The Origin of MASK
Chapter 27: Not a Game Any More, Part 3
By Qweb and/or Jelsemium
But before Vanessa could fire on the brick house, a voice roared over her radio.
"Warfield, you idiot! What do you think you're doing!"
Mayhem had seen the whole thing.
"We can't dig the shawl out of a mass of rubble! Leave that house alone. Get over here and help me with these cursed pilots!"
Mayhem always had an eye on the profit margin. He was a businessman at heart. But Vanessa was a fighter who hated to lose. Her finger trembled on the firing button despite Mayhem's order, then she yanked Manta into a tight turn and headed for Thunderhawk.
Phew! Gloria thought, not wanting to test Aura by trying to hold up an entire building.
She looked the structure over with worried eyes. It looked horribly unstable, and every nearby blast and explosion seemed to make the front wall slide just a bit farther out from the vertical line. Gloria was suddenly very afraid for the people on the roof, but she didn't know what to do about it.
Matt did.
Like Mayhem, he had seen Vanessa's attack. He could also see the frightened cluster of people on the house.
"Brad! Get those people off the roof!" he ordered.
The helicopter pilot saw Vanessa heading over to help Mayhem. "I don't know," he said uncertainly. "Can you handle them both yourself?"
"How the hell do I know?" Matt exclaimed, diving away from Manta's laser fire. "But you're the only one who can rescue those civilians. Go!"
"Right!"
Condor turned away and zipped toward the roof. Mayhem saw Brad's unprotected back and couldn't resist his favorite target. But Brad had Condor bobbing and weaving like a wide receiver on a three-dimensional field. The blast from Switchblade missed the pilot and struck the rotors. The blades hummed oddly, missed a beat, then resumed their work. Brad released the breath he'd been holding and continued on.
"Hey, Dagger," Bruno called over the radio. "I'm tired of playing tag. You get his attention and I'll sneak up from behind."
"Okay," Dagger answered agreeably.
Jackhammer attacked, weapons firing from every pore. Hondo wheeled the pickup around to face the charge head on. Firecracker's front bumper absorbed the laser blasts, channeling the energy into thermal blasters, which returned the fire to Jackhammer. The inside of the Bronco began to heat up, but Dagger and Gorey kept up their blasting.
"You guys like lasers?" Julio said. "See how you like the rest of the light show. He switched on the hypno headlights.
The enemy fire stopped abruptly as Dagger and Gorey blinked in the spell of the rhythmically flashing lights.
Hondo looked around for Stinger, but the ground-hugging tank was well below the field of view from the highrise pickup. Stinger's claw snaked out and cut Firecracker down to size. The pickup dropped three feet down, crashing back onto its wheels. The hypno headlights jarred off. Hondo and Julio were thrown against their seat belts. Hondo hit the accelerator to escape. The engine roared but nothing happened. Firecracker's drive train had been snipped in two.
Dagger blinked stupidly behind his stupid-looking mask, then he grinned.
"We've got 'em," the demolitions expert gloated, thumping Gorey on the shoulder.
Despite the triumphant moment, Gorey felt uncomfortable. It had nothing to do with Firecracker, though. The Venom agent thought he was sitting on a rock. He felt a stirring behind him, as if he'd pocketed a mouse. Then there was a ripping sound. Now it felt as if he was sitting on a brick. Gorey looked at the seat and saw his matchbox-sized truck had grown to the size of a shoebox. As he stared, it grew again, swelling to the size of a breadbox. It shoved Gorey mask first against the windshield and rammed Dagger in the ribs as he reached for the laser controls to blast Firecracker at pointblank range.
"What the … ?" Dagger said in the best tradition.
"It's growing!" Gorey cried.
And it was.
Dagger threw himself out the door of Jackhammer as Outlaw swelled to fill the entire seat. Gorey, squashed against the windshield, squeaked "Samson, ON!" The mask's power protected him as the still growing tanker thrust him through the explosively shattering windshield. The Venom agent bounced across Jackhammer's hood then scrambled away to join Dagger.
Bruno looked at his fleeing fellow agents in disgust. He shook his head as the growing tanker crushed and mangled Jackhammer. Obviously he wasn't going to get any help from Dagger or Gorey.
