Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3)

by Ben Bequer

  “It makes no sense,” Apogee said again, mumbling incredulously.

  “Could they have followed you?” I asked.

  “You don’t think that I-“

  “I’m not accusing you of a damned thing, Apogee,” I snapped. “But it’s possible. Your suit has a tracker, right?”

  She looked down at the monitor, “Goddamnit. I’m so sorry, Dale.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m just thinking that we can use that against them.”

  Apogee stared at me in disbelief.

  “They came here for you, right?” I said. “They don’t know for sure that we’re here, or that the castle is a trap.”

  Shaking her head, she was about to say something but I interrupted her.

  “We have the element of surprise.”

  “Please tell me you’re not thinking of fighting that.”

  “I’ve dealt with worse.”

  She crossed her arms and stood in my way, “I’d love to hear about it, and about the time you beat two dozen top of the line heroes by yourself.”

  “Well, not heroes-“

  “You know Epic, Dale. Hell, I know him. He won’t come with a bunch of nobodies. You might not know this, but since the Utopia breakout, he’s been out there putting the worst guys away. That team of his is designed to bring you in. He’ll have backup, and a perimeter setup so you can’t get away.”

  “I’m not going back to jail,” I told her.

  She swallowed, “There are worse places.”

  Could she be in on it? Did they send her to talk me out of fighting?

  I must have been giving her a funny look, because Apogee recoiled, “Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.” Her eyes filled with scorn, and her face twisted in anger.

  “For a second, yeah, but I’m sorry.”

  “If I wanted to bring you in, Dale McKeown, you’d be in handcuffs in a power suppressing room, waiting for the judge.”

  I wanted to kiss her, but she turned away from me, her attention on the ships.

  “Anyway, we don’t have time for this,” she said.

  I sat against the pool table as Bubu chimed in over coms, “Bro, they’re landing.”

  “So what do I do?”

  She came to me, taking my hands, “You’re going to be fine, Dale.”

  I shook my head, “I’m a convicted felon.”

  “It will be different this time. I’ll be beside you. That will count for something.”

  “That’s not how they work, Maddie. No, first they’re going to try me for all the shit that happened in Utopia, even though I had nothing to do with it.”

  She squeezed my hands, as if trying to knock some sense into me, “Jesus, Dale, you saved the President’s life. I’ll make them remember that.”

  “Like you did last time?” I wanted to say, but there was little bitterness left in my heart towards Apogee. She was here, trying to help me, trying to find a way out, but she was a hero, a good guy, and she only saw one alternative.

  “There’s another way out,” I said.

  Apogee cocked her head with a little smile, like when you catch a small child telling a lie. “It’s over, Dale. Don’t you see that?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said as I kissed her hand and bounced off the table, heading downstairs, with her close behind.

  “Bubu, we’re leaving,” I said into coms.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Dale,” Apogee said, grabbing my hand to halt me. “I don’t want to fight those people. I’ll have friends down there.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder to give her some reassurance. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to fight anyone. Hell, I’m not going to fight anyone, if things go right. But I am going to need you to play a role in this.”

  “What,” she said, exhaling in exasperation.

  “You’re going to be my bait.”

  * * * *

  We gathered in one of the trap rooms, a lower level chamber that for all outward appearances looked like a huge dining hall, decorated for a wedding. Apogee didn’t like the plan at all, but what convinced her in the end was that it was clever, and it required humiliating Epic. I tied her up, and Bubu recorded me ranting like a mad man.

  “Where’s the tracker?” I asked her.

  “What’s going through your sick little mind?”

  I smiled, “Well, it’s easier than taking off your whole suit.”

  She put both her balled fists at her hips.

  “I need cheese, Apogee. You’re the cheese.”

  I’ve seen her in a reckless, uncontrollable rage, I’ve seen her tear through man and beast like a dervish, and I knew how scary it was to be on the wrong end of a blood-lusting Apogee. I was a little stronger than she was, but her super speed rendered foes useless. My respect for her knew no bounds, but until that moment, I had never been frightened of her.

  “I mean the bait, Apogee,” I said, softening my tone. “I’m not trying-“

  “I know what you mean,” she said, steeling herself behind clenched teeth. “I came to help you, Dale. Not become an accomplice.”

  “Aw, come on. We caught you and tied you up,” I said. “How’s that make you complicit?”

  She shook her head; “You two clowns could never catch me in a million years. Anyone with half a brain-“

  “That’s what I’m counting on, some people without fully formed frontal lobes…”

  “Forget it. The tracker is right here,” she said, pointing at a bunched fold in the fabric just above her right breast.”

  I grabbed a handful of her uniform, feeling the tracker pod beneath my fingers. “Oh no you-,” she managed before I pulled hard, ripping it off.

  Apogee pushed me away, covering the gaping hole in her upper chest. She normally had a “boob-slit” that was extremely revealing, designed as she had told me, to catch perverts like me staring at her ample breasts. Her new uniform lacked the old slit, so I gave her one. It wasn’t like her nipples were poking out, but the hole was vast enough that she was better off not jumping a lot.

  “Reminds me of your old suit,” I said.

  “You asshole,” she said.

