have to do.” He glanced into the rearview mirror to see if there was any moving clothing. “Anyway, Doc Fraiser will be a lot happier if Hanna’s out of the front lines for a while.”
Grover said, “Cindy doesn’t want her to leave in the fall, but I think her going off to play exchange student with Alex would be good for her. And it’d be good for Alex, too.”
Jack said, “The doc won’t like it, but it would give us a pretty sturdy two-person team in case of any West Coast problems.”
Grover said, “And you think there’ll be some, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jack muttered. “I figure Danielle Atron’s not going to leave her comfort zone without a lot of incentives. And I’m not convinced we’ve got all the GC-161 cases under control, either. And stuff just keeps popping up.” He parked in a visitor space and hung the ‘Department of Homeland Security’ tag on the rearview mirror to keep the local cops off the Hummer. Then he waited until Grover piled into the shotgun seat.
Jack opened the door, stepped out, and made a big show of adjusting his uniform, fixing his cap, and taking off his sunglasses. By then, Grover had clambered out of the open door and slipped over to the glass doors into the town hall.
Jack slammed the Hummer’s door and checked that it was locked. Then he walked up to the doors that led into the first floor hall of the building. He yanked open the door and stood in the doorway, giving Grover a chance to sneak past him. He snapped, “Isn’t there supposed to be a group meeting me?”
There were five cops stationed there, and it looked to his expert eye like there would normally be two. One on this side of a metal detector with a little conveyor belt through an x-ray machine for briefcases and purses, and one on the other side to make sure people got their stuff and didn’t try to run through the detector. Two cops were well behind the metal detector, and both were holding riot shotguns. The other cop was a point man, up front near the doors, where he could keep an eye out for trouble, or where he could be the one who got horribly killed while everyone else opened fire on the threat.
Jack knew this was overkill for one guy who had killed an old lady in a dry cleaner’s. There was something else going on. And he didn’t like not knowing what else that could be. The surprises that the SRI had turned up since he took command had been pretty sucky, except for some great soldiers, three teenagers who he really shouldn’t be dragging into ops like this, and a woman who was way too young and sexy and smart to be dating someone like him.
The cop on point stepped forward and asked, “Excuse me, sir, but who were you supposed to meet?”
He acted his most officious, and he snapped, “I’m Colonel O’Neill of the Department of Homeland Security, and I’m here because some pissant mayor wanted to call out a frigging National Guard combined arms battalion! So lead me to your mayor and your police chief, since they’re obviously not holding up their end of the bargain the National Guard has with cities!”
The guy said, “Umm, sir, I’m on spot duty here. I can’t leave my post. I’ll have to call for someone else to come down and take you to the meeting.”
Jack continued being a big pain in the butt. Willow told him it was one of his best impersonations. He kept telling her it wasn’t an impersonation, but she kept insisting on seeing the good in people. He snapped, “Fine. Open that side door so I don’t have to walk through that metal detector.”
“Sir, everyone’s supposed to go through it.”
Jack insisted, “You don’t. Your fellow officers don’t. I’m willing to bet your mayor doesn’t.” Jack was pretty sure of that, because the picture he saw made the guy look like he couldn’t squeeze through that metal detector if he turned sideways and sucked in his gut. “I have a sidearm, my uniform, four pounds of medals, a plate in my right leg, and a metal rod in my left arm.” The last two things were lies, but he wasn’t showing these dorks what he had strapped to his right calf and his left forearm. And he wasn’t letting them take his sidearm, either. Not until he knew what the hell he’d gotten his team into. Again. Granted, Lupo was champing at the bit to get back out in the field, Finn was pretty clearly enjoying himself today, and Miller was happy to be running a small team checking out one of the potential towns the IT guys had flagged as fiscally suspicious. And his teams in Russia were learning way too much about Russian and Eastern European liquors: that brownish-red stuff Gates sent him tasted like they’d filtered the alcohol by flushing it through old railroad ties.
So Jack bullied the police officers into letting him walk through the exit door and skip the metal detector, while two more officers came downstairs to take him to meet with Mayor McCheese.
They stepped onto the elevator, and Jack deliberately took the center of the thing, making the two cops have to back into the far corners or else stand so close to him he’d get to make homophobic cracks at their expense. But that gave Grover room to slip into the elevator right in front of him. Jack could tell from the pressure against his shins that Grover was crouched down, just in case.
