TWELVE
July 18, 1986
12:42 p.m.
"This is going to be good," Biff confided in Scroeder as their van swerved through the streets of Fort Lauderdale, "I've always wanted to do something big like this."
"I'm sure you have, Mr. Tannen," Scroeder said, not really wanting to get into a conversation with Biff, whom he clearly despised.
"You know, my great-granddad Buford Tannen was the worst outlaw in the Old West," Biff went on, checking over the gun he'd been issued by security, "Killed twelve guys and pretty much had free reign over the Hill Valley area until he got beat by a guy named—get this—Clint Eastwood."
"Really?" one of Scroeder's aides was impressed, even though Scroeder himself wasn't.
"Really," Biff said, "The jerk beat him up and pushed him into a manure cart. All us Tannens have hated manure through the years, and..."
"Here we are," the man driving the van said, pointing to the Freeman's house, "And wouldn't you just believe our luck, the MacAdams woman's here too; I know that's her car."
"Duke, turn on the sound scanner," Scroeder ordered his associate at a long soundboard. This man clicked several buttons on it, until the conversation inside became clear in the van. "...David's up there in the spaceship," Carolyn could be heard telling the Freemans.
"Hey, that's cute, how does...?" Biff asked, reaching for the board.
"Shhhh!!!!" Scroeder snapped, pushing his arm away, just in time for them all to hear Mr. Freeman curse out Faraday. "He's going to wish he never met us!" he was ranting, I'm calling him up and...!!"
"That's what you think," Scroeder muttered. He turned to his command. "Okay, Leon, you and your squad secure the back door; if the MacAdams woman tries to run for it, take her into custody. Otis, you and the others come with Mr. Tannen and me."
They all piled out of the van, weapons in hand, and strode up to the front door. Biff rang the doorbell repeatedly. Scroeder rolled his eyes. "Do you really want them to know we're coming THAT badly!?" he asked sarcastically.
Mr. Freeman opened the door. "Can I help you?" he asked, clearly knowing why the people were at his house, but seemingly bent on covering up his knowledge.
"Hi, Biff Tannen, K.O.N.D.O.R. Industries," Biff introduced himself, "On behalf of Dr. Dale Catledge and Dr. Charles Faraday, I'm here to tell you that neither you nor your family is going anywhere until we say so."
"I demand to speak to Faraday this minute!" Mr. Freeman demanded, "That jerk is going to pay through the nose for kidnapping my son from us!"
"Yeah, I heard," Biff said. He held up his gun. "Point is, though, we have the guns and you don't, so you're just going to do what we say, kapeesh?"
Mr. Freeman growled in resignation. "In that case, come on in, I guess," he shrugged.
"Look, you're making a big mistake here!" came Carolyn's voice from Biff's left as he went in. Biff stopped long enough to watch the rest of Scroeder's team hustle her toward their van. "We know exactly what we're doing, so just be quiet and enjoy the ride," the man named Leon told her, "Dr. Faraday wants a quick word with you."
"Otis, put a tap on the phone," Scroeder ordered his adjutant as they went in.
"I can't, Colonel Scroeder," Otis admitted, "We didn't bring a wiretap."
"What do you mean you didn't bring a wiretap!?" Scroeder demanded.
"Well sir, they didn't have any left in stock."
Scroeder groaned in disgust. "Between a complete moron and a group of incompetent fools...!" he could be heard muttering under his breath. "All right, when the phone rings, we answer it first," he announced to everyone.
"Nice place," Biff commented, glancing around the Freemans' above-average residence, "Much better than what I usually have. How much do you pull down a month?"
"I really don't think that's any of your concern, Mr. Tannen," Mr. Freeman told him.
"Yeah, well, I'm armed, so I think it's very much my concern," Biff said. Noticing their glares, he said, "Hey, why the long faces? Your kid's going to make everyone rich, including you probably."
"We don't want to get rich," Mrs. Freeman said in a barely controllable raised voice, "We just want David home. You can't imagine what it's been through for us the last eight years, wondering where he is. Isn't it enough for us to want to get back to our normal lives?"