  I turned away from her and tossed the wadded bit of uniform containing the tracker onto the same chair where we had strapped Apogee a moment before. She saw what I was doing and instead of punching me in the face, nodded in approval.

  “Why couldn’t you explain that to me before you went and ripped my uniform half off?” she said, trying to spread the remaining fabric to cover her breasts without much success.

  “It’s me,” I said. “They would have known the difference.” I turned to Bubu, “You have everything uploaded?”

  “For the good it will do,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * * *

  The elevator carried us to the lowest level of the underground construction. Despite designing the elevator, I didn’t trust it. I was still hesitant about structures not built from concrete and reinforced steel, which was strange, seeing as my entire plan relied on printed materials. In any case, there was no time for the stairs. Only Apogee had super speed.

  The hallway leading out of the elevator was pitch black and freezing. I had no idea how far underground we were, and thinking about it made me a little claustrophobic. I switched my contacts to infrared, and the world became a sea of blues and reds. The drones were weaponless, but still out there doing their job, feeding us external video. Bubu had a laptop strapped to his chest that fed him data and video from the contacts and the drones, so our local network hadn’t been breached yet. I guided us towards the exit, optimistic that Epic didn’t have a techie in his gaggle of heroes. If I was wrong, this would be a brief escape attempt.

  A separate readout told me the castle was primed and ready. The majority of the drones were not ready for action, and the few that were I kept on lockdown. They were never meant to be the vanguard of an assault, but they could
hamper an invader’s attempt to scuttle the traps. When Epic’s people broke down the door, they would find the foyer wide and easily accessible. They would go after Apogee’s tracker and encounter the first trap. It was more a nuisance than anything else, chloroform gas triggered by pressure plates set into the floors, but it might get a couple of them. When they realized the tracker was a decoy, they would have to decide whether to go up the stairs and into the wings or explore the underworks.

  I had to assume they were at least as competent as me, which meant they had already scanned the castle on their recon sweeps. We were probably too deep for them to detect, and the lower chambers would be just as alluring to a bunch of heroes as they would have been to Haha’s team of psychopaths. I locked the elevator, knowing they would never take it if it were available. There was no easier death trap than an elevator you couldn’t control. The stairwells were marginally safer, but neither of those options was required when you had people who could tear through the floors.

  Regardless of how they made their way down, what they would find were the traps. The further they descended, the deadlier they got. Working as intended, against Haha’s people, they were designed to divide and conquer, and each room was lined with secret chutes that I could use to maneuver between them, picking off at the bad guys at their weakest. Against the sheer numbers Epic had they would be speed bumps, but might thin the herd a little. Part of me was disappointed that I would never get to see the whole plan come together, but there were other battles to fight.

  * * * *

  I found the exit hatch; one of many built into the dungeon areas and the hill itself, and pulled it open. The air outside was crisp, but a touch warmer than what we were feeling inside the hill. The hatch opened at the hill’s base, leading onto an expanse of densely wooded forest that stretched for miles away. I looked up. People in the business always knew to look up first. It was what separated us from mundane cops and criminals. They were always looking for trouble on ground level. My vigilance was immediately rewarded as a pair of streaks flew overhead, the infrared painting them as a pair of incandescent orange stars flaring overhead. I ducked back into the hollowed out chamber and counted to five.

  The night sky was clear when I peeked again, but I saw the distinct outline of three humanoid figures rushing toward the base of the hill in spread formation. They were oblivious to the hidden backdoor, but were moving with deliberate caution, as they closed our line of escape. I looked back to see Apogee and Bubu staring at the laptop monitor, Apogee flashing me a thumbs up while the computer ran the outlines through our database (which I borrowed from Interpol without permission) .

  Two of the approaching supers vexed the computer, but one was obvious, at least once the system spat out the name. Pummel was a new super with a power set similar to mine, except he could fly many times as faster than the speed of sound. He was a big, handsome guy with a perfect coif of auburn curls that swirled around his shoulders when he moved. If he wasn’t part of the air recon, then he was probably hunting with his partner, Fangness. She was the lithe woman moving from tree to tree, her movements fluid and quiet. I didn’t know much about her, other than she was agile with enhanced senses.

  “Pummel, Fangness and one other,” I told Apogee, hoping Bubu would be smart enough to let the professionals handle the job.

  Madelyne smiled, “Oh, my God, Pummel is such a douchebag. He’s mine.”

  “You can have them all if you think you can take them,” I said, unslinging my bow.

  “Fangness is fast,” she said. “And she doesn’t like me.”

  “Bro, let the girls fight, take out the big guy. I finish the other one,” Bubu said, his eyes never leaving the infrared images on his screen.

  “Stay in here,” I told Bubu. “You do not want to mix it up with these people. They don’t know you’re not super and they won’t bother to ask until after you’re in a body cast.”

  I could feel his irritation, and though the infrared blurred his features, they seemed to burn brighter as he stepped into the shadows of the hatchway. I hadn’t turned my gaze from the three interlopers and noticed them moving faster, closing to within a hundred yards of our position. Our hiding spot was a small copse of bushes surrounding the escape hatch, concealed from the moonlight by the heavy wooded forest in the lower valley beneath the castle, but I put my money on Fangness catching our scent.

