Book II Chapter 8

When Holly had shown up at his workshop with a bag of store bought popcorn, Murray knew that she was disturbed. He invited her in with a gesture and led her to the back, to the space where he had set up the meeting area for the Planning Committee. He gestured her towards one of the couches, where she flopped herself down and sprawled out like a bag of old laundry.

He knew what was bothering her, the gist of it if not the specifics. Her breakup with Tom Blackmore. He, Mike and Dieter had talked about little else over the past week, concerned not only with how it was affecting Holly and Tom, but also how it would affect the Committee. Murray glanced over his shoulder while he worked; keeping an eye on the girl that had called him ‘Uncle Pablo’ for most of her life. The urge to talk to her about it was almost overwhelming, but he firmly held the impulse in check. Over the years Holly had often come to him with her problems, but they had formed their own set of rules on how it was done. Patiently now, satisfied that sooner or later she would open up to him, Murray finished hooking up the DVD player to the big screen TV, and went to get a movie.

His choice for tonight was King Kong, not the 2005 version that he had worked on, but the original 1933 edition with Fay Wray, digitally remastered and put to disk. He popped it into the player and started the credits rolling, then left briefly. When he returned he was wearing the gorilla’s head mask from Planet of the Apes. He sat down next to Holly, who looked at him but didn’t smile as he had hoped. But she did curl up next to him and lay her head on his shoulder.

Murray put his arm around her and made himself comfortable. Neither had said a word, and would not say any until the end of the movie, for that was the pattern that they had set. Murray removed the mask halfway through the film to eat popcorn and to sip a Grape NiHi. When Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham said the final lines, “It was Beauty who killed the Beast” and the final credits began to roll, he rose from his seat on the couch and popped the DVD from the player, put it back in its jewel case and replaced it in his file collection. He returned to the couch, but instead of sitting there he pulled up a chair and sat facing Holly, and said, “So what happened?”

Holly looked away, muttering stubbornly, “It wasn’t my fault, Uncle Pablo.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve heard that before, haven’t we? Look, Kitten, your record speaks for itself, but I promise to reserve judgment until I hear your side, okay? Just tell me what happened between you and Tommy Blackwood that made him kick you outta the clubhouse.”

She sighed. “Last Tuesday night, Tom took me for a ride. Flying, you know? We used that buddy harness thing he and Mike made up.”

“Uh huh. Well, I can’t say that wasn’t expected. I knew sooner or later you’d nag him into taking you for a spin. So, how was it?”

For the first time since she’d arrived there, possibly for the first time since the breakup, she smiled. It was a sad and dreamy quirking of the lips, and her eyes briefly unfocused as she remembered that night.

“I can’t… there are no words, Uncle Pablo. It was just fantastic. So beautiful. Peaceful, but at the same time so exciting! You know me, I’m an adrenaline junky. I’m into the extreme sports. But I swear, I’ve never felt anything that compares. It was almost perfect freedom.”

“Almost? I would have said it was perfect. No cockpit, no engine, nothing between you and the open air. Going wherever you want just by willing it. What could be more free than that?”

“Well, yeah. For Tommy. He was the one really in control. It was amazing, don’t get me wrong. But I was still just a passenger; I was strapped on like a baby in a carrier. It wasn’t quite the same for me as it was for him.”

Murray frowned, thinking about her words, something nagging at the back of his mind. Then suddenly his eyes went wide in realization. “Aww, no. Honey, you didn’t undue your safety strap while you two were trippin’ over ‘Frisco, did you?” Her answer was to guiltily look away. “Aww, shit. You did, you took your safety belt off. Crap. Okay, what else happened?”

“What else? Nothing. Nothing else happened.”

“Holly, don’t give me that. I know you, and I know Tom Blackwood pretty well, too. If that was all it was, he would have been mad as hell, and would probably have grounded you until you started showing some more sense. But he wouldn’t have kicked your shapely little ass off the team over that. So what else did you do?”

It took some more prodding, but eventually Pablo got the story out of her. How she had not only undone her safety belt and refused to put it back on, but had also stood upright on Tom’s back, trying to ride him through the skies. She told the tale defensively, and by the time she was finished she had once again worked up a sense of outrage at the way Tom had overreacted. But if she thought she had an ally in Murray, she was soon disabused of the thought. His eyes had widened in disbelief at her tale, and when she had finished he had risen to his feet and begun to pace in agitation. Finally he faced her, and for the first time Holly actually began to feel uneasy.

“Let me get this straight. Tom takes you for a ride through the clouds. You decide, on your own, not only to take of your safety strap, but to stand up and try riding him like a freaking skateboard?! And when he orders you to sit back down and buckle in, you not only disregard his orders, but you start arguing with him. Is that what happened, Holly?”

