Super (13 page)

S
ince Sam came back
with me from the Maldives, he’s been staying in an apartment I keep here in the northern Virginia area. While I’m on-call as Patriotman, I often have to make appearances at the White House to accept awards and shake hands, doing an overly exorbitant amount of glad-handing with sleazy Hill types that make me wish I could carry a small bottle of sanitizer somewhere in my uniform.

But, since I’ve been in mini-retirement for the past three years while I attempt to cleanse the world of shitty good guys, I’ve pretty much been paying rent on a place I see only when I’m brought to the East Coast to purge a mark in the area. So, it’s good that Sam has been there for a couple of weeks now. Maybe he cleaned the mold off the shower.

Deke and I are sitting here in this parking lot only a mile away from my second home, where Sam is probably just waking up. He’s been here training, day after day, lifting, learning, and enjoying his time as he readies himself to become the new Beast Machine, complete with upgraded battle armor and weapons, all courtesy of my bank account.

I don’t mind. Patriotman has been in need of a good sidekick for well over a decade, and, with Sam’s size, he’s a perfect replacement. Once we got back from the Maldives, we got in touch with Hank Cagle, the original Beast Machine, and got his full blessing. Hank is generously donating his time to help train Sam, and he even contributed his favorite helmet to the cause, telling us he was proud to see the ol’ boy getting some action again.

With Deke in the car, I’d been slowly making my way in this direction for the simple fact that—while I may like him—I rarely trust a government agent. They’re good for passing along information, and for unintentionally putting wrenches in your gears, and that’s about it. Otherwise, they’re big proponents of the CYA Method—Cover Your Ass.

I had a hunch something was up with Deke, especially considering the fact that he was following me from the Pacific Northwest and showed up in Eric Landers’s neighborhood.

If all they wanted to do was tail me, then why not call in an area-based DPS agent and have him riding my bumper from a distance? I know Deke was assigned to me, specifically, but from what I know of him, he’s not the type of guy to go out of his way when there’s a shorter distance from point A to point B.

Something is afoot, and that’s been confirmed, but I have no idea what.

Deke sits there in the passenger seat with a smug grin that I want to smack off his stupid, fat face. Dickhead. He thinks he’s got me, and maybe he does, but about the only thing he can do is out my true identity to a reporter.

So what if every one of my superhero buddies turns on me for eliminating our own kind? I have the power and the strength to fight back. It might be a bitch of a few months, but eventually they’ll calm down once they see that I’ve been in the right, for doing what I’m doing, all along.

It might be tough going up against Clark if he chooses to come after me, but that would be like two brothers fighting for different sides in the Civil War. A Confederate and a Union soldier meet on the battlefield, stare each other down, and walk away to fight a different fight.

I hope.

Well, now that I think about it, there’s only one thing that would make me shit my pants. I need to figure out whether or not I should be glad I’m wearing dark brown slacks.

Meanwhile, if I could get Sam down here…

To distract Deke, I scream, “Turn it off,” shove the barrel of my .45 against his forehead, and then quickly jam my left hand in my pocket to grab my cell phone.

Shit. I can’t text in my pocket without looking. I’m not a twelve-year-old girl.

Forget it. I’m going for it. No time to waste considering the people on the other end of that wire already know that Leo Craft is Patriotman.

I press the barrel harder against Deke’s forehead and yank my cell phone out. A couple of taps later and I hear the slow ringing in my ear.

Deke tries to pull further away from the barrel and says, “I wouldn’t compromise whoever that is. It wouldn’t be smart, bud.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying—”

I hear a groggy, “
Yeah, uh…’lo?
” from Sam on the other line.

“Tell Mom I’ll be home late for dinner,” I say, then hang up. That’s code for, “I’m in trouble, and use the cell’s GPS to come find me.” I’m going to use Deke’s trick to find me to have help find
us
. Sam and I have worked on a number of these options, like, “Put the cat out, would you?” means, “I’m going into battle, clear my internet history if I don’t make it back.” I trust that he’s been able to master all the technological devices I dumped in his lap when we were back on the mainland. I remember telling him, “You’ll need to figure these out,” to which he’d replied, “Can’t I just beat people up with you?”

