Title: In the Eye of the Storm, Ch. 33
(The Pursuit of Weapon X, part 4 – Captured!)
Author: W6C Email: wolverine6claws
Dated: 12/17/2021
Rated: NC-17 for violence
Summary: The X-Men pull themselves together after the battle at their home. Wraith and Weapons Plus close in on Wolverine and Sabretooth. Meanwhile, Dr Maier readies the troops to bring down Weapon X to take him back to the compound, known as The Spa.
Disclaimer: Don't own the ones you recognize, Marvel does. Except for a few not-so-famous OCC's; such as Dr. Devan Maier, Dr. Roger Lindsay, Dr. Felicia Russ, Dr. John Carlton, Dr. Sid Garra, Dr. James Godin and Professor Eichmann, and future to-be-named supporting characters, they're mine and so is this story. No disrespect ever intended to Marvel or the X-Men. No profit made on this story.
Wraith exited his trailer and marched toward the waiting helicopter that had set down in the field a few hundred yards from the convoy. As he moved swiftly toward the large evac helo a soldier ran up to him and handed him a GPS locator that showed three red dots on an electronic diagram of the surrounding area including buildings, roads and waterways. The readout showed the distance from the locator to the three targets. He nodded a dismissal to the soldier and the combat readied trooper ran back to the convoy to get ready for an impending assault.
His targets were nearly ten miles out and he needed to get the convoy closer to them before he attempted extraction. It made little sense to teleport the trio from where he would find them and have no place to teleport them.
He swiped his finger across the screen of the locator and it panned in the chosen direction to show him a map of the area. A few more swipes and he had a good idea of where he wanted the convoy to stage for the final move. He reached for the radio in his left chest pocket and keyed it.
"Wraith to Convoy Lead."
"Convoy Lead, go ahead, Colonel," came a voice in reply.
"Proceed to highway marker 2-5-1 and stage there. I want the Suite set up and ready when I make my move."
"Roger that, Colonel. Convoy Lead proceeding to marker 2-5-1. Good luck, sir."
Wraith gave a nod as he thought about how much luck they were going to need if this was going to go off without further casualties or fatalities. He crossed the dark field to the waiting helicopter, climbed into the personnel compartment and donned a headset as he took a seat before fastening his safety belt. "Go to whisper mode," he ordered the pilots and the sound of the rotors damped down to near silent. "Let's go." On his order the aircraft powered up and lifted off the ground. A moment later he was watching the convoy below moving out as he had ordered. By the time he got close enough to the escaping ferals to extract them, the convoy should have closed the distance enough for him to deposit them in the cages set up for them.
As the invading troops began to retreat the X-Men inside the mansion took stock of each other and the damage caused to their home. Hank watched from the library window as the soldiers who were still able to walk away helped their wounded comrades back to the large military convoy parked haphazardly on the front lawn. He noted that the "no man left behind" rule of all military branches was not being adhered to as those retreating had no issue in leaving their fallen where they lay.
He turned from the window to check on the professor who was now speaking with Piotr. The power to the mansion had been cut during the invasion and they stood in the darkened room, catching their breath and taking stock of the damage as the glow of the headlights outside swept across the room as the vehicles moved out.
"Everyone, check in, please," Charles sent out the telepathic message to his X-Men. The reports came in quickly but in an orderly fashion as each team gave him a sit-rep from their locations inside the mansion.
Cyclops took advantage of the telepathic connection Xavier had created to speak to his team. "Everyone do a quick sweep of each floor to be sure we're clear. We don't want any surprises. Then rendezvous in the Danger Room."
Each team acknowledged the order and swept the floors to be sure they were completely clear of any lingering intruders. There were broken windows on every floor and in every wing of the mansion; overturned furniture and broken vases, but no one had been injured or killed. The X-Men gathered in the Danger Room and once everyone arrived, they discussed their next action plan.
The black ops helicopter flew low over the trees, its engine's whisper mode turned the aircraft into a blackened ghostly specter in the night sky. Anyone on the ground who might happen to look up to the stars at just the right moment would see the large black dot blocking out those stars for a brief moment. A blast of wind from the rotor's down draft would throw them off balance for a moment and leave them wondering if their minds were playing a trick on them. As the spectator panned the skies for the unidentified flying object the helo would already be out of sight and then shrugged off as an imagination playing games.
