Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  In front of us, Coleman lays on the horn. I hope Devon’s OK in there.

  I glance back over my shoulder at Kayla. Our resident swordswoman is chewing on her collar, staring blankly out at the rain-spattered streets.

  I need to explain to Devon what’s going on. What Kayla’s going through. So Devon can explain to Kayla that making her a surrogate daughter is not a healthy or fair thing to do.

  So I don’t have to explain it myself.

  Ahead of us the lights flicker to green. We gain approximately six inches of blacktop. And red. A herd of pedestrians swarms across the road.

  Felicity’s phone buzzes. She flips it open, one eye on the traffic light, foot ready to pounce on the gas. She punches a button.

  “—cking bullshit lights. Fix this, Felicity. Sirens. Police. Anything,” Coleman’s voice barks.

  “Clandestine organization, George,” she says, sugary sweet.

  “Fix it!” he barks. The rest of the car grimaces at the phone. I think I can see Kayla reaching for her sword.

  “Tabitha?” I fight my seatbelt and call over my shoulder. “Any chance you could help us?”

  Tabitha is already unfolding her laptop. “Course,” she says. “Hack into the grid. Rejig the algorithm.”

  “Oh wait!” Clyde pipes up. “I think—”

  “No,” Tabitha says. There is no debating that word.

  “But I think I can—”

  “No,” Tabitha says again.

  Even my balls retract at that one. Clyde says nothing.

  “Clyde?” says Tabitha. She sounds suspicious.

  Still nothing.

  And then: the jingling of change.

  I strain to look around. Even Felicity takes her eyes off the light.

  “Oh you stupid silly fuck!” Tabitha’s fingers suddenly blur across the keyboard.

  And I see Clyde’s hand. His hand in his pocket. It’s vibrating, rattling the coins.

  Man, Clyde has some stones.

  My eyes fly from his pocket to the traffic light.

  “What are you silly bastards playing at?” Coleman says over the phone. “Fix it already.”

  Red. Red. Red.

  “Lives on the line, you incompetent fucks!”

  “Oh yeah,” I snap, unable to bite my tongue. “Well that sort of encouragement is definitely going to help save them.”

  “The day I start taking leadership advice from an incompetent fuck like—”

  Green.

  Cars lurch forward. Pedestrians scatter. Coleman is cut off. We all brace for the slamming on of brakes.

  And it doesn’t come. Green. Green. Green. Light after light.

  “Got it,” Clyde says. “I got it.”

  He sounds like a man who just ran a marathon. Who just ran it and won. He’s breathing hard, lying back against the seat. It’s the moment in the movie where Kurt Russell would roll the girl off him and light the cigarette.

  “More bloody like it,” comes Coleman’s disembodied voice from the phone.

  London passes in a blur. Record stores. Theaters. Pubs. Accounting firms. Law firms. Government buildings. History. Far too many tourists for anyone’s liking.

  Tabitha still types furiously.

  “I got it, Tabby,” Clyde says. He finally seems to have noticed that she’s pissed at him. He reaches out a hand to her. “I got it.”

  “Stupid,” Tabitha says, shrugging off the arm. “Silly. Fuck.”

  “But I—” Clyde starts. “I fixed it. We’ll get there.”

  “Yes,” Tabitha snaps, finally looking up from the screen. Her fingers don’t stop moving though. “You cleared a path. Fixed the lights. But, I mean, for a moment, did you think to put them back afterwards?”

  Clyde is very, very quiet.

  Which gives us a chance to hear the concert of car horns sounding in our wake.

  “Not your job.” Tabitha enunciates the words very carefully. “For a reason.” She doesn’t speak loudly. Not even forcefully. But every word is a body blow that rocks the car.

  And paradise is most definitely in trouble.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Trafalgar square. Nelson’s Column. The National Gallery. History. Gravitas. A thousand bloody pigeons. They take off in one great flapping mass as Felicity’s minivan bursts through a police cordon. Officers yell. Car sirens squeal.

  To be fair it was a very unexpected roadblock.

