The Expatriate had said that mutants found it impossible to avoid meddling in such things, and it appeared he was right. It seemed certain that the young mutants’ arrival in Chicago would now be delayed. He only hoped the World Federalists weren’t lucky enough to kill any of them, or at least not the girl known to Walt Norman’s listeners as Peg.
Chamber tugged at his boots as he climbed out of the Xabago and joined the rest of the group. They formed up outside the Xabago, the kids in their red school uniforms, Sean in his black-and-yellow Banshee uniform, striped wing panels connecting arms to ribs. Only Emma had not changed, her trim white suit enough of a uniform for her purposes.
“We’ll make an airborne assault,” said Banshee. “Synch, M, and I are the transport. M, can you carry both Husk and Jubilee?” ' '
She nodded. “Of course.”
He continued. “I’ll carry Chamber and Synch will take Skin.” '
“I’ll coordinate things from here,” said Emma. That surprised Chamber. Emma wasn’t one to shy from action. She continued, “Indications are that the terrorists and hostages are scattered all over the park. I’ll try to scan for them and avoid any surprise encounters. This situation is much less contained and controlled than Seattle. These people are heavily armed, and I won’t be able to protect you the way I did back there. Don’t take any chances.”
“With the hostages,” added Banshee, “or yourselves. Let’s go.” '
Banshee stood behind Chamber and locked his arms around him. There was a noise like a jet engine warming up six inches behind his head before the sound faded into a supersonic thrum that he felt more than heard. They were airborne.
They flew below the forest canopy to avoid detection, Banshee popping up above the trees only occasionally, just long enough to get a vector on the mountain. More than once, Chamber found himself pulling up his feet or swinging side to side to avoid a branch or a treetop. It was not a comfortable way to travel. Fortunately, it was only a few miles.
They put down outside the park, just before the trees opened up. Ahead of them was a paved service road of some kind, and a cluster of older buildings. Ahead and to his right, he could see the sculpture clearly for the first time, sixty-foot granite faces looking down calmly, unaware or unafraid of the danger they now faced. He tried to imagine them blown to bits, falling down the mountain in house-sized chunks.
“That’s the sculptor’s studio up ahead,” said Synch, “where the artist had his models and plans and stuff.”
“Emma,” whispered Banshee, “what are we up against?”
Chamber heard her telepathic reply. There are terrorists and hostages in the studio. Also at least three other groups, including a big one in the gift shop. I think that’s where most of the hostages are. It’s hard to read there because of the psychic confusion. A small group in the administration building—that’s their field headquarters, I think. Also more troops and a few hostages up at an amphitheater of some kind. There are rocket launchers there aimed at the mountain.
Banshee thought on that for a moment. “Three teams. M, you’re with me. We’ll take out their command post, then go after the rocket launchers. Synch, Skin, Jubilee, take the gift shop. Chamber, Husk, take the studio.”
Jono looked at Paige and almost cringed. Banshee was thinking militarily, codenames, powers, and resources, not personalities, or he’d not have paired the two of them. Well, I'll just have to make the best of it.
Banshee continued. “If your target is secure, move on to the amphitheater. Emma, Synch seems to know the layout of this place. Can you telepatbically spread the information around?”
Chamber suddenly felt alien memories intruding in his head, of looming adults, older brothers and sisters, a station wagon with the windows down driving through the trees, and of holding a tiny plastic replica of the sculpture in childish hands that were brown instead of pale pink. It was a strange sensation, but he thought he could find his way around the park now.
“Husk, Synch, I want ye both to ‘husk’ into something bulletproof. It will be up to you two and M to take the point for your respective teams and protect the rest of us from gunfire.”
Husk crossed her arms across her chest, grabbed the skin of her shoulders in her hands, and ripped. Underneath, her skin was like polished marble. Chamber hoped that was bulletproof enough. Paige didn’t always have total control over her transformations. Synch linked with her powers and did the same, managing the same chrome steel appearance she had used back in Idaho.
