Superhero by Night Omnibus

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  With that sniper on overwatch and with only four pistols, two knives, and a sword to my name, it’s going to be tricky. I counted roughly thirty guys at the docks and another twenty here. More than I can take head-on, but not more than I can take.

  I got down low and fast walked over to the far side, making sure to keep the two-foot-tall parapet between me and the sniper. I had to ditch my poncho, which meant having the rain soak me through, again. It was too loud, though; I couldn’t risk someone hearing it.

  It took me all of ten seconds to find the leader of the buyers—a real conceited dirtbag twirling around a silver revolver. At least he’s out in the rain with his people and not in a warm, dry SUV while they all get soaked to the bone.

  Maybe they can put that in his obituary.

  He’s surrounded by his men; there isn’t any way to take him out first without giving up the element of surprise. If only I had a frag grenade, that would be something!

  “Those two, right there,” Sara said, appearing beside me in the wind and rain without a drop on her. I didn’t shout but my whole body jerked to the side and I lost my balance and ended up in a puddle. She laughed, her voice like tinkling bells. God, how I missed that laugh.

  “You could warn me before you do that, Spice,” I said to her. Ever since Joseph passed these powers on to me, I’d had visions of her. Each as real as the last. Each one freaking me out like nothing else in my life.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” She threw an impish smile at me then pointed again. I looked at where she pointed. Two men were walking the perimeter under the Army sniper’s perch. He had no way of knowing they were there. Perfect. I looked over at her to say ‘thank you,’ but she was gone.

  I shook my head. Maybe I was losing my mind. Or maybe I was seeing a ghost? Stranger things have happened in this world. Still… freaked me out. I pulled myself out of the puddle and crouch-walked back the way I came until I was at the closest end of the warehouse. I hated operating during the day, but if I had too, this was the day to do it. The dark clouds belched rain and thundered lightning every few seconds. That made it easy enough to find a shadow the two men walking perimeter would pass through.

  I readied myself. First, I pulled out the red scarf I used to disguise my identity. I wrapped it around my mouth and nose and tied it in a knot beneath my growing mess of dreadlocks. Then I pulled out both my tanto Ka-Bars.

  Shadow step took me right behind them. I rammed the Ka-Bars up through their backs and into their lungs. They tried to call out, but their lungs collapsed along with them a second later. Whatever sounds they managed to make couldn’t be heard over the wind and rain.

  I frowned. Nothing happened. No rush, no surge of power. Nothing.

  Am I ever going to figure out how these powers work?

  Regardless, I dragged them back behind a hunk of abandoned machinery leaning against the wall. With two down and the rest helping park the semis or watching the action, I had a first step. All I needed to do was figure out which semi had the explosives, teleport into it, disarm my detonator, and proceed to kill the other forty-odd guys here.

  Easy.

  ♦♦♦

  “Did you see that?” Rico asked no one in particular. “What?” Master Sergeant Farrel replied as he leaned closer.

  “Hold on,” Rico said as his hands flew over the controls, changing buttons and typing in commands faster than Bill could follow. One of the four drones hovering five-hundred feet above the area had caught a flash of light. Rico rewound the recording, played it then rewound it again. To conserve hard-drive space, the drones only collected an image every four seconds. As Rico played the frame forward it zoomed in on two men walking the perimeter below Felix’s OP. A blue light hit the men like a camera flash and the next frame they were gone. Nothing but empty ground and no sounds of alarm.

  “Whiskey, we have a possible super on the field.” That got everyone’s attention. There were incredibly harsh penalties for people who used their powers in the commission of a crime, incredibly harsh. Even still, it was pretty common. One of the reasons he loved having Sandy on the team. “Switch to AP ammo, I say again, AP ammo.”

  It was a practiced drill, popping out their mags and replacing them with the red striped ones. Armor piercing ammo wasn’t a hundred percent effective against the invulnerable types, but it was better than nothing.

  “You wanna call in the Saints, boss?” Zim asked from the driver’s compartment.

