"... vigilantism.”
“Yeah. That.”
“I’m restoring order. Righting wrongs.”
McGurk slapped his knee. “Isn’t that what Hitler’s doing? Restoring order? And that bastard Mussolini? And how is stopping a guy from robbing a store for another guy so he can pay off a hospital bill restoring order?”
Green Lantern went to the locked wooden door and pounded on it. McGurk watched him, bemused. Finally the Lantern gave up and McGurk walked up and patted the crime-fighter’s shoulder comfortingly.
“I know, pal, I know. Where’s a cop when you need one?”
The mangled toothpick in Detective Beasley’s mouth dangled for a moment as he yawned. He was looking scruffy: the shadow of a beard was emerging on his angled face and his hair was greasy from sweat and cigarette smoke. The weaiy cop was leaning heavily against the dewy wet black-and-chrome prowl car, which was parked facing the entrance to the luxurious jewelry store. Other squad cars had blocked off the avenue behind it and were also parked facing the store, their headlights illuminating the entrance. The dawn light was beginning to rise over the city, giving the scene a grim gray flatness.
Beasley broke into a cynical grin as Green Lantern emerged from the jewelry store entrance. Behind the hero, two beat cops led McGurk out in handcuffs.
McGurk gave Green Lantern a farewell nod. “So long, Green—don’t take any wooden nickels!”
The Lantern just grunted. All he wanted was to head home. Although he was expecting the ribbing, the sight of Beasley’s snide smile annoyed him.
“What the hell are you grinning about?” the super hero mumbled. “You find this funny?”
“You’re right—I should be pissed. We gotta waste manpower to get you and this joker out of a safe, with everything else going on.” “Oh yeah—what else is going on?”
“Didn’t you hear—the Japs bombed our bases in Hawaii and the Philippines. We’re at war. Oh yeah-you were ‘indisposed’ for the last twenty-four hours.”
The smile slid off Beasley’s face as he flicked his chewed toothpick into the gutter and turned to climb back into his car.
The radio station was chaos—the alarm bells from the wire services were ringing merrily to announce yet another breaking story on the fledgling war that had just engulfed the country. Radio reporters practiced reading their copy, and newsmen not writing or editing stories huddled around the chattering teletype machines and radios, reading and listening for the latest update.
Scott rushed through the pandemonium to Irene’s office. He found her at her typewriter furiously churning out copy, her fingers flying as the typewriter clacked away like a machine-gun.
“Irene-what’s going on?” Scott asked.
“It’s war-we’re going to war,” Irene said, not looking up from her typewriter. “FDR just announced it.”
“Do you think Green Lantern... ”
“Look Alan—they’re saying we lost a lot of boys in Pearl Harbor. We don’t know what's going on in the Philippines. Hong Kong’s under siege. Do you think anyone’s going to give a hoot in hell about a guy in tights catching dumb-ass burglars?”
Scott stood awkwardly, stung by the truth in Irene’s words. Then some of what she said sank in.
“The Philippines? Paul’s there,” Scott said.
Irene stopped typing and took a breath. She looked up to Scott and he saw her concern.
“That’s right. Paul is there,” she said. Then she went back to her work.
Exhausted from his double-shift at the station, Scott walked through the door of his apartment, turned on his desktop radio and threw the late-edition paper on the coffee table, next to his scrapbook. Flopping on the couch, Scott opened the book and flipped through the articles about Green Lantern’s feats of capturing thieves and nefarious underworld figures.
“The world’s changing,” Scott said to himself. “We’re not so innocent anymore.” His spoken words fell flat.
Scott walked to the comer of the room and opened a small chest in the comer. Squatting down next to the chest, Scott pondered its contents: the Green Lantern ring and his neatly folded costume. As he lit a cigarette and contemplated these objects, the radio played a rebroadcast of FDR’s speech, the president’s solemn, angry, resolute voice booming through the static:
There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger... With confidence in our armed forces-with the unbending determination of our people-we will gain the inevitable triumph-so help us God... ”
Alan Scott closed his eyes.
