A/N – This is a story I wrote several years ago. My goal was to write a GAH story that would read like an actual episode of the series. With the recent demise of Stephen J. Cannell, the "brains" behind this and many other great TV shows, I thought I'd put it up here for other fans of the show to read. Hope you enjoy it.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from The Greatest American Hero.
Midnight in a downtown office building is normally no place to find excitement, and the FBI headquarters in Los Angeles was no exception. The only signs of life were a lone guard at his post in the lobby by the elevators and the faint glow of light from the closed-circuit television system on the desk in front of him. Views of the rest of the building alternated with views of the parking lot; hallways, offices, all deserted, all silent. The television screen was silent too, but it didn't make any difference to the guard – his attention was firmly focused on the small transistor radio strapped to his belt, and the lightweight headphones firmly over his ears. A squad of patrol cars, sirens blasting, could have raced by in front of the building and Eric McAdams wouldn't have known about it. He was far more interested in the current state of affairs at the forty-yard line.
The front door opened with the rattle of many keys and the next shift arrived with its usual precision. One might have been tempted to give Greenwich its mean time from the schedule of the security staff in this building. The relief man approached McAdams with an exaggerated wave, motioning to him to remove his earphones and let himself in on the events taking place away from the gridiron. McAdams did so with reluctance.
"What's the situation?"
"Third down, score's tied."
The man behind the polished name badge that read 'Aaronson' shook his head and pointed to the log. "That's great, kid. How 'bout the rest of the free world?"
McAdams handed him a clipboard with the building sign-in sheet attached and regretfully switched his radio off. "I got a week's pay riding on this one."
"Way to go." Aaronson wasn't particularly interested in what McAdams had to say. Partly from his total indifference to organized sports in general, but mostly from his basic indifference to McAdams himself. He took the clipboard and signed his name on the bottom line; McAdams signed his above. They exchanged keys, McAdams collected his few belongings and moved off toward the elevators. McAdams gave his relief a quick wave before leaving. Aaronson offered a half-hearted response. Kids… just kids, that's all they ever were anymore.
As soon as McAdams was safely on his way… to catch the rest of the time-delay gave on the nearest sports channel, he'd wager… Aaronson swiftly removed a pair of very sharp, very shiny wire clippers from his uniform pocket. He moved down the hall to the inner offices, pausing at the door of Room 204, where the template read 'Regional Director/Lester Carlisle'. That was it. And if it was locked…
Why even consider the possibility? Aaron noticed in a moment that not only was the door not locked, it wasn't even latched all the way. All he'd had to do was give it a quick nudge to test the thickness of the door in case he'd had to force it, which wasn't likely given the likes of Eric McAdams and his transistor oblivion, and it had swung open as easily as a loose door on a men's room stall. This really was too easy. Perhaps he'd give Rahim a refund on this job. He certainly wasn't earning his night's pay.
The desk was his target… as quickly as he'd taken the clippers from his pocket, in one swift stroke he'd disconnected the alarm buzzer located under the top right desk drawer. Done. Aaronson left the office exactly as he'd found it otherwise, except for carefully closing the office door and locking it behind him. No sense letting anyone become unnecessarily suspicious.
In the agents' bullpen down the hall from Room 204, a rotating closed circuit camera panned back and forth, giving the viewer at the guard's section a perfect look at the entire area every thirty seconds. Aaronson waited until it had turned to show the other side of the room, then stepped up behind it and cut the wire to the oscillator. The camera continued to run, but showed only a sliver of the room and part of the blank wall it was attached to. He re-pocketed the clippers and surveyed the slight… oh, very slight… but important work he'd done. Yes, this was an excellent start.
00o00
Downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the morning is definitely a good place to find action. Particularly at the southwest corner of La Cienega at eleven-thirty when the area was in the middle of a very exciting and very noisy bank robbery. Gunfire burst from the front door of the modern-style building's front entrance in regular spurts, all aimed in the direction of a half-circle of squad cars that rimmed the area. One faded beige sedan punctuated the semi-circle of black and white. The local police, crouched behind their respective vehicles, stayed out of the line of fire, managing to return an occasional shot, but for now it was the holdup man's game.
Bill Maxwell crouched behind the door of a patrol car as close to the bank as he'd been able to get. The call had come over the radio just as he'd started for the office, and Bill, who possessed no love for either his desk or his superior, had pulled an impossible U-turn with his Government-issued Dodge in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard and raced to join in the action.
He tried to edge around the car door to get a clear view of the bank entrance, but pulled back quickly when a bullet tore a chunk of metal out of the vehicle all too close to where his hand had been. Crouching down so he wouldn't be seen, Bill pulled a small two-way communicator from his suit pocket which he activated after making sure that he wouldn't be overheard by any of the nearby boys in blue.