She nodded, not quite as sure of herself anymore. “Yes, it was. Alright, the way you say it makes it sound bad. I shouldn’t have done it. But Tom overreacted! He dumped me in the bay, in the middle of the night. It was freezing!”

“He should have left you there! Damn it, Holly, were you born stupid, or did you have to work at it? You could have been killed!” Murray shouted, his voice raised in anger. Holly shrank back into the couch, shocked. She had heard Murray rage like this before, but in all their years she had never had it directed at her.

“Look, it was… it was over water, alright? It wasn’t that dang—”

“It was a thousand feet over water! Holly, you’re a teacher, you know better physics than that. Hell, I’ve taught you better than that. If you had fallen, by the time you’d hit you would have been doing almost a hundred and thirty miles an hour; it would have been the same as hitting concrete. You would have died, little girl, and you know it, so don’t go telling me it wasn’t dangerous.”

“He—if I’d fallen, Tom could have flown down and caught me. He would have had plenty of time—”

“Tommy doesn’t fly, you brain dead idiot! He falls. He can fall in any direction he wants, but it’s still falling, which means he can’t move faster than any other falling object.

“And something else, while he was giving you a ride he was compensating for your weight, too. If you had fallen, he would have shot up like a cork underwater. By the time he could have started back down, there would have been a good thirty or forty meters between the two of you. From a thousand feet up, you would have hit that water in a little over six seconds. No way in hell could he have caught you before you hit.”

Holly gaped, stunned, as she realized the truth behind Murray’s words. The enormity of the risk, the absolute lack of judgment that she had shown, shocked her. She tried to speak, to explain herself, but Murray wasn’t having any of it.

“And yeah, I know just what you’re gonna say, so don’t bother. It’s the same thing that you’ve always used with Dieter whenever you do something stupid and dangerous. ‘It’s my life, my neck, and my choice.’ Which is the biggest load of crap anybody’s ever tried to hand me. It’s also my life, and Dieter’s life, and it’s Tom Blackwood’s life, too. Did you ever stop to think how it would affect us if you died, especially in such a stupid, senseless way like that? Who the hell do you think would have gotten the blame for something like that?”

“Blame? B-but—”

“Yes, blame. I wouldn’t have blamed Tom, but he would have blamed himself. It would have torn him apart, probably destroyed his life. And worse, your father would have blamed him, too.” Murray paused, looking away, then muttered, “And he would have killed Tom for it.”

Holly felt a sudden tremor pass through her body, and a coldness settled in at Murray’s words. The words had not been said lightly, it wasn’t just an expression, he had said them as seriously as a stated fact. The name ‘Viktor Krummel’ whispered in the back of her mind, the low level government clerk in Germany who had sold her father’s name and address to terrorists for money, an act which had resulted in her mother being killed. Viktor Krummel, who had ended up as a paraplegic with a broken spine after her father had tracked him down.

What would her father do to Tom, if he blamed him for Holly’s death? She shuddered, suddenly fearing that answer more than anything else she could think of.

*****

It was approaching midnight, and the fog that had come in at dusk was just beginning to clear up, allowing the faint sheen of stars to be seen through the overhead haze of the city lights. The darkened figure on the rooftop was little more than a shadow, as invisible as the other shadows that made up the rest of the night. The figure leaned over the low parapet of the rooftop, peering intently at the alley below, as unmoving as the stone and wood it crouched on.

Tom Blackwood watched silently, spying on the car parked in the alley and the men inside. The two in back were the younger of the four, not quite out of their teens, low level street pushers who sold their product mostly to local high school students. The man in the front passenger seat was their boss, their connection, the one who fronted them the crystal meth and other illegal drugs that they sold. He had come there tonight to collect his cut of the action, and to re-supply the twenty plus agents who moved his product in the ten square block area that was his territory. The two in the back would most likely be armed, their boss in the front probably wouldn’t, but the bodyguard who was driving definitely would be.

Tom had been following the street pushers in this neighborhood all week, noting their habits, and mapping their connection’s route. He knew the little fat guy with the diamond studded tooth and the double handful of gold rings did his combination collection and supply run twice a night, and that this was his last stop before going home. He’d noticed wryly that although the fat man drove a brand new Cadillac and probably cleared at least five or ten thousand dollars a week; he still lived in a run down building in the same decrepit neighborhood that he operated in. You can take the rats out of the dump, he thought, but they always seem to find their way back.

Tom’s ultimate goal was to follow the drug pipeline upstream to where the major distributors were, instead of wasting his time on the small fry who would be replaced almost within the same hour he took them down. He could have followed the trail up at least another level or two by this time, but opted instead to broaden his understanding of the street level pushers. He considered the past week to be a learning experience, in Basic Drug Trafficking 101. The knowledge was paying off, he and the other members of the planning committee had already come up with several plans for disrupting the street trade at a later date.

He and the remaining members of the planning committee.

