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Chapter 196 – Where Raptors DareWillow didn’t think this could get much worse. She recognized that voice. But she refused to panic. Instead, she tried to channel Jack as much as she could.
“Cordelia. Fancy meeting you here,” she snarked.
And Cordelia Chase stepped forward far enough that Willow could see her. Perfectly-dressed, perfectly-coiffed Cordelia Chase. “Willow. You’ve certainly aged well. Not like Harmony, who’s now roughly the size of a Hereford.”
Willow channeled some more Jack. “Beef. It’s what’s for minions.”
Cordelia grinned a toothpaste-ad smile. “You’re really improving over your old, whiny, ‘teacher teacher I know the answer’ self.”
Willow tried to look calm, even if she didn’t feel calm. She didn’t feel anything close to calm. But Jack wouldn’t act panicky when he was in a tight spot. “You know, just the other day I was explaining to someone why you couldn’t be an Orphan, after your mother made such a huge deal about natural childbirth, and then you’re a late summer baby …”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like you were really fooled. Come on. Miriam Chase, the biggest liar in our whole city, fibbing about having her kid the natural way? Yeah, right. Mother had a late miscarriage while they were boating near Monte Carlo, so she grabbed an anonymous baby from this orphanage in Switzerland. She just lied about the natural childbirth bit, and she lied about my being hers, and she lied about my birthdate. Really, Willow. If Miriam Chase told me that the sky was blue, I’d step outside to check, just in case.”
Willow didn’t want to believe Cordelia about anything, but that made sense. A lot of sense. And it meant that there could be more Orphans out there, floating around just outside their profile. This was so not of the good.
Cordelia pointed at the corpse and said, “Now you’re probably wondering just who would do a sick, depraved wacko thing like that —”
Willow interrupted, “William Robert Halsey, AKA P$ychon4ut, who bears me ill will because I’m one of the people who got him arrested and convicted. Even if he never spent a day in the Texas State Pen, because your people bought off one of the state corrections officers who did the transfer to the penitentiary and replaced the other officer with a double.”
Cordelia just stopped and stared for a couple seconds. “Wow. I gotta admit it, that was totally Sherlock-y there. You still are the ‘teacher teacher I know the answer’ kid.”
Willow stared at her. “Now I’m the ‘teacher teacher I know the answer’ woman.”
Cordelia smiled unpleasantly. “Then you also know that he’s completely loony over you. He has ’em bring in women and paint ’em up to look as much like you as they can, and then he hacks ’em to shreds. You are not gonna enjoy what he has in store for you.” She paused for a second. “Unless you want to be my personal computer hacker, which will give me a lot more power and protect you at the same time.”
Willow glared. “Cordelia, maybe you haven’t figured this part out, but I’d rather be chopped to pieces by a serial killer than do anything for you. I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”
Cordelia shrugged. “Some people can be so totally unreasonable. It’s not like I was tough on you when we were kids because I hated you or anything. I was just being proactive and dealing with my most dangerous competitor. It was nothing personal. It was just a business decision. Mother might be a lying, untrustworthy, despicable cougar, but she does understand fundamental power struggles. Too bad your mother was all about being non-confrontational and letting mean kids run you over. Well, I’ve got Halsey tied up for hours on a big hacking job, trying to see what your SRI buddies are up to with you and your general missing. I’ll come back in a while and see how much agony you’re in by then, and if you’ve changed your mind. And if not, then I’ll let Halsey get his hands on you for an hour or two … and after that I’ll see how desperate you are for my protection. But if you don’t have any fingers left by then, you won’t be of any use to me.”
* * *
Jack stood up beside the bed, trying to look patient. He absolutely was not patient, but he wasn’t going to let them know that if he could help it. He stepped toward the window, because if he moved toward Locke the guy’s Orphan bodyguards would have to take that as a threat.