"If you want something done right … " the strong man muttered.
He stretched out Stinger's claw toward the tailgate of the immobile MASK pickup.
When Brad landed on the roof, he didn't know exactly what he was going to do. There were three men, two women and three children up there, and Condor was definitely a one-man chopper.
His worry didn't show when he spoke, though. "You folks call for a taxi?"
They swarmed around him.
"Now, I can only take one or maybe two at a time. Who's first?"
"Please, can you take the children?" the dark-haired woman asked.
One of the kids was just a toddler. The girl who Vanessa had kicked was older, about five or six. The other youngster was a boy about Scott's age. Brad thought he must have more sense than Scott, however. This youngster looked scared.
The rock musician scooped the kindergartner up on his lap and set the baby in hers.
"You hold on to him real tight, and I'll hold on to you," he said.
"She's a she," the girl corrected.
"Sorry."
The boy climbed on the back, wrapping his arms around Brad's waist.
Brad fed power to Condor's engine. His heart sank when he felt how much power it took to lift the load. Mayhem's blast had damaged the rotor after all. A tear or nick in the aerodynamic surface was forcing the engine to work twice as hard as normal.
The overloaded chopper finally waddled into the air.
"Don't you folks worry. I'll be right back," he lied with conviction.
As Condor lumbered through the air. Brad prayed Venom would stay occupied elsewhere, or his Condor would be an extinct species. Then a flying car whooshed past.
Brad's heart stopped. Then he recognized Gator and his heart took one beat before stopping again. Gator couldn't fly!
But Dusty could have told him, that the first thing an auto stuntman learns is how to fly a car.
Looking at the painting back in MASK headquarters, Dusty's first thought had been, "I bet you could jump a car from that cliff to the roof." It was the casual thought of a professional, as a painter might mentally arrange his palette while looking at a sunset. Yet, that casual thought had remained in the back of Dusty's mind, until he decided someone needed to get those people off the roof. So he'd headed for the cliff top, and found the jump just a trifle too long for safety. That didn't stop him trying it, of course.
Brad held his breath as Gator's rear wheels scrabbled on the edge of the roof where Vanessa had torn away the wall. Gator clawed at the edge of the building, loose brick and mortar scattering in a wide rooster tail. Then the tires caught, and the jeep plunged forward, straight at the dome in the center of the roof.
"Backlash, fire!" Dusty ordered his mask.
The sonic blast blew a tunnel in the dome, the only route that wouldn't run over the people Dusty had come to save. Gator skidded through and jolted to a halt, nose against the front wall.
"You crazy cowboy! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Brad screamed in a fury of relief.
"Somebody's gotta get these folks off the roof," Dusty said reasonably. "You're sure not gonna do it in that itty bitty whirlybird."
"How do you expect to do it?" Brad retorted. "You can't jump back up to the cliff. You barely made it down to the roof!"
"Don't you worry. I know what I'm doin'," Dusty said. "You just get those kids outta danger."
Brad had to take Dusty's word he had a plan. He didn't think Dusty was stupid. "Don't ever do that to me again, cowboy," he said, sending Condor on her way again. "You scared the daylights out of me. I never saw a flying Gator before."
"What do you have in mind, Dusty," Gloria called from the ground.
"Gonna give these folks an 'E' Ticket ride," Dusty answered.
He positioned Gator facing the lake and hustled the bystanders aboard. He could feel the unsteady building tremble under his feet. Dusty sat the three men in back, telling them to hang on to the roll bar. He figured their weight would keep the hydroplane's nose up when it splashed down. The women, one calm though frightened, the other wide-eyed with barely suppressed hysteria, went in the front seat. Dusty made sure they had their seat belts fastened. He told the dark-haired woman which buttons to push to launch the hydroplane.
"But aren't you going with us?" she asked.
"Too much weight, ma'am. I'll have to find another way down. Don't you worry, though. Gator's real easy to drive. She won't give you any trouble."
The stuntman checked over the set up with a critical, professional eye. He judged the total weight of the boat, then measured the distance to the lake with a look. He adjusted the spring launcher and the hydroplane's jets. He looked back at the lake, then shook his head. It was going to be tight.
Dusty stepped around to the back of the jeep and removed the depth charge from its cradle.