Wraith sat near the open door and watched the treetops below him thrash about under the onslaught of the rotor wash. His mind went back to decades past to a memory of the team he used to be a part of completing a mission in Germany. The label "team" was used quite loosely back then…. Well, things hadn't changed all that much, not for him anyway. Sabretooth had always been a loose-cannon; Wolverine was always a rebel and balked at nearly every command he was given; Fox was a distraction and Maverick was, well, a maverick. With all of those personality issues and a truckload of disdain for the company they worked for, Team X still got the job done.
He was the team's extraction man and quite often he deliberately left the team hanging out to dry. They took a lot more hits than they ever really had to simply because he chose to not be at the extraction zone in time to evacuate them. And that alone caused enough trust issues within a team whose players had sociopathic issues with trusting anyone to begin with. The memory of those times caused a smile to spread across Wraith's face; God he hated mutants; the fact that he was one didn't seem to faze him as he made a living and had a reputation for his willingness to target his own kind. He looked down at the GPS in his hand; less than five miles out now and the three dots on the screen were still in close proximity to one another which made his job easier. Two were in close proximity to each other and the third was standing a short distance away on its own.
"Hnh," he grunted thoughtfully; wondering if the two dots circling each other on his screen was an indication that Creed and Logan were going at it again and the third dot was the Guardian waiting for his opening… or were the spinning dots the Guardian having an altercation with one of the ferals; if so, which one? He stared at the dot standing its ground a short distance away from the other two – that had to be Wolverine. He never could bring himself to run away from a fight.
Logan set his stance as he stared into the tree line. Their scents were being carried on the slight breeze; the platoon was still a short distance away, but the nearly silent sound of their footfalls moving steadily closer were those of highly disciplined soldiers who moved with purpose. He turned his attention back to the sky above him to check on Sabretooth's progress. Creed was still in a close-combat grappling match with the winged X-Man about twelve feet off the ground.
He turned his attention back to the dark forest around him as the sounds of footfalls continued to get louder. A shrill cry of pain above him echoed through the night and Logan looked up as a dozen or more white feathers fluttered down around him. The battling mutants above him came crashing to the ground a couple yards away from where he stood as Victor had torn out nearly all of Angel's flight feathers on his left wing and was still holding a fistful of them as he landed with a nasty thud.
Victor landed on top of Angel with his full weight knocking the breath out of the turned X-Man. He jumped to his feet as soon as he landed to stand shoulder to shoulder with Logan. As he came to stand next to Wolverine, Logan looked at him and then down at his hands. Victor looked down too, to see he was still clutching mounds of feathers in his clawed hands. He looked at Logan and tilted his head as if giving a shrug and opened his hands to let the feathers fall to the ground. Some of them were caught on the night breeze and fluttered away before being caught by the branches of nearby scrub brush.
Angel was exhausted and overcome with pain; not just from having his wings destroyed, but also from Sabretooth's three hundred and fifty pounds landing on him and breaking more than a few of his hollow bird-like bones. He lay on the ground nearby in shock, unable to focus any longer on the mission at hand.
"You should have run when I told you," Victor told Logan.
"I'm tired of runnin'," Logan replied.
Victor took a long deep breath and readied himself for the imminent onslaught. The two ferals sniffed at the air around them and, as they followed the scents, they ended up turning themselves completely around and realized they were surrounded. They stood back to back and prepared to defend themselves.
The convoy of trucks and trailers pulled into a field just off Highway Marker 251 as ordered. Soldiers and staff of the Weapons Plus program exited the vehicles and began preparations to receive Weapon X. Two very heavily armed soldiers were positioned inside the trailer known as The Suite, but they stood outside the large holding cage. A dozen more armed troops were positioned around the perimeter of the trailer.
Professor Maier was inside the Suite, watching the monitors that showed the position of the mutants and Wraith's ground troops. They were closing in on the targets. It wouldn't be long now. Dr. Russ was sitting beside Dr. Godin at the bank of monitors; she felt excited and nervous all at once with the realization that she was finally going to meet this man known as Weapon X face to face.
Back at the mansion, the X-Men had taken stock of each other and determined that no one had been seriously injured. There were a few cuts from shards of glass flying through the air, but other than that they had come out of a potentially fatal ambush virtually unscathed.
"We have to find Logan!" Storm demanded before Cyclops had a chance to direct the team.