“Let’s go,” ordered Banshee. He and M lifted off, then dived and flew away in the direction of the parking lot, their bodies just a foot or so above the ground. Doubtless they’d use their superior speed to loop around the parking areas and hit the headquarters from the rear.
With Synch in the lead, he, Jubilee, and Skin started a duck-and-cover run across the complex, headed for the gift shop.
Jono and Paige just stared uncomfortably at each other for a while. Given that they were closest to their objective, they needed to stall to give the others time to get clear.
Finally, she said, “Come on, Jono. Let’s just do this.”
He nodded, and they crept up to the back of the largest building. The first door was locked. The second, marked park staff only, was not. “I’ll go in first,” said Husk, “draw their fire. You take out the terrorists.”
She pushed the door, and he braced for a squeak, but it unlatched with a barely audible click and swung silently inward.
This is it. Show time.
Synch, Jubilee, and Skin made their way stealthily across the center of the compound, using landscaping, trash cans, tree trunks, and anything else they could find for cover. Though Synch was the nominal point man, Jubilee—as the smallest and most agile of the three—found that she made the best time across the relatively open area, occasionally staying put for a while so that the others could catch up. It was on one such occasion when she was crouched behind a trash barrel, knees hugged to her chin, that she became aware of a sentry.
Actually, she didn’t see the sentry. Perhaps Skin did, but at any rate, thanks to Emma’s telepathic contact she knew exactly where he was, and if she moved so much as a millimeter, he’d see her. She could see Skin ahead of her, running in a crouch and ducking behind a bench. She could clearly see him, but he was hidden from the guard.
He seemed to have something in his hand about the size of a baseball, and when he held it up, she could see that it was a rock. As she watched, Skin held up his left forearm horizontally in front of his body. He cupped the rock in a flap of slate-colored skin on the back of his arm, and slowly pulled it back about a foot. Then he popped up just long enough to aim and release the rock. His elastic skin formed a makeshift but effective slingshot. The rock swished by just a few inches in front of the guard’s face and clanged off a metal light standard behind him.
It wasn’t until she peeked around to see the guard tum away from them toward the noise, that Jubilee realized Skin hadn’t missed. The rock had gone right where he’d wanted it to. The muzzle of the guard’s rifle/grenade launcher sought a target in the wrong direction.
Something glittering streaked in from the guard’s left. It was Synch. The guard turned, bringing around the weapon, but Synch hit him like a bowling ball. The man fell with a barely audible curse, and the gun went spinning up into the air.
Though she knew she’d never reach it in time, she lunged for the gun, knowing that if the grenade launcher went off, it could be the end of them. She made a flying leap. The rifle seemed to go by her hands in slow motion, just a few feet beyond her grasp, when Skin’s fingertips shot out and wrapped themselves around the gun, like a chorus of frog’s tongues trying to bring down an airplane.
She hit the grass, did a forward roll, and came up on her feet. She turned to see a smiling Skin, the rifle’s strap around his neck, examining his prize.
She glanced around for other guards, but they seemed safe for the moment. Synch was dragging the unconsci
ous guard behind a shrub. She turned back to Skin, who seemed quite taken with the gun. “Do you know how to use that thing?” Her voice was just above a whisper.
He looked up in surprise. “No idea, but don’t it look cool?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not especially, but maybe it will scare somebody who should be scared.”
Synch slid in next to her. “If it’s any consolation, I’m scared. The gift shop is right there, and I think I see a back way in.”
Jubilee stooped low and trotted toward the back of the building. “Let’s go shopping.”
Banshee and M crouched between a pair of National Park Service trucks, watching the entrance to the administration building. Banshee had spotted four guards standing near the doorway, all heavily armed. Were it not for the hostages inside, M could have taken them easily, but doing it with some degree of stealth presented more of a problem.