Tom shook his head angrily, trying to clear the traitorous thought from it. He’d sworn that he wasn’t going to spend all his time thinking about Holly again, he couldn’t afford to. Not out here, where he was supposed to be going up against dangerous criminals who liked to shoot people. Dieter was right, if he didn’t get his head back on the job, he was probably going to end up dead. He had to stop thinking about her every couple of minutes, or about that night and the disastrous ride, and concentrate on the job at hand. He had to forget about her, completely.

Yeah, right. Like he could actually do that.

“Heads up. Flyboy. Tweedle Dee and Dum are getting back to work. Looks like the party’s about to get started.”

“I see them, Rockstar. How’s the tracker reading?”

“Looks good, signal’s strong. Let’s get ready to track.”

The rear doors in the Cadillac had swung open, and the two street pushers had gotten out. The driver turned the big engine over, revved it a little, and then started to ease it down the long dark alley towards the streets beyond. Tom rose straight up into the air, stopping to hover two hundred feet over the street, well above the haze of city lights. A heads up display appeared in his goggles, showing a ghostly overlay of a street map, a red pulsing dot indicating the moving vehicle that was his target. After following the car for several minutes, it soon became clear that drug dealer was heading back to his home ground.

“Damn, looks like another wasted night. He’s just heading home.”

Tom grunted, not bothering to acknowledge his brother’s comment. They had been hoping that the dealer whose name they didn’t even know would lead them up the chain to his supplier, but it looked like that wouldn’t happen, at least not tonight. Still Tom followed, keeping an eye on the vehicle below. Sooner or later, if they were patient and careful enough, they knew they would find the next step on the ladder.

The Cadillac had slowed down, and was just turning into the small parking lot that serviced the building where the target lived. Tom dropped down, coming in silently, about to touch down lightly on the roof below. Suddenly, the quiet night was shattered by the double roar of gunfire. Two shots, close together, and echoing much louder than a simple handgun, coming from the street at the opposite end of the building he was hovering over. Tom froze, then spun in mid aid and sped to the other side of the roof.

Shouting and the squeal of tires spinning on the fog dampened concrete. An older four door sedan, speeding down the nearly empty street. A small group of young black men, shouting from behind whatever cover they could find to crouch behind, one of them screaming as he held his arm. Blood stained the front of his shirt, and spotted the ground he was sitting on.

A drive-by shooting. A drive-by shooting, right under his nose!

“Rockstar, macro!” he snapped, launching himself off the roof. He paused, floating above the center of the street, his gaze turned to the bleeding young man below. Instantly the left lens of his goggles seemed to disappear, replaced by the projected image from the telescopic lens mounted on the array in the bandoleer across his chest. The image twisted as he shifted position, then zoomed in on the bleeding figure below.

“Doesn’t look too bad, looks like it hit in the upper arm. Not spurting, so it didn’t strike a vein…he should be alright until an ambulance gets there. I’ll call one.”

Without another word Tom turned and left that scene, moving through the night as fast as he could, following in the wake of the fleeing car. The twisting, hilly streets of San Francisco were not made for high speeds, and at the 125 mile an hour terminal velocity Tom was capable of, he soon caught up with them. The car, an old Chevy sedan badly in need of a new paint job, had already begun to slow down and to merge into traffic. But Mike flashed a captured image of the vehicle onto Tom’s heads up display, and the pattern of the fading paint was obvious. Tom slowed his pace, and followed.

“Rockstar, let’s get a heat signature on these guys. I want to see what kind of numbers I’m facing.”

“Already got it, Flyboy,” came the answer, and in a moment a new image appeared on the display. The ghostly colors of red, orange, yellow and blue formed, the thermal imaging showing bright for the running engine and four, no, five figures in the car below. Two in front, three in back, the one in the middle of the three being much smaller than the others.

“Looks like four men and a woman, Flyboy. How do you want to handle this?”

“We’ll wait until they stop. That car’s just as much a deadly weapon as the gun, if I try taking them out while they’re mobile; somebody’s liable to get run over. You’ve got better resolution than I do, can you tell me anything about that gun?”

“Yeah, the barrels are still hot; I can just make it out. Looks like a sawed off double barrel shotgun, the guy in the passenger seat is holding it between his legs. I don’t see anything else, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Unless they’d just fired it, anything else would just be more cold metal. They could all be packing, for all we know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

For the next fifteen minutes Tom followed the car, as it wove its way through the late night San Francisco traffic. In his left hand he held the ice pick like device that Murray had invented, the same one that he had used to rescue Molly Wu from her kidnappers. He intended to use it tonight to take down the drive-by shooters below, but not right now. Now it was a waiting game, until the moving quarry below finally came to rest, or at least made it into an area where there was not only less chance of any innocent bystanders getting hurt, but also fewer witnesses.