"We'll find him," Scott assured her. "Two teams. Blue Team will be Storm, Nightcrawler, Rogue and Jean; Gold Team will be myself, Beast, Colossus, Iceman and Gambit. Blue Team, you're our fliers… we need your eyes in the sky. Report anything you see. Gold Team, we're on the ground… we're going after that convoy. Nightcrawler knows where he dropped them off. Start there. We'll rendezvous at the convoy. We'll let you know when we find them."
"There's only one road out of here for the next five miles," Bobby pointed out. "After that there are two roads they can take. If they split up, it makes our job a little harder."
"Well, then we better find them before they do," Scott replied. "Let's move!" The two teams split up; the Blue Team headed for the back of the mansion and the forest beyond where Kurt had transported Victor and Logan. The Gold Team ran out the front of the mansion, taking advantage of the broken out windows and headed for the garage to load up into two of the armored SUVs in the X-Men's fleet of military style vehicles. Scott paused long enough to turn to Charles. "We'll get him. We'll bring him home."
Charles nodded, looking at Scott with an expression of great concern, daring to hope for the best. Scott nodded and ran out to catch the vehicles heading down the driveway. He couldn't even assist them in locating Logan telepathically because of Wolverine's innate ability to block out mutant "mind benders", as Logan called them. This was just another situation that proved that ability to be a hindrance to the X-Men in their many attempts to try to save him from his enemies over the years.
The first things Logan and Victor saw clearly were the dozens of flashlight beams shining through the trees, but they were still quite a distance away; at least 1,000 meters he figured. The light beams were red and green, so as not to allow the white light of a regular bulb to give away their positions; but they were hunting mutants who had the visual acuity that spanned far beyond those of regular humans; the green and red beams shown like neon in the darkness for both Wolverine and Sabretooth. The lights bobbed up and down and pointed in different directions as the person holding it moved through the trees toward them. The two mutants looked in every direction to see the same lights closing in on them. The lights were so bright that the combined beams lit up the forest around them like daylight; exposing themselves and their teammates' positions to their quarry. As the soldiers drew up on them, Logan and Victor had to close their sensitive eyes as they were nearly blinded by the numerous beams now pointed directly at them.
Logan felt as though he was being blinded right through his eyelids, there was no way he was going to be able to open his eyes. He was certain that Victor also had to deal with the situation in the same manner. What the soldiers didn't seem to realize though, was that neither mutant needed to be able to see in order to defend themselves. Using their keen sense of smell and hearing, they could pinpoint where each soldier stood as keenly as a bat uses sonar to determine position and distance. In Logan's case he also had the keen sensitivity of touch to assist him.
They knew when the signal was given to halt as every footfall ceased. The flashlight beams remained fixed on the two mutants and Logan was certain it was deliberately done to keep them blinded. They knew when the hand signal was given to advance, when they could clearly hear the footfalls of only two soldiers moving closer to them. Logan figured these were the two luckless bastards who were assigned to put shackles on two of the most physically powerful mutants alive.
As the two soldiers moved up in front of the mutants, they halted as both mutants turned their heads to face them directly; wondering how they knew precisely where each of them was standing was baffling as the two platoons of soldiers were keeping them blinded. Victor towered over the soldier in front of him so he bowed his head as if looking directly at the man and snarled at him. A low rumbling growl froze the man's blood. Logan's soldier stood about eight inches taller than he so he had to tilt his head upward and shifted his body to his right to face the man directly; he curled his lips back to bare his fangs and released his claws. The soldier dropped the shackles as he stumbled backward in surprise.
"You are surrounded," the platoon leader called out. "We are heavily armed and there is no way for you to escape. Stand down."
Victor shot an arm out; claws readied, and caught the closest soldier to him across the face. The man let out a scream and dropped the shackles he had been holding. He clutched the side of his face with both hands as blood poured out of the wounds. Another soldier ran forward to pull his teammate back away from the mutants, as he seemed to have frozen in pain and terror.
Sabretooth had drawn first blood and Logan took his cue. He leapt off his position toward the soldiers to his right as Victor lunged in the opposite direction.
"Fire!" one of the platoon leaders shouted and just as the first rounds were fired Victor and Logan hit the dirt. Two of the rounds found Logan as he dove to the ground. He let out a grunt as he felt the impact and heard Victor let out a loud growl, knowing he'd caught a round or two as well.
The remaining rounds fired took down their fellow soldiers as they were all standing in a big circle surrounding the mutants. One thing Logan and Victor knew from their years of war experience was never to completely surround your target in a fire fight. The immediate first burst of fire took down a dozen or more troops and the platoon leader realized his mistake.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" he shouted, waving his hand over his head in an up and down motion; giving the visual signal for those who couldn't hear him and the weapons fire ceased.
