1
In the absence of any other intel, Stalker liked to trust his gut. Rare was the time when his Ranger instincts steered him wrong, and it looked like tonight would not be an exception.
In the briefing, hours before, Hawk had almost seemed- Stalker hesitated to use the word sheepish, the man was his commanding officer and founder of the G.I. Joe initiative; when he spoke, even casually, he did so with no less than the authority of Old Testament God. But even he was beholden to higher forces that he didn't necessarily agree with and Stalker knew him well enough to hear a small amount of discomfort when he outlined the mission parameters.
Breaker had been monitoring enemy chatter which suggested Cobra activity in downtown Akron, Ohio. It wasn't anything specific, just an overheard codeword here and there on known terrorist frequencies that suggested more than the usual baseline enemy comings and goings: Enough to perk up some ears upstairs, but not enough to expend a full compliment to investigate.
"And that's the problem," Hawk said, gesturing to the map on the huge briefing room screen, "downtown Akron is a big place, and we have no idea what Cobra would want in the area. You're a good soldier, Lonzo, but you can't be everywhere at once."
Stalker nodded and flipped through the briefing folder that Breaker had prepared. Like the Colonel had said, it was rife with possibilities, none of which stood out as being the logical target.
"My thought is that this is a waste of your time," Hawk continued, "I'm going to tell the higher ups that-"
"The museum," Stalker said, "That's what they're going to hit."
In any other military organization, interrupting the commanding officer, let alone a Colonel, would be insubordination. But G.I. Joe was different: Hawk had picked his men and women not just because of their training, but because of their strong opinions. And he made it clear from the outset that if they had something to say to him, they should come out and say it. Joe operatives were given an amount of autonomy that would make an officer in the regular army blanch.
"You're sure about that?" asked Hawk.
With Hawk's gaze now fixed on him Stalker's posture involuntarily stiffened. He was tall; lean but athletic. Like all on-duty Joe operatives, he was fully decked out for combat: Loose fitting camo pants, a snug matching sweater, and a web belt. A green beret adorned his head. In spite of the relaxed rules on the G.I. Joe team he wore his hair regulation length. A neatly trimmed, almost ethereally symmetrical moustache was his only indulgence, "Sure as I can be. There are no eminent scientists working in Akron right now, and as far as I can see from this intelligence there's no experimental military weapons being tested."
"True on both counts, but why the museum?"
"Cobra has three main MOs: Two of which are scientist kidnapping and stealing secret weapons. Take those off the table and what are you left with?"
Hawk nodded, "Artifacts."
Stalker allowed himself a slight smile, "Cobra Commander does love his bric-a-brac."
It was true. Cobra Commander, like many mentally unbalanced people, had an unhealthy obsession with the occult. However while most seekers of the arcane would settle for buying a nice crystal at the psychic fair every now and again, he had the most powerful private army in the world at his disposal, and the will to use it. He would think nothing of levelling half of Ohio if he thought he could get his hands on an amulet that controlled dragon ghosts, for example.
"Could still be a lot of other reasons for Cobra to make a stop in Akron," Hawk tilted his head, "if they show at all. This could be a waste of everyone's time. We're doing a big operation in Paris, seems Cobra is using mind controlled snakes to steal art treasures or plant bombs or some nonsense. We could use you there. Do you really think there's something to this?"
"Got a feeling is all," Stalker replied.
"Then you've got the job," the Colonel was already strapping on his helmet as he turned to leave, "But if it turns out to be a wild goose chase you owe me a Yo-Joe Cola."
Now Stalker watched as a baker's dozen Cobra infantry and Major Bludd, big as life, strutted down the main corridor of the Akron Museum of Natural History. During normal business hours it might have looked like they were taking the afternoon tour.
The good news was he'd just saved himself fifty cents.
With each step the soldier's polished boots produced a sharp click: Like fancy Italian shoes, or a lady's high heels. Not a manly sound for your boots to make, in the Ranger's opinion: Made them seem vulnerable.
Boots aside, each man was fully armed with the usual compliment of Cobra laser rifles and frag grenades, so they were prepared to throw down. Although given their sloppy formation, Stalker surmised that they weren't expecting whole lot of resistance. And even with him here, they still weren't going to get much.
The G.I. Joe team currently boasted a force of fifty infantry supporting ten specialists like himself, and that number was growing every day. Despite those numbers, they were still finding themselves spread pretty thin.
Cobra swelled their ranks by feeding on society's disenfranchised, angry, frustrated, or just plain greedy: Commodities that were in ample supply. They told them what they wanted to hear, promised them what they thought they deserved, and converted them with disturbing swiftness. Cobra cells were cropping up in more and more places, their attacks becoming bolder.
None of this fazed Stalker, he believed in his team. He'd been hand picked by Hawk, and he was responsible for hand picking some of the recruits in turn. He had no doubts about their capabilities to handle any situation, anytime, anywhere. But right now the odds were stacked fourteen to one in the enemy's favour. As soon as he'd seen them, he had activated the signalling device on his web belt for backup. There was a Joe installation not too far from his location. It was lightly manned, G.I. Joe had ten active operations at the moment, including the Paris snake bomb thing, but Stalker knew they'd send whoever they could, as soon as they could. It was best to hang back and observe for the time being.
Besides, part of his orders had been to find out the focus of Cobra's newfound interest in natural history, and the best way to do that was to let them lead the way for now.
Major Sebastian Bludd, ensconced in the centre of the formation of blue-garbed soldiers, carried himself like a caffeinated jackal. His movements were swift, deliberate, and constant. His gaze never settled on one thing for long before flicking onto something else, on constant vigil for the next threat to his person. The product of a lifetime of well-earned paranoia.
He wore armor that covered his chest and back as well as a piece that ran from his hand to his shoulder. On his head was a flared helmet, dark gray. An incident not included in his dossier had cost him his left eye, and a patch now hid the damage from the world. The biker mustache that framed his sneering lips completed his resemblance to a b-movie space pirate. His theatrical appearance was deceptive, however: Major Bludd was a psychopath with a capital Psycho, who employed killing as a problem solving method the way most people used snide comments. He'd murder a close colleague with neither a second thought nor the slightest spike in his pulse rate. Passionless and efficient, he was an ideal mercenary.
In his armored hand he held a small device, a box about the size of an adding machine. Stalker didn't have a good angle from where he was, but he could make out a soft yellow glow emanating from it, flickering at an even interval, and accompanied by an electronic tone.
"So whatever they're tracking gives off a measurable trace." Stalker intoned, "That's never good news."
That meant that whatever their target was giving off, be it radiation, magnetism, or martian brain waves, made it more than just some glassy bauble. It whispered of the possibility that this wasn't one of the many dead ends pursued by the Commander in his quest for a supernatural edge. Whatever it was, this tchotchke stood a chance of actually doing something.
And that was reason enough to keep Cobra's sticky hands off of it.
The Major and his cohorts made a sharp left, through a passageway that led into one of the museum's large atrium spaces. This one was currently hosting an archaeology exhibit, with the products of many digs from around the world. Artifacts it was, then.
Stalker waited until they were all inside, then darted from behind the pillar he'd been hiding behind. Three long strides took him to the entrance, where he flattened himself against the adjoining wall and risked a peek inside.
The circular room was cavernous, as it would have to be to contain the variety of attractions that were displayed there. There were several alcoves at even intervals around the room's walls, each containing a diorama of the place where the respective artifacts had been unearthed. Scattered throughout the rest of the room were various items of interest, ranging in size and shape from a small collection of jewelry to a full-sized horse drawn cart.
Bludd had stopped in front of a display case near the back of the room, his escort arranged themselves around him in a semicircle, facing outwards. Stalker moved closer, careful to position himself to assure that he wasn't spotted. He took advantage of a flaw in the trooper's helmet design: The wide base and swept-forward sides of their headgear reduced their peripheral vision to nearly nothing: A huge disadvantage perpetrated in the name of style, a theme which recurred in many aspects of the Cobra organization. The bright electric blue of their uniforms was another one. True, they looked great on the battlefield, but they also looked great when you were about a mile away from the battlefield looking at them through a rifle scope. Intimidating, but they stuck out like a sore thumb in almost any combat situation. Rumor had it that Cobra Commander had commissioned a famous European fashion designer to create them, Stalker couldn't remember which one. If it were true, he hoped it wasn't the same guy who designed any of his fine suits.
From where he was, the Ranger could see the case's contents. Carvings, mostly: All small and fairly unassuming. Major Bludd gingerly set the tracking device on the top of the display, and then put a gauntlet-clad fist through the glass. He extracted one of the carvings and held it up to examine it.
"Doesn't look like much, does it boys?" Bludd's shrill Australian twang grated on Stalker's ears, but he had to agree that the man had a point: The carving, a spearhead made of amethyst with some decorative carving near the base, was remarkably unremarkable.
None of Bludd's men responded, which was smart on their part as the Major was not enamoured of small talk. He was more interested in hearing the sound of his own voice, the why of which was a mystery to Stalker. If he sounded like that, he'd take every opportunity to shut up.
The mercenary shrugged, "Well either way, I get paid. Let's get this back to the head snake,"
Bludd tucked the spearhead into a compartment in his belt, then gestured for his men to move out. It looked like he couldn't wait any longer for the cavalry, Stalker would have to keep them occupied for a few minutes, hopefully not getting killed in the process.
In one smooth motion, honed from years of training, the Ranger sprung up from his hiding place behind a dugout canoe, pivoted, and fired.
"Yo Joe!"
His battle cry reached the Cobra infantry's ears a split second before the laser concussion fire cut into their midst. The beam's sound, a metallic twang like taut steel cables being struck, filled the air as the darkened corridor was illuminated by red lightning. Two of the point men went down in a hail of neon. Bludd himself nearly took out a third as he reeled and fired in Stalker's direction, barely missing the Cobra's face as he unleashed a barrage of blue energy bolts into the primitive water craft, sending splinters flying in all directions. The other troopers who were able joined in, quickly reducing the wooden vessel to a charred silhouette on the marble floor.
By that time, however, Stalker was long gone. Three long strides and a quick tuck and roll put him in a nearby wildlife diorama simulating the forests of Northern Oregon, complete with fiberglass trees and a couple of taxidermy bears. Ensconced in the artificial foliage, he felt very much at home.
His swiftness, combined with the smoke, sparks, and fire of the Cobra canoe assault made his escape impossible for the enemy infantry or Bludd to follow.
"Did we get them?" the trooper furthest out asked, his voice unsteady with adrenaline.
"No, they're still out there," another said, "Anyone get a count on how many?"
"They took down three of our guys," a third reported, "Has to be at team of at least two or three of them."
"There ain't but one Joe out there," Bludd snarled, "else you'd all be dead right now."
One of the casualties on the floor was stirring, he groaned softly, "My leg. I-I think I need first aid."
The other two were also still alive, flesh wounds in their knees and thighs would immobilize them, but they could recover. Stalker made it a habit to never shoot to kill Cobra's infantry if he could help it: They were frustrated, angry, and on the wrong path in life, but that didn't mean they couldn't change. Stalker had been in a similar situation himself many years ago, and he'd turned things around. Maybe it was overly optimistic of him, but he believed in second chances.
That philosophy didn't extend to Bludd. however: He'd lost some friends to the mercenary's lethal whims. If he got a decent bead on the swarthy Australian, he would take his head off without a second thought.
Bludd wasn't about to give him that chance, however. You didn't get as far in gun for hire business as Bludd had gotten, being as personally unpleasant as Bludd was, without knowing how to stay alive. The merc instinctually knew all the possible sightlines in the large room that Stalker could attack from, and he was being meticulously sure to stay out of them. He walked over to his fallen charge.
"Awww, you got a boo boo, mate? Let me kiss it better," Bludd delivered a sharp kick to the injured trooper's face, the toe of his boot shot through the opening of his helmet without so much as glancing off of the edges, impacting mightily with the soldier's T-zone. The man was instantly out cold.
"Now the rest of ya shut up, I'm trying to concentrate."
Bludd scanned the room, looking for any unusual movement he could plug a laserbeam into, "That was some nice shooting, but we still have you outnumbered, Joe, whoever you are. Why doncha step out into the light and we can have a chat?"
From Stalker's position any clean shot of Bludd was blocked by two of his men. They were frozen in place, terrified of incurring the wrath of the one-eyed man. As they nervously shifted their weight, the negative space between them gave fleeting almost-opportunities at a clean shot. If Stalker fired, he'd be giving away his hiding spot, which would a fair trade if that shot could take Bludd out of the human race once and for all. Unfortunately for the Joe, such an opportunity was not materializing. He could cut down the troopers that blocked him easily enough, but that would give Bludd more than enough chance to escape. That couldn't be allowed to happen.
"What's the problem? You shy? Come out now, and we won't kill you, I promise," Bludd said, "Make me wait and you'll be sorry."
At the moment, time was on the Ranger's side; reinforcements were on the way, and the mercenary couldn't step out into the potential line of fire without endangering himself: Something that was against every strand of Bludd's DNA. Stalemate.
"You know what, we don't have time for this," Bludd gestured in Stalker's general direction, "I'm pretty sure he's over there. Blast everything on that side of the room."
With that, the museum was bathed in blue light as remaining ten men opened fire. Their shooting was indiscriminate and spread out enough that Stalker was able to stand his ground, at least temporarily. He rolled to the side as a couple of bolts seared some of the nearby cedar chips that were being used to represent the forest floor of the Pacific Northwest, but they were firing at the other exhibits as much as they were at his. The Roman Colosseum exhibit in particular was taking a pounding.
Some of the plaster redwoods that surrounded Stalker were now bursting into flame, dropping their huge, fake limbs all around him; through the smoke and fire he could just make out Bludd behind his men; he wasn't firing along with them. Instead he was backing away, his head turning left and right like he was engrossed in a tennis match. His gaze latched onto something: A fire exit. Bludd was about to rabbit. Cavalry or not, Stalker had to go on the offensive. He knew, however, that as soon as he returned fire he would gave away his position: Then the light strafing that peppered his general vicinity would become a beam of glowing blue rage focussed on just him.
Best to make it count, then.
Stalker got himself from a prone to a ready position on one knee: As soon as he fired he'd have to bolt if he wanted to come out of this with all his body parts intact. His attackers didn't see the transition: Partially because the artificial Japanese Aralia shrub he'd chosen to hide behind perfectly matched his camouflage; but mostly because they were, for some reason, choosing to concentrate most of their fire on a nearby family of taxidermy bears.
Stalker blocked out the chaos around him; the shouting, fire, and laser bolts, took a breath, and fired. A glowing red finger of energy vectored out, slipping between two of the frontmost Cobra troopers and striking down one in the back row. Possibly not as lucky as his three associates, he went down like a 250 pound bag of Russet potatoes and was still. Stalker was through playing around.
The Cobras were too wrapped up in generating carnage to notice the latest of their pals to hit the ground. That was fortunate, it gave Stalker another second or two to do what he had to. He tried to ignore the cracking he heard directly above him. The artificial tree he had taken shelter under was starting to burn, and small bits of debris were already falling around him. It wouldn't be long before they were followed by larger chunks.
As the Joe had hoped, the eliminated Cobra soldier's absence created a small but significant space in their phalanx through which he could just see Bludd. The mercenary was nearing the fire exit now, moving at full sprint, preparing to throw himself through it. He had to bite back his disgust at the cowardice of Bludd abandoning his men to cover his escape: Such negativity might have affected his aim. He also attempted to ignore the massive creak he heard from overhead, it was followed by a snap and then awful silence. Something big had broken loose and was headed his way, no way to know how many seconds he had before it hit him. The shot he had wasn't perfect, Bludd's head, Stalker's ideal target, was blocked by one of the Cobra soldier's elbows. But the Major was headed left to right, and in just another split second, he'd have an ideal crack at-
"Dag!" Stalker cursed in spite of himself. A plaster tree branch, fully aflame, had fallen practically on top of him and he had to roll out of the way just as he was making the second shot. He'd compensated as best he could but he still fired wide a couple of millimeters, only grazing Bludd's helmet. It must have rung his bell a little bit, though, as the merc's head jerked to the side and he paused for just a moment at the door. The last Stalker saw of the Australian as he left the room was a crooked smirk and glib salute delivered over his shoulder.
And then the jig was up.
"He got Ray!"
"The shot came from over there!"
The Cobras closed ranks and began pulverizing the Pacific Northwest exhibit. Cobra rank and file troops were notoriously undertrained, so it wasn't surprising to Stalker when these guys couldn't determine the exact origin of the most recent shot that felled their comrade, and just started firing wildly again. What they lacked in crack training, however, they made up for with the fact that there were still nine of them, and the alcove was saturated with laserfire within seconds.
After a few moments of carnage, the senior Cobra soldier made a sharp gesture, "Cease fire! I think we got him, guys."
The others followed suit, and soon the only sound was the crackle of the several fires that were burning in various places around the room. The largest of which was the ruin that was once the Pacific Northwest exhibit.
Nothing remained but the charred wire structures that were used to create the fake trees, and some burning paper mache rocks. The mural on the back wall, meant to convey the illusion of a lush Oregon forest, was now blackened beyond recognition. For the Cobras examining the scene, however, one thing seemed to be missing.
"Do you see him?" asked one of the soldiers, "I don't see him."
"Well he's gotta be in there, we totalled the place," said another.
"Wait, I see something," a third exclaimed, pointing.
Through the smoke, they could just make out what appeared to be an arm jutting out from behind a lump of artificial tree trunk.
The lead trooper whooped, "That's him! We got him guys! We bagged us a G.I. Joe!"
There was a raucous session of chuckling and awkward high fives as the nine men made their way into the alcove to see which Joe they'd crossed out.
"Cobra Commander's going to give us all medals for this," one of them said as they reached the spot where their quarry lay, "We might even get to go to that new R and R center at the South Pole!"
"Rec Base Three?" gushed another, "Aww, man. I can hardly wait. You know that the Destro Dining hall is serving Kobe beef now?"
"I hate to dump on your dinner plans, but Cobra Commander isn't going to do anything," said the second man from the right.
"Why not? It wasn't one of those greenshirt guys, that was a name-brand G.I. Joe we just offed," the man next to him protested.
"How do you know? We didn't see him," said another.
"I know the voice," the first man said, "It was the black guy with the mustache: Straker, I think they call him."
"Cobra Commander isn't going to reward us because he doesn't know this is happening," the second man from the right said, continuing as if he'd never been interrupted, "Destro is doing this op behind his back."
"Aww man," the first man whined, "I wanted to see the Cobra Cuties."
"Guys, we have bigger problems right now."
The other eight Cobras turned to look at the pointman, who had reached the spot where the arm lay. He rolled the plaster log aside and picked up what turned out to be a disembodied member from underneath it. Some of its claws were broken, and the fur was badly singed, but unless they had started recruiting from Jellystone Park it was clear that it didn't come from any current member of the G.I. Joe team.
"This ain't no Joe." said the point man.
"Then where the heck is-"
That was all the man managed to get out before Stalker, dropping from above, drove his knee into his upper back, at the base of his neck . The blow folded the blue-clad soldier up like a beach chair.
Stunned into momentary inaction, the other Cobras were slow in shouldering their weapons by approximately a half second, which was more than Stalker needed. The pointman was next, Stalker leapt forward, slamming the butt of his rifle hard onto the side of his head. His momentum, combined with the sheer force of the blow was more than enough to overcome the helmet's protection, and he joined his comrade in the black slumber of unconsciousness.
Another man had gotten it together enough to draw a bead on the Joe; which surprised Stalker a little. A typical Cobra recruit usually won't get their wits about them that quickly. He quietly commended the soldier on his relative clearheadedness. Still, it was too little too late. Succumbing to a tug of whimsy, Stalker picked up the ursine limb and swung it like a club, the fiery claw end raking across the shooter's face, leaving four rows of red claw marks.
The rifleman screamed girlishly as Stalker reversed the momentum on the furry cudgel, backhanding him by proxy. He spun in the air and hit the marble floor in a heap. The remaining five guys, in an act of coordination rare for such inexperienced soldiers, decided to rush Stalker at once. What could have been a good strategy ended in disaster for the Cobras as Stalker took out three of their number with one mighty swing of grizzly fury.
Stepping back, and still holding his bizarre weapon, Stalker faced off against the remaining two men. The Cobras glanced at each other, hoping the other had some idea of what the procedure was for this situation.
Suddenly remembering he had a gun, one of the two was about to take aim when his gun disappeared in a whirl of fur and fire. Stalker finished him off with a boot to the solar plexus.
Smiling, he looked at the one guy who was remaining, "Looks like your buddy just lost his right to bear arms."
There was only silence.
"Get it?" said Stalker, pointing to the still smoking bear limb in his hand, "The right to bear arms?"
The final Cobra, bewildered and afraid, was beyond any ability to act in his defense, let alone form a coherent reply. He could only blink.
"Man, that was funny," Stalker threw the limb at him. It barreled into the blue soldier's sternum, knocking him to the floor.
2
Bludd's first act upon bursting into the alley alongside the museum was to set his laser pistol to the "low" setting and blast the door handle at close range. It was instantly fused into molten metal, never to be used again. Now at least that bleeding Joe wouldn't be able to follow him easily. Hopefully those idiots he brought with him would keep him busy long enough to make it to the extraction point. Based on who the Joes had sent to intercept him, however, Bludd had his doubts on that count.
Bloody Stalker, he raved to himself as he sprinted to the end of the alley. There was supposed to be no resistance whatsoever, and he nearly gets a peephole drilled in his cranium by one of the founding members of the G.I. Joe team. Sure, he'd handled it, as he always had: He wasn't afraid of Stalker or any of those other coddled Yank pantywaists. Fear was the first of many human frailties they beat out of you in the first year of SAS training. But he resented being forced into a reactive situation: If he had known when he was briefed that blighting Stalker was going to pop out from behind a potted plant, guns-a-blazing, he wouldn't have settled for a half platoon of high school dropouts.
What really galled Bludd was the lack of professionalism. Destro's intel had the museum as lightly guarded: Maybe a highly unfortunate night watchman to contend with, but nothing more. Going from dealing with a rent-a-cop to one of G.I. Joe's top Rangers was a spectacular failure of intelligence gathering, and his payment was going to be adjusted to reflect the spike in difficulty. And if Destro didn't like that, he'd smash his little trinket to dust right in front of his shiny face.
He glanced upward in hopes that the Cobra airship Pythonicus, the means of his extraction, had arrived, but no such luck. It was late by about two minutes: More unprofessionalism. Working for Cobra was like working for a troupe of circus clowns, except that clowns actually rehearsed once in awhile. The clear Akron skies were unforgivingly black and empty, the stars taunting him with their incessant twinkling. He was on his own for now. As he looked away, a large, dark, birdlike shape shot noiselessly across the sky and began to circle.
Grumbling a curse word that only other Australians would get offended by, he bolted across the street to the nearest refuge. A large, low, wide building whose front was comprised of a bank of perfectly polished windows. Windows that were almost entirely obscured by gaudy sale signs in various eye-searing neon colors. The lights in the store were out, but in spite of that the fluorescent sign on the roof was proudly lit, proclaiming to the world at large that this place was home to:
Gary McQuality's House of Video. Your VCR specialist!
Bludd slipped around to the side door, noting on his way what kind of burglar alarm was being used. According to the sticker on the window it was an EastLock, which fortunately were child's play to bypass. The side door easily succumbed to Bludd's steel-toed boot and he was inside.
A plain, white walled hallway greeted him, and he quickly scanned top edge of the walls where they met the ceiling, searching for the motion sensor. If his knowledge of burglar alarms was up to date, and it was, EastLock would give him a generous minute and a half before sounding the alarm and automatically calling the police. He spotted it: A telltale red light above the break room door. A single laser was enough to silence it, and as a bonus, short out the whole system. EastLock, a subsidiary of Extensive Enterprises, made nothing but junk: It was almost like they were encouraging crime. Bludd double-timed it to the showroom, he'd noticed a skylight in the roof of this building when he and his (now probably defunct) team had parajumped in. It would be the perfect place to wait and keep an eye out for the Pythonicus.
Bludd hunkered down behind the counter in a spot that afforded him a good view through the skylight without being seen from the street. He thumbed the homing beacon attached to his belt, and prepared for a short wait. Destro, he knew, wouldn't let him down: But not for any altruistic reason, of course. Whatever the artifact was that Bludd had obtained, Destro seemed to want it pretty badly. Glancing upwards through the skylight, the mercenary pondered upping his price even more. An extra 50 percent would probably cover his pain and suffering, with a little left over to salve his general annoyance at having to work for that pompous arms dealer who played at being an overlord. Wearing a fancy dress mask and owning a few sweatshops in Taiwan that cranked out tanks and laser rifles didn't make you a leader in Bludd's book: He much preferred dealing with Cobra Commander.
True, Bludd disliked and distrusted Cobra's supreme leader as much as anyone else he'd ever met, but he had to admit that the Commander had a gift for strategy and he was direct to a fault. If the Commander liked you, he paid you on time and screeched at you less, and if he didn't, he'd have you put to death in short order. There was never any doubt where you stood with Cobra Commander. Destro, with his open necked shirt, shaved chest, and five dollar words had always set Bludd's teeth on edge.
Still, he had to admit the man's money was good. Bludd settled on a price increase of 60 percent. Yes: That seemed fair.
Bludd risked raising his head above the counter for a moment to see if Stalker had emerged from the Museum. The street outside was deserted, with only the traffic lights standing sentinel on the corner, cycling dutifully through their sequences, directing the flow of an nonexistent rush hour. The Major wondered for a moment if those buck privates he'd brought with him had gotten lucky and taken him down. He scoffed at his own optimism: They'd be more likely to hurt each other before they would rub out a veteran Joe.
Bludd got his laser pistol up and ready. He reckoned it wouldn't be long before his pursuer did make an appearance, and he wanted to make sure it was his last.
Another quick glance upwards, still no Pythonicus, but Bludd felt a twinge in his guts: Something was wrong. He looked up again. It was the stars...
They were gone, something was blotting them out.
"Yo Joe!"
The husky, feminine voice was clear, even through the skylight. There was a momentary shimmer of light reflecting on dark metal as a crossbow bolt zipped silently through the window pane, splitting it instantly into a jagged spiderweb. It held together for a second or so before it fell away, raining glass in the expansive showroom; Bludd threw up an arm to protect his remaining eye from the falling shards.
Scarlett pulled the quick release and detached from the Falcon glider, dropping through the ragged hole in the roof with a balletic grace. She'd IDed Bludd from the air as soon as he'd fired his weapon in the alley. After determining where he was headed, she'd had to circle the glider a couple of times before she had a good enough angle to make a dive. Even with her expertise piloting an essentially non-motorized aircraft it had taken a minute or so. Using the Falcon was a calculated risk: Bludd was a crack shot, if he'd seen her she'd have made an excellent target with no cover and almost no ability to maneuver. But it was the fastest transportation option available, and if Stalker was calling for backup the situation had to be serious. Besides, the other choice was riding over in the VAMP with Clutch. No, thank you.
Upon hitting the ground, she did a shoulder roll to break her momentum and came up in a combat crouch, keeping Bludd in her sights the entire time.
"Drop it, Bludd."
Bludd, having had no time to recover from his glass shower, was too late in bringing his pistol to bear: Scarlett's XK-1 power crossbow was already trained on him. Obviously a much slower weapon than the standard concussion beam lasers used by the military since the big changeover in 1980, in the Intelligence officer's hands the difference in speed was largely academic. If Bludd made one twitch that Scarlett didn't like, she could give him a short-range tracheotomy at a moment's notice.
Snorting, Bludd stood, tossed the laser pistol to the floor, and raised his hands, "Congratulations, Lassie, ya got me."
Scarlett stood along with him, her aim unwavering, her piercing blue eyes never leaving him. She was pretty, but it was an austere kind of beauty. She was unusually tall, close to six feet if you factored in the raised heels on the boots she wore, with a robust build that betrayed her southern farm girl roots. She wore her rust red hair long, tied in a ponytail that fell to her upper back. Her uniform was a snug fitting tan and gray jumpsuit that resembled a leotard: Thicker than lycra, the space-age material allowed total freedom of movement with the durability of kevlar.
"Tell me," asked Bludd, "How could such a pretty thing get all wrapped up in this ugly business?"
"Aww, do you really think I'm pretty?" Scarlett replied with lilting sarcasm, "I hope I'm not blushing!"
Scarlett gave a curt nod towards the front door of the building, "Get moving, Captain Ahab."
Even as he complied, Scarlett knew he was planning to try something. Bludd was working way too hard to look casual, while at the same time tensing every muscle in his body in preparation for an all or nothing strike of some kind. An untrained observer might be fooled, but Scarlett had come from a martial arts background, her father and brothers ran a martial arts school back in Atlanta, which she attended regularly since the day she could walk on her own. By the age of 15 she had received as much combat training as an average Mossad operative. Scarlett could read body language like a book, and right now Bludd's was titled: "I'm Going To Stab You In The Face When I Get Close Enough".
Her first instinct was to let him try: Even unarmed, she knew she could take him, and it would be the perfect excuse to snuff him out once and for all: She knew Stalker would approve, anyway. But then the Ranger always had a tendency to play it fast and loose with the regulations when it suited him. But the Joe team's official stance on high-status members of the Cobra organization was to take them alive for interrogation if possible, and Scarlett preferred to play things by the book.
"Knife," she said, keeping her distance.
Bludd rolled his eye, "You know, you are no fun at all."
Above his head, Bludd slipped a throwing dagger out of a hidden sheath in his glove. Holding it up, he presented it to Scarlett before tossing it aside with a theatrical flourish.
"Good enough?" he asked with more than a little mockery in his voice.
Scarlett said nothing, she motioned for Bludd to step out from behind the counter and move to the exit to the parking lot. He did so without question, which made the Intelligence Officer feel uneasy. The catlike tension was still there, but that was normal for a captured asset. If someone had her at gunpoint she'd be doing the exact same thing, acting casual, waiting for her captor to make a mistake. What was out of character was Bludd's confidence, and as far as Scarlett could tell it wasn't just false bravado. He should be bargaining for his freedom, or at least cursing her name a bit, but right now he just seemed to be going with the flow. It was very Un-Bludd.
She stepped back to let him walk past her. The main floor of the showroom was expansive, but the area just in front of the checkout counter where Bludd had been hiding was fortified with a row of display shelves stocked with impluse items like candy and tape rewinders; a shrewd attempt to squeeze a couple more bucks out of customers who only came in to buy a package of blank tapes. They'd been arranged to form a short, waist-high corridor leading to the cash register. Wide enough for three people to walk side by side in relative comfort, it made for closer quarters than Scarlett would have liked. As Bludd passed her, he was easily within grabbing distance of the end of her crossbow. Scarlett, highly trained though she was, didn't relish the thought of a close quarters hand to hand scuffle with Bludd. He was scum, but he had a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, and if he was going to pull something out of that bag it would likely be now.
It was then that she caught it, a tiny twitch in Bludd's good eye, glancing to his left: A look of acknowledgement.
Someone else was here.
Scarlett risked taking her eyes off of Bludd to follow his gaze. She glimpsed a dark form, moving swiftly: Slick highlights gliding across an oil-like surface. That was all she saw before it was on top of her.
"Coooo-bra!"
A fashionable high heeled combat boot caught her in the temple. The world went blurry for a moment as Scarlett rolled with the impact; dropping her weapon, but mitigating the brunt of the ambush. Years of hand to hand training kicked in and she instinctually lashed out with an elbow, and there was a satisfying jolt as it met with her attacker's jaw. The dark figure wasn't prepared for a counterattack, probably assuming the sucker kick would be enough to put Scarlett down, and was sent reeling backwards.
Scarlett already knew that Bludd was gone, probably to fetch his gun. That was going to make bringing this situation under control exponentially more difficult. At the present moment, however, there was no time to think about that.
Scarlett snapped her head back to face her new adversary. Across from her stood the slim, rangy form of Anastasia De Cobray (no relation), better known as the Baroness. In the store's moonlit gloom the paleness of her skin stood out in stark contrast to her tight-fitting armored black catsuit and immaculately coiffed head of long dark hair. The chest plate and gauntlets she wore were form-fitting as well, probably custom made. The Cobra sigil: A red, stylized king cobra, fangs bared, flaring its hood, was emblazoned across her breastbone. She wore a pair of glasses with a slight green tint that Scarlett had always suspected were not prescription. Strikingly attractive, she was blessed with the high wide cheekbones and firm jawline of a supermodel: Sadly, she was also nearly as crazy as one.
The Baroness touched her cheek where she'd been struck, "That will leave a bruise," she spoke with an Eastern European accent that was as thick as poured concrete, "Now I'll really have to hurt you."
"If that's your plan, you're off to a bad start," Scarlett said, a grim smile touching her lips, "You hit like a Serbian grandmother."
The Baroness smiled now, leveling her laser gun at the still unarmed Joe, "I guess we'll go with plan B, then."
Scarlett raised her hands, not to surrender, of course: When she was done gloating, the Baroness obviously planned to shoot her on the spot. She needed to have her hands in position to get at the back of her wrist where she kept a set of magnetized throwing stars for just such an occasion.
The Baroness assumed, as many did, that the stars on Scarlett's gloves were merely decorative, and so didn't catch what she was doing until she was already underway. In one practiced motion she plucked two metal stars off of her left forearm: One to do the job and one for good luck. Holding them with the lightest of grips, she released them with a hard snap of her wrist and fingers. Spinning like shrapnel, they streaked across the room, each finding a target. One in embedded itself in the Baroness's shooting hand, between the knuckles of the index and ring fingers...
The other caught her in the face.
The Baroness's aristocratic upbringing had seen to her every need. Whatever little Anastasia wanted, she got: Be that a purebred pony, a complete collection of Hummel figurines, or as her tastes changed after studying abroad for a few years, Krav Maga lessons and automatic weapons. Still, there were certain realities of combat that even the best training couldn't prepare a person for, particularly one as vain as the Baroness. And that was that sometimes, no matter how good you are, you're going to take one in the face.
The Baroness dropped her gun, not because of the pain: She didn't seem to even be aware of the throwing star stuck in the webbing between her fingers. All of her super-villain decorum had evaporated in her haste to attend to the other chromed blossom which was now hanging just below her left cheekbone.
Her hands shaking, she plucked it out and stared at it for a moment, wide eyed. A tiny bit of blood tinted the end of one of the points. Tentatively, she touched her cheek, looking at the blood on her fingers like she was seeing the substance for the first time. All in all, it wasn't even a bad cut: A some polysporin and a bandaid would probably take care of it. But the Baroness was beside herself. She dropped the throwing star and glared at Scarlett.
"You "did this!" She hissed, a knife appeared in her good hand, "I'll cut your pretty face off!"
The raven haired woman lunged at Scarlett, slashing wildly with the knife. The Joe was not cowed by the savagery of the attack, in fact Scarlett was in her element. She kept her hands in front of her to guard her torso and shifted her upper body left and right, oscillating in opposition to the wide arcs of the Baroness's blade. Frustrated, the catsuited woman shifted her grip on the weapon, holding it like Van Helsing might wield a wooden stake. With all of the force she could muster she brought the weapon down, with the aim of driving it into the soft flesh above Scarlett's collarbone. Using her Aiki-Do training, Scarlett intercepted the strike, grabbing the Baroness's wrist and twisting it painfully as she pivoted behind her. Almost like magic, the Baroness's knife was transferred to the Joe's free hand, the blade resting gently on her adversary's neck.
"You think I'm pretty, too?" Scarlett said, leaning into her usually subtle southern accent, "Well, everyone's just full of compliments today."
The pain of the armbar seemed to be distracting the Baroness from her rage of moments ago, but Scarlett could still her breathing loudly through clenched teeth. She looked around, there seemed to be no sign of Bludd. She had half expected him to try to shoot her during the scuffle, but cutting and running was more his style. A mixed blessing, then.
"Looks like your friend has left you high and dry, but don't worry: We have a nice cell waiting for you," Scarlett was about to take her prisoner out to the parking lot.
"Major Bludd is no friend of mine," the Baroness snapped, "Just a means to an end."
"Now that hurts my feelings," Bludd's voice: Grating as ever. He was still here.
The concrete room was echoey, but Scarlett was fairly certain that Bludd was in the store's back room. She turned the Baroness in that direction to use as a human shield. Not that her adversary's body armor was going to do much against a laser blast, but Bludd might have slight misgivings about gunning down a colleague so high up in Cobra's ranks.
She wasn't counting on it, though.
"I thought you'd be miles from here by now," Scarlett said, attempting to keep him talking, "Getting soft in your old age?"
"He's realized that he needs me to get out of here," said the Baroness, calmer now.
Bludd stepped out from the back room, he had his laser pistol was drawn and aimed at the two women. Presently he was holding it at about waist height. If he were to fire now, the beam would pass through both of them.
"What happened to Pythonicus?" Bludd demanded.
"There has been a change of plan," said the Baroness, "Cobra Commander is making use of Pythonicus at the present time. Destro has sent me to extract you."
"Bloody unprofessional." Bludd snapped, "This is all bloody unprofessional! This never would have happened in the '70s."
Scarlett moved the knife a fraction of an inch closer to the Baroness's throat, the Cobra agent swallowed before continuing, "I have transportation stashed nearby. Of course, I will need to be freed from my current...predicament."
There was a moment of deathly silence as Bludd considered his options, "Nah. I can probably find your transportation myself. It'll be easier if I kill you both right now."
He raised his gun to shoulder height, there was a high pitched whine as it powered up to fire.
"Wait!" the Baroness shouted, "There is at least one Joe in the museum, and likely more on the way here as we speak. I have hidden my vehicle carefully, you will never find it in time."
Bludd pursed his lips, then nodded, "Good point," he said finally, "So I'll just kill the Joe, then."
"You're going to find that more easily said than done," said Scarlett, turning herself sideways as best she could to provide the worst target possible.
Bludd's face split into a smirk, "Never know 'til you try, love. Baroness, you're going to want to hold still for this."
Bludd had the gun, but Scarlett still had an edge, however slight it might be. She knew Bludd was a crack shot, probably one of the best currently working for Cobra, but he wasn't a patient man. As her hostage had said, the clock was ticking, and the longer it took for the mercenary to get a clean shot, the more likely it was that he would panic and settle for just any old shot. That tension was what Scarlett was counting on.
Keeping the Baroness turned on an angle, she hunched her head downwards so that she could observe Bludd just over his comrade's shoulder. She watched the mercenary's trigger finger, waiting for it to constrict. When Bludd reached the point of no return and was committed to firing, she knew she'd have a half-second window to shove the Baroness into him as he fired. From there, she could recover her crossbow and-
"What happened to my skylight?"
Scarlett's heart sank. She recognized the voice immediately from the annoying commercials that ran on afternoon TV. Gary McQuality, wearing his cowboy hat and one of his signature giant belt buckles, strode into their midst with the unearned confidence of a portly TV Western hero. This was bad. This was so, so bad.
"Sir, please leave immediately," she shouted in her most authoritative voice, already knowing it would do no good, "I'm with the G.I. Joe team, these people are extremely dangerous and...dang it!"
Bludd, knowing a lucky break when he saw one, was on McQuality in less than a second. Grabbing the cowboy by the shoulder, he pulled him in front of himself, pressing his laser pistol into the soft, rounded hillock of flesh under the fat man's jaw.
"Well that's rude of you, dearie," said Bludd, "if the big boy wants to join the party, I say we let him. Now let Ms. Badanov go, and I won't blow a new hole through the donut, here."
The presence of a civilian hostage made an already difficult situation exponentially worse. Due to the nature of their enemy, G.I. Joe was one of the only military organizations authorized to undertake strategic action on American soil, and they did so on a regular basis. Military operations were a blunt instrument at the best of times, and while every effort was made to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens, sometimes people and property got caught in the crossfire.
Scarlett had no way of knowing that Bludd wouldn't just shoot McQuality as soon as she released the Baroness, but at the moment there weren't a lot of options. She loosened her grip on Cobra's Intelligence officer. As soon as she did, the Baroness tore herself from her grasp and picked up her laser rifle from the floor.
She pointed it at Scarlett, after moving a discreet distance away, the Joe noted. Wouldn't want me to get ahold of you again, she thought ruefully.
"I would like savor your demise, but sadly I don't have time," the coolness was returning to her voice as she leveled the weapon at Scarlett's forehead.
Scarlett quickly ran her odds of surviving the next ten seconds, the math wasn't precise, but even considering the margin of error they didn't look good. She decided her only chance at this point was to rush the Baroness, and hope she didn't hit anything vital before she could wrench the laser out of her bony fingers and cram it-
From just outside the building came the sound of screeching tires and the sound of a man's voice, calling out with an almost boyish enthusiasm:
"Yo, Joe!"
Scarlett steeled herself, mentally and physically: Lord help her, her backup had arrived.
He wasn't much of a strategist, but no one was better at battlefield improv than Lance Steinberg, better known as Clutch.
As soon as he'd pulled up to the museum, he could see four heat signatures inside the VCR store on the thermal scanner built into the dash: Red and yellow humanoid blobs with blue fringes. In the back there were two clustered together, one was average build, the other was a fat guy. A bright white hotspot, the telltale indicator of a firearm, was next to the fat man's head. So most likely a snake holding a hostage. The other two, standing apart from one another, were thinner, with curvier proportions: Women. The one furthest away also had a gun and was pointing it at her counterpart. Since Scarlett had brought her crossbow with her, process of elimination suggested that this was the Baroness, about to punch his teammate's ticket.
Scarlett was a member of the fairer sex, and thus, in Clutch's esteemed opinion, did not belong anywhere near the army, combat, or guns in general, (with the possible exception of posing for a sexy gun calendar) but he'd be dipped in antifreeze before he'd allow anyone to hurt a member of his team on his watch, no matter how unqualified they were to be there. It was time for decisive action.
Gunning the VAMP's Hemi engine, he jumped the curb and burst into the empty parking lot towards the bank of windows, hitting the highbeams as he did. The store was illuminated like it was daytime, and he confirmed visually what he surmised from the thermal: Bludd, some fat cowboy guy, Baroness, and Scarlett, standing almost in single file near the back of the store. He noted with some amusement his teammate's tensed shoulders and stiff posture.
"Don't worry, honey. Uncle Clutch won't let anything happen to you," he said under his breath. Then he sounded his battle cry.
With his left hand, Clutch snapped the wheel and gunned the throttle; the tires protested loudly as the VAMP's rear end kicked out, pinwheeling on its axis as it rapidly approached the storefront. Counter-steering to maintain the skid, he dropped his right hand to the laser controls and turned the guns to target the store while rotating them to counter the spin of the vehicle itself. He did a quick calculation in his head based on the VAMP's rotation and the rate of fire of its heavy laser. Based on this, he opted to wait for a tenth of a second before he squeezed the trigger.
The air was filled with a sound like an eagle screaming into a synthesizer as the twin heavy lasers began spitting out dual beams of blazing magenta fury. The front windows of McQuality's weren't so much shattered as they were disintegrated at point of impact. As the still very much in motion VAMP slid past, it sent out a fan of light spears that reduced expensive VCRs and television sets to so much overpriced shrapnel. A regularly spaced row of holes was punched through anything foolish enough to exist in the beam's path.
An uninvested observer might be forgiven for thinking that Clutch was an out-of-control lunatic who had it in for McQuality's and was trying to assassinate every living thing in the store. Such a hypothetical observer would be incorrect, at least about the assassination part. Clutch's intent wasn't to put down the enemy threat, their grouping was way too tight to even make an attempt. Instead, he cut a swath through the center of the store. Under normal circumstances, this would, of course, have killed everyone, but Clutch knew the VAMP and its rate of fire like the rhythm of his own breathing. The tenth of a second delay was to ensure that the lasers were in between firings when his sights crossed paths with Scarlett, giving her a generous two foot radius on each side.