“I don’t get it, Flyboy. I’ve been graphing their route, and it doesn’t seem like they’re going anywhere. At least not anywhere specific. It’s like they’re just wandering around wherever they feel like.”

“Probably nerves. They just shot someone, maybe they need to cool down before they go home.”

“Yeah, that might be it. You think we should just call the cops on this one? Another anonymous call or maybe even call Schoolgirl. We could feed them the location, and they could get some squad cars out here.”

‘Schoolgirl’ was the code name they had agreed on for Molly Wu, in honor of the outfit she had worn the night Tom had first met her. And turning this whole thing over to her was beginning to sound like a good idea. The piebald old Chevrolet was beginning to slow down, and the neighborhood they were in had transitioned from downtown business district, to inner city urban housing. Small tract homes, overcrowded a lower income sprawl, none of them less than twenty years old. Postage stamp yards with anemic looking trees and cracked concrete sidewalks. It appeared that the drive-by car and its occupants were coming home.

“Turn the thermal vision back on, Rockstar, and let’s check these guys out again. Then you’d better crank up the voice machine and start composing a report to Schoolgirl. As soon as they light and we get an address, we can—Awww, crap!”

The thermal graphic image had once more sprung up in Tom’s left lens, the electric bright images of the five heat signatures inside showing clear against the cooling backgrounds of the night. The figure on the passenger side had brought the still glowing icon of the double barreled shotgun back up to its shoulder, and was even now slowly edging it out of the open window. Tom spared a quick glance up, seeing just down the street what must be the shooter’s intended target.

A group of maybe eight to ten young Hispanic men, most of them still in their teens, gathered together in front of one house to the right. The garage door was up, the light from inside spilling out and illuminating the group, who were standing around or leaning casually against the several cars parked in and around the front yard. Most had cigarettes, some had bottles of beer and wine, and the radio of at least one of the cars was tuned to a Spanish station and cranked up high. All wore the long sleeved plaid shirts buttoned to the top that was practically the uniform of the Hispanic gang bangers.

The Chevy below was beginning to slowly accelerate, the shortened barrels of the shotgun now fully sticking out of the window, pointing at the gathering ahead. It was so evident now, the actions of the shooters. Their aimless driving, the cruising up and down of the streets. They hadn’t been working off a case of jangled nerves on their way home; they had been looking for fresh meat.

“Rockstar, make the call!” Tom snapped, as he threw himself downward. With a thump that made the car jump on its shocks he landed, sprawled belly-down on the roof, the ice-pick like tear gas injector in his left hand punching through the thin sheet metal. At the same instant Tom shifted his body, sliding to the right, his free had shooting down to grab the barrels of the shotgun and jerk them upwards an instant before the weapon went off. There was an explosive roar so close to Tom’s face that he went immediately deaf in that ear, as the blast was deflected up and away from its intended targets. Tom got a glimpse of the crowd but couldn’t hear the shouting, as they all threw themselves to the ground or took whatever cover they could find.

The car below him shot forward, accelerating and swerving wildly. Tom lost his grip on the burning hot barrels as the shotgun was jerked back inside the car. He tried to press the button on top of the injector, but at the last second the car took a sharp corner to the right, sending him skidding across the roof and making him grab frantically at the injector with both hands.

Tom shifted his gravitic field, trying to keep up with the careening car, to keep from being thrown from his perch. The thought occurred to him that it might have been better if he had been thrown, or had let go of the injector. He could have flown then, and still followed the shooters from a safe distance. But something of rage and plain stubbornness inside him made him desperately hang on, gritting his teeth as he tried grimly to trigger the injector.

For block after block the old Chevy sped through the streets, weaving left and right, trying to shake the unwanted passenger on its roof, but could not. The ringing in his ear was fading enough that he could hear voices raised in shouted argument coming from inside the vehicle, but could not yet make out the words. Suddenly the car ceased its wild twists and turns and leveled out its path, now heading straight down the run and picking up speed. Tom was about to trigger the injector, when out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement to the side. A hand holding a pistol was reaching up around the edge of the roof, the handgun blindly pointed in his direction.

Tom’s grasp of the injector suddenly became a deathgrip, as he desperately willed his body into the air, arching up at a forty five degree angle until only his forearms still connected to the vehicle. The pistol fired, a gout of flame and copper jacketed lead sped through the space his body had just vacated. Tom twisted, then dropped his body down as hard as he could, all two hundred plus pounds of him concentrated into both booted feet as they smashed into the wrist behind the gun. There was a telltale crunch that he could feel through his heels as the bone broke, followed by a scream from inside the car. The shattered hand withdrew, the pistol spun off into the darkness.

