Super (9 page)

W
hen my heart
drops out of my throat long enough for me to take a breath, I blink and focus again to reassure myself. Yep, that’s a damn SALCON insignia engraved into the side of the barrel. Ironically enough, it’s a large, fat
S
inside a diamond shape with a dove at the eastern point and an olive branch opposite of that.
Peace
symbols, and here I am, looking at a dead guy and the instrument that caused it.

Peace my ass.

Seriously, can the shit get any deeper? A SALCON commando team taking out the head of the NSA? If anything makes sense in this godforsaken ordeal, that’s the one thing that does. SALCON is the united front of superheroes and they’re probably not happy that someone has been giving orders to off their members.

I
wouldn’t be, obviously.

I slink over to the side door that looks out toward their driveway on the side of the house. I don’t know why it’s even there, considering the five-car garage on the front side leaves plenty of room for Dolores’s scooter collection. The top half of the door is paned glass, and a nearby streetlamp gives me enough light to survey the territory. I don’t see any SALCON commandos coming up or down the driveway where green moss and small, leafy weeds sprout up among the bricks. A fat, thick, impenetrable hedgerow creates a solid boundary between the two property lines, so there’s no way I’m cutting across.

Looks to be all clear. My car is two blocks over, to the east, parked next to another multi-million dollar mansion that probably houses a chubby, white-haired leader of whatever subcommittee he was able to wrangle control of. Or maybe he’s a foreign NATO rep here on U.S. soil. Or maybe he’s even a retired SALCON heavy.

As I’ve said, SALCON is sort of like the U.N. or NATO of the tights and muscles crowd, a global representative organization that fights for the rights of those who keep the world a safer place, but who aren’t often accepted into normal society because of their special abilities.

Look at it this way: it’s a governing body for the freaks of the planet.

The leader is a guy with white hair and a white goatee, aptly named The Minion. Not quite a superhero name that strikes fear in the heart of morons, but the dude is a genius and a perfect figurehead capable of matching wits with foreign and domestic politicians.

The fact that SALCON is here, and that they’ve eliminated Eric Landers, makes perfect sense because it’s likely that someone finally found out that he was one of the three American upper-level suits calling in orders to eliminate SALCON underlings and superheroes all around the world for the past three years. There are plenty of foreign leaders placing orders, too, but the U.S. is by far the biggest proprietor of our services.

It would be like Kofi Annan, that awesome guy from the U.N., finding out that former President George Bush had been using the NSA, CIA, and FBI to employ elite assassins to eliminate marks with close ties to the U.N. council—then, Kofi gets pissed and fights back.

Which means, in all sincerity, that Conner Carson and Joe Gaylord, the top dogs of the FBI and CIA, are probably already dead, dying, or marked for elimination, so there goes my ability to extract more information that they possibly didn’t have. I’m not going to risk approaching them now, not a chance in hell. If I show up at either one of their houses, I could easily have a red dot centered on
my
forehead.

In fact, I don’t have the slightest clue what my next move should be.

All I know is, I gotta get somewhere and process all this.

I step out of the side door and quickly scan up and down the side of the house. It’s chilly outside, and I can feel the low-hanging fog speckling against my cheeks.

I drop beside a garbage can that smells like rotten chicken and take another look.

Nothing going on, all clear. I can only guess where the two snipers at the backside of the house went, but I’m in a spot where they can’t get a good shot at me, regardless. So, what I do is, I back up to the hedgerow—to get out of the bright glow of the streetlight—and I slink sideways for what feels like miles. Eric Landers has…
had
…a humongous house.

Had
. I shake my head. He was a great guy, and it’s still too soon to think of him in the past tense.

When I reach the street, I pause for a moment, surveying the neighborhood, and my senses fully process what’s going on around me. I pick up on the mossy, wet smell of the landscaped and coiffed yards. A slight breeze pushes maples and pines to the side like old friends giving a shoulder a nudge. Somewhere a dog barks, and behind me, Eric and Dolores are dead in their home, due to a SALCON attack that I never saw coming.

I move. I need to get to a safer place. This is all too much new information to analyze while I’m on the run.

As if things weren’t screwed up enough.