Damn. Even with the clouds or fog or whatever it was around the window, he could see for miles. It looked like tropical forest. It looked like they were a mile above the forest. It looked like … Son of a bitch, he knew where he was. Right where The Collective was safe from any thermonuclear war scenarios, and safe from global warming, and safe from global cooling, and safe from anything up to and including a visit from Gojira. Everything he’d needed to know had been out there for months, and he hadn’t tumbled until now, when it was too late. But that also meant there was no way out of here, unless he could steal a chopper and defeat a hell of a lot of anti-air measures at the same time. Unfortunately, the last time he’d checked, his name wasn’t Stringfellow Hawke.
He looked down as much as he could. That was a hell of a drop. He couldn’t tell what floor of the building he was on, because there was no ground a floor below, or two floors below. The building had to be set right on the edge of the tepui. That was pretty frigging arrogant. All right, everything about these pricks was arrogant. But they were assuming their fog machines would keep anybody and anything from spotting them in a casual fly-by, and people probably flew around looking at these things pretty regularly.
Locke was still explaining why Jack needed to betray his country and shaft everyone he cared about and join up with a bunch of people he’d rather shoot than talk to. But Locke didn’t see it that way. For him it was an unemotional, purely sociopolitical decision. “So I want you to wait here while I organize several presentations. I need you to hear from Maggie and Billy Bob —”
“Would that be William Robert Halsey, AKA P$ychon4ut, AKA Mister Date-Rape?”
Locke calmly ignored the jibe. “— and half a dozen other researchers and planners here. I think you’ll see that this is an important step toward protecting the future of our planet and our species.”
Jack snarked, “Walsh? Do I have to call her ‘sis’?”
“I would prefer it if you didn’t. I’m sure she would prefer it if you didn’t.”
So Jack asked, “And what happens when Atron finds out I’m here?”
Locke flatly pointed out, “That could be rather painful. For you.”
* * *
Alex was just sitting on her bed holding Piki and trying not to think about Shar dying and trying not to cry. But the cellphone from Willow was ringing again. She got up to turn it off, and she saw it was Cindy.
Cindy? Why would Cindy be calling her? Maybe she just heard about Shar. Maybe she just heard about Terawatt quitting. Maybe she wanted to yell at Alex for not being nice to Hanna.
She groaned a little and answered the cruddy thing. “Hi, Cindy, thanks for calling and all, but I’m not really up for talking right now, so —”
“Don’t hang up!” Cindy shrieked. “Oh, please Alex, just listen and don’t hang up on me. Jack and Willow got kidnapped, and it’s The Collective. And it’s worse than that. They tried to kidnap Mister Gotham, and they tried to kidnap Miss Hollywood. Grover and Riley and Hanna wouldn’t tell me who they are, but Buffy Summers just got arrested for killing like three Orphans in the middle of a skating rink, so I think it’s pretty obvious who Miss Hollywood’s supposed to be. Hanna said Shar’s dead and she couldn’t save her, and I know you have to feel so horribly awful now, but please just don’t hang up!”
“Oh, crud! Jack and Willow? You’re sure?”
Cindy insisted, “Riley said he had two soldiers stationed in the hotel as protection, and the attackers killed ’em and left ’em in their room, but Jack and Willow are gone.”
Alex remembered the thing in the Congo, with the bounty for capturing Jack alive. And she remembered the hate plague thing at the computer conference when they wanted to strip away Willow’s support structure and wipe out a huge chunk of the industry all at once.
The Collective would totally want both of them alive. For a while, anyway.
Cindy added, “Riley’s already got people moving to the rescue, but he really hoped you’d help because he said you were the best superhero out there, and there were people who could lift more or whatever, but you were the best. And he’s right. You’re the best superhero in the world, and I’m really afraid for Grover, and it really makes me feel better when I know you’re saving the day, too.”
Alex tried not to cry as she said, “I couldn’t save Shar. I couldn’t even stop her.”
Cindy insisted, “Hanna told me about that. Nobody could’ve. Pyre could’ve taken out every super in the world all at the same time!”
“B-but she was Shar! And I loved her. And I needed to save her!”
