“What’s your names?” I asked, catching my breath and telling my heart to stop beating like something out of a cartoon. The rifle going off, followed by one bomb exploding, had not been part of my rescue plan.
The brown-haired Army Ranger guy looked intent. “George Wilson.”
“Wayne Mendoza,” called the black-haired Marine Recon guy. “Who are you?”
“An American,” I said, stepping back. I pointed up at the ceiling, where the rectangle of an access hatch showed. “You two, get that hatch open. It gives access to the roof of the arch. It’s how maintenance replaces the airplane caution light. I want to put these two bastards up there, away from any of you folks.”
Mendoza looked down at his unconscious captive. He rolled the man over. A cell phone hung by a cord from the man’s neck. “Should I take this off him? To prevent another blast?”
“Yes!” I yelled, then sought calmness. The sound of creaking metal came from the south end of the room, where the explosion had happened. “Take it off carefully. Hold it by the cord. Don’t touch anything on the phone.” I looked to the Ranger guy. “George, do the same for this bastard’s phone. He set it off but who knows whether it could affect the other bomb. Be careful with it. Put the phones over on that window sill, slowly.”
“Will do,” George said. “Both Wayne and me have training in handling live explosives and detonators.”
“Good.” I waved at the north end group of people to stop approaching. Then realized something. “Are any of you a nurse or a doctor?” I called to them. “We’ve got someone hurt from the blast on the south side of the room.”
A middle-aged brunette held up her hand. “I’m a nurse. Worked ER and intensive care. My name is Alice.”
I nodded. “Alice, follow me. I’ve got to check out that blast site and see what’s broken.”
She came after me, as my sensitive ears told me. A rush of thoughts came from the people in her group and also the folks in the south end group. Spotting the older man whose right leg was bleeding badly from some kind of shrapnel, I raised my psychic shield against the thoughts of others. Didn’t need piles of emotions and confused thoughts getting in the way of what I needed to do now. The south group of people parted to allow me to pass through them. I pointed at the hurt man. “Nurse Alice, please help him. Some folks here have got to have some handkerchiefs or socks or whatever that can be used to stop the bleeding.”
“I’ll see to him . . . uh, Mr. American.”
Ignoring her comment, I headed for the blackened space that had once been the operator booth of the south arch tramway. Cold air blew my way from an opening in the wall on my left side, while the right side wall was bulging outward from the force of the blast. In the middle, the place where the carpeted floor met the first step, was a large black hole. My memory of the construction of this part of the arch said there was a v-shaped space below the floor that reached down five foot. With any luck the blast had not torn through the vee of the arch. If it had, this end of the deck might start to drop down, though the compressive force conveyed by both arch legs would likely keep the apex room mostly in place. Time to check on the extent of the damage.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Deputy director!” yelled Richardson. “Does the south side SWAT team advance?”
Andrew looked away from the observation room image conveyed by the south arch security camera that was attached to the roof just above where the blast had happened. Part of the image was blackened from smoke, but the tiny mobile camera inside still worked. The dome that covered it must have protected it from the blast. Either that or God Himself was a special agent of the FBI. Richardson’s shocked face came into focus.
“Not yet!” One wall video screen showed the north arch hostage group moving away from the explosive bottle at their end of the room. Other wall screens showed the arrival of the Fly Team vans at the base of the arch, while the CNN copter image showed hostages moving toward the middle of the arch, to where the two vets were sitting on the bodies of the two jihadists. Two women were doing something with cell phones. The Green Mask man in the suit was now moving toward the south side camera and that end of the deck. “Let’s hear what this intruder has to say about the condition of the stairwell. He’s closer to it than our people down below. Any word from our folks on their condition?”
“Yes,” Richardson said quickly. “Got an ear pod link with the south arch folks. The SWAT team and three field agents are all okay, no injuries. But the blast wave buffeted them badly. Some of them might have a burst eardrum. All report ready to take control of the scene.”
“Agent Richardson,” called Yamaguchi from her desk next to him. “Public affairs says CNN is calling them demanding to know what is happening. They say they saw an explosion at one end of the room. What response?”
“Say we are managing the rescue of the hostages,” Richardson said. The senior agent paused, looked down at Jacob Whitson of the NCTC, then over to Andrew. “Deputy director, agent Whitson says his Fly Team people are entering the visitor center and heading for the emergency stairs in both arch legs. Or should they call down the tram cars?”
“Don’t use either tram group,” Andrew said quickly. “The vibration of their use might activate the north side explosives bottle. What matters now is that all hostages are alive, the jihadists are restrained by those vets and the intruder will tell us the condition of the blast site. Once we know that, we can proceed to an active rescue of the hostages.” Another thought hit him. “Jacob, have your explosives people head up the north leg of the arch. I want them up there with the SWAT team and able to get eyeballs and sensors on that other explosive package. People, get moving!”