I put one foot in front of the other, walking in a hurry, trying to keep my head down and not attract attention. My shoes are soft-soled rubber but every subtle step sounds like a bunker buster taking out some Taliban stronghold.

This is a neighborhood where some insomniac would definitely notice an interloper bleeding from a superficial wound in his neck at almost four a.m., but what do you do? It’s chancy to walk quietly and calmly because I still run the risk of taking a bullet to the head, but my gut’s telling me those snipers are long gone. Have to be. If they’d tried to radio their comrades inside the home and no one responded, then undoubtedly they weren’t prepared for an entity who would put up a fight against their trained commandos. My guess is they’d confirmed the death of Eric Landers then retreated to report back to SALCON.

There had also been rumors among the members of SASS that SALCON was working on something big, and we all thought they were planning to hit the Japanese because they’d been so vocal in their disagreements with SALCON’s political wrangling as of late.

Nobody within SASS knew a damn inkling of truth, and I had no reason to be suspicious of any of them. All I was supposed to do is figure out which one of them is plotting an attempt on Palmer’s life, which had absolutely nothing to do with SALCON or their movements.

Which also makes me wonder, if they know who had been barking the orders, do they know who had been doing the dirty deeds?

If that’s the case, that’s big. Too big. That means they’re coming after me, my friends, and God, I hope not, but my family is a possibility, too.

Am I in danger?
is a rhetorical question, because I’m always in danger, but what about the other members of SASS? Charlene? John Conklin, Don Weiss, the Charlies, Tara and Mara, and the rest of the crew?

Dallas, I’m not so worried about her. You know…just because.

Are the hunters becoming the hunted?

Do I have time to warn them all? Should I waste the time? They’re highly trained assassins who can hold their own.

Self-preservation, man. You gotta go. Now.

No, wait. The phone tree, remember? Who was first? Charlene?

Call her, let it go down the line. One call, Leo. One and done. That’s why it’s called a support group, dumbass. For support.

I lift my phone to dial then think better of it. I’d momentarily forgotten that Charlene knew more about my current status with DPS than she should’ve.

I can still trust
her
, can’t I?

That’s a tough one, and right now, I’m in such deep crap that it feels like a brontosaurus took a dump on me, and I can’t afford another what-if scenario. Okay, so I’m not calling Charlene, definitely not Dallas, which leaves me nine choices. Maybe, just maybe, I’m unintentionally crying wolf here, and SALCON doesn’t know who did the dirty work, only who was in charge, but something tells me that if they were able to infiltrate the government enough to find out who did the hiring, then you better believe they know who the underlings are.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

And, if I call and get the phone tree going, that might alert the culprit that his cover is blown, and I’ll have no chance of catching Palmer’s attempted murderer.

I guess the question now is, do I even care?

As I walk, pondering, trying to pull the pieces together, I’m about a half block away from my rental car when I pass a large mansion with a white stone façade on the side facing the street. Lush green vines creep up the trellises, and it’s pitch dark inside.

An unholy conglomeration of nature that looks to be a crossbred Corgi and Beagle pitter-pats down the walkway and stops behind his master’s wrought-iron fence. He fires a small grumble at me, nothing more than a warning shot across the bow, and then retreats back up toward his porch, toenails clicking like a typewriter.

It’s not until his ears perk up, and he flashes a quick look over his shoulder that I realize someone is behind me.

My stomach muscles clench and I hesitate, processing the situation. SALCON commandos would’ve shot me dead already. Anybody with trailing tactics capable enough to get that close, without me noticing, would’ve either pulled the trigger, slid a knife into my ribs, or tightened the garrote wire, so it’s likely not someone who wants me dead. And I’m making this guess purely by default.

Still I can’t risk anything, so I spin around, duck low, and get ready to pounce.

I brought along one of the dead commando’s Smith & Wesson .45, and it’s pointing directly at the head of—

“Deke? What the hell?” I stand up.

He drops his hands once he realizes I’m not going to shoot him in the face.

Honestly, I would’ve expected to see Santa Claus kissing Elvis before I could’ve anticipated Deke Carter trailing me through an upscale neighborhood in northern Virginia at four o’clock in the morning.

He glances at my neck. “Jesus, Leo, you okay?”

