|
|
Chapter 159 – Marching OutAlex listened as Riley talked about the history of the Congo, and why it was still a really dangerous place because of people more than because of wild animals. He even talked about this Belgian guy who wrote some really cool books that sounded like something she’d enjoy reading.
She’d had a chance to call home a bunch of times and talk to Ray, and Shar, and her dad, and Louis and Marsha, and Nicole, and Robyn, and Gloria. And her mom again. She hadn’t been able to tell most of them why she was blubbering on the phone, but just talking to them made her feel a lot better. And Ray totally thought it was okay if she killed some hostiles who killed an entire town and were trying to kill her and Hanna and Jack, no matter how old the hostiles were, and that made her feel like less of a monster.
Riley kept calling his wife every half hour or so. Whatever Sam was doing, she started sounding better, like she could breathe more. Alex made a mental note that Terawatt needed to go through a bunch of Red Cross classes, and maybe some Army field medicine stuff. If you could fix what happened to Sam with field stuff, that was something Terawatt needed to know about.
And Jack had taken Alex aside and talked with her for a long time about her nightmare and about her maybe killing three children, because there were places in the world where kids just as young but not super-powered would try to kill you with knock-off AK-47s and stuff, and American soldiers in places like Somalia had to be willing to shoot, or else they would get shot. She wasn’t sure she had what it took to be a real soldier.
It was weird, but just talking with Jack for a while made her feel a whole lot better. So did the crying, but she didn’t think anyone else in the jet would cry about this kind of stuff. Even if Jack sort of got teary when he was talking to Charlie.
But they were going to be over Sam’s compound pretty soon.
She thought Jack had a pretty good idea when they only had one parachute. They really didn’t need more than that.
And Jack had been busy on the phone, even when he wasn’t talking to Charlie. He had to call General Hammond and explain about the Midwich children, and about their op to the Congo to stop whatever some Orphans were up to, because — thanks to Senator Kinsey being a sneaky jerkhead — Jack currently had the authority to fly to the Congo with SRI forces just on the say-so of one non-military person who was saying she got shot by an Orphan.
And he had called Willow a couple of times. Willow and Hermione had found pretty much what was Jack’s guess about Midwich. There had been a tour bus allegedly from Eastern Europe of doctors and hospital workers, supposedly looking at modern British medicine in action. But they hadn’t gone to any British hospitals, and they arrived in Dover just two days before the Midwich deal, and then they traveled back to the continent only a couple of days later, to vanish without a trace. That bus was probably twenty-five doctors and twenty-five assistants and who knew how much medical gear to do what Maggie Walsh needed. And the suspicious bureaucrats Hermione had come up with were straight out of the Riddle-Appledore war within the SIS, including a Parkinson and an Ashford, both of whom were now dead.
And Hermione wanted to talk to Terawatt about Ron proposing to her, and ask if Annie Farrell or Terawatt could come to the wedding. Alex said yes even before she thought about it, and if it was going to be in September, Alex would have to get out of college for a couple of days, and she’d probably have to ask Jack if he could fly Terawatt to England in the Cessna for the wedding.
And Willow wanted to tell Jack she’d already talked to Mrs. Murdock and bought the house and called several construction companies and architects to get bids, and she’d already bought a floorplan-designing program and sketched out what she wanted as the floorplans for all three floors, and she’d see if any of the architects would go along with what she wanted and submit a bid.
And finally, Willow called to say Sergeant Harriman had something lined up at the closest landing strip that would have a runway and jet fuel for the Cessna, which would still put Jack hours away from the compound. And it had taken two hours of re-tries to get through to the Thornberry vehicle, and they were packing up and driving back to the compound to help. And they acted like it was perfectly normal for Eliza to be out for a day or two or three on her own in the middle of the jungle, with nobody but Darwin, who was a chimpanzee. Willow thought that made her own parents sound like micro-managers.
Alex thought it made Willow’s parents sound like Mom and Dad of the Year, but she didn’t say so. How could you even survive being alone in the jungle for days without any supervision?
Oh, wait, Hanna could. Or Terawatt could. Or Azure Crush could. And the girl had frightened off a full-grown leopard. Maybe Mommy and Daddy Thornberry weren’t worried about Little Thornberry because, just possibly, Little Thornberry was the most dangerous thing in the entire jungle.