Cindy carefully said, “Alex, I know it hurts. But we’re not Marvel Comics. People die every day. My friend Terri lost her little sister to leukemia. They tried and tried and tried. They did crazy stuff hoping just one crazy treatment might help. Nothing did any good. And it tore her up for a long time, but there was nothing they could do. Sometimes that’s just the way things are.”
“But that’s not fair!” Alex tried not to think about Shar saying those same words.
Cindy sighed. “No. It’s not. But you can’t make the world fair for everyone. All you can do is help when people really need it. And I really need you to help Grover and Riley and Major Carter and all of them.”
Alex hugged Piki hard and asked, “What am I supposed to do?”
Cindy explained, “Just put on your uniform and fly to the Blackbird Riley has waiting for you at Edwards. And be ready for Maggie Walsh and Danielle Atron and people like Bane and Poison Ivy, because there’s been a jailbreak. And Riley’s worried that some of the Orphans there may have powers now, too.”
“Oh, crud.”
They really did need her help. Even if she felt useless and stupid and torn apart and pathetic. And …
And she had an idea. A totally crazy idea that just might work. And if it worked, it would be awesome. She told Cindy, “Let ’em know I’m on my way.”
She went silvery and slid under the baseboard into her secret wall compartment, and she grabbed all her Terawatt stuff she’d told herself she was never ever going to get out ever again. It hurt to look at it. It hurt just to wear it and remember what had happened the last time she’d done any superheroing.
Then she flew downstairs. Her mom and dad were both home because of some kind of warning they’d gotten from Riley that she had just totally ignored. She just skipped over that and told her dad where she was going, and why, and what she needed from him. He even had everything she wanted in the garage, although she swiped a couple of things out of the kitchen, too.
She jetted down the interstate toward Edwards Air Force Base. She looked down, and there was no vehicle on the road that was going as fast as she was. There was no one going anywhere near as fast. She popped her phone out of her morph, and sure enough, it was a fully equipped tPhone and it even had Willow’s speedometer app on it. The app said she was going around a hundred forty-eight or a hundred fifty miles an hour.
She remembered rushing down to Bakersfield to fight Danielle Atron, and how she’d needed to hitch a ride on the top of a truck. But now … now she was faster. And stronger. She just needed to be tougher. And smarter.
Her phone rang, only the ringtone was something she didn’t recognize, but it was dark and creepy.
Oh. Right. “Terawatt here, Batman.” She even gave it her best Terawatt tones, because Terawatt didn’t cry.
“Good.” There was no mistaking the gravel voice that meant it was definitely Batman, and not that nice, friendly Bruce Paine guy. “I know how much it hurts to lose someone close to you, especially when you were right there and you couldn’t save them. But you have to channel that guilt and that pain into something productive.”
Alex still wasn’t sure that what he’d done with his pain was ‘productive’, given how much time and effort he’d put into being a guy who beat up criminals, instead of spending all that time and effort being a philanthropist, and campaigning to lower the crime rate, and working to get people jobs and better lives so they didn’t have to commit armed robberies and stuff. But he’d done it. And he wasn’t sitting in a room holding a stuffed Pikachu and crying like a baby, like some people she could name.
She just said, “I’m en route to Edwards now. A Blackbird should be ready for me.”
“Good. I’m almost on-site, and I could use additional support. We don’t have adequate intelligence on all of their resources or all of the powers we might be facing. If they’ve interrogated O’Neill and Rosenberg or used a psychic to read their minds, they’ll believe you’re not part of the battle plan. That could give us a massive tactical advantage.”
So nice to know he was concerned about having another weapon, and not whether Alex Mack was falling apart on the inside. Maybe he didn’t know the difference, if he’d been like this ever since his parents were murdered in front of him when he was a boy.
He growled, “There was an attempt on Bruce Paine. I stopped it and captured the criminals. Then I performed forensics and found plant fibers on one cuff and mineral traces embedded in a pair of shoes. We’re looking at the tepui of the Guiana Highlands, if you know what those are.”