Come on, come on, come on. Find me, Sam.

Deke tries to shake his head, squinting at me, confused, but it’s hard for him to move his neck because I’m absolutely trying to push the barrel through his skull. I reach into his jacket and pull out the wire and the device it’s attached to. Some fancy contraption that I’ve never seen before—a metallic gray box about the size of an iPhone with a small, digital screen counting up the minutes of recording time. This thing has been going for a couple of hours.

I calculate that back to the moment Deke approached me outside of Landers’s house. Briefly, I think that maybe it’s nothing more than a digital voice recorder, a decoy, and this will be a simple fix, but those hopes melt when I see
LTE
in the upper left corner. It’s broadcasting, and goddamn it, they’ve heard every word.

I throw it to the floor and smash it with my heel.

“
Who
, Deke?”

He doesn’t answer. He flashes a look over my shoulder, like he’s waiting on someone too. Or, could be he’s trying to pull an old trick; ‘Ha, made you look!’ in an attempt to distract me. I vote for the latter and keep my eyes on him.

Bad move.

It seems like they come out of the sky, materializing everywhere.

Black commando suits. Weapons ready. They’re quiet. They don’t need to shout. They know they’ve got me surrounded. Only thing is I have a gun to Deke’s head, but maybe they don’t care about that so much, given who it is.

And yeah, I’m glad I’m wearing brown pants, because the worst possible scenario just came true.

SALCON commandos swarm on the car, laser sights, thirty of them at least, pointing at the center of my chest.

I back off of Deke and hold my hands in the air. The .45 dangles from my thumb.

Deke reaches over and takes it from me, smiling.

There’s an indentation in his forehead where the barrel buried itself in his skin.

One of these days, I’m going to use that fucking thing as a bulls-eye.

I
n total
, there are about forty-five armed SALCON commandos surrounding me as I’m yanked from the driver’s side of the car. Ordinarily, forty-five armed men wouldn’t be too much of a problem, particularly if they’re low-grade schmucks that somebody like Sergeant Evil hired for five bucks an hour to guard his—
ahem
—“impenetrable” palace. I’ve fought more at once, truth be told, but you don’t want to mess around with these guys. Next to the elite Special Forces of the United States military, like SEALs and Green Berets, these guys are probably third in line for the most badass group of soldiers on the planet.

I relent to their pulling and dragging because while I may be nearly invincible, and begin healing on wounding contact, my body is definitely not equipped to handle the exploding shells fired from a SALCON 24T automatic rifle, made by Smith & Wesson.

One of them, a big guy about Sam’s size, says to another one, “Standard cuffs? Are you kidding me? He’ll snap those things like they’re made out of taffy, private. Get the goddamn electro-bar out.” The stitching over the right side of his chest says his name is Gordon. A standard issue military mustache that looks like a sleeping caterpillar covers his upper lip. Maybe I could punch him, on principle.

Not a good idea, Leo.

Seconds later, a skittish, totally freaked out kid of about twenty-five years old approaches me with nostrils flaring and his fight-or-flight juice kicked into high gear. He’s Lewis, apparently. “I’m sorry, Mr. Patriot, sir. If you’d just let me…”

Gordon barks, “Don’t play patty cake, soldier. Get it done.”

I hold out my balled fists, wrists up, and let him attach the electro-bar—first the right, then the left. I can feel the barely detectable thrum of electricity running through these things. It makes my skin tingle, and I know that if I struggle too much, it’ll deliver enough voltage to stop an elephant’s heart.

Gordon grabs me by the neck, guides me to the back of a nearby van and shoves me inside. Twelve SALCON commandos follow. For an extra measure of security, Lewis—who was volunteered again—shakily attaches a chain from the electro-bar to the floorboard. Like I’m going anywhere.

Right now, I’m letting it happen. I’ll wait for the proper opening. I’ll also wait for the appropriate opportunity to shove my foot so far up Deke’s ass, he’ll look like a corndog.