  Coleman plunges out of his car waving a badge. Devon is more hesitant, her arm held high as pitiful protection against the rain. Kayla falls into step next to her as the others and I tumble out of Felicity’s van. Devon ignores Kayla and pointedly steps towards me instead.

  “Aren’t we meant to be all secret and undercover?” she says. “This seems a touch bombastic for cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not my area of expertise at all, of course. Could be that John le Carré’s been telling me terrible fibs all these years.”

  “They’ll bill it as a terrorist threat,” Kayla answers, not giving me a chance to display my ignorance. “Then a poorly conceived publicity stunt. Always do.”

  Devon turns and finally acknowledges Kayla. Complicated emotions play out. “Thank you, Kayla,” she says finally.

  “There are the primaries,” Felicity interrupts our little soap opera. She points.

  Misted by rain, framed by the monumental lions that guard the square, four figures stand in a loose group at the base of Nelson’s column. I squint, trying to make out details.

  There’s the tall bastard from the British Museum. The tree-maker. Or the warper of time, depending whether your adhere to the logical theory or my one. He’s wearing shades, and a trench coat, and generally trying to look like I did when I was fourteen, and discovered cyberpunk, and didn’t know any better.

  To his right is a rotund little man in what appears to be an anorak and cords. If it weren’t for the fact that his right hand appears to be encased in the sort of power glove sci-fi artists drool over he’d look more like my dad that a threat to national security.

  To the left of the group is the only one of the Russians who looks younger than forty. He has a scruffy goatee beard, little round glasses misted with rain, and an irate expression. The collegiate proto-Lenin look worn fifteen years too long.

  Hanging back is a blond woman with a pretty, angular face. High cheekbones outlined in steel. Half her head is covered in long sweeps of blond hair. The other half is bald metal that creeps down to encase a frighteningly Terminator-like eye. She appears to be wearing a lab coat.

  All in all, I feel like I’ve faced more frightening foes and lived to walk away. Plus, we outnumber them. If it wasn’t for the fact that it only took one of them to kick our arses at the Natural History Museum I might have made it all the way to feeling confident.

  Tall, dark, and Russian holds a bullhorn. He barks curt phrases into it, then glares at us. Behind him, the blond woman cracks her knuckles.

  “They’re saying things?” I say. “No one mentioned that they’re saying things.” It seems like the sort of information it might have been useful to have.

  “No hostages.” Coleman disengages from irate policemen and the tatters of their roadblock. “No reason for us to listen. So round them up. Standard delta formation.”

  We all stare at him, confused by this last utterance. Felicity clears her throat.

  “Oh bravo, Felicity,” Coleman gives her a withering look. “Not even the basics of field training. I understand your attraction to the incompetence of Wallace a little better now.”

  And there, right there, that should be the moment when she tears the balls from his body.

  “Is delta formation the one where Kayla goes and attacks everyone with her sword?” Clyde ventures.

  Felicity’s head definitely goes down. And is there a chance that Coleman is right? That Felicity isn’t everything I believe her to be?

  No. No, that way lies madness.

  So instead I pipe up with a persistent, “You didn’t think it might be important t
o know what they’re saying?” I’d rather go on about the holes in Coleman’s thinking than in Felicity’s training. “Is this lack of field information going to be a constant thing?”

  Coleman wheels on me. His arm comes out and, to my great shame, I flinch back. But he’s just holding out a smartphone. He smirks at me.

  “Use the bloody MI6 translation app if you’re so fascinated, boy-toy. And keep out of the way of the real agents.”

  “Hello? Researcher. Right here.” Tabitha rolls her eyes.

  “That’s me too,” Devon pipes in. “I remember that. I’m a researcher too.”

  Coleman pats her on the arm. “Oh don’t worry.” He smiles. Shows too many teeth. “No one really expects anything of you, gorgeous.”

  Kayla takes a step towards Coleman, and he takes a step away.

  By the shade of Devon’s cheeks, a large number of her new teammates are now dangerously close to clambering above Clyde on her shit list.

