Those Meddling Kids
Chapter Six
by Technomad
Fred Jones
When Fred pulled up to the checkpoint, he was sweating inside. He, Jed Eckert and Shaggy were crowded into the front seat, with the rest of the Wolverines either stuffed into the back or hiding in the car's trunk.
"Rough patrol?" asked the ALA corporal who was commanding the checkpoint. Fred could smell the cheap vodka on his breath. He hoped it made the man careless. The rear windows were tinted, but it wouldn't be hard for the man to peer inside, and then the fat would be in the fire.
"Routine. Nothing unusual, comrade."
"Good. Get back on in. Put the car with the rest in the motor pool." With that, the barrier rose, and Fred drove on into the restricted area of Pueblo. He knew where the motor pool was, and soon had the car parked.
When they were sure they weren't observed, Fred opened the trunk and the ones hidden inside came scrambling out, gasping for air and rubbing themselves where the close quarters had hurt them. "Oh, man, fresh air feels good!" groaned Robert.
"Right!" barked Scooby. Fred put Scooby on a leash; the ALA had trained dogs of their own, but did not let them wander freely. Once that was taken care of, they headed for the area where the rockets were being stored.
As Fred had expected, nobody paid them any mind. They were in ALA uniforms, or approximations of them...the ALA had supply problems and not all of its members had full uniforms. They also used civilian clothes, albeit with at least some attempt to look military. The Wolverines and their companions fit right in.
The area where the rockets were stored was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The only gate was guarded by ALA soldiers, who looked just as sloppy as the others. "Slack," Fred whispered. "They're counting on the fact that this is a way behind the lines. They'd never do it this way if this was closer to the front."
"Well, we'll have to show them the error of their ways, won't we?" Robert murmured back. His eyes lit with the evil gleam Fred had seen there before.
"Just keep yourself under control until the time's right, Robert," muttered Jed, who had come up behind Fred and Robert. Robert and Jed exchanged stares for a second, then Robert dropped his eyes, acknowledging Jed's command. Fred felt relieved. He had enough to do keeping Daphne from getting out of control, without worrying about Robert.
Inside their perimeter, the ALA were apparently very sloppy. It was getting on toward evening, and nobody questioned the infiltrators. Most of the ALA about drifted off toward their barracks, or toward what had to be the mess hall. Fred was tempted...the smell was delicious, and he was almost always at least slightly hungry...but he knew better. In the mess hall, there were too many people around who might get curious about so many new faces.
Once it was full dark, they put their plan into motion. They had located a suitable truck in the motor pool, and had found that the keys were still in the ignition. "Apparently they don't trust themselves to keep track of the keys any other way," Aardvark said disapprovingly.
Daryl and Danny came ambling up to the guards on the secure area. Since they were in more-complete ALA uniform than most of the others, they had been picked for this job.
"Sorry, but you can't come in here. This is restricted," said one of the guards.
"Oh. We're sorry. We transferred here from Fort Collins a few days ago, and we don't know our way around yet. Where's the latrines?" said Daryl.
"Over there -" one guard managed to get out before both brothers struck. Fast as thought, they whipped out knives and stabbed both guards in the throat. The guards collapsed, fountaining blood, as the brothers jumped past them and opened the gate. The Wolverines and the infiltration team rushed in. They dragged the corpses inside, and Daryl and Danny took their rifles, standing on guard at the gate as though they'd been stationed there.
"We've got no time to lose! Velma! You and Aardvark get up into the offices, and grab all the files and computer discs you can! Daphne, you and Robert are on watch to keep the Reds off us! Erica, Toni, make sure the rest of the building's clear! The rest of us will be working on the missiles!" At Fred's order, the intruders got to work.