“I do.” She still remembered that exhibit in New York where she’d first met Batman. And that made her think of Catwoman, which made her think of the worldwide Christakos conglomerate. “Are we talking an inaccessible tepui surveyed by Christakos Mining?”
“Exactly. Four thousand feet high, vertical sides, only accessible by helicopter or paratroopers. Finn believes they have anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses, all the way up to Russian S-300 or S-400 systems that would make it nearly impossible to hit them with a cruise missile or an ICBM. They presumably have defenses not only atop the tepui but around its base as well.”
Alex guessed, “So Riley’s got you and some other superheroes coming in to help, and a bunch of SRI people.”
“Exactly. Batman out.”
Alex thought about that. A lot of people she knew — people she cared about — would be involved. Hanna and Grover and Az and maybe Ultraman, too. The people she knew on Team One and Team Two. And there was no telling what shape Jack and Willow were in now.
She just hoped that everyone else she knew was safe.
* * *
Vince Carter waited impatiently. Sitting in a fake exterminator truck beat the shit out of sitting in a jail cell, but he wasn’t feeling patient. He glanced at his watch again. Things were still going according to plan, but he’d had good-looking plans before. They tended to fall apart at the last stage, just when he was so goddamn sure everything would finally work. Half the time, it was that moron Dave Watt’s fault.
“Vince, you’re sure you don’t want to wear a mask?” one of his guys checked.
He growled, “No way. The whole point of this is me getting recognized, so Terawatt and her DHS backers will know exactly who’s behind this.” Also, he wasn’t going to mention it, but he was secretly hoping a neighbor would recognize him so the Paradise Valley cops could send Dave Watt to the Macks’ house just in time for Vince to shoot the guy in the nuts as a parting gift.
Two men clambered in through the side door. They were dressed in white coveralls with the fake exterminator logo on the backs, and they were wearing exterminators’ masks. One of them gave him a thumbs-up and the other said, “Done. The tank’s emptying into their ductwork, and their air conditioning’s running, so everyone in the whole house will be out cold in five minutes.”
Vince nodded. “Good work. We get the two black vans, wipe this van clean, and drive into the Macks’ driveway in forty minutes from …” He glanced at his wristwatch. “… now.”
* * *
Corinne Carlson insisted, “No, no, I got it.”
Rita was great, but sometimes Rita just wanted to protect Corinne from everything. Even stuff like opening a jar of maraschino cherries. Corinne didn’t like to admit it, even to Mark, but her right hand did not work as well as it used to because of the metal in it, so opening jars was even harder than it used to be. But this was the kind of thing she had to do for herself.
And Rita had come over with a carton of chocolate chip ice cream, so they were having an ‘our guys just rushed off on another ultra-dangerous mission they can’t tell us about’ ice cream party. Corinne had the maraschino cherries and the hot fudge sauce, because Mark’s Medal of Honor — among many amazing things she hadn’t expected — meant they got a discount when shopping on the base, so she could afford to buy stuff she used to look at and just sigh over.
She just barely had the lid loosened on the jar when the doorbell rang. Rita hopped right up, but Corinne insisted, “No Rita, I got it. Really.”
It wasn’t like she was helpless. So what if she was a hideous freak with a damaged right hand and right arm, and no right foot, and hardly any right leg below the knee, and scars on her face that she and her friends would have mocked and pointed at when they were in high school. She had been a horrible person in high school, and Mark just didn’t believe her about that.
She opened the door to find two guys who looked like extras from “Men in Black” down to the sunglasses. “Corinne Christina Carlson?”
She was already starting to feel edgy. “Yes. Who are you?”
The older guy held up an identity wallet. “DHS. Captain Miller thought it would be prudent if you accompanied us to a secure location until your husband’s current op is successfully concluded.”
“Just let me get my coat and a couple th–…”
Rita stepped forward and interrupted. “If Captain Miller sent you guys, then what’s today’s SRI password?”
The younger guy looked at the older guy and sighed. They both pulled out big-ass handguns. The older guy said, “It looks like we do this the hard way.”
