Hero Force United Boxed Set 1

by Baron Sord

  “Bueno,” Grill said, his face stretching into a wide smile that featured his golden teeth. He grinned, “Thing is, how do I know these are the numbers?”

  “That’s them,” Blondie grumbled.

  “Prove it,” Grill said amicably.

  “I can’t fucking prove it. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Grill laughed, motioning with his cigar. “You muy peleonero, amigo.”

  Blondie scowled at him a moment before bending over and picking up the cooler. He turned to go.

  Sumo stepped in front of him.

  “Move it,” Blondie growled.

  Sumo didn’t.

  Blondie glared at Sumo and said to his men, “Shoot this fat fuck.”

  “Uh, uh, uh, uhhh,” Grill tsked. “Nobody shoots my men except me.” Grill now held a pistol to the back of Blondie’s head. He cocked the hammer. “But me? I shoot whoever the fuck I want.”

  Blondie didn’t turn around. He growled, “If you shoot me, we will haunt you to the fucking grave, amigo.” He said it with bitter hatred.

  That was the distress call I’d heard.

  But I had to wonder, who was we?

  Was it FwCK?

  Most likely, because I could now see the tattoo clearly on the neck of one of Blondie’s men.

  Was FwCK a gang?

  Had to be.

  Again, I wasn’t sure what to do. This was literally a Mexican standoff. Correction, Mexican-American standoff, which made it politically correct.

  Blondie’s two men were in position to shoot Sumo in the back, but Sumo blocked them from Grill.

  Grill was in a position to shoot Blondie.

  The two deckhands?

  They stood to either side of Grill with their pistols trained on Blondie’s men.

  The math said that, at worst, Grill would kill Blondie, the two deckhands would kill Blondie’s two black-jacketed gunmen, and Sumo might die, but he looked like he could take quite a few bullets to the back and survive. If he was wearing a vest under his suit jacket, he might be able to take them all, leaving Blondie and his men dead.

  “What’s your move, player?” Grill asked Blondie.

  Before he could answer, I made a move of my own.

  Jumped over the yacht behind which I was hiding. Came sailing down with my arms flailing. Although I’d had quite a bit of jumping practice, I was still learning. I had been aiming for Grill, but I came down on Sumo and knocked him to the dock.

  BAM!

  After my crash landing, everyone scattered and a firefight followed.

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Next thing I knew, Sumo was heaving me in the air like a pro-wrestler. He threw me at Blondie’s two men. I hit one and knocked him splashing into the water. I went crashing after. We both landed — or should I say watered — in one of the empty boat slips. When I surfaced and whipped my wet hair out of my eyes—

  Smack!

  The guy in the water with me punched me in the face.

  I punched back. Because I was treading water, I didn’t hit him very hard, which was probably for the best. But I did tag his cheek.

  His head spiraled and he went limp. He immediately started sinking.

  I grabbed him under the arm and paddled to the dock. Grabbed a metal cleat with one hand and pulled the wet guy out with me. Dropped him dripping on the wood. He was out cold.

  Pop, pop, pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  More shooting.

  Then it stopped.

  Grill and his three men had taken up defensive positions behind a big boat to my left. Blondie and his other man had taken up a position behind a boat to my right. All were waiting to fire or reloading.

  Grill whispered to his men in Spanish.

  I could hear his words as his thoughts, which were amplified in my mind, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Didn’t matter because it was obvious they needed to get back on their go-fast boat and get the infierno out of here before the cops showed. Unfortunately for them, they could only get there by exposing themselves to fire from Blondie and his man.

  As for Blondie’s crew, they couldn’t walk off the docks without passing Grill’s crew. Unless they planned on jumping in the water and swimming their plastic cooler to shore, they were stuck.

  Again, I wondered, did I stay or go? It really didn’t matter either way to me because I couldn’t decide who the good guys were, or if there were any.

  Blondie hissed to his man next to him, “Who the fuck is that guy?!”