The elevator doors opened, and Grover darted out. Jack moved out slowly, playing Colonel Self-Important to the hilt.
“To the left, and down the hall,” said one of the officers.
Naturally. The mayor had the biggest office in the building, and the one closest to that refrigerator. The not-quite-pretty secretary at the desk in front of the doorway had apparently gotten her style tips from old Molly Ringwald movies. She asked him, “Can I get you something?” But she asked it in tones that sounded suspiciously like Willow standing in the bedroom, asking him, “Can you help me with something in here?” And he knew how that one turned out.
Seriously, who would even have believed sweet, innocent Willow knew what crotchless panties were, much less owned a pair? And he knew damn well Alex hadn’t told her about them. Willow had another intel source he just hadn’t tracked down yet.
He marched into the mayor’s office. Jeez, the guy was fatter than the picture he’d seen.
“I’m Mayor Peter Belgoody, at your service! Please, colonel, sit down, sit down!”
He sat in the nice chair in front of the mayor’s desk. At least he hadn’t had to shake the guy’s hand. It looked flabby and greasy. He figured the guy’s motto was ‘I like my hands flabby and greasy, just the way I like my food!’ The mayor sat down, too, and the chief of police stood over at the side of the desk.
Jack went right into Colonel Insufferable. “You know, tons of people want the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Army, the Navy, you name it. But that doesn’t mean you get what you ask for. Now the Department of Homeland Security has real problems we’re fighting. You heard about that blob monster in Downingtown?” Both guys nodded. He went on, “We managed to stop it, but only because we spread our forces the right way when we had lots of demands on ’em. We can’t afford to have a whole freaking National Guard battalion wasting their time in this place if we might need ’em in ten hours in Trenton because they’ve suddenly got giant killer termites or something. So let’s make it simple. You justify it to me, and you get the troops. You don’t make me happy, and you get the finger. Now then …” He stopped and pulled out his phone. “I gotta take this call. It’s someone important. Don’t move. I’ll be back in less than five.”
He stomped out of the room like he was the only important person in the building. He really hated guys who acted like that, so he knew it would piss off Mayor McCheese and Deputy Dawg.
Grover had to make an effort not to hold his breath when Jack walked out. Jeez, Jack was really good at playing General Asshat. Grover just stayed put in the corner behind the chair.
The police chief asked, “What do we tell him?”
The mayor said, “Well, obviously we can’t tell him the truth. Guys like that?”
The police chief asked, “So what do we say?”
The mayor said, “No sweat. I’ll explain everything. If he buys it, we get the troops, and we get rid of our ‘monster hero’ problem. If he doesn’t buy it, he’ll make a big deal of rubbing it in our faces, and we act sad. Then he has an unfortunate accident on the way back, and we blame the monster, and we still get the troops.”
The police chief grinned nastily. “It’s a win-win for us.”
The mayor said, “It’s a win-win for Tromaville.”
* * *
Riley scanned the streets far below. He was using a monoc made for a sniper rifle. He didn’t like the sniper tasking on American soil, because it automatically meant dead people. But sometimes there just wasn’t a better option. He thought of that CIA HK team in Finland. He had shot a guy in the back at a quarter of a mile out, but he hadn’t had a lot of choice when that guy was about to shoot Alex with an RPG.
But there were no monsters rampaging through the streets. There was no rampaging going on at all.
If there was a threat so massive the police needed the National Guard, why were people just driving around and walking down the streets and acting like everything was completely normal?
* * *
Jack stiffly walked out of the mayor’s office for the second time. He took his time getting into the elevator, until Grover tapped him. He rode down, not worrying about the speed of the elevator, which apparently had been bought from those guys who made the unbearably slow elevators in hospitals. Then he took his time about getting out of the building. He opened the exit door to get past the metal detector and stopped to say, “Keep up the good work, men.” That gave Grover plenty of time to clear the doorway and move over to the glass doors to the outside.
He opened a glass door wide and then stopped to tell the cop still on point duty, “You need to get some body armor if your bosses are sticking you out here as bait.” That gave Grover time to get out the door.
He took his time moving across the parking lot to the Hummer, and he opened the driver’s door before he put on his sunglasses and slowly adjusted them.
Grover hissed from inside the car, “Watch out for ambushes. They’re gonna kill you and make it look like it’s the monster, so they can get their Guard invasion and get the monster killed off.”