  “Right,” Coleman says, “over by that bloody fountain.”

  He pulls an improbably long, silver pistol from inside his jacket, crouches, and runs towards one of the fountains that lies between us and the column with its guardian lions. Rain patters off the back of his expensively cut suit. The Russians watch him warily, shifting positions slightly. The tall one continues talking into the bullhorn.

  “Oh, come on then.” Felicity starts moving. Then looks back at me. “Find out what they’re saying,” she tells me. “It’s a good idea.”

  I smile at that. A little late for the praise, but I’ll take it.

  Then Felicity’s off. Tabitha follows, then Clyde, all with the same doubled-over urgency—like victims of a bad buffet covering the final yards to the bathroom.

  Devon remains standing next to me as I examine Coleman’s phone. Kayla doesn’t move an inch from Devon’s side. And to be honest, this is about the time when an overprotective Kayla becomes a very, very good thing.

  “What do we do?” Devon asks, a look of concern on her face.

  “You stay here,” Kayla says. “And I beat down every feckin’ one of them that comes this way.”

  “Oh.” Devon’s eyes are wide. Apparently she’s still getting used to Kayla’s particular brand of doting. “Did not… hadn’t really considered that an option. But I suppose—”

  I skim through a few pages of apps on the phone trying to find one that says something as obvious as “translate.”

  Over by the fountain, Coleman, Felicity, Tabitha, and Clyde are all crouched in a large puddle. Coleman and Felicity have their guns drawn, Tabitha has her laptop on her knees. Clyde slips battery after battery under his mask.

  And there is the translation app. I have to believe it was Coleman who named it “Foreign jabber.” I get the thing running and select “Russian-to-English” from a menu.

  “—until the seventeenth of this month,” says a robotic voice from Coleman’s phone. I stare down in surprise. The translation app. It talks.

  “If our demands are not met,” the thing continues, “then we will destroy London in its entirety.”

  It talks, and it says the most awful things.

  Over by the fountain Felicity pokes her face and her gun around the curve of stone to get a clear look at her target then ducks back. She nods to Clyde. I want to get over there. I don’t want Felicity out there alone. No matter how many big guns she has around her. I want to be one more.

  The Russian says something.

  “I repeat,” the phone says, “our demands are the complete and unconditional surrender of the West to the United Soviet Socialist Republic.”

  Wait. Their demands are what?

  Devon stares at the phone. “Are they serious?” she asks.

  To be fair, despite the madness, they probably are. This seems a little far gone for an improv comedy routine. But still, that demand’s a little eighties cliché, even for a fan of the decade.

  I mean, “The surrender of the West”? What is “the West” any more?

  I look back out at Felicity. She is out there with Coleman, and two people going through relationship trouble.

  “I’ve got to get out there,” I tell Devon. “You’ll be safe with Kayla.”

  In fact, I’d be safer with Kayla. It seems a little late to convince everyone to come back here, though.

  I start towards the fountain but Devon catches my arm. She gives me a quick, savage hug. I look at her confused. Kayla lets out an irritated hiss.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well,” she says, “it’s just… in a manner of speaking… I think they’re probably going to kill you.” Devon looks sad and slightly embarrassed at having admitted this. She gives me a rather pathetic-looking thumbs-up. “Good luck, though.”

  Funny. That doesn’t make me feel any better at all.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I start to cover the ground with the same doubled-over run Felicity performed, but when you’ve seen other people do it, it’s hard not to be self-conscious about the whole thing. I cover the last ten yards at a light jog.

  Coleman fixes me with an uncharitable stare. “And to think,” he says, “I always thought that late was better than never.”

  “You could always go back to MI6 if this is bothering you,” I say.

  “—expect declarations of surrender to be delivered to the nearest available embassy by 6 pm on the evening of the seventeenth, local time.” Both the Russian and the phone drone on, unperturbed by our argument.

  “That.” Tabitha points at the phone. “What’s it?”

  “Oh,” I say, as nonchalantly as I can, “the Russians are demanding the total surrender of the West to the now extinct U.S.S.R. Nothing much.”