Corinne had been thrilled with her new prosthetic foot. But she had been appalled when she found out how much the frigging thing really cost. She had only kept it because General O’Neill had called her personally and talked her into wearing it so she always had a personal weapon on her and her husband wouldn’t have to worry about her while he was off saving the world. Still, she hadn’t ever thought she’d really have to use it.
She sure needed it right now. She cocked her prosthetic until her toes were pointing at the older guy’s stomach, and she tensed the right muscles. The firearm hidden down the length of her foot went off. The .50 caliber bullet it fired caught the guy just below the breastbone and dropped him like her Mark had punched the guy in the stomach.
The second guy reacted. He turned to shoot her.
Rita took the open carton of chocolate chip ice cream and planted it right in the guy’s face.
Corinne seized the moment and kicked the guy as hard as she could in the family jewels. With her prosthetic foot. The guy just collapsed in on himself, with his hands grabbing for his crotch and his knees crashing together and even his shoulders hunching inward. Then she stepped forward and gave the guy a backfist to the temple with her right fist, which had that metal reinforcing she had always hated … up until that very second. The guy’s head bounced off the doorframe and he went down hard.
Rita jumped down the front steps to where the two guys were laid out, and she kicked the guns away from their hands before moving around and picking up the smaller handgun. Then she pointed the handgun at the guys and ordered, “Corinne, call the base MPs. Now.”
Corinne dialed and simultaneously asked, “How’d you know?”
Rita shrugged. “I didn’t. But Graham’s told me a couple times there wouldn’t be an SRI password, so all I had to do to test guys like this was ask them for it. If they were legit, they’d know there was no password, and they’d have a number for me to call and it would be someone I trusted, like Graham or Colonel Finn.”
* * *
Lieutenant Lupo rushed to the office where Riley Finn was letting Lieutenant Marshall glue medical equipment on him. Fuck, did that look weird.
Finn glanced over. “Lupo. Good timing. I’ve worked out how we’re gonna do this.” And he told her what he was going to want her to do.
She didn’t say the first thing that popped into her head. She just stared at him for a couple seconds before she finally managed, “If you say so.” She swallowed and added, “Sir.”
He just grinned.
* * *
Marsha looked up. “What?”
Louis frowned. “The Macks aren’t answering their phone. I mean, they’re not answering any of their phones. I need to go check and make sure they’re okay.”
Marsha wondered, “This is about that text you got from … those guys.”
Louis nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got to be on alert, because of … umm … Alex’s acquaintances. And I think I’d better go over and make sure they’re okay.”
Marsha was pretty sure it was a wild goose chase, but she knew Louis was still trying to make up for that one mistake he made years ago. “Okay. I’ll go with.”
* * *
Alex normally felt tension and worry and stress while she rode in the Blackbird. This time, she just hurt inside. She just wanted to grab those stupid Collective jerkheads by the neck and punch them until they hurt as bad as she did. Even if those Orphans were all going to be strong and fast, and nobody knew how many Collective jerkheads up there would have superpowers, or what kind of powers they might have, or any of that.
She’d been in the Blackbird for less than an hour and a half, and they were already at her bail-out point. Since the badguys had serious anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses, the Blackbird could only get so close before badness might happen. She wasn’t the size of a jet, and she didn’t have a huge red-hot engine for missiles to target. And she could dodge sideways in mid-air, if she had to.
The pilot signaled her, and she dived out the port, locking it behind her. Then she slid around until she was underneath the Blackbird, and she launched herself forward as fast as she could go.
She seared across the sky at speeds that were making her front ‘edge’ get hot. And since she couldn’t really form an aerodynamic edge like a jet’s wing, she was losing speed by the second. Still, she was going fast. She’d be at the base where her GPS beacon was pointing in way under twenty minutes. She knew the base had to be the closest airfield to the tepui that you could get to without getting shot out of the air by Collective missiles.
She just didn’t know how they were going to get from there to the top of the tepui without being blasted into bits.
