The penultimate chapter in "The Origin of MASK"
Chapter 22: War Games, Part 2
By Qweb and/or Jelsemium
Deep inside the mountain, the defenders studied sensor readouts and video monitors to track their friendly foes. Then one of the readings seemed to disappear.
"That's my trick," Jacques protested humorously, his voice slightly muffled by his fish-faced Mirage mask.
"It's Brad!" Matt cried. "He's gone to hyperspeed. Gloria, Dusty, watch the monitors!"
It took the sensors a second to adjust to the motorcycle's computer-controlled, superspeed mode. But a second was all Brad needed to get across the desert. It was easier for the human eye to track him, since he was coming straight at the bunker.
"There!" "Got him!" Dusty and Gloria cried, bringing their gas pump weapons to bear on the speedster.
Freeze rays crisscrossed Condor's path forming a wall of sparkling ice. But the motorcycle roared through the barrier as if it wasn't there. No! As if the motorcycle wasn't there, Matt realized when he saw the unbroken wall.
Brad and Condor vanished in front of the gunners' stunned eyes.
"It's one of Brad's holograms," Matt shouted — too late.
The real motorcycle roared in on a different path from the image projected by Hocus-Pocus. The speeding cycle raced up the curving side of the mountain. Its cannon spat. A diffuse anti-matter blast splattered the sensor equipment in the no longer rotating sign.
The motorcycle leaped from the top of the bunker. It reared in a triumphant wheelie.
"You are now deaf and dumb," Brad radioed the defenders laughingly.
Matt shut off the "dead" long-range sensors, reducing his team to visual sighting plus whatever tracking device each weapon contained. But that was enough for counterattack.
"Dumb, am I?" Gloria muttered into the mike.
A sheet of ice covered the ground in front of the fleeing motorcycle, which couldn't maintain its supersonic sprint for long. Condor skidded out of control. Brad fought the skid as Condor spun toward a nicely placed rock. The cycle sprouted a rotor and lifted off the ice in helicopter mode, its tires missing the rock by a full quarter inch.
"Definitely dumb!" Brad exulted.
Condor soared for altitude, then froze in midair as if grabbed by an invisible hand. The rotors beat frantically, but Condor wouldn't budge.
"You were saying, mon ami?" Jacques, who was growing to enjoy his role as invisible hand, adjusted the anti-gravity gun's controls to reel Condor in.
"I was saying, Help!" the rock musician shouted without shame.
Laser fire raked the side of the gas station as Thunderhawk swooped past. Ace swiveled the harmless lasers to bombard Jacques' viewscreen with blinding light. The Canadian cried out and reeled backwards, but even without his hands on the controls, Brad was still stuck.
Gator bounded into the picture. Calhoun focused the Ouch Cannon on the anti-grav howitzer, which sparked and crackled in response. The temporary disruption freed the helicopter.
The attackers darted away to regroup. The bunker's main sensors had been put out along with the anti-grav gun.
"First round to you, Bruce," Matt called.
He turned to Jacques who pulled off his purple mask and wiped his streaming eyes.
"You all right, Jacques?" he asked.
"Oui, though I still see spots in front of my eyes."
"Your station's out for the duration," Matt told him. "But stand by the controls anyway. I'd hate to see Condor or Thunderhawk crash because we got overenthusiastic."
"Roger," Jacques replied.
"Here they come again," Gloria reported.
While Condor and Thunderhawk provided covering fire overhead, Gator and Firecracker raced past the station's front like wild Indians attacking a wagon train. They raked the impervious bunker with thermal blasts and disruptor fire, to no visible effect. As Firecracker fled away again, its body rose up on stilts three feet above its chassis, revealing its rear guns. A glacial blast washed over the station, covering it with a sheet of ice that glistened under the desert sun.
But the bunker's weapons returned fire unaffected.
"How about a hailstorm," Dusty said, readjusting his freeze ray to make the water pulse solidify in midair instead of at the target.
Huge hailstones began pummeling the ground vehicles. Bruce dodged into a culvert and Buddy followed, so did the storm. Exposed in the open jeep, Bruce and Calhoun ducked under the assault. Buddy laughed as the chunks of ice bounced off the pickup.
"Is that the best you can do?" he taunted.
Dusty grinned.
A gigantic snowball plunged out of the sky filling the culvert from side to side. Bruce slammed on the brakes. Gator buried its nose in the soft snow but stopped, unharmed, until Firecracker, tires squealing, banged it from behind. The depth charge in the back of the jeep rocked violently, bounced from its cradle and dropped on Firecracker's hood.
Buddy closed his eyes. Bruce held his breath. Calhoun prayed.