He knew Scarlett would stay still, and if Bludd or the Baroness happened to cross the path of the heavy laser, that would be too darned bad. The hostage was a wild card, Clutch was pretty sure that Bludd would instinctually push him away as soon as the firing started and he'd fall to the floor. Since he merely wanted to break up the party anyway, he aimed the VAMP's turret so that the lasers hit just around and above his targets. It wasn't necessary to do it while performing a power-over drift, of course, that was just for style points.
Inside the store, chaos reigned. Everything was thrown into sharp relief as a pair of powerful halogen lights blasted illumination into every corner of the room. Cast shadows swept from left to right as their source skidded wildly past the windows. The Baroness dove for cover, and, as Clutch predicted, Bludd discarded his hostage and made for the door. All the while, Scarlett remained perfectly still. She'd had experience with Clutch's fancy driving before: No matter what she thought of every other aspect of his personality, the man knew what he was doing behind the wheel. So no matter how strong the temptation was, and when a heavy laser missed her head by less than two feet it was strong, she didn't move a muscle. Remaining still was her best chance at not being hit by accident.
A second later, when she was sure that the strafing had passed her by, Scarlett stole a quick glance over her shoulder. She saw the glow of tail lights, just about to pass behind the wall: The guns were facing backwards and just before the driver's cab was completely eclipsed she made eye contact with Clutch's reflection. He gave her a wink and a quick thumbs up. Scarlett's jaw tightened with fury.
That hot-dogging moron was aiming with his rear view mirror.
She made a mental note to kick him in the shin the next time she saw him. Looking around, she couldn't locate the Baroness or Bludd. It was possible that they could be lurking somewhere in the store, smoke from the several evenly-spaced fires that were now burning in various spots along the heavy laser's wake would have provided ample cover to stage an ambush, but she got the feeling that the two of them were long gone. From somewhere to her left, she heard a soft groan.
Right, Scarlett had almost forgotten, there was a civilian mixed up in all this. She made a mental note to kick Clutch's other shin.
It didn't take long to locate McQuality, he was behind a shelf, on all fours, turtled up in a compact ball. He had the brim of his cowboy hat pulled over his ears, his knuckles were bone white. Scarlett approached with measured caution. Untrained civilians under extreme stress were unpredictable, the last thing Scarlett wanted was for this guy to instinctually lash out at her. If that were to happen she'd be within her rights to defend herself, of course, but putting a sleeper hold on an unarmed store owner would not be the best publicity for G.I. Joe.
Kneeling beside him, she gently touched his shoulder, "Sir, are you all right? Do you need medical attention?"
McQuality made some mewling sounds before replying, "A-a-re the bad men gone?"
"They're all gone, sir," Scarlett said, "Why don't you stand up and come outside with me?"
Helping the fat man to his feet, she slowly eased him in the direction of the front door. The shopowner blinked and surveyed the damage, a combination of endorphins and shell shock giving him a childlike impartiality.
"F-fire," said McQuality, "there are fires everywhere."
"Yes," said Scarlett, "that's why we want to get outside. Too many fires."
McQuality looked up, "I wonder why the sprinklers haven't come on."
Before Scarlett could respond there came a hissing sound from above as the sprinklers discharged, drenching the both of them within seconds.
"There they go," said McQuality, "That's nice."
"Yes, it's just perfect," said Scarlett through gritted teeth, her hair plastered flat to her skull.
After the shooting started, Bludd had had enough wherewithal to follow the Baroness out to the store's warehouse area. Once there, she led him down a flight of stairs to the basement, where large crates of unsold stock and seasonal decorations were stored. Bludd did a quick threat assessment, scanning the area with two birdlike glances to the left and right. His caution made the fact that he didn't see the Baroness's slap coming all the more ironic when it stung his cheek.
The Baroness could put on a clinic for the technique and form of a good, professional slap, and although her nerves were still wild with adrenaline, this one was no exception. She caught him perfectly as he was looking back to her for further instructions, catching his mouth and part of his helmet, spinning the latter around so that came to rest almost sideways on his head.
"What the bleedin' heck was that for?" Bludd haughtily readjusted his headgear, "You're not sore about what happened back there, are you?"
"Had I not held the means for your escape, you would have left me to the Joes," the Baroness shot back.
Bludd snorted, "Well, if I didn't have your mannequin-faced boyfriend's little magic fob in my possession, I probably wouldn't be getting this lovely pick up service, would I?"
The Baroness glared at him for a moment, she contemplated leaving him here, or better yet putting a plasma round through his face and taking the Key of Ages back to Destro herself. The second of those two plans would please Destro, she was certain. Keeping this operation beneath Cobra Commander's notice had been stressful on her lover and had forced him to make compromises he wasn't accustomed to. The use of Bludd was one of the more distasteful of those compromises.
The screech of tires from above snapped her out of her rumination. It didn't sound like he was getting any closer, but the last thing either of them needed was another firefight.
The Baroness pointed to a steel grate in the floor, "That leads to the storm drain, open it."
"Letting me do all the heavy lifting," Bludd grumbled, "Typical European."
The Baroness held up her still bleeding right hand, "I am injured at the moment."
Bludd laced his fingers through the grate and lifted it away from the opening. In a show of irritation, he threw the barrier aside with a little more force than was strictly necessary. It bounced off a concrete wall and onto a pile of festive reindeer, temporarily filling the room with a racket of metal, sleigh-bells, and shattered antlers.
Bludd gestured towards the passageway, "Ladies first."
Outside the store, Scarlett guided McQuality to a park bench and sat him down. He wasn't showing any signs of shock, he just seemed to be a little out of it. That was good news, probably the first she'd had tonight. Clutch, meanwhile, was doing donuts in the parking lot for some, probably moronic, reason. He'd drive as fast as he could to one end of the paved area, skid in a circle, then race to the other end and repeat the same maneuver. He'd done it about four times since she'd emerged, soaked to the skin, from the VCR store.
She shot a look at Clutch as he passed for driveby number five, catching his eye immediately. She made a slashing motion across her neck with her index and forefinger (a gesture that, given her attitude towards the Joe team's top driver at the moment, had two meanings) then waved him over. She then turned back to her charge.
"I'm just going to talk to my friend in the Jeep. Are you okay here?" she asked, silently monitoring him for any signs of PTSD.
"Yes. Thank you. I'll be fine," said McQuality. He was staring at a single tree across the street.
"Okay. Good. I'll bring you back a nice blanket, how does that sound?"
McQuality blinked, "That sounds lovely."
She stood and walked to the center of the parking lot to meet her teammate. Clutch being Clutch, and thus, in Scarlett's esteemed opinion, medically incapable of doing anything without turning it into a state fair daredevil side show, gunned the engine and raced towards her at a ridiculous speed for a few feet. He then closed the rest of the gap between them by sending his vehicle into some kind of power skid, snapping it sideways and sliding towards her, tires squealing like stuck pigs. It was a maneuver that she was sure she would have been all kinds of impressed with if she was a nineteen year old high school dropout.
The VAMP lurched to a halt less than a foot away from her, the driver's side window aligned perfectly with where she was standing. Scarlett planted her boot on the vehicle's running board and leaned forward. Inside she could see Clutch looking back at her, his face split into a huge, prideful grin like he'd just won the Nobel prize. He rolled down the window and looked up at her. Far from being intimidated by her obvious irritation with him, he seemed to revel in it, taking a moment to bathe in her withering glare before speaking.
"I'll take a cheeseburger and a root beer float, and hey how are the onion rings in this joint?"
"Get out of the jeep," Said Scarlett, her voice controlled.
"Technically this is a urban assault vehicle," Clutch replied, smile intact, "A jeep is smaller with narrower wheels."
"Get out of the urban assault vehicle," she said, a little bit of an edge creeping into her voice.
"Also, I'm not sure if I want to do that," he said softly as he ran his hands along the top of the steering wheel, "because I think if I do, you're going to hit me."
"I'm not going to hit you," Scarlett said, her voice back under control, betraying nothing.
Clutch shrugged, opened the VAMP's door, stepped out and drew himself up to his feet. He was tall...ish, lean and wiry, with sleepy, deep-set eyes under a heavy brow. His hair, dark and slick with product, was long enough that it stuck out from under his helmet in several places. His jaw, as it always was, was covered in a three day's growth of black stubble. He dressed for comfort in a loose-fitting khaki shirt, olive drab, with combat pants. A half-smirk on his face communicated a potentially off-putting combination of friendliness and arrogance, the balance tipping slightly towards the latter at the moment.
He hooked a thumb under the rim of his helmet and tilted it back from his eyes, exposing more slick, black hair, "I did a few runs around the parking lot with the thermal scanner, no hits. Kind of weird, I don't know where they could have-"
Scarlett interrupted him by driving the toe of her boot into his shin.
Clutch let out a loud yelp as he hopped backwards, cradling his lower leg. His shock robbed him of the ability to form sentences for a moment, "Aaaa...That...You...why?"
"That was for shooting at me," Scarlett said, walking past the befuddled driver to the rear compartment of the VAMP. She opened it and extracted a blanket from the emergency kit.
Clutch, regaining himself, followed her, "I was shooting around you. You know me, baby, I'd never let you get hurt. And hey, didn't you say you weren't going to hit me?"
"Technically, I kicked you," Scarlett turned on her heel and walked past him on her way to McQuality, booting him in the other shin on her way by.
Clutch let out another howl, "What was that one for?"
Scarlett kept moving, "Endangering a civilian," she said.
Clutch limped after her, "What, that fat guy? Seriously? He was never in any danger. I knew Bludd was going to ditch him the second the shooting started."
Scarlett wheeled around to face him, "What if he didn't? What if he threw him at me? What if he panicked and shot him? What if the Baroness decided on a whim to gut him on her way out?"
Clutch paused, staring at her, his brow furrowed. There was a moment where Scarlett thought she might be getting through to him.
He snapped out of it almost immediately, however, "I had contingencies, obviously."
Having run out of shins to kick, Scarlett settled for rolling her eyes, "I'll bet. Does one of them involve jumping the Grand Canyon blindfolded?"
"No," Clutch replied, "But jumping the Grand Canyon has always been a dream of mine."
Scarlett walked away, Clutch gave pursuit.
"Look, I know you're mad that I shot around you, and scared the fat guy, and blew up the store, and got your hair wet. I'm sorry, okay?"
There were half a dozen things she could have said to him, about responsibility, teamwork, and generally not conducting yourself like a middle schooler with a $50,000 military vehicle, but at the moment she was past all that. She knew that anything she said to him would bounce off the common sense-proof vest he seemed to be wearing at all times, and right now she had no desire to be added to the pantheon of naggy broads who were all conspiring to hold him back. Someone else could beat their head against that wall for awhile.
"Just call the fire department before the block burns down," she said, the added, "Have you heard from Stalker?"
"He radioed me a minute ago," Clutch said, "he says he's got things handled in the museum."
Clutch limped back to the VAMP to make use of the radio. Scarlett made her way to the bench where McQuality was still sitting, he was now counting the yellow stripes that marked the boundary of the store's loading zone with the tranquil abandon of a sleepy toddler. She draped the blanket around him.
"What the heck happened here?"
She looked up to see Stalker crossing the parking lot towards her, other than some soot on his uniform, the Ranger looked no worse for wear. McQuality seemed intent on his counting for the time being, so she made her way over to her fellow Joe.
Stalker surveyed the ruin that was once the facade of the store. The brick wall was blackened, and there was nothing left of the windows but fond memories. The colorful advertising that trumpeted huge savings to passers were now nothing but ash. Inside it was dark, except for a few small fires that were somehow missed by the sprinkler system that had so thoroughly doused the store owner and Scarlett.
"Clutch happened," said Scarlett, striding in his direction.
Clutch, upon hearing this, quickly finished his conversation and hung up the radio, "Don't listen to her, Stalker, what I did was necessary! Awesome, but necessary!"
"What you did was reckless," Scarlett shot back.
Stalker grimaced. He'd rather singlehandedly take on another Cobra platoon than mediate a squabble between Scarlett and Clutch. Like all large organizations, G.I. Joe had its share of personality conflicts, but none that even approached the animosity that existed between these two. If there was one thing Clutch enjoyed more than bending the rules to the breaking point, it was getting under people's skin. And while she was as quick with a gallows wisecrack as any of her teammates, Scarlett expected everyone working with her to be on point and predictable. Not unreasonable given their job description. Together, they mixed like TNT and gasoline in an already burning fireworks factory.
Stalker changed the subject, "What happened to Bludd?"
"He had some backup: The Baroness," Scarlett said, "They escaped when Reject Kenevel here was shooting up the place."
"Evel Kenevel doesn't do car stunts, he's all about motorcycles," Clutch interrupted, "Also she's skipping the part where I saved her life."
Stalker groaned inwardly, there really was going to be no avoiding this.
"I had that under control," Scarlett was raising her voice now.
"A rifle pointed at your forehead and you had it under control?" Clutch snorted, "I would love to see how you had that under control."
Possibly because he was rolling his eyes, Stalker spotted something in the sky just above Scarlett's head. A silvery disc of flickering light hovering above a nearby park. Rotor blades. Unaccompanied by the normal running lights required by the FAA, it could only mean one thing.
"Fang," he said, and sprinted for the VAMP.
Scarlett and Clutch followed his gaze. The FANG, tracking southward over the museum, was more visible now. The gyrocopter's matte black paint job made it hard to discern against the night sky, but it was still possible to make out its shape from the dulled highlights picked out by the illumination of the streetlights below. It was flying at about 1000 feet, high enough that the normally whisper quiet engine could not be easily heard.
Their dispute forgotten, Clutch and Scarlett caught up with Stalker as he reached the VAMP. Clutch leapt into the driver's seat, immediately bringing the laser cannons to life. Stalker put up a hand to stop him.
"We don't want to bring down an enemy bird over a populated area if we don't have to," he said.
Clutch powered down the guns, "They're a quarter mile away, Stalker, what's your play gonna be? Hand to hand?"
Stalker grinned, "Something like that."
He opened a side compartment on the VAMP and extracted the Jump personal transport system that was stored there. It was the size of a large backpack, with twin rocket tubes on either side. It met the criteria of what a layman or excitable child might refer to as a "jetpack", although it wasn't technically jet propelled.
Clutch laughed, "You're gonna chase them in that thing? You're crazy, man and I love it!"
Speed was of the essence. Stalker strapped the Jump on and took a half second to make sure that all the straps were secure. The ignition was a small switch located on the Jump's frame just above his right shoulder. He reached across with his left hand and pressed it.
There was an immediate and powerful sensation of movement as the two throttle tubes lit up and pulled him skyward with a relentless urgency. Air rushed past his face as the street below quickly faded into the distance. The Jump had no external controls, just an internal gyroscope array that transferred the user's body movements to the aircraft, completely intuitive: Like swimming through the air. It was actually a lot of fun when bad guys weren't shooting at you, and even then it still had its merits. The propulsion system was state of the art, Stalker had to admit that he didn't fully understand the science behind it, but it was miles ahead of any equivalent civilian technology. The best jet pack available in the private sector weighed about 50-100 pounds and would give you about a minute of flight time before you either landed or plummeted to a certain demise. The Jump, on the other hand, weighed about 16 pounds and could keep a pilot happily aloft for the better part of 45 minutes. Advantage: Uncle Sam.
Its one strategic drawback, however, was the noise. The Jump sounded like a mini F-15, and the throttle tubes produced a bright orange/yellow light that could be seen for miles. This wasn't going to be a sneak attack, when he got within potshot range Stalker had better be ready to make a fast break.
He was in the air for less than a minute before he located the FANG, headed east. Above the ambient light of downtown Akron he was able to clearly see the aircraft and its occupants. As a combat aircraft, the FANG was almost as much of a threat to the pilot as it was to those it was used against. It consisted, essentially, of a chair mounted atop some skids with the very basics of a working helicopter built around it. It would be unwise to wave to your friends while operating a FANG as it didn't have a canopy and the rotor blades whirled not two feet above the pilot's head. In addition, while there were seatbelts, there was virtually nothing on the sides of the vehicle to hold the operator in place; if an ambitious cadet decided to try some fancy flying, he or she had better be strapped in tight or risk being hurled out into the open air.
The Baroness was in the pilot's chair, and since the FANG was designed as a one person vehicle, Bludd was perched on one of the skids, hunkered down, gripping the inside edge of the cockpit for what must have been dear life. In spite of the situation, Stalker had to chuckle to himself. Cobra was always innovating: They found a way to make FANGs even more dangerous to fly.
The first order of business was to herd this quarry over an unpopulated area, minimizing the damage the FANG would do when it crashed. Looking down, the city was nothing more than a crisscross pattern of lights in the darkness. Stalker, however, had taken the time to study the layout of Akron's downtown core, and he knew there was a large area of greenbelt northeast of his position. A relatively soft landing, with minimal chance of civilian casualty. Done deal. Drawing his laser pistol he fired a couple of warning shots past the left side of the gyrocopter.
That got their attention, Bludd looked like he might have fractured a vertebrae in his haste to snap his head in the direction of the shot. The Baroness banked to the right, forgetting, it seemed, to compensate for her passenger. The FANG tilted wildly, almost lurching onto its side before she got it under control again. Bludd temporarily became gravity's plaything: Losing his footing, he barely caught ahold of the skid as he toppled sideways, avoiding, for the time being at least, a high impact appointment with the unforgiving asphalt of Akron's streets. He dangled from the side of the aircraft by one arm, twisting in open space.
But, Bludd being Bludd, It didn't take him long to get his ducks in a row. Still hanging from the side of the gyrocopter, he managed to draw his gun and twist in Stalker's direction taking a couple of awkward potshots at him as he did. As an attempt on Stalker's life it was futile, the range alone would make him an impossible target, but lasers were plentiful and no matter how good an operative you thought you were, luck was always a factor.
Stalker dodged the hastily fired azure beams with ease, executing a banking zigzag pattern before leaning forward to pour on the throttle. He raised his weapon and let loose with a volley of his own as he shot towards the FANG like a rocket. Just as he'd hoped, they were banking towards the wooded area, Bludd was in no position to be a threat and all of the FANG's admittedly formidable array of weapons were facing forward. Unbalanced, and with double its normal capacity, it would be a bear to keep the small gyrocopter flying in a straight line, let alone pull off any evasive maneuvers. Stalker straightened out his body to minimize wind resistance and pick up speed.
Bludd had managed haul himself up enough to get an arm over the skid. He was just in time to see bleeding Stalker bearing down on them like a suave but approachable heat seeking missile. An unrelenting barrage of red death rays heralded his coming. Right now he was too far off to be very accurate, but his marksmanship was more than close enough for Bludd's tastes.
"Baroness!" He screamed, although the engine was silent enough that it wasn't necessary, "He's on our six!"
"Don't worry," the dark haired woman responded with a disturbing calm, "In a moment, he will be the least of your problems."
Bludd looked up at the Baroness, she was staring forward, her face was blank but her intentions were plain as day. She looked like a person who had come to a decision: One that Bludd, had he not presently been staving down panic at its implication, would have to admit he would have made himself, had their positions been reversed. Fear, real gut-draining fear gripped Bludd for the first time in years. She spared him a quick glance, giving him a cold, red-lipped smile before she jerked the FANG's control stick, causing the tiny aircraft to lurch right, then left, in rapid succession.
Bludd gripped the skid with the tenacity of a frightened chimp, but it was like trying to hang onto a moving tilt-a-whirl. The pitiless laws of physics took control, wrenching him from the FANG and dropping him into the darkness.
Ditching Bludd was a calculated risk, but a necessary one as far as the Baroness was concerned. There was no way she would be able to outmaneuver a Jump, and the Major's presence would make it difficult to bring the FANG's impressive weapons systems into play.
Not that she'd miss the cretin, of course, but it did mean that she had lost possession of the key for a moment: A minor issue. With Bludd out of her hair, her superior firepower would be more than enough to swat the irksome American out of the sky. She'd make a mental note of where Bludd hit and return to pick the key out of his remains at a later time, his body mass should provide enough padding to keep the artifact safe from damage. A messy proposition, but Destro would be pleased when he learned she'd saved him the cost of Major Bludd's commission.
Stalker watched as Bludd dropped, headfirst, slowly spinning like a doll on a string, "Well, that's one way to handle it," he muttered.
He changed trajectory, swooping towards the falling enemy: The action didn't feel natural. He didn't like Bludd, of all the Cobra higher-ups the Australian was actually his least favorite; and given his opinion of the Cobra organization in general that was saying something. Still, being dropped from 2000 feet onto concrete seemed like a bad way to go, even for a dead eyed sociopath like Bludd. He was becoming a soft touch in his old age, he thought, sighing inwardly.
Besides, there was an elementary school directly below them, those kids didn't need to see that when they got to class first thing in the morning. Would probably mess them up.
Stalker reached Bludd in seconds and hooked a hand into the collar of his body armor at the back of the Australian's neck. Even though he compensated for the inertia by flying down with him for a couple of seconds, the introduction of Bludd's weight caused the Jump to dip substantially and begin a slow dive. Stalker knew the both of them wouldn't stay aloft for long, their angle of descent was gradually increasing in both steepness and speed and it wasn't about to stop.
At their present rate they'd reach about 200 feet before they were falling to earth like a stone, more than enough altitude to kill both of them. He'd have to put down on a building top and take care of his prisoner pronto.
"Don't start thinking we're friends or nothing," Stalker had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the Jump's straining engines, "This is strictly business."
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of presuming," Bludd replied, his sarcasm having apparently survived his recent ordeal intact, "In fact, I may have to get going anyway."
Stalker felt Bludd twist suddenly, the mercenary's hand clamped around his wrist. Bludd struck upward with his other hand, catching the Joe in the ribs. It wasn't an expertly directed punch, given the circumstances it couldn't be, but it was enough to knock the wind out of Stalker and get him to release his hold on Bludd's armor. Still gripping Stalker's arm, Bludd immediately went to work on the Jump's straps, struggling to release them and commandeer the pack. The Jump's internal gyro system interpreted the change in weight distribution as a command to dive towards main street while corkscrewing as fast as the propulsion nozzles would allow.
Everything was a blur, Stalker gasped for air as the world spun around him, alternating between the soft glow of the city lights and the dark sky with sickening speed. Bludd, probably equally disoriented but with the momentary advantage of being able to breathe, had managed to drape an arm across the back of the Jump pack in a parody of friendly camaraderie while the other desperately worked at its straps. His efforts might be in vain: The Joe had no idea now where they were in relation to the ground, but it felt like a steep enough dive that if they didn't pancake themselves against a skyscraper they'd more than likely be a greasy streak down main street in short order.
You do a guy a favor and this is the thanks you get, thought Stalker as he shook off the pain. Both of Bludd's hands were occupied, which made it all the easier for Stalker to grab the back of his head and guide it into a meeting with his elbow. The resulting crunchy thud was the most satisfying experience Stalker had had all day. The bear hug loosened and the strap fiddling came to a sudden stop, but the Ranger knew that the mercenary was still conscious, just a little stunned.
The next four elbows to the face took care of that. Bludd went limp, and after a brief but powerful urge to let go, Stalker's kinder nature prevailed and he reasserted his grip on Bludd's collar. Still spinning wildly out of control, the need to change course was paramount. But, thoroughly disoriented, he had no way of knowing what he might be flying into. "Up" seemed like the best bet at the moment, so he righted the Jump and pulled upwards as sharply as the pack would allow.
It turned out to be a smart play, as the world stopped spinning and the mirrored wall of a bank building materialized in front of him. His angle of climb brought him to within inches of striking the broad plain of windows, he and his subdued passenger skimmed along the glassy surface like geese gliding above a vertical lake. Stalker was able to see his reflection at about the same distance as he did in the morning when he was brushing his teeth. There would be no time to check today's flossing job, however: Over his image's shoulder he could see the FANG, bearing down like an angry wasp. There was an illuminated puff of smoke from the skids of the gyrocopter as the Baroness loosed one of its four missiles in his direction.
Not good. Stalker pulled out of the climb and veered sharply to the left. FANGs were as overpowered as they were unsafe, each one packing as much firepower as fully armed gunship. It was the aeronautical equivalent of mounting missile racks and a 50 cal on a go-kart. He knew if he was in the path of that missile, or anywhere within a 500 foot radius of where it hit for that matter, there wouldn't be enough left of him to fill a sandwich bag.
The missile traced a weaving path towards the building, striking a corner office and erupting into a bright orange fireball. The Baroness, a little too aggressive in her attack, had to pull back to avoid getting caught in the blast. Metallic shrapnel, chunks of concrete, and shards of glass radiated outward and began to rain onto the street below.
Stalker figured he must have gotten 501 feet away before the missile hit, because while he was still in one piece, the explosion's shockwave slammed the Jump like a freight train, sending Bludd and himself careening into a hard tumble. Somehow Stalker was able to compensate, twisting his body so that the propulsion unit cancelled out the explosion's chaotic momentum. He also, miraculously, had managed to keep possession of Bludd, although losing that fool was looking like a better and better plan as the evening wore on.
The Baroness steadied the FANG and scanned the city below, she spotted the bright flare of the Jump's propulsion units immediately and brought the the tiny aircraft about. She hadn't counted on the meddlesome Joe catching Major Bludd: Who would do such a thing? Such a display of softhearted weakness would never be tolerated in Cobra's ranks. Still, if he had possession of Bludd, he also had possession of the Key. That couldn't be allowed, she would not return to Destro, her love, empty handed. The prize would be hers again at any cost.
Diving hard and laying on the thrust, she engaged the FANG's forward laser cannon. Concussive blasts lit up the sky like the wrath of a demigod as the ball-mounted cannon etched out a cone of death that surrounded her quarry below.
The laser fire scorching the air around him, Stalker spun and pulled out his laser pistol; he was aiming for the Baroness, but he would settle for a hit on the FANG's engine if he could get it. The stroboscopic glare from the copter's forward laser made it impossible to get a decent shot, but he snapped off a quick volley anyway, hoping for the best.
What he got was a solid miss. A warning klaxon went off next to his ear, more bad news. The Jump was falling again, the added weight, not to mention the aerial dogfighting, was taxing it to its limit. The only good thing was that the Baroness seemed to be having an equal amount of trouble scoring on him. She was, however, closing the gap between them with a singleminded rapidity. Stalker reckoned that her plan was to ram him if she missed with the laser. It didn't seem to matter to her that her plan also carried a significant risk to her own life and limb.
It was a crisis situation, but Stalker liked to think of himself as a positive person, one who can take a crisis and find the hidden opportunity within. It was in this spirit that a course of action made itself apparent to him.
"Lady, if you want this guy, you can have him!" Stalker shouted, twisting at the waist and sending the Jump into a stationary spin. He held Bludd out at arms length, letting himself do two full rotations, picking up speed as he did. He'd seen a similar move done, albeit without jetpack assistance, on a wrestling program. He couldn't remember the name of athlete who performed the move, but the name of the maneuver was appropriate: Airplane spin.
He didn't so much let go of Bludd as centrifugal force tore him from his hands, launching his lifeless form towards the FANG at remarkable speed. Bludd rolled through the evening sky end over end, his arms and legs flailing with a relaxed, lackadaisical aimlessness.
The Baroness, after taking a moment to process what she was seeing, pulled out of her dive in an attempt to veer around the slumbering projectile. She'd committed too much momentum to get out of it easily, however, and Bludd, tenacious even in unconsciousness, became snagged on the FANG's skids by one of his armor's shoulder straps. Once again the gyrocopter listed downwards from the sudden addition of cargo.
Having become accustomed to the awkwardness of an unbalanced FANG, the Baroness was able to compensate more quickly for Bludd's mass. It hadn't happened in the most desirable way, but she did get what she wanted: Bludd, and therefore the Key, was hers once again. But there was still the matter of the irritating G.I. Joe who had so foolishly returned him to her. She saw him flying downwards, fleeing desperately, tracing a glowing orange arc back towards the city. The Baroness smiled as she armed all of the FANG's remaining missiles.
Stalker tore downwards at a speed that made terminal velocity look like a paper airplane tossed out a window on a lazy afternoon. His intention was to hit the Baroness with Bludd, ideally in the face, so that he could make a clean getaway. He hadn't expected it to work, but it had at least bought him an extra few seconds. And if he knew his team, that would probably be all he needed. He was close enough to the city now that he could hear the screeching of tires in the otherwise deserted streets. A smile crossed his face.
"I see him!" Scarlett shouted over the roar of the VAMP's engine, she was standing on the back of the vehicle, manually operating the gun turret as Clutch drove. In addition to being an expert martial artist Scarlett was also no slouch in the gymnastics department, having medaled in a dozen state championships back in Georgia. Every skill she'd learned during those years was being put to the test to keep her from flying off the back of the VAMP as Clutch navigated the streets of Akron like it was Monte Carlo. They'd taken most of the turns on two wheels, and caught air about seven times before she'd stopped counting. Despite the rough ride, she wasn't about to tell the driver to slow down. Hot pursuit was one area where Scarlett didn't begrudge Clutch his grandstanding tendencies. Once the chase started, keeping up with the two aircraft from the ground was a monumentally difficult task, and it was one that Clutch took to with his usual gusto. Crazy driving was what was needed here, she knew, so it was best to just hang on and let the crazy man drive.
Clutch was doing a bang up job, they were almost directly underneath Stalker, right now only visible to them by an orange comet that marked his place in the sky. They'd lost him a couple of times behind the skyscrapers, but, thanks to a little luck and Clutch's liberal use of handbrake turns, were able to maintain eyes on status for most of the dogfight. The giant building explosion was also a useful geographic marker as to where the battle was headed.
Right now Stalker was headed downwards, towards them. Stalker would have known that his teammates would stay with him and this was most likely in an attempt to lure the Baroness into range of the VAMP's heavy laser. The light pollution from the streetlamps, signs, and traffic signals in the urban center rendered the rest of the night sky an even shade of greenish black, like a chalkboard slate. The FANG, with dark coloring and lack of running lights, would be nearly impossible to see unless it was firing its weapons. And if it was firing its weapons, Stalker would be in serious trouble. Scarlett stared at the dark canvas, searching for a sign.
Her vigilance was rewarded by three flares to the southeast: Missiles being launched. Scarlett swung the turret towards them, firing as she did. A spray of red patriot justice spilled from the twin cannons. She scored direct hits on two of the three missiles, their payloads disappearing in twin fiery orange blooms so close together they almost seemed to be a single explosion. The third, however, was still locked on and closing on her friend.
Her finger never leaving the trigger, she made a fine adjustment to her aim, attempting to get the laser streams ahead of the remaining missile without accidentally hitting Stalker. The slim target was frustratingly elusive, as three lasers slipped by within feet of hitting it. The missile was less than thirty feet away from its goal when she finally tagged it, setting off the final explosion for that night. Her heart sank as she saw the orange stream representing Stalker waver wildly in the explosion's shockwave. She hoped he wasn't knocked unconscious by the blast, if he lost control of the Jump, there was nothing that either she or Clutch could do to help him.
The Jump righted itself and Scarlett let herself breathe again. She only noticed now that the VAMP had also eased to a stop: She hadn't been the only one concerned about Stalker, it seemed. Once again the captain of his destiny, Stalker swung down over the VAMP, then veered upwards sharply, landing gently in front of them like a superhero. He deactivated the flight pack and began to unstrap it.
"Thanks for the assist, guys. Did the Baroness give up?" he asked with the calm and ease of someone who was not just the target of three stinger missiles mere moments earlier.
Scarlett hopped off the back of the VAMP, "She took off as soon as we started shooting, I guess she wasn't up for a fair fight."
"That's too bad," said Stalker, smiling, "She probably would have stayed longer if she knew she was leaving this behind." He produced the amethyst carving from a pouch in his belt, "I borrowed it from Bludd while we were up close and personal."
Scarlett gestured for him to toss the piece over to her, he complied and she plucked it from the air to examine it more closely. She frowned, raising an eyebrow, "They blew up half of downtown Akron for this?"
Clutch leaned out of the window of the VAMP, craning for a better view of the carving, "Looks like a bottle opener."
Stalker chuckled, "Maybe. Whatever it is, Destro wanted it bad enough to send Bludd and his crazy girlfriend after it, so it must do something important. We'll bring it back to the base, Breaker might have some idea what it is."
Scarlett tossed the stone back to Stalker, "We should also head back to the electronics store. I left my ride there."
2
"Them! They're the ones!"
On the plus side, Gary McQuality appeared to have recovered nicely from his brush with Cobra. The emergency crews could barely keep the blood pressure monitor on him as he paced around the parking lot, waving his arms and ranting with unfocussed rage.
That rage found its focus as soon as he'd seen them pulling up in the VAMP. Ripping off the armband, he bounded over to them as fast as his stubby legs would permit.
Clutch shook his head as he put the VAMP in park, "Look at this guy. A couple of broken windows and a little fire and he's all bent out of shape. If it wasn't for us, Cobra would have wiped his little store off the map half a dozen times by now."
That much was true. G.I. Joe had foiled several Cobra plots that, if unopposed, would have had near-apocalyptic consequences. The problem was that many of those operations took place in remote areas and the details were on a strict need to know basis. So, with many of their greatest hits squirreled away in above top secret files under mountains of red tape, G.I. Joe's main contact with the American public came from missions that were run on U.S. soil. And in those cases your average Joe Lunchpail couldn't tell one giant futuristic army from the other, especially when they were in a public park emptying their missile racks at one another. They had their supporters, of course, but G.I. Joe could sometimes suffer from an image problem, especially in cases where property damage was involved.
Clutch wasn't done grousing, "Why can't we just grab Scarlett's hang glider and go? According to regulations, we don't need to engage with civilians. I say it's a good idea all around to just beat feet and let the PR team handle this."
Although Clutch was stating it in a way that was somewhat ignorant, we was also correct about that. G.I. Joe didn't require that they do anything save collecting their equipment, and any sensitive materials related to their current mission. But Stalker's upbringing had taught him that if you messed something up in your neighborhood, you'd better go back and make it right yourself. Since he joined G.I. Joe he considered America to be his neighborhood, and he wasn't going to let any PR team speak for him. Scarlett, he knew, was of the same mindset. As for Clutch, well, it was probably best to leave him in the VAMP for now. This situation was going to require a diplomatic touch: An arrow that the Jersey native assuredly did not have in his quiver.
"Play it cool, Clutch," said Stalker, "Let's not make it any worse than it is right now."
He gestured for Clutch to stay put; Clutch shrugged and slouched back in his seat, tipping his helmet over his eyes as he did. Scarlett and Stalker got out of the VAMP and made their way over to the red-faced entrepreneur. It seemed that McQuality was not much of a walker, as the short, angry jog across the parking lot to reach the Joes left him winded. Stalker took advantage of the lull and grabbed the man's pudgy little hand, pumping it twice with a firm vigor. It was time to turn on the charm.
"Good evening, sir. I'm Stalker, and this is Scarlett. We're with the G.I. Joe team. We're very happy to see you're all right."
McQuality took a raspy gulp of air before responding, "All right? All right? Does this look all right to you?"
With an extravagant sweep of his hand, McQuality indicated the store behind him. Quite a mess to be sure, but both at the store and at the Museum across the street the Akron fire crews had done a fine job getting the situation under control: The smoke had stopped, and there were no apparent flames that Stalker could see. However, he knew that the skill and bravery of his local fire department likely wasn't what was on McQuality's mind.
Time to bump the charm up another notch then, "I hear you, Mr. McQuality. And I want you to know that anything your insurance doesn't cover will be cheerfully paid for by Uncle Sam."
"Right, my tax dollars at work," McQuality fumed, "I'm doing a live commercial tomorrow. I have a camera crew coming, there's going to be clowns, radio DJs, the whole bit! Insurance isn't going to make this place presentable by 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, is it?"
"I apologize that this has happened, but sometimes there are circumstances beyond our control that-"
The chubby cowboy removed his hat, jabbing it in Clutch's direction, "Most of the damage was done by that gorilla over there driving your jeep!"
"Urban assault vehicle," said Clutch, his eyes still covered by the helmet.
Stalker groaned inwardly, if he were to have given a name to the central theme of this civilian interaction it would have been "Keep the guy from talking to Clutch", and here they were exchanging words less than a minute in. He chastised himself for not making him park further away.
"More like a business assault vehicle!" McQuality raged, "I'll have you know I play golf with the mayor of Akron and he can make things pretty uncomfortable for you!"
Clutch snorted and continued to take his fake nap, his insolence fanned the flames of the little man's temper. Stalker put himself between them, placing his hands on the fat man's shoulders, he steered him so that he was looking at Scarlett and himself again.
"I apologize for the store, and we're going to make that right. But I assure you that whatever actions were taken by my colleagues tonight were done in the sole interest of national security."
McQuality cut him off, "What are your names?"
"As I said before, I'm Stalker, and this is Scarlett. Clutch is in the vehicle over there," Stalker gestured at the VAMP where Clutch was still sitting. The driver snapped off a sarcastic wave.
"Oh, I heard your precious little nicknames. I want your real names, your badge numbers, and where I can reach your commanding officer."
"We use code names to protect our families, our real names are classified," explained Scarlett, "If you want to speak to someone at G.I. Joe headquarters, we can give you the number of our Public Relations department."
"Oh, no!" McQuality bellowed, "If you think you're just going to foist me off to your bureaucracy, you can think again, Man-Jaw!"
That remark seemed to get under Clutch's skin, he sat up and righted his helmet on his head, "Hey, you don't talk about my teammate that way, buddy!"
McQuality pointed a finger that looked like a chain of marshmallows at the driver, "Why don't you just stay in the car, Bowser, I'll get to you in a second!"
"Urban. Assault. Vehicle! And why don't you get to me right now, Pillsbury?"
Stalker heard a seatbelt unsnapping, Clutch was a great driver, and a tough guy in a lot of ways, but his pride was as fragile as spun sugar. Once he got hot, it didn't take much to get him swinging. If shooting up a local video store was bad, starting a brawl in the parking lot with the owner of said video store was abysmal.
Clutch had the VAMP door open and one boot on the pavement when McQuality's aggression seemed to evaporate. The realization that there was a possibility of the much larger man attacking him caused the little cowboy to switch into retreat mode, darting behind Scarlett with a speed and agility that Stalker would have thought impossible.
Shooting Clutch a look, the Ranger waved him back, "Clutch, stay in the VAMP."
Clutch finally got the message. He did as instructed, but he let his seatbelt snap back into its housing, just to make a point. He stared silently at McQuality.
"Just take it easy, pal," he called out from behind Scarlett's elbow, a little tremor audible his voice.
Clutch was stock still for a moment, then made a sudden, exaggerated lunge for the VAMP's door handle. McQuality let out what sounded like a monkey screech and was back behind Scarlett once more.
Stalker shook his head. Exasperated, he looked back at Clutch again, "Come on, man."
Clutch grimaced and raised his hands, a cartoonish show of contrition. Stalker gave him his best serious look before turning back to McQuality.
"Now I understand that tempers are hot right now," he continued, "But here's what I want you to do. Go home and get some sleep. G.I. Joe has some excellent contractors on retainer and I'm going to see to it personally that they're on the job first thing tomorrow fixing up your store. They won't get everything done by 4:00, but they'll have it looking nice for the cameras by then. How does that sound?"
McQuality grunted, "I suppose it'll do. For now."
"Really happy to hear that," said Stalker, "My guys will be there tomorrow at 8:30."
Three firefighters approached the Stalker and Scarlett. One led the way while the two behind him carried Scarlett's Falcon glider by the wingtips.
"I believe this belongs to you guys," said the frontmost man.
"Right, thanks," said Scarlett, smiling as she accepted the singed glider.
Stalker took the amethyst piece out of his pocket to examine it again, "We'd better get this back to the base. Maybe Breaker can tell us something about it."
3
The Baroness and Bludd walked into Destro's throne room side by side. She spared the mercenary a sidelong glance, she couldn't believe he'd weathered his ordeal without a scratch. Bludd had come to and was fully cognizant somewhere over Zanesville, denying her an opportunity to land and get the piece off of him. She cursed the man's resilience: She had been looking forward to finishing the job she'd started in the skies of Akron. If Bludd had taken offense to her murder attempt, those emotions didn't show in his face. His weathered features were blank, not a hint of anger in evidence. Most likely he was playing it cool until he got his money. After which, the Baroness imagined, he would scurry away to the hollow log or burrow he lived in to count it a few times.
Destro's throne room, one of many he maintained around the world, was dramatic, but tasteful. Modeled after his ancestral castle in Trans-Carpathia, it was built from huge hunks of meticulously shaped granite. Unlike its inspiration, which was composed of crudely fashioned boulders stacked in whatever way the medieval architects thought they would best fit with one another, the stones here were carved with minute precision by computer-guided laser drills. They meshed together with the exacting fit of a jigsaw puzzle to form symmetrical patterns and rhythms, pleasing to the eye. Destro honored the traditions of his forebears, but there was always room for improvement.
The room was a long wide space, torchlit, with columns jutting up from the marble floor to hold up a high ceiling. The floor consisted of a tract of marble, polished to a mirror finish, that led from the entrance to a platform at the far end of the room. On either side it gave way to two deep open pits, each running the length of the room. Like many of Destro's creations, it was an intimidation tactic: Designed to give guests no choice but to move forward once they crossed the threshold.
Destro himself sat on the raised platform, in a throne, naturally, and flanked by two members of the Crimson Guard. Representing the elite of Cobra's officers, the red uniformed men stood motionless: Their humanity shrouded behind robot-like full face masks. Their discipline was such that it was almost impossible to prove, by observation alone, whether or not they were human or just mannequins set up to sell uniforms. Put a price sticker on them, and the effect would be complete. Destro was a consummate businessman, so such a scenario wouldn't have been entirely out of keeping.
The illusion was broken when Destro waved them off. Turning smartly on their heel, the red-garbed men marched in opposite directions through exits in the sides of the room. They would resume their guard duties just outside, awaiting Destro's call should he require them. Their dismissal was a strategic move: In a normal situation, he'd keep them close, both for intimidation and for added security. Right now, however, their presence was awkward. They would, without thought, lay down their lives for his safety, but their ultimate loyalty was to Cobra. This exchange was not one that Destro wanted passed along to Cobra Commander.
To further cultivate the almost palpable undercurrent of superiority that already flowed within the chamber, Destro's throne was situated on a dais that raised him several feet above anyone approaching him from the room's entrance. He stood as the Baroness and Bludd drew near so that he was towering over them when they reached the wide staircase that led up to his platform.
Destro was taller than most men, with the powerful build of one who takes exceptional care of himself. He wore a tight-fitting black bodysuit that covered his entire body except for a plunging neckline that exposed the middle third of his chest. Steel gauntlets covered his hands, each equipped with a set of miniature armor piercing missiles. A high collar, deep red, lay across his shoulders and framed the most striking thing about him: His mask.
The mask was a tradition, handed down through the generations of Destro's family. Those early versions were forged from heavy steel, cold and lifeless. When it was handed down to him, as he had done with the family castle, Destro had taken it upon himself to make some improvements to the mask: Made of what appeared to be chrome plated steel, it adhered to every contour of his face, geometrically exaggerating some aspects, but maintaining an incredible fidelity to his normal features. It was seamless, and, impossibly, it moved with his face when he changed his facial expression or spoke.
At present, the facial expression being translated by the mask was one of peevish irritation, "If your wish was to become famous, Major Bludd, I think you have succeeded admirably. Your antics have made the evening news. This mission was not meant to be publicized. Had Cobra Commander not been in Paris at the moment, he would surely have learned of our activities."
Bludd shrugged, "Yeah, well no one mentioned that G.I. Joe was coming to the party."
"I thought it went without saying that G.I. Joe is always a risk," said Destro, "You have dealt with them before, have you not?"
"I like to know what I'm getting into, what I don't like is being set up to walk into an ambush from one of their best men."
"One man? Surely with a compliment of thirteen men at your disposal, one man should not have posed that much of a threat, no matter how well trained."
The Baroness chimed in, "The man was the one they call Stalker, I believe the good Major fears him."
Bludd spun and jabbed a finger in the face of the Baroness, "Major Sebastien Bludd fears no one, ya four-eyed tart!"
