Team Omega (29 page)

“The FBI can handle it from here,” Lane said, softly.  There was something in his voice that bothered Jackson, a grim awareness that they’d fucked up.  But there had been no clue about Dreamy Girl’s real abilities.  “Sergeant, take the team back to barracks.  We’ll hold the AAR tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir,” the Sergeant said.  Lane would probably have to stay long enough to explain what had happened to the FBI.  Someone else would probably have to explain to the owners of the stadium that Dreamy Girl wouldn't be giving any more concerts—and they might be liable for the death of Parker Lewis...and for whatever had happened to Agent Anderson.  “Come on, lads.  Move it.”

***

It was a more pensive team that met in the briefing compartment for the AAR the following day.  “The FBI say that Agent Anderson seems to be stuck as an elderly woman,” Lane said, without preamble.  “There are some superhuman healers who may be able to do something for her, but the doctors aren't particularly hopeful.  It seems likely that she won’t be able to continue her work with the FBI.”

There was a long pause.  “It might be more ammunition for the Congressmen who want to rewrite SARA,” the Sergeant offered.  “They might give us more authority to intervene earlier...”

“If Dreamy Girl hadn't been a registered superhuman, we would never have been called in,” Lane said, shortly.  “More to the point, do you want a situation where we are required to poke our noses into every registered superhuman’s business?”

He tapped the table before anyone could say a word.  “The manager confessed once he was safely away from her,” he continued.  “You can read a copy of the transcript if you like, but the short version of the story is that Rita Reynar was born with mutant characteristics that became more pronounced as she grew older.  If her powers hadn't kicked in at around the same time, I suspect that she would have been forced to go to one of the establishments for mutants who can't really fit into normal society.  Instead, she hid her true nature as best she could, only to discover that the only way to
maintain
her powers was to drain life energy from innocent victims.  By then, she was well past caring about a society that would have rejected her if it had seen her true face.”

“Sounds like some of the problems with Dr. Death’s early creations,” the Sergeant offered.  “Could she have been someone’s deliberate experiment?”

“The SDI is looking into that, but so far they haven’t found anything that would suggest that her appearance was anything more than random chance,” Lane said.  “In her career, she apparently discovered that young boys from good backgrounds—no drinking, no drugs—produced the greatest amounts of life energy, so she became a vampire.  Davy Wheat was apparently picked up by mistake, hence the decision to risk snatching another boy from San Francisco.  Hiding the remains was no problem as once all of the life energy was gone, the body crumbled into dust and ashes.”

“A freaking vampire,” Ron said, to no one in particular.  “Makes you wonder why so many people admire them.”

Jackson raised a hand.  “What’s going to happen to her?”

“The SDI has taken her into custody and placed her in a cell that will keep her isolated until we can determine if she’s fit to stand trial,” Lane said.  “Luckily, that decision doesn't have anything to do with us.  Some of this will leak out now that her second concert has been cancelled and the media will start howling their outrage.   The FBI will get all the credit, of course.”

There were some chuckles at that from the team.  “At best, she was a Level 2 superhuman when boosted with life energy, but bagging her could have gone a great deal worse,” Lane added.  “Once we've had some downtime, we’re going to have to add someone like her to the training scenarios.  Every time we relax, something bad happens and the shit hits the fan.”

He shrugged.  “Get some rest,” he ordered.  “You’re on leave for the next two days, so enjoy yourself—and remember, anyone who isn't fit for duty on Thursday will be cleaning the toilets across the entire base.  The budget’s too thin to afford proper cleaners.”

“If we were allowed to hire them,” Ron said.  Jackson joined in the chuckles.  The base was secure; no one was allowed to enter without permission from the base CO, who often had to check with the specific unit concerned before granting permission.  Reporters and other bottom-feeders were not permitted onto the base under any circumstances.  “Sir, request permission to borrow a vehicle and leave the base.”

“Keep your beepers with you,” Lane said.  “Just make sure you get some rest.  Word has come down from on high that we may be deployed outside the country soon.  We need to be ready for that if it actually happens.”

Jackson nodded.  The Marines had been put on alert dozens of times while he’d been a PFC, but only a couple of alerts had led to an actual deployment.  It had been enough to frustrate every Jarhead who had to take each separate alert seriously. 

“And we all did well yesterday,” Lane added.  “Dismissed!”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“And who, exactly, is this?” 

Hope studied the man thoughtfully.  He looked vaguely Arabic, although that meant nothing in a melting pot like Africa.  Mixed-race children were far from unknown, even though many tribes and religions spent half their time fighting each other.  He wore no uniform, but he looked like a soldier—and he had been caught in the act of smuggling weapons into the Congo.  There was no point in pretending that he was anything other than an enemy agent.

“We caught him up north,” Mimic said.  The former SEAL sounded pleased with himself.  “We dropped off that donation of cell phones across the area and one of the people called in a tip.  He was there, distributing arms to local tribesmen when we caught him.”

Hope looked at the Redeemer.  “Scan him,” he ordered.  “Who is he, and what is he doing here?”

