The Temporary Hero

by Nick Svolos

“I’m in the short-term lot. Hang on a sec.” She made some bag-rummaging noises and gave me the space number.

  “Okay, just be cool. I’m going to make some calls and get back to you. If they’re going to make a move on you, it’ll be after you come out of LAX, probably at your car. So, don’t be there. If you don’t hear from me, just go to one of the restaurants in the terminal and sit tight.”

  She sounded nervous but solid by the time we finished the call. The girl was a fighter, but she was smart enough to know when she was in over her head. That should be enough to keep her out of trouble for a while. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to extract her before that time ran out.

  I didn’t know anyone in Tucson who could help, but I knew a guy who could be there in a few minutes. I pressed a button on the dash and activated a modification I’d made to my car’s hands-free kit. “Archangel,” I said to the windshield, “can you get SpeedDamon on the line?”

  “Right away, Mr. Conway,” her voice said from my dashboard speakers.

  Yeah, I’d “borrowed” some parts and patched my car into The Angel’s communications network. Hey, if a team of costumed vigilantes leaves a gearhead like me alone with the keys to their gadgets locker, well, they should probably expect this sort of thing.

  X

  Damon Craig’s voice whispered through The Angels communicator in my ear. “We're taxiing to the gate now. Should be hitting the lot in thirty. Are you in position?”

  “Yep. Two targets acquired. Males. They’re parked in an SUV towards the back of the lot.”

  “Cameras?”

  “Eight. Archangel’s shut ‘em down.”

  “Got it,” he said, ending the exchange.

  When we’d come up with this plan, we’d both known there were a lot of moving parts. My part involved breaking every speed law between Santa Barbara and LAX without being arrested so I’d be in position before the plane landed. SpeedDamon’s was running from Los Angeles to Tucson International before it took off. He made it in thirty-six minutes. Archangel did her part too, hacking into SkySouth Airlines’ system and getting Damon a boarding pass. Hopefully, whoever she bumped to accomplish that task deserved it, or was at least given a nice voucher for a trip to someplace fun, like Tahiti.

  In the end, I managed to get there with a couple of minutes to spare. This gave me some time to walk through the parking lot and find the goons lying in wait. They’d chosen a good spot for whatever they had planned. It gave them an unblocked view of the stops where the little terminal bus dropped off travelers, as well as the path a passenger would take if they decided to walk instead.

  I kept my position in the shadows and waited. I had my mask tucked into my waistband if I needed it. Hopefully, I wouldn’t. We didn’t want to draw any closer links between Captain Stand-In and myself. I was just here as a spotter and backup. Damon wouldn’t need it. As long as these guys were normals, he could suit up and deal with anything these two thugs had planned in a heartbeat.

  The minutes took their sweet time ticking by. For the God-knows-how-many-th time, I checked my phone to make sure it was on vibrate. I shouldn’t be so nervous, I told myself. We’d done way more dangerous stuff than this. This time, however, we were using Ratna as bait. Neither of us liked it, but if we were going to catch these guys, it would have to be in the act. For that, we had to leave her exposed. That was where anything could happen.

  I drew a deep breath. Trust your teammate. Damon’s the right guy for this job.

  “Alright, she’s crossing the street now,” said the voice in my ear.

  I took one last look around and saw no civilians walking around the lot. A lucky break. Crowd control in a place like this would be tricky. I crouched down in the shadows next to a minivan and listened.

  Two car doors opened and closed a second or two later. That would be the goons. I poked my head out from the back of the vehicle just in time to see the second of the men pass out of view.

  I flattened and flew, fast and silent, down the row of cars. Landing in a soundless crouch at the end, I peeked around the bumper and saw the two guys walking at an even pace toward my young colleague. I could just make out her face. She looked nervous, but determined. Steady. Like I said, the girl was a fighter.

  Damon came into view, pausing at the corner across the street. Just another weary traveler waiting for the light to change.

  I crept between cars, poking my head up periodically to keep track of the goons and their target. I soon lost track of Damon, and a wave of anxiety surged through me. I pushed it aside and focused on my task.