The tactics of the driver suddenly changed again, as he swerved hard left into the empty parking lot of a small strip mall. Apparently he wanted more room to maneuver to shake his uninvited rider off, rather than the narrow streets. But before he could do that Tom finally managed to jab the button of the injector, and flooded the interior of the car with tear gas. Beneath his mask Tom’s teeth bared in a savage smile, but it quickly vanished. Inside the car a gun exploded, a bullet punching through the roof, and a sharp burning knife was suddenly laid across his lower left side. The spot were the body armor was at its weakest.

Tom grunted at the pain, too anesthetized by adrenalin to really feel it yet but knowing in his gut that it would hurt like hell soon. His objective accomplished, he threw himself backwards off the vehicle and landed awkwardly in the parking lot. In front of him the car swerved crazily, the effect of the tear gas limited by the four open windows. Not enough, though, to keep the car from jumping the curb and crashing through the front window of the grocery store.

Tom stood and watched, a little stunned, as the car came to a stop half in and half out of the big front window. Shattered pieces of glass showered it, destroying what little paint job the old car still had, and steam fountained from the radiator. Then the doors were flung open, and four figures stumbled out, gasping and clawing at their eyes. But they had no chance to recover, before a whirling figure in black was among them

Tom howled, enraged, striking hard with fist and boot. Anger, fear and frustration burst inside of him, the urge to vent it so great that he never even thought to draw any of his weapons. There were four of them, hurt and dazed, but even if they weren’t so they couldn’t have stood against him. In an amazingly short time the flying man stood alone, gazing down at the crumpled bodies of his enemies.

They were white, Caucasian, most of them in their early twenties, one man maybe in his thirties. And they were all hairless, their heads shaved, and on at least two of them he could see the rough blue lines of prison tattoos. Swastikas. Tom shook his head in disgust, feeling his limbs begin to tremble from the after effects of adrenaline. Neo-Nazi, white supremacist punks. Not surprising, considering who they had been shooting at. So was this a gang thing, or just four liquored up racists out for some sick kicks? What was—

He froze, as the numbers hit him. Four? There had been five in the car. The woman?

Tom heard the double cocking of the shotgun hammers at the same time as he leaped for the rear of the car. An instant later the blast followed him, as steel shot roared through the space he had just been occupying. Tom slid along the ground and kept going, flowing over the concrete like a snake, using the car as cover until he was on the other side. There he crouched, cursing his own stupidity under his breath, trying to locate the woman with the shotgun using his still ringing ears. He heard a clatter, as of something metal falling to the ground, and then felt the car against his back shift as someone scrambled over it, through the window and into the store.

Tom sprang upwards, twisting in mid-air, landing crouched like a cat on the roof of the old Chevy. He first looked into the gaping maw of the broken window, but couldn’t see a thing in the pitch dark. He risked a glance over the side, and saw the shotgun laying there, the action broken open. Dropped, probably because she had no more ammunition. Yet the woman might still have another gun on her, another pistol maybe. Without another thought he launched himself through the window and into the darkened store, quickly, minimizing the time he was spotlighted and made a target. He dropped immediately to the ground and rolled to the side, then lay quietly.

“Rockstar, low light,” he muttered, and in a second the heads-up display disappeared, to be replaced by the eerie grey and green of the night vision optics built into the frame of the goggles. Murray had actually outdone himself with his latest improvements. He had made both lenses of the goggles capable of full sized projection from the processing unit in the bandoleer, and mounted two of the dime size low light optics above them, one for each eye. It had taken some adjusting to get the images to exactly match his eye’s point of view, but with the flick of a switch Tom could have complete stereoscopic see-in-the-dark vision.

The flying man looked around now, seeing the store as clearly as if it were dusk instead of almost midnight. Moving silently, his own ears open for the least sound, he eased over to the side of the wall and away from the faint light coming from the windows. Once he had reached the wall he slowly started to rise, until he was lying flush with the ceiling, and looking over the store with a perfect view. Slowly he moved away from the front windows and towards the back of the store, carefully scanning the aisles until he finally spotted a crouching figure, hiding behind a display of housewares. As soon as Tom was close enough to see that the figure’s hands were empty he dropped, crashing into the woman and bringing her to the ground with a high pitched scream of fear.

“Lemme go! Lemme go, you fucker, I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you sumbitch! Donnie, help! Donnie!”

The figure he had landed on squirmed and twisted in his arms like a wet cat, but Tom did not have much trouble holding on. His prisoner turned out to be even smaller than he had first thought, and a he finally got a close look, he almost let go of the struggling figure in shock. It wasn’t a woman he held, it was a young boy! Ten, maybe eleven years old, with dark colored hair cut so close to the scalp he was les than an inch away from being as bald as the other riders in the unfortunate Chevy parked in the window.

The boy continued to struggle and curse, and when Tom irritably growled, ‘Quit it, kid,” he only redoubled his efforts. Tired as much from the foulness coming from the boy’s mouth as much as from his struggles, Tom finally grabbed a double handful of the boy’s shirt and lifted him two feet off the ground and shook him. When the boy had ceased his efforts, Tom set him back down on unsteady legs, grabbing him now by the scruff of the neck, and leaned down to growl in the boy’s ear.