The air was filled with the pungent odor of nitroglycerin and graphite and Logan's brain subconsciously compared that acrid smell to that of the brimstone left behind in the wake of his pal, Nightcrawler's, teleportations.
"Medic! Medic!" multiple voices shouted from all directions.
As Logan lay on the ground, trying to heal the two gunshot wounds in his belly, a boot slammed him in the face. "You did that on purpose!" shouted an angry voice. Another kick caught him in the chest.
"Stand down, Soldier!" It was the same voice Logan had heard give the command to fire. "You strike that prisoner one more time I'll bring you up on charges!"
That last caught Logan by surprise. Did these troops even know what they were doing? Did they know why they were on this mission? Before he had a chance to really figure out who he was dealing with here, the sound of a helicopter became loud overhead. The helo was still in whisper mode but to Logan's ears it wasn't. He opened his eyes to squint at the dark sky but realized the helo was still a distance away.
"Logan," Victor ground out between clenched teeth as he rolled onto his side. He got to his hands and knees and paused as a weird sensation came over him.
Logan had also made it to his hands and knees and looked at Victor just as he too felt an odd sensation. It was as if the air around him was vibrating. He paused for a moment and realized the air around him was actually shimmering as if the light beams around him were being bent out of shape. He remembered this from his past and realized what it was.
"Oh, fuck," they said in unison and a second later they both vanished.
Storm, Rogue and Jean took to the air immediately while Kurt teleported ahead to the first stop he'd made with his passengers. He could feel Jean's mental touch in his head, which kept an open link between the four team members and he relayed his position to them. Jean nodded, pointing Storm and Rogue to the proper direction and the three women made excellent time; covering the three miles that separated them from Nightcrawler within minutes.
When Jean let him know that they were above his position, Kurt gave a nod and teleported to the next stop, again relaying his position to Jean. When he materialized in the small field there was no sign of Logan or Creed and he didn't have the same type of super senses that Wolverine had so he had no idea in which direction they had gone. He hoped they had continued in the direction he had chosen for them away from the mansion.
Kurt turned in the direction he was certain Victor would have gone, taking Wolverine with him kicking and screaming if he had to. In a burst of smoke and the odor of brimstone left behind, Nightcrawler teleported a short distance from the previous site. He knew Logan was injured and probably not moving as swiftly as he normally would so he didn't want to keep teleporting three miles out at a time because he may port right past them.
On his second short jump, he heard voices shouting not too far from where he stood. He relayed the information to Jean and then spotted something silver gleaming in the moonlight from behind a bush nearby. He walked over to it cautiously, not knowing if it might be a weapon aimed at him.
As he closed the distance he gained confidence that it wasn't a weapon, because someone would have shouted for him to halt – "wouldn't they?" He walked right up to the bush and reached over it and he blinked at the silver object. It was one of Logan's crutches. Kurt looked behind the bush and could see the other crutch lying in the dirt so he dropped the one he was holding back there with it and looked around.
Kurt looked around him in every direction. The crutches were obviously slowing Logan down so he'd ditched them – "or was it for another reason?" Kurt wondered. He'd been friends with Logan for more than two decades – "what would Wolverine do?" he asked himself silently. "He'd track his prey," Kurt realized and looked at the ground.
His yellow eyes allowed him to have pretty decent night vision, although nowhere near as acute as Logan's, but enough for him to easily see the circular indentations the heels of the crutches left in the soft soil. It was an unnatural shape in the wild, Kurt remembered from some of the tracking lessons Logan had given him over the years. That particular lesson also happened to be included in his evade and escape training; so Kurt and the other students would understand what sorts of things trackers are looking for when they're hunting you.
Kurt noted that the circular markings stopped at the spot where the crutches were stashed, so he searched for other clues. He moved slowly in the same direction the marks had been going and he saw it… Logan had taught them well. There was an unusual lifting of the leaves and pine needles that left what looked like a drag mark on the forest floor. "Logan's injured leg", Kurt realized. Wolverine was dragging his wounded leg and it left a distinctive furrow in the leaves every few feet as he tried to lift the injured limb from the ground. "I love you, mein freund," Kurt whispered and ran in that direction, following the drag marks and gaining ground on the voices shouting up ahead.