  “Excuse me, miss. Do you have change for a twenty?” one of the men called out.

  Showtime. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, activated the video function, and started recording.

  Ratna broke and ran for her car. I couldn’t tell whether that’s what Damon coached her to do, or if she just panicked, but it certainly got things moving. The thugs pulled guns out of their coats and ran after her. One of them cursed and ordered her to stop. My breath caught in my throat as I loped along after them, closing the distance while trying to keep the camera steady. What if these guys started shooting?

  I needn't have worried. In an instant, a green blur engulfed them, almost bowling the men over in a blast of displaced air. SpeedDamon stood before them, holding their weapons. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Damon’s discarded street clothes trailing along in his jet stream. I had to stifle a laugh. For some reason, it always cracked me up when he did that.

  “That’sfarenough. Donchaknowwhenaladyrunsawayfromyaitmeans‘no’? Hashtaglearntotakeahint,guys,” he said in a voice like a high-speed chirp. Imagine Alvin the Chipmunk, but more menacing.

  Archangel played his sentence back in my communicator at normal human speed, but I ignored it. The bad guys, seeing they were outclassed, turned and ran the other way, right into me. I got a good shot of their stunned faces before SpeedDamon cut off their escape. “Seriouslyguys? Running? Fromlittleoldme? Itakeityouguysdidn’tmakeitintoMENSA.”

  The pair split and ran in different directions, but that only led to SpeedDamon herding them back into the light between the aisles while making more high-pitched jokes at their expense. Ratna, calm now, stepped out from her hiding place and joined me while I recorded the spectacle.

  “Gotta hand it to ‘em,” she gibed. “They’re certainly giving it the old college try.”

  “Probably getting paid by the hour,” I replied.

  Eventually, the men’s stamina gave out and the green-suited Angel deposited them, panting, in a patch of light beneath a street lamp. I glanced around. Still no witnesses. Good. Things were going our way for a change.

  “Alright, fellas, what’s your story?” SpeedDamon asked after he vibrated down to normal speed. “Why’re you chasing that woman?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” one of the goons spat. The other one nodded in exhausted agreement.

  SpeedDamon looked at me. “Sir, do you mind turning off your camera?”

  “Not at all.” I ended the recording and tucked my phone away.

  The hero squatted down, putting his face closer to the thug with the attitude. “Do you like magic tricks?”

  “Wh-what?” the crook stammered.

  “You know. Magic tricks. Like this one.” He held up his hand, fingers together. “Here we have a hand. Nothing special about it, right?” To emphasize his point, he reached down and smacked the ground. “See? Just a normal hand. But if I vibrate it, like this…” his hand became a blur. Transparent. “…I can do this.” He put his hand down again, and it went through the asphalt. When he pulled it back out, his fingers held a small chunk of rock. “Ta-daa. Pretty cool, huh?”

  The man just stared, wide-eyed, and said nothing. My eyes must have gotten pretty big as well. I had no idea he could do that.

  “So, once I reach through solid matter and take something out of it, the trick is to see if I can put it back.” This he demonstrated, putting the rock back in the g
round. “That's the hard part. I have to get it just right, otherwise, one piece of matter materializes inside another. The atoms get all grumpy about that and explode. I’m pretty good at it, though. It hardly ever happens. Well, almost hardly.”

  The thugs’ eyes spoke volumes about their fear, but their mouths said nothing. SpeedDamon continued. “Now, living tissue is really difficult, but I like a challenge. Can I get a volunteer for my next trick?” His hand hummed louder and moved toward the man’s chest.

  He squirmed away. “Hey, it was just a job, okay?”

  SpeedDamon’s hand stopped. “A job implies an employer. Who’re you working for?”

  “I can’t tell you. She’ll kill me!”

  “Well, don’t worry, I won’t. Probably.” The transparent green hand hummed louder.

  “Stop!” the man cried. “I’ll tell you. It was—”

  Both of the men went into convulsions, their bodies contorted in spasms on the blacktop. Then they stopped.

