Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (46 page)

“Time to clear out, gentlemen,” Moe announced for the benefit of the chopper’s four-man crew. None of them moved an inch.

“Aren’t there other friendly supers?” I asked, and I noticed that the question caught Colonel Martinez off-guard. “I mean, are we it?”

He shrugged, “They’re mostly leaving us alone. The bad supers are just jumping on you guys, whenever anyone tries to get in. I think most of them are busy with something. There’s some sort of hubbub going on northwest of the White House, but intel’s scarce.”

“Our reports say that over a thousand villains escaped Utopia prison,” Templar said, crossing his arms.

“I believe it,” Martinez said. “It’s a madhouse in there.”

“You don’t got to go home, but you have to get the fuck out of here,” Moe said from the front of the helicopter, shouting over the rotors at the pilot and his copilot, but he got a firm middle finger in reply from one of the door gunners.

The pilot came back to the cabin and threw a curt salute at Colonel Martinez.

“Sir, I’d like to request, on behalf of the crew, to remain aboard.”

Martinez shook his head, about to retort, but Moe beat him to it.

“Son, that’s some dangerous shit we’re about to hit. You don’t want none of that.”

Only then did I realize the pilot was also a Colonel, probably the air wing commander, and considering his age he was probably was senior to Martinez. He looked hard as nails, with a scowl that would frighten John Wayne. He didn’t like Moe questioning his toughness, especially since he was probably twenty years older than the super.

“Flying this rig into danger’s what I get paid for, kiddo,” he spoke, his face a sunburned grimace with skin pulled too tight over his skull.

“I can’t take responsibility for your lives, Colonel,” Superdynamic said, his voice laden heavy with fatigue.

“Shit,” the helo commander said. “I put five kids through college older than you. All the men on this bird are onboard and ready to go. We’re responsible for ourselves.”

One of the door gunners, unaware of the clash of wills, handed each of us a dark green poncho.

“What’s this for?” I asked the man, drawing a knowing smile.

“Leaks,” he said.

“Leaks?”

“Hydraulic fluid. Don’t wanna get it all over your nice costumes, do you?”

“I’m not getting into that thing if it’s leaking,” I said, immediately regretting sounding so squeamish in front of everyone. They just took their ponchos, throwing them on as they found a place to sit aboard our transport.

“It’s a chopper,” the door gunner said, his voice dripping with condescension. “If it leaks, then it means it’s still got hydraulic fluid. If it don’t leak, that’s when you gotta worry.”

I took the poncho and threw it on as Superdynamic and the helo commander faced off, not wanting to get in the middle of that face-off.

“We might not make it back, Colonel,” Superdynamic said, but from his posture, his lowered shoulders, I knew he had already lost the argument.

“You sure about this, Colonel Cray?” Martinez asked from the edge of the open side door.

Cray nodded. The sleeves of his BDUs were rolled up, and when he crossed his arms across his chest, he revealed a pair of corded forearms, strong enough to twist a man in two.

“Fine,” Superdynamic said, moving past Cray to take his seat.

Colonel Martinez looked us over, and I imagine he was probably bewildered that the fate of the country as a whole was left in the hands of, as Templar had said, “a couple of vets, a bunch of rookies, and a villain.” He nodded once and saluted Cray, ducking as he ran off to avoid the rotors. The co-pilot didn’t wait, firing up the engine and taking us up to the sky.

Cray didn’t hang on to anything as the chopper rose in the air and took a hard bank.

“Hang tight,” he said, returning to the cockpit. “This is going to be a hell of a ride.”

As we disappeared into the dark night, I checked my gear, popping the Bluetooth earpiece to Superdynamic’s communications system into my ear. It had a voice recognition system that interpolated the sound of your voice as it reverberated through your skull and transmitted a cleaned-up version of that sound. I had jammed the transmitter into a pocket in the back of my utility belt. I also had two each of my newly designed implosion, concussion, shock, and flash/bang grenades. Smaller than anything I had ever built, they were each the size of a C battery, and they lined the back of my belt in an organized row. I checked my new toy, a glove-mounted grapple gun with a 30-meter range. I was careful the thing wouldn’t fire inside the cabin of the Black Hawk. Looking over at Moe, I caught him smiling.

