Mystery Men Part 4

MARCH 17, 7:30 PM

Karl Rainey cursed loudly as he banged his sprained ankle getting into the squad car. Muttering under his breath, he carefully placed his bandaged leg and slammed the door shut.

“You okay, Mr. Rainey?” the cop that had been assigned to him asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“I’m fine,” Rainey replied, unable to keep the anger from his voice. He was far from fine…in fact, he couldn’t recall a time in his life when he was as angry as he was now.

The officer put the car into gear and cautiously pulled out into traffic. They made their way from Blessed Mary Hospital through the streets of Century toward Rainey’s apartment.

Damn feds, he thought as he rummaged through his coat pockets for his cigarettes. As if I didn’t go through enough last night…

When they had first entered his room at the hospital, he had mistaken them for more detectives. By that time, he had spoken to so many cops about the incident at the Courage Café that he was beginning to wonder if any of them knew who was supposed to be handling the case. “Hello, officers,” he had said to them as he was pulling his pants on. “Don’t mind me, but I have had about enough of this place.”

The two of them had stared at him blankly. Finally, one of them broke the silence. “Agents, actually, Mr. Rainey,” the man said coldly, as if he had been insulted. “I’m Agent Stone, this is Agent Curry. We are with the Bureau”

After they showed him their credentials, they asked to hear his story. He explained to them that he had told the cops at least a dozen times, but they still wanted to hear it from him. So he told the story again. Most of it he managed to relate without editorializing, like any good journalist should, but when he got to the part about Officer Duke dying, he couldn’t help but get a bit emotional. The young man had died because he had gone to the Courage to meet Rainey; he couldn’t help but feel responsible.

Agent Stone listened to him, showing about as much emotion as if he’d been reading his grocery list. When Rainey was finished, Stone nodded. “We believe, Mr. Rainey,” the agent began, “that either you or Officer Duke, or perhaps both of you, were the targets of this attack. With this in mind, you will be placed into custody of the Century City PD until we have determined who was responsible.”

Rainey shook his head. “To hell with that,” he said. “I’ve got work to do…”

Agent Stone cut him off. “You will be taking some time off from your job at the Chronicle, Mr. Rainey. Effective immediately.”

Rainey had stared at the two FBI Agents, his mouth agape. “You want to keep me quiet,” he realized. “You don’t want me telling this story.”

“That’s right, Mr. Rainey,” Stone agreed. “You will have the next six months off, but will receive your regular wages during that time. Should we determine that more time is needed, we will arrange for that as well.”

Agent Curry spoke for the first time. “We suggest you take a nice vacation, Mr. Rainey. Europe’s out of course…but you could go to Florida or Hawaii. Maybe a nice trip up to Massachusetts to visit that mother of yours.”

Rainey didn’t respond. Had that been a threat? He couldn’t be sure…all he could be sure of was that there was no winning here. There would be no article in tomorrow’s edition about the incident at the Courage Café.

Sure that they had made their point, the two federal agents left him there in his hospital room to finish getting dressed for checkout.

And so here he was in the passenger seat of a Century PD squad car with another cop. He looked over at the officer, who seemed a few years older than Duke; like the city itself, Century’s police department was incredibly young. “What was your name again, officer?”

The cop answered without taking his eyes off the road. “Dolan,” he said. “Jimmy Dolan.”

“I’m sorry, Officer Dolan…I’ve been through a lot today.”

The young man smiled. “Understandable, sir,” he said. “And it’s Jimmy, sir…no need to be formal.”

Rainey smiled for the first time since the Courage. “Fair enough…how many other guys have been assigned to baby sit me?”

“Just me and one other, sir. He’s waiting for us at your apartment.”

They pulled up to his building a few minutes later and made their way inside. Rainey had a difficult time managing the stairs to his second floor place on the crutches. He got to his apartment to find the door ajar.

He pushed it open with the end of one of his crutches and cursed loudly again. His apartment looked like it had been hit by a tornado…papers and books were strewn about, the cushions of his furniture had been torn open, and the drawers of his desk hung from their wooden frame.