"You'll get him back, once we're..." Biff was cut off as the doorbell rang. The person ringing, the mailman, nearly had a heart attack when Scroeder's team thrust it open and put their guns in his face. "Package for the Freemans?" he said weakly.
"They're kind of busy right now," Biff took it off his hands, "So why don't you make like a tree and get out of here?"
"Hey pal, it goes, 'Make you a tree and leave,'" the Freemans' other son sniggered as Biff slammed the door shut.
"No it doesn't," Biff said, offended.
"Uh Jeff, why don't you just go out back and let us deal with these nice men," his father said, gesturing toward the back door.
"Oh no he doesn't," Scroeder said sternly, "We're keeping a good eye on all of you, so you're staying together until we say otherwise."
"Hey, don't look so bad," Biff plopped down on the sofa and flicked on the TV, "A little television ought to cure your blues. Especially if Donohue has those transvestite midgets from Mars on again."
July 18, 1986
12:59 p.m.
"There it is, right over there," Doc pointed toward the Cuyahoga Nuclear Power Plant ahead of them, "Pull into those woods over there; we could probably sneak in through the back fence. Security's been lessened ever since the meltdown."
"So how much plutonium do you think we'll need, Doc?" Marty asked as they touched down (sort of) in the woods.
"If my calculations are correct, about two and a half pounds should be sufficient," Doc said, "Gentlemen, Johnny-5, come with me. The rest of you stay here with David; make sure no harm befalls him if Catledge somehow pulls a sneak attack behind our backs. If you're attacked, Max, take off and head as far away from here as possible. You can pick us up after the threat has passed. Just keep us informed over the walkie-talkies. And now gentlemen, let's move out."
He, Marty, and the rest of the men hopped down the stairs, waiting for Johnny-5 to catch up with them. They slipped through a large hole in the fence surrounding the plant and galloped toward the rear entrance to the plant. Even with Doc's comment, Marty was surprised how light the security at the plant was. There was practically no one around at all, in fact. "Have you heard some of the rumors surrounding the meltdown, Doc?" he asked as they entered radiation suit room, "That some idiot walked right in and fried the reactor without killing himself? And somehow there's something about a talking duck being....?"
"Talking duck?" Wayne asked, puzzled, "I haven't heard that one yet." He set down the crate with his shrinking machine (Doc had requested he bring it "just in case") and slipped into one of the suits.
"I've heard many of the rumors," Doc said, "At this time I can't comment on...."
He stopped as the sound of a plane flying low overhead caught all their attention. "I hope that wasn't Catledge-related," Doc mused, "Our position is now very much clear to him if he watches the radar."
"Come on, Dr. Brown, would his response really be THAT fast?" Newton posed.
"Don't underestimate Dale Catledge, Newton," Doc warned him, "Numerous people have and are no longer alive because of it. The man has no empathy for anyone or anything. I cite the moment when word reached us in Alamogordo of the firebombing of Dresden. While most of us, including myself, were appalled at the devastation caused by the Allied air command, Catledge expressed great displeasure that greater destruction wasn't leveled on all those innocent civilians. Indeed, he confided in me that if it had been up to him, he would have loaded the planes with our plutonium and let the poor German populace have it."
"You sure keep coming up with a load of horror stories with this guy, Doc," Marty said.
"And they're all the truth, Marty," Doc said, "Here's another you might want to know: One night after the Trinity test, I caught him on the phone with Lavrenti Beria-in person."
"Beria? Stalin's secret police chief?" Wayne asked.
"And the person that madman put in charge of his nuclear program," Doc said darkly, "From what I inferred from the conversation, Catledge's intention was to sell the Bolsheviks key nuclear secrets in return for a high position in the Politburo once Stalin launched World War III against the free world and capitalism. Thankfully Stalin died, perhaps, as evidence now suggests, at Beria's own hands, and that never came to fruitation. But the fact is they came close to destroying the world together."
