Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes (13 page)

That explained the patch with the three-headed hound on his shoulder. Of course Cerberus guarded the door.

“What can I do for you, commander?”

“We’ll see. This is Captain Lauer.” The second officer stood too far away to shake hands, but he nodded. His sharp, weathered face was deeply creased didn’t look as old as his white hair. I guessed he spent as much time as he could outdoors.

“Ma’am.” His gravelly voice sounded as wind-worn as he looked. “The Navy would like to ask a favor.” And he wasn’t happy about that, not at all. He waved me over to a screen.

“Do you recognize this man?”

The picture showed a big man, beefy, bald, scars on his face. His beaten, irregular features said he’d fought hard more than once and not had bones reset when he healed. None of it went with the Hawaiian shirt.

“No… Should I?”

“He’s Ernest Winman. You might know him better as ‘Brick.’”

A bolt of icy shock ran through me, shaking me from head to toe. “Oh. I didn’t recognize him.” I never would without the gargoyle leer on his face the night he’d almost gotten me. Burned into my brain, it was the only way I’d ever remember him. “He’s in Detroit Supermax.”
Please
let him be in Detroit.

Captain Lauer’s expression told me he wasn’t.

“He’s in Guantánamo City,” he said, eyes still measuring me. “And he’s our problem now.”

“
Why
isn’t he in Detroit? Sorry.” I closed my own eyes, breathed, opened them. Lauer obviously didn’t like my reaction, neither of them did; I knew the look—they didn’t want me here, didn’t want to have to be talking to me, and the part of me not focused on Brick wondered why. Was it because I was a cape, because I looked so young, or because I was a civilian?

Lauer started to say something, stopped, continued with a sigh.

“The Whittier Base Attack cost us too many heavies, and left us—especially the Army—scrambling to provide supersoldiers for all of our areas of responsibility. Winman was one of many superhuman convicts offered commutation in return for military service. The Army gave him a new name and put him on a first-in squad.”

He rubbed his jaw, frowning hard. “The file Army Intelligence sent over shows he served ten months in China helping to punch out local warlords, and then his squad got hammered hard on an operation so screwed up by bad intel that there were only two survivors. The Army thought Winman was dead but unrecoverable. Since Guantánamo City isn’t Hell, they were obviously wrong.”

“Obviously,” I echoed, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept looking back at the screen. “What do you need me to do?”

The captain’s jaw actually clenched, grinding on words he didn’t want to say.

“We need you to help recover him, ma’am. We have a consulate in Guantánamo City, and a few minutes ago they got a phone call from the provincial governor’s office telling us Winman is there. The picture you see is the attached CIA station minder’s confirmation.
 
The Cuban government wants Winman
off
of Cuban soil, and they want him off now. They are willing to give us time to extract him, but not much time. If they have to do it themselves, they’ll make the arrest and deportation public. That won’t look good.”

Despite the situation I almost laughed at the understatement. I’d been around Blackstone and The Harlequin long enough to know what the headlines would look like:
American Invasion? Cuba captures US military criminal!

“It will look even worse if Winman doesn’t go down easy and creates civilian casualties,” Lauer continued. “And we don’t have a supersoldier unit that can get here in the window they’ve given us.”

“What assets do you have?” I tried to sound like Watchman—a Sentinel now but still the supersoldier’s soldier.

He looked at Commander Rosack.

“We have three armored infantry squads on base, ma’am,” the commander said. “Two light, one heavy, with one always buttoned up and ready to go. Our heavy would ordinarily be enough to take Winman out, but not without civilian casualties in an urban engagement.”

Just the thought made me wince; a straight-up firefight with even a B Class Ajax Type in the middle of a populated area would be…bad.

“So you’d like me to get him out of the city?”
You can take him, Hope. You’ve done it before.

Captain Lauer nodded unwillingly. “We can send the squad for support. If you can get him clear of civilian involvement, they can finish the job.”

He didn’t exactly stress the
if
, but it was implied and more than anything else shouted how much he didn’t like the situation. He didn’t want me in this, and he was looking at a potential disaster because his bosses weren’t giving him time, forcing him to work with an asset he didn’t trust. Lei Zi called these kinds of situations “unforced risks,” strategy driven by politics, and hated them.

