Superpowers 1: Superguy

by T. Jackson King

  “It will also put them in clear view of the jihadists,” Richardson said.

  “I know. Timing will be everything. How long until the first hostage shooting happens?”

  “Forty minutes.”

  “Let’s monitor what we can see from Kimberly’s camera. And from the first responder’s phone. Any word on a Cobra getting free?”

  “Yes,” Richardson said quickly, looking up at the wall image from the agent’s camera. “Our DOD liaison says the Air Force can send over a Cobra in fifty-two minutes. They’re fueling and arming one at Ellington Field right now.”

  That would be after the first hostage was killed. Which meant the Houston team on site, the SWAT team with them and the other SWAT team were the only options for direct action. Leastwise any action that could happen before the first band member was killed. He looked aside to the YouTube live image that was being transmitted by the smartphone of one of the terrorists. It showed one lightly bearded man holding his Barret, its bipod resting on the shoulder of a male band member. The Barret was pointing at the western end of the field, toward the jumbotron screen. To one side stood a female jihadist. She was holding an AK-47. Kneeling at her feet was a male band member. The muzzle of the AK-47was pointed at him. He looked frightened. As did the few band members whose faces were visible in the YouTube imagery. He wished the bird at Ellington Field would take off right now. The base was southeast of the university, just a few miles from the stadium. But getting fighter jets and attack copters ready for combat took time. Time the band members did not have.

  “We wait,” he said, hoping against hope.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I arrived.

  The third level inside the screened support frame was empty, except for the black speaker boxes. My location was the left side of the frame as seen from the field. I moved left to get behind the speaker. Further left was the backside of the giant red screen. The speaker covered me down to my knees. Which meant my lower legs were visible to anyone looking this way from the field. Which at least one jihadist was doing, based on the copter shots coming from the west end of the field. I moved further left until all of my body was covered by the backside of the screen. Leaning to the right, I moved my head to the narrow open space between the speaker and the screen edge. The field lay before me. My sharp vision took everything in.

  There were 23 dead bodies scattered across the bench seating of the north and south stands. Nine wounded people were moving a bit, but were not able to reach the dark opening of a nearby concourse entry, where white-dressed EMTs were gesturing to the wounded to head to them.

  “Crack!”

  One EMT jerked back as one of the jihadists on the field shot at him as he moved out of cover and toward a wounded woman. It was clear the terrorists were just fine with the nine wounded adding to the death toll of 23. Lowering my psychic shield halfway, I reached out, seeking what minds were in view, and those that might be hidden.

  Pain hit me from nine locations. The woman who was the target of the EMT was hit in her belly. Her pain was immense. Shaking my head, I broadened my mind seeking.

  Ordered, determined thoughts came from within the north stands and also from the south stands. The minds belonged to police SWAT people at both locations and FBI agents on the south side. They were getting ready to come into the open and fire down on the jihadists from the top levels of the stands. But the six killers were alert to that option, which was one reason they had forced the inner ring of band members to stand very close to them. The jihadists wanted to make any rifle shots at them hit a band person, instead of them. The long black tube of a large rifle drew my attention. Was that a Barret .50? Whatever it was, the rifle tube was bipod-braced on the shoulder of a young man who was looking my way, toward the west end of the stadium. Behind that young guy stood a burly, lightly bearded jihadist dressed in a long raincoat. An infrared glow came from the tube of the long rifle, telling me this was the guy who had shot down the news copter.

  His thoughts of blood and paradise nauseated me. I slammed my psychic shield shut, not wanting to perceive any more twisted thoughts from the five men and one woman who were convinced their actions would bring on the worldwide dominance of Islam. Nor did I wish to hear the frightened musings and terrors of 303 band members. My plan required tight concentration and sudden action.