  Bill shook his head. “Not yet. If we can’t handle it, then yeah, maybe.” Bill had never worked with the Saints, but their leader was an ex-Air Force Colonel who went by the name Mach. Odds were, they could trust them… maybe.

  ♦♦♦

  I bounced around the perimeter, jumping from shadow to shadow until I found the perfect position. I could see all four trucks as they backed up and parked the trailers side-by-side and opened each one for inspection.

  It only took me a minute to figure out who was in charge of the sellers. He was tall, blond, and built like a tank. I sure hoped he wasn’t another invulnerable; I’d had enough trouble with the last one—and I was all out of thermite grenades.

  He walked over and spoke to the local with the silver pistol, who was smart enough to put it away when the sellers arrived.

  I supposed I could start a fight between them, get them shooting at each other… that would probably happen anyway. But first things first. I needed to disarm my bomb and make sure it didn’t accidentally kill the good guys.

  I made a mental note to figure out how to avoid this in the future. I didn’t want to kill cops or federal agents, but at the same time, they were clearly not doing their job. How could I do mine and not risk bystanders? I wondered if that was one of the reasons Joseph quit. Was the risk of killing innocents too high?

  I re-focused on what I was doing; the last thing I needed was for some street-level thug to sneak up on me and finish my crusade before I’ve even started.

  The first trailer opened with a bang as the big metal doors swung aside.

  “Holy crap,” I said out loud, unable to contain myself. I thought the one trailer full of C4 was bad, this one had crate after crate of military ordinance. I didn’t know what an XM25 was but the big “EXPERIMENTAL” tag on the crate was enough to send a shiver down my spine. The next trailer held more traditional small arms: M4 Carbines, Sig P320s, and several stacks of grenades.

  Awesome. What were they planning?

  When the last guy at the meet told me about this deal, I figured it would be street level at best. The C4 was a surprise, but this? This is frigging insane. What did the Russians do, raid the Redstone Arsenal? The Army guys must be crapping their pants; this is a whole lot of ordinance heading for a war. Just not one fought by the government.

  The last trailer opened, showing the pallets loaded with C4. Perfect. I triggered my shadow step. A blast of arctic cold later and I was all the way in the front of the trailer. I sliced through the duct tape holding the cellphone to the thermite grenade and pocketed both. No need to leave it behind. It’s nice to know the Army is here; I can’t let ISO have all this crap any more than they can.

  Now for the fun part.

  ♦♦♦

  Bill let out a string of curses so foul it would make a Drill Sergeant blush. The three men in the van with him remained silent, fearing for their lives if they were to speak.

  “What the actual eff, Rico,” he said in a whisper.

  “I don’t know, Master Sergeant,” Rico said formally. There was a time for familiarity and time for the chain of command, and Rico didn’t want that chain wrapped around his neck. “Intel didn’t say anything about any of this. Just the ten pounds of missing C4…”

  Bill stabbed a finger at the monitor. “Does that look like ten pounds of C4 to you?”

  Rico shook his head. “No, Master Sergeant, it does not.”

  Bill took a breath, trying to calm himself down. This was a crap show of the worst kind. There were millions of dollar
s of ordinance in those trailers and it was forcing their hand. It didn’t matter that they were outnumbered ten-to-one—there was no world in which he could return to his CO and explain how they let enough weapons to start a war go to these criminals.

  “Gear up. Shoot to kill, no warning shots, no asking for surrender. We make one announcement of who we are, and we kill everyone who gets in our way. I know this is more than we signed on for, but this is exactly what we’ve trained for. And Sandy?”

  “Yes Sergeant?”

  “Make sure you pay enough attention to give an accurate account of what went on here?”

  “Yes Sergeant,” the invulnerable soldier said in a whisper. Bill didn’t envy the man; if this went south he would be the only one left alive.

  “Rico, set them to full record and let’s get to it.”