"Ralph! Ralph, come in!"
Another bullet punched a hole in the driver's side window just above his head. Bill ducked closer to the ground. "Ralph, come on, PDQ… Ralph, willya come in?"
The back tire of the squad car blew apart, sending Bill all the way to ground, suspecting somehow that he might be in a little trouble. Any lower and he'd be below the yellow lines in the middle of the street. "Ralph!"
If Bill had looked up at that moment, which he wouldn't have felt was in his best health interests, he would have seen a large red blur careening through the air. Too big to be a bird, and too awkward to be an out-of-control traffic copter… it had to be Ralph, hurrying as fast as he could.
His landing, as usual, left something to be desired; he wound up spread-eagled on the roof of the bank, the breath knocked out of him. After a moment he scrambled to his feet and ran to the edge of the roof to get a handle on the situation. With a groan he realized that he didn't need a crystal ball.
Looking around for ideas, Ralph spotted a raised structure with a door in it, smack in the middle of the roof. He ran to the door, yanked it off its hinges, and found a flight of stairs leading down. Nothing was ever easy, he told himself. Nothing... especially if it involved Bill Maxwell.
Hurrying down the steps, Ralph found himself in a back hallway which branched off to the offices of the bank's bigwigs. After making sure there was no one to observe his movements, he exited the stairwell. Dressed for company, he wasn't. The suit always made him feel like a fool, all candy-apple red with a flowing cape that belonged on the shoulders of Clark Kent and not a high school teacher who only five minutes before had been standing in the express line of Stephen J's supermarket with his understandably annoyed wife.
From the sounds of shooting and occasional shouts, Ralph guessed that the would-be robber and his hostages were still in the main lobby of the bank. He came to another door and opened it a crack to find himself with a view of the lobby. A quick glance around the room revealed a half-dozen hostages lying face-down on the carpet while the would-be robber used a woman, in her mid-thirties from appearances, as a shield while he fired on the hapless police outside.
Ralph let the door close slowly with the slightest possible click, stepped back… and disappeared completely.
One of his newer powers, the invisibility didn't always work right, but today Ralph felt lucky. Besides, he had this one down better than the flight bit, even though he sometimes found himself fading in and out like a ten-cent light bulb. But this time he felt in control. Concentrate, Ralph. Concentrate.
Out on the street Bill rapped the communicator against his palm a few times, convinced it wasn't working. Not a peep had emerged the whole time he'd been trying to raise Ralph. Usually the kid at least replied before coming up with some cockamamie excuse why he couldn't come right away. Usually. We got to work on your attitude, Ralph, Bill vowed… once I get out of here.
He stuffed the communicator back in his pocket and readied his gun again. A pause in the gunfire let him poke his head around the door to see what the heck was going on. With a curse he lowered his gun. The man had one of his hostages as a shield. No wonder everyone had stopped firing.
Inside the bank, Ralph advanced on the robber, relishing the sheer sneakiness of it all. He paused a mere eight inches away and called out, "Hi, sailor!"
The man spun toward the unexpected voice and Ralph took full advantage of the move to disarm him quickly, wresting the gun out of his hands and sending him spinning head over heels through the air. When the shaken woman who had been used as the shield gathered enough presence of mind to turn around, she found her captor sprawled across one of the windows under a sign that said 'Next Window Please'. She turned next to her fellow hostages for an explanation, but they were just raising their faces from the carpet. No one had actually seen what had happened.
Two uniformed officers charged into the room using the same door Ralph had used, while two more came in through the front door with Bill close on their heels. Still staring around wide-eyed, the woman sunk into a nearby chair, while another of the hostages, a man in his fifties, came up to her with a proud smile.
"Judith!" he beamed, taking her limp hands in his. "You handled that superbly."
Judith's eyes finally focused. "Uh… thank you, Mr. Randall…"
"I had no idea our hold-up prevention instruction included that kind of training. Congratulations, Employee of the Month!"
The woman's co-workers crowded around her, offering up a round of applause. Judith and Bill, who had remained in the background, glanced at the hold-up man who had just been hauled to his feet by the uniformed officers and was being cuffed. Judith still had no idea what had happened, but Bill did. The prisoner weighed at least two hundred pounds. There was no way this Judith could have thrown him.
Holstering his gun, Bill stepped back from the appreciative crowd. "Okay, Ralph," he squeezed through his teeth. "Front and center."
He kept moving until he came to the end of the line of tellers' cages, idly righting the 'Next Window' sign that had been smashed in the fray.
Without warning Ralph popped into living color beside him, giving Bill a start that thirty minutes of continuous gunplay hadn't managed. "For pete's sake, wouldya…" Bill grabbed a handful of curly blond hair and shoved his friend down behind the counter.