Destro, neutral and collected up until this point, stepped forward at this act of aggression towards his woman. He raised his arm, fist clenched, and there was a high pitched whine as he primed one of his wrist missiles. Bludd was not so enraged that this fact was lost on him, nor that his laser pistol and knives were checked with security when he entered Destro's base. The masked man's little rockets, gimmicky though they might be, were the only weapons in the room. And since they were designed to take down small aircraft, it would be nothing for Destro to reduce him to a smoking pair of boots, should he choose. The mercenary backed off, silently adding "self righteous sense of chivalry" to his list of things that made Destro insufferable.
The Baroness smiled, pleased at having simultaneously getting Bludd's goad and coaxing a public expression of affection out of Destro.
"My apologies," said Bludd, swallowing his pride for the time being, "But as I was trying to say, those novices you sent along with me barely knew which end of the rifle the laser comes out of, they didn't stand a chance against a trained Ranger with the drop on them. As it stood, the only reason I got out in one piece was on account of my keen intuition for these situations."
Destro resumed his former ease, "That intuition is the reason I'm paying you as much as I am for your services."
The mention of payment perked the mercenary up for a moment, "Right, thanks: That reminds me, if you want this little souvenir, the price just went up."
The Baroness stiffened, "You cannot be serious, we are already paying you a small fortune," she said.
Bludd nodded, "Right you are, missy. Which is why I'm thinking this little item is worth quite a bit to you. Now, as I've said, I went through quite a time obtaining it, and I feel the old price doesn't reflect the pain and suffering I've been through."
"You don't know pain and suffering," said the Baroness, her voice low, weighted down with fury, "Continue these games and I will show you what it means to suffer."
Bludd held up a finger and placed his other hand over a pouch on his belt, "I wouldn't do anything rash. See, I held this little McGuffin in my hands, and I know how fragile it is. You try anything, luvvie, and I guarantee I'll crush it to dust before you've taken one step."
The Baroness gritted her teeth, but was silent; she looked to Destro, who only smiled.
"You seem to have me at a disadvantage, Bludd," said the big man, "I suppose I have no choice but to ask you to name your price."
"Destro!" the Baroness implored, "surely you aren't planning to negotiate with this- this- dirt!"
"Negotiate implies that he has a bargaining position," said Bludd, relaxed, "the way I figure it, I'm holding the cards right now."
"Indeed," said Destro, "So, what are your terms?"
"Two million," said Bludd, "Loaded onto one of your best jets, which I will fly out of here and off into the sunset. I'll leave the piece in a neutral location and you can pick it up in a couple of days. Oh, and I wouldn't use those rockets of yours on me if I were you. 'Cause if I go boom, so does your item, and I assume the whole elaborate plan that goes with it."
The Baroness was beside herself: Bludd, a mercenary who probably took out ads in magazines, was openly mocking Destro, her Destro, and if that weren't insolent enough, he was doing it in a replica of his ancestral home. It was sacrilege of the highest order: If she hadn't checked her own weapons at the same time as Bludd, she would have shot the Australian by now. She looked to Destro, expecting his mirrored visage to twisted in rage, but instead she saw she the exact inverse of her own inner turmoil. He looked like a man who was discussing a football match with a work associate, not being extorted for a fortune.
"So," said Destro, in a brisk, businesslike tone, "It will be two million dollars, and a jet?"
Destro's calmness seemed to have caught Bludd a little flat-footed as well, he hesitated before responding, "Uhh...Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right."
"And you will leave the piece in a neutral location, where I can collect it in a few days?"
"Yeah, do you have a problem with that?" said Bludd, still wary.
Destro nodded, the amber light from the torches glinting off his smooth, chromed pate, "Not at all, you are a shrewd businessman. I believe we have a deal."
"Destro!" the Baroness shouted, "Do not capitulate to this vagabond!"
Destro ignored her, stepping off of the platform and walking towards Bludd, "I will, of course, require some kind of proof that you have the piece. I'm investing a significant amount of money and I need to know that you will deliver."
Bludd, reading the odd mood in the room, took a step or two away from Destro, forcing out a chuckle as he did, "Deliver? I'm a little insulted, mate. I may be a lot of things, but Major Sebastien Bludd always delivers."
Bludd was rooting around in the pouch he'd indicated earlier, his intention, it seemed, was to produce the piece as he said the word "Delivers", but it wasn't working out according to plan.
Bludd held the pouch open, angling himself so that the dim light in the room could reach the inside, "Well, that is odd. I was sure I put it in the left one, maybe..." he trailed off as he opened another, rummaging through the contents with an increased fervency.
There were, it turned out, quite a few pockets on Bludd's tactical gear, and it took him almost a minute to search all of them. Save for the sounds associated with Bludd's mounting desperation, the throne chamber was silent as a tomb as he did so.
Destro watched him, arms folded, his face blank, as motionless as the Crimson Guard who had just left. Bludd was giving himself a second patdown when he finally spoke, "Shall I save you further humiliation, Major Bludd?"
"I had the bloody thing!" the Major protested, "Just give me a second!"
"I have been tracking this artifact for many years Major Bludd, do you not think that I would have the means to know when it was brought to my own stronghold?" for the second time, the whine of Destro's wrist rockets seeped into the room, "The Joe known as Stalker relieved you of it during your high profile skirmish this evening. I am sad to say, Major Bludd, that you did not deliver."
Destro raised his fist and prepared to fire when Bludd, with the dexterity that blesses only the truly embattled, dove behind the Baroness, placing her in a headlock.
"Not another step, sparkle scalp," Bludd said, his rasping breath flicking at the Baroness's hair, "Unless you want you want me to do some amateur chiropractics on your girlfriend's skinny little neck."
Destro lowered his fist, powering down the wrist missiles, "If you harm her, Major Bludd..."
"If I harm her, pretty much the same thing happens than if I don't harm her, so from my perspective this is my best option," Bludd was attempting to walk himself and his hostage back to the exit at the far end of the room, "Now I'm still gonna want that plane, and you can throw in the two million while you're at it. Call it a ransom."
The Crimson Guard were already re entering the room, rifles up. Destro held up a hand to stay their fire: Though their aim was impeccable, it wasn't a risk he was willing to take, "You shall have what you desire, but know that two million dollars will seem like a paltry amount when compared to what I will do to you when I find you again."
"Better make it three, then," Bludd chuckled, pulling his prisoner more quickly, "Come on, Witch Hazel, our chariot awaits."
Maybe it was repressed rage, maybe it was the fact that this was the second time she'd been in this position that night, or maybe it was just prospect of spending who knows how long in a Rattler cockpit with Major Bludd, but whatever the case the Baroness had had enough. She planted her feet, stopping their progress towards the door, and raised her right leg so that her knee was at roughly hip level. Then, with a force Destro would not have thought her capable, she rammed the back of her heel into the mercenary's leg. The spiked heel hooked under Bludd's protective plate, tearing through his pantleg and embedding itself into the Major's shin.
Bludd let out an unsettling shriek and released his grip on the Baroness; capitalizing immediately on her freedom, she spun like a rotor blade, delivering a devastating roundhouse kick to the Major's already battered skull. His helmet flew off, landing with a hard clatter on the marble floor as its owner toppled over the precipice and down into the pit below. His cries of pain gradually tapered off into nothingness.
The Baroness righted herself, checked her hair, and sauntered over to the pit, kicking Bludd's helmet off the edge on her way by. The series of hollow metallic klunks it made as it bounced repeatedly off the jagged rocks that formed the pit's sides gradually decayed into silence. She leaned over the precipice, attempting to discern the Major's fate. The pit's rocky walls revealed nothing, simply leading her gaze down into blackness.
Destro joined her, placing a familiar arm around her waist, "How far down does it go, darling?" she asked.
Destro considered for a moment, "I honestly don't know," then, seeing the tiny cut on her cheek, his eyes, rendered as black with glowing green slits by the mask, widened, "My dear, what have they done to you?"
"It was the red haired one, that Scarlett," the Baroness spat, "If I had had another second or two I would have settled this debt with interest."
"I will see to it that you get your chance, my dear," said Destro, "But first, there is the problem of obtaining the key."
The Baroness frowned, "They key is a lost cause. Surely the G.I. Joes have ascertained its significance. By this time it will probably be locked in one of their fortified compounds. We would need an army to get it now."
Destro looked into the Baroness's eyes and smiled as warmly as his chrome face and serpentlike eyes would allow, "My dear, we won't need an army. Just one fat little cowboy."
4
"Why didn't you take that exit by the Red Rocket? It's faster." asked Scarlett from the VAMP's passenger seat. Stalker sat in the back, examining the item for the tenth time since they'd set out from Akron. He wasn't really learning anything new, but it was a welcome distraction from the Scarlett and Clutch Show going on in the front seat.
Clutch snorted, "Are you really telling me how to drive faster? Because, baby, I can drive way faster than this."
To illustrate his point, Clutch shifted gears and laid on the throttle. The streetlights outside began to whip by faster as the VAMP picked up speed, pressing the three of them back in their seats a little.
Scarlett made a show of nonchalance, staring out the window at the trees racing by, "Hey, drive whatever way you want. I'm just telling you how to get there more efficiently."
"If you don't like the route I'm taking, red, you're welcome to jump on your hang glider and fly the rest of the way home."
"I'd probably get there first."
Stalker leaned forward, casually resting his arms on the sides of the two front seats and providing a mediating presence between the two, "Once we get back, we're going to have to go on high alert. Destro's not going to give up that easy."
"He's persistent, I'll give him that," Scarlett said, sighing, "I'm surprised he hasn't attacked us again."
"Maybe he doesn't know how short staffed we are with the Europe thing," said Clutch.
Stalker shook his head, "I heard Cobra's guys talking back in the museum. Destro's keeping this a secret from Cobra Commander, so he probably doesn't have access to Cobra's full resources."
"Well that's good news, at least," said Scarlett.
Clutch snorted, "Still, I bet he's got more than three guys," chuckling, he shot a sidelong glance at Scarlett, "Sorry, two guys and a girl. Hey, did I tell you you looked great today?"
"You might have, I try to tune you out. I wish I could do the same for your after shave," said Scarlett, "If Destro is acting alone, that could mean bigger trouble for us. His plans are a little more refined than Cobra Commander's."
Stalker nodded his agreement, Clutch laid on the throttle. The three of them sat in silence for the rest of the drive to the base.
Located in the center of a large, flat field on the outskirts of Akron, the G.I. Joe installation was much the same as the rest of them were. Identical would be another way of putting it. Each of the Joe compounds was built to tight specifications, allowing for a sixteenth of an inch margin of error. The reasoning was simple: Familiarity. Any Joe could walk in cold to any of the thirty five bases dotted around the country and know every system, every weapons locker, every battle station, right down to what drawer to open to find the plastic forks in case someone brought pie. This eliminated wasteful down time when moving from base to base, which happened a lot.
The base's shape was determined by its purpose, and that purpose was to repel attack. A modern castle: Its thick, armored walls, gunmetal grey, sloped down to meet the ground at a 45 degree angle to better repel a missile attack. The windows were sealed with sliding shutters that matched the surface of the building perfectly when closed, as they were now. Once closed, they were engineered so as to be impossible to pry open. Laser cannon installations dotted the top wall, these could be controlled remotely from a console inside the communications room, or directly by a gunner for that personal touch. Jutting out of a tower at the highest point of the base was far and away its most distinctive feature, a massive gun barrel roughly a hundred feet long. An experimental technology called a railgun, it was tied with the thirty four ones at the other G.I. Joe bases for the largest in the world.
Clutch gave the password to the computer at the security checkpoint and barely cleared the gate as he sped towards the base as fast as the VAMP's powerful engine would permit. The three of them scanned the skies and surrounding land warily; it was unlikely that Destro would try something this close to the base, but there was no accounting for the chrome maskman's determination. Unlikely or not, they lived in a time and place where logic was a meek suggestion in the face of increasingly bizarre shows of force. There was an unspoken agreement between the three that the sooner they were inside the base's steely confines, they safer they'd feel. Clutch punched in a code on the VAMP's dashboard to activate the entry ramp, timing it so that the ramp was just touching the pavement as the vehicle's front tires reached it. Hurtling inside, he threw the vehicle into a skid to avoid slamming into the rear wall of the motor pool.
After each of them had filed their report of the evening's goings on, it was decided that a watch rotation should be established. Breaker had volunteered to keep an eye out, but he was already monitoring the Europe mission. No one doubted Breaker's ability to multitask, but they didn't feel like pushing their luck. Still feeling the adrenalin rush of his dogfight over Akron, Stalker didn't much feel like sleeping, so he volunteered to take first watch.
A few hours after setting up shop on the roof of the base, the whole thing was starting to feel like a waste of time. From his vantage point, Stalker could see for miles in every direction: The two acres of land immediately surrounding the base were taken up by airfield. A row of Sky Strikers, G.I. Joe's state of the art jet fighters, were arranged on the south side of the base, each turned at a thirty degree angle for quick deployment. Even from this vantage point their white backswept wings and sleek aerodynamic lines were apparent, although from the roof they looked like toys arranged with precision by a fastidious child. There were some hangars to the north side, the obstacle course and outdoor firing range was eastward, and to the west was a multipurpose area, ostensibly for calisthenics but mostly pressed into service for games of pick up basketball. The one thing every direction had in common was that nothing was happening in any of them.
"See anything interesting?"
The voice caught the Ranger by surprise. He turned to see Scarlett standing beside the roof access hatch. She was holding two cups of coffee. He hadn't heard her approach, he chided himself for the lapse in situational awareness.
Scarlett smiled, the consternation must have shown in his face, "Didn't scare you, did I?" she asked as she approached, holding out the coffee.
Stalker chuckled as he accepted the mug, "Nah, scared is a young man's game, I don't have the energy these days. You are quiet as a mouse, young lady."
"Just some tricks I picked up from Snake Eyes," she said, looking out over the landscape. Dawn was just starting to break, painting the dark horizon with a thin band of cobalt blue, "So, no Destro?"
"Not that I've seen. I don't think he'd risk a frontal assault anyway. He wouldn't have the resources without backing from Cobra."
"By the way, bucko, you were supposed to wake me at 4:30 to relieve you," said Scarlett, her tone heavy with mock accusation, "Or do you just like standing out here?"
"I don't need a lot of sleep," Stalker replied, "It's a gift. Besides, nothing's going to happen. Destro's planning something cagey."
Scarlett raised an eyebrow, "Have that on good authority, do you?"
Stalker smiled, "Just a feeling."
An intercom squawked nearby, Stalker raised a finger to Scarlett in a "just a minute" gesture as he walked over to answer it.
Breaker announced himself, "If you have some time, I think I may have worked out something about that artifact you brought in."
"It's pretty dead up here, I'll be right down," releasing the intercom button, he looked at Scarlett, "You coming?"
"Lead the way, old timer."
Breaker had placed the artifact on the large conference table in the communications room. Next to it was the tracking device that Bludd had been using in the museum. The Joe communications officer stood nearby, holding what looked to Stalker to be an oscilloscope with a handheld device wired to it; not being a science guy, he couldn't be sure. Technically Breaker wasn't a scientist either, but he had done a lot of extracurricular research over the years in his quest to know everything there was to know about communications, and that led to a lot of overlap into other disciplines. Neither Stalker nor Scarlett had specifically solicited his help with the artifact, but they didn't have to. As soon as he'd found out they were bringing it back, he'd been eager to have a look. There was nothing the man liked more than solving problems, the harder the better.
Breaker gave them a quick wave as they entered, his cheeks swelled up for a moment and pink sphere emerged from his mouth like some kind of eyeless grub peeking out of its burrow. The bubble swelled to an impressive diameter before popping, after which Breaker deftly scooped the debris back into his mouth with his tongue. If there was one thing the communications specialist might have prioritized over problem solving it would have been bubble gum, but it was a narrow preference. For Breaker the two went hand in hand: Whenever he was working on something challenging in his head, his jaw was also working on a mouthful of the pink, sugary confection.
"Hey Stalk, Scarlett, come on in," he said through the rapid chewing, "This is some pretty interesting stuff here. I can't say I fully understand it, but I can tell you a couple of things."
"All ears," said Stalker.
"First thing is that this little doohickey gives off a serious magnetic field," Breaker moved the handheld unit close to the artifact, as he did so a glowing green line began to twitch and thrash on round screen of the larger device.
He indicated the smaller machine that Bludd was using, "That's how they were able to detect it with this thing. It's basically a fancy Gaussmeter." Snapping his gum, Breaker walked over to the console in front of the giant monitor that dominated the back wall of the room. Pressing a few buttons, a wireframe diagram of the artifact popped up on the screen. Undulating green lines twisted around it like fighting snakes. "I'll tell ya, whoever made that thing sure knows a lot about magnets. It's not a strong field, but it has a distinct magnetic signature unlike anything I've ever seen. Pretty neat."
"Yeah, neat," said Stalker, "What do you suppose it does that Destro wants it so bad?"
"I couldn't tell you," Breaker admitted, "It's such a weak field that I don't think it could be weaponized. It might be professional bias on my part, but it could be used for communication. I'm just grasping in the dark, though."
"It's a key," said Scarlett.
Stalker nodded, "You think so?"
"It's small, portable, and has a unique signature. Like a primitive version of a key card. Plus, doesn't it look like a key to you?"
Stalker and Breaker looked at the item for a moment, one end was filed smooth and tapered to a point, the other side was flatter, a little like a handle. It did seem like it was meant to be part of something bigger, like a puzzle piece.
Breaker popped another bubble, "Lady has a point."
Stalker folded his arms, "If it's a key, and Destro wants it, I don't want to think about what it unlocks."
Scarlett collected the theoretical key from the table, "Me neither, which is why I'm locking this thing in the vault until we can get some experts in here to figure out a little more about it. Thanks for your help, Breaker."
"Always a pleasure," said Breaker, extracting his gum and unwrapping a fresh piece.
5
Gary McQuality woke that morning hoping that the previous night's events had been a bad dream. It took one look at the sooty stains on his white suit to dash his hopes. It was infuriating: All he had worked to build, shot with lasers by maniacs, burned to ash, which was, just for good measure, smeared all over his best suit.
His lucky suit.
He picked up his beloved garment, still damp from the sprinklers, and brushed at the stains. The effort was futile: The best dry cleaner in Akron wasn't going to get that crud off of there. But hey, what's a suit more or less in the name of National Security, right?
National Security. That was a laugh. If what happened to him last night was any representation of National dadgum Security, he'd sure hate to see insecurity. It seemed like those G.I. Joes had a blank check to just hop in a tank or a plane or an urban assault vehicle and go blow up whatever they felt like, and if anyone had something to say about it, they just waved National Security in their faces and everything was forgotten. Heaven forfend that the big bad boogeyman Cobra crawl out from under the bed and bite everyone in the butt.
But he had to hand it to them, they knew all the angles. That guy who was with them, the one who did most of the talking and kind of looked like Billy Dee Williams, that was a smooth customer. He knew just what to say to make everything all right. Those contractors he was talking about probably gave him kickbacks that went right into his pocket. Cause some damage, then reap the profits from fixing it. A nice little scam.
Heck, he wasn't even so sure that these Joe people and Cobra weren't really on the same side. They all seemed pretty chummy last night, from what he could see. Trading wisecracks like old pals; like it was some kind of game. McQuality remembered seeing an episode of 20 Questions last year that made a pretty good case for-
His reverie was interrupted by the doorbell. A quick glance at the clock on his dresser confirmed that it was 7:40 in the morning.
"Better not be a salesman," McQuality grumbled as he put on his silk bathrobe and padded out the door of his enormous bedroom to the marble staircase that led to the foyer.
The bell sounded again before McQuality reached the front entrance, "Keep yer spurs on, I'm coming!" he barked as he grabbed the handle and tore the door open.
Standing on the front terrace was a tall, well coiffed man in his late 30s. He wore a well-tailored suit, not as nice as McQuality's lucky suit, but a strong second place. His silk tie bisected a perfectly pressed white shirt, his shoes were like black lacquer. If McQuality's angry outburst upon opening the door had startled him in any way, he didn't let on: His face was split in a dazzling smile. He put out a hand to the shorter man.
"Name's Fred," he said with the deep, warm voice of a morning radio DJ.
"McQuality," said McQuality, his salesman's instincts compelled him to shake the proffered hand, "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I just moved in down the street, and I think I have something of yours," said Fred, producing a pile of envelopes, "The mailman must have us confused. Now that I've met you, I can see why that would happen. We're like twins." Fred laughed as he handed the envelopes to McQuality.
McQuality accepted the letters and rifled through them, completely missing the glance that Fred shot over his shoulder, across the opulent foyer of McQuality's home and upwards through his bedroom door to the masked, red uniformed man who was just now crawling in through the window. Fred met his fellow Crimson Guard's gaze and gave a quick nod and received a thumbs up in return before McQuality looked up again. The operation was a go.
McQuality muttered some words of thanks and was in the process of closing the door on Fred. The handsome man's hand shot up to grab the side of the door, stopping it cold as he began to stall for time.
"Say," said Fred, "I don't mean to keep you, but I'm new in town and I'm kind of feeling homesick. You seem like a fellow cowboy so maybe you can help me out. I'm from Texas: Amarillo specifically. Have you been to Amarillo? Great barbecue. You wouldn't be able to recommend a good place to get barbecue around here, would you?"
Whatever McQuality's recommendation might have been for a good rack of ribs was lost to the red maskman in McQuality's room, for he was getting down to business. It was a simple mission, relatively speaking, but there was a narrow window of opportunity: After McQuality had selected his outfit for the day, but before he got dressed.
To this end, uniformed Crimson Guard had broken into the house behind McQuality's property that boasted a good view of his bedroom window. The husband was away when he'd kicked the door in, fortunately. There was a housekeeper and a wife in attendance, true, but they were unarmed, caught by surprise, and understandably terrified of the hulking masked monster that had burst into their home, so they didn't put up much of a fight. The two were easily subdued, tied up, and left in a closet for safe keeping. There would be an aftermath, of course: Police would likely be crawling all over the neighborhood later today, but by then the Crimson Guard would be long gone. At least they'd have something to talk about over cucumber sandwiches at the next book club meeting.
The Guardsman in the house took up a position on the rear deck, the best line of sight for McQuality's bedroom. He'd radioed his partner who was waiting on the street in civilian clothes when he determined that McQuality had settled on an ensemble. While the undercover operative was walking up to McQuality's door, grabbing the mail from his box on the way, the masked man had vaulted off of the rear deck of the house. The Cobra hit the ground running, vaulting over the fence and covering the distance between the two homes in a few great strides.
He was already unspooling his climbing equipment by the time he reached the house. 30 feet of sturdy rope with what looked like a metallic cylinder at the end. He was spinning the weighted end above his head as he came to a stop under McQuality's bedroom window. He let it go and sent the rope sailing in a graceful arc over the roof to land behind the mansion's chimney. On impact, the cylinder blossomed into a spiked grappling hook, entangling itself behind the brick outcropping.
The Crimson Guard was up the wall with silence and speed that rivaled that of a ninja. Once he was in through the window he spared a glance to his partner to make sure that he was keeping up his end of things. It looked for a hot second that the target might break contact and jeopardize the mission, but the plainclothes Cobra had intervened quickly and redirected his attention. The Cobra elite smiled behind his mask, taking pride in the effectiveness of his division. A significant part of the Crimson Guard's training was devoted to infiltration, ingratiating oneself to the rabble of western society, and directing their actions to suit Cobra's designs. Banal small talk was a specialty: Sports scores, soap operas, eating establishments where they served salt-laden fried food, whatever the dull eyed fools wanted to talk about.
The Guardsman glanced over the clothes that had been laid out on the bed. Pants, shirt, jacket, and, as he'd seen from the neighbor's house, the belt. He pulled out the duplicate belt that Destro had given him and did a quick check to make sure the two were identical. They matched perfectly, right down to the wear patterns on the buckle. Intel had done their job well, it seemed.
He grabbed McQuality's belt and replaced it with the copy, taking care to emulate the original's exact position on the bed, lest the fat man had a photographic memory. If he had been more inclined to ask questions, he might have wondered why replacing a doughy VCR salesman's belt was such a high priority mission, but questions were for irritating children and new recruits. He was a Crimson Guard, who infiltrated all walks of life; befriending the enemy, entering their lives, learning their weaknesses so as to better enslave them, who trained for years to suppress their snotty, weepy emotions, supplanting them with icy strategy to become the next best thing to a robot, who abandoned their individuality by surgically altering their faces so that they all looked like clones of one another, and who gave up the name of their birth to take on the friendly, generic monicker "Fred". Every Crimson Guard was Fred, and Fred didn't ask questions, Fred just did the darned job.
Fred's mental clock warned him that he might have been in danger of overstaying his welcome, but the sounds of boisterous laughter from the foyer confirmed his fears were unfounded. Looking down again, he saw McQuality and his partner, Fred, sharing a laugh like they'd known each other for years. He was too far away to hear the conversation properly, but judging from the body language he surmised that McQuality was giving Fred some tips on his golf swing. There was no need to hurry at all: Heck, he probably had time to snoop around, maybe steal some money for the coffers, but that wasn't his mission. He shoved the belt into his jacket and leapt headfirst out of the window, catching the rope on the way down.
The egress of the Fred upstairs did not go unnoticed by the Fred at the front door. As soon as his partner was clear, he broke off the conversation by checking his watch, "Look at us, gabbing like ladies. If we go on much longer, we'll probably start swapping recipes. I gotta get to work."
McQuality pointed at him, winking, "We're going to get out on the links together, you and me. Remember, keep your-"
Fred chuckled as he walked away, "-Keep my head down and my feet apart. Got it! You have my number, give me a call."
"I'll do that. Take care, Fred!" Far from the grump he was when he opened it, McQuality was beaming as he shut the door.
Fred's face, on the other hand, went blank as soon as he turned around.
His encounter with Fred had left McQuality with a feeling of positivity that buoyed him through most of the drive to work, but he parted ways with his high spirits in the final mile of his commute. He'd rounded the corner and saw what looked in the distance like emergency vehicles surrounding both his building and the museum. The previous night came flooding back to him, dousing his good mood with a cold dose of reality. There were hours to go before his commercial shoot and the parking lot was full of giant diesel monstrosities of unknown purpose. Who were these people? If they were police, why were they still here? McQuality had given a statement the previous evening. Hadn't all this been settled by now?
His good mood was all but evaporated as he pulled into the parking lot, grinding his teeth, and planning the string of obscenities he was going to unleash once he got to a phone. Before he could get all the way out of his car he was intercepted by a burly man with a blond crew cut and matching mustache. He wore an orange hard hat that contrasted with a olive drab camouflage vest and cargo pants. His eyes were hidden behind pair of black sunglasses. He stuck out a tree trunk arm before McQuality could tear into him, once again decades of habit compelled the cowboy to shake the hand attached.
"Name's Rebar, G.I. Joe's construction expert, Stalker sent me," the large man said, effectively cutting off McQuality's first barrage of questions, which would have included who the heck are you? and what are you doing in my parking lot?
It was just then that McQuality noticed Rebar's sidearm, a laser pistol holstered on his left hip. These must be the contractors that Billy Dee was talking about last night; his great mood had caused him to temporarily forget about their arrival, although they weren't supposed to be here for another hour.
Rebar placed a massive hand on McQuality's shoulder, and began leading him through the metallic labyrinth that currently occupied his parking lot. Stalker must have briefed him on McQuality's irascibility, because he didn't give the little man a chance to talk before he launched into a progress report, "My crew and I were already in the neighborhood, so we took the liberty of getting started early, hope you don't mind. Damage wasn't as bad as it looked: There was some water and fire damage inside, which we're patching up right now. You've got new windows, a couple of new doors, the joists were a little saggy for my liking so we're reinforcing those, you also had a tiny mold problem in the basement, so we fixed that as well. My crew normally does permanent encampments and bunkers, so you're going to have the sturdiest building on the block when we're done. Isn't that right, Nailgun?"
Rebar had turned his attention to another man working nearby. Like Rebar, he was also a hulking brute: With dark wavy hair and a large Nordic beard. He was also armed, a laser rifle was strapped to his back in addition to a web belt with grenades and a combat knife, he stopped what he was doing and snapped off a salute as they walked past, "Yo Joe!"
"In fact," Rebar continued, raising his voice and adopting a drill sergeant's windy cadence, "We're more than likely going to finish an hour or so ahead of schedule if Drill Press has anything to say about it, isn't that right, Drill Press?"
Another man, this one wearing an armless green jumpsuit and maneuvering a crane, leaned out of the operator's booth long enough to shout, "Yo Joe!"
They made their way into the store, and McQuality had to admit he was impressed with their work. If anything, that Stalker character had undersold their abilities. The water damage had been fixed, the burn marks were gone from the walls, and the ceiling had been completely replaced. The place had never looked better.
McQuality was about to say something, but it seemed like Rebar wasn't finished yelling at his workers, "And if we can't, well then Arc Force has agreed to buy everyone lunch, is that not correct, Arc Force?"
"Yo Joe!" shouted another man as he walked past. Dressed in bright orange, he was the biggest of all of them. He carried a ten foot girder on one shoulder like it was made of styrofoam.
Rebar brought them to a stop in an area that had been cleared in the center of the store, "That's how things stand right now, so unless you have any questions, my men and I have a job to finish."
Try as he might McQuality couldn't think of any questions.
True to their word, the gigantic armed men had completed the work and had withdrawn entirely by the time the camera crew arrived to shoot the live commercial spots. The store itself looked great, inside and out; McQuality could not find a single fault with their work, no matter how closely he examined it. If anything, Stalker had undersold what the Joe contractors were able to do: They hadn't just fixed the cosmetic damage out front, but the inside of the store was also ready to go as well: The toilets even flushed better, for pity's sake. The property was in better shape now than it was when he first moved into the location. He'd started off his inspection with a chip on his shoulder, wanting to find fault, but by the time he finished he had decided that if Mr. Stalker got kickbacks from this work, he was welcome to them.
And it was a good thing, too, as he'd sunk a lot of money into this project. He'd reached an agreement with WXPN, one of the local TV stations, to do a series of live remotes during "What's Shaking, Akron?" their afternoon news magazine program. Four five minute segments would air after the local news, national news, weather, and sports respectively. It was a non-refundable deal, and he didn't relish the idea of doing a telecast from what the previous night had looked like the Normandy invasion.
He had also needed someone to banter with over VCRs and camcorders so he'd told the station to send over their prettiest news babe. While the wording of his request may have rankled them a bit, they did deliver when they sent over Petra Peters. A slim, apple-cheeked former pageant winner, Peters had a coiffure that was sculpted to motionless perfection, a smile that wouldn't quit no matter how many clumsy passes were made at her, and the ability to rock a tangerine blazer and matching skirt like no one else in the tri-state area.
A slight breeze tugged fruitlessly at her spray frozen 'do as she pointed a lacquered fingernail at one of the row of video cameras on the table in front of her, "So, what about this one?" she asked, her tone lending the question a cheerful lilt, "Can I take it with me on vacation?"
"Yes, the Taka Sugiru," said McQuality, picking up the bread box sized camcorder and hefting it onto his shoulder with a slight grunt, "This is the first of our new line of camcorders that doesn't require a separate VCR unit. The tape goes right inside the camera. Just press the eject button on the side."
Petra did so, and a door opened on the side of the camera, heralded by the faint grinding sounds of six tiny motors working in unison.
Still looking at Petra, who was in turn looking at the cameraman, McQuality's hand groped down to the table for the video cassette that should have been sitting next to the massive camcorder. The tape wasn't in the precise spot that McQuality had dictated it be placed. It was, in fact, about an inch out of position, which in television terms meant it might as well have been on the moon.
McQuality emitted a chortle so fake he was almost just saying the words ha, ha, "So let's say you want to go on vacation to the beach, with the Taka Sugiru you just have one unit to carry, so you won't have a shoulder strap to clash with your bikini."
"Well, that's just wonderful," enthused Petra, "Although I'd rather be filmed in my bikini than film someone else."
Seconds had gone by now, and McQuality was no closer to locating the tape. Breaking eye contact with Petra to find it would, in McQuality's opinion, imply panic and make him look weak and incompetent. No one bought home video equipment from the weak and incompetent. For viewers at home, his struggles were underscored by bouncy synth bass track, which smoothed things over somewhat. On set, the silence was deadly.
Petra leaned over to grab the tape, "Can I..."
"No!" McQuality barked a little too aggressively, he recomposed himself and added, "I've got it."
But it was clear that he didn't have it. Not in any way, shape or form. In fact, his hand was migrating ever further from its goal, much to the frustration of everyone watching. Ever the professional, Petra shot a quick glance to the director, nodding for him to cut to a close up of her.
"Is Taka Sugiru a Japanese company?" she asked as she watched for the tally lights on the cameras to change. Once their attention was away from McQuality, she gestured for a production assistant to move closer to the table. A 16 year old kid scurried up to the set in a hunched position, and carefully nudged the tape into McQuality's reach, practically doing a tuck and roll to get away as the cameras switched back to the wide shot.
McQuality tapped the table once more before his stubby kewpie doll-like fingers touched the tape. He snapped it up immediately, "There she is!" he said, triumphant. Petra called upon six years of broadcast experience to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
As he popped the tape into the camcorder and shut the door, there was a low rumble, not quite audible. Something that that could be more felt than heard, gaining in strength.
"Now we have this set up so that we can see what I'm filming," said McQuality as he put his eye up to the camera's viewfinder. On thousands of TVs across the Akron area, the picture switched to a shot of Petra as seen through the camcorder. Or rather of her knees. The rumble became more insistent. Distant sounds of some kind of traffic incident competed with the bouncy soundtrack.
"My eyes are up here, Mr. McQuality," said Petra, keeping it light.
The view quickly shifted to a shot of her face, the colors were more garish than the broadcast equipment, the contrast more harsh, "I'm sorry, little lady," McQuality said, "Let me get a shot of that pretty smile of yours."
The view abruptly zoomed out to show Petra from the waist up, she vamped for a moment: Cocking her hips and throwing her head back, striking a pose that was three quarters a playful attempt to imitate a fashion model and one quarter serious attempt. Several police cars shot by on the street behind her, lights on, sirens blaring.
"Be careful what you do, Gary, the police are coming," said Petra, laughing. The rumble was loud enough now that she had to raise her voice a bit.
"I'm always a gentleman, little lady. Don't you worry. Now notice the lifelike color," McQuality said, shifting into sales mode, "You're not going to get that anywhere else. Not for this price. And for today only, I'm offering this unit for the low low price of-"
The sales pitch was cut off when a gas station in the background erupted into a ball of hellfire. The initial blast of light overwhelmed the camcorder's CCD chip, causing the screen to go pure white for a moment. The picture came back just as Petra wheeled around to see what had happened. The street behind her was shrouded in smoke and flame. The camera work was relatively stable, likely because the cameraman was paralyzed with fear, so the angular shadows could clearly be seen as they emerged from the fire.
HISS tanks.
The first of the high speed weapons platforms pushed aside the flames like a black phoenix. A triumph of state of the art engineering and the flagship of Cobra's armored division, the HISS was a modernist rethinking of the very notion of what a tank should be. The driver's compartment was thrust forward and boasted a canopy made entirely of munition proof glass, giving the driver a clear view of the battlefield. Its quasi futuristic design made it look like it was constructed entirely from parallelograms, which in addition to making it look achingly cool, also cut wind resistance and gave the HISS a top speed of 75 miles per hour over uneven terrain.
Two more of the angular war machines surged forth from the smoke and fire that was once a thriving Traxxon service station. They flanked the leader, lowering their twin laser barrels to draw a bead on McQuality's video store. A hatch popped open on the lead vehicle and Destro emerged, the late afternoon sun painted a corona on his skull like a halo of silver.
It was then that initial spell that had held the gathered masses transfixed was broken. Pedestrians began to scatter in every direction, the HISS tanks fired over their heads. Powerful lasers sketched lines of fluorescent blue-white that contacted the street in front of them, setting off blooms of orange fire. Those with the wherewithal changed direction, running towards the relative safety of the neighboring shops and businesses, some even fled to the museum, although after last night's attack it was still legally a disaster area.
Destro pulled up a CB style microphone from inside the HISS turret, after a short, keening spike of feedback he spoke into the mic, "We will burn Akron to ashes unless you give us the one known as Gary McQuality."
McQuality dropped the Taka Sugiru as his hand went limp, Petra began to edge away from him.
6
The ride back to Akron was much more exciting than the one out of it had been. Clutch, whose grin belay an unconditional happiness usually reserved for children and golden retrievers, was weaving in and out of traffic like he'd been hit on the head and the concept of "slow down" and "brakes" no longer had any meaning for him. A hotdog vendor had just enough time to dive out of the way before his cart was smashed skyward by the New Jersey native in his speeding VAMP. There was an explosion of wieners as the sidewalk was stained yellow with mustard.
"One of the founding principles of G.I. Joe is to cause less damage than Cobra," said Stalker from the passenger seat, as he not-so-subtly gripped onto the door handle.
"Don't worry, Stalk, I got it handled," Clutch's eyes didn't leave the windshield as he transitioned smoothly from a sidewalk to the wrong side of main street, "You're starting to sound like Scarlett, if you don't mind my saying."
"He's not starting to sound like me," said Scarlett from the back seat, shouting to be heard over the sound of cursing and blaring horns, "Stalker's been rational and sane for years."
Clutch let out a guttural laugh as he simultaneously cranked the wheel and pulled the handbrake, causing the world outside to spin like a merry-go-round on nitrous, "See, that's what I like about us, our witty back and forth."
The spinning stopped and they fishtailed before rocketing down an off ramp, headed towards the general neighborhood of McQuality's video concern. It was easy enough to spot in the distance, its place marked by a crooked tower of black smoke rising lazily from the general vicinity. If Clutch kept up the pace, while also taking care not to wrap his team around a lamppost, they'd be there in less than two minutes.
Scarlett popped the hatch in the roof that accessed the gun turret, "I'm going topside to warm up the laser cannons, try not to wreck us before we get there, would you?" The wind whipped at her rust hued ponytail the moment she poked her head out the opening.
The street leading to McQuality's was strewn with wreckage: fires, half crushed police cars, and other street debris lined the gutters and sidewalks. From her vantage point behind the turret Scarlett couldn't see any casualties, actually she couldn't see much of anyone, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what Cobra was doing. Scarlett hoped it meant that most of the innocent bystanders had gotten away in the chaos.
Ahead, the battleground was enlarging rapidly. Scarlett counted three HISS tanks, their obelisk styling jutting up from the suburban street like rock formations from an alien planet. Manning the turret of the rearmost tank was Destro, identified easily by his distinctive glinting cranium. Surrounding the tanks were a compliment of Cobra Troopers, all armed with laser rifles. At their feet were what she at first took to be chunks of asphalt, but as they drew closer she could make out sneakers and baseball caps. At least ten civilians were lying facedown on the pavement, hands interlaced behind their heads. So Cobra had some hostages.
Nuts.
The troopers hadn't noted the VAMP's approach, their backs turned for the most part. Just then, there was some movement from the back of the crowd, one of the hostages, seemingly taking advantage of his captors inattentiveness, had shot to his feet and was making a play at grabbing one of the trooper's rifles. Scarlett had to admire the man's guts, but the best he could hope for no training and the numbers against him was a stalemate. More likely he was about to die, badly.
The man, older with a receding hairline and considerable paunch, wasn't lucky. His grab for the Cobra's weapon was easily evaded and he got a buttstroke across the jaw for his trouble. The man was sent spinning to the ground as the Cobra, an officer and much better trained than the men from last night's museum heist, smoothly brought the rifle to bear on his would be assailant's head.
Clutch must have seen it too, because the VAMP put on even more speed. Angry speed. Scarlett set herself behind the laser cannons, although she didn't get along with the Joe driver, he was a member of her team, and as such she knew his combat instincts and habits inside and out. She knew what was coming and was already turning the laser turret to mesh with it before it happened.
"Yo, Joe!" she shouted, more to break the officer's concentration than anything else. He looked up just as the VAMP started to spin.
It was pretty much the same move he'd pulled last night, a 360 degree power skid. Although at that time it was useless showmanship, today it served a strategic purpose, allowing the VAMP to get close to the action in as little time as possible while redirecting the forward momentum that got them there without a sudden stop.
Scarlett let loose with the laser cannons, hitting the Cobra center mass before he had time to register what was happening. The red concussion beams punched into him, carrying his limp body backwards and slamming him against one of the HISS tanks.
That was enough to get the other trooper's attention, helmeted heads spun and laser rifles were brought to bear. Scarlett lit into the two enemy combatants nearest to the man she'd just taken down, being careful not to hit the hostages interspersed between them.
"This is where I get off, good buddy," Stalker said, giving Clutch a quick salute before opening the passenger the door on the still very much in motion VAMP and stepping out of it like it was parked. The urban assault vehicle orbited away from him as he alighted to the pavement, giving him the perfect amount of cover to raise his autolaser. Cradling it with his other hand for stability, he touched the trigger and sent out a 30 degree fan of red spokes. While his gun didn't pack the punch of the VAMP's laser cannons, it still sent a cluster of five Cobras stumbling backwards to land in an unmoving heap.
The VAMP was finishing its power skid now, which brought it parallel to the rightmost HISS. Its gunner was angling the cannons to get an easy shot at the driver compartment. Unfortunately for him, the closeness that allowed him to do this also brought him into proximity with Scarlett. It was too awkward for her to turn the guns and kill him that way, but she was getting a little bored of sitting behind the VAMP's turret anyhow. Uncoupling her power crossbow from the magnetic harness that held it on her back, she hauled herself out of the gunner's platform on the VAMP. She planted a foot on the roll cage and pushed off towards the HISS gunner, firing the crossbow as she did.
The gunner, who had overlooked her in his haste to blast Clutch, was reminded of her existence when the bolt slammed into his shoulder. Now Scarlett, or rather the shaft of metal that she had put inside him, shot to the top of the gunner's priority list. He released the controls and his hands flew to the bolt, he gripped it in an attempt to pull it free.
That attempt was cut short by a karate kick to the jaw as Scarlett reached the HISS turret. The Cobra was stunned for a moment, which was all the time Scarlett needed to get into the gunner's compartment and execute a close-quarters judo throw. Having now been shot with an arrow, drop kicked, and hip tossed within the space of fifteen seconds, the gunner didn't even have time to scream, emitting only a muffled squeak as he fell to the unforgiving pavement below.
Hopping out, Scarlett popped a fragmentation grenade off of her belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it into the now vacated compartment. Taking advantage of the sloped design of the HISS tank, she dived down, sliding down the canopy and past an understandably confused tank driver. He didn't have long to wonder what was happening before the Atlanta native reached the front of the tank, did a handspring into a front aerial flip, and the back of the HISS was engulfed in a fireball.
Stalker felt the heat of the explosion from his position behind the treads of the second HISS, which was now boxed in by the exploded remains of the one that Scarlett had just taken care of. For someone with a background in tradecraft, he noted, the girl sure liked to blow stuff up. He wasn't faulting her strategy, though: Putting the grenade inside the heavily armored tank ensured that the explosion's force would be directed mainly upwards, mostly just sound and fury. It also had the effect of stirring things up, the Cobras were now scanning their surroundings to see how many Joes they were up against, and no longer focused on the hostages. He set his autolaser to single shot and took a peek out from behind his cover.
Three Cobras, two hostages, and a lot of smoke. The hostages were face down and none of the enemy were looking his way. He curled his finger around the laser's trigger and strode out from his cover. Holding the gun by his waist he popped off three precise shots in sufficiently rapid succession that an observer might assume it was a short full auto burst. Each laser had found its mark, and the Cobras fell in unison.
Reaching the hostages, Stalker tapped the toes of the nearest with his foot. It may have seemed like a callous way to rouse a hostage, but civilians unused to combat situations were often in a heightened emotional state. It wasn't unheard of for hostages to unthinkingly lash out at their saviors. These civilians, however, were very well behaved. The first sat up, blinking away the smoke.