“You give me any more of that dirty lip, you little brat, and I’ll shake you ‘til your teeth rattle! Now tell me, just what the hell were you doing in that car?” He could see the boy’s face clearly, even though he knew the kid couldn’t see more than a dark shape in this light. Between the threats and the eerie sight he must be showing, his prisoner quickly lost most of his bluster.

“I—I was with Donnie. He’s my b-brother. He was taking me coon hunting.”

Tom blinked, then paused, not sure if he had heard right. “Raccoons? In downtown San Francisco?”

The boy looked at him as if he were stupid. “Coons. Niggers ‘n spics. Mud people. Donnie’d done it before, but this was my first time. He let me load the gun, said I could have my turn when we got to China Town.”

Tom looked at the boy, stunned, as the words sank in like sharp glass. “You… didn’t even know those people you were shooting at? They never did anything to you?”

“I don’t know any damned mud people.”

“Then why the hell were you trying to kill them?”

“Because they’re mud people!” the boy snapped back.

The shock was settling in deep now, leaving a sort of dizzying numbness. This wasn’t some sort of gang hit after all, the usual fighting over turf or drugs. These crazy little bastards had actually gone out and chosen people at random to shoot, based solely on the color of their skin! And the boy’s own brother had brought him along, and apparently seen nothing wrong with putting a gun in the hands of a ten year old boy and telling him to go kill strangers with it.

And the boy had been eager to do so.

Tom felt it then, a rage unlike anything he had ever experienced before. The senseless violence, the pure viciousness of it all, filled him with outrage that translated into the need to pound on those who would do such a thing. This mindless hatred, which was now being reborn in it’s foulness into this next generation.

With a growl Tom dragged the little monster down the aisle, scanning the shelves for something specific. Suddenly he found it, and grabbing the frying pan from its hook on the wall, he shifted his grip on the back of the boy’s neck. Grimly dropping to one knee, he forced the struggling boy across the other one, and proceeded to lay into his upright bottom with the frying pan in the other.

The kid howled with the first swat, and then began to spit curses even more foully than before. But after about the fifth swing he was gasping too hard to say anything anymore. By the tenth he was choking, and by the twentieth he was sobbing too much to even struggle. Eventually Tom threw his improvised paddle away, pulled the boy upright and held him by the shoulders. He glared into the tear streaked face and snarled.

“I’m taking you outside, and you’re going to stand there and wait for the police. And when they get here, you’re going to tell them everything, everything, that you and Donnie and those other losers did tonight. You’ll tell them about the shootings you saw, and you’ll tell them about all the other crap your brother and his friends have done. And if I ever see you involved in something like this again, you won’t be able to sit down for a week! Do you understand me?”

The boy nodded, sniffling, too choked up to talk. Tom rose to his feet, and without another word he grabbed the boy by the collar and hustled him out of that darkened store. He had to pause and boost the boy through the broken window and across the car, to avoid the glass, but once outside he released him on the sidewalk. The boy stood there without trying to run, totally cowed, shivering and making snuffling noises as he wiped his tears with a shirt sleeve.

In the distance Tom could hear the sound of sirens, coming closer. He glanced towards the four bodies he’d left on the ground, and saw that one of them had staggered to his feet and was trying to limp away. He watched, waiting until he could see the flicker of the red and blue lights, and knew that the hobbling skinhead would be caught. Without a backwards glance he turned, strode to the end of the store and disappeared into the shadows around the corner.

*****

Several miles away from the scene of the car crash, Tom alighted onto the rooftop of a small apartment building. He stumbled when his feet touched ground, gasping, his hand going to his ribs. He stood bent over for several long moments, trying to take a deep breath, moving slowly as the pain subsided.

“You okay, Flyboy?” Mike’s voice, silent while the action was going on so as not to distract him, came tinnily through the plug in his ear. His tone conveyed his concern.

“Not sure. No, I’ll be alright. Bastards shot through the roof while I was on it, I took a bullet across the ribs. It didn’t penetrate the body armor, but it kicked me pretty good.”

“Anything broken? Any bleeding?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m just bruised, I think.”

“Well, that’s good. Then I hope this hurts like hell!”

The sharp, piercing squeal of electronic feedback screamed in Tom’s ear, making him yelp in pain. The three second burst of sound ended, leaving a ringing in his ears and the beginnings of a headache forming at the base of his skull.

“Jeez—Dammit, Mike, what the hell was that for?”

“For being a damned, stupid, stuck up asshole! What the hell were you doing, are you trying to get yourself killed?!”

“Hey, I had to stop those guys. That’s what I’m out here for, remember?” he snapped back.

