Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (5 page)

Hell, I would’ve given my right arm for that abandoned shack full of junk in Australia. My present situation made that meager place seem opulent. Still, there was little for me to do. I had to brave the unknown wild ahead of me, look for a distant column of smoke and hope for good luck. I tried to keep a steady pace as I moved across the grass-covered rock that dominated this island. One of the downsides of my hyper metabolism is that it required fuel, and the last thing I had eaten had been pushed through a feeding tube by a nurse in the Tower.

I should have been eating normal solids, but Superdynamic said he needed a specific caloric balance as the bones adjusted to their new home, so I got a special concoction of his design. I tried to remember the last meal I had eaten conventionally, but it wouldn’t come to me. My stomach started growling, and I ignored it by trying to pin down where I was. If I drew a line in my mental topographical map between Mali and Germany, it meant I was probably on the southern coast of Italy or France. This was a good thing, as this part of the world was well populated, and I should run into civilization soon.

The real question was what to do once I did encounter the rest of the world. If I ended up in a small coast village, full of people who neither knew, nor cared about Blackjack, would I really just turn myself in?

There would probably be a small constable who’d come to arrest me, then an uncomfortable few hours wait for Interpol or some other Euro agency to reply with equipment and men to detain me. Was I going to just walk up to the nearest cop and say, “Hi, I’m Blackjack?”

Taking it a step further, they probably send the big guns, Epic, maybe even Apogee. Who better to soothe the beast than beauty? They debrief me, ignore my story, make up whatever fits into a nice, tidy box, and go with that. I get tagged with all of the mayhem and murder, despite being the victim. Once they had me, they could do whatever they wanted. They had before.

Well, not necessarily, they could’ve mitigated my previous nastiness. I had certainly earned a second look, if not for how Hashima had fallen out, then definitely for what I had done in Washington. But that would require a person who somehow didn’t profit from my incarceration, along with some kindness and forgiveness, and those qualities were scarce in my world. If they got their hands on me, I was going right back to mind prison. I could imagine the U.S. and Euro agencies fumbling all over each other to stand in front of the mike at a press conference and take credit for my capture. It made me sick.

I did have another choice, but the idea of going on the run also made me sick. This wasn’t like before my time with the Impossibles, a time I considered my best days, staying ahead of the law and keeping Sandy’s practice well and busy. I’d made a bundle of money, lived a life of plenty and had more fun than in all the years since. I had been an unknown entity, untouched by the criminal system – thanks to Sandy – and while I may have been on the radar of a few heroes, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

Things would be different now, with half the world after me, and every half-assed super having my wanted poster on their phones. Then again, 1,300 or so villains escaped from Utopia when Dr. Zundergrub came to kill me. We snagged a bunch in DC a few months back, but a lot of the nastier ones were still out there causing havoc. It was a waste of time to come after me, if I went underground and kept to myself. There were guys lighting cities on fire, killing supers and their families in their homes. Coming after me would be stupid.

I had options and opportunity. It had been at least a day and still nobody had come looking. Maybe the plane going down had not been intentional, but something had happened to hide it from people who would be looking. There was no way the plane wasn’t being tracked. Maybe Haha had orchestrated the whole thing so that my doppelganger would have the optimal chance at killing me. I wouldn’t put it past him. Worst case scenario, I had a day, maybe less.

I also had some money stashed away, money not even Sandy knew about. Trust was never an issue between Sandy and me, because I never trusted him. He had been a good lawyer and maybe, eventually, a friend, but one of the few things I know about myself is that nobody ever gets the whole truth. I always keep a little back. In this case a little consisted of an account hidden so deep that the only record of its existence was a twenty-two digit account passcode I had memorized. Hey, it’s not paranoia if they are, in fact, after you.

It wasn’t a fortune, but certainly enough to live like a king somewhere south of the equator or east of extradition. A village or small city deep in South America, dark-skinned beauties more concerned with my pockets than my past. My Spanish wasn’t bad, and I had always wanted to learn Portuguese.

I trudged forward, content that there was something approximating a plan. Something nagged at me though. Haha had dressed some impostor as me and used him to kill a bunch of people. I won’t call them innocent. Nobody is innocent, but these guys were at least professional. They had families, or if not that then people who cared for them. The question I kept coming back to was how many more? Who else would suffer for his vendetta? If I went into hiding, what would Haha do to draw me out?

If I turned myself in, there would be no discussion. I would be neatly squared away in whatever deepest, darkest pit they could find. That was assuming I allowed them to imprison me. The thought of creating more widows and orphans didn’t appeal to me as I strode across the countryside, but anyone trying to strap a pair of those goddamn manacles on me would be courting death. Anything I said would be construed as desperation, and that wouldn’t have been totally inaccurate. Of course, with me in prison, anything Blackjack 2.0 did couldn’t be attributed to me, but that silver lining was quite dull to me.

No.

I couldn’t allow it. This ridiculous little game he had started was bound to cause more damage, and that was hinging on the fleeting idea that Haha would keep it small. Lack of ambition was never Haha’s problem. He and that poseur masquerading as me would both need to be taken off the board, and I was probably the only thing on Earth who understood his warped sensibilities enough to try.

Once they were dealt with, I would surrender.

Maybe.

Or maybe I would drop Blackjack 2.0 off on their doorstep along with a virus to wipe Haha from existence, and make them beg me to accept a pardon. They thought I was a marionette whose strings they could pull? I would make them understand that working with me was a better option than being garroted by those strings.

