Superhero By Night (Book 3): The Wraith [Guerrilla Warfare]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  I turned away from the door and walked back to the girls. “How did you all get here?”

  The girl who helped me before pointed away from the house, opposite the direction I had come onto the island.

  “Thanks. Stay here, stay down and don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I walked away as the idea turned into a full-fledged plan. Sure enough, the island had its own dock and Alvarez his own boat. Maybe forty feet long, but sleek. No upper story, just the one level and a below decks probably. Designed more for speed than to go out and party on.

  I picked up speed, jogging down the dock and vaulted onto the boat with one hand on the railing. I made my way to the bridge and looked around. The controls looked like a standard car, except the throttle was more like an airplane’s. I just had no idea how to start it. There were a lot of electronics; maybe it was like a car and needed key-fob to start...

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Krisan.

  “Go for Krisan,” she said with a grin in her voice.

  “Funny,” I said, still speaking in my scary Wraith way.

  “Okay, okay, I know. But consider it an apology. I’ll try and be an operations person.”

  “Operator,” I said.

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s operations.”

  I shook my head, forming a grin of my own. That crazy girl could lighten any mood. “Can you hijack electronics that aren’t phones?”

  She was silent while she thought about it. “I... I don’t know. I never really tried. What did you have in mind?”

  CHAPTER 14

  Rodrigo checked all the cameras again. Where had she gone? Despite what he told her, he actually wasn’t sure the door would hold against her. It was rated to handle an F4... in theory… but his cousin was unclear on exactly what her powers were. They knew from the footage they had that she was fast, strong, and deadly with weapons.

  And she’d killed Torrez. He rotated the amphitheater camera to show Torrez’ body. A headless mess that had once been human.

  Damn her. I’d liked that man.

  The two of them went way back. Torrez was an idiot, always solving problems with his powers and not his brain. When Rodrigo had started climbing up the ranks, he’d taken the overpowered lug with him. After all, an F4 strength and invulnerability was always an asset.

  She’d killed him in less time than it took to eat a donut. Just... unbelievable.

  That, more than anything else, had him worried. He knew the true power of ISO-1. In a few short years, they had infiltrated federal and local governments, taken over law enforcement, and pacified whole countries.

  Yet... here was this woman. An ex-model, of all the irony, taking them apart like cotton candy. Thanks to her. the shipment today was likely the last one from the states—and it wasn’t even a full load. And now other superheroes were getting involved, disrupting their business.

  There best asset had been how invisible they were… that no one knew about them. That ship had sailed as this woman tore them to pieces.

  “What the f—” he didn’t have time to finish the word.

  The island was small enough that no part of the house was more than fifty feet from the water. The forty foot, high-speed, custom yacht hit the beach going close to seventy knots. It slid right up and crashed into the house, blasting through the wall and sheering his safe room in half before coming to rest embedded in the other side.

  Wood, plaster, and steel crashed around him, along with a shower of sparks as his monitors exploded from the impact.

  He huddled in the corner, afraid to move, hoping against hope that the impact had killed her as well.

  Then the back of the yacht shifted. Broken pieces of hull fell away and there she was, standing up, cracking her neck, wrapping the infamous red scarf around her mouth as she walked toward him, her eyes like a demon’s with blue fire.

  “Now, let’s talk about where you’re sending those girls.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Capitan Garnez of the light freighter Ramera stood on the bridge overseeing the operation. The ship itself was sixty feet long. They had eighteen cargo containers on board. The inner six contained the real cargo, the rest was maize from Mexico they would sell as a bonus.

  “No contact, señor. Nothing.”

  “You try your cell?” he asked his radio operator.

  “Si, but we’re still out of range of any towers. You want me to fetch the sat-phone from the locker?”

  Garnez shook his head. He had to keep the damn thing locked up or his crew would use it to call home—and not only did his missions require secrecy... it cost a lot of money to use the thing.

  “No, they’re probably just busy with the party,” he said with a smile. A party his crew was certainly looking forward too.

  They were half a mile out and he could see the lights on the beach exactly where they were supposed to be. Using binoculars, he scanned the beach and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Twenty-seven runs in the last two years and not once had there been any sign of a problem. ISO-1 owned every level of law-enforcement and government from here to Texas.

  The only thing different about this run was that he was short almost twenty-girls from the US. No one had told him why; they just hadn’t shown up. It was the first time anything like that had happened. Garnez just chalked it up to bad luck.

  A quarter mile out and he buried himself in the business of docking the ship. It was big enough that coming up to a small dock wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but he was an experienced ship handler and he had done this run many, many times.

  “Let’s bring her in,” he told his helm as he stood up. What could they possibly have to worry about?

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I watched from the rooftop, my enhanced vision filling in the darkness with light as bright as in the noon sun. To my surprise, the ship filled my vision as if I were looking at it through a pair of binoculars.

  “This is new,” I murmured.