He was about to say something when Stalker put a finger to his lips, gesturing for them to run back the way he'd come. They were about to comply when there was a click from above. The gunner in the middle HISS had seen them and was taking aim on Stalker with his sidearm. Stalker was aware of his presence, of course, but was waiting to get the hostages clear before he dealt with him. But, he supposed if the man wanted to press the issue...
Still maintaining eye contact with the hostage, he squeezed off an almost nonchalant shot over their heads, spearing the Cobra who jerked back, then slouched over sideways on the rim of the HISS turret.
The hostages turned to look at the dead Cobra, then back to Stalker. They stared at him for a moment, unsure how to process the situation or even, it seemed at the moment, to blink. Stalker responded by smiling and giving them an encouraging thumbs up. Placing a hand on the lead guy's shoulder, he pushed him in the direction he was to go, patting him on the back on the way by. The others, still a little dazed, followed behind.
Clutch, converse to his usual restless behavior, was stopped about twenty feet from the battleground, engine revving. Being the wheelman he'd be working the perimeter, batting cleanup. Through the windshield of the VAMP he was able to see Scarlett jumping around on one of the HISS tanks like it was playground equipment just before the back half of it blew up. Probably not a coincidence. Stalker had walked into the battle like it was an afternoon stroll. He was obscured by smoke from the gas station that was burning across the street, but Clutch was able to see three flashes of red light followed by a pause, then a fourth.
A gaggle of disoriented tourists sauntered out from the smoke, single file, blinking like it was their first day on earth. They'd gotten clear by about ten feet out when a Cobra trooper staggered out from behind them. His teammates must have missed that one, Clutch mused as he slipped the VAMP into gear and gunned the engine. Opting not to traumatize the civilians any further, Clutch decided to forego the laser cannon and take care of this problem with the VAMP's grill. Zooming behind the Akronites, he extracted the terrorist from the situation with as much care and precision as was possible when hitting a man with a motor vehicle.
The Cobra didn't see it coming until Clutch was almost on top of him, which was understandable. What soldier seriously expected to be intentionally hit by a military vehicle in combat? There was a moment before the impact where the trooper and Clutch locked eyes: The trooper saw a man very much in his bliss, smiling eyes, a grin all the more apparent by the field of dark stubble from which it emanated. Even with this fleeting glance it was obvious: Here was a person who had been waiting to do this very thing for years.
The trooper's face was mostly hidden by his helmet and the red mask that covered his nose and mouth, but his eyes said it all: Cartoonishly wide, filled with a combination of fear, surprise, and a little bit of incredulity. The cliche "he never knew what hit him" didn't apply here: He knew what hit him, but he was struggling with the reality of it. His inner turmoil was brief as he was sent sprawling onto the sidewalk behind, bouncing once, skidding for a few feet, then lying still. He stirred a little bit, but was out of the battle for today. The civilians carried on down the street without so much as a backwards glance, the Cobra edited out of their lives without their knowledge.
It was from this new vantage point that Clutch saw something familiar at the far side of the battleground, two things actually. The first was the jet black hair and equally black catsuit of the Baroness. She was crossing the parking lot, gun in hand, shoving thing number two ahead of her: The little fat guy from last night. Clutch couldn't remember his name, it was something silly and made up sounding. McHowdy? He did remember how funny he was when he got mad. Classic.
His hands were bound and the Baroness was leading him to the HISS tank furthest away from the action, best positioned for a clean getaway. The rear door slid open and the cargo ramp was being lowered, the Baroness prodded him with her gun to get him moving, and that was all Clutch needed to see.
"Not on my watch, Gretel," Clutch said to no one in particular. He jumped on the gas and sent the VAMP hurtling up over the sidewalk to skirt the edge of the miniature war zone. He thumbed the joypad to bring the gun turret to life, firing as soon as he got within line of sight.
The lasers cut a furrow in the pavement just short of the Baroness's shoes, there was fury in her eyes when she looked up to see who would attempt such insolence. When she did, Clutch couldn't help but notice the discreet bandaid just below her cheekbone. She turned her weapon on Clutch, letting fly with a full auto volley across his windshield.
Clutch had been in enough relationships to know when a lady was about to turn on him and had already ducked by the time the first laserbolt seared through the window pane. The barrage left a trail of perfectly round holes, ringed with glowing orange molten glass, in its wake.
Drawing the sidearm from his shoulder holster, Clutch reemerged to fire off a counter attack through the VAMP's driver side window. The Baroness darted behind the corner of the HISS, leaving McQuality out in the open.
"Hey Hopalong!" Clutch called out to him, "Cavalry's here! Giddyup, why doncha?"
It took the businessman a tick to parse that his fortunes had changed, he looked around with a fitful anxiety, trying to find the source of the voice and somehow missing the VAMP directly in front of him.
"What am I going to do with this guy?" Clutch lamented, then screamed at the top of his lungs, "Dude! Over here!"
McQuality's attention finally locked onto Clutch, the New Jerseyan had to stifle a guffaw when the doughy little man actually hopped in the air like a cartoon pig before running towards him. His arms being restrained made his panicked scurrying all the more hilarious.
The Baroness was peeking around the corner of the HISS, so Clutch bounced a laserbolt off the tank's wall just above her head. Sparks flew and he saw her hair whipping away as she retreated from the line of fire. He figured her glasses would protect her eyes, he didn't really want to hurt her. Cobra had a couple of female operatives that he'd had to deal with and he'd hated doing it every time. Fighting alongside women was bad enough, but shooting at them felt uncomfortable and weird in the extreme, and he tried to avoid it when he could. Clutch was an old fashioned guy, and the paradigm of women in combat was new territory for him.
McQuality was getting close, Clutch reached over and popped the passenger side door for him. The Napoleonic cowboy leapt inside; he got some good height and distance on the jump, his restrained arms making him look for a moment like a chubby trout swimming upstream to spawn.
Now that he was inside and relatively safe, Clutch threw the VAMP in reverse. Destro had appeared in the HISS's turret and was rotating the guns in their direction. Closing the passenger door and strapping the prone McQuality were luxuries Clutch could ill afford as he gunned the engine and sent the vehicle roaring backwards.
A pair of laser bolts exploded the patch of asphalt where the VAMP used to be. Clutch engaged his own weapons system and returned fire, punching a pair of holes in the HISS's armor just below the gunner's cubby. Not his best shooting, but you couldn't be on all the time.
By this time Stalker and Scarlett had mopped up most of the Cobra opposition. The redhead was backhanding an enemy infantryman who was foolhardy enough to engage her in hand to hand combat, while the Ranger was tossing the unconscious form of another Cobra onto a pile he'd created. Both looked up from what they were doing just in time to see Clutch race past in the VAMP, in reverse, blasting away with the laser cannons. A pair of cowboy boots hung out the passenger door on the ends of stubby legs.
"You know," said Scarlett, "I'd say I've seen it all, but I don't want to tempt fate."
Rumbling after him was the HISS tank, Destro behind the gun controls, saturating the pavement just ahead of him with laser bombardment. Clutch did a great job staying ahead of the path of destruction for a moment or so, but the HISS was better armed and faster than the VAMP. A laserbolt struck directly beneath the engine, the detonation flipped the assault vehicle over onto its roof. Destro communicated for the driver to move into position for the kill.
Stalker couldn't tell if either occupant had survived, but there was no time to worry about that now. He snapped off a full auto spray of laser beams in Destro's general direction. The upper part of the HISS was awash in a bouquet of sparks as the maskman ducked into the gunner's compartment.
Scarlett nocked an explosive arrow into her power crossbow, aiming for the canopy that protected the driver. It hit home, exploding on contact and shattering the tough plexiglas window. The driver was rocked by the impact, smashing him against the side of the cockpit. He slumped forward, it was unclear if he was unconscious or dead, and the tank began to grind to a halt.
Still hunkered down in the relative safety of the gunner's compartment, Destro blindly turned the guns towards Scarlett and Stalker's position and mashed the fire controls. An arc of electric blue segmented destruction radiated from the turret, drawing a circle of sparks and molten exploding pavement around the futuristic tank. It wasn't an elegant strategy, but it was enough to force the Joes to fall back, seeking refuge behind the flaming remnants of the HISS that Scarlett had destroyed moments before.
"Baroness, my dear," Destro called out, "It may be time for the better part of valor!"
The Baroness understood Destro's meaning. The arms dealer pounded the ruined tank with laser fire while she made her way behind his vehicle. She climbed into the cockpit, taking a moment to roll the driver over the side. Taking the controls she reversed the tank and executed a three point turn, missing the former driver's head by less than a yard. Opening the throttle, she sped down main street as fast as the HISS could go.
Stalker and Scarlett stepped out from behind their cover just in time to see the HISS turn a corner and disappear. With their transport gone and possible casualties to contend with, there wouldn't be a chance to go after them.
The two Joes jogged over to the VAMP. Much to their relief, they could hear the sounds of struggling and cursing from the totaled vehicle.
Clutch had almost freed himself by the time they reached him. He halfway out the driver's side window, lying on his back and pulling himself into a sitting position. Stalker offered him a hand up.
"Man, I almost had him," the driver said, dusting himself off, he held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart, "I was that darned close."
"How's your passenger?" asked Stalker, glancing over Clutch's shoulder to the now smoking VAMP.
"Howdy Doody? He's fine, he just got banged up a little bit."
Scarlett had made her way to the passenger side of the overturned VAMP, looking inside she could see McQuality sprawled out on the vehicle's ceiling. He was stunned, but seemingly not the worse for wear. Looking over at Scarlett he held out a hand, "For the love of Benji will you please get me out of here?"
"I'd be happy to, sir," said Scarlett, in her most diplomatic voice, "Nice to see you again, by the way."
Once out of the VAMP, Scarlett was amused to see that through the whole ordeal he had somehow had retained possession of his hat, "What did I do?," he said, imploring, "What did I do wrong that these people keep attacking me?"
"That's a great question, sir," Scarlett replied, "If you'll excuse me for just a moment."
She walked over to Stalker, who was taking an informal headcount of the hostages and Cobra wounded.
"How'd we do?" she asked, following his gaze and doing a quick count of her own.
"Hundred percent save rate on the civilian hostages: That's good. We have about four wounded snakes, two dead, and a what's left of a couple of HISS tanks. The rest must have piled into Destro's machine when he beat it out of here. What about him?" Stalker nodded in McQuality's direction.
"He's fine," said Scarlett, "Other than some bumps and bruises. It's bugging me, though."
"Why would Destro come after him again?" Stalker completed her thought, "It doesn't jibe with me either. We have the piece, he must know that. Why come back, and why target him?"
"Ransom, maybe?" Scarlett offered, "Or maybe he has a cousin in the cyborg business. I don't know."
"A Cobra spy, maybe?" Stalker sounded doubtful even as he said it.
They looked over at McQuality who was now was pacing in front of the ruined VAMP, making emphatic gestures and ranting to himself. He looked like exactly the opposite of a spy.
Scarlett raised an eyebrow, "If he is, it's a brilliant cover."
"And if he's not, then this doesn't make a lick of sense," Stalker said.
"Not even half a lick: They turned tail and ran," Scarlett said, frowning, "With the VAMP out of commission they had superior firepower, we would have been easy pickings. Why give up?"
Stalker shook his head, "More questions than answers."
McQuality had stopped pacing, seemingly he'd come to a conclusion, "Asylum!" he shouted.
"What, you finally remembered where you belong?" Clutch said, taking a momentary break from chatting up Petra Peters to cut in. He raised his hand, palm out, in an attempt to elicit a high five from the reporter. It went unanswered.
McQuality scurried over to Stalker and Scarlett, "I am in immediate danger that is both clear and present! I demand political asylum!"
Scarlett's brow furrowed, "That's not how asylum works, you'd have to go to another country to request-"
"Protective custody then," he said, attempting to grab Scarlett's sleeve. The snug material made doing that difficult, however.
Scarlett shook him off, "Okay, don't touch me. What do you think, Stalker? You're ranking officer here: Should we take him in?"
Stalker mulled it over. Something wasn't sitting right, but it was tough to put his finger on what was bothering him so much about this whole situation. It wasn't just the nonsensical nature of the attack, or how quickly it was abandoned. There was something else that stunk here, but it was good at hiding itself, eluding detection at the back of his mind.
Slithering.
Still, there were regulations to be followed, one of them being that any American citizen who was under duress from Cobra forces was entitled to G.I. Joe assistance. Right now, McQuality more than met those qualifications.
"I guess we can't leave him out in the cold," said Stalker, "We'd best bring him to the base until we can get this figured out."
McQuality raced over to Stalker, embracing him in a full on hug, "Thank you, thank you sir!"
Stalker detached the emotional businessman from his person, "You can't touch me, either."
7
To save time, Stalker got some of the support personnel come and to pick them up by chopper. A few more were dispatched for crowd control, rounding up the prisoners, and getting the debris picked up. Scarlett, Clutch, and himself escorted McQuality back to the base.
Whatever interest Destro had in McQuality, it seemed to have waned sharply since his retreat: Once again, the trip back to the base was free of incident. It certainly could be argued that losing two HISS tanks and eight men was a significant setback and that Destro would need time to fall back and lick his wounds before trying again. But it still didn't seem right, at least not to Stalker.
They'd arrived late in the afternoon, and Scarlett took the chubby little man to the quarters that were to be his temporary home until they'd figured all of this out. McQuality for the most part was an ideal guest, far from the belligerent churl he'd been the night before. It wasn't an uncommon reaction, people often disliked G.I. Joe right up until they needed them for something. Stalker didn't take it personally, it was hard sometimes for the average American to understand the role G.I. Joe played in ensuring their safety.
It was decided that there would be a rotating watch on McQuality's room. Scarlett insisted on going first, as Stalker had pulled a double shift the night before. Stalker hadn't argued, he had to admit he could use the break.
He and Clutch had headed down to the base's recreation room to unwind a bit. Only one of them, however, was having much success. As Stalker lounged on the couch, feet up, attempting to enjoy a little down time before whatever disaster was next on the list, Clutch was pacing behind him in the juice bar/ game center area, driven by a restless energy. It was more than just post-battle adrenalin, the prowled from activity to activity with a singular lack of focus that was tinged with internalized anger.
Stalker did his best to ignore him, using the remote control clicker to scavenge the late afternoon TV landscape for something to watch. A news program, a game show, even a talk show would do right now. Sadly, the airwaves were dominated by soap operas and educational shows for kids that were skipping school. Nothing was piquing his interest.
Not that Stalker could concentrate on the TV even if he could find something to watch. Clutch's noisy patrol of the game center was the dominant narrative in the room at the moment. First he played the stand-up video game for a few minutes until the difficulty rose beyond his abilities. Cursing, he kicked the machine and moved onto pinball, which didn't go much better. After giving the pinball game a punitive slap, it was onto the pool table to set up random shots, the majority of which seemed to be missing. All the while maintaining a low level grumbling that was slowly escalating into a full blown temper tantrum.
It was just then that the intercom went off, Clutch had moved onto shooting baskets at the indoor basketball hoop, so Stalker pressed the button.
"Stalker here."
"Hey man," came Breaker's voice over the speaker, "I heard you guys were back, how'd it go?"
"Not bad," Stalker said, "Fragged some snakes. We have a houseguest, by the way."
"McQuality, Scarlett told me. He seems like a neat fella, tried to sell her a VCR that takes two tapes."
"Yeah," Stalker laughed, "He's always on, that guy. What's on your mind?"
"I'm not sure how she got this number, but you got a message from a...Michelle? That name ring a bell?"
"It does," Stalker said, groaning and covering his eyes. Michelle was a young lady he'd taken up with a year ago. He'd broken it off with her after their third fight about the irregular hours and long absences required by his work as a G.I. Joe operative. They'd both agreed that the separation was mutually beneficial, at least that was what he thought. Somehow, over the months that followed, however, Michelle's mind seemed to have changed and now she was going to extreme lengths to renew contact with him. It wasn't the first time this had happened, women seemed to have a hard time letting go of Stalker and were always trying to renew contact with him in various...creative ways. It happened so often, in fact, that the other Joes had coined a term for it.
"Another one of Stalker's stalkers?" Clutch chimed in, having overheard, "She didn't climb the fence, did she?"
It was a name that irritated the Ranger, he really hoped it didn't catch on.
"No, she just called the base," Stalker told Clutch, "I'll give her a call tomorrow sometime, thanks Breaker."
"Let her down easy," said Breaker, "She seemed a little bit fragile." the communications officer cut the line.
Clutch vaulted over the back of the couch to land heavily beside Stalker. Resigned, he turned off the TV, sensing he wasn't going to be watching it for the next few minutes.
"I don't know how you do it, Stalk," said Clutch, "Women seem to love you."
"I'm just a lucky guy, I guess," Stalker replied.
"And you never seem to to anything. Me, I crack jokes, I work out, I make sure they get a good look at the guns," Clutch flexed his bicep to illustrate his point, "But I get nothing. You just walk into a room and sit down and the chicks are all over you. You don't even roll your sleeves up. I don't get it. No offense."
Stalker shrugged, "None taken."
"I mean, back in Jersey, I was the king, you know?" Clutch stared dreamily at a point on the ceiling as he reminisced, "I had five to seven chicks on the line at any given time. Life was simple back then: I'd took them out for a spin, maybe buy them a hamburger or something, do some burnouts in the Opti-Mart parking lot and they were putty in my hands."
There was a pause, and Stalker was about to open his mouth to say something when Clutch suddenly started up again, "I mean today with that news chick, I forget her name. Anyway, she actually got to see me drive, that was cool. Then I saved that guy, right? I'm a hero, right? A real American hero."
"Sure," said Stalker. He was going to stick to one word responses until Clutch wore himself out.
"But I go up to talk to her and you'd think I was a nerd or something the way she brushed me off. Women today, I tell ya," Clutch leaned back and put his hands behind his head, "Ever since I joined G.I. Joe things have dried up. I don't get it, I thought being in an elite combat unit would get me more chicks."
Stalker waited a a full five seconds to make sure Clutch's ranting had subsided before venturing to respond, "If you want my opinion, the problem isn't G.I. Joe or women today, I think the problem is you."
Clutch's brow furrowed as he glared at Stalker, "Are you kidding? On my worst day I am redlining on the awesome meter. Do you think you're better than me? Do you want to settle this over foosball? Come on, let's play some foosball!"
Clutch heaved himself off of the couch and was halfway to the table when he noticed that Stalker hadn't followed him, "Hey," he said, "Are we playing or not? Don't tell me you're scared."
Stalker looked back at him, "See, it's stuff like that that's holding you back."
Clutch frowned, "Foosball is holding me back?"
"This whole chest-beating act of yours," said Stalker, "It turns women off."
"I do not turn girls off," Clutch made his way back to the couch, "I'll have you know that this act of mine worked wonders from junior high right up until I graduated university. Ladies love the Clutch!"
"And how is it going right now for the Clutch?" Stalker asked, "See we're on different pages, you're talking about girls, I'm talking about women."
"Yeah," said Clutch, "Girls, women, chicks, babes, it's all the same thing."
"Nah, you're wrong there, and that's why you're in this dry spell," Stalker leaned back, "See, you're in the Majors but you're still playing high school ball."
Clutch nodded, the sports metaphor seemed to be getting through to him, "Okay," he said.
Stalker pressed forward, "This stuff that you're doing, this act of yours, that's what girls like. They want a dangerous rebel who drives fast and cracks heads, but when they become women all that changes. They want someone who's real, get me?"
"So I have to be real?" said Clutch, "This is starting to sound like hippie crap to me."
"What I mean is they want to know the real you, you've got to be open with them," Stalker said.
Clutch shook his head, "So I tell them everything I'm thinking?"
"Well, let's not go nuts. You tell them everything you're thinking and they'll have you locked up, but they do like it when you share a little bit of your feelings with them, it makes you seem a little more, " Stalker spread a hand on his chest, "vulnerable."
Clutch looked at Stalker for a moment, then started to laugh. There was more than a small trace of discomfort in his mirth, "Yeah, good one! Vulnerable!" he got up and walked over to the juice bar, "I need a drink after that."
Stalker put his feet up and grabbed the clicker again, there was only so much he could do.
McQuality was having second thoughts.
He stood in the room that was supposed to be his home for the next few days. No. Room was too grand a term for the space in which he found himself. Cubby would be a more accurate description, but even that gave the place an air of whimsy that this decrepit hole didn't deserve. Wait, that was it.
This was a hole.
He'd paced it out, and three steps could get him from one wall to the other. There was no closet, no place to hang anything, just a small dresser like a teenager would stuff his ratty underwear in. All that was missing was a few stickers from one of those rock and roll heavy metal headbanger bands stuck to the side. What was he meant to do with his fine suits, roll them up like burritos?
And if the choking claustrophobia of the hole itself wasn't enough, the other facilities were equally underwhelming: The bed was a twin, tiny, with a rough blanket and sheets whose thread count he didn't even want to speculate upon. And the bathroom was no more than a broom closet with a toilet, sink, and a mirror. No shower, let alone a bathtub. How could he unwind after the day's stressful events without his evening soak?
Something had to be done. McQuality knew the girl -he still didn't know her name so he was sticking with Manjaw- was just outside. She had the same case of the no-funs that the rest of these G.I. Joes were suffering from, but to a lesser extent. She seemed reasonable, nice even, not like the other two. He felt that she could be persuaded to see sense. He knocked on the door to the hallway to get her attention. She opened the door.
"Is there something the matter, sir?" she asked in a friendly, but professional tone.
McQuality turned on the schmooze, "Well, ma'am, I'd just like to tell you that you're doing a fine job so far with the protection and all."
"Uh huh," said Manjaw, seemingly unmoved by the compliment, "Thanks, was there something else?"
"I'm just thinking that, even though this is great, with the safety and all, that we may be," McQuality pretended to struggle for his words, "overdoing it a bit."
"So you feel too safe?" Manjaw asked.
"When I asked for protection, I was thinking more along the lines of a nice hotel," McQuality said, then he held up his hands, "With armed guards of course, for safety, I'm just thinking that we can strike a better balance between safety and, you know, living like a hobo."
The woman soldier took a deep breath, "Having dealt with Cobra before, I can assure you that this is the best balance of security and comfort that we're going to be able to muster at the moment. Now if you'll excuse me, I should go back to guarding the door."
She turned to leave and was pulling the door shut behind her when McQuality grabbed the edge, she stopped trying to close it, although he had the sense that she could easily have done so by force if she wanted. She turned and gave him a look that was slightly, but markedly, less friendly than before.
"If cost is the problem, you don't need to worry: I'm happy to help," McQuality reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out flat piece of gilded plastic, "Ever see one of these?"
"I live in the modern world," Man-Jaw said, her tone dry, "So yes, I have seen a credit card before."
"You haven't seen one like this before," said McQuality, his grin widening to show teeth, "This, my dear, is a USA Express Gold Card. There's nothing that I can't do with this card, including putting up you, Lando, and Billy Joel's caveman brother in the Akron Grand Hotel until all this blows over."
"No kidding? The Akron Grand Hotel?" The amazonian soldier woman said, her voice going up an octave. McQuality's smile bordered on Cheshire, he'd sold enough sound systems to know when he'd hooked someone, and this young lady was hooked. All he had to do was reel her in and dump her in the cooler.
"None other," said McQuality, puffing up his already very puffy chest, "Best accommodations in the whole state."
"Maybe we could get a room on one of the top floors?"
"Not just a room," McQuality wagged an instructive finger at Scarlett's nose, "a suite of rooms. That's how we high rollers do things: A big screen TV, private pool...hot tub. Heck, I'll spring for some room service if y'all like."
"It sounds fantastic!" Man Jaw enthused, "By the way, what direction does the window face?"
"It's the executive suite, it's all windows, baby! A 360 degree panorama of the whole city!"
"That's good. So Cobra will have a choice about how they kill us," although she hadn't dialed back the enthusiasm of her tone, McQuality was now able to retroactively parse the derisive undercurrent of the soldier's half of their conversation up to this point. His smile disappeared.
"They can either send out some Rattlers to turn us into Swiss cheese with their gatling lasers," she continued, "or maybe they'll use their FANG choppers and just incinerate us with missiles. That would probably work, too. What do you think?"
McQuality was examining the toes of his cowboy boots, "I dunno," he said with joyless monotone of a sullen teenager.
Man Jaw wasn't finished, "If we do get room service we should probably eat quick, because as soon as Cobra realizes we've done something as astronomically stupid as moving our civilian protection operation to an unsecured hotel in the middle of downtown they won't waste any time. But hey, on the bright side I can eat whatever I want because I won't have to worry about gaining weight when I'm dead."
McQuality dumped himself onto the bed, "Yeah, you made your point."
"I understand that these accommodations aren't what you're used to, Mr. McQuality," the young woman said, "but you're going to have to co-operate with us if we're going to do our job of keeping you safe."
McQuality emitted an affirmative groan as he stared at the ceiling, his arms sprawled out to his sides like a basking seal in an expensive suit.
Man Jaw shook her head, "Try to get some sleep, sir. We'll try to have this sorted out by morning."
McQuality, now intent on marinading in his own misery, said nothing as she closed the door. It would be a few minutes before self pity began to lose its appeal and he sat up. The room hadn't changed, it still looked like a meat locker with a bed. Grumbling, he got to his feet, slipped off his shoes, and padded over to the bathroom. In a merciful nod to civilized living conditions, it was separate from his sleeping area. Locking the door behind him, he turned on the water in the sink and let it run for a minute to get cold. Cupping his hands under the water, he splashed some in his face.
The cooling sensation was a small but distinct pleasure in what had been an awful day, it wasn't much, but McQuality would take what he could get. He rubbed his eyes dry and let the remainder of the water run down his face into the metal sink. It was then that he heard another sound, intermingling with that of the water stream. Hiding within it. A sound that was similar to the tap water, but discordant enough to make itself known. Not a rushing sound, it was more guttural, somehow. Aggressive.
More like a hiss.
McQuality, alarmed, shut off the tap and listened. The hissing was still there, but he couldn't locate the source. It was like it was all around him. Walking a slow circuit of the tiny room he listened to the vents in the ceiling, the walls, the fluorescent lights, even the toilet. The hissing got neither louder nor lower, it was almost like it was following him around.
He felt a sudden, violent constriction at his midsection. Like someone behind him was grabbing the waist of his pants in preparation for a massive wedgie. He spun to face his attacker, stumbling over his feet as he did and nearly toppling over the toilet. So far as he could tell he was alone in the bathroom, but he could still hear the hiss. And it was getting louder.
Oh, what now? Wasn't it enough that these crazies spent all day shooting at him, now they had to send the invisible man to take him out? What had he done to these people?
Another constriction, this one strong and sudden enough to knock the wind out of him. He doubled over and gripped his ample guts. Though painful, the constrictions also served to clarify something: It wasn't an invisible assailant that was attacking him, and his pain and the hissing both had the same source.
Unbuttoning his blazer he looked down at his belt; actually, it didn't take much of an examination to determine that whatever was holding up his pants right now was not the Buckaroo Special he'd bought in a specialty boutique in West Texas five years ago. This thing was moving, migrating slowly from left to right.
It was now broken into little articulated segments that interconnected, like the treads on a car tire, each one pushing it along as it slowly rotated around his waist. Micromotors, actuators, and other tiny mechanical parts were visible in the gaps between the segments, clicking away. They moved in concert, an impressive display of engineering that McQuality was far too deep in the throes of panic to really appreciate.
The buckle was changing too, it segmented and widened, like a hood, unhooking itself and pulling suddenly away from where it had been fastened. It twisted to face him, two tiny points of red light fixing him with a malicious glare. Below, a mouth appeared as if commissioned by Satan himself, a mouth boasting a pair of wicked metallic fangs. Although the optimistic part of his mind was telling him this was some kind of hallucination, that this sort of thing wasn't possible, the rational part begged to differ: The writing was on the wall, and no matter how crazy it seemed, McQuality had to accept that his belt had, for whatever reason, become a mechanical snake.
The robotic serpent's silver head wavered in a slow figure eight pattern as it stared him down. Whoever had designed it had certainly paid attention to detail. Although it was clearly mechanical and had inherited its silver head and black body from the belt it had been disguised as, its contours mimicked those of a snake with a surprising level of fidelity, right down to a forked tongue, flicking in and out.
For the second time today McQuality was motionless, terrified that the slightest movement would set the thing off, sparking it to whatever sinister agenda it was planning. Although it was a robot and could have been equipped with any number of lethal gadgets from lasers to explosives to lord knows what all, McQuality was most afraid it would try to bite him. He just knew that he couldn't handle it if it bit him. Blow me to kingdom come, fine, but don't bite me in the face. He silently implored.
He jumped as he felt it moving again, a strange mechanical undulation around his midsection, as it pushed itself out of his belt loops, locking his gaze the entire time. Snake themed vehicles and devices were Cobra's bread and butter, and more often than not the design choice was an aesthetic one: The organization was called Cobra, so their equipment should have a serpentine theme, obviously. In the case of the belt snake, however, the design choice was a practical one. The very things that made it a triumph of microengineering also made it incredibly fragile. Had he had the wherewithal, McQuality could have easily bashed it into metallic confetti with his cowboy boot. The solution was to have the infiltration device take on a form that instilled fear and exploited an instinctual desire to keep one's distance. Synergistically enough, a cobra was perfect for this purpose. Sometimes things just work out.
The belt snake pulled itself free from McQuality and coiled itself up on the floor in front of him. The cowboy pressed himself up against the bathroom wall, getting as much space between himself and the metallic serpent as humanly possible without losing weight. The snake wavered in place between him and the door; without stepping over it, escape would be impossible. And there was no way McQuality was about to do that.
It was then that McQuality became aware of a thumping sound, he'd mistaken it for his heart for a minute there, but it was even more irregular than usual, and, he noticed now, accompanied by a voice.
"I heard noises in there, let me know if you're all right," it was Man-Jaw, just outside the bathroom door.
McQuality whimpered, fear sweat was running down his forehead, collecting at the tip of his nose and dropping into his lap. He wanted to answer the woman outside the door, he really did, but he also didn't want to do anything to upset the fragile truce he'd attained with the reptilian automaton. Still, even he understood that such a standoff couldn't go on forever, so he raised his voice as high as he dared.
"Snake," he said in a stage whisper, "My belt is a snake."
"I'm sorry, what was that again?" Man Jaw's voice was muffled by the door, "Do you need me to come in there?"
"Yes," he said, trying to increase his volume without actually making his voice louder, resulting in a sound not unlike a stressed out chipmunk, "Please come in."
"I'm going to need you to stand away from the door, sir," the woman soldier said. There was a pause, then a sharp thud sounded from the other side of the door. A bright flash bloomed outwards as the door exploded.
Scarlett burst in through the new hole she'd torn the door just in time to see the snake leap from its coiled position and arc through the air towards McQuality, or rather a spot on the wall just above his head. The fat man did a fast duck and cover as the serpent lit up the mini lasers in its eyes, rapidly melting a hole in the wall just wide enough for it to pass through.
"I need a clear shot! Sir, get away from the wall!" she shouted, but McQuality was not taking well to instruction at the moment: He was more occupied with covering his face and emitting high pitched mewling noises. Behind him, the only evidence of the infiltration drone was the hole it had burned in the wall.
Scarlett cursed, pounding the wall in frustration.
McQuality carefully unshielded his eyes, "Is it gone now?" he peeped.
Scarlett shook her head, "Yes sir. It's gone," she said, trying to keep her profound annoyance in check, "I'm going to need you to exit this room." Now that the immediate heat of battle had passed, she couldn't help but notice that McQuality's slacks were pooled around his ankles, revealing his jockey shorts, which were emblazoned with a steer/ lasso pattern. McQuality was just noticing it himself, he reddened.
"The snake was my belt," he explained.
"Just pull up your pants, sir," said Scarlett before turning on her heel and running out of the room.
8
Just outside the door, Scarlett palmed the large red emergency button on the wall as she raced past. Klaxons went off: A shrill, rhythmic wailing that filled the air of every section of the base. Red strobe lights mounted on the top edges of the walls pulsed in time with the sirens. Breaker in the command center would be alerted to the exact origin of the alert, although he probably knew already if he was monitoring the base systems for heat anomalies. Sure enough, his voice crackled over the walkie talkie on her belt.
"I'm getting a report of some hot stuff happening in your section, you guys okay?" he asked.
Scarlett kept moving, snatching the walkie off her belt, "We're fine for the time being, but there's been a security breach. Cobra managed to sneak something into the base. Can you track it from there?"
"How can I not?" Breaker said, "It's like someone's running through the vents with a lit arc welder. What is that thing, anyway?"
"I'll explain later," said Scarlett, "I'm in section G7, how far away am I?"
"It's got a lead on you, it's really moving," said Breaker, "Looks like it's headed for C6."
Scarlett's heart sank,"Then I know what its after. If they're not on their way already, tell Stalker and Clutch to meet me at the vault," she shut off the walkie and poured on the speed. Pivoting hard on the ball of her foot, she turned a corner and sprinted towards the elevator doors at the end of the hall, nocking an explosive bolt into her crossbow as she did.
"No time for the stairs," she said to no one in particular as she leveled the crossbow at the elevator door and fired. The bolt hit home, a fireball suddenly and violently crushed the doors aside like paper.
Scarlett didn't have the luxury of hesitation, when she reached the fiery ruin that was once the North elevator in section G7, she dived through the door headfirst: A brief wave of heat from the fire quickly gave way to the darkness of the elevator shaft.
She flipped in the air, twisting her body so that her head and feet had traded places as soon as she was clear of the opening. She hoped she'd gauged the distance properly and that her feet would find purchase on the metal ledge in the elevator shaft that divided the floors of the base. Otherwise, depending on where the elevator was at the moment, she'd be in for a long drop and a couple of broken legs if she was lucky.
A sharp impact under her toes told her she'd judged correctly, she folded up to absorb the shock then pushed off and let herself fall at an angle, twisting again to catch the next ledge. Fortunately, the elevator moved using tracks on the walls of the shaft so there were no cables to impede her progress. The shaft was minimally lit, with only some dim utility lights to see by, so Scarlett was mostly going by feel. Her knowledge of the base's architecture was helpful: Like every Joe, she was required to know the specs of all Joe facilities with almost the same intimacy as the engineers who designed them.
Three more jumps got her to section C6, a fact that was made more obvious by the soft orange glow of molten metal emanating from just below. The tiny robot had adhered itself to the wall, and was already well on its way to melting a snake-sized passage through the elevator door. Scarlett stopped her descent by straddling two ridges on either side of the shaft and drew on the mecha serpent. But the machine was like quicksilver, whipping through the hole it had made before Scarlett could get a bead on it.
Cursing again, she jumped up, pulled her legs together and let herself drop onto the ledge of the elevator door. She pried the door open, taking care not to make physical contact with the still molten hole in its center. She emerged into the hallway of C6 and was running immediately, there was no need to speculate on where the infiltrator would be going. This was the floor where they kept the vault.
The vault was the place where G.I. Joe kept any and all security sensitive items that came into their possession. A reinforced titanium box with foot-thick walls on five of its six sides, the side that faced the hallway was the exception to this, being four feet thick to compensate for the three foot thick door. It also had a series of heavy duty locks, and a security system with a combination keypad/ retinal scanner that wouldn't mean squat if that snake got near it with that heat beam.
She rounded the corner to see it twisting its way down the hall at what had to be a land speed record for robot snakes. It looked like a wavy line was being painted on the floor and erased half a second later, its mechanisms sparkled under the fluorescent lights like fine jewelry. Scarlett loosed a barrage of three crossbow bolts at it, but the metallic serpent was too fast, abruptly contorting itself around the projectiles as they embedded themselves in the floor around it. She didn't dare use explosive rounds this near to the vault, lest she accidentally do the snake's job for it.
The effort of dodging Scarlett's attack did, however, cost the robot precious seconds of forward momentum. She was able to catch up with it, bringing her boot down on the end of its tail, crushing it and pinning it in place. The snake thrashed, still pulling towards the vault with a singular desperation.
"Just stay still, this won't hurt a bit," Scarlett breathed as she unsheathed her combat knife. She knelt, preparing to grab it by the neck and decapitate it when she heard a metallic click and felt a slight tug under her foot as the serpent suddenly pulled away from her. Speed slithering away with even greater velocity than before. It had detached the section of tail under Scarlett's boot, leaving it behind like an unwanted train car.
Turning towards the fleeing snake, Scarlett kicked the crushed tail section across the hall with a grunt of contempt, an action that probably saved her life. The section skittered across the hall, touched the far wall, then detonated, creating five foot diameter fireball in the small corridor; impressive given the small amount of explosives that the snake contained.
The shockwave hit Scarlett like a sledgehammer, hurling her across the hallway and slamming her into the wall hard enough to make a dent. The force of the explosion knocked her out almost immediately, but instinct, forged from thousands of breakfalls in her family do-jo back in Atlanta, kicked in and kept her bones from shattering on impact. Scarlett fell to the floor in a heap, the last thing she heard before blacking out was the cricket-like trill of the snakebot's heat beam as it began boring its way through the vault door.
Scarlett was out for less than fifteen seconds before she began to stir again. She propped herself on her elbow and her head punished her for it. Sighing, she put a palm to her forehead, which was throbbing so much she thought could almost hear the pain. She chided herself for thinking such a silly thing: It would have been impossible to hear pain over all this ringing in her ears. She leaned on the wall for support, and pulled herself to her feet: A process that was slower and accompanied more groaning than she would have liked.
She took a quick inventory of the situation: She was unbroken, and appeared to still have all her limbs intact. She glanced over to the area where the tail section had exploded. It had created a circle of destruction, spanning from the floor to halfway up the wall. The metallic skin of the wall was cratered inwards, exposing the charred remains of the wiring and ductwork behind it. In an otherwise untouched passageway, it stood apart like a smoldering portal to hell. Scarlett had always been quick to anger and normally she looked upon that as a liability: Something that she needed to keep under tight control in order to be taken seriously. Looking at the circumference of the sphere of devastation, she was quite certain that her fit of pique in kicking the piece away was the only reason she wasn't making plans to be fitted for a peg leg right now.
"Score one for my hot temper," she said to herself, softly so as not to further aggravate her headache.
A quick glance at the vault door was sufficient to determine that the snake bot had done its work. A by now familiar molten orange hole was punched into the lower section. She was just entering the combination into the lock when she heard Stalker and Clutch running towards her.
"What have you been up to?," said Clutch as he surveyed the damage.
Scarlett finished typing in the code and put her eye up to the retinal scanner, "A drone," she said, "Disguised as an article of McQuality's clothing. It's small but heavily armed, we have to be careful."
Hydraulics droned as the door began to roll aside, a slow process as it weighed a quarter ton. Scarlett stepped back from the door and raised her weapon, her left side was sore from where she'd been bounced off the wall and she was favoring her other leg. She could see Stalker out of the corner of her eye, her injury hadn't escaped his notice.
"It tried to blow me up, I rolled with it," she said, "I'm a little bruised, but I'm fine."
Stalker nodded, powering up his laser pistol, "Fair enough."
The door was now fully open, and the three Joes entered the vault. The lights automatically activated when they crossed the threshold. The vault's interior consisted of three rows of metallic cabinets, two on either wall, one in the middle. Drawers of various sizes contained all manner of untold secrets and contraband. There was no immediate sign of the snakebot, but there was also no sign of it having escaped, either.
Stalker motioned for Clutch to watch the door while he and Scarlett made her way to the drawer where she'd stored the artifact. Sure enough, the drawer was now a square hole in the wall; its front, having been sliced off with laser precision, lay on the floor.
Stalker and Scarlett traded glances, then, weapons ready, they eased silently over to the cabinet. Stalker took a position just to the left of the excavated drawer, covering the opening, while Scarlett crouched beneath. Using the tip of her combat knife, gave its underside a gentle nudge to slide it open. Stalker glanced inside, he shook his head and lowered his weapon.
"Nothing," he said.
Scarlett stood and surveyed the small room, "It has to be in here someplace."
At the entrance, Clutch held his rifle at his hip as he scanned the floor, "Do you want to give us an idea of what we're looking for?"
"A small robotic drone," said Scarlett, "Black and silver. It's made to look like a snake."
"Of course, because why wouldn't it look like a snake?" Clutch said, expanding his visual sweep to include the side of the cabinet in front of him, "Sometimes I think Cobra does this stuff just for the sake of being creepy."
Scarlett moved towards the corner of the room, attempting to see everything in front of her at the same time, "Funny," she said, "That's how I feel about those bikini magazine clippings you put up at your work station."
Clutch snorted as he looked up at the ceiling, unaware of a slithering movement on the wall to his left, "That's just to remind me what a real woman looks like. I-"
It was the clicking that tipped him off, the sound of hundreds of tiny electromagnets tickling the wall as they activated and deactivated in concert. Clutch turned his head to see the snake drone attached to the titanium panelling, at roughly eye level, staring him in the face.
His immediate instinct was to make a grab for it, but the reflexes of a mere human could not compare to those of a machine. It snapped backwards from his grip, hissing as it lit up its eyes. Although Clutch had had no experience with this robot snake in particular, his general experience fighting Cobra gave him a pretty good idea what "glowing red eyes" meant. He threw himself to the floor just as the twin heat beams sliced the air where his head had once been. They struck the doorjamb and wall behind him, boring into the titanium like it was marzipan.
"Little no-legged jerk," said Clutch as he rolled into a supine firing position, spraying the entranceway with automatic laser fire. The serpent did its dance again, snapping itself into various contorted shapes in order to be where the striking beams weren't.
Although it was doing well so far, considering, time was running out for the snake bot. It had a very clear mandate: Enter the Joe facility via McQuality's pants, wait until he was alone, detach and zero in on the artifact's magnetic signature, use its heat beams to move through the base, obtain the artifact, and return to Destro. It was equipped with these specific mission parameters in mind, but the technology had limitations. The heat beams, in particular, were energy pigs: Each time time it fired them it significantly depleted its power and endangered its mission. The effort of dodging Clutch's laser barrage wasn't doing it any favors, either.
The Joe base utilized signal dampers that made remote operation of the drone impossible. It lacked the sophisticated artificial intelligence of Cobra Synthoids, but it was capable, in its limited way, of making decisions for itself. Its microprocessors went to work on its current situation. Below it was the most immediate threat: The G.I. Joe designated as Clutch. He lay on his back, firing upwards at it. The probability of any laserbolt hitting the drone were low right now, but given the proximity between it and Clutch, and factoring in the driver's accuracy rating with a laser rifle, that could change in a few seconds. There was also the matter of the other two Joes, designated Stalker and Scarlett, who were even now rushing to his aid would and would be there in 2.5 seconds by the drone's calculations, lasers blazing. Once they arrived, the snake's survival chances dropped to zero.
A bolder strategy was called for.
It waited a microsecond for its moment then, with blinding swiftness, coiled itself against the wall and snapped itself straight, launching its body towards Clutch like one of Scarlett's arrows. Specifically towards his face. The gambit worked, Clutch was not expecting a frontal snake assault, the driver yelped and stopped firing to throw his forearm in front of his face. The snake sank its fangs into the fleshy part of Clutch's arm.
Other than the cursing that ensued, it was a gamble on the drone's part what Clutch's reaction would be: It was possible he might have smashed the bot against the floor, or dropped the rifle entirely and made a grab for it with his other hand, both of which would have jeopardized the mission. It was lucky for the snake that Clutch decided to attempt to shake the bot loose, whipping his arm out towards the hall. The snake released its jaws when the driver's arm was at full extension, essentially flinging itself down the corridor and out of immediate danger.
"Creepy little-" the rest of Clutch's statement was drowned out in the sharp electronic twanging of his laser rifle as he rose to his feet and loosed a full auto barrage. He was joined by Stalker and Scarlett seconds later, the three Joes rained a magenta shower of deadly light at the synthetic reptile. Sadly, it was to little avail. The snake was too fast and too small a target, slithering around light bolts like a mosquito in flight avoids a flyswatter.