A policeman walked up to Jack. “Sir? I’m Lieutenant Laks. The chief wanted me to show you the site of a recent killing spree by the monster, so you’ll realize how dangerous this thing is.”
Jack pretended to be stupid. “Very well, Lieutenant.” The guy did look pretty lax. After Jack shut down this town, the guy could be an ex-Laks. “Lead on. I’ll follow you.”
He hopped into the Hummer and started it up. Then he called his people. “Hannibal to Face. Looks like we have a situation K and L combined. Mad Dog and I are driving into a trap. I expect some extremely awesome backup.”
“Face to Hannibal, roger that. We are searching for your vehicle now.”
Jack slowly followed the police car through the rather calm streets. The suspiciously calm streets. Grover asked, “What’s a K and L? And how come I have to be Mad Dog?”
Jack grinned. “K means police involvement. L means mayor and/or city councilmen involved. This whole town is dirty. The cops in the atrium area? Every one of them knew there’s a serious threat out there, and it might come for the people in City Hall. But no one put increased police presence out on the streets to protect the citizens. And look around you. No one’s acting nervous. No one’s panicking. No one’s in hiding. Everywhere we go, it’s business as usual. Nobody’s scared of a monster rampaging around the town ripping people apart. But the monster must be doing something massive if a dirty mayor and a dirty police chief want National Guardsmen on their streets where they could see something.”
Jack made another call. “General Hammond? O’Neill on-site. Definitely not a Guard crisis. We need to get the FBI in here ASAP. The town mayor and police chief, at a minimum, are severely dirty.”
Hammond replied, “Understood, colonel.”
Jack added, “And the EPA, because there are way too many waste dumps in the town. Oh, also, the cops are about to try and kill me and frame their monster.”
“Colonel!”
He casually added, “Oh, I’ve got Klar hidden in the car with me, and Major Finn overhead in a chopper with Action Girl.”
“Still, Colonel, planning the murder of an Air Force colonel? I think your case just jumped to domestic terrorism. Maybe the Guard will have to sweep that town, just to collect all the police officers.”
Jack said, “I’m just guessing, but I figure the cops on duty and not hiding behind the metal detector at City Hall and not funneling me into this deadfall are probably okay. Mostly.”
“I’ll give that intelligence to the FBI when I contact them, Colonel.”
“Thank you, sir. O’Neill out.”
Grover cleared his throat. “Okay, I get why you’re Hannibal. I mean, you’re the colonel and you’re in charge and you come up with the plans. And I get why Major Finn is ‘Face’. But why am I Mad Dog and Hanna’s Amy? Why not Mr. T? I mean, B.A.”
Jack grinned. “Oh, I’m hoping Mr. T’s gonna come swooping out of the clouds in a little bit.”
“Oh. Right.”
The cops pulled into an alley that looked like the setting for a film noir. It was dark even during the day, because of the buildings on either side. It widened out into an area that could have been pretty, but instead looked like — and smelled like — garbage that hadn’t been picked up, and no-longer-stacked pallets. It was the kind of armpit that even homeless guys would pass on.
Jack clambered out of the Hummer and left the door open as he put away his sunglasses. “Ahh, the olfactory tour of New Jersey. This stench tells me we’re in Tromaville.”
Lieutenant Laks and his sidekick pointed guns at Jack. The lieutenant said, “Shuddup, flyboy.” Two more armed cops came out of the shadows, both with guns.
Jack calmly said, “You do realize that I already called DHS and told them about this little trap, right? You’re now moving from plain old corruption and five-to-ten-in-the-state-pen crime up to domestic terrorism, and life in a federal supermax lockup with some really bad types. But that’s assuming you won’t get the death penalty.”
Lieutenant Laks smirked. “We won’t even get arrested. We’re gonna hack you to pieces and blame our monster, so your bosses will call in the National Guard.”
Jack said, “Why don’t you losers just do your jobs and apprehend him? He’s just one guy. Or are there any cops around here who are competent and aren’t on the take?”
One of the cops, a short, fat guy holding a shotgun incorrectly, laughed crudely. “He’s too cheap to put the whole force on the pad.”
Jack nodded. “That’s about what I figured. You four, and a couple guys off-duty now, and a couple other guys at city hall protecting his fat ass.”
With a sneer, Lieutenant Laks said, “Smart. Too bad you figured it out a little late.”