  Looking up, I focused on the thick gray pillars of the cumulonimbus clouds that now hung over the stadium. I knew from college books I’d studied that producing a thundercloud requires lots of air moisture, unstable air and heat lifting it all upward. This being Houston, even in the fall, there was plenty of all three. The base of this cluster of giant toadstools looked to be four or five miles across. And that base was low, maybe just 2,000 feet up, with the top going way higher. A big hunker it was.

  As my mind reached up, I felt the negatively charged bottom of the cloud mass. The charge was heavy and felt like a mass of octopus tentacles lashing out, urgently seeking a connection with something positive. Like the jumbotron frame I stood within. Or like a tall tree that conveyed upward positive charges from the ground. Or like me. My mind caressed the negative charges filling the base of the cloud mass. Almost I heard the electricity speaking.

  “Free me! Free me! Join with me!” it seemed to say to my mind.

  I looked away from the cloud base and down to the crowd of people on the grassy field. Many band members were looking up as the thunderclouds rolled over the stadium. The jihadists noticed the clouds too. Five of them pulled hoods over their heads or put on rain hats or some head cover. But all six still held their rifles aimed at the hundreds of young college students who surrounded them. The leader of the group, a lanky, long-limbed man who was holding a smartphone aimed at the woman who was pointing her rifle down at a kneeling student, held his own rifle in his other hand, pointing outward. There had been no more shots at EMTs as the first responders stayed inside the concourse entries. In my mind I tallied up the minutes left before the kneeling student was shot. In less than forty minutes either the first hostage would be murdered on a worldwide YouTube broadcast, or the waiting groups of police and agents would come out and shoot down at the six jihadists, trying their best to kill all six before the killers could murder again. Time to act before either side took a gamble or did the irreversible.

  In my mind I recalled my memory image of the jumbotron and the top of the frame that supported the red screen. There was a railing above the screen that supported person-high metal letters that spelled out the words ‘TDECU STADIUM’. Maybe I could hide most of myself behind the first ‘T’ in that giant line of letters. I imaged that spot in my mind and thought “I wish to be there”.

  The cold storm wind whipped at me as I appeared on top of the metal support frame. In front of me was a frame of three horizontal rails that supported the letters. The ‘T’ was directly in front of me. It was five feet high and a foot thick. Glancing down I saw the six terrorists as if I was viewing them through a telescope. My perfect eyesight brought each of them into tight focus. They were arranged in a circular group, with the inner circle of band members standing two feet beyond them, excepting the kneeling student who was within a foot of the woman jihadist. She had her brown hair rolled into a bun on top of her head and seemed ready to ignore the likelihood the oncoming rain would soak her. Though she did glance now and then at the lanky man in charge. He shook his head, then gave her a grin.

  That arrogance convinced me these six were going to kill all 303 band members even if someone in the White House made a public promise to meet their demands. The leader was clearly enjoying the prospect of being the center of world attention. And thanks to YouTube, Flickr, Snapchat and similar online media sites, he was indeed being watched by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Well, time for those viewers to see what happens when fanatics target civilians who never did a thing to harm anyone.

  My awareness rose up to the base of the thundercloud, which hung above the stadium. The writhing snakes of t
he negative electric charges were even stronger than before. Good. I thought “bring me close to them”.

  My body rose up in the air, moving toward the dark gray of the thundercloud base. My thoughts moved fast. I had only seconds before I was noticed by the crazies on the field.

  “Come to me,” I thought as my mind reached down, took hold of millions of positive electric charges that filled the jumbotron frame, and brought the charges up to me.

  A cloud of positive electrical charges surrounded my body, hovering just outside of my natural electrical field. That meant the charges lay within a few millimeters of my forehead and hands, and the clothing I wore.

  Looking up, I called to the negative charges.

  “Come to me, little ones. Come to me.”

  A stepped leader of negative charges sped down from the cloud bottom, moving almost too fast for me to see.

  A streamer of positive charges rose up from my body toward the leader, which is the precursor for the main bolt of lightning that happens when both the leader and the streamer connect, bringing the harsh yellow flare of lightning down to the ground.