It was under this barrage that it reached an external wall. Snapping its body like a whip once again, it detached another section of its tail. The tail section attached itself to the wall magnetically; it contained a charge, its last, but fortunately for it, also its largest.
Another explosion rocked the hallway, filling it for a moment with light and fire. The Joes were forced to take cover in the vault as the wave of flame passed by. The snake was small and aerodynamic enough to slip under the maelstrom, towards the jagged maw it had cut in the wall.
The Joes burst from the vault and down the now charred hallway, heedless of the fire, twisted girders, and sparking power cords that hung from the ceiling. By the time they got to the opening, they were too late. The snake drone had leapt from the precipice, uncoupling the last detachable section of its body as it did. The one that hid the mini turbine engine.
Stalker, Scarlett and Clutch could only watch as the drone streaked away, a ribbon of blue fire spilling from its tail, like a tiny firework roaring towards the horizon.
9
The Baroness had never seen Destro so happy as he had been when the snake drone had resumed transmission. It was a subtle but distinct departure from his normal demeanor, but the signs were there for the observation, if one knew what to look for, and the Baroness did. It was obvious to her during the hours that the drone had been out of communication that her man had been tense.
He played it off like he was relaxed: Lounging in his throne, sipping grape nectar from a jewelled goblet and flipping idly through the latest issue of Better Bombs and Cannons, outwardly projecting the insouciance of a man as assured of his success as he was of the sun rising. His tells, however, told a different story: His neck was stiff, his eyes would regularly dart to the control console that had been tracking the serpent's progress until it had gone dark behind the Joe base's signal damper. She thought briefly of offering her reassurance to him, but there was no speaking to the man when he got like this. Any attempt on her part to assuage his concerns would only set him off. There was nothing Destro despised more than being seen as weak, and she wasn't in the mood for one of his table flipping displays of rage.
When the chime went off on the console and the big screen had once again jumped to life, Destro leapt to his feet like he had been electrocuted. When he noticed that she'd seen this he'd brought himself under control, making a point of checking his shirt cuffs and straightening his collar before strolling over to the control board with a practiced nonchalance. The Baroness smiled to herself, he tried to hide it, but right now Destro was as excited as a kid at Christmas.
The image on the screen was distorted for a moment, nothing more than rippling lines and intertwined fields of color. Destro pecked out a combination from the grid of sixteen large, glowing, unlabeled buttons that dominated the console's main control panel, boosting the RF. The picture untangled itself, resolving to an aerial view of the night sky, with some nondescript patch of midwestern town slowly scrolling below.
Destro smiled, showing his teeth, their whiteness contrasted sharply with his metal face, "The snakeatron has completed its mission and is returning right on schedule."
"I can see that," said the Baroness, crossing her arms, "However, you still haven't explained to me what makes this little item so valuable."
Destro was engrossed in the screen, "It is not what the key does, but what it grants its holder access to, that is its true value."
"Yes," said the Baroness, "I deduced as much when you referred to it as a key."
The raven haired woman stepped closer to the console, although the screen, being the size of a garage door, was easily visible from where she had been standing. The city lights had rapidly given way to forest as the snakeatron tore through the air on its singleminded quest. In the distance was a mountain range, which even on the big screen wasn't much more than a dark smudge on the horizon. Local hikers knew the place as Python Peak, and it was a popular destination for those willing to make the two hour trek through the woods to reach it. What those backpackers were not aware of was that the geographical formation on which they roasted their marshmallows for afternoon s'mores was actually a rocky facade for Destro's hidden fortress.
"So what, if I may ask, dear Destro, will it give us access to?" the Baroness queried, "Riches? Weapons? The secret to making the best fried chicken?"
Destro laughed, "Ah, your dry sense of humor, one of the many qualities about you that I love."
The drone was now within a quarter mile of the base, the rocky wall dominated the screen now. Destro punched another sequence of buttons to open the landing bay door. On the screen a glowing split appeared in the rock face, getting wider as the disguised bay doors slowly rolled open. Destro turned his attention from the screen to the Baroness.
"The key unlocks something far better, than riches or weapons my sweet: Leverage. Over every country, every government, every man and woman on the face of this planet. Put simply-"
The Baroness interrupted him by placing a gloved finger over his lips, "Say no more. I think I want to be surprised."
"I believe you are going to like this very much. But for now, we must go," Destro spared a glance back at the screen, it now depicted the inside of the fortress's hangar. The snakeatron was home. He tapped out another code on the console, the screen shifted to a wireframe map of North and South America. A red dot blinked on the equator, near the border of Venezuela and Brazil.
"This is our destination," he said, "I already have a presence there, but we could proceed no further without the key. Let us retrieve the snakeatron and harvest its prize."
He started for the throne room's exit, the Baroness fell in behind him, "Not to be overly critical, darling," she said as they walked, "but surely there was a better name for that machine than snakeatron."
"It's an electronic snake," Destro said, the tiniest bit of defensiveness in his tone, "what would you have me call it?"
The Baroness considered for a moment as they reached the door, "It's a snake android, so just off the top of my head, serpentoid has a good ring."
Destro laughed again, "That is better. I may have to change to change the brochures!"
The massive granite doors slid aside with the grinding rumble of an ancient millstone. Had they been slightly quieter, either Destro or the Baroness might have heard the sound of struggling coming from the pit. As it stood, they were out of the room and headed for the hangar when the armored hand rose up from the darkness and clawed at the floor.
"This is embarrassing," Clutch tilted back in his chair and stared at the ceiling of the communications room, "I can't believe we let that undersized tinker toy get away from us. Now we have to do research, this is the worst!"
Scarlett stood at the console next to Breaker's where Stalker sat, looking over his shoulder as he stared at its screen, a second set of eyes to catch anything he missed. When he'd suggested that she might like to sit down, given her recent adventures outside the vault, she'd insisted that he knew the systems better. He'd acquiesced, her argument made sense, but he didn't feel great about doing so.
Scarlett shot Clutch a look over her shoulder, "As I remember it was you that let it get away."
Clutch pointed to the bandaged wound on his forearm, "Hey, it bit me."
On the screen, displayed in rapid succession, were various artifacts in the G.I. Joe database rumored to have supernatural properties. Stalker's hope, and it was a dim one at this point, was to find any information about the artifact and what Destro could want with it. This was his second time through.
"Poor baby," Scarlett turned her attention back to the screen, "It nearly blew me up, and you don't see me complaining."
It had been a good 12 hours since the artifact had been snaked away in the night, and most of their leads had gone stone cold. A call to the museum about the artifact's origins had revealed nothing of interest: It had been donated by a collector in Rhode Island along with a bunch of other stuff from the junk drawer of the ancients. The collector himself was off in Peru where he couldn't be reached by any communication more sophisticated than carrier pigeon.
Clutch snorted, "You're probably saving that story for your diary."
Scarlett broke her attention away from the screen again, "Go ahead and make jokes, Clutch. That's all you're good for. Why don't you go grease an an axel so you can-"
"Hey," Stalker stabbed a forefinger at the pause button, bringing the stream of artifact pictures to a halt, "I know you don't like each other, but hair pulling and snarky comebacks are not what we need right now. Destro is now in the wind with his hands on an item that could be a direct threat to global security. An item that we don't know anything about, but given the resources he's thrown after it is probably insanely dangerous. Every minute he has it in his possession is a minute too long, in my estimation, and bickering like grade schoolers is not going to get the job done."
Scarlett bit the inside of her lip while Clutch stared at the floor.
"You know," said Breaker, looking away from his console, "Things are pretty quiet on the Paris front right now. I could put in a request to divert a couple of guys to help out."
"Nah," said Stalker, "I have a feeling that by the time they got here, whatever Destro is planning will already be going down," he raised the volume on his voice as he turned back to his teammates, "Which is why we need to figure this out. Someone's got to know where Destro took that thing."
Clutch shrugged and shook his head, "Hey, I think Breaker is right. We might need the extra manpower to do this. It never hurts to have a boost."
"A boost," Said Scarlett, her gaze alighting on the Cobra tracking device that was still sitting on the conference table next to Clutch. She started for the table and reached out for the machine, a move that Clutch misinterpreted completely.
"Whoa, hey, back off, What did I say now?" the driver said as he attempted a hasty transition from reclining with his feet up to a full standing defensive stance. He ended up toppling the wheeled office chair he was sitting on backwards, dumping himself onto the steel floor. Scarlett barely noticed as she grabbed the device off the table and examined it.
"What are you thinking, Red?" asked Stalker.
"I'll tell you in a second," Scarlett was turning the machine over in her hands, scrutinizing all sides of it, "Aha!" she said, spotting what she was looking for on the device's underside: A coaxial port. She tossed the device to Breaker, "Can you hook this up to the satellite uplink for me?"
Breaker caught the device, there was a sharp report as he cracked his gum, "Oh, I get it. Yeah, I can do that no problem."
Stalker beamed Scarlett his winning smile, "A boost. Now that's what I'm talking about."
"It's a good thing we've had this console for a while, because this will void the warranty," Breaker pulled a panel free from the console exposing the rat's nest of candy colored wires and cables within. Reaching inside up to his shoulder, he felt his way through the electronic spaghetti to a junction box with four coax cables leading to it. The one on the upper right was what he wanted, he unscrewed it and threaded it back to the outside of the console, then fastened it to the tracker.
Typing out a quick sequence on a secondary panel, he switched the main screen to a map of the world.
Clutch had righted himself and made his way to join the others in front of the big screen, "So what are we doing?" he asked, adding, "I'm okay, by the way."
Stalker clapped Clutch on the shoulder, "We know you can take it, tough guy."
"The tracker is tuned to the magnetic signature of the piece, but it has a limited range," said Breaker, typing like he was paid by the word, "What Scarlett figured out, which I am a little embarrassed I didn't think of, was to take the tracker's signal and bounce it through our satellite."
"A boost," said Scarlett.
Clutch brightened, "Hey, I was the one who said "boost" a minute ago, so I guess I helped you eggheads figure it out. Go teamwork."
The map shifted to a medium wide shot of South America, a red dot winked on the border of Venezuela and Brazil, near the equator.
"Signal's a little garbled," the communications officer said, "but I've got you a thirty mile radius in what appears to be Pico da Neblina. Once you get there, the Cobra tracker should help you narrow things down."
"Works for me," said Stalker, then he turned to Clutch and Scarlett, "Anybody up for a nice jungle vacation?"
Scarlett smiled, "I think I can clear my schedule."
Clutch picked his helmet up off of the table, "You know I'm in."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's move out."
Stalker's two associates fell in behind him as he strode out of the door.
10
Vince was not fond of Venezuela, not at all.
The weather was always the same, consistently hot and sweaty. The slightest exertion was enough to make his armpits pump out what felt like a half gallon of sweat, and turn his back into a water slide. His standard issue Cobra tank driver uniform didn't help matters. It was a rich shade of candy apple red, and armored him from head to toe, including a helmet that covered his whole face. The uniform bore a passing resemblance to a lobster, a comparison that was pretty apt in this case, because Vince was being boiled alive in it. He looked across the table at his compatriots, four men, two officers and two grunts looking almost as miserable as he was. Their uniforms, however, were made of a breathable lycra-like material, and their helmets had a cloth half-mask in the front as opposed to his faceplate.
Right now he'd happily gun all of them down for the opportunity to change into some cargo shorts.
Vince pulled down the lower part of his face mask to take another belt of cream soda. It was the only good thing in the God forsaken part of the world. They sat at the back of the bar, although they had the place more or less to themselves. Technically the six of them (Bartell, another grunt, was in the bathroom at the moment) were supposed to be occupying the town, both to keep it secure as the head of Destro's supply line and act as a first line of defense against possible attack.
But at 86 degrees, nuts to that.
Besides, this mission, whatever it was, was so off the radar it might as well be on sonar. No one was taking the time out of their day to come to this tiny village in El Nowhere Venezuela where they've apparently outlawed air conditioning and everything is covered in at least an inch of dust to mess with whatever Voodoo Destro and the Baroness were cooking up out in the jungle.
Even the officers didn't care. They put on a show when the brass were passing through town: Standing at attention, maybe intimidating one of the locals to show they were going that extra mile, but as soon as they were out of sight it was straight back to the bar. Pounding back root beers and trying not to think about what kind of horror movie bugs were crawling around out there.
Vince polished off the cream soda and held the empty glass in the air, wiggling it from side to side to signal the waitress he was ready for another, "So how long are we going to be out here for, does anyone know?"
It was a question that all the ground troops were asking each other at least three times a day each, in the hope that they'd finally hit upon the person who actually had a straight answer. Today, it was not to be the case, however. Mitchell, one of the officers, took a sip of his cola before responding, "It's on a need to know basis, Vince."
A waitress scurried over with Vince's drink, she tried not to shake as she set it down in front of him. It was to her great relief that Vince didn't acknowledge her as she disappeared into the shadows. The HISS driver took a sip of the sweet liquid, "I'm developing a healthy curiosity. Come on, Mitch, you see the Power Couple every day, they must have said something."
Mitchell shook his head, "All I know is what you know. They have a bunch of science guys down in the underground city, and there's the one vault that they can't get into. They went back to the states a few days ago because, supposedly, Destro found something to help him get into the vault, but if he found it or not, I don't know."
Norton, one of the grunts, burped before speaking, "I heard he found it. Some kind of key thing. They got into a big dustup in Ohio with the Joes over it, but they got it."
Although it was impossible to see behind his dark goggles, Vince's eyebrows shot up.
Mitchell gave his subordinate a sharp look, "And where did you hear that, recruit?"
"One of the communications guys told me," said Norton, suddenly aware that he was the table's center of attention, "I'm just saying what I heard, man."
"Hey, it's the best news I've heard all day," said Vince, smiling, "We might be out of here, soon."
"I wouldn't bet on it," Loomis, the other officer, said, "Destro's got some materials coming. Concrete, steel plating. It sounds like he's building a permanent encampment here."
Vince rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling, "You're kidding right?"
"Saw the manifest myself," said Loomis, "From what I've heard he's got a major interest in staying right here."
Vince finished off his cream soda in one rage filled gulp, then slammed the glass on the table, "You're a real ray of sunshine, Loomis."
"Um, guys," Raymore, the other grunt who had been silent up until now, was staring wide eyed at the door, "We might have a situation here."
The others followed his gaze to see a tall man making his way across the deserted bar. The blazing midday sun poured through the windows and doors behind him, obscuring everything but his silhouette. It was obvious, though, from his beret and the laser rifle slung over his shoulder that he was with the military. His stride, unhurried but by no means hesitant, took him right up to their table.
The men at the table scrambled madly to get at their weapons, most of which were leaned against a nearby wall just out of reach or, in one or two cases, hung on the back of their chairs.
Stalker swung his weapon into his hands in one practiced motion, training it on the Cobras at the table, "Let's keep this friendly, guys."
The Cobras knew that the slightest twitch of the Ranger's trigger finger could unleash a lightstorm that would send them all to Valhalla. An unspoken agreement passed between the men at the table that none of them wanted to die just now and the scrambling ceased.
Mitchell, the ranking officer in this situation, took the lead in addressing their adversary, "What do you want, Joe?"
"First off, my name is Stalker, not Joe," the Ranger's tone was genial, "G.I. Joe is the team name. A lot of people make that mistake, don't feel bad. I was just passing by and I saw you fellas in here, and I figured maybe I'd buy you a drink."
The five men at the table sat stone faced. This Stalker guy had the advantage at the moment, but he held it by a very thin margin. Mitchell's rifle was hung by its strap across the back of his chair, if he were to let his arm fall off his armrest he could just touch the stock. He'd been idly doing it off and on since the group of them had sat down. He sat at the back of the table so his arms were less visible from the Joe's vantage point. Mitchell had spent hours drilling his rifle skills, and he was fast, maybe the best in his class. He was sure he could capitalize on even the slightest lapse in the Joe's vigilance.
Stalker was a shrewd customer, however, regularly sweeping his gaze across the table, keeping close tabs on everyone's hands even as he continued his relaxed banter, "What, is no one thirsty? I know I am. I'm from Michigan, I'm not used to this kind of heat. Maybe everyone has forgotten what they were drinking."
The ranger's scrutiny lingered on Vince for a split second longer than usual, and Mitchell figured that was good enough. His left hand darted down with the intention of pushing upwards on the rifle's stock, freeing it from the chair, and flipping it end over end into his hands. As plans go it might have been a shade too clever, his hands had barely moved when he was rewarded with a blinding red flash as a laser bolt was fired so close to his face that it caught part of his helmet and singed his eyebrows.
When his vision cleared, he saw the barrel of Stalker's rifle, the Ranger himself wasn't looking in his direction, he was still taking inventory of his comrades.
"I think this guy ordered a tall glass of cool it," he said.
Mitchell held his hands up, palms facing Stalker. A thin tendril of smoke rose from the hole the Sergeant had blasted into its outer rim of his helmet. Another wordless communique passed between the men at the table; the Ranger had the floor.
"Where was I?" Stalker mused, "That's right, me and my friends have this place surrounded, so here's how it's going to go. You guys give yourselves up. In exchange for leniency, you're going to give us all the information you can about Destro's little side business out here: What kind of encampment he has, how many men, how much ordinance, all that stuff. Does that sound good?"
"You know," said Loomis, "I have to say, it doesn't sound good. In fact, it sounds like a crappy deal all around for us."
"You think so?" said Stalker, turning his full attention, and his rifle, to the Cobra Officer, "I thought I was being really nice about this whole thing."
As he had been talking, keeping the Ranger's attention on him, Loomis had given a fleeting hand signal, no more than a flick of his finger, to Raymore, the furthest man to the right. The Grunt had understood immediately, and had worked his hand down to his thigh, where his sidearm was strapped. Pressing his fore and index fingers under the flap, he'd unsnapped the fastener gradually enough that it didn't make a sound. He walked his fingers on the laser pistol, easing it free, being ever so careful to keep any overt movements that might tip off the Joe restricted to his forearm and wrist.
"You've got nothing, Joe," Loomis had been playing it cool this whole time, if he was scared of having a rifle pointed in his face, his eyes didn't show it, "I know for a fact that the bulk of the G.I. Joe team is in Europe. We have confirmation of ten Joes in Paris right now, probably a few more we don't know about. You have another two ongoing operations stateside, leaving maybe three or four assets to spare. I say, at best, you have three guys, including yourself, which means you're bluffing."
The other men at the table were trying like the dickens not to look at Raymore. Vince, whose eyes were hidden behind his visor, had the best view of the grunt's progress. Raymore had gotten the flap on his holster open and had access to the gun's grip now; his fingers curled around the weapon. He shifted his weight, just a bit, so that he could get the gun clear of the table. He had a decent shot at Stalker's legs, which would most likely put him out of commission, but G.I. Joes were legendarily tough, and Stalker still had the upper hand. Even injured, at this range he could easily take out two or three of them before they put him down for good. Winging him wasn't the solution. It had to be a kill shot.
Stalker grinned, "Well, you're two-thirds right."
With all the swiftness he could muster, Raymore shot to his feet, raised his weapon, and took aim on the Joe, who seemed to have no reaction whatsoever. The grunt wasn't complaining, but this guy had to either be older than he looked for his reflexes to be this slow, or have a plain old death wish. It would be impossible to stop it from happening, of course, but he expected a Joe Sergeant to at least try to defend himself before he got plugged.
It was these musings that distracted the Cobra grunt from seeing the crossbow bolt as it zipped through the window and across the bar to embed itself in his upper arm, causing him to drop the laser pistol. A second bolt, hot on the heels of the first, dug itself into his shoulder. The Cobra's arm went limp as he reeled backwards, his eyes wide in shock. He tripped over his chair and dumped himself onto the floor with a cloud of dust and a decided lack of ceremony.
Stalker looked at the remaining men, the smile was gone, "Like I was saying: There are only three of us, but we do have the place surrounded, and I never bluff."
If anyone at the table had a witty comeback, they were keeping it to themselves. The room was silent except for Raymore's squeals of pain from the floor.
"Okay," said Stalker, stepping back from the table to better cover them all with his rifle, "Here's what happens now: You are now prisoners of war, everybody please stand up to the best of your ability, keeping your hands where I can see them, and make your way outside."
Vince stood with the others, putting his hands up and shuffling out from behind the table. He sincerely hoped that wherever the Joes were taking him had air conditioning.
Stalker had had a whole speech planned for the Cobras as they were filing out to the street, but it seemed as though he wasn't going to get that chance.
The sound of the toilet flushing in the back room must have gotten lost in the midst of all the chair scooting and dragging of feet; not to mention the wailing of the Cobra that Scarlett had shot. Raymore was what the other Cobras called him. Man, that dude could whine. You'd think the guy had never had an arrow in him before. He must have been new.
The Cobra couldn't have had more of an advantage, cloaked in shadow, he was out of Scarlett's line of sight from outside the bar and the length of time he'd spent in the restroom exempted him from the Joe's initial threat assessment. In addition, the other Cobras had done a great job of not alerting Stalker to his presence, there were no glances towards the restroom to give him away. The last factor might have had less to do with strategic thinking on their part and more to do with the fact that they'd forgotten he was in there, but coincidence or not it was an ideal ambush. It was sheer instinct that prevented Stalker from falling victim to it.
In the end, what saved him was the standard issue Cobra boots; those expensive, clicking boots. The floor under the bar itself was wood, well worn and soft from the foot traffic of many years of rural Venezuelan merry making. The Cobra's boots just made a dull thud when they moved around on it. The back hall, where Bartell was hiding, was done in linoleum over cement, which when it interacted with the trooper's boots made that prim little click.
The next sound was the man's gun powering up, a high pitched whine that was more felt than heard but that every Joe knew so well that they could pick it out at a marching band convention if they had to. Stalker didn't bother to look to confirm his assailant's presence, he hurled himself to the floor just as the trigger was pulled and an aquamarine streak of light sliced through the amber gloom of the bar.
Stalker couldn't help admonishing himself as he rolled in the Cobra's direction and put two laser bolts through his center mass. Slow, stupid, and sloppy. As recently as five years ago he'd have spotted that guy and taken him out before he got a shot off.
Now was not the time for self flagellation, however, and Stalker snapped his thinking back to the here and now. The Cobras scattered in all directions, the HISS driver and the injured trooper ducked out the back while the two officers and the remaining grunt lunged back to the table to reclaim their weapons.
There was a loud bang as Scarlett forced the door open with a mighty Karate kick and burst into the bar, power crossbow primed and ready. She wasted no time in firing, and there was an understated thud as the Cobra trooper who had remained in the bar seemed to sprout a silver bolt in his chest. He hadn't quite gotten to the weapon he was after, and he slumped onto the table with his hand just touching the rifle stock.
The two Cobra officers were a little luckier. Having grabbed their rifles, they immediately adopted a spray and pray strategy with respect to everything in front of them. They unloaded on the bar, their laser rifles scratched the air with blue light as world in front of them shattered into a hellscape of sparks and mayhem.
Stalker was on his feet, he made a run for cover behind the bar. The two Cobra officers had temporarily lost interest in him and were after whoever had skewered their towel boy. That person being Scarlett. Stalker risked a peek over the bar, he saw that Scarlett had taken cover around a corner just out of the Cobra's line of sight. From his vantage point he could see that she was reloading the power crossbow, a process that took her a second and change. A couple of laserbolts took big bites out out of the wall she was using as cover.
He knew that the lady was more than capable of taking care of herself, but it didn't sit right with him having her draw his fire. Stalker was too much of a gentleman to let that fly. He reared up from behind the bar, swinging his laser rifle towards the enemy.
"Hey snakes, it's time to shed some skin!" not the best one-liner, but it would do. Red fire leapt from his rifle as he cut one of the officers down. The concussion beam driving the man backwards and slamming him into the wall. His friend took notice of this and turned his attention back to Stalker, whipping his rifle in the Ranger's direction without breaking the stream of fire. Stalker ducked back behind the bar, knowing that when it came to laser weapons, any cover less than armored concrete was more of a visual deterrent than anything else.
Above him the mirror that was mounted behind the bar warped and shattered along with all the bottles that had been arranged in front of it as the Cobra lasers struck. Stalker was showered with glass and sticky liquid as he scrambled to get to a new position.
He reemerged just in time to see Scarlett leaping towards the oblivious Cobra, right leg extended forward. The drop kick caught the man in the temple, and was sufficiently well delivered to nullify any protection his helmet might have given him. In fact, his headgear flew off as his head snapped to the right, revealing a flat topped crew cut: The regulation haircut of the Cobra elite.
The Cobra stumbled, dropping the rifle, but staying on his feet. His half-mask remained in place, hiding his mouth and nose, but as he reeled around to glare at Scarlett his expression of rage was clearly legible.
"Not gonna shoot him?" Stalker inquired.
"We already killed two," Scarlett answered as she settled into a combat stance, "We have to have one alive for questioning."
"Fair enough," said Stalker, shrugging, "You need some help?"
Scarlett smiled, "Nah, I'm fine. Sit this one out."
"If you think I'm going to tell you Joes anything, you're out of your minds," the Cobra officer spat, his voice was gravelly to excess.
He lunged at Scarlett, lashing out with a big, meaty fist in what might have been intended to be a jab. Whatever he had been planning, Scarlett was faster, grabbing the extended limb and twisting it in a way that was, in itself, extremely painful. Using the Cobra's momentum, she flipped the much larger man like a pinwheel, dropping him on his back onto a nearby table. The dry wooden furniture submitted instantly to his bulk, dissolving instantly into a puff of kindling and splinters.
The breath knocked out of him, the Cobra officer could only lie there on the table's remains and gasp like a landed trout. Stalker walked over, pulling a set of wrist restraints out of a pouch on his belt, "Nice piece of work, young lady." he said as he rolled the still incapacitated man onto his front.
"Oh, you do go on," Scarlett replied.
Within a second of ducking out of out the rear exit with Raymore, Vince could hear the bar behind him explode in a cacophony of laser violence. The lights in the corridor, like half of the junk in this backwards armpit of the world, weren't working, so except for the light from the raging battle behind him, he and his injured comrade were in complete darkness. The stroboscopic blue flashes projected hundreds of iterations of his shadow against the plaster walls in sharp relief, each one lasting a fraction of a second before another took its place. Most of the flashes were blue, so that was a good thing: It meant that Cobra was probably winning this one. It made sense, even if the Joe Ranger wasn't lying about how many guys he had with him there were only three of them against six Cobras. No, he corrected himself. five Cobras. The Ranger had nailed Bartell pretty good.
Vince had gotten to know Bartell pretty well over the month or so they'd been assigned here. Okay guy in general, preferred cola to root beer, lousy card player. But he wasn't going to waste any of his time crying over him. He'd had the drop on the Joe, a clear, unobstructed bead on the side of his head, and he'd still blown it. If he was that incompetent, there was no place for him in Cobra anyhow. They were better off without him.
The sounds of the battle diminished as the two men rounded a corner that would take them to the back alley. Vince could hear Raymore now, groaning something about his shoulder. Raymore had done a little better against the Joe. Heck, Raymore had done a lot better with a lot less to work with, strategically. True, he hadn't gotten the job done either, but at least he'd tried. Vince was nothing if he wasn't a team player. As he opened the door that led outside, he made a promise to himself: Once they were out of this, he was going to make sure that someone in the Cobra top brass heard about his colleague's bravery. Raymore was a good egg and he deserved some recognition, darn it. Vince had a feeling that this guy was going to-
"Hey, fang face! Don't move a muscle."
The Ranger hadn't been lying, there was a Joe covering the rear exit. Leaning against the wall with his rifle cradled to his side. Later, Vince would rationalize that he'd heard something in Raymore's moaning that gave him permission to toss his associate at the Joe and get himself to safety. The truth was the Cobra's instincts for self preservation had taken over as soon as he'd been aware of the Joe's presence: Raymore had been unceremoniously flung towards his adversary before he could utter a word.
The Joe's instincts took over as well and he squeezed off a burst of laser fire, piercing the already wounded Cobra and putting him down for good. It was enough to buy Vince a few seconds, which he used to turn the corner and upend a few trash cans behind him to hopefully keep the Army man busy while he got to the flight pods.
The Cobra had barely slumped to the ground before Clutch was leaping over his corpse in pursuit of the HISS driver. He couldn't be allowed to get away, lest he get to a communicator and warn the others that G.I. Joe was onto them. The last thing the three-person team needed was for Cobra to be ready for them when they got there. Even so, consideration for the villagers made the driver reluctant to fire down the alleyway after his quarry. The village didn't have a large population to begin with, and most of it had fled or sequestered itself indoors when Cobra had arrived to occupy the area. Be that as it may, there was still a chance that a stray bolt could find one of them. Clutch was a decent shot, but he didn't want to risk hitting a civilian if he could help it.
He rounded the corner just in time to see a flash of red at the far end of the alley as the tank jockey took a hard left down the village's main street. Clutch had to hand it to him, for someone in a full suit of body armor the guy could move. Gravel kicked up under the Joe driver's boots as he sprinted after him, kicking one of the trash cans aside and jumping over the other like a video game character. He took a quick inventory of his surroundings when he reached the street, the Cobra's red armor was easy enough to pick out: A slash of crimson against the tan walls of the buildings in the village. The tank driver was headed for a thicket of trees at the end of the street where the road simply stopped and the village gave way to jungle.
He must have a vehicle stashed in there, Clutch reasoned, a tank most likely, although he hoped not. If it was a tank, the Joe would be seriously outgunned once he got over there. Not that he couldn't handle it, of course, but he wished that the bomber that had brought them here had have had room for a VAMP.
Reaching the treeline, Clutch was greeted by a high pitched whine, like a jet engine but at a much higher pitch. It wasn't the rumble of a tank engine, which was a relief, but it was something he'd never heard before, which decidedly wasn't.
There was a tornado of leaves and twigs as something thrust itself upwards, shoving branches aside in its bid to burst through the treetops and into the open air. The force of the vehicles engines nearly knocked Clutch off his feet, he squinted against the flying debris as he looked up at the object. He only got an initial glimpse as it zipped overhead, trailing a sprinkling of turbine-ground vegetation in its wake. Whatever it was, it was equipped with two powerful jet engines, mounted at the back. Clutch could see that the driver was half concealed in a clear canopy, curved like a dome -or bubble- which glinted as it caught the Venezuelan afternoon sunlight.
Whatever it was, it was fast and maneuverable, zipping into the air and turning on its axis to fire the laser cannon mounted on its underside. Clutch dived into the trees, narrowly evading the beams as they clawed at the street, pounding a row of smoking holes in the packed earth in front of him. It promptly spun again, retreating upwards. Rolling into a three point firing stance, Clutch squeezed off a couple of shots in retaliation, but his target was now headed away from the village, cresting the tall trees and disappearing from view.
Clutch cursed and got to his feet, if that little weasel in the armored shrimp-suit hadn't already called home about their presence here, he would most likely be telling them in person very soon. This mission was about to get ten times harder unless he-
He stopped before his rant could get underway. He'd been in the process of turning to direct his rage at the dirt behind him in the form of an angry kick when he finally noticed that there were five more of those flying bubble things hidden in the grove. Arranged in a neat row, they sat waiting for an operator.
The Jersey native considered for a moment: He'd been trained as a pilot, everyone in G.I. Joe had to reach a certain level of proficiency with every vehicle in the team arsenal, but this thing was some kind of bizarro prototype. It probably would take a week of specialized instruction just get certified to fly it. On the other hand, certification was for losers, and a quick glance into the cockpit revealed a control yoke not dissimilar to that of a dirt bike. Clutch had owned many dirt bikes in his day.
He shrugged, "Enh, how hard can it be?"
11
Having tied the unconscious Cobra officer to a support beam in the dining area, Scarlett and Stalker emerged into the alley behind the bar. Clutch was gone, but the dead trooper he'd shot was still there: Sprawled face down in an awkward lump, three cauterized holes burned through his torso.
Stalker put a boot on the deceased's shoulder and rolled him over, in addition to his other wounds, Scarlett's crossbow bolt was still protruding from his shoulder, "Not this guy's lucky day," he said, letting the corpse flop over onto its back, "Where do you suppose Clutch went?"
Scarlett shrugged, "Got me. Although something tells me I don't want to know."
As if in response, the sound of rapidly approaching turbines filled the air, accompanied by a familiar cry of exuberance.
"Yeeeeeah!" Clutch's voice, audible even over the racket of engines. It was followed up by a bout of gleeful cackling. It was coming from the main street, and the two raced down the alleyway, if only to assess their teammates mental state.
They hadn't quite reached the end of the alley when something whipped by, skimming low along the dirt road and kicking up twin trails of dust. The driver's voice went with it.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy, Bessy!" was all they were able to discern before he was out of earshot.
They emerged onto the street to see Clutch at the controls of what looked like a flying Tilt-a-Whirl car. His inexperience with the vehicle was evident as its course was unsteady, with frequent staccato dips and stops. He glanced over his shoulder at his two teammates and gave a quick wave of acknowledgement, a lapse of attention which seemed to cause the machine to tip on a forty five degree angle as it listed to the right. He returned his hand to the controls with a start and corrected his course, relatively speaking.
"We got a runner, Sarge," Clutch called out over the machine's mechanical droning, "Gotta stop him before he ruins the surprise."
"You gonna be all right in that thing?" Stalker shouted. The machine sounded like a bag of hair dryers.
"No problem, it's all in the wrist!" Clutch replied as he nearly plowed flight pod into a hardware store, "Meet you back here in a few!"
Before another word could be exchanged the flight pod shot straight up like a champagne cork, arcing northward over the trees. It was difficult for Scarlett or Stalker to tell if the maneuver had been intentional or not.
"I was right," said Scarlett, "I didn't want to know."
As he popped, buoy-like, above the treetops Clutch decided he was going to have to get himself one of these things. The controls were tricky, but darned if this tiny aircraft wasn't more fun to ride than a jet ski. He quickly located his quarry, headed north. He was getting the hang of flying the thing now; twisting the grips on the control yoke in opposite directions moved it left and right, while turning them both in the same direction raised or lowered the craft. A pair of thumb controls next to the grips rotated it in place. Forward momentum was achieved by pushing the yoke forwards and feathering the throttle to keep it from plowing into the ground. There was an art to it that he was gradually getting the hang of. The control panel, which was integrated into the yoke, boasted a lot of other controls, some of them probably safety features, that Clutch dismissed as unimportant nerd junk. It was pretty intuitive once you got the hang of it, although the controls themselves were touchy as all get out. Clutch's main difficulty in using them was mastering the light touch necessary to get all the elements working in harmony for a smooth, flowing ride.
Not that he cared, of course, as he jammed the yoke forward and fired up the turbines to counterbalance the thrust. Hot jungle air whipped past as the flight pod reared forward and roared towards its prey like a balloon being shot out of a cannon. The path wasn't straight, Clutch's driving instincts told him in general terms how much throttle was enough to keep him in the sky, but the skill of driving a VAMP didn't translate perfectly to the flight pod. More than once his feet, which dangled out of the front of the machine, touched the uppermost palm leaves of the jungle below before he was able to make a correction.
With the speed that comes from a lifelong devotion to not sweating the small stuff, Clutch had made up enough distance between himself and the other flight pod that he could see Cobra flying it. He couldn't see a walkie talkie in his hand, so that was a good thing. Based on his quick perusal of the pod's controls before taking off, Clutch had deduced that they most likely weren't equipped with radios, either. If they were prototypes, it would make sense that they wouldn't have all the niceties of a fully realized combat aircraft. A little bit of expense cutting on Destro's part that was going to cost him more than he bargained for if the Joe had anything to say about it.
The Cobra's pod spun to face him as it continued forward, a trick Clutch hadn't yet mastered, and he let loose a spray of blue lightning at the Joe. The Cobra had flight experience, but Clutch had a decided lack of concern for his vehicle, not to mention his own life and limb, on his side.
As soon as he saw the other pod rotating, Clutch knew what was up. He wrenched the grips forward, causing the main turbine on the bottom of the pod to squeal in protest as he pushed it past its limit. The laser beams passed just underneath him as he continued upwards arcing so that he was above his adversary.
Clutch was never one to read a manual, but he thrived as a hands-on learner and when he got his hands on something, he learned fast. This fact was evidenced by his ability to run intermediate level evasive maneuvers with a flight pod given that his total flight time with it to date was five minutes and twenty seconds. And while the controls were becoming less and less mysterious to him, he still had no idea how to operate the weapons systems. Give him an afternoon to mess around with it and he'd be able to pick off clay pigeons while flying through flaming circus hoops, but that level of mastery wasn't going to come quickly enough to solve his immediate problem. Luckily, Clutch had another solution that was almost as good.
This guy is nuts! Vince had temporarily lost track of the Joe that was chasing him after he'd opened fire. The flight pod's main weapons system, a heavy laser cannon mounted on the front of the yoke, was far too close to the operator's field of vision, rendering the pilot effectively blind each time he fired. It was one of many problems with the barely out of prototype aircraft, which, in Vince's opinion, was not ready for prime time.
It shouldn't have come to this anyway, he'd fully expected to be off scot free as soon as he'd gotten airborne. The flight pods had a nightmarish learning curve, but were very maneuverable once you got the hang of them. Even if the Joes had an attack chopper, Vince would have been able to fly rings around it. The only chance that the Joe would have had to catch him was if he could pilot a flight pod himself, and until a few minutes ago Vince would have thought that notion was ridiculous: The Cobras who'd been trained on the flight pods, himself included, had taken a month and change to get used to the controls. He'd been one of the lucky ones, three of his fellow trainees had been seriously injured, including one guy who wound up in traction due to his underestimation of the pod's unforgiving controls.
Trouble Bubbles was the nickname that the flight pod had earned over the course of that training session. The idea of some guy just jumping into one cold and being to do anything other than smash the nearest obstacle into submission and then blow up was absurd. And while this dude chasing him was far from a maestro, he was still airborne and keeping up with him pretty well.
Well enough, it seemed, to give Vince the slip. The Cobra scanned the undulating sea of green below him; had he shot him down? No, there would be a smoke trail marking his path. Then where-
The Cobra's thought process was derailed by a massive jolt that shook the trouble bubble like it was hit by a freight train. Vince looked up to see the Joe, the certifiably insane Joe, had dropped on top of him.
"Hey, pal," the soldier's voice was audible over the sound of the turbines of both of their flight pods, "Do you know where a guy would go to get his car detailed around here?" He followed up by raising his pod up about five feet and slamming it down onto Vince's canopy again. This time the thick plexiglass cracked in several places.
Panic dictated Vince's next course of action, he pushed his yoke forward, executing a steep dive directly into the jungle. He barely had control over the machine, even with his training, as he screamed groundward, hoping to get enough distance between himself and the Joe to open fire again. The leafy floor rushed towards him as he struggled to reassert control over the pod. There was another jolt, accompanied by the sound of grinding metal, this time coming from his right side. He looked over to see the Joe, grinning at him through the cracks in his plexiglass canopy.
"Seriously," he said in a tone that suggested that he might not be serious at all, "I'm pretty lost here, you seem like a guy who knows his way around town."
Vince risked taking his hands off his controls to draw his sidearm, the flight pod squirmed as he did so, but he managed to get his laser pistol clear of its holster and fire off a few shots in the Joe's direction. The beams burned three holes, similar in grouping to that of a bowling ball, in the side of the pod's canopy. They were poorly aimed, but they did the job. The Joe disappeared from view.
Vince returned his hands to the control yoke just in time to break the trees' leafy surface. The world was a blur of green for a moment before he fell into the darkness of the jungle. Fortunately there was a small clearing where he could get his bearings. He stopped the pod five feet from the ground and hovered for a moment. He couldn't hear the other flight pod, but it was hard to hear anything when flying one of these things.
One thing was certain, however, flying a trouble bubble in the open air was one thing, but using one to dodge around obstacles was quite another. There was no way, Vince assured himself, absolutely no way that guy would be crazy enough to-
Again the Cobra heard what was fast becoming his least favorite sound in the world, a metallic impact followed by the crunch of reinforced plexiglass. The Joe had followed him into the jungle, evidently with a song in his heart as he was humming something as he bashed his vehicle against Vince's. It might have been "Girl from Ipanema" but Vince couldn't be sure. He directed his flight pod away from the serenading maniac, and into the deep jungle.
Trees, some likely hundreds of years old and more than dense enough to turn Vince and his flight pod into a flaming pancake with the slightest impact, whipped by as the Cobra zigzagged through the dark forest. He'd completely lost his bearings, but he was sure if he could reach the river he would be able to find his way back to the base.
Risking a glance over his shoulder, Vince saw that the Joe was still in pursuit, although the obstacles had definitely slowed him down. He returned his attention to the forest in front of him just in time to see a fallen tree directly across his path. There was no time to go around it, so he fired his main cannon, exploding a gap just wide enough for him to slip through.
Ahead there was light sparkling through gaps in the trees, Vince made straight for it, full throttle. He popped out over the river in a puff of leaves, turning the pod around as he did so. The Joe following him was not going to live long enough to see the sun again.
Vince saw the glint of sunlight bouncing off of the enemy pod's canopy, an artificial smoothness that was alien to these ancient surroundings. He powered up his laser cannon, but waited to fire. He wanted to be sure about this.
The enemy flight pod wasn't long in following, roaring at top speed out of the jungle; so quickly, in fact, that it was almost on top of Vince before he could fire. He only caught the briefest of shimmers from the white and plexiglass aircraft before the guns sparked up and obliterated his view. He knew from the sound, however, that they had found their mark. A raucous explosion sounded, and shrapnel pelted his flight pod's transparent carapace. Vince was less than a second into a mental celebration of the Joe's apparent death when there was a dull thump from above him and the normally sunlit interior of the flight pod was darkened by something above.
Looking up, Vince knew what he was going to see but he'd already made up his mind that it was impossible. Sure enough, the Joe was there, spread eagled on the pod's shell, one hand was gripping the edge of the plexiglass while the other was opened, palm out, giving a pleasant, neighborly wave.
"Hey," the Joe shouted, "I feel like we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. I'm Clutch!"
Vince made a sound between a growl and a grimace, gunning all the turbines that handled forward momentum. The pod snapped forward as Clutch was thrown the opposite way, sliding across the rounded plastic bubble and only saving himself by planting his feet between the two cylinders that contained the rear turbines.
The shell was too wide around for Clutch to get a grip on it on both sides, so he had to settle for one stabilizing hand gripping the left side of the bubble's front opening. The pod was rocketing down the river with the speed of an amorous salmon, and the air friction alone threatened to pry Clutch loose and plunge him into the likely alligator infested waters below. He hugged the bubble, trying to be as aerodynamic as possible as he edged himself towards the pilot's compartment.
This didn't do unnoticed by Vince, who responded by gaining altitude and banking towards the edge of the river. The branches clawed at the side of the flight pod, and Clutch along with it.
Clutch had a clever witticism in mind, but when he tried to say it he inadvertently stripped the leaves off of a tree branch when it passed through his mouth at high speed. He was lucky in one respect, the Cobra tank guy piloting the flight pod couldn't do anything to scrape him off that wouldn't endanger himself in the process. Although he was hunched over, the branches were still whipping at his exposed arms and the back of his neck. Painful, sure, but the worst that it could give him was a couple of welts.
It was a pale shadow of what he planned to do to the tank guy once he got his hands on him.
Clutch had gotten an arm around the side of the of the large salad bowl that comprised the pod's windscreen. He was well on his way to getting his head and left shoulder around as well. His face was pressed against the glass, framed against a blur of green, glaring at tank guy. For his part, the Cobra was trying very hard to ignore him as he concentrated on keeping the finicky aircraft aloft while at the same time preventing Clutch from getting inside and snapping his neck. He risked a glance over at his adversary and saw that he almost had his head inside the compartment.
Most likely deciding that the measures he'd been taking were not enough, the Cobra pulled away from the treeline, gaining altitude and banking hard to the right in an attempt to shake the Joe loose. Clutch temporarily lost his footing, but his improved grip held and he was able to swing his legs around so that he was hunkered on the front of the craft, practically within the Vince's personal space.