Officer Dolan insisted on going in first and Rainey hobbled in after him. “You would think I committed a crime and wasn’t the victim of one,” he said angrily.

“Hey, Dolan,” a rough voice said from the kitchen. Rainey turned to see the other cop, a huge brute of a man, rise from his seat at the kitchen table. That room had fared slightly better than the living room, but was still in pretty bad shape.

Rainey pointed accusingly at the big cop. “You always treat victims like they’re suspects?”

The cop sneered at him…or maybe just looked at him; it seemed the sneer was a permanent expression. “I didn’t do this.”

Officer Dolan nodded. “It was the feds,” he explained. “They were here before going over to meet you at the hospital. Said they wanted to see if they could find any clues as to why some one would want you dead.”

The big cop laughed at that, but didn‘t smile. “All they had to do was pick up the morning paper,” he said. “Mr. Rainey, I’m Officer Hogan.”

Rainey’s eyes went wide. He recalled scribbling the name in his notebook right before Duke had been shot.

Hogan nodded. “I can see that you’ve heard of me before.”

“You’re Eddie Duke’s partner,” Rainey said quietly. His feelings of guilt surged inside him. “I’m very sorry about what happened to him, officer.”

Hogan just stared at him.

“He saved my life,” Rainey said. What else was there to say?

Hogan turned back toward the kitchen. “I was hard on him, you know? Did he tell you that? I was hard on him because I wanted to make him a good cop. Seems like maybe I didn’t need to be so hard. He died probably thinking that I hate him.” His gravelly voice had grown quiet.

Dolan took the awkward silence that followed to place the cushions back on the furniture in the living room. “We should all sit down and talk.”

Rainey made his way over and awkwardly plopped down into his lounge chair. “What is there to talk about?” he asked as he placed his crutches on the floor beside the chair. “I thought we were just going to get some of my stuff before we headed to wherever you guys are going to be keeping me.”

“We’ve got a little time,” Hogan said, taking a seat on the couch next to Dolan.

Officer Dolan leaned forward. “What do you think the incident at the Courage was all about, Mr. Rainey?” he said.

Rainey shrugged. “Well, the FBI seems to think it was because some one wants to keep a lid on the whole Mystery Men thing, but I don’t know…if that was the case, then why wait till now? I’ve been writing about them for over a year now.”

“Maybe none of your previous stories were anywhere near the truth,” Hogan said. “The whole thing that happened with me and Duke might’ve been your first real eyewitness account.”

Rainey gave that a thought and then nodded. “It was definitely the strongest lead I’ve had since starting the story. You could be right. But I don’t get what you are driving at.”

Dolan began to answer, but Hogan cut him off. “I want to know why my partner died. And who did it.” He pounded a fist into the coffee table in front of him and it shuddered violently. “I want the truth. Don’t you, Rainey?”

Rainey nodded. “Of course,” he said. “But they’ve taken my job away from me. What can we do?”

Hogan smiled. “Well, you’re a reporter, and we’re cops. Something tells me we might be able to piece some things together if we try real hard.”

Rainey laughed at his sarcasm. “Okay, good point. But aren’t we supposed to leave town or something?”

The younger cop smiled and nodded. “I’ve got that covered. We’re supposed to head to D.C.,” Dolan explained. “I’ll go there and check in with HQ everyday like I’m supposed to, while you two are free to do what you can.”

Hogan nodded. “I’ve also got a guy who will be helping us…a private eye who can move about more freely than we might be able to.”

“Are you sure you can trust this guy?” Rainey asked. “I mean, we’ll be in some deep shit if we are found out.”

Hogan nodded again. “The guy specializes in weird cases and the Century PD has called him in to work on some of the crazier things that have happened here. I worked with him a couple of times and kind of became pals with him. Maybe you’ve heard of him…he’s from New England, too. Name’s Patrick Malone.”

Rainey thought the name might’ve sounded familiar from a story he covered years ago when he’d still been living in Boston. Something about the town of Dunwich and some strange things that had happened there….he couldn’t recall the details, though.

“Between the three of us, we should be able to get to the bottom of this. I’ve already looked into some things…like what the guys Duke and me were chasing had been up to…and made some interesting discoveries. What do you say, Rainey?”