  ♦♦♦

  I needed to pare down the field. There were too many, even for me. Also, instead of starting with the leader I was liking the idea of interrogating him. After getting so much info off a low-level nobody, I could only imagine what I would find out from someone in charge of something so clearly important to them.

  The only thing to do was work the edges, come from the outside and work my way in, taking down as many as I could. I focused my vision, letting the shadows vanish until I found a spot. Triggering shadow step, I was there, spinning around while pulling my pistols.

  I was ten feet behind the farthest SUV. Three enforcers were huddling together, smoking instead of watching the entrance. The four SUVs of the buyers were parked in a semi-circle facing the trailers from a distance of thirty feet.

  Their mistake.

  I stepped out of the dark shadow caused by the wall, guns at shoulder level, and pulled the trigger. Silencers didn’t work like in the movies. ‘Silencer’ is more what the technical device is called according to the books Joseph had me study. What it really does, is suppress.

  Since I was really trying to be unpredictable, I was carrying two Smith and Wesson M&Ps chambered in forty cal that I picked up from some unfortunate drug dealers who no longer needed them. Loaded with subsonic ammo they were about as quiet as a brass gong. The advantage was that the sound only lasted for a second and didn’t travel nearly as far.

  All three went down with barely a hiccup. I dropped the mags and reloaded, making sure I stayed topped off. I put the partially used mags in my coat pocket.

  Then it hit me.

  I had to brace myself against the SUV as a wave of euphoria flooded my chest. The world sharpened into greater focus and I could see and hear everything. It was different than when I used the powers without killing a bad guy. More powerful I guess. I felt like I could do anything. I shook my head to clear the buzz and focus my thoughts. I had a plan and I needed to stick to it—despite the little voice inside of me telling me to jump up and start shooting.

  I ducked around the right side of the SUV. There were two men with their backs to me.

  Pop pop.

  They fell, holes blasted in the back of their heads. I kept moving, ducking around the next truck as the euphoric wave hit me again, not as bad this time. My skin tightened and I could feel my body revving up.

  Two more fell; I felt fantastic and on a roll. That little voice was now screaming at me to up the game.

  Someone beat me to it.

  “Federal Agents, down on the ground. This is your only warning!” His voice was loud enough that I heard him over the rain and the wind. If I had to guess, he was using a bullhorn.

  Of course, I wasn’t about to surrender—not when there was so much killing that needed to be done. The crack of a high-powered rifle filled the air and I realized the agents weren’t really interested in anyone surrendering as the leader of the sellers went down in a mass of brain and blood, his skull split by a rifle round.

  Then all hell broke loose. Automatic weapons fire erupted, accented by the much quieter ‘pop-pop’ of pistols—they only seemed loud when there weren’t rifles blowing holes in things.

  A little part of me was sad or disappointed at not getting all the kills. I didn’t have time to contemplate that though; I needed to move and take down as many as I could. I leaped up on the SUV, walking forward both guns barking as I fired down into the crowd of gangsters who had all turned to the west to fire at the feds. Unlucky for them.

  I took down one, then another, followed by a third in as many seconds before they realized they were taking fire from two directions. The Ukrainians (I assumed, since that was where the boat’s registry came from) were carrying AK12s with collapsible butt-stocks. It gave them the appearance of SMGs, but in reality, they were combat rifles (there’s no such thing as an Assault Rifle; according to Joseph that’s just a term made up by people who don’t actually know anything about firearms). They opened up a few seconds later, half of them returning fire to the west, the other half firing on me. The rifles belched flame as the thirty round magazines emptied in less than two and a half seconds.

  For me, the world slowed down. I moved to my left, running as I fired back at them. I hit the edge of the SUV, leaped, and continued firing as I flew through the air. Two more went down, their heads jerking back as my bullets smashed between their eyes.

  Then my luck ran out.

  My Wraith powers allowed me to regenerate, as far as I could tell, from about anything. However, bullets frigging hurt so I wear an armored vest that will stop most pistol rounds. The 5.4 millimeter rounds tore through me like my vest was made of paper. The force knocked me sideways and I hit the ground with a crunch, rolling several times before coming to rest face down in the mud.