Alex immediately stepped over and told Jack and Riley and Hanna. Jack just said, “I figured it wasn’t just that the kid had really bad B.O.”
Sometimes, Jack was the weirdest combination of eight-year-old boy and wise old man. Well, wise old wacky guy, like the old hermit who had lived out in the Paradise Valley woods and who had once been a great biochemist.
* * *
When they reached the right coordinates, Riley jumped from the plane with the one parachute and the big gun bag, which was on a long cord.
Alex was right on his back, in her silvery morph, with Hanna already pulled into the morph. All of Hanna’s weaponry was in the gun bag, so Hanna was light enough to fly with. That meant they could help Riley in one extra way.
Alex clung to Riley’s side until he reached for the big handle to release his chute. That was when she dived straight down, following her tPhone’s GPS information so she was headed right for the compound. She beat Riley to the ground by a long ways, so she had time to dart over to a big open area in the compound. Jack had explained that she needed to pick an area where Riley wouldn’t be in danger of landing up in a tree, or in a river, or on a fence.
She let Hanna out of her morph, and she popped free the last thing Jack had given her: a flare. She used her TK to rip off the tear-strip and ignite it, and she planted it firmly in the ground. Riley was a pretty awesome paratrooper, but having a target and a good idea of ground level was always a good thing.
Then Alex jetted over to the jeep with the solar panels on top. And there were two people inside. Sam, looking awfully pretty for someone who had been shot a couple of times, and an early-teens girl who would have been a target for someone like Libby. The girl was still skinny, and had her hair up in pigtails that didn’t suit her at all. She was wearing braces and a pair of glasses that made her look nerdy. Plus maybe she could use a good foundation to hide those freckles, plus … Well, really she just needed a couple of years to mature.
Alex used her TK to unlock the jeep’s door, and she rapped on the window before opening the door.
And … oh crud, Sam had her shirt off and there was a huge needle stuck in her side with blood and stuff oozing down a tube, and there were bandages, and an awful lot of blood. “Sam? Are you okay?”
What a stupid question. Sam totally wasn’t okay.
“Hi, Terawatt. I’m better than I was an hour ago, but I could use a lot of help. Eliza’s been really great. But if you could free the doctors trapped in the far trailer, I could really use a transfusion and some surgical assistance.”
Eliza looked at Alex with huge eyes and babbled, “Terawatt! You’re Terawatt! For real! I mean …” Her voice rose to a squeal. “I’m talking to Terawatt!”
Alex smiled. “Pleased to meet you. As one hero to another.”
Sam said, “One superhero to another. Eliza talks to animals, and understands them.”
“Me?” Eliza squeaked. “No! I … I mean … Well, anybody can talk to animals, people talk to their pets all the time!”
Sam insisted, “She didn’t scare away the leopard. She talked to it and got it to leave. She has a chimpanzee. She had an argument with it. My best guess is some sort of projective and receptive empath, so she can interact with the brain functions of the animals. And maybe strength and stamina, because she’s swinging on jungle vines like a monkey.”
Alex looked at Eliza and asked, “Can you sense people’s emotions, too?”
“Not for trying … I mean, no! I can’t do any of that stuff! I don’t have any powers! At all!”
Riley came rushing over, and Alex got out of his way. He held Sam gingerly and checked her vital signs and then started looking over her wounds. “Tera, can you get the doctors free, so Sam can get some medical care?”
“Sure thing, Colonel Finn.”
She flew over to the trailer where Hanna was straining to pull apart a chain that looked like it was supposed to hold battleships in place. And the lock was huge, too. She’d seen soup plates smaller than that thing. Even with Hanna’s strength, it wasn’t budging. And Hanna was fully armed from Riley’s gun bag by then, but Alex doubted there was a ‘jaws of life’ in Hanna’s gear.
Hanna looked over and said, “We will need C-4 unless the general can pick the lock or you can open it.”