There was an uneasy silence. Doc looked at his watch as he slipped on the gloves to his radiation suit. "Well, we'd best get moving," he said, "Our best bet lies in the reactor itself and its vicinity."
It was a long and winding trip through the guts of the power plant. As before, though, they had the advantage of virtually no one being around. The only guard they saw looked at least ninety to Marty, and he was sound sleep at his post. He figured that since most of the mess from the meltdown had been cleaned up, people weren't as concerned with the plant's safety anymore, for some bizarre reason.
The reactor door was wide open. Doc produced a strange object that looked like an elongated vacuum cleaner. "I'll handle the sentient radiation in the reactor," he told the others, "Spread out and look for active plutonium capsules and the like."
Marty walked into a large storage facility next to the reactor room. "Let's see, plutonium, plutonium, where are you?" he asked out loud. After several minutes of searching, he came across a familiar-looking type of crate with radiation warnings on them. "Found it Doc," he called out, "Give me a hand with this, guys."
Newton helped him pick up the other end. They carried it out into the hallway. Marty opened it up. "Damn, only three canisters," he muttered, "Will this be enough, Doc?"
"Hopefully," was all Doc said as he went about sucking up apparently thin air from inside the reactor, "I'm getting very high levels of energy in here, so I think..."
Too late Marty heard the footsteps coming up the hall behind them. There was no mistaking the gun at the back of his head, however, and the seemingly unintelligible shouts that came with it. "Doc!" he breathed in horror.
"What?" Doc looked up. His eyes widened in horror at the sight of who the visitors were. "It can't be!" he gasped, "It can't!"
"It is, Doc," Marty said weakly. He was ordered to turn around, and for the second time in his life found himself staring straight into the cold, emotionless eyes of the Libyans.
"You know these guys?" Wayne asked Doc as he and Newton puts their hands up as one of the Libyans gestured with their guns for them to do so.
"Unfortunately yes," Doc's voice stung with regret over having made his transaction with the Libyans in the first place—the transaction that in an unaltered timeline got him murdered.
"Dr. Brown you Yankee dog, you thought you could run from us forever?" one of the Libyans snarled in broken English, "Now you pay for all you did to us!"
"Uh, can we have a ten second running head start?" Marty proposed, "It'll make it more interesting, you know."
"Forget it!" shouted the other Libyan. They put their fingers on the triggers....
"Hello boys," Johnny-5 caught the Libyans from behind and relieved them of their weapons in a flash, "Let me show you the door." He tossed them like rag dolls into a closet door to their left, stunning them.
"That's our signal to get moving," Doc waved the others down the corridor toward the way they'd come in. Angry Arabic shouts behind them told them the Libyans were back in charge of their functions. Heavy machine gun fire raked at their feet as they turned the corner. "These guys don't know when to stop," Marty shrugged.
"And the bad part is, if they fire around nuclear infrastructures such as this one, it's entirely conceivable that they could start another, worse meltdown with a well-placed shot," Doc theorized, "Hence we need to escape them A.S.A.P."
But it turned out they'd gone straight from the frying pan to the fire, for their path out was blocked by four large and hulking robots that looked like a Terminator-style replica of Johnny-5. "Robot alert, Dr. Emmett Brown and associates located," one of them buzzed. Each of the four robots produced what looked like four heavy guns from their multiple arms. "Engage and incapacitate," the first robot droned, "Open fire."
All the robots let loose with a wild barrage of machine gun-style laser fire. "This way!" Newton dragged everyone into a power room and bolted the door. "I can't believe it, they're using the 2Bs against us!" he gasped.
"What are the 2Bs?" Marty wasn't totally sure he wanted to know.
"They're the next generation of what Johnny-5 is now," Newton explained, "The brass at Nova liked my designs for the SAINT model so much they commissioned a second one more powerful than the original model almost immediately. Since I was disgusted they'd turned my design into a weapon to begin with, I told Howard I wanted no part in a next generation model. I guess he found someone willing to do it, because otherwise we wouldn't be staring down the gun sights of the SAINT 2B right now.