  Except I was hovering in mid-air.

  “Coming to you,” the negatives seemed to say.

  Rain hit my face. I looked down. I spread the fingers of each hand, then pointed them downward.

  Above me the negative leader fingers of charged energy connected with my positive streamer particles. The circuit closed. From above the bolt came.

  Yellow-white harshness filled the space around me.

  It moved and glared and shone and sparkled as if I were inside an old-style light bulb, or at the center of a crowd of spotlights. In one way, it was as if the sun now surrounded me. In another way, it felt familiar. So similar to the one time before when I had done this, out in the meadow near my Jemez Falls refuge. That time I had been standing on the ground, which allowed the millions of volts to flow down and out to nearby rocks and trees.

  This time, those volts englobed me. They encased me. They hugged me tight. I pointed my fingers down at the six killers, down to the spots where they stood. Those killers I could not see through the glare of the lightning nimbus that englobed me. It did not matter. My mind provided the route to them.

  Six bolts shot out from my fingers, one for each killer.

  The negative charges rushed down, drawn by the positive charge of each killer, who stood on the wet ground, their torso soaked with rain, holding metal in their hands.

  I could not hear their screams.

  No matter. I held my aim for a few seconds more, making sure the negative lightning charges moved from me down to them.

  Around me the yellow-white glare faded.

  Still hovering, I looked down.

  Though it was now dusky due to the thunderclouds overhead, I saw clearly. My vision has always been sharp as an eagle’s, based on a few mind visits with eagles.

  Six stumps of blackened metal and flesh smoked like small campfires, the white smoke rising up from them like fingers of iniquity.

  Hundreds of band people lay on the group, thrown there by the impact of my six bolts. There must have been some very loud “cracks!” as the bolts connected with the jihadists and the wet soil they stood on. Fortunately the grassy soil was a good absorber of negative charges. I noticed that the kneeling captive was standing up and slapping at his clothes, which looked badly scorched. The inner ring of band people were also slapping out sparks that had hit their clothing. Fortunately, all their metal instruments had been piled at one side of the field, so my six bolts had not jumped from the jihadists over to someone holding a trumpet.

  “We’re coming!” called millions of negative charges above me, reaching down in stepped leader fingers that searched for the remaining positive charges that still hung around my body.

  “No!”

  The word was no sooner out of my mouth than the positives of my body linked up with the descending negatives.

  Yellow-white light surrounded me, hugging me, getting so close I smelled smoke as some of my clothing became singed by the negative charges. Desperately I sought an answer. Then I remembered the jumbotron frame on top of which I had just stood. Behind it was a flag pole that rose up behind the giant screen. My mind followed my memory.

  The yellow-white glare of the second stroke of lightning had done what all lightning does in following down a successful pathway to the ground, or to a strong positive charge. Me. But it now fled downward to the metal pole. The flag pole sucked down the screaming negative particles. Did I mind-hear them say “Goodbye!” as they flowed to the pole? Had to have been my imagination.

  I sucked in wet, tingling air. I opened my eyes. Looking around from three hundred feet above the ground, I realized my plan had worked. The jihadists were dead. Their rifles were half-melted. No band member was hurt or dead. And the police and agents in the two stands were now pouring out of the concourse entryways, running down the steps toward the field. As were the white-clothed EMTs and ambulance medics, some of whom were streaming out onto the field from ground level entries used by the two teams. Time to go. I thought of my grassy meadow in the Santa Fe National Forest, close to the Jemez Falls. I wanted to be there, to see the red sunset that happened so often in northern New Mexico. I wanted to rest in a place without people, a place where I could feel safe. I thought “I wish to be there.”

  And I was.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Andrew could not believe his eyes.

  One wall screen was filled with the image from agent Kimberly’s shoulder camera. Another wall screen carried the EMT’s smartphone image. They both showed the same thing.