Captain Alan Scott opened his eyes to the bright sun. He thought hard as he came to consciousness, but it did not take him long to realize where he was. Flat on his back, as he turned his head and looked about he could see dusty rocks and sunbaked Sicilian countryside, and the incredibly blue Tyrrhenian Sea stretching to the horizon. By then Scott was completely aware of where he was and what he was trying to do.
The soldiers in the recon patrol all had construction backgrounds and were part of the Army Engineering Corps. They were enthusiastic and good men but green, and their lack of knowledge for the nuances of combat cost lives.
They were negotiating the crest of a ridge overlooking the highway to Messina, bypassing the German’s dummy positions and moving behind the German’s main line of defense to their rear. Their mission was to reconnoiter the bridges that Scott knew the Germans would be preparing to destroy once their delaying force made it across. The enemy was staging a textbook retreat, delaying
the Americans just long enough along the narrow road clinging to the Sicilian hillsides. Scott’s engineering expertise was proving to be extremely valuable for this campaign. Every bridge destroyed by the Germans cost the Allies valuable time.
Allied forces were pushing east towards Messina and encountering excellently executed, stubborn resistance. Captain Scott was called on to scout out the bridges ahead to determine their condition and if they could support the approaching armored columns. Because of the skill of their enemy and the extreme danger of the mission, Scott wanted to wait until his own men arrived, but the Major told him that the patrol could not wait another day—he needed to know ASAP what the tactical situation was beyond their lines.
Scott’s own men had been given relief after a batch of particularly harrowing missions defusing booby-trapped bridges. The other engineering platoon was badly chewed up the day before when they were accidentally shelled by Allied artillery, and none of the other companies had men to spare.
That left Scott with the major handicap of using the replacements. And since he knew that this mission was far too dangerous an assignment to be left to an inexperienced officer, Scott chose to lead them himself.
Scott watched the six men moving on their bellies in the darkness of night, crawling past the machine gun emplacements and scant barbed wire that marked their own lines into no man’s land. As they got to their feet and moved across the moonlit field, Scott was somewhat relieved. The men were nervous but so far had handled themselves well, following Scott’s lead to the smallest detail-they tried to move like him, step where he stepped, look where he was looking. He had told them that doing so would be key to their survival, and they took this advice to heart. He had been unsure of how many men to take, but settled on six because of the sheer distance they needed to go behind enemy lines. Six would be much more difficult to move quickly and silently, but it gave them a better chance of survival if they had to fight their way out. Also, if they were separated, the chances of at least one getting back to report was better
As they moved deeper into enemy territory, the patrol encountered delay after delay, much of it a result of pure bad luck: enemy machine gun fire erupted nearby. It was difficult to tell if it was meant for them, so they froze and lay still. Later, a flare went up and once again they lay prone, this time in a shallow culvert, waiting out the enemy parachute flare as its rocking motion threw dancing shadows everywhere, until it finally s
puttered out. And they waited beyond that until their night-vision returned to them. Another time a Mark III tank rumbled nearby and the men fanned out in a grass field and waited for the twenty-ton machine to lumber into the distance.
They finally made it to the village and bridge they were to observe. Once Scott mentally tallied the bridge's condition, the enemy’s numbers, disposition and location, he turned his team back toward their own lines. Feeling that the worst of it was over, Scott let the kid from Atlanta lead the squad back. Scott needed a breather from being on point for so long.
Then they got lost.
Getting disoriented behind enemy lines was truly Scott’s worst nightmare. Only one Allied observation post knew that his patrol would be coining back through the line. Now they were running late and they could not find the cut to make back towards this observation post. This left them the option of back-tracking to where they should have gone, effectively doubling their patrol time. Crossing anywhere else along their lines invited their getting shot or shelled by their own side. Worse yet, with them running late, the guards on the post might be relieved by men unaware that there was a recon patrol coming through. Scott knew that on these missions there’s only one way for it to go right and a thousand chances to screw it up, each occurrence leading to another like dominos clicking down towards disaster. Yet he could not betray his growing concern to the squad.