The rear doors slam shut and we’re encased in shadows, the only light coming from the two small windows at the back of the van. The driver wastes no time in getting up to speed as he hurtles us out of the parking lot. He squeals a right turn and heads northbound.

I spot Sam running down the sidewalk, armor flailing loosely because he doesn’t know how to attach it properly yet, or he was in too much of a hurry. I’m betting on the former. He’s got a long ways to go before he’s truly fit to become Beast Machine. I have to give the poor guy credit though, he’s moving ten times faster than I thought he’d be able to by now. It doesn’t matter, however, because Hank Cagle wouldn’t be able to catch us at this speed either.

Sam pulls up, limping, grabbing his hamstring. He thrashes his arms and curses at the sky.

Too little, too late, Sam. Not that it would’ve done any good.

In all the commotion, yelling, guns waving, and jostling, they shoved me in here without thinking to check my pockets. The only hope I have left is that Sam will keep his wits enough to continue tracking the GPS positioning of my cell phone.

God only knows where they’re taking me, and I can only think of one reason why.

My best guess is, I’m a dead man.

SALCON is super-pissed that I’ve been eliminating some of its most important and well-regarded members over the last three years. The NSA, CIA, FBI, or any of the other international government agencies I’ve worked for haven’t been too choosy or cautious when it came to selecting marks for elimination.

There’s a credo among the assassins I know, especially the ones in SASS. You only take out the ones who really deserve it, and even then, it’s a hard thing to do because millions of faithful fans around the world have to mourn the death of someone they looked up to.

If they only knew.

This goes doubly true for me, considering I’m fighting for both sides.

I’ve never eliminated someone simply because some D.C. string-puller had a hard-on for watching an old enemy blink out of existence.

In the eyes of SALCON, none of this matters. I’ve been offing superheroes and upsetting the world balance while they’ve worked so hard to maintain peace and ensure that people of my kind can live a life of equality. Whether they’ve chosen to do it on purpose or not, they’ve continually turned a blind eye to the fact that there are horrible people wearing the white hats of the good guys.

They found out Eric Landers was calling the shots, and likely Joe Gaylord and Conner Carson, too. Ronald Kidman in Australia is probably a goner, as is Theodore Carlisle of England, Phan Thanh Chu of Vietnam, and Elizabeth Canterbury of our polite neighbors from up north.

If they do that, if they go through with knocking off all those important people…

That’s all out war.

Supers versus citizens.

No, they wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense for them. Not financially. Not politically.

Then what in the hell are they up to?

The soldier beside me, Miller, I take it, slides the infamous, black SALCON hood over my head. Phil warned me about this.

I probably should’ve listened to him a long time ago.

W
e bumble and
rattle along in the van for what feels like days. It’s probably closer to an hour; it seems that long because these guys are stone-cold statues. I mean
quiet
—like I can’t even hear the one next to me breathing.

I have no clue where we could be going, and it’s a given that none of these goobers will give me a clear answer, or open their mouths at all, so what I do is, I think, because I’m good at that when I’m stuck. I try to process everything that’s happened to me over the past month.

First, Agent Lisa Kelly and Agent Deke Carter of Direct Protection Services—agents belonging to a clandestine organization so underground that the President doesn’t know about it—approach me in the Portland airport with serious knowledge of my activities as a superhero assassin. That one’s easy: interdepartmental sharing.

Or something.

They tell me that there’s a plot to assassinate President Palmer and that they have reason to believe that it’s a member of a superhero assassin support group known as SASS. I decide it’s a dumb name, accept the assignment and join the group anyway, because no matter how much of a screw-up President Palmer is, he’s a nice guy and probably doesn’t deserve to die. Well, except for the fact that he initiated these murderous operations against filthy superheroes, which I gladly joined, because I got sick and tired of the assholes out there doing horrible crap under the guise of good.

I went to a couple of the meetings, met some interesting people, then Agents Kelly and Carter showed up at my place asking me to knock off Patriotman. I questioned it, they took me to see…George Silver, which supposedly surprised even them. At this point, I’m thinking Deke knew all along.