Rainey smiled. They might be able to keep him from writing about it in the paper, but he was going to get to the truth no matter what. “Count me in.”

* * * * *

MARCH 17, 8:47 PM

David Barry was sweating beneath the heavy welder’s mask. After making the final touches, he shut the torch off and removed the mask. He tossed both down onto the cluttered table beside him and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked down at his finished project and smiled. He always felt happy once a long task was finally complete.

He reached down and lifted his creation from the workbench. It was fairly light….much lighter than he had hoped. A child could lift and aim it if he had to. The barrel was perhaps a bit longer than he would have liked, but he could decide if it could be shortened once he had tested it. Other than that he was satisfied with his work.

He looked over to the clock on another nearby workbench and saw that it was almost nine o’clock. He had worked straight through last night and all through today. He should have been exhausted, but only felt a bit tired. He hadn’t been sleeping much at all lately…no more than a few hours here and there. With all that was going on, he wasn’t at all surprised, but he thought the lack of sleep would have started taking its toll on him.

His mind went back to the phone call he had received an hour before. Luckily, he had stopped the torch for a moment or he never would have heard the thing ring. He picked up to find Sara Klein on the line. Hearing her voice, he assumed the worst.

“No, no,” she had said. “It’s not that…there’s still no word on my uncle. But the reason I’m calling has to do with him.”

Professor Samuel Klein, Sara’s uncle and Dave’s mentor, had been missing for ten days. There was no sign of what had happened to him. It had them both on edge.

She went on to explain that she received a letter from the bank the Professor did business with. It seemed that due to some clerical error, they needed her uncle to come in and re-sign some documents regarding the purchase of a small industrial building over by the docks on Ocean Avenue. “I didn’t know he owned a building down there,” she said.

Professor Klein worked at Fort Nicholas as a special advisor to the military. Dave knew that he was involved in research with military applications, but doubted that Sara had any idea of what her uncle’s work entailed. He also knew that the Professor was suspicious of his work falling into the wrong hands…having escaped Germany only eight years before, it was an understandable concern. Dave had known that Professor Klein had a private laboratory where he could work unwatched and unrestricted. He explained this to her.

“And you didn’t tell me?” she said angrily. “My God, Dave, he could be there right now. He might need help…”

“He asked me not to tell anyone about his private lab,” Dave had explained. “No matter what, he said.” The professor had a lot of eccentricities, but he had long ago proven to David Barry that he was perfectly sane. Dave never even considered telling any of the cops or FBI investigators about the existence of the lab. Having never been there himself, it wasn’t a hard lie to pull off.

“What if he hurt himself…or he fell or had a heart attack?” Sara was nearly screaming now. “He could be there right now!”

“Okay, Sara, “ Dave said trying to soothe her. “Come down to my workshop and we’ll go there and take a look.”

“No!” Now she was screaming. “I don’t want to see you! How could you not tell me about this?”

“Your uncle made me promise, Sara,” he tried to explain. It pained him to hear the hurt in her voice.

She took a deep breath on the other end of the line. “I’m going down to this place to have a look,” she said at last. “Good bye, David.”

“Sara, wait,” he said, but it was too late; she hung up and the connection went dead.

That had been just over an hour ago. He was hoping Sara would get over her anger enough to give him a call and let him know what she found there. In the meantime, he did what he always did in tough times. He went to work.

He walked over to the other end of the warehouse that served as his workshop. He placed the gun down on another table and retrieved the battery unit that would power it. The battery pack had been designed to be worn on the back of the person wielding the rifle. He slipped his arms through the shoulder straps and pulled the unit up onto his back. After securing the straps so that the battery was snug against his back, he pulled the power cord out of its housing and plugged it into the port on the rifle. With a flip of the switch located on the gun’s housing, the unit hummed to life. So far, so good, he thought.

The rifle was a rail gun…it used magnetic fields to propel its ammunition rather than the chemical explosion in conventional firearms. If he had done his calculations correctly, the rail gun’s projectiles could achieve a much greater velocity than a standard rifle and therefore, do more damage.