I exhaled. “Okay. I can do that. I’ll need to change—”

“Not for this mission.” Lauer shrugged. “I’m sorry, but having an identifiable American cape engage on foreign soil without even being in the country officially would be…almost as bad.”

I looked down at my civvies. No armor?

“I understand.” I
preferred
to bring my full kit to a fight but I trained to fight with less. Tough as he was, Brick was a
B
Class. I’d beat him twice before and I would have backup.
How hard can it be?

“We’re not soldiers, at least we shouldn’t be. I’ve got nothing against soldiers, fine men and women. But they’re trained first and foremost to break things and kill people, follow orders that tell them when to do that. Superheroes are all about protecting and helping people, though we can kill people and break things when the need arises. Different priorities, which doesn’t mean we don’t work together sometimes.”

Atlas
, Chicago News interview about the China War.

It had to be the first time I’d ever been
driven
to a mission.
 
The only thing I asked for before they loaded me with their team was a strip of carbon-fiber tape—I doubled it over and turned it into a damage-resistant bandage cover for Ozma’s lace ring. The truck they loaded us into looked like a beat up vintage produce truck; the recent change to free market capitalism hadn’t yet replaced Cuba’s decades-old fleet of work vehicles and anything newer than the 60s or 70s would at least be noticed.

The truck didn’t match its contents; I’d never ridden with more dangerous looking cargo. The heavy marine “tin-man” squad looked ready for anything and I wouldn’t want to be downrange from them for
anything
. Their bulky suits—fully articulated ceramic battle armor—looked capable of stopping anything less than heavy artillery and had to weigh at least 500 pounds without the weapon mounts racked onto them; which meant they had to be supported by powered exoskeletons although I couldn’t hear the servo-motors.

Their Cerberus Watch decal patches, cartoony three-headed grinning and slobbering Scooby Doos, didn’t match
them
; with their helmets off, their heads looked ridiculously small peeking out of their armor shells but they also looked totally comfortable wearing all that metal and potential death.

And they kept calling me “ma’am,” even the lieutenant who outranked my state militia commission.

“You ever danced with a team like ours, ma’am?” Lance Corporal Balini asked. Beside him, Lance Corporal Tsen leaned in to hear over the engine and road. They both looked young enough to need fake IDs to drink.

“I’ve worked with a US Marshals fireteam?” Of course the
team
had all been duplicate Platoons, Bobs in cutting-edge SWAT armor.

He shook his head. “Then you haven’t danced, ma’am. Don’t worry—we know the steps.” Our ride bumped over a particularly deep pothole, shaking us about, and started to slow. “When Charlie dances, we bring the foxtrot! We—”

“Button it, people,” Lieutenant Corbin interrupted.

Lieutenant Corbin looked like a computer geek who’d bought a tennis club membership and gone crazy; thin-faced but seriously tanned, short blond hair bleached by the sun, most of the time he focused on data streaming across his glasscam shades. Beside him his second, Corporal Stein, focused on everything in the zone of engagement, not talking, eyes moving as if he could see through the sides of our ride.

The truck stopped and we listened to our driver talking in Spanish. None of the team as much as twitched when two Cuban soldiers came around the back of the truck to look at us. One of them shot a question at Lieutenant Corbin, who answered fluently. Papers were passed, including an ID with my face on it and an official-looking stamped page. The soldiers read carefully and snapped pics of everything with their smartphones, and the one doing the talking pointed at me and asked another question. Whatever the lieutenant said, I didn’t hear “Astra” or “Hope Corrigan.”

And whatever the soldiers thought of the tiny blonde girl and her hulking tin-men escorts, they returned our papers and waved us on. Our ride rumbled into gear and we drove through the checkpoint, the yellow gate dropping behind us.

“Welcome to Cuba,” Balini quipped. “The weather today will be hot and dry. And tomorrow.
 
And the day after that. Did you bring your sunscreen?”