Nothing happened.
A mound of snow plopped down behind them, fencing them into the arroyo.
"Y'all don't think I'd leave my guns loaded?" Dusty said with mock severity.
The unarmed depth charge nestled in a drift of snow. Buddy regarded it with disgust.
Calhoun regarded the snowball in front.
"Gulliver, Full Power, On!" he ordered.
The eyepiece of the long-faced mask glowed. A framework of light surrounded the snowball. The framework, and the snowball, began to shrink.
Gator and Firecracker rolled past the softball sized ball of snow, knowing it would grow again to full size when the shrinking effect wore off.
Julio swung around to cover their escape from the arroyo and flew straight into Matt's invisible stun ray. He grunted and slumped at Thunderhawk's controls. The flying car went into a steep dive.
"Watch it, Julio," Ace said, as the sudden change in direction threw off his aim.
Julio didn't answer.
Ace jerked his head around and saw his friend's motionless form. He grabbed for the controls and brought Thunderhawk down to a smooth landing.
Relieved by Ace's quick action, Jacques took his hand off the anti-grav controls.
Ace felt panicky as he ran around to the driver's side of the car. He pulled off Julio's mask. The flying physician's eyes were closed, his face pale. His breathing seemed labored.
"Julio?" Ace said uncertainly. The test pilot had no idea that they'd flown into the range of a weapon. He was afraid Julio might have had a heart attack or a stroke.
"He's all right, Ace," Matt reassured his friend over Thunderhawk's radio. "He's just had a dose of my stun ray."
Ace sighed with relief; then his eyes brightened. "Then it must be my turn to fly," he said.
He carried the smaller man around the car and strapped him in the passenger seat. He put Julio's mask on the floor beside him, figuring the rush of air through the open gull-wing doors would revive the stricken Latino.
Ace launched Thunderhawk into the air again, whistling tunelessly as he flew. He swung wide of the mountain, sweeping around to the defenders' blind side. Brad soared up on his one-man helicopter and kept pace alongside.
"You take the right and I'll take the left," Brad suggested.
The two aircraft split up and roared down on the mountain, trying to take out the gas pump guns. Gloria and Dusty built a wall of ice to defend the weapons. Thunderhawk's low-power lasers were refracted by the ice but Condor's anti-matter began to chew a hole in the barrier. Brad hovered to concentrate his blast on the ice.
It was a mistake to hold still for even a second. Suddenly, a door yawned in the side of the mountain. Out burst a huge cannon, its gaping maw aimed directly at Brad.
Condor backwinged like a startled gull, sideslipped and crunched its rotors on the mountainside. Brad used main force to bring the crippled helicopter down on its tires. The motorcycle bounced to a stop. Brad looked up at the enormous gun as Ace roared down on it, firing laser blasts that went right through it. A puff of smoke erupted from the gun's barrel and out popped a long stick. A flag unfurled. It said "Bang."
The hologram vanished. The mountainside was smooth again.
Brad heard Matt's laughter in his ears. "Turnabout's fair play," the MASK leader said from the controls of his hologram projector. "You're grounded, pal."
Brad shook his head and laughed.
"As long as I've got wheels, I can fly!" he said, zipping away on the cycle.
Thunderhawk rushed past the gas pumps, dropping a small bomb to blast the ice shield away.
The noise and air revived Julio. Dizzily he reached behind the seat for the doctor's bag he took everywhere. He broke a sharp smelling ampule under his nose, shook his head to clear it, then looked around with a semblance of alertness.
Ace greeted his awakening. "Think you can gum up the works?" he asked, gesturing at the gas pumps.
Julio donned Streamer. "If you can get me close," he answered.
Ace swooped past, dodging frantic blasts from the freeze rays.
"Streamer, Stickem, On!" A sticky stream shot from the mask's vest. The freeze nozzles were clogged by the gluey paste, which Bruce had once intended as fire extinguisher foam.
Dusty and Gloria quickly shifted to hose mode, attempting to force the stickem from the nozzles with water pressure.
Buddy, who was all too familiar with the stickem, knew it wouldn't hold under the pressure. He spun Firecracker around aimed its freeze ray at the pumps. Bruce reared back Gator's body and fired the water cannon on the hydroplane. Under the double blast, a glacier formed around the pumps.
Dusty and Gloria dropped their hands from the pump controls. Dusty put his hand suggestively on another panel. Matt shook his head.
"Aw, come on, Matt," Hondo complained. "This is one ace that's tired of being in the hole."
"I think we'll keep you up our sleeve a little longer, Hondo," Matt replied. "It's time to play our wild card, Alex," he said over the radio.