  “Ow,” I said.

  ♦♦♦

  Bill had one hand on Sandy’s shoulder, walking behind him as he fired his M4 Carbine from the modified shouldered position. The rest of his team was spread out, taking cover and returning fire. Mostly to keep the focus on them and Sandy while Felix did his business.

  “Super in the field. African-American woman. No costume but she’s wearing a red scarf— never mind, they got her,” Felix said over the radio.

  “Keep firing. Rico, frag!”

  “Frag out!” Rico yelled, pulling the pin on a grenade and hurling it toward the enemy. The explosion caught the majority of the huddled criminals off guard, sending several men through the air, screaming and flailing.

  Within seconds the tractors belched to life, doing their best to escape. “Whiskey. Drivers,” Bill ordered.

  The sniper didn’t acknowledge the order, simply following it. Bill heard the crack of his rifle above his own fully automatic one as the sniper went to work taking down the drivers. Just not fast enough. “Tango down,” he said before firing again. Tango was military shorthand for ‘target.’ The first truck crashed into the far wall. The second stalled, the third ran into the second one. But the fourth was getting away. It was the one with the C4 and they really needed to stop that one.

  “Whiskey, kill it!”

  “I’ve got no shot,” he replied calmly.

  The exhaust system and several tires exploded as the sharpshooter tried to disable the vehicle. If there was one thing they had learned in their careers, the only sure way to stop a vehicle was take out the driver.

  “Sandy, go to work. Everyone else, fire on that truck!”

  Sandy ran in ahead, screaming and hollering to draw fire as he engaged the tangos at close range. The rest of the team leaped up, firing their weapons dry. Bullets ripped apart the semi as the big tires spun in the mud trying to for traction. In the end, despite the volume of fire, they couldn’t stop it.

  “Rico, get back to the van and put a drone on it!” Bill yelled. He turned and pulled the trigger as the man with the silver revolver darted out from behind an SUV, running for the empty building behind them. He twisted, keeping his sites over the man and firing; the slide locked back and his weapon clicked empty.

  The man stopped short, his hands flying up, expecting to die. When he didn’t, he smiled. “I guess it’s not your lucky
day,” the man said. The silver revolver clicked as he pulled the hammer back, aiming it directly at Bill’s chest. The hammer fell and the gun exploded the bullet out the barrel. Bill closed his eyes as the bullet hit him dead center. From ten feet away the .500 round hit like a mule, sending him flying backward to land in the mud and hit his head on the dirt.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Dying in the line was one thing, but dying from this idiot? Just like he feared, the shock from the impact numbed his limbs and made him cough as he tried to breathe. His vest had stopped the round, but at the cost of a collapsed lung. His M4 was attached to him via a sling, but it was hopelessly tangled. He tried to get his hands to work and draw the Sig Sauer on his hip, then he heard a hammer click back. Bill’s eyes had cleared enough to could see the barrel a mere foot from his face.

  The smiling man behind it grinned as he pulled the trigger.

  Mud and dirt exploded beside his head. The gunshot deafened him, but his eyes were just fine. The African-American woman with the red scarf wrapped around her face kicked the revolver-man in the chest, sending him flying through the air to crash against the side of an SUV, denting the door and shattering the window. She stopped for a second, glancing down at Bill, her eyes glowing like they had blue LEDs installed behind them.

  She vanished in a burst of light, reappearing inside the SUV. She grabbed the leader’s hair and dragged him, one-handed, through the broken window then started the black vehicle and floored it. Mud splashed behind her as she tore through the remaining vehicles. Two gangsters tried to stop her, but she pulled the e-brake, sending the SUV into a sideswipe, slamming them with five-thousand pounds of steel and glass; they weren’t getting up.

  “I’ve got a shot on her,” Felix said over the radio. Bill shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around what he’d just seen. She had saved his life, and it all happened so fast he couldn’t even be sure what he saw.