* * *
Marine Captain Carl Eddings was running his own flight check on his chopper. He knew this piece of machinery like the back of his hand. And that was why he was grappling with the issue of sabotage.
He was going to have to be very careful about which components he sabotaged to keep his chopper — and his ass — out of this attack. With all the anti-aircraft and anti-missile crap The Collective had around and atop their base, anyone flying in was going to end up in little teeny fragments. And so he needed to find a way of sabotaging the chopper that wouldn’t point back at him. Just as important, he needed to choose something that the maintenance guys wouldn’t instantly peg as a part they could simply replace and get him back into the air.
After all, he had warned his people that the attack was coming. He had no idea how big the attack was, or what craft would be used, but with a couple of S-400 systems and a couple of S-300 systems up there, the top of the tepui was safe against anything including ICBMs and cruise missiles. He didn’t know all the hardware they had around the base of the tepui, but he knew there was heavy anti-air weaponry around the thing, plus some nasty surprises for infantry.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to look. It was Lieutenant Lupo, trotting out his way. Even in heavy gear, she was one fine lady. Too bad she hadn’t given him a tumble yet.
She strode up to him and took a casual look around. He already knew there was no one nearby, or he wouldn’t have been working on his plan right out here in the open.
She looked him in the eye and said, “Codephrase: Masada mesosaur.”
He suddenly thought he might choke. Of all the people he thought might have the passphrase The Collective had given him, Stick-up-the-ass Lupo was down below pretty much everybody, including Carlson and Miller and even Bill Lee. Okay, he would have been more surprised if it was Finn. That was about it. Frankly, he’d been hoping Rosenberg was another Collective agent, because she was smoking hot and she probably fucked like a rabbit. “Holy shit, Lupo! I thought …”
She interrupted angrily, “Yeah, you didn’t think enough. When you got that email, you should’ve gone straight to Miller. I had to rub some onion in my eyes so I looked like I’d been crying my widdle eyes out. It was a good thing I did, because Finn and Carlson went completely Boy Scout on us. And when Acid Burn put together their profile, they pegged you, too. So O’Neill’s been feeding you disinformation ever since.”
He grimaced and said a few choice things about O’Neill. Smart COs were always a headache.
Lupo told him, “You knew the Collective was pulling your name from the files they sent to Frady, so you should’ve realized there was a reason my name wasn’t in there either. I mean, Finn and Carlson got pegged right off the bat, and Valentine got pegged in the second go-round. You should’ve asked yourself how Frady ‘missed’ me, when I’m Special Forces and they’re not exactly chick-friendly.”
He scowled. He really hated it when someone pointed out that he’d screwed up somewhere, and she was right. That was a major screw-up. He should have known she was a Collective mole the second he read that Time magazine.
She continued, “We’re going to be the only chopper going in, and we’re taking Finn and Action Girl and Terawatt. That’ll be it. I’ll handle Finn. Walsh wants Action Girl alive and unhurt. Atron is set to take out Terawatt. Permanently. Once we have the SRI down for the count, we assess whether we need to evac the whole base and move to Base Two or Base Three, or if we can stay put. Whatever happens, you set down on the helipad and don’t go back to base, because O’Neill already fingered you to Hammond and Jackson. If you go back or you stay here now, you’re fucked.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Lupo explained, “You just play it straight. Finn will give you a flightpath that’ll put you low over the jungle up to the tepui, and then straight up when we get close. Our people will make sure that one tiny corridor is safe for the few minutes we’ll need to get in and land. Then you stick with the chopper unless one of our people says otherwise. Got it?”
“Roger that, lieutenant.”
Eddings put on his helmet and got in the pilot’s seat. Then he went through the rest of the flight check and started up everything except the rotors.
Okay, there was Action Girl and Klar. He wondered if Klar was banging her, or if she even put out. Rumor was she wasn’t really even human, just some freak experiment that Walsh cranked out. Still, she was pretty fucking hot for a teenager. Klar just had to be trying to tap that. She was carrying her usual heavy loadout plus one of those fancy parachutes, and Klar was carrying his usual pouch. And he was wearing clothes, so he looked like an animated set of clothing, which looked pretty damn weird.
