Comic Book Hero Chapter 15

“Man, I cannot believe you took almost a dozen bullets from a machine gun and that’s all that happened to you! Damn, Tom, do you know how freaking lucky you are?”

Tom Blackwood could only nod in response to his brothers’ comments, as he gazed at the bruise marks on his bare torso. They pockmarked his body both front and back, purple-green oblongs that looked no worse than a bad run-in with a coffee table in the dark. It really was amazing, he thought, none of the bruises had even broken the skin. Even the ones that had struck the lightly armored parts of his outfit had barely raised more than welts. The knowledge that by all rights he should be dead sent a shiver down his back, and he hastily pulled his shirt back down. He shifted uneasily in his chair, sharing a somber glance with his brother. The angel of death may have passed him by last night, but he had definitely felt the shadow of its wings.

“Hey, I told you guys something like this might happen if Tom was ever shot. It’s just basic applied physics. When you’re lifting you have almost no virtual mass, which means almost no resistance to an applied force. With no resistance, the force may move you aside, but it can’t penetrate.”

Tom’s brush with death didn’t seem to impress Murray in the slightest. He lay on the old couch with one foot on the floor and the other planted on the cushions, scarping down his third slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza. Today he was wearing another one of his bizarre costumes, this time the pinstriped uniform of a 1930’s baseball player. The ball cap sported the emblem of the New York Yankees, and across the back of the shirt was emblazoned the name ‘Gehrig’. The shoe that dug into the couch cushions had cleats.

It was the night after the rescue of Molly Wu, and the three members of the planning committee where meeting once again in Murray’s workshop. Tom had driven up that afternoon, and he and Murray had spent the day checking the suit for damage, and finding surprisingly little. Accepting Murray’s offer to spend the night, Tom had waited until darkness fell and then flew to his apartment, letting himself in through the balcony. He quickly packed a bag with more of his clothes and personal possessions, included a six-pack of beer for that nights’ meeting, and then left the same way he had come in. He had navigated inside the apartment with the use of a flashlight, and if by some chance Carlton Biggs was once again watching his place, he never knew that Tom had been back. Tom fully intended to meet with the beady-eyed bastard once again, but he’d damn well do it at a time and place of his own choosing.

As he came in for a landing on Murray’s roof, Tom noticed his brother’s minivan parked inside the fence by the back door. He let himself in through the skylight, and Mike grinned at him as he dropped to the floor inside. But he also frowned as he looked his sibling over for any signs of damage from last night’s escapade. Tom braced himself for the expected storm, only to be surprised when Mike merely nodded and then gestured at the open pizza box on the coffee table. Maybe his brother had finally accepted that some dangers were now inherent in Tom’s new life, and just could not be avoided.

As the pizza was passed out and the six-pack duly broached, the three men began to rehash the events of the night before. At first with a somber sense of wonder, but then more eagerly, as if the recounting of the story had turned the event around, altered it to something else. From a time of danger and terror it had become a full blown adventure, to be brought out and marveled at, picked apart and recounted in minute detail. For a brief time the men became three boys, playing at an exciting new game that would never cause them hurt.

“Okay, I get the idea about the lack of resistance. The bullets weren’t bouncing off of me, as much as I was bouncing off of them. That’s why all of my bruises are oblong instead of round. But what I don’t get is why I have any bruises at all. You said when I lift I have no virtual mass, so how come I get hurt even that much?”

“I said almost no virtual mass, Flyboy. There’s still inertia, remember? That alone gives your body enough resistance for the bullets to impart some of their energy, just not all that much. As it is, it’s a damned good thing you were wearing all that body armor, buddy, or this pizza party might have been a wake. Hey, toss me another Tuborg, man, pontification is thirsty work.”

From his strategically placed spot by the refrigerator Mike obliged, tossing the bottle to the little man on the couch. Murray caught it deftly, sitting up to were he could reach the bottle opener. The opener was of the wall mount variety, and had been bolted directly onto the arm of the aging couch. It was a typical Murray modification, one that the Blackwood brothers approved of wholeheartedly.

“You also lucked out on something else, bro. Check this out,” warned Mike, as he swiveled his chair around and proceeded to type rapidly on the keyboard to Murray’s computer. Tom still found himself bemused by the sight of someone else being allowed anywhere near Murray’s beloved systems, but the small man on the couch only watched with idle curiosity. Apparently their weeks of working together had convinced Pablo that Mike really did know what he was doing.

From the speakers came a burst of noise, a tinny racket of gunfire and shouting. Tom felt a clammy chill cross the back of his neck and trail down his spine. He recognized the panicked voices of his brother and Murray, and knew the tape was a recording of last night’s gunfight.

“This is a twenty second sound loop from last night, the twenty seconds where that guy was using you for target practice. Now let me filter out our voices, so you can hear the gunfire more clearly.”

Mike’s fingers flew across the keyboard once again, and on the screen in front of him a series of graphs appeared. As the sound loop played once more a spiked sine wave appeared on each graph, denoting the separate voices of the three men and the staccato peaks of the gunfire. Neon lines that ran their jagged courses across the screen. The loop played again, as one by one Mike used the computer filters to eliminate the individual sounds, until only the gunfire could be heard.