Silver gives me a bullshit story about Patriotman turning his back on the American people and his original would-be assassin has a bit of Stockholm Syndrome or got brainwashed, whatever, and is intending to murder the president at Patriotman’s behest.

As if it wasn’t weird enough already…

I decided to eliminate my alternate identity as Patriotman—because I can always resurrect under a new identity—just to play along with Silver’s scheme and try to figure out what in the hell he’s up to.

Kimmie did me the favor of making it look real. Point goes to her, I guess, because I never saw that coming.

Okay, what else?

The van bounces, rattles, and I finally I hear the guard next to me groan.

We keep moving. It feels like we’re off road. I imagine we’re heading to some SALCON stronghold in the middle of nowhere.

I’m not looking forward to this meeting or whatever it is. I imagine they have plans to line me up in front of a firing squad.

Get back to the past, Leo. Look for answers to save your ass.

So then, I went to yet another SASS meeting because I was under the assumption that the murder of President Palmer was still going to be perpetrated by someone in that group. I’d visited a bunch of the members and gotten no vibes, but then, Charlene asked me how I could sit there and allow Dallas to take credit for
my
work.

I learned how she knew
that
when Deke told me that Charlene is actually an employee of DPS.

All of that freaked me out, so I went to see Eric Landers, who was murdered.

I met Deke outside of the house, who told me that Phil was dead, possibly at the hands of Charlene, possibly at the hands of Dallas.

Oh God, Phil. For a couple of brief hours, I’d glossed over the fact that my dad was dead.

Phil…Dad… You were right. I should’ve listened. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and fought the bad guys like a hero is expected to do. I feel awful, you know, because I’ve been lying to you and everybody else all along. Doing this, killing the bad good guys, it was never about the money. I always said that because it was easier than trying to explain that good people can also carry evil in their hearts. What I did may have been hypocritical, but I feel like it was the right thing to do. Murder or thinning out the number of evil people in a different way…maybe you can’t justify it. Maybe you
can’t
. The only thing I do know is, having people believe I was motivated by greed, like Kimmie, was a helluva lot easier than explaining that I was trying to right a wrong in a bad way, for the greater good. So, yeah. I’m sorry. You’re gone now, and I’m about to be. Was it worth it?

The jury is still out, but for now I’m gonna say hell yes.

We bounce on another pothole so hard, it jostles my electro-bar, sending a jolt of electricity through my arms, down through my chest, and into my abdomen. My heart flutters hard for a moment, but it actually does some good, snapping me back to the present.

Where was I?

George Silver wanted me—or, Patriotman—dead because he’s an asshole, and he used to be Suckerpunch, a.k.a The Doberman. According to Deke, he’s also the one behind the plot to assassinate Palmer for a forty-year-old grudge.

Deke, evidently, is a two-faced bastard, who’s also working with, or for, SALCON.

Should I believe anything he said?

I don’t know.

I’m so thoroughly confused that I barely know which questions to ask, and they may not be the right ones at all.

Why would DPS bother sending Charlene into the SASS meetings if they planned to have her assassinate Palmer and be the patsy all along?

How did SALCON find out everything that they know? Did Deke tell them?

Why get me involved? Okay, that one might be easy. If Deke was lying about only discovering my identity recently, then he could’ve told Silver that I was Patriotman, Silver plays like he doesn’t know how to get me to kill off my identity, and then the man behind the mask…

The man behind the mask becomes the patsy for everything.

Oh my God. Silver must be working for SALCON, too.

They’re going to have Charlene kill President Palmer and blame me, then the subsequent investigation by the DPS will reveal that Leo Craft, some crazy nobody, was murdering superheroes and also assassinated the President of the United States of America.

Silver knocks off two personal grudges that he’s harbored for decades, SALCON gets their revenge on me for offing their constituency and has a name to publicly announce and…

What am I missing?

Where does that leave the other members of SASS?

A cold chill runs down my spine. I have a feeling I might have something to do with that as well.