“Nervous?” he asked, and I had flashbacks to the last time I flew a military craft into a mission, sitting in a similar bay with Cool Hand, Dr. Zundergrub, Mr. Haha, and Influx, and how she had noticed my fidgeting as well. I thought of Influx’ passive-aggressive concern, her dangerous attraction. Despite her interest in me, her primary goal was the mission, and if I wasn’t up for the challenge, Influx would have dropped me out of the cabin there and then, and probably hooked up with Cool to pass the time.

I shrugged and Moe chuckled, satisfied in his need to act cooler than I. It made no sense to me, to play the tough-guy game in light of what was coming. It made him happy, though.

Down the cabin, the rest of the team was preparing for the fight in their own way. Ruby stayed close to Superdynamic, the old pro, as he chattered away on the radio, trying to find any intel that would help our hopeless mission. Ricochet played on his portable gaming system, but his eyes blared through the screen, his mind a million miles away. Moe listened to music on his ear buds, trying to put on a confident face. He was the biggest of the bunch, so the others were looking to him. Templar chatted with Focus, whose worry was evident in her pursed lips and furrowed brow. The final member of the team, Mirage, just looked out of the cabin, scratching a shoulder itch under his white robes.

“ETA thirty seconds,” Superdynamic said over our comms.

Moe waved to get my attention.

“Hey, you like Dio?”

“What?” Did he mean the musician, or Dio as in God in Italian?

“Ronny Fucking James Dio,” he said, using a head bob to accentuate each word.

I nodded and he leaned over, handing me his earbuds. Holding them to my ears, the sounds of “Last in Line” tore out of the tiny speakers.

“Too loud,” I said.

“Nah, rock that shit,” he said, motioning for me to pop the earbuds in. I did, weathering Dio’s screams and smiled as I listened to the words.

“Thought you’d like it,” he said, letting me enjoy the song, doing some light head-banging with each beat. The music was so loud, I’m sure it was reverberating out of my skull into the helicopter cabin and drowning out the chopper noise.

“Contact,” shouted a voice I didn’t recognize over our comms. Suddenly the right door gunner flinched and opened fire with the M134 vulcan gun, the report of the weapon resounding through the chopper. A rain of smoky, spent shells and links rained across the floor.

“Incoming,” he shouted, and I realized Superdynamic had patched us into the helicopter’s internal comms.

“Me too, skip,” another voice shouted, and the left gun joined in to the chorus.

I ripped off the buds and tossed them at Moe as rockets flared from the stub wings and the chin-mounted M230 ripped into the night. Inside the cabin we were illuminated by the hellfire of weaponry.

“Bank right!” Cray shouted, and the chopper dove to starboard with such ferocity we felt a moment of zero-G in the cabin, our feet and arms floating in the air. The maneuver would have sent anyone not strapped in flying out of the helicopter.

An instant after, a howling ball of plasma roared over us, just a few dozen feet from our previous course.

“Left, left!” We dove in the opposite direction, fighting the overwhelming forces of gravity that pressed against our bodies. The two door gunners were the only ones in the rear of the chopper who were unaffected by the violent maneuver, using their seat and straps as leverage to keep firing at our unseen attackers.

As we came about, I could see a long stream of flares falling behind us, illuminating a host of flying enemies with their ghostly light. The leader of the bunch was swathed in flames and rearing back, building up a fireball the size of a large watermelon and unleashing it on us.

“Port incoming,” the door gunner shouted, then the side of the helicopter exploded as a lance of bright red plasma tore into the gunner’s position. His dying scream echoed through the chopper. The pilot’s body was just a charred torso, still twitching and spattered in blood. Mirage fought off his straps, but the gunner was dead. The gun position had split apart, the weapon pylon destroyed.

I tore off my restraints and reached for Mirage, who was in danger of falling out of the helicopter with the next hard turn. His face and arm were burned, but he ignored his injuries, instead glaring out of the open door. I followed his gaze and saw a pair of supers flying nearby, actually in mid high-five, celebrating their bulls-eye of the door gunner.

“Bastards!” I yelled as Superdynamic reached Mirage and me, studying the helicopter’s structural damage.

“I’ll fly out and drop them,” he said, but I held him back motioning to something I had just noticed, another half-dozen flying supers coming to assist the two who had attacked us.

“Wish I had my bow now,” I muttered, reaching into my pocket. I came up with a handful of change and random pieces of metal from my work on my new kit.