“What’re you doing here, man? I almost shot you.” My frustration is palpable, and he backs up a step. His white, fluffy hair isn’t as pristinely plastered against his head as it usually is, and his light blue suit and white collared shirt look rumpled, as if he’s had a long, hard day. Right now, I’m not conjuring up much sympathy for him.

“I should ask you the same thing,” Deke says. Granted, I have the .45 in my hand, and his weapon remains tucked squarely away in his shoulder holster, but he’s showing no signs of being here as an arresting authority. Maybe he doesn’t know anything about what happened back at Eric’s place.

“Do you have a car nearby?”

“Yeah, it’s parked right behind yours.”

“Then let’s go.” I flash my eyes up and down the street, looking for any signs of approaching SALCON grunts and spot nothing out of the ordinary. About six blocks down, an absurdly early morning jogger wearing a yellow reflective vest passes by on a cross street, but that’s it.

“What were you doing with Eric Landers?” Deke asks.

“Baking cookies.” I grab his arm and drag him with me. He doesn’t resist. It seems silly, though, like I’m punishing a seventy-year-old man as if he’s a toddler, so I let go, and thankfully he follows like a good little boy. We cross the quiet street, and I repeat my question. “What’re you doing here? Trailing me? Spying? What?”

“Agent Kelly asked me to follow you once you left Portland.”

“And how, exactly, did you manage to do that? I’d never used that ID before. It was brand new.”

Deke flicks a grin at me as he’s removing his car keys from a pants pocket. “We have ways.”

“Nope!” I hold up a finger like I’m scolding him. “Nope, nope. Not playing that game, Deke. If you have no clue what’s going on, and I’m assuming you don’t, because you would’ve said something if you did… This is deeper than me, you, Lisa Kelly…everybody involved, and I’m not about to play Pin the Tail on the Dumbass with you. Give me the keys and tell me how.”

“The GPS on your phone, dummy. It’s about as easy as watching you on a video monitor.”

I…I don’t have anything to say to that. Point goes to Deke, because that had totally slipped my mind.

We reach a white Ford sedan—a rental that’s way nicer than mine—and Deke reluctantly tosses the keys to me.

“Get in the car.”

Chirp-chirp
. The doors unlock.

“What were you doing with Eric Landers?”

“Watching a bunch of SALCON commandos put a bullet between his eyes.”

Deke pauses, chuckles like I’m joking, and then his eyes go wide when I don’t return his smile.

O
kay
, well, now…hang on a minute before any of those proverbial conclusions are jumped to, let me explain. I never said a word about being an average guy on the street. There may have been a few details I left out, however.

A few big ones, no doubt, but a guy has to have some secrets.

It’s true: I am the hero known as Patriotman, masquerading as Leo Craft the assassin.

Why?

Why…
everything
?

That’s a good question.

I spent my entire goddamn life hiding my true identity as a superhuman. From the moment I came out of my mother like I was riding a Slip n’ Slide on a hot July day, sick, weak, and diseased to the point of nearly dying on the operating table, I’ve been…special. For the first ten years of my life, there were cold labs, needles that injected warm fluid in my body—fluids that no other human on the planet has used or ever will use again—along with beeping monitors and lumpy hospital beds.

Underground laboratories, government officials in dark suits and darker sunglasses, and those late night knocks on the door, only to be whisked away from dear old Mom and Dad for another round of testing. Was I progressing well? Were my muscles developing at the predetermined rate that had been programmed into the live microbial cells swimming around in my weekly injections? What was my sperm count like? Was I behaving like a normal teenager? Crusty socks, hormones raging whenever I saw a cute girl in short shorts?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Great, we have big plans for you.

How it all went down is another story altogether, but I will say this, the men who made me are no longer with us, so that only the people I chose would ever learn my secrets, and to assuage my guilt I spent three decades as America’s Hero, the Defender of the Human Race, Friend of Planet Earth, God Among Men, the Elite of Elites—whatever. All that shit still makes me sick to my stomach.

It’s how I met Polly, it’s how I tossed Tennyson Pettigrew like a stubby-necked softball, and it’s how I knew that George Silver was lying about Patriotman turning his back on the American people in order to join the North Koreans. That’s when I knew something was up.