  “Wow,” Coleman says, sounding decidedly un-wowed. “Completely unreasonable demands from the bad guys. Good job finding all that out, Arthur. Great detective work.” My former profession has become an insult.

  “And to think,” I say, “I always thought assumptions made an ass out of more than just you.”

  Coleman and I then engage in a bout of light death staring.

  “Just a thought,” Felicity interjects, “but the people trying to blow up chunks of the capital are just over our shoulder.”

  Coleman harrumphs. I spend some time fantasizing about the Russians maiming Coleman in some academically interesting ways.

  “Alright,” Coleman strokes his mustache, “we know they’re heavy hitters, so we go in quick and decisive. Shock and awe and all of that. I want at least two of the bastards spitting out their intestines from the initial strike. So I’m thinking we have to drop the column on them.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. The column? Nelson’s Column? Drop a national monument on them? Has Coleman been hitting the crack pipe? There again, it may be fun to let this play out just to see Coleman come up hard against reality.

  “Sounds workable.” Felicity nods.

  It sounds what?

  “What have you got, Clyde?” she asks.

  No. This can’t be.

  “Databases. Warming them up.” Tabitha has her laptop open.

  “Wait,” Clyde starts, “I can—”

  “Fucking Bobbitt you if you try.” Tabitha doesn’t even look up from her screen.

  “Oh,” Clyde says. “Well in that case then, maybe…”

  Is this all part of Felicity giving Coleman enough rope to hang himself?

  “If upon the seventeenth,” the phone continues, “our demands are not met—”

  “Elkman’s Push. Not enough,” Tabitha says. “Need more power.”

  “—we will utterly annihilate the city of London.”

  None of this makes any sense. We’re trying to deface the capital. The Russians seem to care more about their demands than the bunch of armed agents crouched nearby. I mean, they know who we are. We’ve taken one of them out. There’s cocky and then there’s cocky.

  “A modern Chernobyl,” the Russian continues. My eyes snap from the phon
e to the drenched foursome standing calmly demanding something they can’t ever possibly receive. Chernobyl again.

  “Oh!” Tabitha lets out a little exclamation. All eyes snap back to her. She looks up at Clyde. “We could try the Sinsdale.”

  “Oh!” Clyde echoes the same excited little noise.

  “Sinsdale?” I ask.

  “Sinsdale,” Clyde confirms. “As far as we can tell it pulls, well basically, high barometric pressure. But in very specific places. Very interesting experimental thaumaturgist from the late 1800s is Sinsdale. Really plays with language. Ended up accidentally fileting himself of course, but we get to walk in his footsteps now.”

  “English?” asks Coleman.

  “Swiss actually,” Clyde says, “though his grandfather was—”

  “Explain it, you jackass,” Coleman demands, cutting him off.

  “A blistering hole in this green and pleasant land,” the phone responds.

  “The column,” Tabitha interjects. “Chop it down.”

  Coleman rolls his eyes.

  “You know,” says the phone, suddenly conversational. “We can hear you.”

  It takes a moment for the meaning of the statement to fully sink in. “We”—the Russians, the bad guys. “Can”—are able to, possess the facility. “Hear”—auditory sampling, soundwaves striking eardrum, turned into neurological impulses resulting in understanding. “You”—me, Felicity, Clyde, Tabitha, Coleman. Or, in other words, the Russians are listening to us, to what we’re talking about, to us discussing how to attack them. And they’re doing nothing. Which means…

  “Oh fuck,” I say.

  There is a white flash, the crack of thunder. A thousand pigeons leave the ground.

  “Move!” Felicity bellows even as she does. Her arm catches me around the waist, tearing me away.

  Proto-Lenin and Anorak-boy are off the ground, speared by lightning, backs arched, heads thrown back. They spasm, curl up around their guts, then jerk spastically, rigidly out again. Proto-Lenin gags, hawks up a ball of lightning. It flies across the square, detonates against the lion to his left.

  My feet hammer the ground. Rain lashes me, each footfall a detonation of spray.