Chapter Eleven: The Cyborg

“Those mob fools want you gone so they can get back to the way things were. But I know the truth; there’s no going back. You’ve changed things forever.”

-The Joker, The Dark Knight

           

Luigi Morello was just getting ready bed when his daughter, Mira – a beautiful, black-haired girl of seventeen who was the perfect image of his late wife – suddenly burst into his room with hardly a knock.

“Dad,” she said breathlessly. “Come quickly! You have to see this!”

Morello started at her sudden arrival, and was even more unnerved by her flustered state. His first instinct was that one of his rivals was staging some kind of attack on his home. He quickly dismissed the idea; Mira looked flustered, but not terrified like she would be if there were men with guns trying to break in. Besides, Xin Lo Pan would never dare to try something like that.

“What?” he asked. “What is it?”

She shook her head.

“You have to see for yourself,” she said. “Come on!”

Morello hesitated. He had put his gun in the drawer where he kept it when he slept, and now it looked like he might need it. But if he put it on in front of Mira, she’d wonder why he thought he needed a gun.

Mira didn’t know about her father’s chief line of business, and Morello intended it to stay that way.

So, abandoning the idea of his gun, he allowed his excited daughter to drag him downstairs to the living room, just in time to see the famous Huston Gold Sky Patio collapse, carrying what looked like at least fifty people to their deaths.

Morello froze, rigid, staring at the TV, his mouth open, his eyes wide in his round face.

“What…what…”

“The news says that terrorists have taken over the building,” his daughter explained. “Tanzanians. They sent most of the people who were in there out onto the balcony and it collapsed beneath them! They don’t know how many died yet, but they say it could be close to a hundred!”

Morello raised a hand to his forehead in shock. He’d killed people before, and he’d had people killed, but nothing…nothing like this. Of course he knew when Calvan gave the job that there was some kind of angle to it, but this…this couldn’t be what Calvan had intended, could it?

“Dad,” she said, cocking her head to one side and staring at him. “Are you alright?”

“I…” It had been a long time since Luigi Morello had felt so troubled. “This…I’m going to have to go change and go see someone about this.”

 “What?” she said, following him back upstairs. “Why? We were not involved, were we?”

“Well, actually, we did some work for them just this week. There could be…there could be questions. I need to talk with some people.”

He shut himself in his room and hurried to throw on a suit. All the while his mind was racing. Tanzanian terrorists…the Sky Patio…Calvan…coincidence? It must be. But what were they after? What other secrets did the tycoon hide?

He needed answers. And Luigi Morello always got answers.

“Will you be alright?” he asked Mira as he came out.

“Of course!” she said with a laugh. “Lenny and Victorio are here, aren’t they? And Max.”

Max was her huge, soft, and immensely cuddly St. Bernard. Under ordinary circumstances, Morello would have chuckled at the idea of him snuggling Xin’s men to death, but he had no laughter tonight.

“Good,” he said absently, kissing her on the cheek. “Don’t wait up for me. I think it is going to be a long night.”

            By this time, of course, the Huston Gold disaster had become the biggest story in recent memory. Representatives of every TV, radio, and print news channel descended on the scene like locusts, pressing as close to the action as they could, even after taking casualties. The reporters and news anchors were determined to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of the unfolding crisis and raced each other to be the first to report some new development or theory.

            Back in the studios, experts on everything from Tanzanian culture to police tactics to architecture were brought in to discuss the situation in detail and so to keep the audience riveted even during the long minutes where it seemed like nothing was happening. Failing that, the TV stations resorted to playing footage of the collapsing Sky Patio over and over and over again.

            Judging by the ratings, it seemed as though all of San Ignatio, not to mention Los Angeles, San Francisco, and a substantial part of the country in general were tuned in to watch the crisis.

            But so far, not a single reporter had been able to get within a hundred yards of Deputy Chief Webb, which meant that none of them knew the name ‘Alpha’ or had any notion that the event was more than it seemed. 

Joe Webb tapped his pen thoughtfully on his palm, contemplating his next move. Horrifying as the disaster was, it might give him an opening. The thing about hostages is that you could only kill them once, and the more you did, the less your remaining hostages were any use to you. When Alpha had a hundred or more, he could afford to be fairly ruthless. Now that he only had a handful, he would have to be more reserved. That would give Webb more maneuverability. It was just possible that if he sent his men in hard and fast Alpha would hesitate executing any hostages until it was too late.

“Bill,” he said. “Get SWAT on the line; it’s time to go in.”

             

            Otto Strasser paced the dining room restlessly, checking his watch two or three times every minute. He had bought them two hours…assuming the police didn’t try anything in that time, which they probably would. Since they were isolated from the lobby, that meant they would have to attempt an aerial assault.

He had sent Gidan back up to the vault, both to try to speed up progress and because Calvan’s penthouse was the only place from which he could watch all sides of the building at once. He’d sent Antony up as well as a look out and had one of the Tanzanians brought down to replace him: he needed to have some communication with his people on the upper floors.