  He was referring to me where I was crouching over their unconscious friend who I’d saved.

  “No fuckin idea,” Blondie’s other man muttered. “You want me to shoot him?”

  “Go for it,” Blondie said.

  Pop!

  The shot hit me in the chest and I just took it.

  “You hit him?” Blondie asked.

  “Yeah I fucking hit him!”

  “Hit him again!”

  “I’m low on ammo.”

  Blondie scowled, “Me too.”

  Maybe I needed to referee this situation? So both groups could go without killing each other? I had nothing to lose. Why not try?

  “HEY!” I shouted. “Why doesn’t everyone put their guns down and go their separate ways?!”

  Pop!

  Another round hit my bicep.

  Blondie had shot me.

  I scowled, “Would you stop fucking shooting me already?”

  “Who the fuck are you?!” Blondie hollered.

  As always, my ninja mask was down and I wore all black. “I’m the referee! How about you take your wet friend here and go?! I can help carry him out if you need it!” I turned to Grill. “And you four! Why don’t you get in your boat and go?! How does that sound?!”

  Both crews talked it over while I waited.

  Grill spoke first, “Tell them to put their guns in the water and they can go!”

  “Fuck no!” Blondie laughed. “You put your fucking guns in the water and you fucking go!”

  “Fuck you!” Grill laughed back.

  We were back to a politically correct standoff.

  This might take all night. The cops would be here before these guys came to an agreement.

  I shouted, “How about I kick the shit out of all six of you, and I go home?!”

  Laughter from all the men.

  They appeared to appreciate my bravado.

  With a semi-laugh, I shouted, “I don’t want to be here any more than you do! I already went in the water once and I don’t plan on doing it twice!”

  More chuckles from the men.

  I said, “The cops’ll be here soon, so let’s get this show on the road, alright?! Guns in the water! All of you! Or I go agro!” Now my goal was to simply keep them from killing each other. “I’m giving you to the count of ten! Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

  None of them made a move.

  “Alright,” I sighed. “I warned you!” I jumped from my position, went high, sailing past the mast of the yacht where Grill and his crew were hiding. Slammed down hard onto the dock behind them.

  They spun around and all four started shooting.

  I jumped up again and came down behind them, landing right behind Sumo. He whirled around, leading not with his gun, but with his hammer hand. Thing was the size of a roasted ham. I leaned back and ducked under it. When I came up, his shoulder was protecting his jaw, so I fired my fist at the side of his head.

  When I connected with his temple, my fist kept going until it exploded out the other side of his skull like a blood-covered bomb, taking half his brain with it.

  Whoops.

  Mexican Sumo Wrestler collapsed dead.

  Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop!

  I threw my hands in front of my face as several shots from the two deckhands hit me. One in the palm, one in the elbow, another in my stomach. The others whizzed past my ears.
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br />   “Stop!” I shouted.

  The only reason they did was to reload.

  Grill stood there, gun lowered, eyeing his bodyguard with blunt horror. He blurted, “No, no, no! Qué paso?! Qué le hiciste a Miguel?!” Grill looked right at me.

  Despite my very limited Spanish, one word stood out clearly.

  Miguel.

  Apparently, Miguel was the name of Grill’s Mexican Sumo Wrestling bodyguard.

  A widening puddle of blood stained the dock around dead Miguel’s head.

  Grill stared at me, his mouth hanging open like he couldn’t believe what had happened.

  I couldn’t either.

  I thought I’d gotten my punches under control after killing Karambit Kayhill. Then again, you obviously had to hit a guy Sumo’s size a lot harder than you had to hit a guy like Kayhill to take him out, whether you pulled your punch or not. I thought I had pulled it. Clearly, I had hit Sumo way too hard.