"So the big question is, how do we got out of here?" Marty asked as the laser fire started destroying the locked door.
"Stand back," Johnny-5 lowered his laser and blew a large hole in the wall. They scrambled through it just as the door gave way. "Dr. Emmett Brown, stay where you are," one of the robots warned him as he kicked open the door to the power room next door. It fired a blast that destroyed a power coupling and plunged that section of the plant into darkness for a few seconds until the emergency lights came on.
"Well, at least you can't say we're not getting our exercise for the day," Wayne shrugged as they dashed down the next hall as fast as they could.
"GRENADE!!" Marty screamed as one landed just in front of them. They just had enough time to dive out of the way before it exploded. Loud Arabic shouts told them the Libyans were hot on their tail again. "This is utterly insane!" the teen lamented, "If I'd known Dale Catledge would go THIS far to stop us, I'd've stayed in bed this morning!"
"Don't let them hit the plutonium!" Doc warned him as a shot from one of the Libyans almost hit the trunk carrying the radioactive cartridges. "I'll tell you, now I can certainly imagine what Harry Potter felt like when the Death Eaters were chasing him and his friends around the Department of Mysteries in Order..." the senior scientist started to say. He stopped, groaned and banged his head off the wall once they were out of harm's way again. "You're slipping, Brown!" he shouted to himself, "Two unnecessary future revelations in two days! Especially when J.K. Rowling hasn't even invented the character yet!"
"Who's J.K. Rowling?" Marty had never heard of anyone even closely named that before.
"You'll like her in due time, Marty," Doc told him quickly.
"More trouble!" Newton gasped. Ahead of them was a trio of robots that looked exactly like Johnny-5—his co-creations, Marty figured. "Hold and incapacitate Dr. Emmett Brown; fire." one ordered the others. Unlike their successors models, these ones only had a single laser to wreak havoc with. But like their distant cousins, they were deadly accurate with their aims. One passed so close to Marty's head that he could feel a stinging heat even with the protection of a radiation hood. "This is going to Hell!" he groaned.
"Elevation forty-two degrees, fire," the robots droned, firing off more blasts. "Dr. Emmett Brown, stay where you are." they threatened as the group ran into a bathroom. Almost immediately they realized they'd made a mistake. "Great, we're cornered," Marty groaned. There was no other way out. Moments later the door exploded open. "There is no escape," one of the robots announced, "Surrender, Dr. Emmett Brown, or face imminent disintegration."
"I have not yet begun to fight," Doc had a strange glint in his eyes. He ran toward one of the mirrors over the sink and stuck out his tongue at the robots. They all fired and blew the mirror clean off the wall. Doc picked it up and stuck out his tongue again. This time when the robots fired, he held the mirror in front of himself so that the laser shots ricocheted off it and blew the robots up instead with loud sizzles.
"Whoa, that likes parted their hair, pilgrim," Johnny-5 exclaimed in a John Wayne impersonation as he examined the smoking hulks of his "brothers."
"Yeah, but there's still a ton of agitators out there wanting a piece of us," Doc said, throwing down the mirror, "Let's see if our path out of here is still blocked."
"Dr. Emmett Brown, stay where you are," came the next generation robots' orders from outside the bathroom. Everyone screamed and jumped into the stalls as the machine gun laser blasts tore the bathroom apart. Marty noticed a lead piped from a disable toilet lying at his feet. Having a brainstorm, he watched as one of the robots separated itself from the others. As it cruised near his stall, he leaped out and clunked it over the head with the pipe. Unfortunately, this had no effect on the robot, which turned its head slowly toward him. "That was a mistake," it told him, shoving a laser gun in his face. Before it could fire, however, Johnny-5 somehow leaped on its back and covered its "eyes." "Guess who?" he asked it playfully.
"Dr. Howard Marner, Ph.D?" the robot guessed.
"EEEEEEEEPPPP!!! Wrong answer!" the older robot said.
"Dr. Benjamin Jabituya?" the killer robot tried again.
"No way, you're cold as an iceberg!"
