Superhero by Night Omnibus

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  I slammed on the brakes, skidding the car to a halt and jumping out the second I had it in park. I ran to the empty lot; neatly bulldozed. Leveled, with no sign or trace that I had ever lived there. That Sara had ever lived there. No garden, no foundation, nothing. Not even the place Charles and I buried Stinky Pete, our cat who died when we were eight. We’d cried and cried over that dumb cat’s little box. Dad was so mad when we came home with a gravestone we’d made at school. Of course, he hated that cat.

  The dirt was compact. I didn’t leave a trace as I walked across the lot. A crack of thunder sounded in the distance and rain began to fall. As if the world could feel my emotions.

  The rain soaked me in seconds. I didn’t care. I pictured the last time I saw Sara’s smiling face—the way she made me laugh when talked on Skype. I walked over to where the door to the garage used to be, the spot we both died in and I fell to my knees, my head dropping to my chest. My body may have lived, but the person I was died with Sara.

  The world hadn’t frozen, it hadn’t moved on, it simply erased them from existence. No house, no remains, nothing. As if we were never even alive. I don’t know how long I sat in the rain, frozen in my grief and anger.

  It was long enough to start shivering. I took a deep breath and let it all out until I could stand. The water had saturated my leather jacket and soaked me to the bone. I stood up, shook off my hair and made my way back to the idling Hellcat. I was such an idiot. Not taking advantage of the time I had with them. I had dreaded every Thanksgiving, because of things that didn’t matter anymore. Charles’ death wrecked me. It wrecked our family. Sara could have healed it if I had let her. In my pride and stubbornness, I refused to forgive Dad, Mom… even myself.

  I sat down behind the wheel, shutting the door. Rain pelted the car, soothing me with its drumming sound. I may not be able to tell them I love them or ask for their forgiveness. But I can make the people who took them away pay.

  I smiled at the thought. Oh, they were going to pay, they just didn’t have enough to cover the bill.

  Chapter 5

  In Detroit, I made a few mistakes, mostly because I was in love with my new-found ability to defend myself. Now, in New Orleans, I needed to take even more care. The only thing some people feared was the unknown. I must remain a Wraith to keep them afraid. As a rumor, I was unstoppable.

  Which is why I was at the docks five hours after I left my parents’ bulldozed lot. A cup of hot coffee bolstered by a couple of energy shots keeps me alert. I’ve spent the last month scouting out locations, routines, key personnel—everything I could learn about ISO-1. I had wandered the city as a homeless black woman. No one even batted an eye. With a pencil, a map, and a library card I was able to find virtually every location they had in the city. It was how I triggered their big meeting yesterday; I found and took out the dockyard lieutenant. He had been a fountain of intel. Now he’s sleeping with the fish. Fitting justice if you ask me.

  The low warehouse I was atop had no protection from the elements, just a small two-foot-tall wall running along the roof edge, punctuated by drains spaced ten feet apart. I was using it as cover, just poking my eyes above to watch. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the activity down on the docks from the Russian-registered cargo ship was my target.

  With the rain and wind, it was hard to see, but I didn’t want to risk binoculars; the glint off the glass could give me away and as unlikely as that was, I didn’t want to take the chance. The ISO-1 people are easy enough to spot; they’re all locals, milling about watching the Russians offload pallets of what I presumed were weapons. The last man I killed yesterday had said it was an arms deal.

  Four semis were backed up with ubiquitous containers already loaded on the back. A forklift zoomed back and forth, loading in the pallets as fast as the crew unloaded them. I didn’t know a lot about docks but was pretty sure that having the ship’s crew unload the cargo was usually a no-no.

  I called upon a little bit of my power, enhancing my vision and sharpening my hearing as I scanned each person down there. They were tense, nervous, fingering their weapons and constantly swiveling their heads, watching for trouble.