I reared back and threw a quarter with all my might. The missile was lost in the rain and night, but when it hit, I saw one of the two supers clutch his chest and drop out of the sky. His buddy went into a violent dive to save his companion, so I missed with the next quarter I threw.

Focus was behind me, unbuckling the gunner’s remains from the melted chair and shepherding Mirage back to his seat. I looked over at Superdynamic and handed him the remaining pieces of metal and lint I had dug out of my pocket.

More flying supers were incoming now, their attention drawn to us by the deaths of their companions. They were more wary now, staying well away, until one dropped from above and bathed the Black Hawk in fire.

The pilot dove out of the billowing flames, but the fire still danced into the cabin, licking at all of us. Moe, Superdynamic, and I were unaffected. Focus closed her eyes, putting her right index finger up in the air, and the fire avoided her, but Templar, Ruby, and Ricochet were not so lucky and bore the brunt of the attack. Templar screamed in pain for a moment, but his eyes widened as Mirage stretched with his powers, spreading a blue-white illumination across the ship that protected us from the flames.

The Black Hawk itself was in flames, racked in secondary explosions above us as the fuel line to the rotary engine blew, and upon loss of power, we began to oscillate at increasing speed.

“We’re going down!” Colonel Cray yelled from the cockpit, as if we didn’t know, and the darkness rushed up to meet us.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Superdynamic hurled himself out of the helicopter and hovered beside the crashing craft. He unleashed a light show of telemetric lasers from his suit, with a wave of his arms creating a solid-light platform beneath the vehicle that slowed our fall. I gripped the door jamb, bending the steel under my grip to keep from falling out as the thing spun. The helicopter slowed and steadied, despite the oscillating forces of the turning rotors, and descended at a safe rate.

Behind him, though, a cadre of evil supers swept in for the kill.

“Watch out!” I yelled, but he was focused on bringing the chopper down safely.

Superdynamic caught a plasma blast in the back, losing control of the helicopter. We rolled on our sides and continued falling again, but our leader raised his shields and reformed the solid-light platform, slowing our fall again. Going on the offensive, Superdynamic unleashed a furious storm of lasers and light, but the enemies were too many. For every villain who dropped out of the sky, a spray of bullets or power beam stitched Superdynamic, overwhelming his defenses and enveloping him in red, blue, and yellow energy.

“Ruby, we need you,” I shouted at our only ranged attacker, but she was pressed against the back wall of the helicopter as Superdynamic’s power waned and we once again began to fall.

“Dammit!” I raged. Surging every ounce of strength and rage into my legs, I shot out of the cabin like an arrow from my bow, aimed at the nearest of Superdynamic’s attackers.

I soared right at a woman flyer, the flamer who had burned the Black Hawk. She was channeling her powers at Superdynamic, unaware of my approach. I crashed into her, collapsing her lithe frame around my shoulder as we both fell out of the sky.

I wasn’t done. I aimed my arm and shot the gauntlet gun at the nearest villain. The six-inch-long grapple shot through the back of his cape and speared his torso. The villain screamed, ending his attack on Superdynamic, but somehow he managed to stay aloft. I engaged the magnetic winch and shot through the sky at the man. He turned, grabbing at the wound in his midsection, spinning to see what was dragging him down. He caught a glance at me and didn’t have time to look surprised before catching a right cross that almost decapitated him. Whatever power he used to keep him flying ended as he died, and I began to free-fall.

Another super in a tech suit raced down after me, raking my body with machine gun fire from a wrist-mounted cannon. Realizing I was still holding onto the dead flamer girl, I used her as a shield at first, then hurled her body at the suited villain. He was too surprised to dodge the improvised missile. Their bodies crumpled into each other in a bone-jarring, limb-severing mess.

Tumbling into vast darkness below, I felt a massive explosion somewhere near, and beneath me the world opened up, swallowing me whole.

Someone was holding me up, cursing, man-handling me as I broke the surface of a large body of water.

“Quit fighting me, goddammit,” the rough voice said, and I realized I must have fallen into the Potomac.

I pushed off from the source of the voice, paddling for myself. I looked over and saw it was Colonel Cray. He was watching me, making sure I could swim independently.

“You okay?” he asked, and I replied with a nod that I wasn’t sure he could register between the rippling water.