Ralph pushed his head back up just far enough to make eye contact with Bill. "That's all the thanks I get?" he demanded.
Bill gave him another push and Ralph bobbed back up like a spring. "Do you know what it's like trying to look nonchalant in the checkout line when a voice screaming for help suddenly comes out of your coat pocket?"
"Keep your voice down, please…" Bill ordered, nervously glancing around to make certain they hadn't been observed.
Ralph hadn't finished. "So I leave Pam in the ten-item express line… with twelve items… and I leave my clothes underneath a delivery truck which is probably at this moment dragging my best tie all the way back to the warehouse, and I come here, save all these people and what do I get?"
"Will you shut up?" Bill's strengths in law enforcement had never included an abundance of tact.
"There," Ralph nodded. "You see? Right there. That's what I'm talking about. I go through all that to get here, and they don't even know who saved the day. They think she did it. She thinks she did it. They all think she took that guy and threw him halfway across the room."
"I just lost a collar to a bunch of rookie yo-yos who probably stay up late at night to catch Dragnet re-runs," Bill reminded him. "You think I like that? And what took you so long anyway? I coulda been cat food out there in the street while you and the Counselor were clipping coupons."
"If you think you're not happy now, I think you'd better take a look at Pamela to see what unhappy really looks like," Ralph countered. "Right now she's probably taking all my razor blades and aftershave and throwing them under the truck that's got my best tie wrapped around the camshaft…"
"Wouldya not play that record again?" sighed Bill. "I got tickets for the Rams game this afternoon. I don't wanta stand here arguing all day. You been gettin' a little sloppy lately, the ol' response time is right down there in the sewer."
For one mad moment Ralph wondered if the little green guys who'd given him the supersuit in the first place would mind if he used one of his many unusual talents to make Bill clam up until he was finished speaking. "Didn't you hear anything I said?" he hissed. "I've got to get back to the market so I can try to save my marriage. Then I've got to go to a meeting at the school that I'll probably just barely make, if I'm lucky, and I have to change my clothes…"
Whatever Ralph would have said next was silenced when Bill shoved him down behind the counter, greeting one of the officers who was approaching. "I think you can take off now," the young cop said, opening his mouth to reveal a mouthful of orthodontia, mortally offending Bill with his next words. "Thanks for the back-up."
Bill glared at the younger man. "Back-up?" he repeated.
The kid gave Bill a friendly clap on the shoulder and walked away before Bill could think of anything else to say. He stared after the cop, his stomach roiling with unspoken anger, but he couldn't find the right words. Back-up?
Ralph emerged from his hiding place, smiling broadly, and slapped Bill on the shoulder. "Thanks for the back-up."
Bill gave him a look that could have wilted a plastic plant. "Get in the car."
"Whatever you say."
"Did you see that? That kid had more metal in his mouth than the train tracks between Frisco and L.A. He called me his back-up, Ralph."
Ralph snapped his fingers and vanished. Bill jumped again, hating himself for it, but Ralph's tendency to do whatever he felt like doing spooked him. The flying he could handle, as long as Ralph didn't have him slung over his shoulder, but that disappearing… that gave him the willies every time.
00o00
In Bill's miraculously intact sedan, less than half an hour later, they had managed to pick Pam up at the supermarket where she had been waiting at the curb. Pam shared the front seat with Bill while Ralph occupied the back, struggling back into his street clothes. An occasional arm or leg blocked Bill's rear view mirror, but he had stopped complaining about it several blocks back. He had other concerns.
Pam tipped a glance toward the back. "I found everything, honey, except the…"
"The tie," Ralph finished for her. "Yeah, I know. Figures."
"Willya quit harping about the tie," Bill snapped, making a right turn without signaling.
Pam turned her attention to the older man. "Bill, for once, just stay out of it. This is all your fault anyway."
"My fault?"
Ralph stuck his head above the seat, totally obscuring Bill's rear view. "Just drive, Bill. Drop me off at school and we'll argue later."
"Whaddya think this is?" Bill inquired snidely. "Yellow Cab? Maybe I should paint the fare chart on the door and stick a light on top?" Pam still stared at him coldly. "And I bet you want a ride home, Counselor?"
Pam forced a tight-lipped smile. "Why, thank you, Bill. It's so sweet of you to offer."
Ralph ducked back below the seat to finish changing while Bill adjusted his mirror. Somebody could be following them. "I gotta get back to the office. Somehow I gotta come up with a story for Carlisle that don't make me look like a blue-ribbon nitwit or he's gonna have me checkin' bananas for fruitflies in Tijuana."