  I smiled at that. It was nice to know I was having an effect. Since I was going to be here for a while I had stopped at a Walmart and bought a hiking style rain poncho. It did a pretty good job of keeping me dry while I waited. I was still wet from earlier, but I could endure this. I’d gone through worse.

  Much worse.

  As the sun finally made its appearance the crew finished their loading. I counted over fifty pallets. Whatever ISO-1 was buying, they were buying a lot of it. When they were done, the Russians locked the trucks and dispatched the convoy: four semis and four black SUVs. The semis had Russians in them, the SUVs were loaded with locals. As each semi pulled out, an SUV moved out behind them. This was going to be tricky. The docks had several exits, but I was on the roof of the building next to the most used entrance. Sure enough, they came my way.

  “Here we go,” I muttered as I stood up and started sprinting across the rain-soaked rooftop. Water splashed against my leather pants as I ran at full speed for the far side. Other than my senses, I hadn’t kicked in any of my other powers. What Sara said in the car had me thinking I shouldn’t use them as much, or as casually.

  I timed it just right, leaping over the ledge and falling through the air as the last truck passed under me. I hit the corrugated metal with a bang, rolled and slid to a stop, grasping for a handhold to keep from flying off the far side.

  “Ow,” I said as I pulled myself into a crouch. I knew the rear door was locked and wouldn’t do me any good—not with the SUV babysitting them. However, I didn’t need a door. I crawled along to the front, staying as low as possible, not only to avoid being seen but also to keep from blowing off in the gusts of wind. Despite their design, the containers weren’t waterproof, just tough. Near the front, according to the library book I read, was the weakest part of the container.

  Once I was there, I looked for any holes; nothing. That was okay. I brought my own hole maker: a one-handed five-pound sledge and a metal spike. I placed the tip on the bottom of the s-curve of metal and retrieved the sledge from my belt. I waited for us to pass under a bridge and when we did, swung with all my might. The loud bang of the sledge produced a dent, the sound was hidden by the loud engine as it passed, confined under the bridge. As dad always said, nothing worth having was easy.

  Another bridge came up and I swung again, this time hard enough to punch a hole clean through. I carefully slipped the hammer back through the loop on my belt and the spike in my pocket. Leave no trace, just like a Boy Scout. Not that I was one.

  With the hole punched I got down on my belly and held my eye up to it, summoning my powers so I could see in the total darkness. The inside of the container appeared in the bizarre inverted light and shadow world I can see in when using my abilities. The shadows vanished, showing me enough space to fit my body. I reached into the back of my mind and triggered that place where the shadow step existed. Instantly I was laying on top of a shrink-wrapped pallet.

  Despite my dark-vision, I couldn’t read the labeling; I needed light to differentiate the words from the shadow. That’s where the little LED light I carried came in handy. I clicked it on and pointed it at the pallets as I climbed to my knees. The light illuminated the entire inside of the container, showing me what I was kneeling on.

  “Oh boy,” I said out loud.

  Each of the pallets held hundreds of brown bricks printed with large, black lettering:

  BLOCK, DEMOLITION, M4

  (COMPOSITION C4)

  LOT #XZ4498-998321-SW1138

  “Well, crap.”

  A quick search of the trailer told me the entire thing was filled with the explosive. I counted the number across and down, multiplied, and came up with 18,000 pounds of C-4. Good Lord. What did they want with that much explosive? They could level a football stadium with it. More than likely it was several years supply. The
y probably got a good deal on black-market explosives and decided to stock up. Where do you even go to order such a thing?

  Regardless, I wasn’t going to let them keep any of it. And since they were kind enough to provide me with the means of their own demise, I decided to take advantage. C4 requires both a shockwave and extreme heat, at the same time, in order to detonate. That meant I couldn’t just shoot it or light it on fire; I needed something with a big enough kick to detonate it. Something powerful… like a lightning bolt. I smiled as I thought of a plan. I didn’t know the odds of a random bolt of lightning but I did know how much juice flows through power lines. If I could rig a detonator, something with a kick, like a grenade and send electricity through it at the same time… boom goes the dynamite.

  Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

  Chapter 6

  Master sergeant Bill Farrel waited patiently behind the semi-closed doors of the plain box van he and his team occupied. The three men behind him—and the one on a nearby rooftop—were all highly trained and decorated Army Rangers and Special Forces types… something he never was. No, Bill had spent his career in the Army Criminal Investigations Division, or CID as it was commonly known.

  Today, the five-man special investigative unit was outfitted for urban operations. Police blue uniforms with exterior vests labeled “US ARMY” on the front and “CID FEDERAL AGENT” on the back. They also had badges on their belts and were trained to yell “federal agents” when they went in. In his experience civilians didn’t know what to do when a federal agent told them to get down. That was okay, though, since the people he was after weren’t really civilians.

  “Yo, Bill, how long?”

  In a normal unit, addressing him by his first name would be a big no-no. CID was a little different. He’d worked with these guys for years and they were a well-oiled machine.

  “Fifteen mikes, Sandy,” he replied without looking. Sandoval was their super. There weren’t enough in the military for every unit to have one, but Bill’s unit was different; they were tasked with tracking and recovering stolen Army weapons, mostly explosives and other dangerous items. Today, they were after a Warrant Officer who was selling C4 to an unknown group.

  It frustrated him no end that they were so blind on this one. He couldn’t trust local law-enforcement—not here in New Orleans anyway. There were plenty that were good, honest types, even here, but he didn’t know who they were. And he didn’t want ten pounds of C4 ending up in the hands of bad guys because he trusted the wrong person. Protocol demanded they notify the local cops when the CID operated inside city limits, and they would… the second after they left the van.

  Besides Sandy, the other three were normal humans, highly trained and specialized. Rico was his comms expert. Right now, the brown-haired man had three drones silently hovering above the empty lot, each with powerful HD cameras using military grade optics recording everything they saw. Despite the rain and the wind, Rico held them in orbit and recording as much as they could.

  Somewhere (to avoid compromising the position on the off chance their targets had telepaths or some other form of ESP Bill didn’t know where specifically) Felix covered them with his high-powered rifle. Felix was their only straight-up combat soldier. He was deadly with a hundred kinds of weapons Bill knew about, and far more he didn’t.

  Finally, Zim, who slept with his feet up on the dash, snoozing as he almost always did before an op. Zim was their medic and operations officer. He knew all the rules and regulations, on top of his skill as a field medic.

  Sandy had gone through Basic training and AIT and completed all of four years in the Army when his powers manifested. Despite his relatively low level of training, he was incredibly useful.

  “They’re arriving,” Rico said, sitting up as his general disinterested facade vanished, replaced by a high alert. Zim was next to him before Bill finished turning around. The three men huddled over the monitor, looking for whatever Rico saw.

  “There,” Rico said, pointing at the center screen while adjusting the drone’s angle. The rain vanished for a second and four black SUVs rolled into the large lot, squished between two tall warehouses. The lot had once held storage silos but only the circular remnant of them remained; now it was large and open enough for exactly this kind of deal but closed off from the street. Perfect for shady crap like this.

  Eight men with SMGs, all dressed in black suits, spilled out of the SUVs. The leader was fairly obvious. He was a tall Latino man with a large silver revolver he kept twirling like he was in the wild west.

  “Jackass,” Zim whispered.

  Bill agreed.

  “These are the buyers,” Rico said.

  “What makes you think that?” Bill asked.

  “Look,” he said as he switched the camera to thermal. The people outside the vehicles lit up in bright red and yellow splotches, as did the engines of the SUVs. However, the interiors were cold. “Normally thermal can’t see through metal, but they left their windows down. Anyone inside would bleed heat outside. If they were the sellers, they wouldn’t leave the product behind.”

  Bill nodded his agreement. He pointed at each monitor, counting the tangos. He swore under his breath. His five-man team couldn’t take down twenty guys, even with the element of surprise.