“Not like that, we’re not! You remember the rules, dammit; you were the one who wrote most of ‘em. We’re here to do the things the cops can’t. If we find anything they can handle, and can handle better than us, you’re supposed to stand back and let them.

“We ran just this kind of scenario before. You were suppose to follow along and keep those guys spotted, while I called the cops and gave them directions. They could have sent a dozen squad cars and pulled those punks over, or waited until they got home and picked them up later. Simple and clean, less dangerous to everyone, including the innocent bystanders. There was no need for you to pull a damned crazy stunt like that, riding around on the top of a car full of armed skinheads. You’re lucky they only shot you once, you idiot.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, they were trying to do another drive by! I had to step in, damn it !”

“But you didn’t have to stay. As soon as you pulled that gun from that guy’s hands, you should have gotten out of there. There was no reason for you to stick on that car, and every reason to get the hell off of it. Instead of a nice, quiet takedown by a bunch of trained professionals, we had a careening car and a shootout in a crowded urban neighborhood. A stray bullet doesn’t care who it hits. And all this, just so you can play cowboy.”

Tom started to reply, but in the end he couldn’t. Instead he shut his mouth and looked around, fighting the urge to pace, to run or to fly, anything to work off the mounting sense of anger and frustration. He wanted to end the conversation, to tear the microphone and headset out of his mask and stomp on them, but it was the fact that he was so angry that stopped him. Why was he reacting this way?

“You’ve been getting more and more reckless, Flyboy, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. Tinker has, too. He thinks it’s because of the breakup with Mata Hari, but that’s not it. You’ve been doing this for some time now. Remember the night you went to see Sawbones?”

Tom kicked at an empty beer can lying on the roof, and sent it skittering across the tar covered surface and over the low parapet, heard it hit with a clang in the alleyway below. Tinker, Mata Hari, Sawbones for Doctor Sam Dray. All those damned stupid code names they had made up, mostly on his insistence. They irritated the hell out of him now, gave him the urge to snap at his brother and say something that he knew would be both stupid and childish. But Mike’s next words stopped him cold.

“Afterwards, you said that you were calling it a night. Tinker and me went offline, but instead of heading home you hit the damned streets again! You LIED to us! You took down that vicious little psycho Snakeman without any backup, and for no justifiable reason.”

“Aww, for—! Look, that guy was a punk. You know he wasn’t all that dangerous, he—”

“He had a freaking arsenal, you idiot! What, do you think because you can fly, that means you’re bulletproof now?

“Damn it, Tom, don’t you get it yet? You’re doing the exact same thing that you accused Holly of doing.”

Tom froze, stunned. He felt as if someone had just sucker punched him in the stomach. His mind whirled, a maelstrom of a thousand dizzying thoughts, and the inevitable feeling that he had just realized something of huge importance.

“Hey, bro? You okay?”

“Just… just give me a moment, okay?”

Tom turned, and slowly began to pace across the length of the apartment roof, lost in thought. He felt the tight pull and ache of his injured ribs, but ignored the pain. Had he done it? Had he been guilty of the same thing that he had accused Holly of?

He tried to rationalize it, told himself that the two courses of action were completely different. Okay, he had been getting reckless, maybe taking a few too many chances. But surely that didn’t equate to what Holly had done! Climbing on his back a thousand feet above the bay, ignoring his orders, riding him like he was some idiot skateboard…!

Tom sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat, unable to stand his own hypocrisy. Okay, so Holly had thumbed her nose at gravity and done something incredibly stupid. He was the one playing games with guys who carried shotguns!

“Are you there yet, man?”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’m there now, Rockstar. You’re right, and I apologize.”

“Uh huh. And?”

He barked a laugh, grinning despite himself. “Okay, I’ll say it. I’ve been an ass. A king sized, long eared, four legged ass. And you were right to try scrambling what little brains I have with that feedback. Okay?”

“Good enough, for now. So, are you going to be alright?”

“Yeah, I guess. No more stupid risks, I guess this job has enough hazards without me trying to invent some more. Thanks, Mike.”

“That’s Rockstar, you putz. And you’re welcome. You going to go home, now?”

“Yeah, I guess. I need to get some sleep, tomorrow I’m going to have to some serious apologizing.”

“Who, to Mata Hari? Hey, remember, she screwed up, too. Maybe you should save the groveling and just sit down and talk.”

“Yeah, maybe. Probably. Anyway, I’m going to sit here for a while and do some thinking, and then I’m going home. Straight home, no detours this time. You can call it a night, too.”

“The persecution rests. See you tomorrow, dude.”