"You and your bank robbery ruined our morning, Bill," said Ralph, now fully dressed. He rolled the red suit into a ball. "The least you can do is cooperate a little." There were two grocery bags on the seat beside him. Ralph moved the contents of one bag to the other, leaving one empty. He used the empty bag to collect a handful of tattered papers from the floor of the back seat. "Honey, my briefcase…?"
Pam cast her eyes skyward. "I'm sorry, Ralph. By the time I got there, the truck had…"
"Of course. Why not? With the tie. They were both gifts from my mother, but hey, that's okay. At least I didn't lose the notes too."
He stuffed the suit into the bag, not noticing when the communicator slipped out of the sleeve and fell to the floor of the sedan. "So I'll go into my journalism class looking like I've been sleeping in a bus station. I can always tell them I'm doing a story on the homeless and wanted to fit in."
Bill chuckled sarcastically. "You're breakin' my heart."
Pam watched her knuckles turn white as she clenched her purse. "Will you both knock it off? You're worse than a couple of kids."
Just then Bill pulled up in front of Whitney High School and Ralph opened the back door to get out. He leaned back in the front passenger window to give Pam a quick kiss. "I'll try to be home by five." He gave Bill a narrow-eyed glare. "Barring any complications, that is."
Bill shifted the car into drive. "Keep it up, Ralph."
"Stop it!" Pam exploded.
Ralph leaned back in to grab one of the brown bags from the back seat and slammed the car door closed.
Bill stepped on the gas without another word, jolting Pam back into her seat with the sudden acceleration. "Why do you do that?" she demanded.
"Do what?" Bill stared straight ahead.
"Talk to him like that. What possible purpose does it serve to always keep him one step away from telling you what you can do with that stupid suit?"
Bill shook his head. "I'm just tryin' to do what I've been doing from the beginning, Counselor; pull him into shape. We gotta face the fact that he's got a backbone of cream of wheat."
The tension had left Pam's knuckles and spread to her neck. "This isn't basic training."
"One of these days he's gonna thank me for it."
"Right." She counted to ten, refusing to sink to Maxwell's level in this war of words. Then, in a calmer tone, she asked, "Could you please give the mission of mercy a rest for the balance of the day? Twenty-four hours."
"It's for his own good."
She hadn't wanted to say more, but it looked like an explanation was the only avenue left open to her. "Look, it's his birthday, okay?"
"Is that why he's been so touchy today?"
"It couldn't possibly be connected with you, could it?" When her barb went right over Bill's head, Pam backed up and tried again. "I've been planning a surprise party for weeks, and by tonight he'll be so mad at you he won't enjoy it at all. Can't you please just give him a break until after the party?"
Bill considered her words. "You're way too soft on him, Counselor."
"I know, Bill," Pam nodded, her face too insincere to be for real. "I'm really sorry about that."
Her sarcasm went unappreciated. Bill was too wrapped up in his thoughts to be much of an audience for her. She scored herself a point in the ongoing duel and fell silent, unwilling to push her luck any further. Bill did have a tendency to tune her out, and, for once, she was grateful. She didn't dislike him; neither she nor Ralph would put it that way… but that manner of his always hit you like somebody running fingernails across a dry blackboard.
00o00
Another change of guard was taking place at the main office of the FBI. Aaronson waited patiently at his post in the guard station for his relief to arrive. Like clockwork, the third-shift guard appeared in the doorway and made his way to the desk.
"How's it going?" Aaronson inquired.
"Can't complain," the new man shrugged.
Give the man a radio and he would be a perfect clone of the last one, thought Aaronson as he handed his relief the sign-in sheet. When the man shifted his attention to the printout, Aaronson moved quickly to knock him unconscious with two quick martial arts moves. The guard collapsed like a cheap umbrella, but Aaronson caught him before he could hit the floor… to drag him to a nearby closet, not out of any driving concern for his victim's well-being.
After disposing of the guard, Aaronson turned in time to see the service entrance door open and four men enter the building. Young, handsome in a disturbing way… as disturbing as the guns they carried. Aaronson acknowledged only the obvious leader of the group as he stepped forward. "Rahim."
"Report." Rahim was a man of few words. When two would do, he would never use three.
"Everything is locked down."
"Your colloquialisms are charming." Rahim looked anything but charmed.
"Everything is in readiness," Aaronson corrected himself in a grudging tone… this was the part he didn't care for at all.
"I wonder if you recall the purpose of our mission," Rahim said icily.
"I have done my part," the man defended himself.
"See that you continue."
Rahim motioned toward the elevators. Aaronson nodded and moved off to cover them. With a nod, Rahim instructed his companions to follow him. Together, they moved toward the door of the stairway and Rahim pulled it open. With silent, practiced movements the men entered the stairwell, Rahim in the lead, while the door closed slowly behind them.