The Redeemer closed her eyes for a long moment as the man cowered away from her.  “He’s from Libya,” she said, finally.  “One of their secret policemen, someone who worked with one of the Congo factions in the past.  His orders were to arm the tribes we disarmed and use them to destabilise the country.  He would have succeeded if someone hadn't decided they liked us more than they liked him.”

Hope nodded.  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.  “Was he the one who shot our people?”

“I don’t think so,” the Redeemer said.  “He’s had some training in shielding his mind from telepathic probes, but not enough to hide from me.  I don’t think he’s really anything apart from a smile, plenty of weapons and bad intentions.  And the weapons came from a multinational set of arms dealers.”

“Most of them were trash,” Mimic put in.  “All ex-Soviet gear: AK-47s, primitive RPGs, some landmines and even a handful of odd weapons I think were intended to deal with early superhumans.  At least, I can't think of any other use for them.  But Russian weapons are reliable.  He wouldn't have any difficulty teaching his students how to use them.”

Hope frowned.  “And ammunition?”

“They were going to establish a supply line from Libya,” the Redeemer said.  “Once they had built up an insurgent force, they intended to use the supply of ammunition as a way of keeping it under control.  They’ve been bitten already by terrorist groups who took their weapons and then attacked the West without bothering to follow orders from Libya.  This group was intended to remain firmly under their thumb.”

Hope shook his head.  “And the chances are that Libya isn't the only nation that’s trying to meddle in our affairs,” he said.  The American spy, the mystery sniper...the Americans claimed not to have sent him, but he wasn't sure if he believed them.  “We have to send a very clear message that this sort of interference will not be tolerated.”

He tapped his communicator as he stood up.  “All Saviours, meet me in the mansion in twenty minutes,” he ordered.  “See what else you can pull from his head, then dump him in the prison camp.  We can deal with him later, once we’ve dealt with his master.”

Mimic looked up, surprised.  “You intend to attack Libya?”

“I intend to send a very clear message,” Hope said.  “Time is running out for states that think they can murder their own people and threaten the rest of the world without interference.  And
this
guy could have killed some of us as well as the people we swore to defend.  I’m not going to let that pass without a response.”

***

Flying superhumans had caused a problem for air traffic controllers almost as soon as their existence was confirmed.  Superhumans were hard to track on radar, even using the most sensitive military-grade equipment, and many of them could fly faster than the average fighter jet.  So perhaps it wasn't surprising that Libya’s air defence network completely missed Hope’s arrival, at least until he reached Tripoli and hovered in the air long enough for the radar network to get a clear look at him.  It wouldn't be long before they scrambled jets and tried to force him to the ground.

Tripoli looked surprisingly prosperous for a state ruled by an evil dictator, but Hope had no difficulty hearing the suffering of the men and women in a dozen state prisons.  Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had ordered merciless repression of anyone who dared to think about a world without him, even after he’d lost his patrons in the Soviet Union.  It was easy to check out the dozen different palaces he’d built around the city, playing a shell game with assassins who would have to attack the right palace to be sure of killing their target.  Years ago, before the dawn of the superhuman era, America had launched punitive strikes against Libya that had come within a hair’s breadth of killing the dictator.  It would have been far more of a lesson to rogue dictators if they’d killed the bastard. 

He heard the aircraft coming long before they made visual contact with him.  None of them were particularly advanced, and he was mildly surprised that they could still fly.  Libya wasn’t known for intensive pilot and engineer training, if only because pilots had a nasty tendency to fly north to Europe and defect.  The primitive MIGs wouldn’t have survived a dogfight with modern American or European aircraft, let alone a single superhuman.  It galled Hope that the West had chosen to ignore the suffering on their southern border, but it no longer mattered.  He would remove the Colonel and give the world a lesson in how to deal with people like him.

The MIGs flew past him and Hope waved, mockingly, before diving towards the first palace.  He crashed through it at superhuman speed, tearing through the walls as if they were made of paper and bringing down the palace in his wake.  The building remained intact just long enough for Hope to be sure that the Colonel wasn't there, collapsing into a heap of rubble just after he threw himself back into the air.  He saw a number of soldiers on the grounds staring in horror at him, only a handful having the presence of mind to lift their weapons and fire on him—not that it would do any good.  Hope ignored them and the aircraft as he flashed over to the next palace, and the next. 

He found his target in the fourth palace.

Up close, there was nothing particularly spectacular about a man who held an entire country in bondage.  He was older than Hope had expected and tending to fat, disguised by carefully-tailored uniforms that hid his growing paunch.  Maybe he was vain, or perhaps it was an unusual display of sensitivity to the feelings of his subjects.  Many of them had barely enough to eat.  If the key to maintaining control was to avoid making one’s subjects feel that they had nothing to lose, Hope wondered, did he fear how they would react if they saw his expanding waistline?

An arm caught him and pulled him backwards, slamming him into a wall.  A stream of women threw themselves on him—and at least one of them was definitely a superhuman.