Taking just a moment to spit out the fern he'd half ingested, Clutch lunged at Vince, one hand gripping the Cobra's collar and the other balled into a face annihilating fist. The Joe was savage, the helmet took his first blow, barely. Vince's head jolted backwards as his visor cracked in front of his eyes. He almost blacked out.
"That's for making me eat salad!" Clutch bellowed, as he readied his elbow for another crushing blow intended for the Cobra's temple.
Desperation took hold as Vince directed the flight pod towards a nearby cliff face. He might have had some dim intention of smashing just the side of the vehicle that Clutch was on against the rocks, but that plan was straight out the window as soon as one of the side turbines struck a rock and stopped working. The machine, which was an affront to aerodynamics at the best of times, began to spin out of control, smashing itself against seemingly every hard surface it could find.
Clutch and Vince, once adversaries, now had a common enemy in gravity. They were thrown around the inside of the flight pod as each of the machines engines failed and it began to bounce down the side of the cliff face like a pachinko ball. The last thing Clutch remembered was seeing the blue sky through the cracked dome just before it shattered.
Then everything went black.
11
Scarlett inspected the Cobra officer's dog tags, "His name is Loomis," she said, tossing the tags to the wooden floor in front of the bound man.
"Good to know," said Stalker, nodding, he looked over at the Cobra. Lashed to a wooden support beam in the middle of the bar's dance floor, the enemy operative was attempting to look defiant. He stared with a blank insolence, ignoring the Joe's presence as if he tied himself to a post every afternoon at this time.
"Hey, Loomis," said Stalker, "I want to start out by saying sorry about your friends. It's an unfortunate circumstance that we had to do what we did. Them or us. Not a lot of choice there."
"Those men were fools," said Loomis, "Cobra is stronger without them."
Stalker's eyebrows shot up, he grimaced, "That is harsh," he turned to Scarlett, "Don't you think that's harsh?"
"Cobra does not~ sound like a fun workplace," Scarlett said, "Too Darwinian for me."
"Your turn will come soon enough," the officer continued, "You and everyone else. Your pal who took off in that flight pod? He's probably dead by now."
"A flight pod?" Scarlett chuckled, ignoring the officer's attempt to rattle them, "Is that what you call that flying gumball machine?"
"All pleasantries aside," Stalker leaned in so that he was within the officer's line of sight, "Here's how it's going to go down: You're going to tell us everything we need to know about your buddies little summer camp out there. I'd like to know the location, the amount of men you have, what kind or ordinance there is, how many patrols you have going out. Scarlett, I feel like I'm missing something."
"We want to know what the key does."
"Right! The key. I'm real curious about that key," Stalker retrieved a chair from a nearby table, and sat down, "So, anytime you're ready, Loomis, you can let fly."
The Cobra shook his head and snorted, "You can do what you want, Joe. I'm not telling you anything."
Stalker nodded, "Not talking. I guess I have to respect that. You're loyal to your team. A rare quality in this day and age."
"It's downright admirable when you think about it," Scarlett agreed.
"It is at that," said Stalker, getting up and making his way to the door.
"Where are you going?" the Cobra asked.
"Oh, well since you won't talk, I was going to hand you over to the villagers here to deal with," Stalker said, "I was having a conversation with the town council. Did you know this place had a town council?"
"I'll bet he didn't," Scarlett chimed in.
The Cobra's eyes were widening, and the sweat that was already dripping down his forehead began to switch from heat to fear sweat. He offered no response.
"Anyway," Stalker continued, "We were having a nice conversation about you guys being here, and it turns out that they weren't your biggest fans. What was it they said?"
"I wouldn't know, I don't speak Spanish," Scarlett admitted.
"You really should learn, beautiful language. I remember now what it was- mal plaga. Evil plague. Sounds nice in Spanish, though."
"Lovely," said Scarlett, "Get to the part about the machetes."
"Oh yeah," Stalker put his palm to his forehead, "I'm getting on in years, things keep slipping my mind. Anyway, I guess you guys weren't the ideal guests here, so the town elders- Well, the whole town, actually- really wants to get even. Now, I told them that we needed information, and that you would be a valuable prisoner to us stateside, but if you aren't going to be forthcoming, well..."
Scarlett glanced out the window, "They're out there right now, sharpening pretty much everything in sight."
Loomis glanced past Scarlett to see a tall figure standing just outside in the street. A machete, long and curved, hung loosely in his grip. He shifted his weight casually from side to side, but his eyes were locked on the Cobras. And they were filled with rage and murder.
"This village is pretty remote, I guess that's why you picked it. But they have their own way of doing things out here. Once I give you over to them, I'm not sure what's going to happen to you. They were a little vague on that point."
The Cobra laughed, the sound of it was probably higher pitched than he would have liked, "You're not gonna leave me here. That's a death sentence. You're G.I. Joes, you're soft."
"We're also in Venezuela, and in a hurry," said Scarlett, "If you don't give us what we need, that puts a time crunch on us to figure it out for ourselves. That takes time. Time we could have spent contacting the proper authorities to get you back to the States. Easier for us to let the locals handle it."
"Speaking of," said Stalker, "We should get started on that."
"Yeah," Scarlett shrugged, "You'd better call in the head machete guy and tell him we're done here."
Stalker didn't get halfway to the door before Loomis relented, "Wait!" he bleated, "Come back here, I'll tell you what you want to know."
Stalker crossed his arms and leaned on a nearby support beam, "I'm listening."
"He has an installation, Latitude 6.423 Longitude -66.58. It's inside a cave system, heavily fortified. Destro has two compliments of soldiers, and four Crimson Guard as his personal bodyguards. There's three HISS tanks and, I think two rattlers for air support. He also has ground to air laser cannons. The main entrance is heavily guarded, there are a couple of other ways in, but the natives took care of those for us, each one is loaded with death traps: Ancient, sure, but plenty deadly. No way you're getting in there."
"Let us worry about that," said Stalker, "What does Destro want in there? Has to be something pretty important."
The Cobra shook his head, "I don't know anything about what we're here for. None of us do. I haven't even been inside the cave system."
Scarlett stepped closer to Loomis, "I'm sure you've heard something, you seem like a pretty important guy. This is not the time to be a disappointment. If you have some razzle dazzle, it's now or never."
The Cobra looked stricken, "I'm telling you everything I know. Destro's been really hush hush about the whole thing. Only a few guys are allowed in the cavern, and they haven't been to talkative about it. The best I can tell you is that it's big: Like some kind of underground city."
Stalker raised an eyebrow, "Interesting," he turned to leave and motioned for Scarlett to follow.
"Hey," Loomis called after them, "You're not leaving me here are you? You said you'd have me extradited! Don't leave me here!"
The Cobra's howls of protest were still audible as the Joes crossed the street. They passed the young man who had been staring down the Cobra earlier, Stalker gave him a nod. The man smiled and snapped off a quick salute before turning on his heel and jogging down the street towards the town hall.
"So who was that?" Scarlett asked, looking after him as he disappeared into the building.
"He does a bunch of stuff around here," Stalker replies, "Mostly, though, he teaches at the school. They're all relieved that Cobra's out of their village without a fight. At least on their part."
"So they're not going to chop up our friend back there?"
"Nah," said Stalker, "They're decent people, they don't want trouble. More than happy to let the authorities handle it."
"So what now?" Scarlett asked, "If what First Officer Loomis is telling us is true, we don't stand a chance of getting into that installation alive. Especially now that we're down a man."
Stalker nodded, Scarlett was hiding it like the intelligence specialist that she was but he knew her well enough to know that Clutch's unknown fate was bothering her. Mainly because it was bothering him so much. Both of them knew that permitting the driver's capture or possible death to affect them in the moment wasn't going to help them. Best to compartmentalize such thoughts until they could deal with them properly.
"I'm not going to say I liked the guy," Scarlett continued, "but he was good at what he did. I respect that. He deserves better than going down in a jet propelled fish bowl."
"It'll take more than a crash to take out the Clutch," Stalker chuckled, "More than likely they've captured him, he's too valuable to execute."
Scarlett smiled, shaking her head, "He's Cobra's problem now."
Clutch had had some headaches in his life, but this was the worst. He could only recall tiny snippets of the events between the flight pod crash and his current situation, but he felt like that was probably for the best.
He found himself in a cell, which itself was in a small, stone room. Light poured in from huge stand-mounted floodlights outside that, although they weren't aimed directly at him, weren't doing his pounding head any favors.
The room he was in looked quite old, Clutch wasn't much of a history buff, but even he could tell that the decorative patterns painted on the walls had been there for quite some time. Clutch figured that the laser grid that covered the door of his cell was a new addition.
There was a small window at about eye level. Too small for a man Clutch's size to fit through, his captors hadn't taken any steps to block it. Making his way over, Clutch craned his neck to get as good a look outside as was possible. He'd assumed that he was in a village similar to the one he'd left his teammates in, but he quickly discovered that this wasn't the case.
He could see four buildings, old and primitive, much taller than the one he was in. Seemingly uninhabited, their dark windows stared out over the smooth stone pathway that made up the street. The buildings themselves did not seem to be made of individual bricks, but rather appeared to be carved from solid pieces of stone. Decorated with elaborate carvings that ran their entire height, the structures soared much higher than Clutch could see.
It was then that he noticed that there was no sky visible between the buildings. At first he'd just assumed that it was night time, but the glinting stalactites high above told a different story.
"An underground city," he muttered to himself, "Don't that beat all?"
On the other side of the street was parked a HISS tank and a troop transport. The HISS was pointed in the opposite direction of the lights. Deductive reasoning wasn't his strong suit, but Clutch figured the lights must be pointed at whatever Destro was here for. The HISS was poised to demolish anyone who might come to crash the party. Strain as he might, he couldn't see much further down the street than the next building. He heard movement behind him as someone entered the room.
Clutch hopped down and turned just in time to see Destro and the Baroness darken his door.
"Curious about your surroundings, Joe? A sign of a keen intellect," Destro said, smiling. His white teeth were unsettlingly discordant against his metallic lips, "Hopefully, you will also have the intelligence to co-operate."
Clutch leaned on the wall, partly because it projected an air of rebellion, but mostly because his head was still killing him, "Well if it isn't Sonny and Cher. What can I do for you?"
"We know that you're not here alone," Destro said, letting Clutch's taunts roll off him, "I'd like to know how many are in your force, and where they are."
"Force?" said Clutch, "I don't know what you mean, I'm here on vacation. I'm a real jungle nut."
Destro nodded, "Insolence. It is to be expected, that will change in short order."
The Baroness produced a device, handheld, consisting of a box with several knobs and an oscillating green screen.
Clutch rolled his eyes, "Is part of your plan going to be boring me into submission?"
"Boring may be involved," said Destro, motioning to the Baroness, "But not in the sense that you're thinking."
The Baroness fiddled with the box for a moment, than fixed her gaze on Clutch, "I don't think he's noticed the headband yet."
Clutch's fingers brushed his forehead, and encountered a thin band of smooth metal, flush with the surface of his skull. He immediately attempted to get his fingernails underneath it to pry it loose.
Destro laughed, "A futile effort, Joe. The headband has been precision fitted to your cranium: Only the destruct command can free you."
Try as he might, Clutch could not get so much as a sixteenth of an inch underneath the band. He might as well be trying to pry off his eyebrows. "Why don't you play dress up with someone else," he said, insolence in tact, "I've got a busy afternoon planned."
Destro nodded to the Baroness, who turned one of the device's knobs just slightly to the left. She might have done something else afterwards, but Clutch wasn't aware of it if she had. His field of vision went pure white as every neuron in his brain exploded in a symphony of pain.
When the world returned, he saw that he had dropped to his knees, he wasn't aware that he'd done so. His perception of time was distorted, the brief moment during which he'd received the pain broadcast could have been an hour as far as he was concerned. Sweat rolled down his face, in spite of the relative coolness of the cavern, as he gasped for air.
"Trippy," the word was barely audible between hoarse gulps.
Destro stood close to the laser grid, the pulsating magenta scanlines danced across his face, "Now, do you have something you'd like to tell me?"
Clutch chuckled, more of a ragged croak than the sound of actual mirth, "I do," he said, "When you need to remember something, do you just stick a magnet to your face?"
"Droll," said Destro. He glanced at the Baroness, held his hand out, palm upwards and flicked his fingers. With a crooked smile, she nudged the dial up a couple of more notches. Once again Clutch's existence became a supernova of agony.
When it subsided, he found himself face down on the dirt floor, arms covering his head in some animal attempt to stave off the intangible. His mouth was open, and he gasped like a landed salmon. Each breath freely dragged dirt from the floor into his mouth.
"I commend you on your fortitude," said Destro, "But you must see that your efforts are Sisyphean at best."
"You're the sissy," said Clutch, unmoving.
"With each attempt to defy me the pain will become greater," said Destro, "You will have to endure untold agony each time. Agony that I can furnish with the mere touch of a button. This is a battle that you can never win."
Clutch had worked himself back to his knees again, "Then I guess I'll go down fighting."
"You misunderstand," Destro said, "There is far too much at stake here. I will never allow you such a simple exit as mere death. You will give me the information I require, or the pain will be endless."
Clutch wasn't sure if he could hold out. He was tough, sure, but this was something beyond his experience. It was a pain like a tazer applied directly to his brain. He wanted to hold out, told himself that he could do it, that The Clutch could never be cracked, but there was a part of him that knew there was a limit. At some point he'd run out of smart aleck remarks and the information that Destro wanted would spill out of him whether he wanted it to or not. His only hope was that maybe he would pass out before he broke, but he doubted that the Baroness would allow that to happen. He had a feeling that lady knew her way around a torture chamber.
Both Destro and the Baroness snapped around to glare at a Crimson Guardsman who burst into the room. The normal decorum of his station was absent as he ran over to Destro, barely taking time to snapping off a salute as he did so.
The maskman placed his hands on his hips in a show of indignation, "I told you there were to be no interruptions," he boomed.
"I understand your orders, sir, but there's been a development," the officer said, then glanced at the Baroness. Suddenly remembering procedure, he gave her a quick salue, "Ma'am."
"Never mind her!" Destro's voice bounced off the stone walls, "What do you want?"
The Baroness's brow furrowed at the slight, and her lips thinned. But for the moment, she said nothing.
"You told us to inform you if certain circumstances arose, well, sir, they have," the Crimson Guard had regained some of his composure, and took up the stiff posture more typical of his rank, "We have Code Mongoose."
Destro's face slackened, "Impossible!"
"Code Mongoose? Rather impersonal," a voice, raspy and high-pitched, came from just outside the door, grating the ears of all who heard it, "Is that how you refer to me, dear Destro?"
Cobra Commander, accompanied by three fully armed officers, swept into the room then spread out to fill it. Destro and the Baroness stepped backwards to make room for them in the small space.
The Commander was wearing his battle helmet, blue, flared like those of the Cobra rank and file, over a blast shield that obscured his face. Polished to a chromium finish, it was completely smooth, featureless and unnerving. He was dressed in his usual uniform, a tailor made double breasted uniform jacket, pleated pants, and spats over patent leather boots that cost more than a used car. Finally, there was the final monument to battlefield impracticality: The cape. Jet black, it cascaded from his shoulders to hover just inches from the floor, whirling around him as he moved like an aura of dark energy. Although it was more suited to a fascist homecoming parade than a the South American jungle, the fact that Cobra Commander looked like a million bucks in it could not be argued.
Destro's face, hidden as it was behind a layer of chrome, still conveyed the unmistakable impression of a man caught with his hand deep in a metaphorical cookie jar, "Cobra Commander," he stalled, "I believed you to be in Paris."
Dark shapes swirled around the blank faceplate as the Commander's head turned to survey the small room, "That operation is performing admirably," he said, "My presssence was not necesssary for this phassse. Sso when I was informed that my men and resssourcesss were being used in Venezuela, I was interested and decided to investigate perssonally."
The Commander's lisp, a vocal tic that affected the way he pronounced the letter "s", was beginning to creep into his voice. It was unusual as speech impediments go, it came and went, sometimes in mid sentence. The Commander didn't seem to have control over it, and there was no pattern to its appearance save one known to all of the ranks of Cobra: It really started to come out when Cobra Commander was mad.
Destro still didn't have his footing, his brow furrowed as he stammered, "But how..."
"Oh, that would be me, mate," Major Bludd was leaning on the door frame, holding an apple. He took a bite and finished his thought as he chewed, "Figured the head snake might want to know what was going on on his dime."
"Bludd!" the Baroness took a purposeful step towards the Major, and was only dissuaded by Destro's arm as it shot out to stop her.
"People never seem to be glad to see me," Bludd smirked, "Hurts my feelings, it does."
Cobra Commander closed the distance between himself and Destro so that their chromed faces were less than a foot apart, "My quessstion to you," he said, "Before I have my men reduce reduce you to your component atoms, and find a new armsss supplier, is what is my money being usssed for?"
"Yes, Commander," Destro said, ignoring the threat and forcing a casualness into his voice that no one in the room believed, "This is a side project. Not worth reporting to you in its present state, but down the road there will be much potential."
The Baroness's eyes flashed as she glared at Destro with an intensity that threatened to burn pupil-sized holes through her glasses. They had made some big plans here, and Destro was giving away the farm without a fight.
"Interesting. Vague, but interesting," Cobra Commander nodded and stepped away from Destro, the relief in the war profiteer's face was palpable, "I can forgive the secrecy and the use of my resources if it gets resultsss. In fact, I admire your initiative. You will have to show me more."
Cobra Commander made a sharp gesture and his men turned towards the door in unison. He himself followed with a wide sweep of his cape. Major Bludd executed a nimble hop into the room to get out of their way as they left. He walked up to Destro, who was as still as a statue, paralyzed with rage. Bludd, as if to counterpoint, was as close as a mercenary could get to full-on glee, as he grinned the grin of the truly smug.
"I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed," said Bludd, "I was really hoping he would he'd fill you and ladybelle there with holes as soon as he saw you. But you know what? Seeing you grovel is actually better," he put a hand on Destro's shoulder and leaned on the man like he was a telephone pole, "What's the saying? A brave man dies but once, a cowar-"
Bludd never got the chance to finish that particular shopworn adage before Destro's hand was on his throat. He may have lacked the Australian's wily experience, but he did have a combination of strength, surprise, and vision-reddening level of rage on his side as he all but threw Bludd against the wall.
"A thousand deaths will not be enough for you, Major Bludd." Destro's voice was a rumble, like a fault line getting ready to snap, "You will soon wish you stayed in the hole where the Baroness left you."
"Temper, temper," the Major's voice was choked and raspy but he still managed to maintain a taunting air of superiority, "Not while the boss is here. Double C and I are on pretty good terms at the moment, and he'd be just sick if something were to happen to me."
Destro glared at him, saying nothing, glowing green pupils just inches from Bludd's face. After a long moment he released his grip and Major Bludd dropped to the dirt floor. He leaned his back on the wall, massaging his neck and pretending to shrug off Destro's attack.
Straightening himself up, Bludd made his way to the door. On his way he snagged a small pot from a nearby shelf that had been sitting there for approximately 300 years. He paused in the doorway and examined the vessel, turning it around in his hands, "Ugly stuff, no wonder they buried it." He let the piece drop, and it fell to the dirt floor with a thud. Other than a small chip out of the rim where it had grazed a small rock, the pot was perfectly fine right up to the moment Bludd stomped on it, shattering the relic to dusty splinters. He chuckled softly to himself as he strolled out of the room.
Destro looked after Bludd, or rather at the spot where he had been, for a long time. It was the Baroness who finally broke the silence, "Is this what we've worked so long for? To give everything over to Cobra Commander and that-that mercenary?"
"Cobra Commander's troops are loyal to him," Destro's voice was quiet and precise as he continued to stare out the door, "there was nothing I could do."
The Baroness grabbed his shoulder in an attempt to turn him to face her, then stomped around to stand in front of him when he resisted, "And how do you expect to usurp Cobra Commander if you cannot sway their loyalty?"
There was a sound, almost like a bark, from the cell as Clutch started to laugh, "Awww, honey, you're betting on the wrong nag there."
That snapped Destro out of his rumination, he wheeled around to loom over the Baroness, "Do not discuss my plans in front of the enemy!"
Clutch, sitting on the floor of his cell, slumped against the back wall, was still laughing, "Don't be too hard on her, sport. At least now you'll have an excuse when everything falls apart. There's a reason you look like a second place bowling trophy."
Destro ignored Clutch, or at least tried to appear as if he was doing so, "The situation is fragile right now, my positioning is not ideal."
"Your positioning right now is over a barrel from what I can see," Clutch called out.
Destro paused, struggling with all his might to keep his temper in check. He would have turned the controller for Clutch's headband up to 11 and watch the man's skull pop, but even in his rage he knew that now was not the time to lose control. He took a deep breath, and continued, "What you do not understand, my dear, dear Baroness is that the timing could not be worse for-"
The Baroness threw her hands up, "Oh, the timing. How many times have I heard about the timing? It seems like the time is never right. First you have to become Cobra Commander's sole arms supplier, then you need to know where all his secret bases are, after that you need to amass at least 500 men in your personal army, finally you need to come out here and get this...absurd...weapon that you won't explain," she began to sputter and trip over her words, "and after that I'm sure the-the...tanks won't be the right color to match the uniforms! And then you'll need to redesign your logo! And on, and on!"
Destro set his jaw, "The situation is complicated! I explained before that this is a delicate process requiring the most intricate of machinations, you cannot expect me to concoct an overthrow over a long weekend. The Commander's knowledge of our activities here is a setback, but not a fatal one, I simply need the time to-"
The Baroness turned away, head down, examining the dirt floor, "Yes. You need time. Take all you need, Destro. The Commander has whistled for you, I'm sure he's wondering why you haven't run to his side so he can pat you on the head."
Destro motioned towards her, like he was going to put his hands on her shoulders, but then thought better of it. He turned and exited the building without a word.
"Such intelligence," the Baroness sighed, "if only he was a real man."
Clutch had gathered himself enough that he was able to stand, and was now leaning on the cell's doorframe, "Never gonna happen, sweets. If you want my opinion, your boyfriend has bitten off more than he can chew. I'm not one to pay the big Snake a compliment, but he's ten times the leader Destro will ever be. Keep on this track and the only thing it's going to get the both of you is killed," he put on a crooked smile, "And even though you're a badguy, I'd hate to see that happen to someone so pretty."
The Baroness looked over at him, Clutch couldn't read her expression, a fact that he interpreted as reason to continue, "If you're ever in the market for a real man, by the bye, look no further. You'd have to switch sides, of course, but you can keep the outfit."
Keeping eye contact with the Joe, the Baroness raised the control box and pressed the button. Clutch seized and fell straight backwards onto the dirt. Satisfied that he was subdued, she deactivated the machine and tossed to the floor before stalking out of the room.
After a moment, Clutch was able to roll over onto his side. He smiled despite the pain, "She didn't kill me. I'm putting her down as a strong maybe."
12
Stalker and Scarlett had waited for the Venezuelan authorities to arrive to pick up Petty Officer Loomis. This was partly because they wanted to brief them on proper handling of the prisoner, but also because Stalker wasn't 100% sure the locals wouldn't kill the Cobra as soon as they left. He had the word of the town council that they would leave him alive, but that wasn't to say there wasn't a vigilante element that might just want to get even ASAP.
His worries turned out to be unfounded as the town went about their business for the hour or so it took for a detachment of Venezuela Falcon Corps, their country's answer to G.I. Joe, to show up and take charge of the prisoner. The Falcon Corps representatives, a pair of jungle commandos codenamed Macho and Red Card, were appreciative of the capture and apologized for not being able to offer more help.
"We have our own problems right now," Macho said, replacing his mirrored sunglasses as he stepped back out into the sun-drenched street, "Otherwise we'd pitch in."
Red Card tugged on the restrained Cobra to get him moving, she wore a jersey for a soccer team that was unknown to the Americans, "Mongoose is on the move in Chile as we speak. Hope you guys can handle this."
Both Stalker and Scarlett were familiar with Mongoose, an up and coming terrorist organization operating in South America, Europe, and parts of Africa. Not as well equipped as their American counterparts, they made up the difference in sheer ruthlessness.
"We're on it," said Stalker, "Cobra's our best customer, we know how to handle them. Thanks for letting us play in your sandbox."
"Not a problem," said Macho, gesturing for the hoverjet that had brought them here to descend. Dust kicked up as the sleek craft, which had been circling the town like a skybound manta ray, eased down onto the narrow street and lowered its boarding ramp. Its engines were loud enough that Macho had to shout to be heard, "Just don't mess up my country, else I'll have to come looking for you!"
"We wouldn't dream of it," Scarlett said, still watching the Cobra carefully as Red Card marched him on board, "Just get our friend there to the U.S. and we'll be right as rain."
Macho smiled at Scarlett as he boarded the aircraft, "First class all the way."
The hoverjet lifted off, turning as it did, then rocketed off over the jungle.
"Well, I'd say it's safe to say they know we're coming. Daylight's burning, and if those coordinates Loomis gave us are accurate and not some kind of Cobra trap, we have a four mile hike through dense jungle ahead of us," said Scarlett, "So what's our next move, boss?"
"I was thinking that over," Stalker turned to his teammate, a crooked grin on his face, "Do you have your fish bowl licence?"
The flight pods covered the distance between the village and the Cobra site with speed, if not ease. The controls, which had given Clutch, their best driver, some hassle proved even more elusive for the two Joes who weren't vehicle specialists. Their preparation consisted of a couple of stop and go dry runs up and down the street, much to the amusement of the children of the village. After about 10 minutes of this, they had agreed that a) They definitely shouldn't be operating these machines at all, and b) they could probably use them well enough to fly in a straight line for a few miles, provided there were no major obstacles and no one was shooting at them.
At about the third butt-clenching mile, Scarlett could see the mountain: A grayish brown smudge cresting above the treeline. She would have gestured to Stalker, but she was afraid that anything less than a full on kung fu grip on the control yoke would spell doom. Sky Strikers were easier to fly than these things. She glanced over at Stalker, barely catching a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, he was about 10 yards away, and even at that distance she could tell his face was a mask of concentration. He must have felt her gaze upon him because he glanced in her direction and gave a quick nod.
It was time to ditch.
They'd decided in advance that approaching the Cobra installation in the Flight Pods would be an exercise in spectacular suicide. The machines were far too noisy, and the Joes experience level was not nearly sufficient to compensate. The plan was to get within a mile of the base, find a clearing, and, hopefully, land the pods with a minimum of explosions.
Stalker jerked his head to the right, towards a nearby clearing that was just about what they needed. Scarlett nodded and was about to make her approach when the Ranger dropped out of sight. Her heart skipped a beat as she craned her neck to better scan the empty sky that her teammate had occupied seconds before. She hadn't seen any laser fire, and the sound of a missile wouldn't have been drowned out even by the chorus of turbines she was currently sitting on.
Relief spilled over her when, with the same swiftness that he was removed, Stalker returned, popping out of the treetops and bouncing in the air for a moment. Even through the domed windscreen she could make out his sheepish smile.
She was just able to make out his voice as he shouted over to her, "Little too much throttle."
A few moments and one confirmed miracle later they were safe on the ground, each with a new respect for earthbound transportation. Though there was a strong urge between the two of them to simply blast the accursed machines, they decided to leave them for the moment, just in case they needed to make a quick escape. Neither Joe could imagine the situation that would see them voluntarily boarding the craft once again, but it never hurt to keep your options open.
They set out through the jungle towards the mountain, quickly at first, covering as much ground as they could before they encountered the first signs of Cobra occupation. It wasn't long before they found it.
Between the the dense foliage and what felt like at least 200 percent humidity, the jungle was about as opaque an environment as either of them could imagine. Branches, ferns, vines, and lord knew what all vied for the opportunity to whip them in the face as they alternately pushed and hacked their way through the greenery. Stalker used a machete he'd picked up in a nearby town in anticipation of just such a scenario, Scarlett was using some kind of sword thing she kept in her boot. Each tried to look out for the other as much as they could, but the going was slow and difficult.
Jungle work was an acquired taste, two tours in Vietnam hadn't done it for Stalker, but they had honed his skills to a fine edge. The South American jungle was different in small ways, but the broad strokes were exactly the same. The Ranger found himself slipping into his old rhythms like a well worn shoe, he didn't like the jungle, not at all, but he respected it. He could move within it with a confidence that few Americans could match.
Scarlett's patience, on the other hand, was being pushed to its limit, and her bushwhacking technique had been inheriting aggression from that irritation. Her swings, while still controlled, were much harder than they needed to be, expending energy. The intelligence officer hadn't logged a jungle mission before, and it was an environment that had a way of bringing out the worst in first timers.
A thin branch lashed out and caught her in the forehead. Grunting, she yanked it aside and nearly pulled it off of the tree it was attached to before chopping it off, "I've got some furlough coming, and when I'm done with this I'm going to take it," she said between swings, "I'm going to go my place in Atlanta, I'm going to crank my air conditioning, and eat popsicles in my swimming pool."
"I didn't know you had a pool," said Stalker as he calmly de-limbed a tree and pushed the debris aside.
"That's the other thing," Scarlett said, "I'm also getting a pool. I decided just now."
This elicited a chuckle from the Ranger, "I hear swimming is the best exercise."
"Nope," said Scarlett, "No exercise. Just eating popsicles and floating in an inner tube. It's going to be strictly-"
Scarlett was cut off as Stalker's forearm shot out in front of her. She looked over at the Ranger who was staring at something on the ground.
She would have missed it, even the most experienced Joe soldiers would have. A thin filament, skirting the ground at ankle level. The only thing that gave it away was the barest glimpse of sunlight filtering down through the leaf canopy to glint on its edge. A thin row of whitish dots that shouldn't be there.
Scarlett let out quick whistle, "Thanks, I didn't even see that."
"No charge," Stalker replied, looking down the line to see what it was attached to. About five feet away he saw it: Not one, but a row of four Claymore mines affixed to a tree. Expertly hidden with bark and leaves, they were nevertheless obvious to those who knew what they were looking for.
"Well they aren't messing around, that's for sure," said Scarlett, "This must mean we're close."
"I'd say so," Stalker agreed, "Better keep quiet from here on in."
They were roughly a quarter of a mile away from the mountain when they'd first spotted the red of their uniforms in the distance. Crimson Guard. Keeping low and moving with supreme silence, they'd crept as close as they dared. From behind a bluff they were able to determine that they were dealing with a patrol of four men. A small patch on each man's collar indicated their rank as Elites, the best of the best, otherwise known as Cobra Commander's personal bodyguards.
The two Joes traded a concerned look. They couldn't communicate verbally, but the thought process was clear as if they had been telepathic: This was no longer just a dog and pony show, where Cobra Commander goes, death follows.
There was also a tacit agreement between the two of them that they couldn't wait for backup, Destro was a slow planner, often taking years to execute a scheme. Cobra Commander worked on an accelerated schedule, often throwing a dozen half-baked plans for world domination at the wall at once and seeing which stuck. It was a wasteful strategy, but also a dangerous one. The Commander's presence meant whatever was going to happen here just got moved up to the front of the docket. One way or another, this was all getting sorted out today, and Scarlett and Stalker were elected to do the sorting.
The first order of business, then, was to take out the Crimson Guard patrol, a tall order in and of itself: Crimson Guards weren't like the regular Cobra grunts, or even the officers. These men were true believers, fanatics who were willing to give up their very identity for the cause. Their discipline was second to none, the Crimson Guard was one aspect of the Cobra organization that lived up to the hype. One on one, an average Joe against a Crimson Guardsman would be a toss up as to who walked away from the conflict. Four on two made those odds a lot more bleak.
Adding to the complexity was the fact that they were far too close to the Cobra encampment to use their energy weapons. The sound they made carried a little under a mile, even a single shot would be more than likely to bring four more just like these guys running. The advantage, of course, was that they couldn't allow the Guardsmen to fire their weapons either: That meant that if they did their jobs right, the likelihood of getting shot dropped to zero. Yo Joe.
The attitude of a regular Cobra trooper got more casual as soon as they were out of sight of the top brass. Left alone, they tended to chat amongst themselves, horse around, become careless. The Crimson Guard had no time for such frivolity, they existed for their duty. Each man was arms length from his comrade, rifles up, scanning the jungle with a mechanical regularity that a theme park animatronic would envy.
They occupied what passed for a clearing in the dense foliage. There were only a few thin trees and some hanging vines between the Guardsmen and the thick brush from where the Joes were observing them. No good cover whatsoever, so a frontal assault was out, then. Furthermore, they had positioned themselves in front of a large rock that towered over them by about a foot, there would be no ambushing them from behind. The only good news was was the surrounding forest was as dense as Christmas cake. A flanking action it would be, then.
Stalker looked at Scarlett and gestured towards a low hill about fifty feet to the enemy's left. Scarlett nodded as she readied her power crossbow. She turned and began to make her way towards it, the anger from earlier absent from her movements as she navigated to her flanking position with an admirable confidence.
Stalker picked up some loose rocks from the ground, along with some sticks, and quickly formed them into a small structure. Balanced with impressive precision, the precarious structure was topheavy, relying on friction and gravity to hold together. It wouldn't last long where it was, but it wasn't meant to. After tending to it for a moment, Stalker turned and faded into the verdant tangle of leaves and vines.
Stalker cut wide, circling to get behind the Cobras. Time was short, so he walked upright as much as he dared, knowing that a single snap of a twig or rustling of leaves held the potential for disaster. Hunkered over, he slid through the forest like a ghost, each footfall guided by years of training honed to instinct; to the uninvested observer his machinations sounded like no more than light breeze playing with the ferns. He got to within a grenade toss of the Red Men before he went to a prone position and began his crawl.
He took a glance over towards Scarlett and was pleased to see that she was in position, visible from his vantage point but hidden from the enemy for the time being. She looked in his direction and flashed him a quick smile, Stalker hoped the bad guys couldn't find him as easily. He was fairly sure they couldn't; this hadn't been the pair's first mission together, and they knew each other's trick pretty well by this point.
Flat on his belly, Stalker began the slow process of creeping through the tall grass, pulling himself along with his elbows and knees. Given enough time, he could perform this task in complete silence: Creeping up to within less than a foot of the enemy without the slightest awareness on their part about his presence. Today he was in a hurry, and he couldn't give these guys the silent treatment as much as he'd like to. But that was what the fragile structure he'd built was for, and if he'd timed it correctly it would be going off right about now.
Stalker's timing was perfect: The tiny sticks holding up the bottom of the miniature shrine gave way just as Stalker was getting within earshot of the Cobras. The stones scattered in all directions, producing an unnaturally loud, ear catching sound not dissimilar to a heavy footfall. The red suited Cobras snapped their attention on that side of the jungle, their weapons were raised and ready to fire in a move so rehearsed it could have been a dance routine. Being well trained, they held their fire. There was no sense in putting the camp on high alert for a wild boar or a bird making a noisy exit from the underbrush. They waited, listening for sounds to follow.
Stalker knew that there would be none, he also knew that that would tweak their suspicions more than if the sounds continued. An animal would tend to go about its business regardless of who was pointing a laser at it, a man would freeze. Their attention would be locked onto the section of woods where the sound came from, which was what Stalker needed them to do.
As soon as he'd heard the distraction go off, he'd put the pedal to the metal, which in guerilla warfare terms meant he'd increased his speed from half a foot in 60 seconds to two feet. The combination of the trap, plus the whine of the Cobra's laser rifles as they powered up was enough to cover the sound of his approach, which was still as silent as a house cat on shag carpet.
He was at the rock now, through the sticks and underbrush he could see the leg of the rightmost Crimson Guard just in front of him. He was close enough that he could make out the stitching that held the sole to the bottom of the boot, and several spots where the soldier had missed the last time he shined them.
Discipline must be slipping, he thought as he rose to his feet, freeing his bayonet from its sheath as he did so. There was a metallic clicking of weapons, accompanied by the laser whine dispersing as the rifles were powered down once more. The Cobras must have been satisfied that whatever had made the sound presented no threat.
Well, they were half right.
The bayonet held at his hip, Stalker stepped out from behind the rock and sank the knife into the upper back of the first Crimson Guard, grabbing him by the shoulder as he did. The Cobra's last words were nothing more than a grunt, a swift inhalation just before he went limp. As a last word it wasn't much, but it was more than enough to alert his cohorts to Stalker's presence.
The first guy had gone down without much of a fight, but that was the only lucky break Stalker was counting on. Rifles were coming up even as the three smoked visors snapped to face Stalker's direction. The Ranger knew that if he could see the identical faces behind those visors, they would be just as impassive as the masks they wore. There was no confusion in their ranks, no compassion for their fallen colleague, only a lightning quick assessment of the situation, followed by efficient action. Their professionalism would almost seem admirable if it wasn't ice cold.
The man nearest the Joe freed his sidearm from its holster. There was a streak of silver from the jungle, accompanied by a truncated hiss as a crossbow bolt materialized in the man's shoulder.
"There's another one in the woods somewhere," the Guardsman called out even as he dropped the weapon, his arm useless for the time being.
"It's quiet time, sucker," Stalker adds some insult to that injury, delivering a knife hand strike to the Cobra's relatively unprotected throat. It didn't matter what kind of tough guy you claimed to be, when someone gets a solid strike to your windpipe, you're going on time out for a few minutes. The Crimson Guard was no exception, clutching his throat as he fell back against the rock, gasping for air.
The leftmost Crimson Guard stepped away from the group, towards the woods. He scanned the trees for some sign of the shooter. Stalker knew that Scarlett would have moved to a new position as soon as she'd taken her shot, so unless he broadened his outlook his search would be in vain. By some divine intervention, he didn't opt to just hose down the jungle with laser fire. Maybe he preferred to pick his shots, at any rate it was fine by Stalker.
The remaining Crimson Guard who wasn't dead or incapacitated had turned his attention to the Ranger. He'd had his rifle in firing position during the scuffle between the Joe and his comrade, but there was no opportunity to get a shot off without hitting his man. Stalker was up in a flash, stepping inside the man's personal space and disarming him, taking a moment to toss the rifle far enough away that he couldn't easily reclaim it. The extra half second consumed by that action was enough for the Crimson Guard to pull out his knife.
The polished steel crescent of the Karambit blade caught the green dappled rainforest light as it unfolded from its handle with a sinister click in transit to Stalker's face. The red soldier lunged at Stalker, swinging the metal tooth upwards in a savage arc. Stalker jerked himself aside, feeling the air displaced by the Cobra's swing as the Karambit grazed his neck.
Taking advantage of the Guardsman's commitment to his strike, Stalker delivered a fast, hard shot to his unprotected abdomen. He was momentarily satisfied to hear a muffled whoosh from inside the Crimson's helmet as the wind was knocked out of him. Intel on the Crimson Guards was limited, but there were plenty of rumours to fill in the gaps. One of them was that their faces were not the only thing about them that was surgically altered. Whispers of surgical experiments, too extreme and inhumane for any licenced practitioner stateside, performed upon the Crimson Guard to speed up reflexes, make them more durable, impervious to pain. The Ranger hadn't put too much stock rumours up until today, but the quickness with which his opponent bounced back from one of his best body shots was very convincing. The Guardsman was slightly set back, but didn't even drop his knife as he rammed a meaty fist into Stalker's temple.
"If at first you don't succeed," Stalker muttered as he shook off the stars. He wasn't surgically altered, but he'd taken harder hits than that back in Detroit, "Try, try again!" Shifting his position so that he couldn't be stabbed, he executed a textbook ju-do throw as he did so. The Cobra elite was hurled over Stalker's shoulder, smashing him against the rock. The Crimson Guard somehow managed to get a grip on Stalker's shirt, pulling him down to the ground with him.
The Crimson Guard was on top of Stalker now, still in possession of his knife. Stalker got a forearm in between himself and the Karambit, stopping the blade a quarter inch from his face. They were close enough that he see the man's eyes through the smoked visor, they were wide and wild, the eyes of a true fanatic. He could hear the Cobra's ragged breathing inside his plastic mask, "Keep trying, Joe," he rasped. Stalker was thankful that the mask prevented him from smelling the man's breath.
Scarlett had acquired a new position, ten yards from where she'd been before. She'd as soon as the bolt was clear of her crossbow, well before the Crimson Guards had determined where she was shooting from. One advantage of using a crossbow over laser weapons was that it didn't betray her hiding place when fired. Lasers, high tech though they might be, pretty much drew a big glowing arrow in the air pointing to the person who fired them. Conventional rifles, discontinued completely in the mid '70s, had the same problem. But a crossbow? That was the perfect stealth weapon: A discreet click, a rustling of foliage, and the bad guy has a brand new hole.
Once settled she noted, as Stalker had, that the Crimson Guard wasn't firing, just looking around. The noise would bring the Cobra regular forces running and he was probably looking to score the kill himself, she reasoned. Cobra often played favorites with their troops, rewarding those who brought back the most scalps. As a practice it was abhorrent, creating a focus on killing and brutality over achieving an objective. It was a wonder Cobra ever got anything done.
She watched as Stalker struggled with the other still active Crimson Guard. They'd fallen to the ground and from her vantage point it looked like the Guard was getting ready to fillet Stalker's face. Every decent instinct in Scarlett's body urged her to abandon her hiding spot and run to her teammate's rescue. But she knew better: She'd be cut down immediately, a waste of personnel. At the moment, she was far more useful in the shadows, picking off the Crimson Guards from a distance while her partner got up close and personal. If there had been a second power crossbow available, he'd be doing the same thing. Besides, the Ranger could handle himself, at least she hoped he could.
If Stalker were to go down, it would be up to her to fall back and figure out how to complete the mission on her own. It was a thought that she didn't relish, but for which she was mentally prepared: Cobra was well-funded, ruthless, and they didn't get out of bed in the morning for anything less than world conquest. If she was the one Joe standing in their way, then she would fight to her last breath, the stakes were too high for anything less. If G.I. Joe failed, freedom died.
So no pressure, anyway.
Her crossbow reloaded, Scarlett reassessed her sightline on the Crimson Guard scanning the foliage. She was now behind a small swell in the jungle floor, lying flat, about twenty feet to his left. The Cobra was still looking in the wrong place for her, but that wouldn't last long. The Crimson Guard were fanatics, but they weren't stupid. Right now he was superfocussed on where she'd been, assuming that the average soldier wasn't able to move undetected. He was moments away from figuring out that she'd changed positions, and once he reached that conclusion he wouldn't be long in finding her. Her current cover wasn't as ideal as the one she'd just left, it would take him a minute, but he would spot her.
Of course, she wasn't about to give him that chance. Currently he'd moved just a little further away from the main group. He was just passing by a tree, its trunk blocked the neat, tidy headshot she was hoping for. He was just about past it when he stopped, the tree was now completely obscuring his center mass.
"Come on, you little jerk," Scarlett murmured to herself as she sighted the spot where his head would be when he emerged from his coincidental cover. She could hear the struggle between Stalker and his adversary raging across the way. Nothing she could do for him except what she was doing now.
After a pause to sniff the air or whatever he was doing, the Crimson Guard finally took another step, the red of his helmet standing out in stark contrast to the field of green that surrounded it. In her hyperaware state she could see his head turning in her direction in slow motion. He'd figured it out, and once he was clear of the tree he'd be staring straight at her.
A tug on the XK-1's trigger ensured that if he had seen her, it would be the last sight he ever beheld. A burst of three bolts ventured forth, one embedding itself in the tree, another hitting his breastbone, the third smashing through the dark visor and putting him down forever.
He hadn't even fully crumpled to the ground before Scarlett was up and racing to save Stalker.
The guy was strong, Stalker would give him that. Likely his strength was due to illegal surgeries, even more illegal drugs, and liberal injections taken from the glands of at least six endangered animals that would likely shorten his natural lifespan by five years, but for the moment he was a beast. Stalker was using a leverage trick to keep the knife, which was now quivering less than a half inch from his eyeball, at bay, but it was taking all his own reserves to do so. In seconds he'd be overpowered.