Jack coolly said, “Oh, I think I figured it out right about the time I met Mayor McCheese in his big office with your sleazebag chief of police. That would be the time I actually called in for reinforcements.” He didn’t change his voice as he said, “Finn, if you would be so good as to give these creeps a warning shot?”
Suddenly there was an ear-shattering boom, and the street shattered precisely between Lieutenant Laks’ feet. He screamed and fell over backward, dropping his gun and scrambling on his butt to get away from the impact.
Jack said, “Everyone? Drop your weapons. Then take your holdouts out and drop them, too. Then handcuff each other. Otherwise, the next shot goes through you. The long way.”
The short lardball with the shotgun swung his weapon toward Jack. “Oh, I don’t think so, wise guy. As long as we got you as a hostage, we got a way out of h–…”
Jack just smiled as the barrel of the shotgun suddenly swung skyward, and a piece of pipe clocked Tubby on the back of the head with a loud thwok. The guy’s eyes rolled up in his head and the guy collapsed face-first to the street.
Jack pulled out his own sidearm and cocked it. He asked snidely, “Anyone else feeling particularly stupid today?”
Just about the time one of the two still-standing cops started to move, a rope hit the ground and Riley Finn came rappelling to the street in full Army Ranger gear, including a wicked-looking M4A1 rifle with an M203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel. Grinning, he said, “Major Finn reporting for duty. And I’d like to point out that I haven’t gotten to shoot anyone yet today.”
Both standing cops dropped their guns, and Lieutenant Laks whimpered.
Hanna came rappelling down as well, and landed crisply. Jack nodded at her, too, and said, “Let’s get these disgraces frisked and handcuffed. Figure every one of them has a handcuff key on ’em, and a couple have a spare. So pull their belts, their shoes, any ankle holsters, their badges, their hats, whatever.”
Lieutenant Laks quietly crawled backward a few more feet, angling toward a huge pile of full garbage bags he could hide behind. He wasn’t expecting an immense thing to rise up behind him and roar angrily at him.
“GRRAAAAWWWRRRR!!”
Jack calmly said, “And here we were wondering how we were going to find this guy.”
* * *
Alex flew through the air. She was going so much faster than she could usually do. She loved getting to take the Blackbirds. They were so cool, and they went so fast, and they went so high you could practically see the whole world beneath you. It was awesome. Mega-awesome! And after she bailed, when she was zooming through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, it just made her feel like a real superheroine, like one of the women from Selina’s world or something.
She popped her tPhone out of her silvery morph just long enough to get a GPS reading. She was heading right into downtown Tromaville, which from her altitude looked even ickier than the pictures Willow had sent her. It looked like it was one-half urban blight, one-half grubby city, and one-half toxic waste dumps. And that added up to one and a half, but this place looked like the kind of place so awful that Maggie Walsh’s blob wouldn’t want to go in it.
She checked for further messages, but all she had was a GPS beacon from Jack. So she headed straight for it.
* * *
Hanna watched in fascination as the monster-man picked up the bad lieutenant by both legs. The lieutenant screamed, wet himself, and then passed out. Not a very brave officer. The monster didn’t look all that scary. He was tall and strong, but so was Major Riley Finn, who was even cuter than Charlie, even if Major Riley was too old for her. The monster was covered in scars, but she didn’t find that scary. She decided that Colonel Jack and Major Riley could have stopped this thing without her and Klar along.
Colonel Jack walked right toward the monster. He said, “Okay, put down the nice police officer.”
“Grawr!”
“Okay, the not-so-nice police officer. But no holding the ankles and playing ‘make a wish’.”
Hanna remembered just the other night, when Janet had cooked fowl and had shown her how to play ‘make a wish’ with the wishbone, so Hanna even got Colonel Jack’s joke this time. She was pleased with herself. Not so pleased she was losing situational awareness, though. When the two still-standing policemen tried to make a break for it, she slid to one side and used one officer’s momentum in a hip throw that rammed him into one of the brick walls. Major Riley used the stock of his M4 like a pugil stick and dropped the other officer.
Hanna decided that what she really wanted was a chance to fight the monster-man and see just how strong he really was. That looked challenging.
Jack said, “See the two people behind me? The ones with the big deadly weapons? If you don’t put the lieutenant down — safely — I’m going to let them come over here and beat you up.”
Hanna slid into a balanced stance and said, “I’m ready right now, sir!”
And that was when the monster-man threw the lieutenant.