  We all froze. The parking lot was quiet, the only sounds were the cars creeping along the slow-moving lanes running by the terminals and the ever-present whine of distant jet engines.

  SpeedDamon regained his senses quickly, like everything he did, and checked the first man for a pulse. When I finally snapped out of it, I had the presence of mind to make another check for witnesses. There weren’t any.

  Well, we had that going for us, at least.

  “He’s dead. I scared him to death.” The speedster’s face betrayed his fear. Every hero’s worst fear. Killing a normal.

  I checked the other goon. He, too, was gone. “No way. One guy I could believe. Both of ‘em at the same time? I don’t buy it.” I opened the second guy’s mouth, checking for a hollow tooth. Maybe they had some suicide pills or something. Nothing.

  Ratna was pacing back and forth, “Oh, God, what’re we gonna do?” She was heading for Panicville, population: her. SpeedDamon didn’t look too far behind.

  I had to do something. “We’re gonna stay calm and figure this out,” I said, injecting a bit of bass into my voice. I needed to sound confident, commanding. “These guys were working for someone and were about to give her up. I don’t know how, but she killed them to shut them up.”

  “Sure, but the cops aren’t gonna buy that,” SpeedDamon protested.

  “They will. It’ll be a hard sell, but I’ll sell it. Grab your clothes and get out of here, Speedy. Leave the guns.” I was already erasing the video of the capture from my phone. “Ratna, I need you to stick around to give a statement.”

  “Y-yeah, sure,” she shuddered. “But what’re we gonna say?”

  “We’ll get to that. For now, I need a cloth. Something clean.”

  Giving her something to do helped her regain her composure. After a few seconds, she pulled a lens cloth from her ever-present camera bag. “How ‘bout this?”

  “Perfect.” I went to work, setting the safeties and putting the guns into the goons’ hands before carefully turning the safeties off.

  I stood up, gave the scene one last inspection, and walked Ratna through our story. I kept it simple. Complicated stories fell apart too easily. Ratna, after landing at LAX, walked to her car. The two guys accosted her, drawing guns and demanding money. Then they keeled over, dead. She had no idea how or why. She called me, suspecting some superhuman might be involved. I came out to see if we had a story. Seeing nothing that we could sell to the paper, I called the cops.

  The “Hack Reporter” angle is what would sell it. Cops are always willing to believe a guy like me is a scumbag. Sometimes, I wonder if they’re right.

  ***

  It took a while longer than I hoped to convince the LAX cops that I was indeed an unscrupulous newshound. Usually, I can convince a policeman of my lack of principles in the first five minutes—often all I have to do is identify myself as a reporter—but these guys kept us running through the story for an hour, trying to shake something loose. I couldn’t blame them. Healthy triggermen didn’t just end up dead in airport parking lots every night.

  To my everlasting joy, Ratna stuck to the story. There’s always an urge to elaborate, to add more details, to make the story more believable. You might think this works in your favor, but you’re really putting the noose around your neck. Those details are what trip you up. Neither of us fell into this trap, and eventually, the airport division detectives had no choice but to cut us loose.

  For once, I didn’t screw things up by being a smart-ass. As I climbed the steps to my apartment, I was tired but also a little proud of myself on that count. I looked at my watch, almost 2:00 a.m., and said a silent curse. I was going to have to be up in four hours.

  I unlocked my door, stepped halfway over the threshold, and froze. The room was dark, but the glare cast by the parking-lot lights reflected off the kitchenette on the far side of my living room, highlighting the silhouette of a man sitting on one of my folding chairs. Adrenaline dumped into my veins. One of the funny things about having superpowers I’m not supposed to have is that my body tends to forget it’s bulletproof.

  I suppose that’s better than having things the other way around.

  I remained where I was, letting the other guy make the first move. He leaned forward, and the light caught his face.

  Dawson.

  He put a finger to his lips and pushed out a little air. “Shhh.” He picked up a pad of paper, holding it up to the light. The words made everything clear. “Your place is bugged.”