“Seventeen gunshots in twenty seconds time, about half the magazine load for an Ingram submachine gun. Way too slow, Tom. This guy wasn’t firing full auto, he was just pumping the trigger, probably because it was one of those cheap, over the counter semi-autos. Or maybe because he just didn’t know how to flip the full-auto on.

“Tom, those Ingrams spit out lead like a garden hose. If he had managed to pin you with one of them, even the armor and your flying wouldn’t have saved you. You would have been chewed to pieces.”

“He’s right, Flyboy,” put in Murray. “The slugs wouldn’t have penetrated the armor, but the hydrostatic shock caused by all those impacts so close together would have torn your insides up. So don’t let last night go to your head. You are not immortal, just occasionally lucky.” And on that note the little man flipped the cap in one hand off into the darkness, while taking another swallow from the bottle in his other hand.

The bottle cap rattled when it struck the floor, bouncing on the concrete surface. The sound echoed off the corrugated metal walls, trapped inside the cavernous building. From his desk and worktables Murray’s multiple computer screens flickered and glowed, eerie phosphorescence that danced at the corner of their awareness. Like the way sounds echoed in the converted factory, the images on the screens had become part of the background environment, mostly ignored by the three occupants. Which was why no one noticed when one of the security cameras went dark.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” said Mike, a thoughtful look on his face.

“Gotta be a first time for everything,” Murray answered, grinning.

“Watch it, short stuff, you can be replaced. I’m family. Look, remember how we said that sooner or later we’d have to get a contact inside the SFPD? Someone we could pass information and evidence to, maybe even get us some info we can’t get ourselves. Well, what about this girl Tom saved last night, this Inspector Wu. She’s already seen Tommy, and she thinks he’s some sort of Federal agent, right? It could work.”

Tom gave a thoughtful nod, considering. “Yeah, you’re right, it probably could work. Or at least it would work the first couple of times. But I’d think that the faceless Fed routine would wear pretty thin after awhile. Then she’d start asking questions and demanding answers, and when I can’t give them we’d have to worry about her trying to find out who I am. She’d investigate me, maybe start recording my phone calls and trying to trace them, and then we’re no better off than if we called 911.”

“Yeah, and isn’t she kind of young?” Murray asked. His usual nervous energy was kicking in, and the little man came to his feet and began pacing, the coach’s whistle bouncing on his chest. “I mean, she’s only about twenty five, right? Who’s gonna listen to her? She won’t have any seniority with the department, won’t have access to a lot of info we don’t already have from Mike’s hacking. And the stuff she will have access to is mostly on youth gangs and violent crimes, the only two squads she’s ever worked. We want somebody who can tell us about the big guys, organized crime, vice, narcotics, things like that. How can this little girl help us?”

Tom snorted in amusement. “Pablo, if you ever saw this woman swing a tire iron, you’d never call her a ‘little girl’ again. Believe me, she’s tough enough.”

“Yeah, maybe. But she’s still too young, and she doesn’t have the pull that we want in the department.”

“Now wait a minute, guys, don’t go putting my girl Molly down,” said Mike, as much to be opposing Murray as to be defending his position. “Her being young is actually an advantage, it means she’s more likely to accept our story. She’s already got plenty of reason to believe Tom’s a Federal agent, and as far as having enough pull in the department, I bet after last night she’s the PD’s fair-haired child. At first they’ll listen to her just because of that, but afterwards they’ll listen because she’s giving them good information. They won’t care where it comes from, just as long as it’s always solid.”

Mike and Murray paused to look at Tom, who considered the question of Molly Wu. Finally he nodded, making up his mind.

“Okay, we don’t have anything to give the police right now, so at this point the question is moot. But if something does come up that we need to pass along we’ll try Molly first, since she’s already seen me. Going to someone we don’t know is just an unnecessary risk.”

Mike and Murray both nodded, accepting Tom’s decision. At the same time they were once again acknowledging that Tom was the leader of their group, and that the final say was always his.

*****

The door that let out into the back parking lot came open with a soft, metallic click. The figure that knelt before it with a lock pick in his hand stood up, easing the door back just enough to peer through with one eye. After ascertaining that the hallway beyond was empty, he carefully slipped inside, quietly closing the door behind him. He made his way down the corridor on silent feet, guided by the sound of distant voices.

*****

The three men continued their banter, the camaraderie and good humor flowing as freely as the beer. Last night’s adventure had made them feel bolder than before, bigger than before. They were invincible. The fear and danger had been forgotten, subsumed by the heady rush of victory. They were three romantics involved in a righteous cause, and life just didn’t get any better that that.

“Hey, I almost forgot. I think I know a way for us to make a 911 call to the cops without leaving a record with our voices behind,” said Murray. The little man had retaken his seat on the old couch, and was busy helping himself to another slice of pizza. Tom waited for him to take a bite, and then wash it down with a swallow of beer, but Mike wasn’t so patient.