Alex grabbed the lock in both hands and tugged with her arms and also her TK. Nothing. Maybe Azure Crush could open the lock that way, but Alex sure couldn’t. So she hung onto the lock and concentrated on the part where a big key would unlock it. She focused, and she could feel with her TK where the cylinder was, and where the pins were, and if she just pushed the pins out until the cylinder would turn …
The cylinder turned halfway around, and the hasp came out of the padlock.
Behind her, Eliza gasped. “Gosh, you’re really strong! I tried getting … umm … someone … to tug on it … I mean, obviously a person couldn’t pull it open … and … never mind.”
Alex looked at the worried girl and wondered if she’d been this bad when she was younger. Eliza wasn’t very good at the secret identity thing, and she was pretty panicky about the whole deal, too. Alex sighed. “It’s okay. We’re not going to tell everybody, and we’re not going to let someone hurt you. In fact, I can help you. In a lot of ways.”
“No! I’m fine! And I don’t have any secret abilities! Honest!”
“Well, if you don’t have superpowers, you ought to be a lot calmer about it. Take a deep breath and don’t give anything away.” Alex wondered what smart, sneaky thing Jack would do.
And then it dawned on her. “Okay, Eliza, since you don’t have any superpowers, let’s make up a story that has nothing to do with anyone we know, okay? Let’s assume that someone has superpowers, and maybe there’s a really good reason why she’s afraid to tell anyone.”
“Okay …”
“So maybe you could tell me a totally imaginary story that wouldn’t be about you in any way, and that would let you get me and Action Girl here off your back.”
Eliza thought about it for a few seconds. “Well … what if, years ago, a girl rescued an old, old shaman when no one else was going to, and he gave her a drink from a magic gourd, and he told her that he was giving her a magical gift, but if she ever told anyone she’d lose her powers forever. So she could never tell anyone, not even superheroes.”
Alex knew there was real magic out there, but she was really sure there wasn’t any in this universe. So she figured it wasn’t a magic potion from a magic gourd. No, it was probably a really weird biochemical that had a really specific effect on human biochemistry, and maybe its secret had been passed down through generations of shamans. But it was pretty obvious that Eliza totally believed it was ‘magic powers’.
Alex pulled the open padlock off and tossed the chains to the sides with her TK. Then she and Hanna yanked open the doors.
“Thank God! We’ve been in here for more than twenty-four hours!”
“What took you so long?”
“We could have died in there!”
“Where’s Frank and Bob and Samantha?”
Alex ignored the crabbiness and answered the one responsible question. “The people who locked you up in here killed everyone except Dr. Finn. They shot her three times and left her to die. She had to drag herself across the compound, fix the sat phone as much as was possible, and then wait for someone to call in because she couldn’t call out.”
Eliza added, “She got shot in the arm and the thigh and the chest, and she had a pneumo-something so she couldn’t breathe, and we built a thing so she could aspirate stuff, and her husband came to the rescue with superheroes.”
“Good Lord, it’s Terawatt!”
“Terawatt? Really?”
It seemed like half the people wanted to meet her and shake her hand, instead of running over to help Sam or getting food.
A tough-looking middle-aged guy took over. “Chalmers! Grab four people and get some food started, and make sure everyone gets a lot of fluids! Harper! Get the surgery cleaned up and get inventory replaced so we can operate stat! Barthman! Get some guards moving around checking our security! Thompson! Get our satellite phone working and call this in!”
He shook Alex’s hand. “Doctor Tom Peterson. I’m one of the chief medical officers around here, which means I usually get stuck with the administrative garbage. Thanks. We’ve been drinking the distilled water and intravenous dextrose and other potables in the supply cabinet, and someone outside got the generator running so we didn’t fry during the heat of the day.”
Alex pointed out Eliza. “That would be Miss Thornberry, who rescued Dr. Finn last night from a leopard and has been caring for her ever since.”
Dr. Peterson shook Eliza’s hand and said, “Thornberry? Well, thank you very much, miss. I’m sorry to say I was not particularly sympathetic when your father was fussing at us about where we sited our compound.”
Eliza smiled wearily. “It’s okay. Dad’s always like that.”
Alex fibbed a little. “She’s a very brave young woman, and she’s obviously learned a great deal about animals from her parents.”