Finn trotted over and gave Eddings the ‘wind it up’ gesture, so Eddings cranked it up. He was going to be ready to lift off before they even had their team assembled.
And here came Terawatt, darting out of the sky like a big silver warhead. He didn’t see how Terawatt wasn’t an Orphan, but his contact insisted Terawatt was a norm. Somehow. Even if she had a build that made porn starlets cry, and even behind a mask was just drop-dead gorgeous.
Finn directed Action Girl and Terawatt into the back of the chopper, while he handed Eddings a flight plan. Piece of cake. Just like Lupo had warned him, a simple vector in to the base of the tepui, and then a vertical up the cliffside and a landing in the ‘fog’ on the first flat surface he could find. He already knew where that was. His contact had told him that on the opposite side of the tepui, there were two big heliports on top of two of the buildings.
He watched as Lupo headed off Klar and argued with him for a few seconds. The guy obviously didn’t like what he was hearing, but he turned and stomped back to the hangar. Good. One less problem. And Lupo thought she could take Finn. Eddings wished he could watch that fight.
Finn glanced at his watch and spoke into the comms. “Liftoff in … thirty.”
Eddings nodded. “Thirty seconds, colonel. Roger that.” He took off and headed along the only safe flightpath to the only safe place left for him.
* * *
He was invisible, so he couldn’t see colors. That meant he couldn’t follow the red stripe back to the hangar door he was supposed to use. And it meant he couldn’t wear a standard digital watch, either.
He was wearing a special analog watch that was made for this. All right, it wasn’t specifically made for people who were invisible and couldn’t see in the visible spectrum anymore. But it worked: you just popped off the cover and felt the watch hands so you could tell the time.
The stealth chopper rose from just behind the hangar and followed a little way behind Edding’s helicopter. He had never seen a helicopter that had stealth covering like this one did, but its whole surface was LCDs that ran off a big computer in the chopper. The underside was supposed to look like sky, although he couldn’t see colors to check. The sides and front were supposed to look like jungle. There was no way Eddings — or anyone else — was going to spot that sucker.
He just hoped that the stealth chopper was stealthy when it came to an IR signature. The jungle was pretty damn hot, but a military helicopter’s engine was far hotter than the jungle was ever going to get, unless someone nuked the area.
On the other hand, there was a stylized bat symbol he could make out as the stealth chopper headed off toward the tepui. He had no trouble figuring out whose helicopter that had to be.
He stepped into the hangar and moved to the secure office he’d come from. Then he checked the time. Perfect. It was twenty-eight minutes since he took Grover’s drug.
It was really weird. His body slowly went back to normal. His eyesight slowly went from ‘weird shades of gray’ to normal color vision. And inside a minute, he was normal again. As far as he could tell.
Lieutenant Marshall smiled at him. “Are you okay? How’s your vision? And I’d like to get a urine sample and a blood sample just to check for any potential problems.”
Charlie O’Neill grinned. “I think everything’s okay. And my vision’s back to normal. Just don’t ask me to take the stuff another eight times.” That Riley was one sneaky guy. And despite the risks of the invisibility serum, there wasn’t anything Charlie wouldn’t do for his dad and Willow.
* * *
Action Girl watched as the chopper soared up the side of the tepui, which she thought was a very interesting word. The word meant ‘house of the gods’ in the language of the Pemon natives who lived in the Gran Sabana. She was sure the Orphans living atop it thought that was very appropriate.
Captain Eddings was a very good pilot. She wasn’t sure that she could fly so close to the cliffside without risking clipping a rotor, but he was far more experienced than she was. And he was an Orphan as well. Riley had pointed that out to her just a short time ago, while Jo helped him with the back of his tac vest. And it made so much sense. Captain Eddings had outstanding reflexes and kinesthetics and skills. He was really handsome. Alex thought he looked like a young Val Kilmer. And he was tough enough to have gone through Marine training. She should have figured it out months ago.
