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 o
ld 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.”
And he crushed the Colonel’s head like a grape.
***
“Jesus Christ,” the President said.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” the General said. “I’m afraid that Hope is very definitely out of control.”
“Tell me about it,” the Secretary of State said. Gayle Hepburn looked tired and worn. “I've been hearing from the Europeans; they’re going absolutely ballistic over Hope’s destruction of the Libyan regime. No one will mourn for the dictator, but they don’t want another influx of refugees crossing the sea to Italy. Apparently, Italy has already started deploying its navy to turn back refugees and Spain and France are expected to join them within two days.”
She shook her head. “There’s also an emergency motion being drawn up for the UN condemning Hope’s actions, mainly by Russia and China. It wouldn't be that much of a problem, apart from the minor detail that the various European powers are likely to join it this time. Europe’s been paranoid ever since Warsaw; God alone knows what’s going to happen if the chaos in Libya spreads across and into Europe.”
General Kratman nodded. “I'm afraid the reports from Libya are quite clear,” he said, grimly. “Hope destroyed much of the regime’s enforcement arms, but he didn't even start putting anything in place to replace them. The Congo saw a very clear presence from Hope and his superhumans right from the start; Libya is back to tribal militias and what army units escaped destruction in the operation. I think we’re looking at an outright civil war within the next few days.”
“So I’m told,” the President said, softly. “What the hell is he thinking?”
“He’s thinking that Libya organised an attack on the Congo, on the uneasy peace he created where warlords once killed thousands of innocent people for fun,” Chester said, quietly. The last report from Matt Tracker had come in just after Hope and his allies departed for Libya. By then, the news had already started to hit Washington. “We only have his word for it, but under the circumstances it hardly matters. Hope just shattered another government and killed their dictator on live TV.”
“That will only add to the chaos,” the General put in. “When a state is run by a dictator, there is always a...personality cult built up around the dictator, helping to convince his population that he’s invincible and any attempt to bring him down is doomed to inevitable failure. The news is never uncensored, so even if there's trouble in one part of the country it doesn't necessarily spread to the rest of the state. But now everyone with a television will have seen the Colonel’s death, right in front of their eyes. They will know that the Colonel is dead.”
He shook his head. “I’d be surprised if the civil war hasn't started by tomorrow,” he concluded. “All it proves is that we need to be ready to deal with Hope as soon as possible.”
Chester nodded. Not everyone in the room was cleared to know that an assassination attempt was already underway, but by now the President would probably be having second thoughts. What if they were wrong about the Saviours fragmenting without Hope? And how would the rest of the superhuman community react if the United States was blamed for Hope's death?
“With your permission, I will put the SDI on full alert,” the General said. “I suggest that we also start calling up the reserves and preparing for outright war. We have to make it clear to the world that we will not stand for this.”
“It isn't fair,” Gayle commented. “How can we reasonably complain about the regimes he’s chosen to target?”
“We can't, but he’s replaced them with chaos,” the General said. “Do you thin
k that the oppressed masses of Libya, given a chance at freedom, are going to forgive and forget everything that was done to them by their former dictator? Of course not; they’re going to want a little revenge. And so Hope’s well-meaning action has opened the doorway to genocide on a scale fully matching the genocide in the Congo. I think we’ll be very lucky if only a few million humans die. And what will Hope do then?”
Chapter Thirty
“You know, this place was meant to be unreachable,” a voice said from behind him. “How did you get up here?”
Chester refused to allow himself to panic, even though he was on top of a mountain that was incredibly difficult to climb, at least for an ordinary human being. A superhuman like the one he’d come to see would have no problems flying onto the mountain peak and entering the small hut that had been built into the rock.
“I called in a favour from Jumper,” he said, shortly. The view really was stunning. “She told me that you were...”
“Friends with benefits,” Michael Lee said, wryly. “I should never have allowed her to visit the Fireman’s Rest, but it gets lonely up here sometimes.”
Chester nodded. “You’re looking well, for someone who has spent most of the decade sitting up here,” he said. “Did you ever manage to write the sequel to your memoirs?”
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