* * *
Jack hopped off the Cessna. Walter had assured him that the truck that would be waiting for him had GPS and satnav. And there should be a box with a couple of AK’s with ammo magazines, because they were down a tac vest and an M203 after Hanna avoided being crushed like an egg when that Land Rover rolled. And rolled. And rolled. He was probably lucky the Wellesley kid hadn’t puked in his lap.
So Jack was operating for a few minutes with nothing but a sidearm on a web belt. And a combat knife on his calf. And a hideout on his other calf. And a garrotte. Because he’d given his tac vest and M203 to Hanna, who needed it more. Still, this wasn’t safe territory. Even if he didn’t run into this squad of Orphans, there could be serious threats at any moment.
An old guy in a worn sergeant’s uniform drove up in a beat-up jeep. “General O’Neill? Sergeant Harriman made arrangements. I’ll drive you over to the truck. It’s not bright and shiny and new like what you’re used to …”
Jack gave him a grin. “As long as it’s got a stickshift and a steering wheel and four tires, I’ll be happy.”
“Thanks, sir. We’re not exactly equipped like a United States Army base.”
It was a small airport with only two crossing runways, so it didn’t take any time at all to get to an old hangar. Outside the hangar, off to one side, was a truck that looked like it had hauled troops around during World War II. Jack lied, “This is fine, as long as it’s got fuel.”
The old guy grinned, showing more gaps than teeth. “I put four jerry cans of water and four of fuel in the back, and the AK-74s are back there, too. I didn’t have anything like MREs, but there’s some smoked beef jerky. It’s got a couple spare tires, and spare parts for the engine, and a toolkit, and plenty of duct tape, and some baling wire. And if the satnav goes out, I left a set of maps in front, too.”
Jack shook the guy’s hand. “Thanks. Sounds great.” He climbed out of the jeep, and the guy took off toward the other end of the field. Jack walked over to check out the truck. He wanted an AK and some spare ammo up front with him before he started out.
He pulled down the truck’s rear gate and found three AK’s pointing right at him. A cold voice from off to his right spoke from out of the darkness, “It would be advisable for you not to try anything, General O’Neill. Every one of my men is an Orphan, and has reflexes far faster than yours.”
Jack didn’t move. “Is this where you cackle and say ‘I’ve got you now, my pretty’?”
The voice moved closer. “No, this is where I explain that you make a nice bargaining chip, but you are not essential. If you cause enough trouble, we will simply kill you. In a country like this, we won’t even have to worry about disposing of the body.”
That was definitely the accent of an Indian or Pakistani who had learned English from a real Englishman. Jack asked, “So, did Singh send you boys to stop Walsh’s little minions, or are they here to stop you?”
The voice stepped into the light. The guy was a way-too-handsome man of around 28, apparently Eurasian, and rocking a ‘modern Fu Manchu’ look that pretty much only Orphans and male models could pull off. He frowned. “Our information was that you knew nothing of our bloc, and very little of the primary bloc.”
Jack went for ultra-casual. He shrugged and lied, “Hey, that’s the trouble with intelligence evaluation. It’s so … squishy. On the other hand, if you guys hadn’t gone out of your way to try and enlist all the unaffiliated Orphans, you could have stayed under the radar for a lot longer. Plenty of people who don’t like you wanted me to know what was going on. It looked to me like it was a huge failure in North America. Did you have any luck in Asia? ’Cause I’m guessing not.”
“Shut up and hold still while we frisk you.”
The guy just did not have a poker face. Jack was guessing from the guy’s expression that Asia hadn’t gone that well, either.
Two more guys came from Jack’s left. While the AK’s were still in his face, the two new guys did a thorough job of frisking him. They took the sidearm and web belt and knife. They found the holdout on his left ankle.
They missed the garrotte, which was in his pants under his waistband. Not that it was going to do him much good at the moment. Trying to garrotte an Orphan would be a lot like trying to strangle a tiger.
Not that strangling a tiger was impossible, exactly. It just had to be done with a great deal of stealth and finesse. And hoping Willow didn’t find out he did something utterly insane. Well, something else utterly insane.