"That should do it folks, now you just sit back and pretend you're on a ride at Disneyland," he said cheerfully.
The blonde giggled nervously.
Stinger's claw grabbed Firecracker's tailgate, crushing it and the auxiliary motorbike that was strapped there. The rear-mounted freeze guns went, too.
Julio fired the spare tire. The wickedly spiked wheel spun into Stinger's armored windshield, wedging itself in the tank's view slit. Bruno jerked his head back as the spinning spikes ground to a halt inches from his nose.
He grunted angrily. "Magna-Beam, on!" he ordered his mask.
The magnetic force grabbed the spiked wheel and flipped it back at Firecracker. Hondo and Julio hit the seat as the tire screamed in the back window and out the windshield.
"I thought it was on our side," the doctor complained to Hondo as he reached up to brush the glass from his back.
The glass was shaken off when Stinger picked up the pickup, turned it sideways, and slammed it down on the driver's door. The tough, armored pickup didn't shatter, but the side buckled. Hondo cried out in pain as his arm was trapped between the crunched door and the seat. Bruno whacked Firecracker down again. Hondo's arm felt as if it was in a vise. He fought down the impulse to blast the door open to remove the pain. He was afraid he'd misfire if Bruno started tossing the pickup around again. He didn't want to blast his own arm off no matter how much it hurt.
Dangling from his seat belt harness, Julio could only watch helplessly as Bruno prepared to pick the truck up again.
Matt saw Firecracker's danger, but there wasn't a darn thing he could do about it. He had troubles of his own. When Manta had joined Switchblade, the tables had been turned. Instead of being the hound, Thunderhawk was now the hare. Calhoun liked it even less that way.
Calhoun braced himself against the dashboard and fought down the bile. His mother had ferried fighter planes during World War II and she had taught her only son how to fly. However, she hadn't considered keeping-your-lunch-down-and-shooting-while-in-a-bellydancing-Camaro to be a critical part of the curriculum. It was a regrettable oversight.
"Burns, pull yourself together before your glass stomach gets us both killed," Calhoun ordered himself.
"Calhoun, I could use some help." Matt said with surprising mildness under the circumstances.
"I see them," with a tremendous effort, Calhoun took over the weapons and allowed Matt to concentrate on flying.
The equestrian's first shot singed Manta and forced Vanessa to peel off.
"Great shot!" Matt exclaimed.
"Thank you, sir, next time I'll try keeping my eyes open."
Calhoun looked around for Switchblade and spotted it coming up from the rear.
"Hold her steady and I'll see if I can cut Mayhem down to size," the Southerner said.
He loosened his safety harness to twist around to use Gulliver. Warfield saw the gesture, and didn't like it. She didn't know what the mask did, but nobody took potshots at the man who signed her paychecks.
She hit the accelerator and knifed in front of the gaudy Camaro. Matt was forced to dodge to avoid a collision. Calhoun was thrown forward and only just managed to get his arm up in time to catch himself from being knocked cold against the doorframe. Pain ran up his arm and the architect slumped back in his seat.
"Calhoun!"
Bruce and Alex saw both Thunderhawk's predicament and Firecracker's. They didn't know whom to help first. They compromised by choosing both. Bruce put the pedal to the metal, aiming his lethal leviathan at the ground battle. Alex turned his weapons toward the sky, firing two rockets, which wove a cloud of concealing smoke behind Thunderhawk's tail. The rockets obediently homed in on Thunderhawk, following the flying car as ducklings follow their mother.
Mayhem and Vanessa fired at random, unable to see their quarry.
"That's the best I can do, Matt, old boy," Alex said. "You're on your own now."
"Thanks, Alex. Can you guys help Hondo?"
"We're already on our way … at speed," Alex said, watching the battlefield rush past.
The bull moose blast of an air horn made Bruno jerk around.
A battering ram slammed into Stinger's fender, ripping away the tank's clawed arm, then trampling it flat under Rhino's rampaging tires. Firecracker bounced sideways a few feet. Stinger spun clear around under the force of the big truck's blow and wound up facing the opposite direction. Rhino's momentum carried it far down the battlefield before Bruce could wrench it around on two wheels for another pass aimed to go straight over the low lying tank.
