A Soldier's POV
By NicNacs

***

[I was watching that episode with the Hawkeye satellite, where L&C broke into Fort Truman (does anyone remember the title?), and something occurred to me. What on Earth would the soldiers think when they came back to that cell that Clark so conveniently escaped from? Well, here's my answer.]

[PS - I wish they were mine, but they're not.]

***

My name is Colonel J G Williams, and I work at Fort Truman. For those of you who are from out of state, that's near Metropolis, New Troy. Most of the time, it's a quiet base, but when something happens, boy does it *happen*.

We had Superman on the base the other day. He left Metropolis to rescue a reporter and a new age hippy. And to stop the entire base being blown to smithereens, but I'm convinced that was just a bonus.

But what most people don't know is, he was here twice.

It took me a long time to figure out, and of that I'm not proud, but who would expect to see Superman looking like that? Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Metropolis was in darkness. Someone had taken over the electrics, cut the power to the city. All the traffic lights were stuck on green, the phone lines were down, it was chaos. In among all that, hardly anyone paid attention to a stolen jeep. Even the team it was stolen *from* forgot about it in the confusion. I'd like to see what they put on their report.

We probably never would have found the jeep if it hadn't been returned to the base. That we found it even then was down to sheer luck. It was driven onto the base by two soldiers, a man and a woman. Nothing suspicious in that, except that one of them saluted with the wrong hand.

Such small details can make all the difference.

The gate guard called ahead, and when the 'soldiers' arrived at the command centre, we were ready. One of them managed to elude us, but we took the man by surprise.

He protested all the way to the holding cells, saying that he was a reporter, and that Fort Truman was going to be blown up. We ignored his pleas and locked him in a cell.

When we came back, he was gone.

That's all very well, I hear you say, but what has a reporter's skill at escaping from locked rooms got to do with Superman?

Well, it's like this. The reporter wasn't a reporter. He said his name was Clark Kent, and I suppose there was a passing resemblance, but there was no way any reporter could have left that room without the guard noticing. And no way that he could have got back in again to remove the evidence afterwards. If I hadn't realised who the 'soldier' was, I would be getting a psych evaluation to prove I wasn't crazy.

It must have been Superman.

Who else do you know that would leave a locked cell by the window, bending the metal bars and leaving behind only a pile of clothes?