He made a mental note that the friskers didn’t check his crotch, so a crotch gun would be an excellent holdout against these guys. Uncomfortable as hell, but a good holdout against guys who were busy acting too macho to get anywhere near another guy’s junk.
He looked over at Fu Man-new and said, “By the way, whoever you’ve got as an armorer ought to be shot. You should definitely get some better hardware than those old AK-47s. Even the broke terrorists are going with AK-74s these days, and the Russians are farming out production of AK-103s to half a dozen countries.”
“Shut up, old man! The primary bloc may want you alive, but we don’t care if you live or die.”
“Now, you see, that’s the trouble with the Khan-man. He’s not thinking far enough ahead.” Not that Jack thought that was one of Khan’s weaknesses. No, Jack wasn’t going to tell these dorks anything that would actually help them.
“Shut the hell up!”
Jack mimed zipping his lip.
One of the AK-wielders in the truck muttered in Hindi, “How is it that no one has shot this man yet?”
Jack pretended he didn’t understand Hindi. In fact, he was perfectly capable of pretending he didn’t understand English, if it suited him. Playing dumb was a valuable life skill.
They forced him into the back of the truck and zipcuffed his wrists together. He thought that was pretty stupid of them, given that Orphans could break ordinary zipcuffs like they were Kleenex. That told him that they were either too confident or too arrogant, because he knew they weren’t complete morons.
Two of the men sat in the back and guarded him. The others either piled into the front of the truck or else climbed into a much nicer truck that rode behind his. They drove out of the area of the airstrip, went west for a while, and then drove south. Since they didn’t bother to close the tarp at the rear of the truck, he could look out. When the truck behind him wasn’t blinding him, he could get glimpses of the night sky. And if you didn’t know how to use the stars to navigate, even when you were in the southern hemisphere, you were at a severe disadvantage in a lot of situations. He wasn’t going to admit he knew that, either.
He closed his eyes to slits and leaned back against the side of the truck, like he was falling asleep. After about twenty minutes, the guards began talking in Hindi. He listened in while pretending to be asleep. Pretending to be asleep was also a valuable life skill.
“How did he know India One sent us?”
“I do not know. Maybe the primary bloc has fed him information because they are so scared of us.”
“And how did he know we were sent to deal with the primary bloc’s people? Do you think he knows we lost our Team One? Could he know what happened to them? I think we should ask Leader Two to interrogate him.”
“We might not need to interrogate him. He seemed very willing to talk about anything that came to his mind. Is it possible that he is smart in one way and yet stupid in another?”
“Do you mean like an idiot savant? I doubt it. Perhaps he depends too much on his Orphans and his superheroes, so he is helpless without them.”
The trucks roared down an asphalt road that was smoother than a lot of roads in this country. Jack told himself he should probably stay awake, but he was so exhausted from the horrors of the day, and so tired, and it was getting late …
He dozed off, despite the armed guards and the threat of imminent death. Being able to sleep in inconvenient places was a life skill, too.
* * *
Alex flew around the outside of the compound, making sure there weren’t any dangerous animals sneaking up on the place. Or any much-more-dangerous humans.
When a humongous RV drove up with headlights blazing, she flew over to take a look. She instantly recognized the guy sitting in the shotgun seat. It was Sir Nigel Thornberry! He was even wearing one of his trademark safari outfits like he always wore in most of his documentaries. Driving the RV was a woman who looked very much like what Eliza was going to look like in twenty years. Behind them was a teenaged girl who had really long blonde hair that had to be a total headache to maintain out in the jungle. And jumping on her back was a little brown-haired boy who was dressed in a little Tarzan loincloth and who was bouncing around like someone just gave him a whole pumpkin full of Halloween candy and he ate it all in one sitting.
Not that Alex had ever done anything like that. Well, at least she hadn’t swung from the ceiling, even if her mom said she was almost literally bouncing off the walls for an hour or two.
The RV pulled into the compound and parked. Then everyone spilled out and ran over to where Eliza was talking with Action Girl. Sir Nigel rushed over and hugged Eliza. The mom did. The manic kid in the loincloth did. Even a chimpanzee in a striped shirt did. The other teenager walked over and just said, “She looks fine.”
“I am fine!” Eliza insisted.