  Or, in Sumo’s case, I had hit him in the temple, which wasn’t as tough as his forehead. Or I’d gotten stronger since killing Kayhill without realizing it. That had been two weeks ago, and I’d packed on a lot of muscle since. Last time I’d checked a scale — this morning — my weight was 305. That was twenty extra pounds of super-powered muscle. And it wasn’t like I had the spare time or the instrumentation to measure the pounds-per-square-inch of my punches, so as to get them under control and prevent outcomes like this. I just threw them and hoped for the best. In this case, it had turned out for the worst.

  “I”m sorry,” I muttered morosely. I really was.

  “No, no, no,” Grill shook his head. “No! You shot my brother.”

  “He’s your brother?”

  “My only brother,” Grill said miserably. He clearly meant his actual blood brother, who had recently lost most of his on the dock.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said pathetically.

  “You killed him,” Grill said angrily, lifting his pistol and taking a step forward. “KILLED HIM!”

  Pop!

  The bullet hit my forearm.

  Pop!

  Another hit my ribs.

  “Stop shooting at me!” I shouted.

  “YOU KILLED HIM!”

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  Pop!

  The third shot missed.

  I lunged out of Grill’s line of fire, intent on stopping him. This time, I’d do it without punching. My first thought was to throw him sideways into the water, but we were walled in by yachts on both sides. I didn’t want to hurl him into the hull of either one and pop his head like I had his brother. I could picture the bloody trail as Grill’s body slid into the water and sank.

  Instead, I slapped the back of Grill’s gun hand.

  His arm flew to the side and wrapped around his body, spinning him where he stood so fast he fell to the ground.

  He lay there spasming violently, the heels of his expensive shoes thudding the wood hollowly.

  Not again.

  The two deckhands glanced at me, glanced at Grill.

  I squatted down to inspect the destruction.

  The back end of Grill’s automatic had embedded itself in the base of his skull at the back of his neck, where it was stuck. His fingers were still wrapped around the grip and his arm was still quivering.

  I hadn’t slapped his gun arm that hard, had I?

  The proof was in the blood running out around the gun as his body spasmed on the dock. I watched in horror as the spasms became less frequent, less intense, then stopped altogether.

  The two deckhands crossed themselves in Catholic fashion.

  Behind me, Blondie went jogging by with the cooler in his hands. His other man followed on his heels, carrying their wet friend draped and dripping over his shoulder.

  The deckhands ignored them, as did I.

  Sumo and Grill were a bloody mess.

  I looked at the two deckhands.

  They looked at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling horrible.

  I knelt down and put my hand on Grill’s chest. Held it their for some time. No heartbeat that I could feel.

  Eventually, the two deckhands squatted down and picked up Grill by the arms and legs. Carried him to their go-fast boat and put him inside. They came back for Sumo Miguel. There was no way they were lifting him. Miguel was massive.

  Not a problem for me. I picked up Miguel and carried him into the go-fast like he was weightless.

  The deckhands’ eyes were wide as they watched.

  “Sorry,” I said pathetically, then hopped back onto the dock.

  They untied the boat and backed it out of the slip, the engines rumbling and churning up foamy water. The boat turned around slowly and chugged out of the basin toward Hospitality Point while I watched.

  What a disaster.

  Nothing about tonight was hospitable for anybody.

  After a moment, I ran off the dock and through the shadows back to Arnold’s Prius. Amazingly, I didn’t see a single cop or even hear approaching sirens. I wasn’t entirely surprised. Nobody lived out here, and the Hyatt Regency was far enough away from the dock where Grill and Miguel had died that there was a good chance no one had heard the shots. Or if they had, there had been so many, perhaps they had thought it was firecrackers.

  I didn’t care either way.

  I just wanted to go home so this four-time serial killer — yours truly — could crash and forget everything for a few hours.

  Man, I had really fucked things up tonight.

  Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” He forgot to mention it also came with great risk.

  Unlike Marvel Comics, my life was loaded with risk.