Banshee studied the weapons. “One of them has a modified AK-47, but the others are carrying Genoshan assault combines. I’d love to know where they got those.’’
M looked at him for guidance. “What do we do?”
“Don’t get in the way of one of those combines, that’s for sure. They have a laser-guided rocket launcher under the barrel. Ye may think you’re invulnerable, but taking a rocket at point-blank range is not a smart way to test it.”
“Then what?”
He looked at the truck behind them. ‘ ‘We stop thinking like mutants, and start thinking like soldiers. When I give the signal, give this truck a push.”
He scooted around the back of the truck, being careful not to be seen, quietly opened the door, and released the parking brake. “Now,” he hissed.
With Monet’s strength, it took only one hand to get the truck rolling at a fast walking pace. Keeping low, he ducked past the tailgate of the driverless vehicle as it passed by. He heard the guards shouting at one another.
He’d found a screwdriver on the floor of the truck’s cab, and knelt down next to the other truck and quickly pried off a hubcap. “Ever throw a Frisbee?” he asked as he handed the metal disk to M and duck-walked to the rear wheel.
He could see two of the guards running after the truck. He jimmied loose the other hubcap and handed it to M. “See if you can take the two on the steps, then go for the hostages.” He darted back along behind the truck, pausing just long enough to watch the two silver disks slice through the air and find their targets. One bounced off a guard’s forehead and he fell like a rag doll. The other had turned back toward the door, and was struck in the back of the neck. He was thrown face first against the door and slid down to the step.
The other two guards didn't realize what had happened yet. One of them had the truck’s door open and was trying to climb in. Sean ignored him and leapt into the air after the other one. He hit the man like a missile and took him down hard. He landed on the man’s chest, grabbed his ears, and slammed his head into the concrete hard enough to render him unconscious.
He saw M duck into the front door of the building. The guard in the truck had finally realized what was going on and jumped from the cab of the truck, which rolled on down the drive. The man fell on his gun, struggled to bring it to firing position.
Banshee was in the air again, going away from where he really wanted to go, but the man couldn’t be allowed to fire. If he did, the whole compound would know what was up. They’d only suspect it when the truck hit whatever it was eventually going to hit.
The man was bringing the weapon up just as Banshee got close enough to strike him with focused subsonics. The guard grabbed his ears, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell.
Banshee did a snap loop and headed back toward the administration building as fast as he could fly. There was no telling what kind of trouble M was having inside. He landed, taking the AK-47 from a fallen guard, and jumped through the door ready for anything.
M appeared from a doorway, smiling. “The hostages are safe back there. I disabled all the guards, but I think the leader got out a window.”
Something clattered behind them. Banshee spun in time to see an office door open, and a frightened-looking terrorist emerge with one of the assault combines aimed right at them. M stepped in front of him, but the man must have been more rattled than Banshee realized. Startled by M’s sudden advance, he fired the rocket launcher.
There was no time for him to do anything, but M was faster than that, moving in a blur, meeting the rocket halfway, trying to fold her body around it.
He missed the explosion somehow, finding himself lying on the floor, his leg pinned under a fallen filing cabinet. For a second, just a second, he thought he was going to live. Then the shattered ceiling of the building caved in on them.
“What was that?” Jubilee looked up from where Synch and Skin were tying up guards with packing tape. They’d made fairly short work of them after Jubilee was able to sneak in the back and separate the guards from the huddled hostages with a wall of her patented fireworks. Half blinded and convinced the building was about to explode, the slimeballs had found Skin and Synch waiting outside the back door ready to round them up and knock them silly.
Until she’d heard the explosion, it had seemed as though they might pull this off. A small group of near-hysterical hostages had wandered out the back door: men, teens, a woman carrying an infant, dazed expressions on their faces. Jubilee waved them back inside. “Hide! We don’t have them all yet! Stay in there.” Seemingly conditioned to obey orders, the shaken people immediately complied.