And now Scott could see the first rays of the sun peeking over the horizon to the east, confirming that it would take too long to back-track around the ridge to the cut back through the lines. That left Scott with having to move the squad across exposed terrain in the dawn. From what Scott could tell, they needed to get over a sharp ridge in order to move back towards their lines, which meant being exposed on this ridge for a few minutes: a lifetime on the battlefield. But Scott knew he had no choice—the patrol would be as dead as vampires once the sun was up. In the rapidly growing dawn light, he gathered the men and spoke to them in a breathless whisper.
“Look, to save time we’re going to have to move along this ridge. I want you to move quietly but quickly. Watch the man in front of you, and whatever you do, don’t stop.”
The kid from Atlanta looked glum. Scott looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t worry—it happens to the best of us.”
He kept it short because he did not want them to see his worry. With Scott back in the lead, they scrambled up to the exposed edge, trying to move as quickly as possible.
They had crested it and were moving along its peak when Scott heard the ripping sound of the incoming German mortars. He yelled for them to get off the ridge but the men froze, uncertain of what to do or where to go. Scott threw himself off the crest and braced for the impact of the shells.
He was alive by pure luck: most of his men were still on the crest of the ridge when the rounds hit in quick succession, but Scott was already on the opposite side and most of the shrapnel passed harmlessly over him. The blast did knock him to the ground, and some of the bodies of his five squad mates had slid down off the crest.
Scott lay still. He was not sure if he could be seen by the German spotters so he did not move for fear of the them dropping another mortar round on him, or of being shot by a sniper. Assuming the enemy was observing him through binoculars and rifle scopes, Scott did not even twitch.
A fresh corpse tumbled down the ridge and landed next to Scott, giving him some concealment. It was the body of the young, highly-motivated corporal from Atlanta. Scott hadn’t bothered to learn the likable replacement’s name, which was just as well: lying in the soldier’s blood, Scott knew the poor bastard’s name no longer mattered to anyone except the relatives back home.
As he lay still on the ridge next to the dead boy, memories of the train crash welled up in Scott’s mind: the similarities of the experience were freakishly similar and Scott wondered what fate was in store for him to have this happen to him twice in his life.
Scott heard boots crunching slowly up the slope, and low muttering: the Germans were coming up the ridge from the opposite side. They were being cautious, but Scott had to assume that his squad was incapable of putting up a fight. He had no other option but to play dead and wait out the Germans’ approach.
Then he heard one of his squad mates moaning. It sounded like Private Damon, the Texan. From what Scott could tell from the direction of his moans, Damon was still on the ridge. Maybe he heard the Germans as well, but in his inexperience mistook them for friendly soldiers. It was the last mistake he’d ever make.
A gunshot stopped the moaning. Scott noted that the Germans, still skittish, had shot Damon from distance. They did not know what lay on the opposite side of the ridge and were wary of being ambushed. Scott wished he could do something, but firing on a alert German squad armed with machine pistols would be suicide. He could hear them continuing to speak in whispers.
From the little German he knew, they were planning on lobbing a few grenades over the ridge, just to be sure. Scott knew he had to do something fast.
He rolled over and let his body slide away down the ridge, towards a shallow culvert running parallel to the ridge. He could see a field of waist-high weeds a few yards beyond the culvert, and he got to his hands and knees and crawled towards the concealment.
It felt to Scott like he was moving very slowly and that he was making a tremendous amount of commotion. He had the awful feeling of his hindquarters being exposed to the German patrol: if they crested the ridge they’d see him crawling away, his ass a perfect target for them to take pot shots at. As he crawled he heard the sounds of objects thumping into the dirt behind him—the German grenades.