  A man dressed in a blue business suit hung in the air above the jumbotron at the west end of TDECU Stadium, his arms outstretched, his hands pointing down toward the cluster of jihadists. A green bandana covered his face. His black hair flared in the wind. That was what he saw in the second or less before a yellow-white lightning bolt shot down from the gray thunderclouds above and wrapped around the man’s body, creating a swirling glow that resembled yellow electrical snakes. The snakes writhed and jerked and flowed as if eager to find escape. Which they did.

  From the lightning enclosed form of the hovering man, two hands stuck out from within the swirling ball of yellow. The fingers aimed downward. From the fingers shot six yellow-white lightning bolts. The bolts connected with the six jihadists. They became six clouds of yellow-white lightning. The shapes of the people within became invisible. Those clouds stayed present for two, three, four seconds, his mind told him. It was the longest he had ever seen a lightning bolt stay in once place. Then the clouds faded, leaving behind blackened pillars of burning clothing and flesh. Stuck to those flesh pillars were the metal of the rifles they had each carried. The rifle metal looked partly melted too.

  “Ka-boom, boom, boom!” sounded the crack of lightning striking the ground and what had stood on the ground.

  Beyond the blackened pillars were hundreds of band members, half fallen to the ground from the booming impact of the lightning strikes. The ones closest to the six were slapping at their singed clothing to knock loose sparks that had jumped to them from the pillars.

  “Ka-boom!” came a second lightning bolt that enclosed the hovering man in a yellow-white nimbus.

  Andrew saw that the second bolt lasted just a few seconds before the lightning snakes sped down to the flag pole that stood behind the jumbotron. The hovering form of Green Mask became visible again, his suit singed and smoking. Then he vanished.

  “We’re heading out there to help them!” yelled Alice Kimberly.

  “Grab the jihadist cell phones!” called Richardson from where he stood in the middle of the room, his face full of wonder and shock.

  “Sir,” called his assistant Juanita Yamaguchi. “I don’t think anything electronic is left intact after that.”

  “Madre Maria,” murmured Carlos Jackson, who sat within a few feet of Andrew.

  “Well, that takes care of those six,” growled
Leonard Ramsay.

  “Andrew,” called Jacob Whitson. “How the hell did that Green Mask guy do that?”

  Andrew didn’t know. There was too much he didn’t know about Green Mask. “Well, he ain’t Zeus, that I know for sure. He didn’t like getting hit by bullets from the Eiffel Tower jihadist. I thought at the time that was why Green Mask tossed a giant ball of flame at the guy. Now, I don’t know. Maybe this guy’s family was hurt by jihadists, or violent criminals. He didn’t wait for those six to toss away their rifles. Nor did he mind-call the rifles to him, like he did in Paris. He just showed up, called down lightning and took them out.”

  “For which I am thankful,” grunted Carlos. “Those six were enjoying their YouTube show. I suspect they would have shot all 300 students sooner rather than later.”

  “Three hundred and three students,” Andrew corrected, his mind whirling with options and hopes and worries. He slapped his hands together, drawing the attention of the shocked crowd of agents in the SIOC room. “People! We need follow-up! Work with our Houston field office to identify where those six hid out. Find the vehicles they came in. It’s got to be close to the stadium. If possible, get fingerprints off those bodies. If not, get DNA samples. I want to know where those six have traveled, who they worked with, who helped them get those rifles and what bastard sold them a Barret! Move!”

  Around him people looked down to their desktop computers, began typing on keyboards, or talking into neck phones. His iPhone vibrated in his coat. He pulled it out and tapped on the phone icon.

  Martha’s face filled the screen. “Andrew? I heard on CNN the jihadists have all been killed somehow, maybe by this Green Mask guy. Does that mean Mira is alive?”

  He nodded. “I think she is alive. The HPD and first responders will be gathering the band members together, checking them for injuries and getting their names. We’ll have a full name list within an hour. I’ll call you back when I see Mira’s name.”