Stalker had his hands full, but his situational awareness was always on, he was still tracking the other Crimson Guard who had stepped away looking for Scarlett. The man still existed for Stalker as a red smudge on his peripheral vision. He saw him moving, stopping, then going down.
Score one for Team Joe Stalker thought as he used his free hand to claw at the ground for a good sized rock. The Guard's singleminded determination to relieve Stalker of his depth perception had left him vulnerable to attack. Stalker could have actually pulled his sidearm and blasted him through the ribcage, but that would defeat his purpose in getting this done without a sound.
His hand closed on a good sized stone, and he wasted no time in swinging it upwards into the Crimson Guard's helmeted temple. The knife didn't waver, but the Cobra's head snapped out of his field of view for a moment, only to return with a shattered visor and the plastic outer surface of the helmet networked with cracks.
"It'll take more than that to-" was all the Cobra was able to get out before the rock connected with his head a second time. This time Stalker could see the lights go out in his eyes as he slumped backwards against the rock, and finally dropped the knife.
Stalker got to his feet and brushed himself off, he could see Scarlett loping through the tall grass towards him, "I guess I rocked his world." He said to her, smiling. Scarlett didn't seem to express any appreciation for his little funny: Still running, she raised her crossbow and fired. Stalker, surprised, but not into inaction, rotated his upper torso to evade the bolt as it sailed past him and into the forehead of the Crimson Guard, the one he'd hit in the throat, who he now noted was recovered and standing behind him with his rifle.
He looked down at the deceased Cobra, then back to Scarlett, "Guess I missed that one, thanks."
"Don't mention it, you had a lot on your plate," Scarlett said, "We'd better get moving."
Scarlett moved past him into the jungle, Stalker lingered behind for a moment, regarding the red clad man who was one decimal away from having his number. Such things happened all the time on the battlefield, where as good as you were, as well as you were prepared, however much experience you might have had, there was always a point where you were at the mercy of dumb luck. It made a man think.
"Dag," Stalker intoned, before shouldering his rifle and heading out after Scarlett.
13
They must have put the darned thing on with magnets or something.
Clutch had spent the last half hour trying to pry the metallic headband off of his forehead. So far he had not been able to get so much as a fingernail underneath the thing, he might as well be trying to pry off his eyebrows. In the overall scheme of things, it wasn't the most pressing issue he was facing: Escaping the cell he was locked in, reconnecting with his teammates, those would have been high on anyone else's to-do list. It was just the presence of the headband that galled him. He didn't like the idea of someone having that kind of power over his fate, telling him what to do. He was in the military, and he took orders, but that was different. Joining the military was his choice, and if someday he was told to do something he didn't agree with he could, and would, tell them to cram it down their missile silo. The idea that Destro and his Euro trash girlfriend had that kind of sway over him made him want to gag.
Still, short of bashing himself in the forehead with a rock it seemed there wasn't a way of removing the headband. He gave up for the time being, and took to pacing around his tiny enclosure. The walls were made of stone, thick slabs that seemed to be one solid piece per wall. Even if he'd had a grenade, he would probably only have succeeded in blowing himself to pieces in the tiny space. The window was too small to get through unless he had some hidden talent as a contortionist he didn't know about.
The window was high up on the wall, like what you'd find in a suburban basement, Clutch did a quick running start and jumped up, grabbing the outside edge of the window and hauling himself up so that he could see outside. The view was the same as before, with the addition of a Cobra guard, rifle in hand, facing away from him in the middle of what must have passed for a street down here.
"Hey!" he called out to the trooper, "I need to go to the bathroom!"
The Cobra stared ahead at the stone building across the street as if he hadn't heard, Clutch was having none of this, "Hey!" he called down to the trooper, "Did you hear me? I have to go powder my nose!"
Clutch could only see the man's back, but he noted with amusement that his posture had become a little more stiff as he continued to play his role of man who isn't annoyed at all. Clutch let go of the windowsill and dropped back to the floor.
Hearing this, and perhaps thinking that it meant a reprieve from Clutch's harassment, the Trooper outside took a deep breath and allowed himself a moment to unwind. He hadn't gotten too far into his regime, however when the first pebble hit the back of his helmet with a sharp but tiny click.
"Hey," the voice behind him said, "Can you hear me over there? Bathroom. Chop chop."
This was followed by a slightly larger pebble bouncing off the man's helmet and making a louder, more metallic click as it did so. Its loudness caused the Cobra to start a bit, and afterwards his neck and back went rail straight as he struggled to keep his decorum. Clutch couldn't see his face, but he imagined that as he moved a few steps forward, he was doing so with firmly gritted teeth.
"Aww, you're no fun," Clutch called out, then dropped back into the cell again. This time the Cobra didn't relax, standing with the rigidity of a plastic doll. He was far enough away from the cell that he couldn't hear exactly what was going on, save for some muffled scraping, which gave way to abrupt silence.
A flat stone, about the size of a cookie, came sailing out of the cell window like a frisbee. It was a perfect headshot, shattering against the back of the Cobra's head with a satisfying clunk. It didn't hurt the man, given the protection offered by his helmet and the fact that the stone was an eighth of an inch thick, but nonetheless he reacted as if he had been shot: Stumbling forward and nearly dropping his laser rifle.
He turned and glared at the stone window, which framed Clutch's face as he cackled at him, "You have to admit that was a good shot."
The Cobra was raising his weapon as he stormed over to the window, Clutch wasn't sure what he was planning to do. He'd been ordered not to shoot his prisoner, but the Joe liked to think that his ability to get under people's skin could override orders. It didn't make much of a difference anyway; as soon as the Cobra got close enough to the window, he received a face full of dirt from the cell floor.
The Trooper dropped his rifle and rubbed his eyes, barely noticing when Clutch's arm popped out through the opening and knocked his helmet off and getting a firm grip on his web belt in one smooth motion.
Inside the cell, feet braced on the wall, Clutch pushed with his legs and hauled the still incapacitated man upwards so that his head made hard contact with the thick rock of the window's upper sill. There was a loud, coconut-like, bonk sound before the man's struggles ceased.
Clutch could only get one arm through the window at a time, and the fully geared Cobra trooper was heavy. The sharp stone edge gnawed at his forearm as he strained to lift the man to the window. A few potentially herniating seconds later Clutch had access to the Cobra's belt as the buckle became level with the window. He quickly unbuckled it with his other hand and experienced a swell of relief as it came free and the Cobra that was once attached to it fell in a heap to the dirt outside.
Clutch pulled the belt inside and went through the compartments, locating a control stick the size and shape of a candy bar. The force field control. He sincerely hoped it worked from this side, otherwise he was in some serious trouble. He pressed the off button and the field became brighter for a moment, then vanished.
"Score one for The Clutch," he said, smiling to himself and heading out to collect the Cobra's rifle.
Once outside the small building, he took a second to look around. The view from the cell hadn't given him much of a sense of his surroundings, just a narrow sliver consisting of windowless stone walls on the other side of the street. Now he saw the scope of it: The walls went from the stone floor to a vaulted ceiling some 200 feet above, massive columns to keep the mountain's bulk from crashing down. Other than the one in front of him he could see several others towering in various spots around the chamber. Surrounding these were a series of two to four story stone structures that looked like they weren't so much built as carved from the stone of the mountain itself. The buildings stretched as far as Clutch could see in any direction.
Clutch whistled softly, "A full on underground city, just like in the movies."
His first order of business should have been to make contact with his teammates, but that didn't sound like much fun at all; so Clutch made his way down the wide stone street with all the stealth and caution he could muster, headed in the direction he thought Destro and Cobra Commander had gone. Coincidentally it was also where light seemed to be coming from.
The streets were deserted, and he only saw the occasional indication of Cobra presence here: An occasional parked troop transport or barrels marked with Cobra sigils. It was a respectable hike to get to where the lights were set up and he allowed himself to marvel at the city's scale: The streets went on and on, he passed row after row of smooth walled stone structures, their purpose obliterated by the passage of time. It was hard to believe that all of this had been built underground by a civilization that didn't even know what a jackhammer was. The only indication that he was in a cave was the stillness of the air, there wasn't even a whisper of a breeze down here. It struck Clutch as eerie.
Familiar voices echoed in the distance, Clutch put his reverie aside and powered on his stolen laser rifle.
"Are you mad?" Destro said to Cobra Commander. He gestured at the Crimson Guards as they did their work and ignored him completely, "You will bring the entire cavern down on our heads!"
"My Crimson Guards are masters of demolition," Cobra Commander replied, "They would never let anything happen to me."
The Cobra elite stood before a massive stone wall, fifty feet high, that formed the rear wall of the underground city. It was carved from top to bottom with elaborate decorations: Stars intermingled with grotesque faces, representations of plants coexisted with those of insects and snakes. In the center of this wall was a recessed area, thirty feet high, that suggested a door. It too was decorated with the same motif as the wall surrounding it. This was also the area where the Crimson Guards were lavishing most of their supply of plastic explosives. There were two strings of at least twenty nondescript black boxes with blinking LEDs stuck around the inside of the doorway, looking like the world's most utilitarian Christmas decorations. The Crimson Guards weren't done, either. They had a large blue duffle bag full of the deadly boxes, and would continue to add them until Cobra Commander said when.
"Do you not think I have thought of this solution?" Destro turned to the Commander, reflective face to reflective face, "This is why I obtained the key!"
"Oh, there's a key?" Cobra Commander made a small gesture with his right hand, causing the Crimson Guards to stop adding more explosives and snap to attention, "Why didn't you ssssay so?"
The Baroness, who until this point had been leaning on a wall and doing her best bored teenager performance, rolled her eyes at this, "Why not give him the farm as well?" she murmured under her breath.
"I believe I did say so, several times, on the walk over here," Destro said, irritability was seeping into his normally resonant baritone, causing it to rasp, "Clear this nonsense away!"
Destro waved his arms at the Crimson Guards like they were pigeons, they, in turn, looked at him like a pack of hungry wolves. They glanced at Cobra Commander, who gave a silent nod, after which they sprung into action again, undecorating the doorway and clearing away from the door.
The decorations on the door part of the wall seemed to follow a radial pattern, all of the elements converging on a single point about five feet from the floor, where a sun had been carved. In the center of this was a hole, about the size of a silver dollar. Destro opened a pouch on his utility belt and extracted the amethyst piece, holding it up to the light to examine it for a moment. After deciding which way was up, he placed the piece into the hole and stood back, craning his neck upwards to better observe the results.
Results that did not appear to be forthcoming at the moment.
"How long does it take, usually?" Cobra Commander inquired, he seemed more amused than angry.
"These mechanisms are centuries old," said Destro, still looking upwards, "They may require more time become mobile."
A few more seconds passed. The Baroness pushed herself off of the wall and into a standing position. Bludd coughed.
"I think I heard something," said Destro, "At any moment..."
Cobra Commander pushed past him on his way to the door, "Let me try it, I have a secret bunker with a lock that does this."
Destro made a halting attempt to stop him, "Commander, do not-" he was cut off when two Crimson Guards seemed to materialize from thin air around him and pressed their laser rifles in his face.
The Cobra leader walked over to the key and grabbed it, pulling it out a bit and rattling it around in the keyhole for a moment, "Yes, this is the problem, it's worn down," he then jammed the fragile artifact into the socket with the heel of his hand and was rewarded with a loud mechanical clunk. The key itself began to glow with a soft lavender aura as a seam appeared in the door and it split down the middle.
Cobra Commander stepped back to where Destro was previously standing and placed his hands on his hips, "There. Now we can move things along."
The cavern behind the door was black, the utility lights only penetrated a few feet into the darkness. They revealed nothing but a small section of smooth rock floor.
The assembled were about to move inside when they heard a man's voice from behind them, "Nobody move, I have Mr. Christmas Ornament Face right where I want him."
They turned to see Clutch stepping out from behind a building, striding towards them. The commandeered laser rifle he was carrying was trained on Cobra Commander as was his undivided attention, "Weapons down, everybody. We wouldn't want anything to befall the great snake, now would we?"
With reluctance, the Cobras laid down their arms, with Bludd going conspicuously last, perhaps thinking that he could get a shot off, then thinking better of the idea. Clutch motioned with the rifle, "Kick 'em over there."
A sharp scraping sound, metal against stone, echoed through the cavern as they complied.
"I don't know what kind of party you're throwing down here," Clutch said. He'd had the wisdom to stop well outside of rushing distance, and he maintained his focus on the Commander as his sole target, "But I'm afraid I'm going to have towaaaagh!"
Whatever Clutch was afraid he was going to have to do was lost as ha dropped the rifle and fell to his knees, holding his temples as though doing so would prevent his brian from escaping. There was some confusion among the terrorists as to what had transpired. One moment the unshaven Joe had had the drop on them, and the next he was rolling around on the ground.
The Baroness held up a small remote that she'd had attached to her belt, "Portable remote for the headband. Fewer features, but it does the job."
There were some shrugs and relieved nods, then everyone grabbed their weapons. The Crimson Guards then went to surround the still agonized Clutch. One of them picked up the weapon that he'd dropped, another put the barrel of his laser rifle against the top of the Joe's skull. The masked face turned to Cobra Commander, "Grease him, sir?"
The Commander considered for a moment, "Not yet. This man has spirit, and I would like to see him broken. Restrain him and bring him along." he turned to Destro, "Please, lead the way, dear Destro."
"For once," the Baroness chimed in.
Destro's mask hid the fact that his face was beet red, "Of course Commander." He ordered one of the men to bring high powered flashlights and they proceeded into the door.
14
Stalker and Scarlett were three quarters of the way up the mountain when they heard the flight pods. They hadn't had a lot of time to hide the bodies of the Crimson Guards they'd dispatched, so they knew it was only a matter of time until they were discovered.
With standard climbing equipment, the ascent would have been dangerous and time consuming. G.I. Joe provided them with state of the art gear that at least made it faster. Stalker had what was essentially a grappling hook gun; light and convenient, it boasted a compressed air firing mechanism cleverly designed to get maximum force from a small amount of Co2. It could fire its projectile, a three fingered claw apparatus that despite its modest appearance could bite into solid granite, an impressive 50 feet straight up. It used a microfilament line that was strong as steel despite being no wider than what might be found in an average ball of yarn.
Scarlett also had a grappling gun, but was instead using the rope attachment for her power crossbow, her preferred climbing apparatus. While it couldn't get as much distance as the grappling gun, it could be aimed with far more precision. She had nothing against the engineers who had created the grappling gun, but Scarlett had fully disassembled and rebuilt her crossbow hundreds of times. She knew every mechanism inside, and trusted it far more than the mysterious workings of the grappling gun.
The mountain was treacherous, mostly consisting of sheer cliffs that commanded what normally would be a breathtaking view of the surrounding jungle hundreds of feet below. Now, however, it was just a reminder of the proximity of death. All too easy for one to imagine a sweaty hand or a poorly placed foot plunging one's body downward, with only one or two bone shattering impacts with the stone walls to look forward to before landing in a heap among the moss and sharp rocks below. Best to keep the mind on the present and leave the future to take care of itself.
"We're going to have incoming, can't say where from," the wind tugged at Scarlett's ponytail as she turned as best she could to find the source of the sound, "Do you see anything?"
"I do," said Stalker, "but you're not going to like it."
Scarlett followed his gaze to see three domed aerial vehicles like they ones they'd commandeered earlier that day. Piloted by experts now, their movements agile and deliberate as they popped out from the far side of the mountain, angling towards them with deadly purpose.
Stalker had his sidearm out and, bracing himself on the rock face as best he could, he fired a volley of shots at the frontmost pod. It ducked low, corkscrewing around the red streaks before resuming its course.
The second one fired its laser cannons at Scarlett, she'd anticipated the attack and was already running along the rock wall, her climbing line guiding her in a gentle arc away from the rocky detonation. Hard shrapnel stung her legs and lower back as she set her foot in a crevice to stop her momentum. Her crossbow was in use, so her options for defense were limited. Ninja stars would be useless against a flight pod, and her holdout gun was hidden in her left glove, impossible to access with her right hand occupied with holding the line.
The pod was below her now, just a bit, and was getting in close. The pilot likely had a sense of her perceived defenselessness and wanted to get in close for the kill. She intended to make him regret that decision. Reaching into her belt compartment, she pulled out the grappling gun and pointed it at the pod that was currently menacing Stalker. She fired, the tiny hook zipped out towards the aircraft and caught it just behind the engine. She then hurled the gun part at he pod below her, specifically towards the upwards facing intake turbines at the back.
The pistol was swallowed by the turbine, instantly stopping it as still as a photograph. It produced an immediate metallic grinding sound that was as loud as it was horrifying. Black smoke and the smell of burnt plastic filled the air as the flight pod veered suddenly to the right, pulling its companion on the other end of the grapple with it like a bola. As the line snapped taut, the second flight pod whirled around the first, a brief semicircular motion that ended when it slammed itself into the cliffside with grim finality. It burst into flames and tumbled down the cliff, pulling the other one along for the ride.
The third pilot was understandably awed by this spectacle, spending two seconds staring at the spinning pinwheel of metal and fire as it spun its way down to the jungle. They were two seconds he didn't have to spare, and Stalker made sure they were the last in the Cobra's life. One laser, straight through the clear canopy, the Cobra slumped onto the controls and the flight pod responded by turning 90 degrees and flying at top speed towards the rock face, headbutting the stony wall just below where Scarlett was hanging. She had to curl her legs up under herself to avoid some of the debris.
Stalker looked over at his partner, stifling his natural instinct to ask if she was all right. If she were incapacitated she'd tell him, and expressions of concern seemed to annoy her more than anything else, "Well, if they didn't know about us before, they're going to figure it out now."
"Then we'd better get moving," Scarlett smiled, "Race you to the top?"
Stalker had reached the top of his rope, he got a handhold in a crack in the rock before disengaging his hook, "You're on, red," he said, firing the hook again.
After ten more minutes of climbing, they reached a ledge that was wide enough for them to stand on. Technically, Stalker had reached it first, making him the winner of the friendly competition between the two, but climbing speed had been forgotten in the face of what they found.
A literal face.
Or rather a carving of one. Hidden in a cave, set back forty feet from outer lip of the shelf where they were standing, the face would have been invisible to outside observers. For something that was ostensibly never meant to be seen the carver who created it had lavished an impressive amount of detail on it. It was three times as tall as Stalker, and possessed thick, angry, downturned brows and a gaping mouth, wide open and full of fangs. The mouth served as a passage, and what little afternoon light that seeped in from the outside was consumed by the darkness within.
"What do you think?" Scarlett asked, "Some kind of ancient South American fun house?"
"I don't think we're going to have much fun in there," said Stalker. He pulled out his flashlight and aimed the beam into the shadows. It caught a few vines but not much else, "Oh well," he said, "World's not going to save itself."
Scanning their surroundings with the flashlights, they made their way through the passage, taking care to mind where they stepped. The floor was flat in a way that a natural cave generally wasn't. These were smooth, carved and leveled by hand. It was difficult to tell how big the space was, the illumination from their flashlights only reached a few feet in any direction. Judging by the echoes, Scarlett reasoned that it was roughly 100 feet across.
Just ahead, her light caught something metallic in the gloom. Moving closer to investigate, she found a Cobra laser rifle.
"It looks like we're not the first guests they've had," she called out to Stalker, "Cobra's been here, all right."
"Yeah, I know," said Stalker, "Some of them stayed for a while."
Scarlett turned to face him, his light was pointed downwards at a set of boots on the floor. The rest of the Cobra's body was outside of the circle of light but Scarlett had the feeling that that was for the best.
"He didn't go easy," Stalker said, as if to confirm her unvoiced thoughts. He jerked his light over to the left, briefly unveiling a scene of chaos; Many bodies, strewn everywhere, "There's more over there. A decent sized force, wiped out like nothing."
"Let's be optimistic," Scarlett said, "Maybe whatever killed them will like us."
Stalker laughed, "It doesn't hurt to look at the sunny side."
"So, where do we go from here?" Scarlett asked.
"Further in is as good a guess as any at this point," Stalker replied, "It won't be too long before we find-"
Stalker stopped short and put his hand up for silence, Scarlett didn't need the signal, she'd heard it too. A short grinding sound, stone on stone. Followed by another. Rhythmic. Evoking a familiar pattern.
Footsteps.
Stalker and Scarlett both spun in place, whirling their lights around to find the source of the sound. It was Scarlett that found it first, although it would have been hard to miss. A stone face, smaller, but not dissimilar from the one whose mouth they entered to gain access to the cavern, but this one was attached to a stone body. A quick visual estimate put it at 12 feet tall, although Scarlett could have misestimated as it was stooping while raising an enormous stone fist.
Its target was Stalker, whose light did a little jig in the darkness as he did a quick tuck and roll to get clear of the impact. The stone giant struck hard, sending up a cloud of dust that spread through the chamber, giving form to the beams from their flashlights.
Scarlett drew her laser pistol, and took aim on the behemoth. She reasoned an explosive arrow would have done the monster in, but she feared what effect it would have in the cave. She didn't relish being buried alive at the equator. It wasn't an agile target so each of the three beam burst she snapped off found its mark, setting off a tight constellation of glittering debris at the back of the thing's neck. The head snapped around, more quickly than its size and mass would suggest was possible, and its eyes began to smolder with a molten orange glow. It turned and began lumbering towards her, moving noticeably faster than before.
"Stalker, I think I just ticked it off," Scarlett said, backing away.
Stalker heard more grinding, heavy footsteps in multiple places around the room. He turned to see multiple sets of eyes winking on, and beginning to move towards them.
"I don't know if you want any more bad news," Stalker called out, "But I think he called his friends."
Scarlett's back hit the wall, ahead of her the golem was picking up speed as it raised its balled fist again, as though it needed the momentum to squish her to pulp. She fired again, this time aiming for the golem's face, parts of it were shattered away, but the damage did nothing to dissuade it from its mission.
Scarlett leaped straight up as the fist hit the wall behind her, flipping and twisting in the air to alight upon the golem's forearm. The great head turned to look at her as she ran along its arm like a log across a river. Acting on impluse, she fired a laser into the creature's mouth as she passed by on her way to vault off of its shoulder. It seemed to have an effect, when she looked back at the creature it was already shuddering as it pulled its arm free of the wall and turned to face her. It took one great step before its head exploded and some kind of glowing orange material, like lava, began to flow out of the neck stump.
"Stalker!" she yelled out, "The mouth is the weak spot!"
Stalker was surrounded by the golems now, and it was only his conditioning and agility that was saving him. Narrowly dodging a fist, his luck ran out as he felt stone fingers closing around his chest. The hand was hard and cold against his ribs as he felt the strength of the monster crushing the air from his lungs. The golem raised him up as a child might pick up an action figure, preparing to dash it against a rock.
Stalker was dimly aware of blue flashes to his right, white splashes of glitter as Scarlett fired wildly into the golem's midst, trying to get at the one that held him. Nice of her, but this was between him and Rocky IV.
Blackness was creeping into the edges of his vision as he raised his laser pistol and fired off a shot at the black area below the glowing orange eyes that he hoped to God was the mouth. There was a shuddering, and he felt the grip loosen, he was able to breathe again. The creature let him drop to the floor, and he was just able to hurl himself to the side before its head exploded into a glowing orange mess. It looked like lava, but it gave off no heat. Just an even orange glow like a thicker version of the liquid in a glow stick. Another golem, who was already in the process of punching where the Ranger had been a quarter second before, instead buried its fist into the oozing chest cavity of its now headless associate.
Stalker scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding the grasp of another Golem as he tried to get clear and regain his bearings. He turned and snapped off a quick shot at the creature who was trying to grab him. His shot hit home and he heard the rumbling as the creature began to shudder, he didn't see the explosion that followed, as he was searching the chamber for Scarlett.
He wasn't long in locating her, just ahead of two more of what he was now begrudgingly referring to as rock monsters. That was ridiculous, of course: As far as he'd known monsters didn't exist, but right now he didn't have the luxury of sitting down and rationalizing his situation. Later, when he had the time, he might get together with Scarlett and they'd hash the experience out: It was dark, they could have been Cobra robots camouflaged with a rocklike finish, or some kind of elaborate trap utilizing stone puppets whose workings were simply invisible in the cavernous gloom. Right now, however, he was living in a Ray Harryhausen movie, and he'd have to roll with that if he wanted to get out in one piece to reminisce it away later.
Scarlett was running away from the rock monsters, arm extended back, firing blindly at them for the most part. Occasionally she'd turn her head to get an aimed shot off, but it wasn't doing much good. The shots were skimming off of the face and upper chest of the monsters while dealing only minimal damage. On the wall behind her he could see even more eyes lighting up.
He felt the presence of another monster looming over him, heard the whoosh of air displacement as another piledriver punch was unleashed in his direction. A forward somersault got him to safety, but there seemed to be no end to the monsters. As he glanced around, the chamber was getting downright crowded with them.
Then his eyes fell on a wide passage at the far end of the room.
"Scarlett!" he called out, "I think it's time for a strategic withdrawal!"
The Intel specialist glanced in his direction, then followed his gaze to the passageway. She got the message, dekeing around an arm the same diameter as a mailbox as it attempted to squash her like a ginger gnat. "Well, maybe just this once," she said as she turned on the ball of her foot and made a fast break for the exit.
Stalker wasn't far behind her, he pumped his arms as he ran, rendering the flashlight's beam useless as it whipped up and down, its light a blur. He wasn't running blind, however. By now, there were enough glowing eyes in the cavern that they provided enough light to find his path.
God doesn't close a door without opening a window the old chestnut came to him unbidden, but he had to admit it was applicable. But in this case the window was a door, and the door possibly led to something even worse than what was after them right now. At this point, Stalker's imagination couldn't conceive of a worse situation than this one, so it was without reservation that he followed into the darkness seconds after it enveloped Scarlett.
The two of them stopped just inside the threshold, and looked back at their pursuers. Lantern like eyes, at least a dozen pairs, were all turned in their direction, and closing the gap at steady pace.
Scarlett produced an explosive arrow and set it into her crossbow with precision, even in the stress of the moment she didn't falter, she looked over at Stalker, "Shall we drop the curtain?"
The question was couched in battlefield glibness, but the intent was clear. Scarlett knew as well as Stalker that the action she was about to take stood a good chance of dooming them both; either due to a cave in or becoming hopelessly lost in a series of caverns after cutting off the only known exit. Even though the alternative would be certain death at the hands of what were probably rock monsters, she wouldn't make that decision for both of them, they had to agree.
Stalker nodded, he wasn't seeing a lot of options,"I'm tired of this scene anyway."
Scarlett aimed the crossbow at the topmost point of the passageway and fired. They turned to run as the explosive detonation temporarily lit up the cavern. The gateway collapsed, raining down chunks of stone on the pursuing monsters as it was sealed forever. They heard the ceiling directly over their heads beginning to crack, accompanied by the grinding of shifting stones as they began to slide free and fall. Impacts both large and small shook the cavern as the two Joes ran blindly, heedless of whatever potential traps awaited them in the darkness. A hypothetical poison dart was the lesser of two evils at the moment. It seemed to be the running theme today.
Finally the rumbling subsided, as did the accompanying avalanche. The Joes stopped running and turned to see the results of their actions. The cavern they had just run through, although it was quite tall, at least fourteen feet, was now clogged floor to ceiling with tons of newly formed boulders. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the cave, but it appeared to be the same situation all the way back to the golem chamber.
"Well," Scarlett said after a breath catching silence, "The good news is they're not going to follow us."
"Not without a backhoe and about two weeks," Stalker agreed, "The bad news is we have to find a new exit strategy."
They turned to look down the hallway, which extended as far as their flashlight beams could reach.
"Wait a minute," said Scarlett, "Do you hear something?"
15
"What isss that thing for?" Cobra Commander's good mood was starting to fray at the edges, causing several of the Cobra soldiers to shrink away from him in a manner that was subtle, yet distinct.
Destro, to his credit, stood his ground with the Commander, although his reply was measured and diplomatic, "It is a necessary part of the demonstration, Cobra Commander, as you will soon see."
The "thing" to which the mirror masked leader was referring was a large piece of machinery about the size of a steam shovel that was in the process of being guided with minute precision by a team of engineers through an ancient stone gate just barely tall enough to admit it. The machine looked like a pile driver, boasting a tall rail on which was mounted a piston that ended with a large titanium mallet. The rest of the machine's bulk consisted of an operator's cab and six large all terrain tires that could pivot independently of one another for pinpoint maneuvering. That said, the machine wasn't exactly fast, and the process of making sure it could get into the mountain's central cavern without caving the whole works in on them was a slow one.
If the potential for a rocky death fazed Cobra Commander, he wasn't letting on. He kicked the dirt floor like a petulant child, "I am not impresssed by your attempt at sssideshow theatricsss. I demand ansswerss."
Destro was facing away from the Cobra leader, surveying his engineering team as they did their careful work. His black and green eyes rolled in their chromium sockets as he turned to face his Commander, "Very well, if you insist."
Destro stepped out into the center of the chamber. It was large, though not as large as the one that housed the underground city from which they had just come. This one was about the size of a five story building, its walls were smooth, curving slightly outwards before coming to a rounded point at the top, like the inside of a huge stone egg. The chamber's floor was a flat disc of soft, light brown soil, notable for being the only place in the underground compound where there was something under foot other than stone. Above, affixed at about the midpoint of the smooth walls were a series of three stone beams that curved upwards and met in the center where they supported a stone ring. The ring, in turn, held up a series of what looked like massive stone pendulums and a complex mechanism designed to raise and lower them. The cables that held the pendulums continued on through a large opening in the dome's ceiling.
"I first learned of this place, or at least its existence, five years ago," Destro said, "It took three years to locate it, and two to find the key that would grant access to the inner sanctum," Destro waved his arm in a semicircle as he turned to indicate the chamber they were standing in, "The people who discovered this chamber thought it was a place to communicate with the gods. Ridiculous, of course, but they could be forgiven for their superstitions."
Destro moved to the edge of the chamber where a row of primitive stone switches were mounted in the wall. Sliding one upwards, he set off a chain of mechanical sounds from above as the aged gears and pulleys ground to life, releasing one of the pendulums to fall onto the dirt floor with a resounding thud.
Maybe a bit too resounding.
The dirt floor began to move, rippling in slow, gentle curves like a slightly disturbed bowl of jello. The pendulum ratcheted up to its apex again, pausing, but seemingly preparing to move again. The cavern seemed to shiver ever so slightly, enough that there were several looks of wide eyed terror exchanged between many of the assembled. Cobra Commander's head snapped from one side to another in alarm as he widened his stance and threw his arms out to the sides to steady himself as the wave reached him.
The shiver stopped, not so much fading away as it seemed to be leaving. Traveling downwards to some unknown destination. Destro, the only one in the room who seemed not to be in the least alarmed by what had just happened, continued, "The Earth, like all objects, has a resonant frequency. If the frequency is matched, that is, if the natural vibrations of the Earth are rhythmically and incrementally increased..."
Destro paused as the rumble returned, stronger this time, the floor began to ripple again like a live thing. The effect this time was more disorienting than before: several of the Cobras put their hands against the walls to steady themselves. Clutch, whose hands were bound behind him, fell to the floor. Taking advantage of the distraction, he began to edge his way towards the base of one of the pendulum's support structures, the only sharp corners in the room.
At the apex of the rippling, the pendulum struck again, increasing the vibration and causing a shudder that sent strings of dust down from the curved ceiling. Then it faded again. The pendulum retreated back to its starting position, but the gears had only slowed, and everyone in the room knew it was preparing to fall again.
Cobra Commander took advantage of the brief respite to change his attitude from nervous to annoyed, "Ssso it's an earthquake machine? I already have ssseveral of those."
Destro smiled, the rumbling was beginning to return, the gears ratcheting was beginning to slow, signaling everyone in the room with any pattern recognition skills whatsoever that it was about to fall once more, "This is no mere earthquake machine, this is an apocalypse engine."
Cobra Commander's demeanor lightened, "Go on."
The vibrations returned, once again incrementally stronger than before, the floor was now getting more than a little choppy. The room's occupants looked like they were surfing without boards. Clutch had reached the support pillar and was now scraping the ropes on his wrists against it, the rolling floor was actually helpful in his cause.
"There are several places in the world, junction points in the Earth's tectonic plates, where it is weak. Most of them are inaccessible to man, this place is not. Apply rhythmic pressure here, even with this primitive instrument, and the result will be minor vibrations, like the ones we're experiencing now. They penetrate only a mile or two into the earth's crust, a party trick, nothing more."
Destro flipped the wooden switch back up, the pendulum relented, returning to its start position, "However with the application of science," He gestured to the large machine, which had been admitted into the room at some point during his demonstration, "We can obtain far more dramatic results."
Clutch was just about through the ropes that held his wrists, a few threads separated him from freedom of movement. Glancing around, he was pleased to note that no one was looking his way, the bad guys were all distracted by the seasick movement that had just taken place beneath their feet. He had to admit it was pretty freaky, and although he wasn't philosophical by nature, it was probably something that mankind shouldn't be futzing around with, in his opinion.
The ropes finally snapped, and Clutch worked his hands out of their embrace and took stock of his surroundings. A couple of the Crimson Guards were now glancing in direction, so he held his hands behind his back and hoped they weren't observant enough to notice the severed rope on the ground behind him. They glanced away again, their interest flitting elsewhere. He was being completely ignored, for all the good that did him. Unarmed, there wasn't much he could do right now. Even if he managed to clock one of the nearby Cobra troopers and grab their weapon, there was still the matter of the Baroness and her little migraine machine. He wouldn't get far unless he was to shoot her first, and the idea of blasting a babe was still repulsive to him no matter how crazy and evil she was.
Not to mention, even if he did get the gun, and was able to kill the Baroness before she zapped his brainpan, he would be shot to bits before he could do something to disable that machine they were setting up, and even though he was only half listening to Destro's speech a few minutes ago he was pretty sure disabling it was a priority. One that he had to admit to himself was going to be difficult to achieve. He liked being a lone wolf, but this was one of those situations where it would be better to be part of a pack.
It was then that he noticed movement, not much more than a play of light and shadow that was out of place, at the top of the chamber. Glancing upwards he saw Stalker and Scarlett crouching in one of the openings that ringed the upper dome of the ancient space. He resisted the urge to smile, and directed his attention elsewhere, lest one of the assembled enemies wondered what had him so interested.
Stalker and Scarlett had followed the sound, the distinctive screech of Cobra Commander's voice patterns, to artificial light that was pouring in through a wide opening at the end of a hallway. Their progress had been hampered by a series of what felt like earth tremors, which they feared might bring the narrow passageway down on their heads. But it had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and they were easily able to follow the light to its source.
The floor fell away to a huge egg-shaped chamber, large enough to host the Super Bowl in Stalker's estimation. At the bottom was a who's who of Cobra Command: Destro, the Baroness, Major Bludd, and the head snake himself. It was quite the potential scalp collection, if they had the wherewithal to pull it off. In the exact middle of the huge rounded floor was a large machine, surrounded by Cobra technicians. Stalker felt a weight in the pit of his stomach: He had been dealing with Cobra in one way or another since 1979 or so, and in that time he had come to the conclusion that when they rolled out a big machine of indeterminate purpose it was always bad news.
Scarlett chucked him on the shoulder and pointed to a figure near the wall. Stalker had missed him in the sea of Cobra troopers that surrounded him, but singled out he stood out like a sore thumb: Clutch was there, his hands appeared to be bound but otherwise he was none the worse for wear. Stalker allowed himself a moment of relief as he gave a quick wave to get the man's attention. Clutch glanced up, making eye contact with the Ranger for a moment, then began returned his attention to staring idly around the chamber.
Once he was sure no one was looking, Clutch snuck a hand up to the brim of his helmet and lifted it high enough to expose the silver headband, letting it go and getting his hand behind his back again just as a Cobra trooper looked his way.
"Nice headgear," Stalker mused aloud. He was fairly confident that the 100 meters between him and the enemy was enough to keep the sound from carrying, "who gave it to him, I wonder?"
As if he'd heard, Clutch tilted his head towards the Baroness. She was holding a small device, her thumb resting on an illuminated button, ready to press it at a moment's notice.
"Looks like it was a present from an admirer," Scarlett said, "I always knew he'd find somebody."
"Some kind of mind control gimmick, you figure?" Stalker said.
"Nah," was Scarlett's response, "Knowing the Baroness it's a pain delivery device. There's a chance it's got a kill option, though."
"Whatever it is, we'll have to take it out before we move in," Stalker said, "We don't want them using Clutch against us."
Both of them knew that keeping Clutch alive was an ideal situation, something they'd do their best to achieve, but if he had to be sacrificed they'd make that call. They also knew that if it came down to the world's safety or Clutch, the Joe driver, like any member of the team, would agree with that decision.
The big machine was now set up in the exact center of the chamber, the technicians were making some final adjustments when Destro shooed them away. He strode up to the machine and took a seat in the control cab.
"This machine is tuned precisely to the Earth's resonant frequency," he said, adjusting some knobs below a round lens set into the console. The lens responded by displaying a rounded grid next to a row of what appeared to be random numbers that changed at regular intervals, their meaning impenetrable to all but a few assembled, "Using precise calculations, I can determine the exact moment to strike within a tenth of a second, increasing the size and strength of each shockwave exponentially."
Destro tapped a few buttons on the control board, and the large screen sprung to life, displaying a wireframe graphic of the earth. A red glowing spot near the equator represented their position. Concentric rings began emanating from the red spot, causing the Earth graphic to vibrate.
"Five minutes will cause worldwide tremors, ten minutes will create earthquakes the likes of which humanity has never seen, whole cities will be razed flat in moments. In fifteen minutes the Earth's crust will begin to crack and split, creating a literal Hell on earth. And, in thirty minutes..."
The graphic of the Earth split apart, cracked in half like an apple.
Destro smiled, "The world would be no more. Obviously, we cannot allow it to reach this point, but..."
"The possibilities for blackmail are limitless," Cobra Commander was as pleased as Destro had ever seen him, "This machine will allow me to ransom not just cities or countries, but the entire world."
Even with his face hidden behind the mirrored face shield, the Commander's enthusiasm was apparent: Destro had made a sale here, regardless of whether he wanted to or not. The Cobra leader gestured at a group of nearby officers with a sharp swipe of his cape, "Get me my media crew, prepare to break into all terrestrial broadcasts within the hour!"
"Commander, I must insist that this is not the best course of action," Destro stepped between Cobra Commander and the machine, "This site's fortification is shaky at best, and I have only just now gained access to this place. More time is needed to finesse the machine, and fine tune..."
Cobra Commander showed his palm to Destro as a team of specialized TeleVipers trooped in around him with camera gear and studio quality lighting equipment, "Don't worry, Destro, you've done well. You will receive your usual 10% commission from the profits, but from here you can let the experts worry about the ssstrategy," before Destro could speak again the Commander had already turned to one of his officers, "Prepare my privacy screen, I want to change into my hood for this announcement. The people need to see my eyes."
The privacy screen, actually more of a portable changing tent, seemed to materialize out of nowhere around the Commander, making further conversation impossible. A TeleViper held Destro by the shoulders and gently guided him away from main action. Destro, stunned at the current turn of events, how quickly he'd lost control of the situation, complied with a docile acceptance as he glanced around the room, his gaze finally coming to rest on the Baroness.
She wouldn't even look at him.
One of the Cobra officers was listening to a radio and risked being shot on the spot to interrupt the Commander's TV preparations, "Zartan is calling from Paris, Commander. He is within striking distance of the Louvre and wants to know if he should proceed with Operation Sneaky Snake ahead of schedule."
The privacy screen had just come away from Cobra Commander, now in his hood. A much simpler disguise compared to his mirrored combat helmet, it consisted of a cloth shroud draped over his head, a Cobra sigil emblazoned on the forehead. The Commander's eyes blazed through the eyeholes, their intensity was almost tangible as they locked onto the officer, fixing the man in place, "Tell Zartan to do as he pleases, we have much bigger fish to fry tonight."
As if by magic, a broadcast quality TV crew had materialized around the Commander. Cameras were being wheeled into position, key lights were being set, a Tele-Viper was using light meter to take readings around Cobra Commander's head. A make up girl was using a q-tip to apply foundation makeup around the Cobra leader's eyes through the holes in his mask.
"Tele Vipers," he snapped at the men at the control board, "When will we be going live?"
"Ten seconds, Commander!" piped up one of the technicians, "Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three..." He mouthed the last three numbers and pointed to the hooded man.
Cobra Commander shooed away the makeup girl, squared his shoulders, and seamlessly transitioned into world dictator mode. The Cobra signal bearing his image was beamed along fiber optic cables out of the cave, through a broadcast truck, up to a satellite and back to the control center on Cobra Island where it was sent out to hundreds of booster stations hidden around the free world. Each had the power to muscle past whatever signal the local affiliates could put out, within less than thirty seconds every television set in the world went to static for a moment, then bore the same image.
Cobra Commander pointed a leather gloved finger at the camera, "People of the world, of every country, every continent, every living thing on this God forsaken rock, hear my words: You are all subject to the rule of Cobra!" he indicated the machine behind him, "With this machine..."
"With my machine," Destro walked into the shot, pushing Cobra Commander to the side.
Above, Stalker and Scarlett were setting up rappelling gear for a last ditch attempt to drive Cobra off of the site. Although the situation was dire and time was short, they couldn't help stopping when they saw was happening below.
Stalker chuckled, "Did Destro just bust in on the head snake's TV show?"
Scarlett shook her head, "Yes he did. The hooded wonder is not going to like that."
On the chamber floor, and in front of a global audience of over a billion people, Destro poked the Cobra sigil on Cobra Commander's chest, "This is my machine, and a significant strategic advantage that I would sooner destroy than leave to your infantile abilities as Cobra leader."
Cobra Commander stood his ground, "Insssolence! How dare you quessstion my leadership! You will be the firssst to fall in my new regime."
Locking eyes with Destro, Cobra Commander raised a hand, palm up, fingers curled like a gnarled claw. It was a signal that the Crimson Guard knew well, it was normally followed by a clenched fist and elbow thrust towards the ground, indicating that the person the Commander was staring at was to be vaporized immediately. Around the room, there was a soft metallic chuckle as at least a dozen weapons were raised, armed, and leveled at the arms dealer's chromium skull.
"I would not do so if I were you," Destro pressed a series of buttons on his gauntlet. The machine sprang to life, pounding the dirt much harder than it had in the demonstration. The earth, once again, began to ripple. Although it was resting on the now constantly undulating surface the machine maintained its position; each of the large tires were mounted on their own independent hydraulic suspension rig, which absorbed the motion and held the machine parallel to the floor.
"The machine is linked to my pulse rate," Destro continued, raising his voice to be heard over the bass rumble that was now filling the room, "should anything happen to me, it will go into apocalypse mode, continuing its work until this world is reduced to a state of primordial ruin!"
"You wouldn't dare! You would die too!" Cobra Commander stared into Destros black, slitted eyes, projecting his rage into them, looking for the slightest flinch. The eyes' bizarre appearance was a fabrication, of course, a veil of technology designed to disguise the wearer's face but leave their every expression, every intent, as clear as mountain brook. There was no flinch in Destro's eyes, his intention was plain, as cold and reasoned as it was completely mad. It needn't be spoken aloud, but Destro said it anyway, for the benefit of the viewers at home.
"I would, Cobra Commander."
The chamber itself was starting to rattle, rivulets of dust began to fall from the ceiling as the stone parts of the floor, formerly immune to the ripple effect, began to succumb. The Baroness, standing off to the side, was unaware of the movement beneath her feet as she stared at the exchange that was happening in front of the cameras. She didn't notice the vibrations because they were eclipsed by the beating of her heart, a feeling she hadn't had since she was a schoolgirl turning on the TV and seeing a young Fidel Castro.
"Oh, Destro."
Cobra Commander broke off from Destro and swiped his hand at the machine, he addressed his men with a scream that was near feral, "Blasssst the machine! Blasssst it!"