Jed Eckert
With Matt, Danny, Daryl, Shaggy and Scooby with him, Jed ran into the main storage room. All around him, missiles stood, like pillars in an ancient temple. He looked around, looking for the nose cones. When he saw them, he ran over and began breaking them open, tearing up the delicate circuitry within. Even if the Reds killed them all, they'd have a real problem getting those birds to fly. They couldn't replicate the components that guided the missile to its target.
The others joined in eagerly, in a frenzy of joyful vandalism. They all had good reasons to hate the Reds, and a chance to spoil something that they clearly needed was very welcome. There was also an undeniable pleasure to be found in destruction for destruction's own sake. They tore up circuits, smashing components to the floor and stamping on them with their steel-nailed boots, and smashing into the sides of the missiles with fire axes torn from the walls.
"We'll make sure these birds never fly!" Danny grunted, swinging an axe and smashing a pile of components.
"Right!" barked Scooby, lifting his leg and pissing all over some shattered electronics. Shaggy grinned to see his canine partner taking part in the destruction.
Just then, a bunch of Soviet technicians came running in, yelling in protest to see the vandalism. They had rifles in their hands, but many of them had neglected to put in magazines, apparently trusting in the mere sight of firearms to overawe the intruders. Jed yanked out his pistol and shot the nearest one stone dead. Another of them raised his magazine-less rifle to his shoulder and aimed it. Shaggy came up behind him, clouting him over the head with a heavy wrench. He slumped down bonelessly, blood oozing from his ears and nose. The rest of them lost interest in fighting, scrambling to get out the door. Jed put a few more bullets into the scrum just for good measure. He didn't want these people to continue their work for the Reds. While some of them inevitably escaped, there were a good few of them on the floor, bleeding their lives out.
At last, they had done all the damage they knew how to do. Jed wished bitterly that they could have done more, but without explosives, they were limited in what they could do in the short window of time they had.
Velma Dinkley
Velma was busily grabbing all the important-looking files she could find, as well as stuffing computer discs into her shoulder bag, while Aardvark watched the door tensely. She wished they had another technical expert with them; she could tell that there were a lot of things here that would be of great interest to their own side, but she wasn't sure what to grab and what to let stay. The fact that everything was labeled in Russian, of which she knew very little, did not help.
When her bag was full, she said: "Aardvark! Get over here! I need you to help me carry this stuff!" Aardvark edged over, continuing to cover the door with his gun. When he was close enough, she pulled his bag open and stuffed more documents and computer discs into it.
Just then, a bunch of Soviet and Warsaw Pact technicians came bursting in, screaming in their incomprehensible language. This was nothing that Velma or Aardvark couldn't handle. They unlimbered their guns and opened fire, cutting the technicians down.
"That'll attract attention. We'd better hurry," Aardvark said. Velma wasn't paying attention. She had found some documents that showed how to download more data from the computers, and was busily typing in passwords.
"How are you doing that?" asked Aardvark. "Can you read Russian?"
"No, but I can read German, and these are in several different languages. Our side needs all this data. Cover me while I download it!" Aardvark nodded, sweeping the room with his weapon as Velma went to work.
Daphne Blake
Daphne was watching out of an upper window, peering around through the sight of her sniper rifle. The Soviet designers of her weapon had done an incredible job, she had to admit.
So far, it didn't look like the other side had twigged to their peril. All was quiet. She could hear the chaos her friends were causing down below, and she smiled a lupine smile. There had been a time...before the war...when she'd have been horrified at being a part of such destruction. Now...now she reveled in it.
Her eyes went wide as she saw lights begin to go on in some of the nearby buildings. Men in Soviet and ALA uniforms came running out, heading to where she and her friends were working. That needed to be stopped quickly, so she took aim and began firing. Slow, unhurried, she put pressure on the trigger, again and again. She exulted in every one. Outside, men began falling, and the survivors scattered for cover.
"Hurry it up, you guys! I don't think we can stay here long! The other side's noticed something's up!" she yelled down to her friends.