  “You collected a lot of energy tonight. It won’t last though. The abilities you gain from this much killing are the ones that go away first as you expend your power,” Spice said from beside me. She had her legs over the edge of the roof, swinging them carefree with a huge smile on her face.

  “I take it that zoom-vision is not something you can grant me?”

  She shook her head. “Regeneration, teleporting, strength, and speed are easier to give you when you’re low energy than the more fine-tuned enhancements. And I can’t ‘give’ them to you for very long without you killing. It hurts me—which is why you age. A girl’s got to eat.”

  I shook my head. “You’re like a vampire,” I said jokingly.

  “Where do you think the legend came from?” she said and vanished. I was left with my mouth open. No. No way, she was just messing with me. Even if my powers all seemed to line up with vampire legends, there was no way. Those stories are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. Whatever Spice is, she’s just another kind of superpower... right?

  I shook my head again. She was just being her enigmatic self. There were other things demanding my attention, so I shuffled those thoughts to the back and tagged them for later.

  The freighter was slowing down to a crawl as it pulled up to the dock. I needed to make sure they were one-hundred percent docked before I acted. I had no idea how to park a beast like that and I doubted Krisan could just Google it and tell me.

  Speaking of her, my phone vibrated.

  “Go for Wraith,” I said in my scary voice.

  “That gives me the creeps. It’s like your voice is peering into my soul.”

  “Sorry,” I said, letting my powers drop for the moment. The world turned dark as my eyes adjusted to normalcy. For a second I was a normal girl on a rooftop, letting the wind blow my hair around as I stared out at the ocean.

  “I’m getting a lot of activity on the cell phones I have access too. I think they may be aware that something is wrong on the island. There’s
a lot of activity at the docks in the city and more people heading that way,” she said. “In about an hour they are going to flood your location with backup.”

  Great. How am I going to get all these women out of here?

  I glanced down at the ruined yacht and shrugged. That could have worked. Now it’s the freighter or nothing. I’ll just have to make it work. Once I have them out, I can focus on the next part. Before Alvarez died, he told me about a secret facility inside the Crooked Tree wildlife reserve. A place where girls went and none ever returned.

  I blinked a couple of times to refocus. The ship was almost docked.

  “I need a boat, Kris. Something light and fast that can go up river through the jungle.”

  “Jungle? Where we going?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere, I am. I’ll tell you later. I’ve got to finish up here before those reinforcements show up,” I told her.

  “I’ll get working on finding you a boat then,” she said before hanging up.

  It was nice having a partner. Someone I could rely on. Not having to do everything myself was pretty good too. What the heck did I know about buying or renting boats?

  I waited patiently for another ten minutes as they finished their docking procedure. When the gangplank came down and the crew started tying her off, I made my move.

  I leaped off the roof, landed in a roll, popped up, and ran down the beach toward the little dock. It was the same one the yacht had used.

  One of the crew must have heard me coming; he turned and I shot him in the head. I shadow stepped up to the main deck, landing in a crouch on the metal hull next to a startled crewman. I spun, bringing my foot around to hit him in the back of the knees and sending him sprawling backward. I followed it up by driving the knife edge of my had into his exposed throat.

  I didn’t have time to wait. There had to be twenty people on board, and they all had to go. I ran like hell down the side of the deck, jumping over equipment and ropes. It was vaguely unsettling since I had only been on a ship like this once before. Strange machines and signs were everywhere, and I didn’t know what any of them meant. Of course, I didn’t have to.

  I ran into another man coming up from below decks. I latched onto his chest, spun around and dragged him with me, building up momentum until I let him go. He sailed right into a metal crossbar, landing with a crack as his back broke and his head slammed into the deck. I kicked him in the throat as I ran by for good measure.

  They were on to me then. A klaxon lit up the air, whining its warning. All the lights on the ship turned on one by one, lighting up the whole area. I took one last shadow step before it was too bright, landing on the flying bridge at the back of the ship.

  Six men held stations in the large room full of tall screens and workstations. I flung the door open, pulling a pistol in my other hand as I did so. The helmsman looked at me and opened his mouth to say something; I shot him between the eyes.

  The bang of the pistol in the enclosed space was deafening. The remaining five turned to face me and I fired in rapid succession, taking out men and windows until there were six bodies on the floor and my slide was locked back.

  I made my way into the room and made sure they were all dead as I reloaded. A heavy metal weight slammed me in the back, knocking me forward.

  Sloppy, Madi. Check those corners.

  I stumbled forward, I turned brought up an arm just in time to block his next blow as the fire extinguisher came down on me again. I groaned as my forearm snapped. He lifted it up to hit me again and I shot forward and snapped my foot into his groin. He grunted, stepping back and letting the extinguisher fall to the floor.

  “In the back is a dick move.” I picked up the extinguisher, raised it with my working hand and brought it down on his head. He slammed into the deck and I hit him one more time for good measure.

  I had to take a second to steady myself as the euphoria hit me. My arm healed almost instantly, and I felt that rush of endorphins.