He kept Jean and the others clued in to his whereabouts and that he'd found tracks leading him to Logan. Rogue hovered overhead to keep Kurt in sight below her and to offer him a lookout from a high point. Jean and Storm flew ahead, keeping a distance between them in order to cover more ground and to try to spot the ferals below.
An odd sound ahead of them made Jean and Storm slow to a stop. They looked to one another and Jean shook her head, signaling she didn't know what that sound was. They moved ahead slowly and then they saw it – a black helicopter and the strange sound was its whisper mode in operation.
Storm's anger flared as did her fear; realizing the Weapons Plus teams must have spotted Logan and Victor below. She picked up speed, flying straight toward the helo at break neck speed. Jean was a second behind her in reacting to what they saw and she tried to catch up to the Weather Witch.
Wraith's airship had gotten within the distance he needed to teleport the three mutants out of the forest. He had to concentrate hard to teleport that many at once. It was one thing to teleport them from a distant location to his location, such as aboard the helo, as he used to do when he was their evac man back in the day. It was a totally different situation when he had to teleport someone or multiple someones to a third location, which was what he was attempting to do now.
He was standing in the open door of the Blackhawk helicopter with one hand on the door frame bracing himself as if he was expecting to pick up an immense physical weight. The other hand was stretched out in the direction of the forest below him. He pulled all of his physical and electrical energy into the core of his being and then re-directed that energy to his fingertips. As he focused all his concentration on the figures below his fingers began to tingle and he knew that meant he was succeeding in his attempt to extricate the three targets.
His fingertips began to burn with the cold energy exchange that told him he was now holding the mutants in the fourth dimension. Usually during teleportation, the subject would pass through that dimension in the blink of an eye and instantly reappear in another location. The problem here was that Wraith's helo was out of range of the convoy for him to simply teleport them the three miles distance which was his limit; identical to Nightcrawler's ability. So Wraith had to hold them in that dimension long enough to get closer to the convoy before he could complete the maneuver.
"I have them! Return to the convoy!" he shouted into the microphone of his headset and the Blackhawk did a 180 and headed back toward the staging area. As the helicopter rotated the pilot caught sight of the X-Men's fliers coming at them. "Two bogies at twelve o'clock!" the pilot reported over the radio.
"Take evasive action!" Wraith shouted back, not knowing what those bogies were. Were they missiles, jets, other helicopters?
Storm slowed as the helicopter spun around and stopped, facing in her direction. She noticed an odd shimmering anomaly hovering outside the open cargo bay door. That was a curious sight and it drew her attention long enough for the Blackhawk to nearly fly right into her. She shot to the right to evade the collision and turned in air to watch the retreating chopper. She and Jean searched the ground below for a quick moment and then realized that Logan and Creed had to be in the helicopter. So they took off after it.
"Rogue, Kurt! There's a black helicopter coming your way fast! We think they have Wolverine and Sabretooth on board!" Jean informed her teammates who were still behind them tracking the ground.
"I see it!" Rogue's voice immediately replied. The Blackhawk was on her just as she finished speaking and passed by her at speeds she'd never seen before from a military helicopter. "I'm going after it!" she shouted out loud. She flew like a rocket, catching up to the covert air ship within seconds.
Wraith saw her just off the tail and shouted into his radio mike, "Get some guns up here! We've got bogies on our tail!" He was immediately joined by two heavily armed soldiers who began firing in Rogue's direction but keeping in mind not to shoot off the tail of the helo.
Jean and Storm caught up to them a few minutes later and put up their own shields to ward off the large caliber bullets being fired at them.
As they neared the staging area where the convoy was waiting, the pilot radioed to Wraith. "We have crossed the three mile threshold, Colonel."
With that knowledge, Wraith focused his mind on the trailer containing the adamantium cage inside. He directed the three energy sources he was holding in the fourth dimension toward that trailer and let them go.
Inside the Suite, there was a loud burst as if a flash bang grenade had been triggered as the air inside the trailer was displaced by the sudden addition of new occupants. Everyone inside the trailer flinched and ducked, not knowing that sound meant their quarry had been obtained. Dr. Maier, Russ and Godin turned to see the Guardian laid out on the floor near their feet, his wings mangled and bleeding. Dr. Maier's eyes lit up as he focused inside the cage to see Sabretooth and… Weapon X, lying in a heap on the floor. He wasn't sure if the mutants had been injured or were just disoriented from Wraith's teleportation. The grin on his face widened, never turning into a smile, but resembling a nasty sneer and the sparkle in his eyes was anything but joyful.