♦ ♦ ♦
I stopped at the edge of the hole. Where the floor had once continued to the metal stairs and rails that led the way down to the south arch tram doors, and below that to the emergency stairs, there was now only blackness. The hole looked to be four feet wide and three feet long. The top step of the stairs was gone, but the other stairs were intact and firmly seated on the underlying metal support frame. On the left was a hole in the wall that was big enough for a hunched down person to pass through. Cold wind blew in, dispersing the last of the black smoke from the detonation. On my right the half wall that had separated the operator booth from the stairs was pushed inward. The tram control panel had dents in it and nothing on it showed a light or sign of being powered up.
“George and Wayne,” I called back. “There’s a three by four foot hole in the floor and top stair. And a hole in the side wall. Rest of the floor is stable. Keep folks back there. I’ll see what I can do here.”
“We’re fine,” called George. “Alice is fixing our guy’s leg.”
“Good.”
Getting the floor hole covered was vital to getting the hostages out safely, since the north end was blocked by its explosive package. Maybe the half wall, which was bent to the right and folded over, would work. In my mind, I thought of a ball of flame.
A yellow-orange globe of flame took form in front of me.
I lifted my hand and gestured forward, thinking to it to “move away from me.”
It moved.
I thought “touch the half wall where it touches the rest of the wall.”
The ball of flame moved to the top of the half wall and touched the spot where the half wall joined with the rest of the booth wall. The flame flared bright yellow as it contacted the thin metal.
I stuck out my right index finger and pointed at the spot where the flame ball touched the metal. Matching my thought to my finger’s movement, I drew a line downward in the air.
“Go down,” I thought.
The flame ball moved down the metal, cutting through it the way scissors cut through paper.
“Stop,” I thought as the flame ball reached the floor of the operator booth.
The rectangle of metal, measuring a good four feet by four feet, was now attached only to the floor of the booth.
Thinking “Go
odbye” I snapped my fingers and the flame ball was gone.
Reaching out with my hand, I thought of the metal sheet bending back toward the stairs and then down. Mind power applied the force to bend it over.
In a few seconds the half wall mostly covered the hole blown in the stairs and floor. There was a good foot of open blackness between the edge of the metal sheet and my feet, but now, the bent sheet covered most of the hole. With a last thought to ‘bend down’ I made the lower end of the sheet drop further down until it touched an intact stair.
“How did you do that?”
I jerked.
Standing up I turned and faced the speaker. Who was Wayne Mendoza. The big Marine was three inches shorter than me but his heavily muscled upper body looked tense under his camo shirt. Behind him I saw George sitting on both jihadists. Above George the ceiling access hatch was gone. A black space showed. My route to escape was open. Muffled voices from behind told me some of the cops lower down on the stairwell were talking about coming up to rescue the hostages.
I gave him a shrug. “Magic. Now, it’s time for me to get up top and then pull those bastards out and away from these good people. Want to help?”
Wayne stepped aside as I walked toward George, who looked curious. All the hostages were now gathered behind George, in roughly the center of the room.
“Sure,” Wayne said, following after me. “But you should know those two ladies there have been imaging everything on their smartphones since your arrival. It’s likely they got your little ball of flame cutting through the metal wall.”
“Can’t be helped,” I said, realizing that my special abilities were now known by both the public and law enforcement. No doubt the women were live-streaming their imagery to YouTube. I stopped this side of the window I’d shot out and looked up. “Can someone offer me some hands to step on so I can get up there? Then you all can grab these two bastards and hand them up to me. Once they are on the arch roof, it’ll be clear for you all to head down the south end stairwell and meet folks who will help you. I got the blast hole covered. It’s safe now.”
One of the two women who had their smartphones aimed at me, clearly taping all I did and said, now lifted her eyebrows. “Mr. Green Mask, how did you make that ball of flame appear? And I didn’t see you touch that metal sheet as it bent over. Are you for real?”
“I’m very real,” I said, lifting my right foot and putting it into Wayne’s cupped hands. “And the flame ball came from my campfire.”
With a nod to Wayne I grabbed his shoulder and stood up. The Marine held steady below me. My head poked through the ceiling hatch. A few inches above my head was the edge of the stainless steel roof. I reached up, grabbed the roof edges and pulled myself up. Below me, I felt Wayne’s hands pushing on my shoes to give me a boost up and out onto the roof. Pulling my legs out of the hatch hole, I turned and reached down.
“Hand them up. One at a time.”
They handed up the jihadist who had not fired. I grabbed his shirt collar, thought “come to me” and let my mind lift up his mass, while pretending to haul him out. Laying him down to one side, I leaned against the cold fall wind buffeting me at 620 feet above the grounds of the St. Louis riverfront. Then I reached down again. But Wayne and George, holding the shooter jihadist, were looking aside. The shooter was in their arms but not lifted up yet.
“Cops!” called Wayne, who looked up at me. “Where you going to go?”
In my mind, my eyes fixed on the jihadist in their arms, I thought “come to me”.
The man’s body lifted out of the arms of Wayne and George and rose up through the hatch to me. With a thought I tossed his limp body to the other side of the hatch, there to lie on the roof of the arch that they had wanted to bring down, like the 9/11 towers.
“Got a parachute. I don’t like publicity. Say bye to everyone for me and if they ask who I am, just tell them my name is “an American”.
Wayne grinned, then nodded.