As soon as Captain Eddings cleared the top of the tepui and moved over the ‘fogbank’ that covered the tepui’s top, Terawatt jetted out on her mission. Hanna was just not very confident that anyone would be able to find all the anti-aircraft and anti-missile sites in this fog.
Hanna got ready. She was wearing a very special ‘parachute’ that was designed for someone as strong and light as she was. The captain brought the chopper to a halt about fifty feet above the dimly-seen treetops below her, and she dived out, popping her chute as soon as she cleared the chopper. Her dive got her clear of the downdraft from the rotors before the chute was fully open, and the chute caught her before she hit the tree canopy.
She was expecting short, scraggly trees, but these were large trees unlike what she had anticipated. There was a long drop from the upper canopy to the heavy vegetation on the ground. It was a good thing she had listened to Riley and not bailed out of the chute as soon as it touched the tree canopy.
The chute ripped in a couple of places, so it was a rough landing. But she only picked up a few bumps and bruises. She’d been hurt worse plenty of times. She rolled up the chute and secured it.
She had an M203, a sidearm, and several grenades along with plenty of C-4. General Jack had said that there were hardly any problems that could not be solved with enough C-4 in the right place, even if Willow had then named ten problems off the top of her head that no amount of C-4 would solve. Including having an allergic reaction to C-4. Jack had then insisted that a C-4 explosion would solve that, too.
Jack and Willow were almost as funny as her Charlie.
Hanna looked through the fog at her surroundings. She assumed that she needed to reach the high wall separating this jungle from The Collective’s compound. She wasn’t sure why there was a wall like that, but she could think of several potential reasons. Some of them might be fun.
Some of them might even be challenging.
She pulled out her combat knife, just in case. She didn’t want to use her guns as long as she was trying to remain silent. And there were … scents around her. Smells she didn’t recognize, but they were making her feel … edgy.
She moved as silently as she could through the brush and high grasses. This was excellent for an ambush, and surely everyone in the compound could tell that.
The grass moved about twenty feet ahead of her. That said ‘ambush’ to her, and it said one of two things: stupid ambushers who couldn’t sit still for another three seconds, or else very smart ambushers who had support coming up on her six or her flanks.
She took a swift glance around. Damn. There was more grass moving ever so slightly. That meant it was a smart ambusher who had support coming up on her six and also both flanks. She was boxed in. She stopped moving forward. She slid the knife into her left hand and used her right hand to smoothly slide her automatic out of its thigh holster.
The ambusher dead ahead stood up. It wasn’t an Orphan. It was a dinosaur. She knew from watching movies with Charlie and reading some of Charlie’s books that it was a velociraptor or a Utahraptor or a Deinonychus or something similar. And it was bigger than she was.
It had a massive muzzle that was full of teeth that reminded her of stalactites and stalagmites in the cave in Kentucky that Charlie had promised to take her to see one day. And it had small feathers on it. The books Charlie had did not show feathers on their predator dinosaurs. It focused its eyes on her and moved its head so she would be sure to see it.
And if it was in front of her, then she knew exactly what was boxing her in on the other three sides. This might be more challenging than fighting the cat-girl.
The lead raptor opened its mouth even wider … and it sniffed.
It sniffed again. And again. And then it turned its head at an angle in a very bird-like movement and it chirped at her. ‘Chiiiirrup?’
It wasn’t like a chirp from a robin. It was like a chirp from a robin the size of an attack dog.
The raptors on either side of her stuck their heads up above the grass and asked, ‘Chiiirr?’ Then the one behind her popped up and made the same sort of noise.
The raptors looked at each other … and stared at her … and sniffed as a group … and suddenly moved off in a pack.
Action Girl didn’t think she had ever really been terrified before in her life, but thinking about what that meant sent shivers down her spine. She gave up on the silent approach and sprinted for the wall of the compound at her top speed.