Riley saw the monster hurl the unconscious policeman right at Colonel O’Neill, who couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. Fortunately, the colonel went flying backward into a pile of garbage bags, instead of into a brick wall.
The monster turned to run, but a steel pipe leapt up off the ground and dived right in between the monster’s legs, tripping him. Riley hoped Klar moved back out of reach of those massive arms.
Hanna let loose with a primal scream and attacked. No SAW, no combat knife, just a hundred pounds and change of genetically-enhanced girl. She sprinted right at the monster.
The monster was quick. Riley noticed that. It was nearly back on its feet before Hanna reached it. Riley had sparred enough with Hanna to have a pretty good idea of what Hanna could do when she wanted to, but still, this was chilling.
Hanna stomped the thing’s right instep hard enough to make it freeze in pain. She followed that up with two absolutely brutal strikes to the thing’s midsection, followed by an elbow-strike to the solar plexus. Hanna kneed the thing in the groin and followed that with a downward blow from her leg that should have crushed the thing’s knee. It finally managed to get an arm down to try and stop her, so Hanna grabbed the arm, did a devastating two-armed strike that probably hyper-extended its elbow if it didn’t break the thing’s arm, and then hung onto the arm to move into a shoulder throw that slammed it to the asphalt.
The thing hung onto Hanna’s hand and used its grip to throw her twenty feet through the air into a brick wall.
Riley knew that what he’d seen would have killed either of them if they’d been merely human, but he also knew that neither of them was. The monster was already clambering back to its feet. Hanna was already pushing herself back up. What Riley really wanted to do was put a nice little three-shot grouping into the thing’s leg, but he’d seen how fast it moved when it needed to, he had no idea where bullets might ricochet in this narrow combat zone, and he had no idea where Grover was. Okay, weapons fire was out for the moment.
He pulled out his combat knife and charged it. He knew the thing was stronger than Hanna, and almost certainly tougher than her, and possibly it even had faster reactions. That wasn’t good, when Hanna was stronger and quicker than even an Army Ranger. But Riley knew something else from watching it. It had no training in martial arts and minimal experience in combat, even counting that alleged ‘ripping a guy’s head off’ claim.
It turned to face him, so it didn’t see the steel pipe that rose up and smacked it in the back of the head. It took a swing at Riley with a fast but ugly roundhouse punch that was chock full of inexperience, and it tried to get a look behind it to see what was attacking it from behind.
Riley ducked under the badly-thrown roundhouse and used that to move halfway around the thing. He kicked it in the back of the knee and hammered it in the kidney using the butt of the combat knife like brass knuckles. It staggered and nearly fell, which put it in position for a wicked sidekick from Hanna.
Hanna was back in action, and if her expression was anything to judge by, she was pissed. And thrilled to have an equal in live combat. Blood was running from one nostril and the corner of her mouth, and she was going to have a black eye by tomorrow, but for right now she was living in the moment. Her kick pushed it back, and her follow-up kicks caught it in the solar plexus and the face. It tried to grab her leg, but she was too good, and she had her leg properly snapped back out of reach when its massive hand swept by.
That steel pipe swung in again, catching it in the side of the neck. But the monster was faster than Grover, and it caught the end of the pipe, shoving it away. An invisible shape went crashing backward, and the end of the pipe stayed in the thing’s hand.
The thing swung the pipe in one hand while lashing out in a fast backfist with the other. The pipe caught Hanna across the ribs, driving her back against one wall, while the thing’s backhand came Riley’s way.
Riley blocked the swinging arm, but it was like blocking a falling tree. The force still knocked him backward, and he hit the ground pretty hard. He expertly turned it into a roll that put him near his M203. Now that he knew where Grover was, he was considering taking a shot at the thing’s upper chest from the prone position if it —
Suddenly the entire alleyway was lit up with a bolt of lightning that tagged the monster right in the head. It convulsed for a couple seconds and then slowly toppled over backward. It groaned, “Grrgh …”
Terawatt swooped down, her hands pointed at the monster in case it still wanted seconds.
And a blonde in a white dress came staggering down the alley. She was frantically swishing a white cane back and forth across the ground as she blindly made for the only noise in the alley.
“Uggh,” the monster groaned. “My head!”
The blind blonde girl tapped her cane against the monster’s side and then dropped to her knees to hug the thing. She burst into tears as she furiously yelled, “What the hell did you do to my boyfriend?!”
Three teenagers simultaneously muttered, “Uh-oh.”