Ignoring the charging Rhino, Dagger wrenched open Stinger's passenger door and scrambled in with Gorey right on his heels.
"Get outta here!" Dagger commanded.
"What gives?" Bruno asked. "Stinger can take that truck."
"But Outlaw's crushing Jackhammer!" Gorey exclaimed.
"I saw. So what?"
"So, Jackhammer's loaded with my explosives!" Dagger yelled. "Who knows what all that pressure is doin' to 'em."
"And who wants to wait around and find out!" Gorey added.
Bruno's eyes grew large. Dagger had enough volatile material in his Bronco to blow a bank off its foundation. Without another word, the strong man transformed his tank back into the faster GTO and roared off at top speed, dodging Rhino's return rush as a matador dodges a bull. Rhino wheeled in pursuit.
"Strange. Why are they running?" Alex asked. "I hardly think we're that fearsome. Why would Bruno turn tail and run?"
Bruce eased Rhino to a reluctant halt. He had hoped to get one good shot at Dagger in repayment of the torch job the Venom agent had done on Bruce's toy lab. But the MASK agent knew Rhino couldn't catch the speedy sports car. He turned his attention to Alex's query.
"Hmmm," the Japanese inventor mused. "When the deer flees, maybe it's not the hunter he fears, but the bear behind the hunter."
Alex put all his genius to work and managed to translate the cryptic suggestion. "You mean he's not afraid of us at all, but of something else. What then?"
Bruce could almost see the hard disk spinning in Alex's brain as the older man looked across the battlefield at the overturned Firecracker, and at the modern art sculpture that had been Gorey's Outlaw and Dagger's Jackhammer. Of course!
"Bruce! Get Firecracker out of there! Jackhammer's going to blow!"
Lifter hurled Firecracker skyward just as Dagger's stored explosives detonated thunderously.
The blast shoved a teetering Rhino across the battlefield. Bruce ignored Rhino's plight and focused his attention on holding on to Firecracker. The high-flying pickup bobbed and swayed dangerously. Julio closed his eyes and crossed himself. Hondo gritted his teeth. Alex grabbed Rhino's wheel and guided the truck to a safe stop. Bruce lowered the pickup gently to the ground.
Julio looked heavenward and said, "Thank you." Then he looked at Rhino. "And thank you, too, Bruce."
"De nada, amigo," the Japanese inventor replied.
The blast blew away Thunderhawk's protective smoke and sent the three battling aircraft tumbling end over end. When Matt fought Thunderhawk back to an even keel, Calhoun dared to open his eyes and found Switchblade right in front of them.
"Gulliver, on!" he said hoarsely.
"What the hell … !" Mayhem exclaimed as everything around him seemed to grow suddenly larger.
Gloria was thrown from her feet by the explosion.
The front of the Folly began to crumble.
The blonde tourist shrieked hysterically as the roof began to tilt. She threw her arms around her friend, preventing the other woman from launching the hydroplane to safety. Dusty saw the desperate plea in the brunette's eyes.
Aw, shoot! he thought.
He reached into the jeep, slapped the release and launch buttons, then leaped back — but his excellent reflexes were no match for Gator's spring-loaded hood. It sprang up and slammed against the side of Dusty's head, throwing the cowboy to the crumbling rooftop.
From her hands and knees, Gloria saw the hydroplane shoot toward the lake. And she saw Dusty fall like a puppet with its strings cut. Unmindful of her own peril, as the building slanted farther in her direction, she screamed Dusty's name. But there was no response. Behind her mask, Gloria's teeth clenched, her eyes flashed. "Aura, ON!"
It was a huge forcefield, the biggest she'd ever tried. She pressed the gigantic, flat shield against the crumbling wall, forcing the building to stand still. Gloria stepped forward as she tried to push the wall back in line.
It had gone too far, though. She could hold it, but she couldn't rebuild the shattered building. Gloria pressed her shoulder against the wall, as if she was holding it up with all the strength of her small body. The position helped her visualize her force field wall, but it was actually the strength of her indomitable will that kept the Folly upright.
But not even Gloria could hold it forever.
Next episode:
The final chapter.
A roof rescue,
A stubborn MASK agent
And a really expensive hobby.