“Where’s everyone?” I asked, fighting a mouthful of water.

“Not sure,” Cray said, his face grim. “I got out and saw you falling out of the sky. You’re the heaviest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen.”

“What about your crew?”

The Colonel looked grave, “Part of the job, son. Come on,” he said, motioning me to follow toward the far shore, away from the White House.

“You be careful, sir,” I said, starting in the opposite direction.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m not done yet,” I said, and left him there. Swimming was difficult and I noticed something wrong with my right arm, dragging me. I lifted it out of the water and saw the long metal wire taut against something dangling below the surface. I didn’t know how to disengage the wire in the damned contraption, so I just I swam to the east shore fighting the heavy pull against my arm.

I headed toward D.C. alone, having lost Superdynamic, his team, and the helicopter. Ahead of me was a wooded ridgeline over which a red glow illuminated the river with an ominous light. When I reached the bank and got out of the water, I pulled the wire and saw the dead villain was still stuck to my grapple. I pulled the guy closer and ripped the grapple spear out of his midsection, shoving his body back into the river.

I ran up the ridgeline and across an abandoned highway, cursing myself for being so out of shape that I was winded when I reached the crest. About a mile south of me, down a wooded slope, was the General Hinds’ forward position, besieged by the orchestra of rifle and cannon reports that echoed up to my position. Below me were a dozen M109A6 Paladin tanks behind the partial cover of damaged buildings, firing on Hinds and his men. Beyond that, the city was mostly dark, but I could guesstimate that the White House was somewhere ahead of me.

“SuperD,” I said into Battle’s comm system. “You guys ok?”

There was no response.

I couldn’t just stroll down to the tanks, walk right through them. Instead, I figured I’d climb around Maxwell’s forces and try to sneak past, toward the White House.

Then I laughed, remembering my rocket boots. They could have helped before, but I was so eager to try out the grapple gun that I had forgotten I could fly.

I fired up the rockets and lifted into the night, getting a better vantage point of the tank battalion below. The Paladins were firing non-stop into the offensive, causing havoc among Hinds and his men to the south. Flanking the artillery pieces were two AN/TWQ-1 Avenger air defense systems, which basically had a pair of Stinger launcher mounted on a turret on the back of a heavily modified Humvee.

Since I couldn’t contact Superdynamic and his boys, I swapped through the channels until I found the radio signal Colonel Martinez had given us to talk to General Hinds.

“General Hinds,” I said, shouting a little to hear myself over the loud thrust of my rocket boots.

“I’m one of Superdynamic’s team, trying to get a hold of General Hinds. Is there anyone out there who can–”

“We hear you, son,” a voice responded. The guy sounded like he was under heavy fire. “The general’s a little busy now.”

The Paladin artillery pieces were stopping the assault altogether, and I was in perfect position to help out.

“Tell the general that help is on the way,” I said, dropping out of the sky and landing beside one of the M109s. Several soldiers opened up on me, including a couple of gunners mounted on the command Humvees. I ignored the pelting bullets and walked up to the nearest Paladin, grabbing the tracks and turning it on its side. I didn’t want to kill the soldiers, who were just following orders, but I figured the artillery pieces couldn’t fire if they were upside down. One by one I rolled the big tanks, making them useless, and then did the same to the two AA pieces.

“Okay, tell the general those artillery pieces to his north are going to be silent for a while.”

“Give me that,” someone said, taking the microphone. “Who the hell is this?”

“I’m with Superdynamic,” I said, trying to deflect the question. “Part of his team.”

General Hinds still struggled with the headset, and I could hear the whipping of the mike against his body. “Goddammit, I said who is this? I’m not into fucking games here.”

“Blackjack,” I said. “I’m Blackjack.”

The silence that followed belied a lengthy thought process. I could only imagine what was going through his head.

“Damn,” he muttered, making me laugh. I looked over the city, trying to find the fallen chopper.

“Blackjack,” my earpiece rang with Moe’s voice. “You up, man?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Swap back to our channels,” he said. “Let the general and his boys do their thing.”

I mentally switched channels, and Moe’s voice rang out, “Where are you man?”

“I’m airborne at the moment. What’s your location?”

“Shit!” he yelled, leaving his comm open. Wherever they were, they were under attack from heavy machine gun fire.

