IN A HELICOPTER ABOVE MANHATTAN
2330 HOURS
Castle was in a very familiar mindset.
He was in a helicopter. Armed to the teeth. Riding with a bunch of fellow soldiers. Ready to kill. Ready to die.
Same old. Same old.
A lifetime ago, when he was alive, when he was a Marine, he was in a similar mindset. There were a few differences.
Back then. He was a dedicated soldier, fighting for god and country. He was also a young father. And husband.
He had something to come home to.
Love.
Family.
Hope.
All that was wiped out one day in Central Park. Killed by scum called The Costa Brothers. Gangsters. Thugs who use words like honor and family.
They know nothing about honor. And they destroy families.
Since that day in Central Park, The Punisher has been fighting a war for thirty years, a war on the scum that murdered innocents for power and greed. He's been called obsessed. Fanatical. Psychotic. Paranoid.
The latest string of bombings ten hours before by Tatamovich and Rastovilich killed over 1500 people. At least. Cops. Civilians.
With those kinds of numbers, how can this be anything else than a war? How could the Punisher be anything less than paranoid?
The story was: terrorists hit the city again. Castle wondered if the feds and media were spreading this bullshit out of ignorance or just keeping the truth to themselves.
Castle wondered what would be more hard to accept for the average citizen: mass murder by terrorists or mass murder by gangsters.
The city was shut down for a few days until things got back in order.
The chopper flew over the main bombsite. One Police Plaza. Castle and the others watched silently. Everybody kept a game face, but there was something hanging in the air. Tension. Horror. Thirst for revenge in the name of the victims. Justice. In the beginning, The Punisher was the enemy of the law.
Federal Agent Dave Hamilton in the 1970s. VIGIL in the 1990s. Serious manhunts.
Then, time passed. The cops and feds turned a blind eye to him and sent failures, fuck ups or people who pissed off the brass.
Soap.
Van Richtofen.
Now, Franklin.
But even back when cops were gunning for his ass, Castle saw them as allies. Soldiers on the same side. He even shied away from killing dirty cops. Unless they were irredeemable fucks.
Like Blackwell. A lunatic member of VIGIL who used a little girl as a shield to get Castle. Castle blew his head off. Shotgun blast. In front of a news chopper.
But most cops were good people. They deserved better than be killed in a bomb blast by greedy bastards.
Castle saw the rubble. The hundreds of emergency vehicles, the spinning lights. Firefighters. Paramedics. Cops. Like worker bees, all over the scene. Helping. Healing. Comforting. Looking for bodies. Trying to bring closure.
True soldiers.
True heroes.
Many of them will be forgotten. A few of them will give interviews. A few will commit suicide. Soul overloaded with too much horror. Saturated with death and misery. More casualties. More victims of this insanity.
Despite that, despite the good will and hard work of such decent people, there was still the need for shadow warriors. People who had to deal with ugly side of things.
People who lived to wipe out scum.
Like Rastovilich and Tatamovich.
Rastovilich and Tatamovich have managed what no other crime lords have. Create a national panic. A siege mentality. They robbed people of the right to live without constant fear of being bombed.
Paranoia. Bigotry. More violence. Gang violence. Social upheaval.
Consequences of these bombings.
Until those bombings, the battle was secret, underground. They made it open warfare. They got civilians killed by the hundreds.
They had to be wiped out.
Exterminated.
Punished.
No matter what guys like Daredevil and Spider-Man thought, some people just needed killing. Some you could scare, or cripple, or turn in…but some desperately needed a slug in the head.
No amount of societal change or rehabilitation could fix them.
Not animals like the countless scum he's encountered.
He was one of the few who understood that. Most of them, he was working with them that night.
Most of his current war has been fought alone. He preferred it that way. This time, we wasn't alone. And he was grateful.
Rastovilich had an army of battle tested warriors. Killers hardened by dirty wars all over the world.
Just like Castle and most of his allies.
"Feels like old times, huh, Frank?" Shotgun told him.
"Yeah." Castle said.
"But different, right?" Shotgun said.
"Yeah. Different."
"Always the chatterbox, Frank." Shotgun said. And he remained quiet.
Sliver Sable spoke up: "Castle."
"Yeah."
"I…may have been harsh in my judgement earlier." She said. "It's obvious you don't admire these men. You wouldn't be here otherwise. You were being professional and figuring out their strategy. I'm sorry."
Castle looked up in her eyes. Sable was a hard woman. Tough. Proud. The first meeting they had was over a decade ago. They fought and spouted threats at each other. She doesn't particularly like him. Castle didn't care what people thought of him, but he knew she didn't have to apologise.
Castle nodded silently. She nodded back. Castle caught Widow's look as well. She echoed Sable's words in a silent nod.
Castle was beyond love or friendship. But he rarely had people who with him. Not since Microchip. He was riding with people who've been through a lot of the same shit he has. Violence. Loss.
Now, he was heading towards another mission. Another enemy. Another group of fucks that desperately needed killing.
The difference with last time, he didn't care if he made it out alive or not.
He was already dead. In every way that mattered, he was dead.
And if he had his way, he would take a lot of those fuckers with him to Hell.