Tom sighed at the silence now coming from his mask, letting go of a tension he seemed to have been carrying for a long time. He moved to the door that led to the stairway that gave access to the roof, checked to make sure that it was locked. If anybody came up there for some late night star gazing, he would have plenty of warning before they got through the door. He moved to a set of lawn furniture, something he saw often on the rooftops of the city, and settled himself into a chair and leaned back. After a moment he reached up and lowered his hood, then unclipped the feeds to his goggles and mask, which he also removed. He felt the cool night air as it brushed his face, took a deep breath and held it in deep before releasing it. Along with the breath he also released a lot of the anger and turmoil that had been riding inside him for the past two weeks, feeling it flow like foul water from the deepest parts of his soul.

San Francisco rightfully boasts some of the most eclectic architecture in the world. It was as if every building had been designed and built by a different hand, each one with his or her own unique way of seeing things. Even the rows on many streets of nearly identical Queen Ann’s stood out, with garish paint schemes and clashing colors, at odds with the otherwise stately designs. It was a city built by artists and navigating the streets was a practice in distraction, as each structure seemed to compete with the others for attention.

But that was a public pleasure, available to anybody in the city with a pair of eyes and the wit to use them. When he first started flying the skies of San Francisco Tom had found an equally strange world that only he seemed to have access to. Since snow was almost unknown in the city by the bay, the rooftops of both private and commercial buildings were typically flat, and in a town where living space was at a premium most had been converted into private little oases for the tenants below. Sundecks, gardens, outdoor gymnasiums, nothing seemed too strange to be part of the rooftop world. Tom had even seen putting greens and at least one bowling alley. Patio furniture was common, statues, and even the occasional fountain. He had seen it all, and yet there was always seemed to be something else to see.

The rooftop he was on was typical, if any of them could be called that. There was the redwood patio chair with the flower print cushion that he sat on, and a matching chaise lounge. A small side table sat next to the lounge, with circular stains from cold drinks on its surface. Someone liked to sunbathe out here. In a corner overlooking the street and also the best view stood a lone stool and an artist’s easel. Someone also liked to sketch. No, wait, there was a stained rag hanging from a corner of the easel. Someone liked to paint.

He turned around and looked at the wall behind him. The roof had two levels, behind that wall was probably a utility room. The wall itself was a pink stucco, and halfway up at just under shoulder height were three large, brightly colored Mexican tiles. Even in the darkness Tom could see the beautiful and intricate patterns. Not something added on by the tenants who came and went, but a part of the building itself, invisible from the ground, something meant for private viewing only. It was the fascinating touches such as these that made the rooftop world something that only he was in a position to really appreciate.

And he had planned to share that world with Holly.

Tom sighed, then stood. He pulled the mask and goggles on, and started to hook his communications gear back up. Alright, he and Holly had screwed up. They were both guilty of the same crimes, recklessness and shortsighted arrogance. And it was up to both of them to take steps to correct their faults, or as it stood they would never have a chance, as a couple or as a team.

He strode to the parapet and stepped up. And kept on going.

*****

According to the GPS unit Tom was traveling at just under fifteen hundred feet in altitude. This was his usual corridor over the city, high enough to be completely invisible from the ground, yet still comfortably under the umbrella of most air travel except for police and traffic helicopters. The GPS also showed him when he had arrived above his neighborhood, and allowed him to hover over what should be his warehouse home. Although in the gloom of late night it was impossible to know that for sure, as there was little in the district to differentiate between one old warehouse and the dozens of others. He solved this by flicking a switch on his bandoleer.

In the darkness directly below a tiny square of purplish light came on and began to pulse, blinking off and on again every three seconds. Tom began to drop, plummeting for awhile in a controlled freefall, then breaking to a smooth stop less than ten feet from the rooftop. Slowly he settled down, and as his feet touched the makeshift landing pad the lights automatically went out. The only source of brightness left was from a single forty watt bulb over the doorway that led into the loft. He had already taken off his gloves and was working on the mask before he reached the door.

On the trip back he had decided against calling Holly immediately, and trying to patch things between them. Not that he didn’t intend to do that as soon as possible, but half past midnight was probably too late for a heart to heart conversation, especially over the phone. He’d get some sleep and a shower, and then go by her and Dieter’s condo tomorrow. But he wouldn’t wait a second longer than that, now that he was no longer fighting it he realized just how much he had missed her. He knew that it would probably involve quite a bit of groveling, but he was prepared for that too…

He had just closed the door behind him when the loft was suddenly flooded with light. Startled he spun around, blinking in the glare, crouching instinctively to prepare for an attack. The loft should have been empty, who—?

Movement, in the corner. He blinked, stunned, as she stepped hesitantly forward. Holly.

He froze for a long moment, holding his breath, lost in the sight of her. Holly, with her arms crossed over her chest, hugging them to herself, making herself smaller. Holly, whose sapphire blue eyes looked down at the ground as she approached, then hesitantly rose to his own.

Holly.

“Tom?... Tom, please. We have to talk.”

He licked dry lips before he could answer. It was hard to hear his own words over the pounding of his heart.

“Yeah. Yeah, we really do, don’t we.”