  There was a minute whirring as the quiver angled the arrow shaft outward for an easier draw. I ran through the targets as they approached, a small reticle coming to rest over Fangness as the system locked onto her. The entire rig was integrated with the contacts and the wrist computer, and allowed me total control over the arrowheads. In spite of all that tech, I still had to aim the arrow and fire.

  “Apogee, take out the target we have not ID’ed,” I said, and with a whoosh of vacuum, she vanished. I rose from my vantage point, and loosed the arrow, noting in my reticle that Fangness sensed my movement and stopped. The missile sailed through the air, and to her credit, she noticed it, but the charge exploded with a flash-bang explosion she could not avoid. The bright light overwhelmed her eyes as the loud thumping explosion droned into her sensitive ears, dropping her in writhing agony.

  I switched to Apogee’s target in time to catch a swirl of dust raised by the blow she had laid on the unknown. The super was tougher than I expected, struggling back from her as she advanced with a hail storm of punches. A few dozen of those would knock anyone out and soon her opponent was still.

  Fangness was still down, moaning in pain. Pummel had stopped dead in his tracks when the arrow had exploded. I saw him raise a hand to his ear, as if to activate his communication system, but before he reached it, I drew an EMP arrow and fired. It bounced of his broad chest, barely tickling him, but the electromagnetic discharge fried all the electronics in a small field around him, ruining his ear bud coms system.

  “Two down,” I told Bubu, breaking into a run in Pummel’s direction.

  * * * *

  Pummel moved towards where the flashbang had exploded, calling out for Fangness. I closed the distance, intent on keeping him in the forest where the advantage of his flight was somewhat nullified. The timbre of his voice betrayed concern for his partner, and I used that against him, blindsiding him with a punch that sent hurtling through the forest, the sharp crack of wood and airy rustle of falling branches echoing in his wake.

  He recovered using his flight and catapulted off a tree straight at me. I drew an arrow, firing with less time than I would have liked. The arrow struck him, erupting in a gas that coalesced into thick opaque foam that dried instantly. He changed trajectory, ascending straight into the sky, but I fired a second arrow before he got too high. The arrow struck, releasing an electrical charge of almost one million volts, working in tandem with the foam, which was designed with a bonding agent that was an excellent conductor. The electrical charge bounced back and forth across the encapsulated Pummel and he fell like a boulder, crashing into the soft packed earth in the forest.

  I left him there, his screams of pain muffled by the foamy shell and moved towards Apogee’s last position. I scanned the forest, but didn’t see her. Fangness was still recovering, huddled in a fetal curl that looked uncomfortable, but there was no sign of Apogee or her unknown opponent.

  “Bubu, where is she?”

  “Bro, I don’t know,” I heard him say in stereo, his voice coming with huffs over the earbud as he ran up behind me. “She’s not on any of the cameras.”

  “Find her,” I said, turning to see the electrical charge expended, but Pummel was still struggling with the foam. His speed was impressive, but his invulnerability seemed to be overstated.

  I saw the screen flicker as Bubu ran through the drone cameras, his expression tight, his breath billowing around his mouth and nose in quick frenetic puffs.

  “Anything?” I said.

  He shook his head, but continued to look.

  “Dammit,” I said, still watching Pumme
l try to break free, like a newborn bird trying to get free of the egg. An idea struck me and I said, “Bubu, find one of their planes and wait for me.”

  “I can’t fly that thing.”

  “Neither can I,” I said as he ran off.

  Epic leaving the planes undefended was a chance I didn’t want to take, but the situation was getting volatile. Engaging the rocket boots, I took another chance and flew at Pummel, landing next to him. Close up, the man was huge, broader than a jumbo jet, his giant feet kicking past the edge of the dried foam. He had managed to free one arm and was battering at the hardened material, each shot cracking it. His breathing was labored and his efforts slowed as I watched. Left on his own, he would pass out from oxygen deprivation, though it was unlikely he would die.

  Fortunately for him, I needed him conscious and aware. Clasping my hands together, I took aim at the area that looked weakest and hammered it. The foam was tough, but where Pummel’s battering lacked leverage, mine was a full power hit that cracked the shell down the middle. The fracture was enough to reveal his torso and shoulder, deep enough for me to fit my fingers in and tear apart. Still not realizing the trouble he was in, Pummel grabbed at the more tenacious hunks of foam and together we reduced the shell to chunks littering the ground.

  “Thanks,” he said, still shaking from the charge coursing through his body and took my offered hand, smoke rising from his crown. Only at the last second did he realize who I was, but I already had a handful of his collar, lifting him off the ground with one hand. He struggled weakly, his ordeal more draining that either of us had expected, grabbing my arm and clawing at my face.

  “Who was the third person in your group,” I roared, my fist clenched tight enough for the knuckles to show through the thick gloves.

  His eyes slowly regained focus, settling on me as a worried expression crossed his face. “Black…jack,” he managed.

  I nodded, “At your service. Now tell me who was with you and Fangness?”

  He shook his head, steadying his grip on my wrist, “You bastard.”