“That explosion came from administration. Synch, go see what you can do. Skin, we’ve got to go stop those rocket launchers.” He nodded, and they sprinted toward the amphitheater, knowing the only way either one of them would stop a bullet was the hard way, and that they were probably already too late.
Chamber thought the inside of the sculptor’s studio was like a shrine or a church. The open-beam ceilings resembled those in a chapel; the tools and models, holy relics. He felt like a bull in a china shop, knowing that to use his powers in here would almost certainly destroy something irreplaceable.
He saw the hostages, about ten of them, huddled on pewlike benches surrounding a twenty-foot model of the Rushmore sculpture, echoing the real item visible through the big windows at the end of the room.
There were two terrorists to his left with rifles, one to his right pulling a pistol. Husk placed herself between the rifles and the hostages.
Chamber turned on the man with the pistol, ignoring the danger, the bullet he knew was waiting for him deep in the barrel, charging the man, roaring at him psychically like a demon from the grave.
Behind him, rifles discharged on single-shot mode. He heard the sounds of bullets striking stone, of breaking glass, of a woman screaming.
In front of him, the terrorist’s mouth opened and his eyes went wide, skin turning white with fear at the hellish figure bearing down on him. Jono reached him just as the man fainted dead away.
He turned. A pane of the big window had been broken out. Hostages were climbing up from the floor where they had all dived when the shooting started. The other two men were unconscious on the floor. And Husk was in the process of snapping the second rifle in half over her leg.
“Hey,” he complained, “we could have used those.”
“Not me,” she said, and threw the broken halves of the gun to the floor.
He looked at a man who seemed to be the least shaken of the hostages. “Find something to tie these blighters up.” The man nodded, unable to take his eyes off the gaping energy-filled chamber that was his chest. “Go,” he said, and the man was finally prodded into motion.
Then they heard the explosion. A piece of broken glass dropped from the frame of the shattered window.
“The rockets,” said Husk, looking out at the big sculpture. “We’ve got to stop them.”
Skin and Jubilee spotted the first rocket launcher near the entrance to the amphitheater. It was a boxlike affair, about six feet long and a fo
ot across, mounted on a heavy metal tripod. In the back Jubilee could see four round openings and. in them, the tail ends of four rockets. The operator squatted a few yards away, working on a control box connected to the launcher by a thick cable.
Jubilee ran for the operator. He had a rifle, but it sat on the ground at his feet, and he hadn’t spotted them coming yet. That gave her an opening.
Normally she would have used her powers, but she was afraid of setting off the rockets accidentally. She jumped into the air, landing a flying kick on the man’s chin just as Wolverine had taught her. He rolled backward, away from the box.
Then she saw the second man, a spotting scope in his hand, who had been hidden behind a tree. He ran for the control box, just as she saw Skin dive for the rocket launcher, the skin on his hands stretching out.
The man slammed his fingers down on a pair of red buttons.
There was a loud whoosh and smoke enveloped her. She felt the heat of the exhaust, smelled the acrid odor of rocket propellant. She spotted the second man through the smoke, and exploded a firework right in front of his face, sending him reeling backward to fall silently on the ground.
She turned to see Angelo wrapped around the rocket launcher, which he had managed to pull off to one side. She could see the rocket arcing harmlessly off into the empty hills.
Then, from somewhere behind the amphitheater stage, another rocket fired, and she could see it heading straight toward the sculpture on the mountain.
Synch swooped down on the administration building, or what was left of it. The roof at one end of the building had completely collapsed, doors and windows blasted out from the inside. There was plenty of smoke but fortunately, no fire so far.
As he touched down next to the building and stepped through a blasted window, he spotted a badly injured man lying facedown on his huge rifle. Synch noticed that the rocket launcher was still smoking, and surmised the source of the explosion. He touched the man’s neck and found a regular, if weak, pulse.
“You’re luckier than you deserve,” he said, then stood and started looking for other survivors. “Banshee!” he called. “Ml” ' ' .
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