I don’t doubt for one second that there’s someone plotting to kill President Palmer, and it very well may be someone within SASS, but believe me when I say that I have never been approached by an assassin, nor did I attempt to turn someone against the leader of the free world like George Silver’s crocodile tears tried to lay testament to.

I believe this to be true because I hear things when I’m out and about. Chatter across the wires, if you will. When you’re involved in a profession like mine, the new one, it’s difficult to not get caught up in all the crazy shit that Joe Six-Pack would never suspect.

I didn’t—and don’t—have any specific details. It could be one of seven billion people plotting to murder Palmer, but it ain’t me. I also believe this because of Agent Kelly and Deke Carter’s total surprise at George Silver’s presence at the black site during our last visit.

Unless she was lying, and I didn’t pick up on that at all, she’d confirmed with her superiors that Silver did indeed own the wallet that funded Direct Protection Services, but he had no hand in the day-to-day operations, not typically, and his request to eliminate Patriotman had nothing to do with my mission to uncover the president’s potential assailant.

There are so many things that don’t make sense to me right now that I couldn’t even begin to guess which one of them makes the
least
sense, but one of the highest ones on the list is, why exactly does George Silver, the Secretary of Defense, want Patriotman dead? I suspect that he plans to publicly blame me, the
Patriotman
me, for whatever’s going to happen—or is supposed to happen—to President Palmer, but why me? There are literally dozens of superheroes out there working that could be the patsy.

That’s the reason for the setup with Kimmie. I figure that if I give her a chance to see my alternate identity die, and then resurrect herself as a brand new heroine, I’m doing double duty. I’m giving her an opportunity to forgive me, and I’m
completely
freeing myself of that godforsaken identity so that I can uncover Silver’s true intentions.

Now for the confusing part: I got sick of the double-standard, double-sided, double-crossing nature of so many of my fellow “heroes” that I could no longer feel proud of the work we were doing for humanity. I’m semi-retired as Patriotman, and occasionally I’ll show up to thwart some bank robbery or hostage situation to keep the persona fresh in the public eye.

Outside of that, I have a guy—in the Maldives, lucky bastard—who looks so much like me that my own mother would get confused. His name is Bart Alonzo, and he earns his living as my stand-in
doppelganger
. The funny thing is, he looks
exactly
like me, like my minute-apart identical twin, but it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference because nobody has ever seen Patriotman’s face. If he ever makes an appearance as me, he’s behind the mask. When I ran into him in Barcelona one sunny afternoon a few years ago, I hired him on the spot because it was so uncanny. I figured if I ever needed to have my face shown, it might be good to have a stunt double, just in case.

Sadly for Bart, in another couple of days, he’ll be out of a job.

Mostly what I do now is eliminate the sons-of-bitches who don’t deserve to be adored by fans the world over.

You think Billie Bombshell is all puppy dogs and roses with her pretty smile and, admittedly, perfectly glorious bottom in that set of blue tights? Underneath that mask is a brutally evil home-wrecker who has ruined more marriages than Monday Night Football. Behind that smile is an alcoholic nymphomaniac who couldn’t care less about the people she’s trying to save. As long as there’s a penis and a bottle of whiskey handy, she’ll fight crime all day.

And what about the Scarlett Gargoyle? He was no better. That guy was running a prostitution ring with rich, white Wall Street guys as clients and fourteen-year-old Vietnamese girls as the chattel. Disgusting. On the side, he fought crime in a bright red outfit with a chartreuse-colored lightning bolt down the sides of his legs.

Or the
Crimson
Gargoyle? The cheap, knockoff, poor man’s copycat who fancied himself just as good as his slightly more vibrant counterpart. I took that contract without wavering for a millisecond because nothing could’ve pleased me more than to watch that cocaine smuggler burn. (Not literally. He died when I released an air bubble into his jugular vein.) Who knows how many lives he ruined when he enlisted the help of underage thugs in South Central L.A. to help him move his product.

What is it with the Gargoyles and kids, huh?

Sam Diamond—I swore I’d never talk about that guy again, but here goes: we served together in Desert Storm. Mainly we were over there as figureheads, almost like a Bob Hope USO kind of thing, to lift morale for the troops. It’s not as if we couldn’t have fought ourselves, and damn, we volunteered for a few missions, but the upper-level generals said absolutely not. It’s like how NFL coaches barely play their stars during pre-season; you don’t want them to get hurt.