He looked ahead to see the four sheets of metal that he had lined up to serve as targets. Each was three inches thick and they were lined up one after the other with two feet of space between each one. “Here we go,” he said quietly as he raised the rifle and took aim.

He pulled the trigger. The humming increased for a split second as the weapon fired. Dave heard a loud screech as the bullet found its target. He lowered the rail gun to see that it had totally pierced the first sheet of metal. Smiling, he ran forward to get a closer look.

The bullet had gone completely through the first two sheets and was lodged in the third. He laughed out loud and raised the gun in triumph.

Between the rail gun and his Steelhawk prototype, he might have single-handedly changed the face of modern warfare forever. He wondered what the Professor would think.

“That’s some gun you’ve got there.”

Startled, Dave whirled back toward his work area to find a young man standing there watching him. His clothes were like a soldier’s, but they were colored like no military uniform that Dave had ever seen; a black jumpsuit and dark red leather gloves and boots. The young man smiled as he placed a hand upon an object that lay concealed beneath a sheet on the table. Dave raised the rail gun toward the stranger. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“Relax, David,” the man said. “I’m just here to talk to you.” He raised one hand in a nonthreatening gesture. The other he left on the concealed object.

“How about I call the cops and you can talk to them, huh?”

The young man smiled. He did seem very calm and not dangerous at all. Dave had a hard time keeping the rail gun pointed at him. He lowered it down to his waist, but kept it at the ready.

The stranger patted the object. “I’ve seen you with this thing, you know. A few nights ago, I watched as you gave it a test run.”

This surprised Dave…he’d always been careful about being spotted when he took the Steelhawk out for a ride.

“So, what do you plan on doing with these amazing things you’ve made, Dave? Sell them to the government?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and Dave wasn’t inclined to give one. “I have a better idea…but I think you already know what it is, don’t you?”

“What’s that?”

The young man smiled again. “Keep them for yourself. It is the only way you will still have control over their use. Who knows who will get their hands on these things once you’ve sold them off?” He patted the covered object again. “Isn’t that what you’ve been planning anyway? Isn’t that why Professor Klein wanted you to work for yourself rather than for the government?”

“Who the hell are you?” Dave asked again. “What do you know about Professor Klein?”

“I know where to find him,” the man said. “But I’ll need help to do it.” He pulled the sheet from the object on the table, revealing a strange looking harness with a large device attached. The device had four small fins that protruded from it, two larger ones from the sides and two smaller ones angling up from the back. At the bottom of the device were what looked like two small engines. “I’ll need Steelhawk’s help.”

Dave took one look at the flight pack he had designed. “You want the Steelhawk? There is no way I’m giving it to you.” He couldn’t even imagine how this guy knew about the Steelhawk.

The young man laughed and shook his head. “Actually, Dave, I was talking about you.”

Dave’s brows furrowed. “Listen, pal, I just talked to the Professor’s niece a little while ago…he might already be found.”

The stranger’s smile vanished. “When? Where does she think he is?” When Dave hesitated to answer, the young man grew very anxious. “You have to tell me, Dave…she could be in danger.”

“Danger?” Dave asked. “From who?”

“From the same people that took her uncle.” He raised both hands before himself, pleading. “Tell me where, Dave…you have to trust me on this.”

Dave considered it for a moment. This guy seemed to know a lot of things there was no way he could know. That made Dave nervous, but at the same time, he felt he could trust the stranger. He couldn’t say why…but it was true nonetheless. “He had a private lab over on Ocean avenue…near the docks. I don’t know the exact address.”

The young man headed for the door. “I’ll see to her.”

Dave started to follow. “I’m coming with you…”

The stranger stopped and turned back to him. “No!” he shouted. “You’ve got to stay here. Meet with me again in three nights at midnight, atop the Century Spire. I’ll be able to explain more then.”

“The Spire?” Dave asked. “How am I supposed to get up there?”

But no answer came. The stranger was gone, although Dave hadn’t seen him go out the door. He stood there for a moment, feeling helpless. He thought about Sara and Professor Klein and wondered what had just happened.

He reached a hand down and ran it along the sleek edges of the Steelhawk. He had an overwhelming feeling that his life had just changed irrevocably.