“See?” the blonde teenager said. “Told ya so.”
Alex flew down and hovered a couple of feet above the ground. “Eliza was a real hero here. She saved Dr. Finn from a leopard, tended to Dr. Finn’s injuries until help arrived, got the generator working to save the other doctors and workers in the compound, and helped Dr. Finn repair the sat phone as much as it could be fixed.”
Eliza’s parents hugged her some more and congratulated her on once again demonstrating the family traits. The chimp leapt into her arms and hugged her. The big sister said, “What…ever.” The boy in the loincloth jumped up and down, and made screeching and hooting noises like he wasn’t even human. The chimpanzee acted more like a person than the boy did. Okay, the chimpanzee was even dressed more like a person than the boy was.
Wow, and Alex had thought her family was unusual.
When the family was done hugging, the father suddenly noticed something about the nighttime fauna in one of the trees off to the side of the compound, and he got the mother to pull out a high-end video camera with a tripod and a specialized sound system. They hurried off to do nature documentary stuff, and just left their kids alone in a medical compound that had been invaded by badguys only a night ago.
Hanna trotted over and asked, “This is her family, right? Including the feral boy and the monkey?”
“He’s not a monkey, he’s a chimpanzee,” the blonde teen insisted.
“Yeah,” Eliza insisted, “he’s a member of the great apes, like gorillas. And people.”
“Hominidae,” Alex added. “The taxonomic family that also includes bonobos and orangutans.” Boy, she was never going to forget about hominids. Not after Maggie Walsh and the Hanna op. Okay, she knew about the bonobos because of something Willow had said.
The wild kid hooted excitedly at her last words. The blonde teen patted him on the head and explained, “Donny here was raised by a family of orangutans after his parents were killed saving them from poachers. He still doesn’t speak much English.” She pulled an apple out of her pocket and tossed it to him, saying, “Apple. Apple.”
“Pomme! Pomme!” the boy hooted before he chowed down on the apple like it might try to get away if he gave it half a chance.
Hanna laughed and said, “He speaks French!”
“What?” the blonde wondered.
“Pomme. It is French for apple.”
“Weird,” the blonde muttered.
“Cool!” Eliza exclaimed. “Do you know any other French?” She stopped and said, “Oh, sorry. This is my big sister Debbie, and this is Donny …” She pointed at the wild kid. Then she indicated the chimp who was still hanging onto her torso. “And this is Darwin. He went to get help, but Debbie and Mom ignored him.”
Debbie rolled her eyes. “Honestly, if I had to do something every time that shirt-stealing goofball had a hissy fit, I’d never get anything done.”
Eliza looked at her sister and said, “This is Action Girl.”
“Well, duh.”
Eliza just kept going. “And Terawatt!”
“Extra duh on that. I just can’t figure out why someone awesome like Terawatt would want to hang around with you.”
Alex firmly said, “Eliza is a real heroine. And since she has superpowers as well …”
Debbie suddenly looked alarmed. She rounded on Eliza. “You told them? I thought …”
“I didn’t! It’s not my fault!”
Alex inserted, “Dr. Finn saw her in action and induced her power set. It helps that Dr. Finn had previously met me, as well as Action Girl and Klar.”
Eliza whispered, “Dr. Finn’s one of those Orphans like in Time Magazine. She’s so awesome.”
Debbie looked worried at that. “She didn’t hurt you or anything, did she?”
Alex was sort of surprised that big sister Debbie really cared that much about Eliza, when she kept doing the ‘Libby’ thing. But maybe she was really more like Alex’s big sister Annie inside, where it really counted.
Eliza looked appalled. “She’s a doctor! She doesn’t hurt people! And anyway, she got shot. A lot.”
Alex explained, “She was shot in one arm, one leg, and the chest. She had a pneumothorax, so it was getting hard for her to breathe. Eliza arrived in time to save her from a hungry leopard.”
Eliza stubbornly insisted, “It wasn’t her fault. She has cubs to feed.” She even pouted a little at someone being mean about the leopard eating someone.
Boy, and Alex thought she was bad at the secret identity thing.
Debbie looked at Alex and said, “Terawatt, you’re a big, important superhero. Maybe you can convince lemur-brain here that her powers are from some weird biological thing she drank, and not magic.”