Scrambling on all fours, he threw his body into the culvert, knocking the wind out of him. Then the three grenades exploded in quick succession behind him. The culvert saved him from getting hit, and Scott wasted no time rolling out of it and into the weeds.
He could hear the Germans talking openly now, their voices louder-they sounded as if they were on the ridge crest, confident that they’d suppressed any potential ambush. He even heard laughter and the easy relaxed chatter of survivors reliving the details of their action.
He lay still in the thick weeds, waiting for his heartbeat and breathing to slow, trying to push the panic back down to his gut. When he felt relatively calm, he slowly began crawling deeper into the field and away from the German patrol and his dead squad-mates.
But as he made his way through the weeds he remembered his pack and what was in it. It was still on the ridge. He could not leave that pack behind. He’d have to go back for it.
Without hesitation he turned around and moved back towards the ridge.
Once again at the culvert, Scott peered from the weeds. He was in luck: he could see his haversack near the crater of one of the mortar blasts, singed by shrapnel but otherwise intact.
The German patrol was still on the ridge, searching the bodies there, and hadn’t made their way down towards Scott’s side.
Scott knew he’d have to risk it. He could not wait for them to find the haversack and its contents.
The moment the Germans had their backs turned, he quickly crawled across the culvert and into the open, towards the haversack. Once again, under the eyes and ears of the enemy, the few yards felt like miles to cross.
Finally he got to the pack and quickly checked its contents. Then Scott backed away, slowly moving towards the concealment of the weeds.
He was almost to the culvert when he heard the shots and the felt the bullets ricocheting off the ground near his cheek, a fragment of stone hitting him, drawing blood. Stupidly, he lay still and tried to fake his death, but by now the Germans were going to make sure. More rounds tore up the ground around him. Instinct took hold and he leapt to his feet and ran across the culvert and into the weeds.
The German squad was pouring gunfire down on Scott. He could do nothing but run.
Fifty yards ahead of him, the field met an olive grove. The grove offered some concealment but, more importantl
y, the old gnarled trees gave him cover against the bullets. Scott charged forward, the pack swinging in his hand. The snap of German bullets flying by him made him feel helpless and amazed that he hadn’t been hit yet.
Then he slipped over an unseen rock and tumbled into the weeds. This was the best break he’d had all day: the Germans had him zeroed in but lost sight of him when he fell into the thick grass.
Scott lay there for a minute, then crawled to his left, hoping to lose the Germans. He moved very slowly, trying not to rustle the grass and give away his position. He had some hope he would make it to the treeline when he heard the crackle of incoming mortar shells lobbing through the air in his direction.
The mortar rounds started dropping around him, tearing up the field in rapid explosions. Scott felt the slap of the concussion and heard the whizzing of deadly shrapnel whipping by him, ripping at the grass. He was extremely aware that the grass offered good concealment but no protection from the scything metal.
He found a slight depression and pressed himself down into it as more rounds approached and slammed into the ground around him. The Germans were playing the odds that artillery would do what they could not guarantee with their rifles, and Scott was sure they bet right.
The explosions stopped and Scott checked himself, amazed to find that he was still relatively uninjured. In the lull he clambered to his feet again, making his way towards the olive grove in a desperate, stumbling run. He would rather take his chances against their snipers than endure another barrage.
He could hear shouts behind him-the German soldiers were equally amazed to discover he was still alive. It took them a moment to bring their rifles to bear, and once again Scott heard the crack of rifle fire and felt the slugs ripping by him.
One bullet caught the pack, the force of it spinning Scott around and ripping the pack from his hand. Scott turned to find it, but it was lost in the grass: there was no way he was going to be able to find it with these men intent on killing him.
Strength spent, legs rubbery, spirit broken, Scott turned to face the German soldiers on the ridge. There were four men—one was watching him through large binoculars. This would be the officer in charge. He could see that he was giving the others a command. The other three men were standing, aiming their Mausers at him like executioners in a firing squad.
Green Lantern - Sleepers Book 2 Page 11