CHAPTER 1 - Gunhawk
When a snake strikes, it doesn't feel as if fangs have punctured your skin. It's more like being smartly rapped by an escrima fighting stick. It hurts like hell. And in the off chance that you are bitten by the Mojave Green rattlesnake, you may die. Or sincerely wish you could.
This lesson was just one more alarming, day-to-day revelation in the strange life of Felicity Smoak.
"No power in the 'verse can stop me," Felicity remarked from her computer console in the Foundry as she crushed the final firewall of a "secure" website.
Oliver's forehead furrowed in WTF confusion.
"Oh. Firefly," she explained. "It's an awesome Whedon space opera with big damn heroes who are on the run in the future. There's cool spaceships, except it's really more like a western. With some Chinese culture thrown in."
Oliver remained gobsmacked. "Big damn heroes?"
"It's shiny," Digg cryptically added, to Felicity's delight, lightly smacking her perky high five.
Oliver shook his head in surrender and returned to sharpening an arrowhead.
"Gotcha!" Felicity declared as her bright blue eyes tracked a blinking red dot on her monitor.
Oliver was instantly on his feet and moving to stand over Felicity, his hands dropping to gently cap her bare shoulders. He coasted his warm palms down her arm. "Are you warm enough?" he fretted.
"I'm fine," she answered, giving his hands a quick pat.
"So, Gunhawk?" he asked.
"Yep," she answered, popping the "p" as only she could. "Liam Hawkleigh himself. He's on the concourse at McCarran."
"Vegas," Oliver guessed.
"Coming or going?" Diggle asked as he joined them to watch the tracker.
"Can't tell. We'll know soon, " she surmised.
And they do, following the scarlet marker as it slipped onto the interstate headed towards Las Vegas.
"So now, what?" Diggle asked as he rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.
"We go," Oliver said decisively.
"To Vegas?" Diggle queried with a hint of doubt.
"I thought he was Bruce Wayne's problem," Felicity commented, raising a well-defined eyebrow.
"Well, he's ours now," Oliver growled. "He's shouldn't have come to our city to assassinate the Glades' alderman."
"Las Vegas is pretty far from our wheelhouse," Diggle remarked.
"Not far from mine though," Felicity volunteered with a grin, glancing over her eyeglass rims at the two handsome faces hovering above hers.
"I lied," Felicity wailed from the backseat. "This is so not my wheelhouse."
"It's okay, Felicity," Oliver said over his shoulder as they cruised south of the city into desert terrain. "We had no way of knowing where this would lead."
"But I'm a city mouse," she squeaked and, seeing her cute distress in his rearview mirror, Oliver thought she was adorable.
Felicity felt a bit lonely in the rental's backseat, but Oliver had wanted to drive this morning and Diggle seemed to be enjoying the chance to ride shotgun.
"Felicity, can you still see him?" Oliver asked.
Checking her tablet, Felicity nodded. "He took the next exit heading south. But after that, he's a ghost. Maybe he's out of range of a tower." They traveled in silence for almost an hour, losing internet service twenty miles after they left the main highway. Felicity always felt more vulnerable when she was offline.
"What would pull Gunhawk this far out in the middle of nowhere?" Diggle wondered aloud.
"Hiding the body!" Felicity guessed with a little too much glee.
"Which body?" Oliver asked the brainy blonde in his mirror.
"We don't know. But that's what assassins do, " she explained. "They turn people – live people, that is – into bodies. That they bury. Sometimes. In the desert."
"She's not wrong," Diggle added.
"Yeah, but not this guy. Not Gunhawk," Oliver said. "When have you known a sniper to hang around to...
BANG!
When the right front tire exploded, Oliver gripped the wheel with both hands, fighting to keep the car on the pavement. Seconds later, a gunshot pierced the windshield and Oliver's right shoulder bloomed with blood.
Felicity gasped as she realized they were under fire. Diggle reflexively grabbed the dash assessing whether Oliver could keep control of the vehicle. "You got it, man?"
"Felicity, keep your seatbelt on but get your head down!" Oliver yelled.
When a third bullet rifled into the engine block, they knew who was the target of Gunhawk's mission in this desolate locale: Them.