  “Okay, okay, where to,” I muttered. That was seven? There had to be more. I went over to the front of the bridge with its angled windows and looked down on the deck. I took a second to reload while I did it. When the slide slammed home I was ready to go.

  The remaining crew were on the main deck armed with shotguns, pipes, and whatever they could find.

  The deck was twenty feet below and I could only see the aft section. There could be more below, hidden in the stack of cargo containers. I guessed I would find out.

  CHAPTER 16

  Cary Ann stifled another sob as she waited in the dark. It was hot—so hot—she’d felt like she would die if she didn’t get a drink of water soon. Her clothes were stuck to her skin with days old sweat. Fourteen other girls were huddled in the container with her—none were from the US. When they had first loaded in her in, she’d seen five other cargo containers with lines of girls and women formed up and forced in at gun and Tazer point.

  They made a point of executing one of the girls the first night. Just to let them know that they were valuable enough kidnap, but they didn’t need all of them.

  She had never felt such fear in her life. It shamed her that she went along—she knew it shouldn’t—but they made them all walk past the dead girl as a point… to teach them the price of disobedience.

  Cary Ann jumped when the engines on the ship went full reverse, vibrating the hull and causing such a racket she could barely hear herself think. She’d spent the last three days trying desperately to avoid thinking about what was next. The first day they were in here some of the girls told stories of drug addiction, forced prostitution, and other horrors.

  She wasn’t a religious girl—had she been she probably wouldn’t have traveled to Cabo San Lucas for a weekend of drinking and partying. Now she regretted all of it.

  After a few minutes the engine died, and Carrie Ann was forced to come to terms with what was about to happen.

  She had only one option left. She knelt down and prayed. Once upon a time, she had prayed every night. After her parents split, she had prayed and prayed for God to bring them back together. When he didn’t, she decided he wasn’t real. She bowed her head and prayed with a fervor that would have made a preacher envious.

  “Lord, please, please, save us from this. I will do whatever you want. I’ll never drink again, I’ll listen to my parents, even when their suggestions are stupid. I’ll go to church, I’ll be the best person I can be, please, God, don’t let this happen.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she couldn’t help it. Terror unlike anything she ever imagined filled her, blocking out even the terrible thirst.

  The door to the container screeched as the pull bar outside was pushed aside.

  Please God, save me.

  The door opened, shining light through and outlining a woman in black with a red scarf around her nose and mouth. Her eyes, though, glowed with a blue fire that both relieved and terrified Cary Ann.

  “Everyone out. The crew is dead and you’re safe, but you won’t be for long if we don’t hurry.”

  No one moved, not even an inch. Cary Ann decided to stand, slowly rising to her feet. “Are you an angel?” she asked. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

  “If I am, I’m the angel of death. Get moving,” the woman said in a voice that sounded like a mix of heavy metal and hell. It sent a chill down her spine and almost made her step forward. She looked down to the floor where she had just prayed and decided it wasn’t a coincidence.

  CHAPTER 17

  From the back deck of the cargo ship I watched the island fade away. We managed to get everyone loaded up and the ship moving within thirty minutes. According to Krisan, we had about ten minutes to spare. With any luck, the rest of ISO-1 wouldn’t even know the ship ever arrived.

  “Ma’am?” a sweet young voice said from behind me. I turned. It was the blonde who thought I was an angel. I still had my mask up and decided to take it down to speak to her. I let my Wraith voice and glowing eyes
fade and addressed her as me.

  “What?” I asked tersely. I felt bad for the girls, but they needed to do the rest of this journey without me.

  She looked away for a moment, took a sip of bottled water and then turned back to me. “I just... I wanted to say thank you.”

  I didn’t know why this was uncomfortable. I felt like crawling out of my skin.

  You’ve gotten so used to killing, it’s become what you’re all about.

  I decided to force myself to stand up and stretch before smiling at her. “I would say it was nothing, but it was actually really friggin hard.”

  She nodded, not finding the humor in my statement. “Will we make it out of here?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Probably? If you stay to the course my friend provided the ship should take you to the US. By tomorrow night all you have to do is use the radio to call the Coast Guard and you’ll be back home in a few days,” I told her.

  I looked back out to the sea. Moments like these were becoming fewer and fewer. Moments where I could just... relax. The weight of my family’s death wasn’t on me and I could just be me for a few minutes.

  She stood there beside me, not speaking, just looking out at the ocean. With the cool night air blowing her hair about we could almost have been friends on a cruise ship, out for a stroll under the stars.

  “Who are you?” she asked suddenly.

  “When they ask you that, tell them I’m the Wraith. Nothing more, nothing less,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “The less people know about me, the better.”

  She shook her head. “What you’ve done, you deserve a reward, recognition, something...”

  I shook my head. “Honey, the only reward waiting for me is prison. As for recognition, when you get back to the states check the FBI’s most wanted list. I think I’m number one.”