            Julius Shija came in. The lithe, handsome Tanzanian was their sniper and lookout man. Back in Africa, he had been a very successful hunter, and so far in the war he had already racked up over thirty confirmed enemy kills. Apart from Gidan, he was pretty much the only one of the Tanzanians that Strasser thought was worth a damn, which is why he’d given him the job of keeping an eye on the police.

            “What is it?” he asked.

            “Sir,” he said. “We have a problem.”

            “Helicopters?”

            “No, nothing like that as far as I can see. Another problem. I sent my spotter, Ahmed, up to find me a good position just before the police arrived. He hasn’t returned.”

            It didn’t take Strasser long to guess what had happened.

            “I imagine we have our uncooperative guest to thank for that.”

            “Yes, that is what I thought,” said Julius. “But don’t you see; that means he has Ahmed’s gun.”

            “So?”

            “So, if he is communicating with the police and they decide to come in, what’s to stop him from attacking our men on the roof? You stationed them there to hold up and air assault, but if they also have to worry about someone on the inside…”

            “Gidan will take care of it.”

            “Perhaps,” Julius conceded. “But after all that has happened, do you want to take a chance on that?”

            Strasser shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was the stupidest damn operation he had ever been a part of. Oh, he’d had disasters before, but never one where so many insignificant details turned out to have such large consequences.

            “Do you have a suggestion, then?”

            “Yes,” said Julius. “I think he should be eliminated as a factor.”

            “I agree, but thanks to Xander Calvan’s mind-numbing irresponsibility, I can’t spare the manpower to go hunt him down.”

             Julius smiled.

            “You forget; hunting is my profession. Surely you and Mr. _ are able to manage here for a little while.”

            Strasser considered this. He had been counting on Julius to be his eyes, but on the other hand, it was true that it would be a relief to be rid of that little pest. Besides, any attack would be from the air, which they could spot just as easily as he could. Then there was another possibility as well.

            “Fine,” he said. “But if you can, try to find out how he’s been communicating with the police before you kill him.”

            Julius shrugged.

            “If it comes up,” he said.

             

            Two teams would go in by helicopter, descend to the fortieth floor as fast as possible and secure the hostages. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was the best they could come up with under the circumstances. If the Sky Patio hadn’t collapsed, they would have had the SWAT guys repel down onto it and enter that way. As it was, no one was willing to bet on being able to swing from a helicopter into the hole in the building’s side as if they were doing a trapeze act. That wasn’t something they had trained for. Webb was counting on Alpha’s depleted manpower and apparent unwillingness to entrust all of his men with radios to allow them to land, secure the roof, and descend to the fortieth floor without sounding the alarm. Their primary goal was securing the hostages; apprehending Alpha and his men was second, though Webb had told the teams to try to capture as many of them alive as possible without risking the hostages.

            Everything had been arranged and set into motion. The teams were loading onto the helicopters now; within a few minutes they’d be on the roof and then…well, then they’d just have to pray.

            Webb sipped his coffee anxiously as he paced back and forth. This was always the worst part; waiting. He never got used to this.

            Webb wasn’t sure how long his agitated pacing went on before Bill tapped him on the shoulder.

            “Joe,” he said. “Someone to see you. He says he has info on the bad guys.”

            “Who is he?”

            “Some security guard; works for the company, but not this building.”

            “So how can he have anything on these guys?”

            Bill shrugged. “Don’t know. We’ll have to ask him.”

            Webb sighed. He really didn’t need to deal with this right now...but on the other hand, if this guy was on the level he’d probably regret not hearing him out.

            “Alright, send him over.”

            Bill gave the word, and a minute later a handsome, black-haired man of about forty came hurrying through the crowd. He looked determined, but not nervous. Webb guessed a military background.

            “You Chief Webb?”

            “Yeah,” he answered. “Who’re you?”

            “My name is Peter Joshua,” he said, handing him a high-class identification. “I hope you’re not thinking about going in there.”

            “How come?”

            “Because if you do, your men are going to die.”

            Webb’s eyes narrowed, and he thought he felt an icecube slide into his stomach.

            “What makes you say that?”

            “Because I have reason to believe that at least one of the terrorists controlling that building is a cyborg.”

            Joseph Webb was not often taken off guard. In the Marine Corp and as a cop, he’d heard too many crazy, profane, blasphemous, disrespectful, and just plain weird things to be surprised at much of anything. But when this professional-seeming man with high-level security clearance said the word ‘cyborg’ he needed a moment to be sure he had heard right.

            “Excuse me?”

            “An amalgam of biology and mechanics,” Joshua clarified. “I’ll probably be fired for telling you this, since the military would prefer to keep it a secret, but what the heck? We’re living in a brave new world and the sooner you realize that, the more likely you’ll survive it.”

            Webb stared at him.

            “Are you serious?”

            “Deadly. Your men won’t stand a chance against him; his kind can change the course of whole battles. See, that’s the reason the war has been going so badly for our side; because the Tanzanians have been fielding cyborgs. They’re stronger than any ten men, have sub-dermal armor that makes them almost bulletproof, and are equipped with built-in weapons.”