At the other window, Robert made a strange noise - almost a hiss. "At last!" she heard him mutter, before his Kalashnikov began to stutter. Outside, the men caught in his arc of fire crumpled, some of them doing spastic dances as the bullets tore through their bodies. Shouts of terror and pain echoed.
"Robert! Keep in mind, you've only got so much ammunition! Switch to semi-auto!" While Daphne Blake was a cold killer, she was no fool. They were a long way from sources of re-supply and spraying the area, unless there was no other choice, would use up ammunition they couldn't easily replace.
"Gotcha, Daphne!" She could hear the clunk as he switched his AK to semi-automatic from full-auto. "Hey, Daphne - you're a pretty cool girl, did you know that? Maybe sometime we could…"
To her own surprise, Daphne found that she really liked that idea. While her old friends were like a part of her, she just didn't relate to them that way. Robert was younger than she was by a few years, but he was cute, and she felt like he understood her. Ever since finding out about her family, she'd been driven on by a rage for revenge on the whole invasion and everybody that was in favor of it.
Robert had been there. He had suffered similar losses. He knew how she felt. She thought they could relate to each other. If the Mystery, Inc. infiltration team stayed on with the Wolverines, she and Robert could end up as a couple. While their hard lives precluded much romance, and they had too little privacy for making whoopee, she sometimes ached for the feel of strong male arms around her.
But this was not the time to worry about such things. She returned to her task. The ALA men outside had taken cover, but many of them had done so very sloppily. Smiling to herself, she set out to demonstrate to them the error of their ways. With her sniper rifle, she was Death in the form of a beautiful, red-headed girl. Anything she could see, she could hit, and anything she could hit, she could kill, or at least wound very badly.
Robert was clearly enjoying himself. He fired on semi-automatic, again and again, and every time he squeezed his trigger, he hit his target. Daphne approved completely. I like a man who's a good marksman...she thought, with the small part of her mind that wasn't taken up with making sure the other side stayed back until it was time for her and her friends to evacuate the area.
Fred Jones
At Daphne's warning, Fred yelled to the others: "Let's wrap this up as fast as we can, people! The other side's starting to take a hand in this situation!" He looked around. To his delight, he saw that one of the doors was marked as going to a garage, and where there was a garage, he figured there would be vehicles they could use.
Jed Eckert
Jed and his companions had done all the damage they could do to the missiles' guidance systems. They had started to work on some of the missiles' solid propellants. "Setting this stuff off will really make things go up with a bang!" said Danny.
Jed had to agree. He knew enough about missiles to know that they were all very prone to explosions if something went wrong with their propellants. He just hoped that he and his team mates could get well clear before the big explosions began.
Matt and Danny pulled out primers and fuses, working them into the main charges. The explosives they were using were hard to detonate by themselves, but with the primers, they'd go off very well. Jed imagined the explosions that would happen, and felt his lips twist in what nobody sane would have called a smile.
Once the charges were placed, the Wolverines attached timers. They wanted to get clear before the huge explosion, after all. Jed whistled loudly. "Daphne! Robert! Aardvark! Velma! Toni! Erica! It's time to get going!"
Toni and Erica came running in, carrying bags full of documents. "We didn't know what these were, but our side will probably want to see them!"
"Good! Get over by the door. Come on, the rest of you! Time's passing fast here!" Jed set the charges to go off in fifteen minutes. He figured they could get clear in that time, if nothing went wrong.
"Stoi!" At that word, Jed whirled, to find himself staring into a face he'd never wanted to see again.
Vladimir Bratchenko
Bratchenko had been heading for his quarters, to get caught up on the endless paperwork, when shots and shouts alerted him that something had gone wrong. Following a soldier's instinct, he had run for the trouble, cursing his subordinates. He thought that once again, the ALA had got into a big brawl.
The ALA men he had to work with were ill-disciplined despite the best he could do. He only had so many of them, and getting new recruits was difficult at best, so he couldn't be as free with imprisonments and executions as he would have been in the Soviet Union.