The garage door shot open and Rhino barreled out. Bruce didn't have a second to react as the snorting, snarling big rig monster roared down on him. The battering ram grill hit Gator's fender in what was, for Rhino, a gentle slap. The sturdy jeep spun round and round out of control, skidding on patches of melting ice.
Over his mask radio, Alex heard an indignant "Hey!" from inside the bunker.
"Sorry, old boy," he told Dusty. "But all's fair in love and war games."
"That's the last time I let anyone play with my toys," the cowboy grumbled.
"Me, too!" yelped Hondo when he saw Alex plunge toward Firecracker.
On a motorcycle that suddenly seemed tiny, Brad prudently scurried out of the way of the big truck; but Buddy stood firm. He faced Rhino's challenge in the small pickup, then he flicked on his headlights — his hypno headlights.
The patterned flashes locked Alex's gaze like a magnet. Even though he knew what was happening, he couldn't tear his eyes away.
"Fight it, Alex," Matt said urgently, though they had built the hypnotic device to be irresistible.
Rhino's charge faltered, slowed. The semi cab slewed sideways.
"I … can't, " Alex groaned, his voice already slurred from forced sleep.
"We've got to block the light," Matt said.
"Time to play that ace," Dusty said coolly. "Though I don't know why I'd want to help that jeep bashin' coyote."
As he spoke, his hands played over the turret controls. Boulder Mountain blew its top!
The capping boulder, which gave the mountain its name catapulted into the air revealing Hondo in a rising turret.
Two tons of solid rock hurtled past Thunderhawk's nose. Ace stood the flying car on its tail. In a carefully calculated arc, the boulder plummeted to the earth, slamming down between Firecracker and Rhino, blocking Alex's view of the lights.
"Th … thanks, Dusty," Alex said somewhat unsteadily. "I promise to report myself to the SPCG tomorrow."
"SPCG?" queried Jacques.
"Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gators," Alex explained.
Hondo's jack-in-the-box entrance surprised the fliers. Before Ace could regain control, he felt the heat-tingle of the turret's low-powered lasers. He knew he'd been "shot down."
He set Thunderhawk down while Julio played an elaborate death scene in the passenger seat.
"The promising surgeon," Julio moaned theatrically, "Cut off in the prime of his life, just as he was about to discover the cure for cancer of the left index finger."
"I'll give you the finger, all right," Ace laughed. "How'd I get stuck with a clown like you?"
"Did you say you were stuck on me?" Julio asked mischievously, fingering the nozzle on Streamer.
Ace yelped in mock terror and leaped to the ground before Julio could glue him to the seat. The Hispanic chuckled.
"I see you want me to drive us home," he said. "Of course, Ace, anything for an amigo."
Gator came out of its spin and, tires throwing up clouds of sand, leaped to attack Rhino. Calhoun swung the Ouch Cannon on line.
"Aren't you boys forgetting something?" a deep voice said kindly.
Calhoun and Bruce looked up and found they were looking up the twin barrels of the hilltop laser. And the Ouch Cannon was pointing the wrong direction. Brad saw their predicament and tried an end run. Without moving his lasers, the football coach looked at Condor.
"Blaster. On!"
The brilliant flash of his mask's disintegrator ray blew a hole in front of the motorcycle. Brad surrendered as meekly as Bruce and Calhoun, but plots were going through their heads. Brad wondered if he could superspeed out of danger. Calhoun wondered what would happen if he tried to shrink Hondo. Bruce considered tossing the black man into the air with Lifter.
Instead, the boulder was yanked into the air by Rhino's anti-gravity cannons. Its shadow fell hugely across the pickup truck as Alex held it, rock steady, over Buddy's head.
"Try your lullaby now," Alex said with mock menace. "Care to give up, old chap. I believe I've got you trapped."
Dusty knew Buddy hated to be "got." He focused his monitor on the pump jockey, wondering what his friend would do. He saw Buddy's hand finger a device hooked to his belt, then static blanked the picture. Exclamations came from all around as the bunker's instruments went haywire.
Over the radio they heard shocked exclamations.
Alex's voice cried out in anguish, "Buddy! I can't hold it!"
Up in the turret, Hondo turned a grayish face away from the scene outside. Matt and Gloria worked frantically to eliminate the interference, then the picture was back as suddenly as it had gone.
They saw the ten-ton boulder resting on the desert sand, right where Firecracker, and Buddy, had been.
There was no sign of life.
"Oh, my God," Alex said in a soft, shocked voice. "No, Buddy. No."
Just like that, the war game was over.
A/N: Sorry, cliffhanger!
Next episode:
Again with the invisible hands!
No way to treat a friend.
And finally a clue to Mayhem's scheme.