“No,” I laughed. He wasn’t joking about dry. Out the back of the truck, I could see
cactuses
—not really what I expected for Cuba. “Where are the palm trees?”

“Guantánamo Province is surrounded by mountains and mostly in a rain shadow. North coast? Rainforests. Down here? Not so much. These days Hollywood uses it for desert location shots for low-budget cowboy movies.”

“Done playing tour guide, Ball?” Lieutenant Corbin puffed a flavored e-cig, blowing a cloud of nicotine and mint. “Or do you want to tell her about the pretty birds?”

“All done, sir.”

“Wonderful. Ma’am, here’s the mission. Our eyes have Winman enjoying the view in the middle of town. We want him out of town where there’s room to bring it to him without blowing shit up. Civilian casualties are not an option in a fight we’re picking ourselves, so we need you to move him.”

“How? I mean, how should I approach him?”

“Don’t you CAI capes drill for that? Assume he will be completely freaking hostile to any approach and take any opening move you want that gets him from Point A to Point B without giving him time to argue about it.”

“So grab him, get him out of town, then subdue him?”

“Yes ma’am. Bringing him in alive is optional but preferred. He is a deserter, armed, and extremely dangerous and technically invading another country, but base will want intel from him. Like why the hell he’s in Guantánamo.”

I wanted that, too. Part of me was burning up with curiosity—Captain Lauer had sidestepped that question in his too-brief briefing. I made positive noises while wiping my palms on my shorts and measuring my breath; not nerves, really, just my usual physiological reactions to an anticipated fight. I doubted I’d ever get over them and, looking around, I realized they were shared. Corbin puffed his e-cig methodically. Stein focused over my head. Balini and Tsen checked their armsracks. The truck stopped again.

“This is the team stop,” Corbin said, handing me an earbug and watching me adjust it. “We’ll set up away from the road. When your piece tells us you’re moving towards us, we’ll light up a flare. Good luck.” They locked down their helmets and dropped out the back of the truck bed, the camo-layers of their suits going live to blend them into the brush as they trooped away. I climbed forward into the front passenger’s seat.

The lance corporal behind the wheel looked at me, tapped a screen between the seats. The image showed an aerial shot of the road with four green icons moving away from it and the centered icon of the truck. Ahead of us, a red icon blinked warningly in the center of town. I nodded and divided my attention between the screen and the road as she drove.

Guantánamo City wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but then I wasn’t sure
what
I’d been expecting, really. The Serene Republic was less than two years old, but it was changing fast.

Maybe I’d pictured a worn and run down Central American slum town. This wasn’t it. Only a handful of buildings were higher than two stories, and the style was old—with their vertical fronts and balconies they reminded me of New Orleans’ French Quarter homes and businesses—but the roofing was solid and most buildings were well patched and brightened by fresh coats of paint in bold palettes. Flowers were everywhere, in boxes and hanging pots. And it wasn’t just dressing up old stuff for show; we passed a ring of new construction on the way in. The narrow streets were a bit rough but getting resurfaced. At least half of the pedestrians strolling the streets or lounging under shading café awnings in the afternoon heat looked American or European.

“Tourists, developers, studio people,” my driver, Lance Corporal Stevens, answered my unasked question. “Visitors from the base.”

“Okay.” I decided not to worry about seeing a familiar face—other than Brick’s of course. If things went smooth, I’d be out of here fast enough it wouldn’t be a problem.

Stevens pulled half up on the low curb and stopped, engine idling. “Here.” She handed me a broad brimmed hat, suitable for casual window-shopping under the Cuban sun.
 
Wide shades came with it, and didn’t clash too badly with my shorts and shirt. Nice. Maybe I’d look like an incognito movie star. When I put them on, she pointed up the street.

“He’s two streets up, outside the Café Cubano. The only Hawaiian shirt in sight. Ready?”

“Seriously? I never am.” I hoped my smile said I didn’t mean it, and I slid out of the truck before she could say anything else. She drove away, grinding old gears. I stood still until the exhaust cloud faded into the heated air, then started walking. Casual now…

“Don’t react,” Shell whispered, a disembodied voice beside my ear. I yelled and almost tripped. She faded in like Marley’s ghost, rolling her eyes as I recovered from my stumble.