  While driving out of Mission Bay that night, it never occurred to me THE BANK BREAKER would soon be the least of my problems. Unbeknownst to me, interrupting the illicit business transaction between Grill and Blondie had made me that mortal enemy I mentioned earlier. It wasn’t who you might think. But I had just set in motion a series of events that would soon bring me to my knees.

  Literally.

  In case you forgot — I certainly had — the dumb bullfrog in the boiling pot was always the last to know.

  —: Chapter 39 :—

  Doug Moore wasn’t the only person whose life was loaded with unforeseen risk that night.

  Kristy Crawford’s life was too.

  When the SUV popped out from between the two 18-wheelers in the rolling maze of traffic on the 710 north, her enhanced reflexes were up to the challenge.

  Sadly, her dad’s beloved Ninja H2R was not.

  Neither was Kristy’s riding skillset. Not once had she ever put her bike into a slide on purpose. Only stunt riders practiced that sort of thing, and Kristy’d never been a stunt rider. She’d raced. Not the same thing.

  Kristy tried anyway.

  Turned the bike hard leftward and dropped her weight down while cranking the throttle in hopes that sudden acceleration of the rear tire would cut it loose and she could lay the bike down in a low-side slide.

  It might’ve worked if traction control hadn’t kicked in at the worst possible time. The rear tire bit the road hard, kicking the tail up and around in a vicious wobbling spiral that sent the Ninja spinning fast on its axis as it raced forward at 160mph.

  Kristy was already off the bike, having prepared for the low-side slide.

  She started her own fast roll, banging every bony point on her body as she tumbled relentlessly along the road. Elbows, knees, hips, shoulders, wrists, ankles, knuckles. She went around so many times, nothing was spared, not even her helmet, which banged repeatedly as she went round and round.

  She endured all of it in slow motion.

  Somehow, she managed to stop the battering roll relatively quickly, but she was still sliding along in a vaguely stable backside slide at 120mph.

  This position allowed her to bear witness to the destruction of her dad’s Ninja.

  Spinning at incredible sp
eed as the bike bounced forward, it disintegrated with every rotating bounce, pieces of it flying off in every direction.

  “No!” Kristy screamed as she watched her dad’s bike die.

  It was the last piece of him she had left.

  Desperate to reach the Ninja, she tried to get her feet under her and piston her legs a few times, trying to run, but her feet were ripped out from under her because she simply couldn’t run as fast as she was sliding, 100mph, not even with super powers. Her legs didn’t turn over fast enough.

  She quickly tripped and fell face-first on the freeway and continued to slide on her chest, hands, and kneepads.

  Up ahead, the road started to curve.

  This put her and the Ninja on a collision course with the tall concrete center divider.

  The Ninja caught an edge and suddenly jumped and flipped end over end in a forward spin that might very well send it flying over the high center divider. Traffic coming toward it was traveling 70mph.

  The bike had to still be going 90mph at least.

  If it hit a car in oncoming traffic, impacted with the front windshield at effectively 160mph, anyone inside the car would likely die. If they didn’t, and they somehow avoided the deadly bike, their car would surely swerve into surrounding traffic and crash into someone else. Or the bike would hit the road in front of another car like a ragged speed bump and send that car flying up and over and bouncing into and off of the center divider and rolling onto its side to smash into surrounding traffic.

  Horror grabbed Kristy by the guts as she cringed in expectation of the worst possible outcome which she could not possibly hope to stop while sliding helplessly along at 70mph or more toward the very same divider as the Ninja.

  But she was able to scream in her helmet.

  “NOOOOOOOOO!”

  Miraculously, as the Ninja came down, it hit just this side of the center divider and went ricocheting back across the freeway, cutting across every traffic-laden lane along the curve, sparing oncoming traffic but not ongoing traffic.

  Cars swerved and braked.

  Tires screeched.

  Spirals of sudden rubber coated the road.

  Brake lights in front burned an angry red.

  Traffic around Kristy was all over the asphalt, ahead and behind.

  One car turned especially hard, a corner of the front end diving down and threatening to start a vicious roll. It recovered.