Hope propelled himself back, shaking off several of the mundane bodyguards, and caught sight of the superhuman coming towards him.  Now that he was ready for her, he avoided her punch and slammed a fist into her chin that threw her through the roof and out into the city.  If she could fly, she would be back within seconds, but as he shook off the remaining bodyguards there was no sign of her.  Hope shook his head and advanced on the Colonel, who started to cry, begging and pleading for his life.  Unsurprised—like all dictators, the man was a bully at heart—Hope caught the Colonel and carried him up into the air. 

Below him, Tripoli was in chaos.  The remaining Saviours had arrived and started to attack every building that supported the regime.  Army barracks, secret police headquarters and jails were under attack, with the prisoners released before the prisons were brought down in rubble.  Air bases and even Libya’s tiny navy would be wrecked before the day was out, leaving the dictator’s entire enforcement machine in ruins.  Maybe the Libyans would rise up and claim their freedom, now that the forces holding them down had been removed, or maybe the regime would re-establish itself under one of the dictator’s henchmen.  Hope promised himself that he would return if the latter happened, unless the new dictator moved steadily towards democracy.  After all the frustrations of the previous weeks, it felt good to go back into action. 

The Redeemer and a handful of reporters had established themselves at an old Italian base that the regime hadn’t considered worth modernising.  Its only occupants had been scorpions and spiders when the team had arrived, but the reporters had set up their cameras in a disused hanger, ready for the show.  Hope dropped the former dictator on the ground and watched as the man tried to scramble to his feet before the Redeemer reached out and touched his mind.  There were no telepaths in Libya, as far as anyone knew, and it was unlikely that a man as set in his ways as the dictator could shield his thoughts.  And who knew what else he knew about his country?

“Plenty of illegal weapons...dear me, he
has
been a naughty boy,” the Redeemer said.  “I’m broadcasting the coordinates to Mainframe and Mimic; they can deal with the nuclear weapons production facility.  They’ve also got a small stockpile of chemical weapons in a base to the south of Tripoli, enough to massacre a few hundred thousand people.  That place needs to be shut down carefully.”

“Order Supernova to deal with it,” Hope suggested.  She could vaporise the entire plant in a near-nuclear blast of heat, enough to destroy any chemical or biological weapons that the regime might have created.  The dictator had spent years denying that he had any such weapons, but no one had believed a word he’d said.  No wonder, when he had no reason to fear that anyone would
force
him to surrender his weapons or face the consequences.  “Make sure that she takes a few others as backup.  She isn't ready to fight openly.”

The Redeemer nodded as she continued ploughing through the Colonel’s head.  “Plenty of other secrets, but he doesn't seem to know about the sniper,” she added.  “He’s been consulting with Russia and China about what to do about us—both of them have been encouraging him to meddle.  It could be that someone under him ordered the sniper into the Congo and never bothered to tell him.”

“I doubt that he left anyone with that much initiative alive,” Hope said, dryly.  “Did you get everything from him?”

“Yes,” the Redeemer said.  She touched her forehead.  “A very sick mind in a sickening body.  Do you know that he used to watch torture and became aroused by it?”

Hope wasn't too surprised.  It happened along the edges of the superhuman community, men and women who could do pretty much anything became bored with ordinary pastimes and turned to the more perverted forms of entertainment.  If one happened to have the power of life and death over an entire country, why
not
start brutalising them for your pleasure? 

The thought wasn't reassuring. Hope himself had claimed power over the Congo.  What he said went...did that mean he would end up like the Colonel?

“I doubt it,” the Redeemer said, intruding on his thoughts.  Hope shot her a sharp glance; he didn't like having his mind read and he knew no one who did.  “You set out to help people and to eventually return the Congo to their governance.  This...pervert set out to take power for himself and succeeded rather neatly.  And he didn't even
want
to get off the tiger in the end.”

Hope nodded as he picked up the Colonel and carried him into the hanger, where television crews were waiting.  By now, the world would have heard that
something
had happened in Tripoli, although they probably wouldn't know what, if only because the dictator hadn't encouraged a free press.  Hope had glanced at a Libyan newspaper once; the first five pages had been nothing more than praise of the dictator, his family and his regime.  It was worse than the superhero-hating editor back in New York, who claimed that SARA wasn't tough enough and that all superhumans should be monitored closely.  His editorials against the Congo operation were a delight to read.

“This is Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the former ruler of Libya,” Hope said, once the cameras were rolling.  “He kept his own people in bondage, he created a terrifying arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and killed or imprisoned all who dared speak out against him, and the outside world did nothing effective to remove him.  But the Colonel was not satisfied with that; he planned an assault on the Congo that would have plunged the state back into civil war and crushed the hopes of those we liberated from the warlords.

“The Colonel’s mind was scanned thoroughly.  There is no doubt of his complicity in his attack on the Congo, or in the creation of the weapons of mass destruction, or of his support for international terrorists who have killed hundreds of people over the last thirty years.  For his crimes, there can be nothing less than the ultimate penalty.  We call upon you all to witness what happens to tyrants now, what will happen to others if they don’t start working towards democracy.  Watch.”