*              *              *              *

I ran up a promontory rock enough to see the peninsula stretched for miles, then swept back to a shoreline where a few small villages lay. I moved as fast as my shoes could carry me over the rocky ground, climbing down the side of the rocky outcropping and down to a sandy shore that stretched for a hundred miles.

The nearest structure was an abandoned shack, wooden roof sunken in, emptied and devoid of any food or clothing. A few miles off was another small shack, and several men stood by a low rocky wall that surrounded their land, watching my approach. One of them scooted inside and returned with a pair of double-barreled shotguns and a box of shells. He handed one off, and busied himself with sliding shells into the shotgun.

As I came closer, I could see one man was near seventy and the other was in his late fifties, similar enough to be father and son. A woman watched me from the window of the small home, and I couldn’t imagine how I looked. A bedraggled, washed out, half-dressed giant striding in from the coast. I would be wary, too.

“Bon dia,” I said, coming within earshot, taking a 50/50 chance that they were Italian rather than French. There was something to the older man’s eyebrows, their thickness perhaps, and the younger man’s prominent nose that gave me the impression that they weren’t French. The younger man responded with rapid fire Italian, rewarding my gamble, but both leveled their weapons at me.

“Americano,” I said, slowing to a walk, trying to appear less threatening. I had to at least pretend the shotguns scared me. A total lack of fear might spur them to shoot me, and they would panic when I didn’t die. Normals always panicked when guns didn’t work. I wanted them to help me; I needed their water and food, perhaps a bit of clothing. I wanted to get it without resorting to violence, but the most pressing thing was that I walk away from this without giving away that I was a super.

The older man fired a warning shot at my feet, and I stopped, raising my hands.

“I’m American,” I yelled, taking a half step back. “My boat sank and I need help.”

The younger man watched me, shotgun aimed straight at my chest as his elder reloaded. He spoke to me in Italian but, again, it was too fast for me to pick and choose words to try to understand.

“Help me, please. I’m thirsty and hungry.”

The old man slammed his shotgun closed after discarding the two shells and aimed at my face. I swore he was going to fire, so I dove to the ground. He could’ve fired the gun into my ear and it wouldn’t have but tickled me, but I wanted to seem vulnerable.

Still, the younger man motioned me away with his shotgun, and I could discern one word, “AWAY!” They weren’t going to help me, no matter who I was or what my story was. If I wanted help, I would have to take what I wanted from them, and let them waste their shotgun shells on my hardened skin.

But they might talk to a local constable, unlikely as it might seem for such a remote little village, they might make enough of a fuss that someone might know a tall, dark-haired super had passed this way. It wouldn’t take them long to figure it out I had survived the plane crash.

Yeah, I had to avoid trouble, if only to make sure I fell through the cracks. I had to stay off their radar, to make sure they had other, more important things to worry about. I stood slowly, backing away, and moved off, circling far around the house to the rest of the village.

I was tempted to hide until night, then move in and steal what I needed, but my hollow stomach overwhelmed my common sense. I ran into the village, drawing looks from the people that saw me. The place had maybe twenty structures gathered together, with a winding stone road that led up into the mountains and out of sight. I saw one car, a dilapidated old Citroen and four mule driven carts. I made a beeline for the water trough and dug my head in, drinking the foul water and getting a curious look from one of the mules. A young boy watched me, running to his mother’s side when I noticed him.

“Boat sank,” I said, breathless. “Americano,” I added.

The woman grabbed her son and moved off quickly, crossing the street and speaking to a group of men that were gathered in front of a small café. One of the guys walked over to me, scratching an itch in his thick mustache.

“You are American,” he said in pretty good English.

Nodding, I said, “My sailboat sank a few miles offshore.”

He looked at my clothing and took off his cap, scratching his head, as if trying to figure out what to do with me. “You have money?”

I shook my head. “I have money,” I said. “I just don’t have any on me. Is there a bank nearby?”

He smiled, flashing teeth yellowed from years of smoking.

“Eighty kilometers,” he motioned up the hill. “Porto Classico is the closest.”

I splashed some water on my face and stood. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars,” I said. “If you can give me some clothes and food, and drive me up there.”

The man shook his head.

“No cars in town, friend.”

I looked at the Citroen and shrugged.

“Hasn’t worked since your Clinton was president.”

I laughed.

“Give me some food, water,” I stopped, breathing heavily. “And some tools…I’ll fix it.”

*              *              *              *

He introduced himself as Giuseppe, and gave me his coat. It too small to wear so I draped it over my shoulders as best I could. He walked me over to the café, introducing me as a cast away from a sunken sailboat. The owner of the shop served me a large baguette and a block of cheese that I devoured, and a wooden mug with some liquor that made me recall grappa, which my father liked to drink after a long day at work.

I thought of him, watching the mangled bread, dirty from my hands, and found myself crying as I dug more and more of the food into my mouth, barely bothering to chew it.

“You’re okay, friend,” Giuseppe said, putting his hand on my back, but I coughed, half chewed bits of bread exploding around the insides of my mouth, and wept, thinking back to my old man. I imagined how different my life would have been if he hadn’t passed when he did, leaving me in the clutches of his brutal wife, my step-mother, and her violent brother, who came to live with us soon after he died.

As I wiped my eyes and went back to eating, a dozen or so people watched me, chatting with each other, amazed at my plight and at the sight of me gorging on the little food they offered me. The café owner gave me a small metal jug filled with coffee along with a cup of steamed milk. I was supposed to pour the coffee into the cup, but instead I drank all the milk, and then poured all the coffee down my throat. The scalding liquid felt good, waking me up from the inside.

The crowd stared on, their expressions ranging from amused to disgusted, as I consumed a second baguette and finished a good pound of cheese.