  “I don’t like the odds. We’re going to wait until the other guys leave. As much as I would like to take them all down, we can use the video of the sellers and tag them with trackers to snatch them later. Right now, our priority is recovering the explosives, hu?”

  They all gave the customary response back. Satisfied, Bill nodded and moved back to his position at the rear of the van. The drones were nice, but he wanted his own eyes on the scene.

  <<<<>>>>

  The trucks rumbled as they slowed down to turn. This signaled my time was up. I crawled back to the front, hoping my makeshift explosive detonator would do the trick once it was hit by electricity. I shut the penlight off and used the incoming moonlight to find the hole. Once there I pressed my eye up against the small hole and caught a glimpse of a dark ledge. Then I triggered my shadow step.

  I don’t know if I will ever become accustomed to the feeling. It was like my body dissolved, then I was blasted with a rush of cold air—the coldest I’d ever felt. Worse than the time I had to run out of the hotel in the middle of a New York winter wearing nothing but a nightie. Then I’m back and the feeling is gone before I can blink.

  The cold wet air hit me in the face, and I materialized in a rush of movement as I burst out of the shadows on the rooftop. I don’t know how it all worked, but it did. I could see in the dark, sense living creatures, move faster, hit harder, and recover from wounds that would kill anyone else. Not to mention I had incredible strength when I needed it.

  The rain pouring down around me in sheets didn’t bother me at all; I could see the rooftop as if it were under a noonday sun. Yet, somehow, I still managed to almost miss the guy lying down in the far corner, pressed right up against the buttress, with a sniper rifle pointed at the gathering flock of black SUVs in the wide-open courtyard.

  I froze, not wanting to alert him to my presence. He wore a poncho that covered everything but his military-style boots—the same kind Joseph wore all the time. Since he didn’t move, he probably didn’t know I was there. I was not surprised, considering the only reason I saw him was my enhanced vision. Only late afternoon, it was dark as evening, with the angry black clouds disgorging a million gallons per minute.

  Is he overwatch for the arms deal?

  I moved closer, watching for any sign he heard me as I slipped my silenced pistol out of the hip holster it rested in.

  “Bravo One-One, this is Whiskey. Vehicles are approaching the target area. I count four tractors with trailers; based on the impressions they’re making in the mud they are loaded down with the stolen package and then some.”

  The response came from the headset the sniper wore. I couldn’t see the radio, but the garbled answer made it clear t
his wasn’t an ISO-1 agent.

  “Roger Whiskey-One. Wait until the cargo changes hands, then we follow the buyers and intercept the package. Romeo will have one of his drones tag the sellers and we’ll track them later.”

  “Wilco,” came the sniper’s reply.

  Clearly, they weren’t the bad guys. If I had to guess I’d say Army Intelligence? Maybe? I shrugged to myself. Joseph taught me a lot, but I only trained and studied with him for three months. There’s a whole lot more to learn than three months’ worth, even if my days and nights were packed with reading and fighting. I make a note for later—try and find out who these guys are. In the meantime, it leaves me with a problem.

  I triggered my shadow step, vanishing in an instant and reappearing on the opposite rooftop beside a water tower. I dodged behind it immediately.

  I don’t know how, but the sniper must have sensed me, he was turning around to look behind him and I had to go. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe the guy was just that good. Either way, it was a good reminder to take more care. The fewer people know I exist, the better. I also didn’t want to accidentally kill a good guy, which brought me to my next problem.

  The detonator.

  I rigged it using my cellphone and a thermite grenade I carry around for close encounters. It shouldn’t detonate without a phone call and a jolt of high-powered electricity. Shouldn’t…

  I know what Joseph would say: “Luck, isn’t a plan.” I can practically hear his voice. If it does detonate and those Federal Agents are nearby, it will kill them as surely as the ISO people.

  Dangit. Time for Plan B.

  Step 1: get down there and disarm the explosive.

  Step 2: kill all the bad guys.

  I liked step 2.