  With the kind of grace and silence you wouldn’t expect from a man his age, he levered his bulk off the chair and crossed the room to step out onto the landing, ordering me to follow with a wag of his head. His path kept us to the shadows, leading me through a tear in the chain-link fence that marked the rear boundary of the SeaBreeze Motel and out to the street on the other side. We remained silent until we got into Dawson’s Crown Vic, parked a couple of blocks down the street.

  “Sorry for the late visit, Conway. This couldn’t wait.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Somebody planted listening devices in your place. I’d say it was the FBI, but coulda been someone else. Might have been those Bedlam guys.” He handed me a drawing of my apartment layout. It had three arrows. The lamp on my desk, the overhead light in the living room, and the phone charger on my nightstand. “Those are the ones I could find.”

  “Yeah, we figured they might try something like this. I guess Ben’s guys didn’t make it out here to sweep the place.”

  “Or the perps might have come back afterwards and put in more. Either way, you’re under surveillance.”

  “I appreciate the warning. You sat up all night to tell me that?”

  “Naw, I came here with a problem of my own.” He reached under his seat and pulled out a reusable shopping bag, the kind Californians have to keep in their cars now that regular plastic shopping bags are illegal. The same ones we always forget in our cars and then have to buy more of at the check-out lane. I looked inside. It held the laptop from Backdraft’s hideout and an official-looking LAPD file on the case.

  “The FBI took over the case today. Brass ordered us to stand down and turn everything over. Took a fair bit of finagling to get that bag outta the station. I need you to take it to the Tower. Hopefully, that fancy computer of theirs can hack the encryption. Make some sorta sense outta all this.”

  “Geez, Dawson, this is pretty vigilanteish of you.”

  He grimaced. “Don’t push it. This whole Bedlam thing’s got me jumping at shadows.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain. That’s why I haven’t told anyone. It’s been driving me crazy, and I didn’t want to bring along company.”

  “Naw, you had ta tell me. I get that. But outta the million different ways to look at this, the one I keep comin’ back to is that this FBI investigation is in their pocket. I don’t mind tellin’ ya, it’s got me spooked. I even sent Carol off ta stay with her mother.”

  Damn. I didn’t think it was possible to sca
re the old detective. He was just that kind of guy. Tough as an undercooked piece of leather. Bulletproof in his own grim, hard-nosed way. For him to come to this—stealing evidence to hand to a reporter—was almost unthinkable. A slow chill worked its way down the back of my neck.

  “You sure it’s worth the risk? If I get caught, they’ll know where it came from.”

  Dawson let out a gallows chuckle. “Maybe they’ll give us neighboring cells.”

  “I hope not. Carol says you snore.” I decided to take advantage of the situation and change the subject, sharing the events at the airport. “So, I’m thinking there’ll be some sort of autopsy on those guys.”

  He nodded. “And if the goons were mixed up in this, that’ll be where whoever’s behind it’ll hit next.”

  “Makes sense. Something killed them, and it sure wasn’t natural causes. I figure they’ll need to make the bodies disappear.”

  “Gotcha.” Dawson pulled out his phone and got some cops he could trust heading toward the airport station. He got a couple of his task-force guys out of bed and sent them the same way. “It’s just one thing after another with you, Conway.”

  “Dull moments are so … dull.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Been too long. I don’t suppose you have any evidence to back this up.”

  I shook my head. “SpeedDamon had me turn off the camera. He leaned on ‘em a bit, but I swear he never touched ‘em.”

  “And you didn’t tell the cops he was there?” He rubbed his forehead. “Jesus, Conway, I should run you in for this, you know.”

  “I’m prepared for that, Captain. If you have to, you have to.”

  He thought about it for a bit, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Naw. Let’s see how this plays out. Just figure out what’s on that laptop before this thing gets any worse.”

  ***

  Work the next day was brutal. Lack of sleep, being dead-ended on the Backdraft story, and the attack on Ratna teamed up with my worry over Dr. Schadenfreude’s revelations, making for a long eight hours. I wanted nothing more than to get to the Tower and get started on processing Dawson’s shopping bag of stolen evidence. But, knowing I was under surveillance, I had to keep up appearances.