I stood up, ignoring the yellow beam of the CNN copter as its spotlight fixed on me and the two jihadists at my feet. Reaching back, I took hold of the ripcord. Then I walked to the edge of the steel arch, looked down, saw several barges tied up at a nearby wharf and jumped off.
Pulling the ripcord I waited for the jerk of the chute opening suddenly.
Nothing happened. No jerk.
Well, that’s what you get when you buy something used at an Army-Navy store.
I thought of my condo bedroom, of where I had stood not long ago in front of my wall mirror. I thought “I wish to be there”.
And I was.
♦ ♦ ♦
Janet could not believe what she saw in the CNN image as the Green Mask guy stood atop the silvery metal of the Gateway Arch, two unconscious and bleeding jihadists lying to either side of him. The man had just turned, faced the Mississippi River and then walked to the edge of the arch. On his back was a square brown pack strapped to his shoulders that she thought looked like a parachute bundle. Then he stepped off the roof.
The chute did not open.
As he fell down, his body reappeared below the arch, falling fast as he stood upright, his tie whipping up past his bandana-covered face. His black hair flared out from the slipstream of passing air. Both gloved hands were stretched out to either side of him, as if feeling for a rail. Or something.
Then he vanished.
In the glare of the copter’s yellow spotlight, a man vanished in mid-air.
“Shit!” she said, then pulled her tablet over to her lap and began madly texting to Beverly. Surely her friend would know something about this mysterious intruder who had knocked out the two jihadists, pulled them onto the roof and then stepped into the air, clearly expecting to make his getaway by use of a parachute. Landing in the river or on a nearby barge would have let him get away before local agents or cops could reach him. Instead, with no chute opening, he had just disappeared in mid-air. She bent and typed on her tablet.
“Beverly! Who the hell is this guy that just disappeared? Is he a DOD asset? He just suddenly showed up, knocked out the jihadists and now has disappeared into thin air. Do we have a superhero working for the agency?”
Janet waited for her friend’s reply. No doubt things were crazy at the SIOC operations room. She hoped her friend could send her some kind of news. She had never before believed in the Saturday morning cartoon heroes, or the superbly produced CGI animated movies like Ironman and Superman. But now, after seeing Mr. Green Mask suddenly appear, then disappear, she was starting to wonder if legends could be real.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Jacob!” yelled Richardson. “Get your Fly Team up there and take control of that situation. Get the smartphones from those two women, segregate the two vets for one-on-one interviews, and hold everyone down in the visitor center for follow-up by our Behavioral Analysis Unit people. Also pull down those two jihadists and use the Fly Team’s QCP to print them. I want to know who they are yesterday.” He looked over to Yamaguchi. “We’ve got some BAU people on that Fly Team, right?”
“We do,” Yamaguchi said, looking down at her computer screen, then up as the CNN copter image refocused on the windows of the observation room. The imagery showed five SWAT uniformed police coming from the south end of the room and moving toward the 22 hostages. “The Fly Team also includes med people who can tend to the wounded hostage.”
Andrew listened as Richardson handled the immediate issues that did not involve fantastic stuff like a man creating a ball of flame in midair so it would free a piece of metal to cover a blast hole, then invisibly lift up the second jihadist without using his hands. That was wild enough. When the man stepped off the apex of the arch, Andrew expected a parachute getaway similar to what Green Mask had done in New York. This time, instead, in the full glare of the copter spotlight, he simply vanished in midair. There were no hydrogen peroxide jump jets affixed to his business suit. Nor did he have a wingsuit to allow him to make a controlled glide down to the ground. He just van
ished. That was not possible. But it had happened. He looked over to the bald head of Richardson’s boss.
“Chief Ramsay, is this Green Mask guy part of your CIRG group? Some fantastic asset of the Hostage Rescue Team?”
Leonard Ramsay, seated behind Richardson, looked his way. His face, usually so composed, was almost white with shock.
“No way. I have no idea who he is. Or how he could vanish in thin air. Or make a ball of flame appear from nowhere.”
Thanks to the security camera, Andrew and everyone in the room had seen the flame ball appear, had seen it cut through the wall metal as Green Mask pointed a finger and drew it downward like drawing a line in the air, then saw the metal bend over without being touched by the intruder. Some agent in the room had captured the smartphone uploads of the two women captives. That imagery had been running to one side of the security screen. They’d all heard Green Mask’s response of “magic” to the Marine Recon vet on how the intruder had made the impossible happen. Then, with the space clear between the ceiling camera and the center of the room, they’d all watched as Mendoza lifted up one of the jihadists, who was pulled up and out by the intruder. Then there had been a sudden rush of SWAT camo uniforms as the south end rescue team had run up and over the covered blast hole, moving to the hostages. While the camera’s view was blocked by them, the smartphone feed followed all that was happening. What was almost as crazy as Green Mask disappearing was how the body of the second jihadist had lifted up from the arms of the two vets and, with no one touching it, had risen up through the room’s roof and then floated in front of the intruder up top. That body had then dropped onto the roof just before Green Mask stepped off the arch.
Superpowers 1: Superguy Page 11