The air was alive with blue lightstreams as every Cobra in the cavern opened fire on the machine. The first few hits, however, were enough to demonstrate the futility of the exercise. The beams stopped short of hitting their target forming harmless ripples that described the contour of the invisible dome of energy that protected it.
"You won't break through my force field in time, I assure you," Destro said, impassive, "It's one of my finest models."
Cobra Commander glared at the force field as though he could willing it away with pure fury. Aside from producing a pleasing ripple pattern on the field's surface, the lasers seemed to be having a negligible effect. The Commander turned his furious gaze back on the arms dealer.
"What do you want, you mercenary traitor?" the words were so guttural they teetered on the edge of hissing gibberish.
Destro smiled, an oasis of calm in what had quickly become a thundering opera of chaos, reaching into his shirt, he extracted a small leather bound notepad, "It's fortuitous you should ask, Commander."
Stalker glanced at the ceiling with wary eyes as he tested the anchor on his rope. No cracks had started to form yet, but he had the feeling they weren't far off. Neither Scarlett nor he could see what the heated discussion between Destro and Cobra Commander was about, the distraction was a welcome one. Not so welcome was the fact that Destro had set the machine off, apparently against the Commander's wishes. The two of them at odds would create a distraction, but the resulting chaos might make their reactions hard to predict.
Scarlett placed her coiled rope on the edge of the opening, ready to be kicked over when the time came, she glanced down at the chamber and back to Stalker, "What are we going to do about that force field?"
Stalker put his rope down next to hers, "I'm sure something will come to me."
Shaking her head, Scarlett managed a smile as she got her crossbow ready to take aim on the Baroness, "Better watch that seat of your pants stuff, you're starting to sound like Clutch."
Scarlett lined up her shot, then nodded to Stalker. Leaning over the ledge he gave Clutch a quick wave. Clutch waved back, scarcely bothering to conceal that he was no longer restrained. The Cobras that weren't preoccupied with saturating the force field with laser fire were having a full on meltdown on international TV, subterfuge just seemed like a waste of energy.
Scarlett let the crossbow bolt fly, it sliced through the air to crack into the plastic housing on the control device that was currently slung on the Baroness's hip. Between the laser fire, the base rumble from whatever the machine was doing, and the Baroness's enraptured focus on watching Destro stand up to his boss, the hit went unnoticed by everyone except the three Joes. The device sparked, and a corresponding flash ignited from under Clutch's helmet. He removed his headgear, and the thin band crackled off his forehead like old tinfoil.
He looked up to his friends above and smiled as though thanking a benevolent deity. Then, helmet still in hand, he took a couple of loping strides towards the nearest Crimson Guard, gaining speed as he closed on him. The oblivious Cobra was far too preoccupied with the business attempting to overload the force field to notice the Joe driver as he escalated his light jog to an all out sprint, leaped up, planted a boot on the nearby wall, and sprung off of it, swinging his helmet at the Guard's helmeted face as he did so.
The combined force of the jump and the swing, coupled with the durable helmet, impacted the Guard's head with enough force to rock his skull and cave in the side of the Cobra headgear. Dazed, the Guard staggered back, giving up the gun to Clutch's waiting hands. The Joe sent two blue bolts through center mass, then turned towards the others before the Cobra had fully hit the ground.
"Yo Joe!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as he opened fire on the assembled enemy soldiers with a full auto laserburst. It was as much a distraction as it was bravado, Clutch knew that Scarlett and Stalker would be vulnerable when they were rappelling down, and this was the best way he knew to give them a fighting chance.
"That's our cue," said Scarlett, giving her coiled rope a gentle kick and sending it writhing down into the open space of the chamber.
Stalker followed suit, "The guy's a nut."
Gripping their respective ropes, the two Joes braced themselves against the wall, and pushed off. They each got a second solid push off on the curved wall before it fell away from them and they were dangling in the open air over the laser battle that raged below.
Three Cobras -two regular soldiers and one Crimson Guard- fell before Clutch's assault, but the survivors were quick to return fire. Blue streaks pattered the wobbling floor just behind him as he flanked right, head turned, firing back at them as best he could while not losing his balance on the unsteady sands. His intention was to seek cover behind one of the stone outcroppings that ringed the outer perimeter of the room; the constantly moving floor was like trying to run on a waterbed, however, and Clutch nearly lost his balance twice before deciding to bodily fling himself the last five feet to relative safety. He skidded behind the obstacle in a spray of sand as lasers pummeled the ancient stone from the other side.
Scarlett and Stalker had dropped four fifths of the way down to the main floor before someone, a Cobra trooper with a particular capacity for observation, spotted them.
"Guys," he called out, chucking the trooper next to him on the shoulder, "there's two more coming from above!"
"Jig's up," Stalker called over to his colleague, "Time to take the express route."
Scarlett had already assessed the situation, and having reached the same conclusion as the Ranger, was in the process of unclipping from her rappelling gear, "Just let me apologize to my knees in advance," she said just before she dropped herself off of the line.
The two Joes had fifteen feet left to go before they let gravity take over, Stalker used the time to snap off a shot and take out Mr. Observant on the way down. His ears were filled with the sound of rushing air for a second before he felt the softened but still plenty hard jolt of the floor beneath his boots. He rolled to absorb the shock and came up in three point combat stance. The floor was as bizarre to stand on as it was to look at, its undulations made him feel like he was crouching on the back of a huge living thing. The room, he noticed, had also acquired a constant shiver that had not been there moments ago. The machine would have to be shut down, and soon, but staying alive to do so was at the top of his list at the moment. Putting his circumstances out of his mind, he scanned his surroundings for targets.
Of those, there were plenty; two Cobra troopers were advancing from behind the machine. Stalker scored a central mass hit on the first, he flew off of his feet and landed in an awkward heap. His friend stepped over the body to get a shot off at the Joe. Even as the blue bolts were leaving his weapon, however, Stalker was already in motion, rolling again. He emptied the space he had been just as the lasers struck and fired a counterattack of his own. The red beams hit home, and the Cobra spasmed as he fell next to his comrade.
"Seventy percent?" Cobra Commander's hands couldn't produce a gesture broad enough to express his outrage, "You are mad! Mad! Why, that's worth...uhhh..."
"I'll spare you the indignity of attempting to do the math, Commander, that would be two hundred million dollars in American currency."
The two masked men, locked in negotiation, seemed oblivious to their surroundings: The rumble of the machine that was now dislodging small sections of the chamber roof, not to mention the laser fight that was raging on either side of them. The Joes were on the other side of the machine, and, for the moment couldn't fire directly at the Cobra higher-ups. The Cobra forces, on the other hand, were stuck in the militarily awkward situation of having to fight with their commander in chief in the line of fire. Hardly a stellar day for anyone, then.
"Two hundred million!" the Commander's hood billowed outwards with the force of his outrage, "That would give you a controlling interest in Cobra! I would sooner die here and now than share power with you!"
A larger than average piece of chamber roof, about the size of a lunchbox, dropped to the floor beside them, it bounced once and Destro took a step to avoid it as he checked the watch built into his missile launcher, "By my calculations, Commander, in three minutes and thirty six seconds you shall have your wish."
Cobra Commander's fists were balled tight, his eyes, wide under his knit eyebrows, seemed ready to pop out of his hood's eyeholes. The small amount of his face that was visible was flushed beet red.
Deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean, fish scatter as their world begins to rumble. The sea floor splits, deep, straight through the Earth's crust, in fact. Magma seeps through and depths that have been lightless for millions of years are illuminated in its soft orange glow.
A farmer in Ohio stops his combine thresher when he perceives a vibration in the machine that he doesn't like. Suspecting a bent axle, he jumps out of the cab and is about to open an access panel when he realizes the shake he was feeling wasn't in his engine, but in the ground.
Zartan smashed the walker's throttle levers to the top setting hard enough to bend them slightly, but it still wasn't enough. The walker, a heavily armored chassis supported by four long, arachnoid legs, had a top speed of 45 miles per hour and no amount of abuse was going to make it perform better. Zartan knew that on an intellectual level, but breaking things always helped him think.
The robotic snakes had done their job, fifteen priceless works of art removed from right under the noses of both the Paris authorities and G.I. Joe. Zartan himself had overseen the operation remotely from a secure location on the outskirts of town. They had evaded guards and Joes alike, skirting corners and staying in the shadows until, once they were in range of their quarry, they disassembled, rearranging themselves into a storage configuration. Four snakes would fold themselves into a cage to store the plunder while the other two would break in half to form whiplike legs. In this form the snakes were less subtle but made up for it by being far more agile. Like a bounding gazelle the theft machine ricocheted off of walls and took hallways like a greyhound. It helped that, while burdened with its precious cargo, neither the French authorities nor the Joes dared not fire upon them.
After all the loot had been brought to Zartan's base of operations, the chase was on. Zartan knew that the Joes would be able to track the machines somehow, they always had a way, so the plan had always been to make a break for it as soon as the last masterpiece on the list was accounted for. What he hadn't counted on was the Joes figuring it out so fast. There were two MOBAT tanks right on top of him within minutes of the last machine's arrival. Zartan had barely had time to load them onto the walker before his door was being kicked down by two Joes, he presumed they were Zap and Rock 'n' Roll, but he really didn't get a good look before he was up the ladder to the walker and through its hatch.
"They're gaining on us," the throaty rasp of Zaranna, his sister, blared over the intercom. She was operating the vehicle's rear laser cannon, "Where is the bloody extraction point?"
And that was the problem of the hour, there was no extraction point. He had been receiving orders directly from Cobra Commander for the bulk of the mission, but the head snake seemed to lose interest in the operation about an hour ago. The final order that Zartan had received, by proxy mind you, was to do as he pleased. In essence, he was being abandoned by Cobra. Cut loose in foreign land amidst a sea of enemy operatives and facing imminent capture. His only option was to surrender.
Or do as he pleased.
Well, what he pleased was to ditch the Joes, make a clean getaway, and sell this artwork to the richest, most crooked oil baron he could find. And he thought he might have a way of making that happen.
Pushing up a couple of levers on the console in front of him, he made the walker do a hard right hand turn, sending it straight up the wall of a nearby building. The walker was equipped with pincers in the tips of the legs that could dig into stone to gain purchase. Bad for historic buildings, but good for keeping Zartan out of military jail. The machine slowed as it ground its way up the wall, sending chunks of culturally-rich gravel to the streets below as it did.
In the back, Zaranna let out a grunt as the sudden transition to wall walking threw her forward against her seat restraints. Enraged, she pounded the intercom button and screamed into the microphone loud enough to render it unnecessary, "What are you doing? I thought the plan was to go north!"
"Plans change, dear sister," said Zartan, "We're headed for the river."
"What?" Zaranna was incredulous, "Why would we do that?"
The machine had reached the top of the building. Zartan checked the rear view camera feed, the Joes weren't following, nor could they return fire lest they endanger civilians. He knew they were already radioing their little American cronies for air support, but hopefully he and his sister would be long gone by the time it got here. Zartan threw the walker in reverse, skittering backwards about ten feet, then directed it to leap across the narrow street to the next row of two hundred year old homes and businesses. The machine obeyed, taking a running start and flinging itself off the roof and across the street. It extended its front pincers to their fullest reach and barely caught the edge of the roof of the quaint boulangerie across the way. In the back, Zaranna received another sharp jolt, which didn't seem to improve her mood.
"I'm going to ask you again, then I'm going to come up there and beat it out of you," she snarled, "Why are we going to the bloody river?"
The machine hauled itself up to the roof with the graceless clamber of a two-ton metallic insect, righted itself, then ran north along the rooftops like some strange Japanese variation on Santa Claus and his sleigh, "We've been abandoned, love, so we're going to take the art and run. The river's our best chance: We ditch this contraption there, use the rebreathers to swim downstream a ways, pop out, dry off, change our look a bit, and slip away in the confusion."
"Oh," his sister's tone had softened, "Why didn't you just say so?"
Zartan directed the walker down a wall to a side street; he knew Paris well, it would take the Joes at least three minutes to reverse their huge tank and get to this location. Even then the MOBAT wouldn't fit into the narrow stone passage without some major urban renovation. With deft precision he directed the walker through the network of alleyways, threading through the maze until the walker emerged out onto a wide roadway, deserted except for the walker. Now it would be just a quick matter of-
Zartan felt the rumble through his chair and feet, but ignored it at first as simply one of the walker's engines breaking down. Not surprising. It was built by that fool Destro, after all, and rapid obsolescence was practically the man's trademark. It didn't matter if the wretched thing fell to pieces as long as it could limp to the water. It was only when the rumble rose to a full shudder that he paid attention.
An earthquake in Paris? Impossible!
The roadway beneath them parted, the starting point of a wide fissure that ran the length of the street. Before Zartan could react it swallowed the walker, sending it tumbling in a heap of dented armor and snapped metallic limbs into a deep, newly formed canyon. Both Zartan and Zaranna were battered around their compartments as their world tumbled around them like a dryer on its spin cycle. It was a ride that only lasted a few seconds, but left a distinct impression as the now useless walker slammed into the bottom of the ravine knocking the wind and most of the consciousness out of its occupants.
When his head stopped spinning Zartan tried to move to take stock of his surroundings, it was a slow process. His limbs still worked, which was good, but his heart sank when he saw the dim outline sharing the driver's compartment with him. A man in olive green, muscular, with a bright yellow beard stood on the ceiling. No, Zartan corrected himself, he was on the floor. The walker had come to rest on its roof and Zartan was hanging from his seat restraints.
The bearded man, Zartan knew him and Rock 'n' Roll, was pointing a large autolaser, the biggest he'd ever seen not attached to a helicopter, in his general direction. His face bore a broad smile, "Wakie wakie, Zartan, naptime is over."
Zartan couldn't find words at the moment, save one, "Zaranna?"
Rock 'n' Roll raised his eyebrows, "You mean cotton candy hair in the back seat? She's fine. Got her on a nice stretcher, restrained of course, and she's getting all the medical care she could possibly want and doesn't deserve."
"Ah," Zartan said, "Good."
Stalker wasn't sure what the rocky slab they were using for cover was called, or what it might have been for, but it seemed like it might have had a purpose at one time. Someone had put a lot of time and effort into its creation, at any rate: The patterns carved into the stone had an impressive amount of detail. It must have taken a long time with primitive tools.
It was a stark contrast to the work that the Cobra troopers had been doing on the other side of it with their twentieth century lasers over the last five minutes or so. Haphazard blue beams lashed at the rock, erasing whatever had been carved there, and the meaning that it held, forever. The rock, to its credit, was holding against them, but it was a comparatively narrow slab of granite, a half foot thick at best. The lasers would do a river's work in minutes, eroding the stone away and crumbling it to powder.
The Cobras had lost interest in destroying the force field that surrounded Destro's thumping machine in favor of concentrating their fire on the enemy. And that was too bad since from what the Ranger had overheard, if it was allowed to continue what it was doing the job of killing the three Joes was going to be pretty much moot.
"So, boss," Clutch was hunkered low, on one knee, right next to the edge of the stone slab, his face was backlit by the sporadic river of blue light that flicked past. There was a small break in the fire and he took advantage of it, wheeling around to snap off a few shots before it continued anew, "What are we gonna do?"
There was a opening on Stalker's side as the lasers abated for a moment, the Ranger pivoted around his side of the slab and laid down a spray of laserbolts, several found their targets. He spun back around the corner with equal swiftness, just ahead of the next wave of return fire, "Pick off as many as you can," he called out to Clutch over the synthesized twang that filled the cavern, "we really need to take down that force field."
Stalker edged around the corner, attempting to provide as small and inconvenient target as he could while still getting an eye on the lay of the land. The Cobras were using the force field for cover, and their efforts to disable it earlier, combined with the incidental fire that it had taken over the course of the battle, seemed to have had an effect.
The field was flickering, ripples of iridescent light ran through it, hinting at its shape and size. It would still hold, of course. Force field technology was new, and had its disadvantages, not the least of which was it had to remain stationary to work, but even in this form it could withstand far more bombardment than the combined firepower of this team could dish out. There was one area in particular, though, near the top, seemed to be consistently unlit whenever one of these waves passed over the field's surface. A patch of ragged nothingness, thirty feet up and no bigger than a medium pizza. There was no way to be sure, but it looked to Stalker like a hole. After firing a couple of more rounds into the enemy's midst, just for laughs, he pulled back around the slab again.
Stalker felt a tap on his shoulder, Clutch must have noticed it too, "Hey. Stalker, I think I see a weakness in the force field, near the top. Throw down some cover, I'm going to try to pop a grenade in it."
Stalker had barely heard Clutch's instructions, much less had a chance to respond, before Clutch pushed off and ran out from behind the slab, blasting redlines into the Cobra phalanx as he did. Stalker, not having much choice in the matter, jumped out from his side, pulling his sidearm as he did. Rifle in one hand, pistol in the other, he unloaded both with savage abandon. None of his usual carefully placed shots this time, just a laser apocalypse to drive the enemy back.
Wavering a bit on the wavy floor, Clutch pushed the sand hard as he struck out towards his target, a small cluster of debris recently fallen from the chamber ceiling. Stalker was doing a good job suppressing fire from the Cobras who were holed up on the other side of the field. The Cobras on the other side, away from Stalker's line of fire, managed to get a couple of shots off on him. The seasick motion of the floor, however, was throwing their aim off just enough to keep Clutch alive. The bolts hit wide to the Joe driver's left and right, never quite hitting the mark.
Clutch dived the last half meter, skidding in behind the relative safety of the softly wobbling stone.
Stalker ducked back behind the slab and moved to the other side. By this time Clutch on one knee, loading a grenade into the launcher that was mounted on the front of his rifle. His head was just below the precipice of the rubble he was using for protection, so that any lasers fired over it would graze his helmet. A normal person might have hunkered lower just for safety, but battlefield instincts told Clutch that his cover was sufficient, if only by a quarter inch.
What he missed, however, was a lithe shadow, moving with impunity through the shower of Cobra blue lasers. The Baroness was getting into position, raising her laser rifle as she picked her way towards her quarry.
There was no time to call out, not that that would have done Clutch much good anyway. Stalker took two steps out from behind the boulder and mashed the trigger, sending a volley of light spears over Clutch's head. The Baroness, maybe knowing Stalker's interference would be a possibility, jerked herself back before the beams can strike home. Her exit was heralded by a shower of sparks as the lasers impact with the wall behind her.
The red light cast from a Joe rifle beam isn't lost on Clutch, he looked up from his task, glancing first towards the retreating Baroness, then over at Stalker. The Ranger was back behind the stone again, he gave the Joe driver a smile and a curt nod. Clutch returned the gesture and was about to go back to his task when he saw a shape, not much more than a blip on his peripheral vision. Hunched over, it slowly emerged from the far side of the stone making its way towards Stalker. A man. He was about thirty feet away but he was getting closer with grim efficiency. Even in these conditions Clutch recognized him instantly.
Bludd.
Before the driver could call out, Bludd's weapon was up and firing. The bizarre movement of the floor must have thrown him off because the shot, which seemed fated to pierce Stalker's heart, instead lanced through the meaty part of his upper thigh. The Ranger grimaced, then crumpled. His free hand going out to cover the wound as he slumped against the rock wall.
"Bludd, you son of a-" Clutch's heartbeat sped up as he forgot seven years of combined combat training and stood, spraying the area just above his friend with hard red light. Bludd, now mere feet from his quarry, stepped and turned so that he was parallel with the wall and let the assault stream harmlessly past.
Grunting with frustration and anger, Clutch regained his senses and broke off the attack. Falling back behind his nominal cover.
Stalker was in a place beyond pain. He'd been shot with a laser before, but it was something you never got used to. It felt like there was a steel rod, heated up red hot, and jammed straight through his leg. The slightest movement increased the pain tenfold, and it was all the Ranger could do to keep from passing out. Still, there was work to be done. The first order of business was to keep himself alive; he reached across himself for his sidearm, hoping to get at it before Bludd was close enough to finish the job.
"Nice try, Joe," that screechy voice, even through the din of battle it cut through like a rusty scalpel, "But we all know how this is going to turn out."
Stalker knew what he was going to see, but turned his head to look at Bludd anyhow. The Australian was about ten feet away, as usual having found the one spot where he was out of the line of fire. His laser rifle was held casually, but its aim was true. Not likely the moving floor was going to save Stalker again, not at this range.
"There's bigger things going down here, in case you didn't notice," Stalker said, not letting the pain he was feeling enter his voice.
"Enh," Bludd shrugged, "It'll sort itself out. Always does. I've had a couple of financial setbacks over the last day or so, and bagging a G.I. Joe with a codename is always worth a few bucks. Any last words, mate?"
It was just then that an explosion went off above the Mercenary's head, Bludd only had a fleeting moment to look up before a wall of rock and sand came down on him. Or in front of him, Stalker couldn't tell, and he was a bit beyond caring about the Mercenary's welfare at this point. He looked back over to see Clutch, holding the still smoking grenade launcher. The driver gave him a lopsided smile.
"Thanks," Said Stalker, more to himself than anything as the rumbling from above had now reached what seemed like its crescendo, drowning out all sound, even the lasers, "I know that was your only grenade, but thanks for using it to save me. I'll make the best of the five minutes I have left until the planet explodes." Stalker said these words with a smile. Clutch, not being a lip reader, responded with a smile of his own and a thumbs up.
Stalker got it, it was hard to just stand there and do your job while a friend dies. It was something that every soldier, even himself, struggled with. Ultimately, it was selfish: Not wanting to be the one who lives on, knowing he let his friend down. It happened to everyone, foolish pride. In the moment, even when logic screams the opposite at you, it's hard to resist being a hero.
The laser fire had died down, and Clutch risked a peek over his low cover. Actually the enemy fire had been steadily declining for a while now: In direct proportion to the increase in the amount of debris that was falling from the roof. The phenomenon might have had something to do with the Cobra regular troops opting for spontaneous resignation from the terrorist organization as they broke from the battle and ran for their lives. The Crimson Guard were still all accounted for, of course, but their attentions were divided between suppressing the Joes, weakening the shield, and covering Destro, who was still having an animated discussion with Cobra Commander, who seemed extra freaked out. Probably the discussion was about money, then.
Now that he was thinking about it, the Cobras attention seemed to have drifted off of him entirely. Only the occasional electric blue whipcrack disturbed the sand in his vicinity. He worked himself up to a low crouch, then, after a cautious moment, a standing position.
Now able to take proper stock of his surroundings, Clutch turned his head left and right, pressing himself all the while for a solution to the immediate problem of Destro's doomsday rig. Then, he spotted it: The Baroness, her back to him, standing less than twenty feet away behind another of the stone slabs. She was peeking around it, crouched low, presumably, to avoid taking a laser to the face. Clutch couldn't see what her target was.
A few long strides eroded the distance between them to less than two yards. Just out of kicking distance, Clutch was a little crazy, but he wasn't dumb.
"Hey babe," Clutch shouted, getting her attention. The woman's posture stiffened at the sound of his voice, she placed her gun on the rippling sand and stood. Her long black hair flowed around her face like dark water as she spun to face him, her hands went up automatically.
If the Baroness was intimidated, she was doing a remarkable job of not letting it show, "Ah, the scruffy one," she said, "What do they call you? Crutch?"
Clutch laughed without mirth, "Good one. You'll be needing crutches if you don't do exactly what I tell you. You and I are going to go over to see your life partner, Mr. Shinyface, and we're going to persuade him to turn off his little party favor."
It was the Baroness's turn to let out a humorless bark, "You'll do nothing of the sort. I know what kind of man you are. I see the hesitation in your eyes. You could no more shoot me than your own dear mother."
"Hey! Leave mom out of this!"
Still smiling, the Baroness lowered her hands and took a slow step towards the Joe driver. Clutch, in response, was a study in contradiction. He swallowed and stepped back, but raised his gun higher as he did so. Increasing his aggression as he gave up the ground.
"You couldn't bear to strike a woman, much less gun one down in cold blood," the Baroness was all charm now, "Especially a beautiful woman. You'd never forgive yourself."
The undulating floor got the better of Clutch and he stumbled, one leg giving out on him a bit. To his credit, his laser pistol's attention remained on the Baroness, and he regained his footing, "You don't know me, or what I'm capable of, so you'd better-"
Clutch could have sworn that he had her covered, that she wasn't about to try anything, but the tiny matte black dagger appeared in her hand all the same, like magic. A lightning quick slash raked the back of his hand, and he released the gun. The Baroness had been correct in her assessment, Clutch was bluffing. He couldn't raise his hand to a woman, and killing one, for whatever reason, was an alien concept to him. Facing her, whatever edge he might have had, either through training or born instinct, was dulled by having to be filtered through his conscience. The Baroness had won this confrontation the moment Mr. and Mrs. Steinberg decided to raise their son right.
Still, he was much bigger than the Baroness, and if he did manage to screw up the wherewithal to attack her, the tide could change. The dark haired Cobra was not about to let that happen, she pressed the attack, flipping the knife into an icepick grip and plunging it towards Clutch's neck.
The graceful and rapid arc of the knife strike was interrupted by an understated metallic click and a glimmer of light, as a crossbow bolt met the onyx blade. A small cluster of sparks popped as the knife spun out of the Baroness's hand.
Scarlett lowered her crossbow, "Having some lady troubles?"
"I don't care what anyone says," Clutch expelled the words as he picked up his gun, "fighting with chicks is weird!"
"Go see if Stalker needs some help," she told him, "I'll take care of this."
Scarlett couldn't even tell if Clutch was successfully away before she was defending herself. The Baroness was true to form, aggressive, constantly on the attack. Scarlett conformed herself around two strikes, working her way in closer with each dodge. Once she was within range, she struck out with a flat palm, driving towards her opponent's temple.
It hit, but the Baroness managed to roll with it just enough that it wasn't the KO that Scarlett was hoping for. The Baroness's head snapped back to attention, her eyes locked with the counter intelligence specialist. There was a jolt of pain from Scarlett's left side as a black gauntleted fist hit home, Scarlett tensed up, refusing to let the wind get knocked out of her. Locking her hands behind her opponent's head, she stepped back and yanked downward, striking up with a knee at the same time.
The Baroness's head flew back, dark hair trailing in an arc behind it. What looked like glitter twinkled in the ancient gloom for a moment, Scarlett was unsure what it was until the Baroness settled and, shakily, resumed some semblance of a defensive stance. It was then that she noted, with no shortage of satisfaction, that one of the lenses in her glasses was shattered.
The two flew at one another one more time, matching blow for blow. It was a game of chess, each move only leaving room for a single possible reaction, and each reaction had to be timed with precision. The slightest lapse on the part of either combatant meant the end of the game.
The Baroness, most likely foggy from too many blows to the skull that day, was the first to blink. Going on the attack, and leaving herself wide open on her right. Scarlett was able to wind up for a crescent kick, high and wide, her boot connecting with the raven haired head perfectly. The Baroness crumpled to the dirt floor. Scarlett marched over to collect her, missing the movement of her hands as she reached down.
The knife slipped out and cut into the Joe's upper thigh, not deep, but surprising enough to dissuade Scarlett for a split second. The Baroness regained her footing and retreated behind one of the monoliths.
Scarlett's brow furrowed as she glared after her, "What is she, made of knives?"
"Fine, fine! I will sign over ssssixty perccccent of controlling interest of Cobra to you!" Cobra Commander's rage was off the charts as he signed the clipboard in much the same way a cat reacts to water. Finishing, he thrust the papers back at the silver faced man, "Are you happy, you bloodsucking parasssssite?"
"Say it to the camera," Destro was calm, bordering on deadpan, as he unfolded one of his arms to point at the terrified Tele-Viper who was still filming the two of them.
"Destro now has a controlling interest in the Cobra organization!" the Commander spat the words at the shivering cameraman.
"In addition?" Destro couldn't contain a slight smirk.
"In addition to being the exclusive arms dealer for Cobra and all its ancillary divisions! Now make this sssstop!"
Cobra Commander glanced up, then threw himself backwards as a largish section fell from the ceiling burying itself in the sand in front of him. He scrambled to his feet and began to run for the exit, screaming as he did, "Cobra! Retreat! Retreat!"
Those Cobras who had not already done so five minutes ago quickly broke formation and bolted, leaving Destro alone.
"Destro," came a husky voice from behind him, he turned to see the Baroness emerging through a veil of smoke and dust. She placed a hand on his shoulder, gazing at him through her cracked glasses, "You were willing to destroy this world, and everything in it, for power. That was wonderful."
"You were right, my dear," the silver maskman said, "All the schemes in the world mean nothing without the conviction to carry them forth."
She glanced back at the machine, still pounding the earth, "Will you keep your bargain with the Commander?"
Destro held up his arm, the wrist controller's keypad had a charred trench burned through it, "I'm afraid not. I caught some crossfire about halfway through my negotiations with the Commander. But don't worry, I have every confidence that our American friends will sort things out for us."
Clutch moved at a dead sprint, finally diving to get to the cover where he'd left Stalker. The Ranger was struggling to his feet, but his injured leg was failing him. Without the support of the wall it was clear that his mobility would be severely hampered. Clutch put aside the implications of this as he tuck and rolled to land near his teammate. His hand, where the Baroness had slashed him, stung mightily and he found he couldn't move it. Archiving the pain for a later time, he went to his teammate.
"How we doin' over here?" he said as he rose, dusting off his pants as he did.
"Been better, but I've also been worse. Where's Scarlett?" the Ranger asked, teeth clenched as he tried to put a little weight on his bum leg.
"She's fighting with Baroness, sent me to see if you needed some help. You know it's a crazy day when I miss a chick fight," Clutch grinned, "Those are the best kind of fights."
"You are an odd, odd duck," Stalker said, "Anyhow, go get her and get out of here. This situation is too hairy."
"But what about the poundy thing, and the Earth and stuff?" Clutch protested, "We haven't stopped Cobra yet."
"We're not," said Stalker, "I am."
Clutch shook his head, "No way, man. I'm not leaving you here."
"This is the only way it gets done," Stalker's tone was even, despite the pain he was in, "Even if this cavern collapses on it, the force field on that thing will hold out long enough to send us back to the pleistocene era. Someone has to stay and stop it. I'm in no shape to move, I'll only slow you down, and there's no sense in all of us dying here. Get Scarlett, get out." he managed a smile, "Don't worry about me, I'll be right behind you."
Clutch shook his head, he wanted to say something, he struggled to think of an alternate plan, some strategy that Stalker, his friend, had missed. He came up empty. The situation, heck the actual room they were in, was falling apart around them.
The Joe Driver set his jaw, "Scarlett's gonna kill me when I tell her."
"She'll get it, so should you."
Clutch turned his attention to the battle just past the wall. He couldn't see Destro, and it seemed all of the Cobra troopers had fled. The air was thick with reddish dust interspersed with fist-to-torso sized chunks of ceiling roaring through on their way to impact with the floor, which still undulated like an unnatural skin, "I did not sign on for this crap." he muttered to himself as he pushed off of the wall and charged out.
He ran into Scarlett coming the other way, holding out an arm he stopped her before she could run past him.
"Where's Stalker?" she asked, raising her voice to be heard over what was now a thunderous chorus of screaming stones.
"He took fire," Clutch replied, "Told me we have to bug out without him. He's going to take care of that big taffy maker."
For a fleeting moment Clutch saw the same twinge of pride and conscience that he'd gone through in Scarlett's face. It faded almost instantly, "Okay, let's go."
Stalker grimaced as he made his way to the machine, the laser wound felt like a burning wire that had been pulled through his body. Each step he took angered it, making it burn hotter than before. Stalker had been hit worse than this, he'd heal once he got medical attention, probably get back to 85% of his full abilities in two weeks or so. G.I. Joe had a generous policy for injury that allowed for two months of convalescence before you were even considered for active duty. Stalker had no intention of taking them up on it. He'd fake his way through, he had before. But first he had a few things to take care of in this cave.
He limped over to the force field, making sure not to touch it, and reached into the thigh pouch of his uniform. Pulling out the plastique and detonator from the trap he and Scarlett had disarmed in the jungle, he gave silent thanks that Major Bludd had shot him the other leg.
He placed the explosives as best he could along the base of the force field, given that the ground was moving, and limped back to a less than ideal safe distance. Raising his laser pistol, he snapped off a shot at the plastique turning away immediately afterwards.
While force fields worked well against sustained laser fire, their record against explosives is not so great. The plastique went up in a sphere of heat and flame, surrounding the field, then overpowering and crushing it. The hot gases rushed inwards, smashing the machine onto its side.
Stalker's estimation, or rather his intentional underestimation, of the minimum safe distance from the explosion was correct. He felt a blast of heat as a massive force pushed against his back, sending him sprawling to the sand. He rolled a few times before coming to a halt. Recovering, he turned to look at his handiwork.
The machine was smashed, reduced to a smoking pile of charred scrap. With its destruction the seasick rippling of the sandy floor had also come to a halt. Stalker hoped that he'd stopped it soon enough.
He looked up at the ceiling, it was too much to hope for that the cave in set in motion by Destro's machine would also abate. Hollowed out with countless tunnels and chambers, the mountain's structural integrity was far too compromised to withstand being at the epicenter of such destruction. Stalker's efforts were too little too late to save it.
The mountain was coming down.
Scarlett and Clutch raced down the tunnel in as straight a line as the falling rocks would allow. The passage was choked with dust, making it almost impossible to see. It was a combination of instinct and luck that kept them alive, zig zagging around falling stones that seemed to be getting larger the further they went. Clutch was faster on foot than Scarlett, his college football skills served him well as he swiveled and rolled around the heavy stones, never losing forward momentum. He was highly motivated, to say the least.
Scarlett, while she lacked the edge in sheer sprinting speed, made up for it with agility. She used her obstacles to her advantage, vaulting off, flipping over, and sometimes practically climbing them in midair in her bid to come out of this cave uncrushed. A couple of times she almost got ahead of Clutch, She was sure not to get too far since he was the one who had come this way before.
"This way," Clutch pointed to a side cavern to their left. Scarlett could see utility lights at the end through the veil of falling sand. They sprinted towards them, the corridor filling up behind them as they ran.
They emerged into a larger, no, Scarlett had to correct herself, absolutely gigantic cavern. Her eyes adjusted to the change in light and she saw the buildings. Ancient structures, hewn from stone, some appearing to be fifty stories tall. At least the ones that weren't currently crumbling into gravel.
"Is this an underground city?" she asked.
Clutch was scanning his surroundings for a vehicle, any kind of vehicle, "Yeah, I guess."
"Cool," Scarlett replied. Her eyes fell on something metallic nearby, "Clutch, over here!"
The Joe driver followed her gaze, any optimism in his features drained away as he saw what she was running towards, "Awww, man."
A Cobra motorcycle stood there, through some divine intervention it was untouched by the cave in. Scarlett was already strapping on a helmet when she looked at her colleague, "What's wrong?"
Clutch held up his wounded hand, "I can't drive that, we have to look for something else."
"Do you see anything else here?" Scarlett shouted, "This is it. Get on, I'll drive."
Clutch looked around in desperation, "But you can't..."
"I can't what? Drive?" Scarlett shot back, "Are you kidding me right now?"
A rock twice Clutch's height slammed into the stone floor behind him, he ran to the motorcycle.
"Go around this one! Right side!" Clutch screamed in Scarlett's ear, "You've got a clear shot!"
Ahead of them there was a stone, once a spire on top of one of the stone buildings, that had pitched over and crashed to the street to become wedged between two buildings at a 45 degree angle. On the right side there was a triangular opening that was just big enough to admit the cycle. Scarlett veered to the left.
"What are you doing?" Clutch shouted over the roar of the engine. He noticed darkness above him as another rocky slab detached itself from the architecture above, just ahead of them. Scarlett pulled back on the handlebars, raising the bike's front forks to get the bike's front tire onto the slab. Riding it like a ramp, she revved the engine and the rear wheels skidded in a quick S formation before shooting up the smooth rock, launching them into the air.
As they made the jump, the spire snapped, closing the triangular opening Clutch had pointed out before.
The cycle landed, bouncing the two of them hard as Scarlett poured on the speed, "Okay," Clutch said, "That was pretty good."
Clutch and Scarlett both spotted it immediately, a glimmer in the distance, faint but unmistakable: Daylight. There was a chance to get out of this alive, then. Until now, though neither Joe would admit it to themselves, of the most likely outcomes of this situation survival hadn't been in the top ten. Now there was hope. As if in counterpoint, loud cracks, like gunshots on a colossal scale, sounded behind them as ancient fissures gave way to unimaginable pressure. The very fabric of the mountain was coming undone now. Scarlett pushed the engine to its limit, racing towards the light with heedless abandon. Ahead, several massive stalactites had broken free from the cave roof and smashed into the stone floor. The first two embedded themselves in directly in their path, like giant redwood trees. Scarlett skidded the bike around the first and they were just barely grazed by the second as its weight pushed it into the floor like a fencepost.
They were close now, so close, the cave opening was a wide crescent of bluish light, one could almost make out the dappled silhouette of the jungle canopy. Hope beckoned, too tempting to resist. Clutch hunkered down as Scarlett willed the Cobra cycle to somehow go faster.
A third stalactite impacted thirty feet to their right, but didn't have the mass to push itself far enough into the ground to stay upright. With a slow inevitability, it toppled in their direction, and it didn't take a physics genius to determine that at their current speed it would be impacting just as they went by.
"Go faster!" Clutch shouted.
"Oh, ya think?" came the raspy reply.
They both got as low as they could as the unavoidable meeting between Joes and rock raced to its culmination. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the skinny end of the stone spike struck the ground, shattered, and the rest swiped through the light in front of them, creating a wedge shaped aperture that was dwindling far too quickly.
They weren't going to make it.
At least not upright, they weren't. Scarlett steered for the wide end of the opening, gave the bike all the speed it had, and ditched, turning the bike onto its side and skidding under the stone cylinder as it fell. Clutch looked up and watched it get closer as they passed under it. Adrenalin heightened the effect, although the actual process necessarily took less than a second, he could see every detail in that rock as he passed under it.
The stalactite smashed the floor behind them, creating a base rumble that they could feel through their whole bodies. A puff of dust kicked up, surrounding them as Scarlett somehow managed to get the bike upright again in time to rocket up the slope to the cave exit. They hit the end of the slope like a motocross jump, soaring ten feet in the air before landing on the soft carpet of soil and ferns.
They were free.
Clutch got off the motorcycle, and removed his helmet. It seemed like he was about to say something when he was distracted by a loud creaking sound. Loud didn't cover it, actually, it was an all encompassing sound, impossible to ignore. It was the scream of a geological anomaly, older than the dinosaurs, that was now succumbing to gravity. Scarlett followed his gaze and they watched as the mountain crumbled to rubble.
It was like watching a souffle fall on a colossal scale; the top went first, its peak collapsing inwards like a funnel. The rest of the outcropping quickly followed, cracking, crumbling, and pouring in on itself. Another geological wail shook the Joes insides as the base of the mountain, impossibly, fell into the earth. The land in front of them fell away, breaking into randomized chunks that tumbled down into a widening abyss. The Joes had to take a step or two back to avoid being swallowed themselves.
After it was over, nothing remained of the former mountain but a crater a quarter mile in diameter, the bottom of which could not be seen. Neither Scarlett nor Clutch said anything for several minutes, they just stared with a placid blankness at the void: An experience like this takes time to process, even if you are a member of America's special missions force.
Scarlett was the first to snap out of it, "Looks like Cobra's gone."
Clutch swallowed, nodded, "Yeah, do you think any of them escaped or..."
"Maybe some of them," Scarlett said, "They had a big head start. I'll bet Cobra Commander did, we couldn't possibly get that lucky."
Clutch had turned away from the crater, he now faced the jungle, "Do you think Stalker..."
Scarlett looked down the hole, its inky blackness gave little incentive for optimism, "I don't know. It doesn't look good."
From behind her she heard a distinctive sniff. She knew what it was, but held out hope it was a hungry tiger stalking them from the underbrush.
"I was there, I should have saved him, man," Clutch said, sniffing again, "We're not supposed to leave a guy behind, that's what they say."
"We never leave a man behind if it's possible to save him," Scarlett said, "If you tried to save him, you would have just gotten the both of you killed. Probably me too."
Clutch turned to face her, tears had cut through the grime on his face, "I know I could have saved him, I know I could have."
Clutch walked towards her, arms outstretched. Scarlett couldn't quite keep the look of horror off of her face as he hugged her, face tucked into her shoulder, sobbing openly. She was sad for the loss of her teammate, of course, but a big weepy blowout with Clutch was literally the last thing she was expecting to do today.
The Joe driver's words were barely audible through a combination of his tears and talking to Scarlett's hair. "I could have saved him, I know I could have..."
Scarlett tried to pat him on the back while still making minimum contact, she looked like a primitive grief counseling robot, "I know. I'm going to miss him too."
"Now what is going on here?"
The voice came from behind them, they turned to see Stalker, makeshift walking stick in hand, emerging from the trees.
Clutch pushed Scarlett away like she was made of poison and quickly brushed the evidence of having an emotion off of his face, "Stalker! Hey, man. Glad you made it."
Scarlett was surreptitiously eliminating some tears of her own, "How did you get out?"
"The pendulums," Stalker explained, "I noticed when we were up there that they worked on a counterweight. I brought one down, shot the other end of it, and it took me straight to the top. After that, I got out through the top of the mountain. That thing was full of tunnels, I just followed the ones that led to daylight."
Scarlett shook her head, "You must have worked fast."
"Fear is a powerful motivator," Stalker smiled.
"But how did you get down?" Clutch said.
"South side is a lot less steep, I made my descent there," Stalker said, "Although to be honest, it was less of a descent and more of a controlled fall with a little bit of rolling near the end. Not my most graceful moment. Got off just as the whole thing got flushed."
Scarlett picked up a rock and threw it down the newly formed canyon, "Well, whatever was here, Cobra isn't getting their hands on it anytime soon."
They listened for rock hitting bottom, the sound never came.
"Nachos?"
Clutch held out the cheesy concoction just below Scarlett's nose. It was heaped with enough chips, onions, ground beef and sour cream to feed three people. She pulled away from it and gestured to her hamburger, "I'm fine, thanks."
Clutch shrugged, then made his way over to the couch at the center of the recreation area, plopping himself down. Rock and Roll, already seated next to him, reached for the tray, "I'll have some of that action."
"Hey, get your own, Hagar!" Clutch attempted to move the massive snack out of the heavy gunner's reach, to no avail. Rock and Roll snagged one of the chips, and the significant amount of toppings that were attached to it.
He tossed his plunder into his mouth, more or less whole and chewed, a contented smile on his bearded face, "Thanks, man. This is good."
"Glad you liked it," Clutch scowled, "Hey, where's Stalker? He was supposed to be out of rehab today."
"He's not due out for another week," Rock and Roll's voice was still muffled with nachos.
"Which means that he's going to be done with it today," said Scarlett, applying ketchup to her hamburger, "The man likes to work."
Clutch looked over at the rec room door, he flashed a smile, "There he is!"
"Have I missed the game?" Stalker strolled in, expertly hiding the ever so slight limp from his laser wound. He took a seat next to Clutch and requisitioned some of his nachos.
"Nah, it's just starting," Clutch moved the nachos to the arm of the couch and grabbed the remote control from the coffee table. Pointing it at the huge new television set that adorned the far wall of the rec room.
Stalker admired the set, "Fancy," he intoned, "When did we get this?"
"Mr. McNuggets gave it to us," Clutch said, flipping the screen on, "I guess since we blew up his business a couple of times sales are up."
"Good of him," said Stalker.
"Yeah he's a real great guy," Clutch settled back in his seat and selected a cluster of nachos, "Salt of the Earth."
The screen popped on and the image settled to a wide shot of a Los Angeles baseball field. The fidelity was remarkable, like a box seat with better color and sound.
Then came the sparks as something in the back of the set exploded, the image winked off and smoke began to curl out from the back of the TV. Along with the smoke, a chorus of groans rose up from the Joes in the room.
"Like I was saying," Clutch said, "The guy's a jerk."