“C’mon, really?” she groused. “Should I use a ring-tone? You popped out from the quantum-signaling shield you’ve been hiding under a few miles back. FYI, Jacky has disappeared from the Dome. Just thought you should know.”

I whipped out my cellphone and pretended to answer it. “Don’t
do
that. Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Fisher finally got the warrant and got the bank to cough up its records, so he knows that the broken-into deposit box belonged to our good friend Doctor Pellegrini? The
Ascendant
? The secret and now really
really
wanted cult leader of the Ascendancy, the guy whose crimes
he
investigated last year?”

I closed my eyes. “And how mad is he at the FBI—never mind.” I liked Fisher, and the way Shell was going on he had to be seriously pissed. “Shell, I’m a little busy. How much did you see out here? Forget it, just access everything after our phone conversation.”

My usual sense-memory download had to have updated the moment distance from the Navy base’s shielding let our quantum-link reestablish; she reviewed it in a second and her eyes got wide. “Brick? Crap on a cracker, Hope. What is
he
doing here? And all you’ve got for backup is four tin-men a couple of miles down the road?”

“How hard can it be? Whatever training they gave him in the Army, he’s still a B Class.” I started walking again.

“Okay…what can I do?”

“Be my wingman? Please?”

“You’ve got it—now go kick his ass. I’ll save pictures.”

I couldn’t help laughing, suddenly feeling loose and ready. “Right. Bye.” She actually mimed hanging up, fading back out as I crossed to the next corner.

I could see my target and I focused on walking towards him without
looking
. He sat at a sidewalk table, not sweating at all while fellow drinkers fanned themselves; anyone who knew what to look for would have wondered if he was a breakthrough just by how the heat wasn’t touching him. He leered at the waitress refreshing his drink, grabbing her butt as she twisted out of his reach, and now I recognized him from memory.

He laughed as she scooted away, shrugged and chugged his drink, and then he was checking
me
over, the kind of look that made me want to put on more clothes. I looked down and kept walking, angling to pass between his table and the curb.

And he grabbed
me
. For a heartbeat I froze, unable to believe it as he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and tugged with a “Hey little girl, have a drink with me.” Then I spun around, facing and behind him to grab
his
wrist. My twisting motion pulled his arm back and forced him to let go, and I
launched
.

“Shit!” was all he got out as he flailed and we climbed. I angled us back the way I’d come, flying south and praying he was too drunk to— He pulled himself up one-handed and I flinched and let go to keep him from grabbing me again. And realized what I’d done. When I dove for him he battered me aside,
laughing
, and I only succeeded in pushing him to smack down in the street instead of into a house.

Which didn’t slow him down at all. He took the fall with a roll and bounced to his feet, laughing harder.

“And who are
you
, little girl?”

We were still in
town
and I couldn’t have screwed up worse—my plan to come back at him from behind and lift him in an underarm headlock had disappeared the instant he’d grabbed me and now people were going to get hurt unless I finished it
quick
.

I forced myself to touch down. “I’m Astra.”

“Well f—” His grin widened and the leer was back. “I’ve imagined this for
ever
. Happy birthday to me.” He clapped his hands and
exploded
.

Blinding light, thunder, a wave of overpressure that shattered windows, and as I blinked to clear my eyes Shell was yelling in my ear.

“Hope! He’s got dragon armor! Up!”

I leaped skyward reflexively. “He’s got
what
?”

“Dragon armor! A Verne-tech and sorcery fusion made in freaking China!”

My watering eyes cleared. Brick stood inside a scorched ring, dressed in what looked like ancient Chinese armor with horribly modern weapon frames attached.

I wiped my eyes. “This can
not
be happening!”

“Yeah? Do you think if you tell him that, he’ll go away?”

Guantánamo City wasn’t Chicago and had no civilian-response system for superhuman fights, but obviously its citizens knew what to do; the people out braving the afternoon sun scattered—one or two stopping only long enough to grab kids not yet smart enough to run instead of stand and watch.