Anyway, Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer, and three days later, we found him in the center of a smoldering village, eating the fresh heart of a puppy while the innocent Iraqi citizens bloated and festered in the summer heat.

He denied that it was him, but two things gave him away: the puppy heart, for one, and two, that particular village had been under surveillance for about six weeks. The local commanding officers in that region had a guy under cover—he didn’t make it. The camera mounted in his shawl did.

Let me say this… Sam Diamond deserved what I gave him. I’m not ashamed of it, and part of me is ticked that I waited so long to do it, because who knows what other atrocities that sick fucker committed on the rest of humanity, all while he smiled for the cameras, wore red, white, and blue, and saluted our fallen heroes after yet another victorious battle against some no-name supervillain.

To sum up, after I made the decision to help out when the good guys weren’t so good, I jumped at the chance when the Prime Minister of Australia called me personally to place an order.

Don’t get me wrong, not everyone doing battle for the right is really evil deep down. Some of them simply have a darker side that their adoring public never gets to see.

Even heroes wear masks.

If some of the people wearing white hats have black hearts, why fight for the good guys?

That’s easy. The perks are better.

If you’re an asshole supervillain, you might be able to take what you want, like girls, guns, and money. That’s great—you’re living like a mad king and loving every second of it—until you realize that all the white knights in town are vying to be the first one to bury you and claim the reward. You can only exist as a supervillain for so long before some schmuck like Captain Kane comes along and makes a name for himself at your expense.

That’s probably why most of them hang out on private islands with nigh impenetrable fortresses. It’d say it’s a bit like Tom Cruise hiding from the paparazzi, but instead of cameras flashing in your face the moment you step into the sunlight, it’s fists, roundhouse kicks, and fancy gadgets shooting laser beams at your face.

The smart ones will strap on an American flag like a cape, fire off a few BAMs, BIFFs, and POWs, put a couple of criminals behind bars, then enjoy free drinks on the house until the adoration starts to wane. Walk into the middle of the biggest art heist in New York’s history, announce yourself as Billy Barbell, take down some punks, and then bite chunks of flesh out of unsuspecting hookers, nobody will ever be the wiser while you gladly accept bottles of champagne and the key to the city.

It disgusted me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. It sickened me so much that I felt fake, that I felt like my heart wasn’t pure, that it was tainted for knowing these things and letting them go. I justified it by thinking, “Hey, they’re helping the human race, so what if he chewed off that girl’s nipple?” I understand how bad that sounds, but is it worth turning a blind eye to someone who commits atrocities as long as he’s still doing good on the surface?

What about the televangelist who gives hope to millions and then snorts a five-pound bag of coke out of a stripper’s ass crack, then goes on a rampage and kills her in his hotel room?

Or what about the pro baseball outfielder earning a hundred and forty million dollars over ten seasons; can we forgive him of that fatal hit and run as long as he continues to help build homes in Guatemala during the off season?

I felt sleazy by association.

So much falsity hidden under the banner of good intentions.

That’s when I went on
Tonight with Don Donner
, announced my semi-retirement to the listening world, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and then walked off the set.

Five people in the world know that I’m Patriotman. Clark Kent, Bart Alonzo, Mom, Phil, and Polly…er…Kimmie. White Cloud, Blue Baroness, whatever, which is an amazing surprise considering she’s kept that secret all this time.

Not counting the two ex-girlfriends who ran for their lives after I explained what I did for a living, three people know that I assassinate superheroes: Mom, Phil, and Kimmie.

And it’s true; I do it for the greater good because I’m not built to do anything else. It’s a job with a purpose. I could walk away from superherodom for good and let someone else worry about it. I could get a job and be a good citizen, but let me say this… I’d die in a cube. I’d die behind the wheel of a pizza delivery van. I’d die selling cars.

Not literally, but my soul would.

While some of my colleagues disgusted me so much that I had to take a break from it all, I don’t pick and choose, though some days I’d like to. That’s between God and the government they pissed off. My employers and my maker are the judge and the jury.

I’m the Executioner.

Funny. Too bad that name is already taken.