Instinctively, he headed toward where the missiles themselves were. He and his technicians were well on the way to figuring out how to fire them, and he figured that even without nuclear warheads, he could give the American fascists some very nasty surprises.
When he burst into the room, he stared, wide-eyed with horror. The missiles were vandalized and would never fly. Their delicate nose cones, with the electronics needed to guide them, were shattered and ruined, and he could see that they'd been wired with explosives to make the solid fuel go off uncontrollably. And standing there, big as life, were the very pests he had hoped had been left behind in Calumet!
"You!" he screamed. "You drove me out of Calumet! You ruined my life! You DIE!" He raised his pistol and fired wildly.
Jed Eckert
At the sight of General Bratchenko, Jed instinctively ducked, bringing up his AK to return the Red general's fire. The short rifle was more accurate than Bratchenko's pistol, and he scored some hits, sending the Russian to the ground with a scream.
"Come on! We've got to get out of here!" Jed yelled. Daphne and Robert came running down the stairs, and Robert's eyes went wide to see who Jed had shot. Jed started the timers on the explosive charges. They had twenty minutes before all hell would break loose.
"There's a truck in the garage! Get in! We've got to split before they bring down the whole garrison on us!" Suiting action to words, Jed ran over to the door leading to the garage, and most of the others followed him. They found a truck big enough to hold all of them, and piled in. Jed looked around. "Okay, we're ready to go...but where's Robert?"
"And Shaggy?" asked Fred. "And Scooby and Velma?"
Vladimir Bratchenko
General Bratchenko was on the floor, agony racing through him. The Wolverine's bullets had caught him in the pelvis, and he could barely move his legs. He howled in pain, and opened his eyes to find himself staring at two Americans. One of them was skinny and rather long-haired, the other more nondescript.
The nondescript one leaned down, his face twisted in a demonic leer. "Good day, General," he said, in surprisingly good Russian. "My name is Robert Morris." He gestured to the tall, skinny American. "This is Norville Rogers, but everybody calls him Shaggy."
"Hello," said the one called Shaggy. "This is our dog. His name is Scooby." A huge Great Dane leaned forward, growling and showing its teeth. "And Scooby's hungry!" Switching to English, he snapped: "Dinnertime, Scooby!"
The dog latched onto Bratchenko's lower right leg, and he could not believe how hard it bit, or how much it hurt. He screamed and screamed, until merciful unconsciousness claimed him.
Jed Eckert
Jed jumped out of the driver's seat of the truck, to look for his friends. He could hear gunfire, and hoped they were all right. The first thing he saw when he went back into the main building was Robert and Shaggy, encouraging Scooby to tear the leg off the Russian general.
"Enough! Come on, let's go! We can't waste time!" At that, Scooby looked up, looking comically disappointed, with blood all over his muzzle.
"No more?" Scooby asked.
"No more! Come on! Where the hell are Velma and Aardvark?"
Velma came stumbling in, loaded down with a huge satchel, supporting Aardvark. Behind them, he could see flames dancing in the room they'd been in.
"Velma! Get your ass into that truck in the garage, now! Shaggy, Robert, help Aardvark!" At his command, the others leaped into action, grabbing the wounded Aardvark and putting his arms over their shoulders, as all of them ran for the truck. Once the whole team was in, Jed stabbed the starter, and the engine roared to life. He threw the truck into gear and charged out of the garage.
Outside, it was chaos. ALA men ran around like headless chickens, shooting at each other and at any Warsaw Pact troops that tried to interfere. Since he was driving one of their trucks, Jed was able to get a ways away before the main missile storage started going up, but when it did, it rocked the truck and lit the night with a light brighter than daylight. Screaming, ALA men and Soviet soldiers dropped to the ground, knocked down by the shock waves. As Jed tore off into the night, he could see a huge mushroom cloud of flame rising over the Soviets' headquarters.