"Dr. Norman...?" the robot didn't get a chance to finish. Newton crawled out form under his stall, opened up the robot's control panel, and pressed the big red button inside to shut down its functions. The robot slumped to the ground, no longer a threat. "Sorry, you lose, buster!" Johnny-5 taunted it.
"There's our way out," Doc pointed to a large hold in the bathroom wall the robots' fire had opened. They rushed out through it, just avoiding the remaining robots' resumed fire. "If my calculations are correct," Doc went on, "Two left and a right should get us out of here unscathed—hopefully."
"You are wrong, Dr. Brown!" all of a sudden, they were pushed up against the wall by the Libyans. "You can run from us as fast as you can," one of them told him, but now you die once and for all!"
He and his associate cocked their rifles. Marty closed his eyes. This looked like the end...
And then he heard a loud zapping sound. When he opened his eyes, the Libyans were no longer there. "Hey, where'd they go?" he asked, puzzled.
"I can explain," Wayne spoke up. Marty saw he'd taken out his shrinking machine. "Dr. Brown, I shrunk the Libyans," he told his mentor.
Doc's eyes went wide at the thought of this. He glanced down at the ground. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "This does successfully reduce objects' mass!" He bent down and picked apparently nothing up. "Marty, examine this!" he held up his hand. Marty gasped in surprise; the Libyans were now about the size of ants. "Holy...!" he exclaimed. The Libyans were screaming in terror at their predicament.
"Wayne, normally I don't approver of human experimentation," Doc told his former pupil, "But under the circumstances, I have to say thanks."
"Well, don't mention it," Wayne shrugged, "I can always re-enlarge them if you want to."
"Perhaps at a later time; right now exit is our first priority," Doc picked up a discarded plutonium vial that just happened to be lying nearby (he ran his plutonium vacuum-thing over it before nodding in approval) and carefully dropped the Libyans inside. He capped it in a way that still left them with a good air supply and pocketed the vial.
"Dr. Emmett Brown, stay where you are," came the unpleasant sounds of the other robots behind them. The four of them took off running, trying hard to avoid the blasts. "That's it, no more Mr. Nice Robot!" Johnny-5 swore and returned fire, mildly wounding several of the robots. One of them in fact slowed to a stop, disabled, but the other two kept coming with all the firepower they had. "Temper temper!" the older modeled robot scolded them.
The group finally made it outside the power plant and back through the fence. "Incoming plutonium!" Marty called to everyone in the spaceship, haphazardly tossing the case through the doorway. They ducked as several laser blasts from the still pursuing robots zoomed overhead, a couple hitting the inside of the spacecraft but causing no apparent harm. Thinking with a little more intelligence now, Marty pulled back the branch of the nearest tree and let it go at he nearest robot, taking off its head. "Hold your positions, don't light a match," it droned confusedly.
"Marty, come on!" Doc waved him up the stairs. Marty managed to avoid the blasts from the final robots and pushed a still firing Johnny-5 up the steps after him. "Max, floor it!" he asked the alien.
"There's been several jets circling the area for the last ten minutes," Stephanie informed them.
"Catledge," Doc mused, "He knows." He rushed up to the alien. "Max, can you go Mach 4?" he asked him.
"I can move at any speed through your dense atmosphere, I can speak hundreds of languages, I can..." Max told him.
"We get the idea," Doc interrupted him, "Just go at Mach 4 around the earth for about ten minutes and they'll lose radar contact with us completely."
"Compliance," Max activated several unseen functions, and the next thing Marty knew, they were going faster than he'd ever gone before, so fast the landscapes below were mere streaks of color. "I think I'm going to be sick!" he mused to himself.
Back at NASA, Catledge stared at his radar screen as the blip showing the spaceship's location suddenly became misty and spread out all over the globe. "Faraday, what the hell's going on with the radar!?" he demanded over the intercom to his associate.
"I don't know," Faraday told him, "We're losing them down here too."
Catledge pounded his fists on his desk in frustration. "BROOOOOOOOWWN!!!!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.