            Webb gave Joshua a very hard look. On the one hand, the idea sounded insane. On the other…if he made the wrong call, a lot of good men might die.

            “Bill, tell SWAT to pull back for now.”

            “On it,” he answered.

 “Alright, Mr. Joshua, assuming there is a…a cyborg in there, how do we kill it?”

Joshua opened his mouth to answer, but Bill cut him off.

“Joe, SWAT’s already there, they’re just about to deploy and…”

Suddenly, Bill’s radio seemed to explode with incomprehensible yells and screams, mixed in what sounded like tearing metal.

            “Incoming!”

            Antony Michen stuck his head into the safe room and shouted his warning over the whine of the power tools. Gidan looked up.

            “Helicopters?”

            Antony nodded.

            Gidan smiled.

            “Excellent.”

            He rushed from the room, descended two flights, and rushed passed the startled guards out onto the helipad. There they were, alright: two black helicopters running dark. But they couldn’t hide from his eyes.

            Gidan cracked his neck, watching the helicopters approach. This was going to be easy.  

            He flung his arms wide. A hammer flipped out of his right arm, a gleaming sickle unfolded from his left. 

He crouched low, savoring the raw power flowing through him as the internal mechanics of his augmented body revved up, surging his strength to levels almost inconceivable to the human mind. Gidan had only the vaguest idea of how his own mechanics worked; something about hydraulics and servos structured in concert with his own natural muscles. The procedure had been so painful that it had rendered him delirious for days afterwards, but it had been so very worth it.

            He took off running across the helipad. Reaching the edge, he fired the air cannons attached to his ankles, launching himself up like a bullet right at the first helicopter. Timing it just right, he swung his hammer right before impact. The helicopter’s nose crumpled with the impact and the whole vehicle lurched sideways. Gidan fell sideways as well, knocked back by the force of his own blow, but he had expected this and hooked his sickle around the helicopter’s struts just in time to catch himself. Instead of tumbling off to the side, he swung around in a tight half-circle before catching himself on the side of the now-careening helicopter.

            The second chopper was about fifty feet to the side, so Gidan braced his feet against the hull of the helicopter and fired the air-cannons again. The blast was so strong that it ruptured the metal hull and sent the helicopter careening even more wildly than before. Gidan flew across the space between the two helicopters and caught the struts of the second.

            The way the first helicopter was struggling to regain its balance gave Gidan an idea. He swung himself up in front of the cockpit of the second chopper and slashed his sickle through the hardened glass and into the pilot’s chest. Blood coated Gidan’s face in a warm spray, and he reveled in the sensation. He swung again, decapitating the co-pilot. As the pilot choked on the blood filling his shredded lungs, the cyborg reached in, grabbed the stick, and pulled it so that the helicopter was pointed straight down at the assembled police below. Gidan launched himself off the helicopter and back toward the Huston Gold as the chopper plunged.

            The cyborg crashed through a window, rolled, and hurried back to watch his work as the helicopter slammed right into the sea of flashing lights below and erupted into a great, orange ball of fire.

            “Pull back! Pull back!” Webb shouted into the radio, his ears still ringing with the roar of the explosion. Chopper Two had just slammed down right on top of a fire truck not two hundred yards from where he was standing. His own car had been perforated with flaming debris, and he, Bill Morgan, and Peter Joshua had all flung themselves to the ground to escape the same fate. Chopper One was still airborne, but only just, and two of the men on board had been blasted out the side. Painfully, the helicopter righted itself and turned to limp back to base.

            The three men staggered to their feet, staring in shocked awe at the conflagration. Everyone on board the helicopter was dead for sure, and so were any men who were nearby; that was at least another…what, fifteen? Maybe twenty men dead?

            Webb swore and kicked his shattered car. This was turning out to be the biggest disaster he’d ever witnessed in his whole twenty years on the force.

            Bill Morgan stared about him, his face a mask of shock, all his usual good humor gone. Peter Joshua, on the other hand, looked grim, but remarkably calm.

            “I am sorry, Chief,” he said. “That was my fault. I should have gotten here sooner.”

           

            George watched the carnage beneath him in agony.

            Enough of this.

            The patio may have been an accident. Deliberately crashing a helicopter into the middle of the crowded plaza was not. These people didn’t just want to make their point and leave; they wanted to taunt and terrorize, to spit on and kick and maim their enemies for the sheer joy of doing so.

            George knew that almost every major American war followed a pattern: early on, the U.S. would take hit after hit. She’d get beaten again and again. Then, slowly, bit by bit, she’d turn it around through tenacity and sheer stubbornness, until she rolled on to absolute victory. The Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, Vietnam…they’d all been like that. It had all gone wrong, until, somehow, America got her second wind.

            Well, George figured it was about time for their second wind in this fight. He’d always wanted the chance to fight for his country. Now he had it. He shouldered his stolen Kalashnikov and headed for the stairs.

Next Week:

Chapter Twelve: Business and Hunting