Eliza insisted, “But the shaman told me it was magic!”
Debbie scowled. “He also told you he was stuck for years as a warthog. And he told you that you’d lose your powers if you told anyone. Well? You still have your powers, right?” Eliza frowned and shrugged a reluctant ‘yes’. “Okay! So now you know he was a great big liar. So stop believing everything he told you.”
Alex said, “You still shouldn’t tell people about your powers. It could get you or your family or your friends in serious trouble. If people knew about my real identity, Danielle Atron probably would have murdered my family.”
Hanna suggested, “Maybe you should have a superheroine identity and a disguise for when you are swinging around on vines and talking to animals.”
Debbie smirked. “Yeah, you could be ‘Sheena of the Jungle’. Except not attractive.”
Alex didn’t jump all over Debbie for being mean, but she did say, “Copyrighted names are not a good choice for a superhero.”
Debbie suggested, “Doctor Doolittle.”
Alex just replied, “Copyright law.”
Debbie grinned. “Eliza Doolittle!”
Alex answered, “That one’s taken, too. You’ve seen ‘My Fair Lady’ with Audrey Hepburn?”
Debbie pretended to frown. “Oh, come on, she could wear the ugly long dress and the stupid hat, and she could do a Cockney accent, and —”
“Debbie!” Eliza scowled.
They stuck their tongues out at each other and looked totally like each other for a moment.
Hanna just said, “We have more important issues than codenames at the moment.”
Alex agreed. “We need to make sure the compound is secure, and check on Dr. Finn, and contact our team leader, and figure out where these creeps are heading, because anyone who gets in their way is in danger, and I really doubt they’re planning on doing something nice and wholesome when they get where they’re heading.”
Hanna took that as permission to move out. She shifted her M203 from her back to her arms, and she took off in a fast perimeter search.
Alex realized that while Riley was busy with his wife and Jack wasn’t back yet, she was in charge. Crud. She felt totally out of her depth. She didn’t know how to find the badguys, and she didn’t know why they were here, and she didn’t know how to stop them.
Eliza hooted softly at the chimp, who hooted back. She looked at Alex and said, “They’re in a couple of trucks and jeeps, heading south-southwest the last time Darwin saw them, which will put them in some really dangerous areas in a matter of hours, unless they change direction.”
Alex asked, “Just how dangerous, and why? Because these are the kind of people who would only go to a place that’s really dangerous if they could find something dangerous and find a way to use it on lots of other people.”
Eliza shrugged. “I don’t know! The animals I asked all said it’s not safe to go there, and they all avoid it.”
Debbie muttered, “You totally suck at the secret identity thing.”
Alex asked, “Do your parents know about your powers?”
Eliza insisted, “No way!”
Even as Debbie frowned. “They have their suspicions. She’s just too good at handling animals that aren’t safe to handle, like cheetah cubs while the mother cheetah is right there.”
“Oops,” Eliza whispered.
Alex told her, “You should find a way to tell them. My life has been much better since I told my family.” She pointed at Debbie and added, “And having a reliable secret keeper to run interference for you can be a really great help.”
Debbie wondered out loud, “I’m reliable? When did that happen?”
Eliza proudly said, “She’s saved me and Darwin at least half a dozen times.”
Debbie scowled. like she didn’t want to admit she’d ever done anything nice for her weird little sister.
—
A/N: The aforementioned Belgian author that wrote the ‘cool books’ is Jean-Pierre Hallet, whose books ‘Congo Kitabu’ and ‘Animal Kitabu’ are well worth reading. Some of Hallet’s adventures were worthy of a (super)hero. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for some of his work. He also was awarded the U.S. Presidential End Hunger Award and over a hundred other awards and honors. All of his important work with the Pygmies of the Congo was done after he had his right hand and wrist blown off in an accident with dynamite … which blasted him out of a canoe in the middle of a crocodile-infested lake … a hundred miles from the closest hospital … with no one to help him get out of the lake, to his jeep, and through really bad mountain roads to said hospital. With a deadline before the road was locked off for the night. Really. Crocodile Dundee and John McClane couldn’t have survived this.