I flew away from the damaged tanks, over a residential area. As I rose higher, the rain obscured what little details I could discern. I tried imagining the trajectory of the crashing helicopter, but I couldn’t spot the wreckage on the ground. Instead, I saw a super circling around me, watching me as I hovered. He was flying fast, and it was hard for me to identify him, but I knew he wasn’t a hero when he fired off a salvo of rockets in my direction. I engaged the thrust and dove to the deck, but the missiles were heat-seeking and stayed close to my tail. The villain chased me. He was another guy in a tech suit, but this thing was a work of art, deadly and powerful.

I tried shaking off the rockets, but they were more agile than I, so I shut off my rockets, tucked my legs under my body, and fired the boots in the opposite direction at full throttle.

I came to a stop in a gut-churning second, and most of the rockets flew right past me. One crashed into me and exploded against my shoulder, but I paid it no mind as I powered toward the super. The maneuver caught him completely off guard, and he fired off hand repulsers to try to avoid me as I slammed into him, chest to chest, wrapping my arms around his torso. His face twisting in pain and shock behind the helmet’s clear viewscreen. Our combined rockets drove us up into the sky, high above the city and into the cloud cover, but once I had a good grip, I basically squeezed him inside his armor.

He felt the pressure at first, shouting commands to his onboard computer, but the armor crumpled in my arms. His muffled screams came to a sudden halt as his midsection collapsed under the pressure. Blood sprayed from his mouth, spattering the screen. I kept the pressure until his head lolled back and he was dead.

I released him and cut my rocket boots, the open throttle of his propulsion carrying him higher into the cloud cover, until the faint glow of his engines faded from sight.

“Moe!” I yelled, dropping out of the sky at low power, letting my body’s momentum bring me down before firing the rocket boots to give me forward propulsion.

“Yo!”

“Where are you guys?”

“We crashed in Montrose Park,” he said. Then his voice cut off for a moment despite my efforts to get him back on.

“You there?” he said after a long thirty seconds.

“Yeah.”

“Montrose Park, on R Street,” Moe yelled.

I tried remembering where the park was, thinking at first impression that it was quite farther than where I had crash-landed.

“Where is that?” I asked

“North of–” he stopped again as machine gun fire raked his position. “Son of a bitch! We’re pinned bad, man.”

“I’m coming,” I said, but I had no idea where to go.

“North of Georgetown,” Moe shouted. “Next to the cemetery.”

“I’ll find it,” I said, powering my rockets and heading north.

I couldn’t stay up in the air.

There were too many villains patrolling the skies. I even saw Hitstreak and Dr. Aeon flying around, and they were guys who could beat me by themselves.

Dr. Zundergrub had a formidable army, with plenty of fodder villains and enough heavy hitters to make it count. Combined with General Maxwell’s rebellious forces, there was more than what was necessary to take the capital and hold it against all comers. Even Superdynamic and his team.

Hiding in the cloud cover made it too easy to lose my orientation, and flying lower brought me within range of the army guys and the ground opened up with small-arms fire. I raced over a mechanized infantry unit that lit me up pretty badly. Only a sudden burst of high speed from my rocket boots let me fly past undamaged.

I was getting too much attention staying aloft, so I landed and decided to walk the rest of the way.

The new boot rockets had served me wonderfully so far, but like the previous jury-rigged rockets, I didn’t know how to land properly. I crashed into a car, flipping over it and slamming into a building that half-collapsed around me.

I dusted myself off and ran north. I figured I was close, since I was somewhere in the Georgetown neighborhood of the District. Running through deserted streets, I looked south, realizing I was heading away from the White House, away from my encounter with Lord Mighty.

Away from Apogee.

The temptation to turn around and throw myself at Lord Mighty struck me, in spite of our plan. I wanted to see how I would hold up against the man-god. Would I even stand a chance? I could fight him like I had Epic, with unleashed rage leading the way, throwing myself at him with abandon, but I knew that Mighty was a different animal altogether. Epic was probably stronger and tougher, but he was lazy and unmotivated, soft because he’d never been challenged, weak because he’d never had to try.

Mighty wouldn’t be surprised by a charge, nor overwhelmed by my anger. He could weather my blows if I landed them, avoid them with his unearthly speed if he wished. No, the only reason to face that guy was to give the team a delay. I had to stand in front of him, slug it out, and hope I could take the punishment.