“Short round, if you’re talking about electronic filters, forget it. You can decode most of them and then restore it back to the original voice easily enough. And even if you could come up with a brand new type of filter that they can’t break, sooner or later they’ll develop the science that can. Hell, just take a look at DNA testing. Ever since that technology became practical, they’ve reopened thousands of cases that they couldn’t solve before. We don’t want anybody knocking on Tom’s door five years from now because of a 911 tape we left behind.”

“He’s right, Pablo. And you know we can’t use computer generated voices, either. If the police start getting emergency calls from someone who sounds like a robot, they’re going to get curious.”

As he was talking Tom took an object from his pocket. It was the handgrip exerciser that Dieter Reisbach had given him three days before. Although he and Dieter had not parted on good terms, and would probably never see each other again, Tom had still followed his instructions to the letter and used the exerciser every spare chance he got. Now he removed the leather strap that held the grips together, taking the exerciser in his right hand, and began to mechanically squeeze and release it while he talked. One, two, three…

“You’re giving me a lesson about recorded media science?” Murray scoffed, snorting disdainfully. “Why don’t you guys teach the Barrymores how to act while you’re at it. And I’m not talking about filters or voice generators, either. Well, maybe something like a generator.

“Look, with the standard VG you type in the words that you want, and then the program generates those words with a synthesizer. But the words don’t have the same rhythm as spoken words, they sound stilted, a robot voice, like Tom said. It can’t be printed or traced back to the person who originated it, but anyone who listens to it knows just what it is, and that would draw way too much attention. But I think I might know a way around that.

“See, about five years ago a guy started circulating some software around the movie industry that he wanted to promote. He called it an ‘electronic larynx’, and what it does is it hooks up some voice recognition software to a VG. You speak a sentence and the software recognizes the words, and then regenerates them as sound. But this program also recreates the exact same rhythm and intonation as the spoken sentence, so that it sounds real. You can even change the voices around, be young or old, male or female, even add an accent if you want. I’ve heard this thing, and believe me, you can’t tell the program from a living persons’ voice.”

“Hmmm, sounds like something we can use. But can’t they analyze it and tell that it’s not a human voice?” Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine…

“Oh yeah, with the right equipment. But they have to know what to analyze, first. Do you know how many 911 calls a major US city like Frisco gets every day? Hundreds, maybe even more. It could be years before anybody catches on, and even if they do, so what? They still can’t trace it back to us.”

“Yeah,” said Mike. “But if they figure out how it was done, can’t they at least find the guy who wrote the program? And wouldn’t he know who had gotten a copy of it?”

“Hell, no. I told you, this was almost five years ago. This guy thought he had a cheap way to replace voiceover actors for cartoons and TV commercials, so he sent out copies all over the place. But the Screen Actors Guild shut him down, threatened to call a strike on any studio who used his program to replace one of their members. Nobody’s used it since.

“After so much time, who knows how many bootleg copies are out there? Besides, it needs to be upgraded pretty badly by now. You and I can probably do that, and that should make it just about unrecognizable. Don’t worry, Rockstar, nobody is going to come knocking on our door.”

“I would not go so far as to say that, Pablo.”

A shocked silence followed the announcement, which echoed in the empty confines of the old building. Three heads snapped up, to stare in rapt attention at the figure at the far side of the room.

Dieter Reisbach strode out of the shadows in the back of the warehouse, examining the three figures he was approaching. Pablo and the man with the long hair scrambled quickly to their feet, exchanging panicked looks. It was almost comical, he thought, how they squirmed like two little boys caught doing a mischief. Dieter’s gaze took them in briefly and then turned away, dismissing them. Neither could possibly be the one he sought. He turned his attention instead to the third man in the room, the one who still sat in his chair and returned his look so calmly. Dieter felt a triumphant swell in his chest, as he looked into the gray eyes of the man he knew as Mr. Dark.

Tom felt anything but calm, in fact he felt like he had just been kicked in the stomach by a Clydesdale. There seemed to be something wrong with his face too, and he had to fight to maintain his composure as Dieter locked eyes with him and headed in his direction. Tom knew that once again his world was about to change, but strangely enough he felt no surprise. It was as if he had expected this, and had known that someday he would be facing Dieter without the aid of the mask.

*Screw this. He knows, so we’ll just have to deal.*

As Dieter strode towards him Tom met his gaze evenly and nodded, one equal acknowledging another. He stood, and as the older man stopped in front of him he said, “Hello, Coach. Have any trouble finding this place?”

Dieter raised one eyebrow in surprise, the corners of his mouth quirking upward. Once again, he had underestimated his student. He had expected denials, protestations of innocence, the same sort of guilty response he now saw on the faces of the other two. He had not expected this quick and quiet acceptance of the inevitable.

“Not at all,” he sad, ignoring the other two men. “I have actually been to Pablo’s workshop many times. But I’m afraid we have not been ‘properly’ introduced.”

“I’m Tom Blackwood. The tall blonde guy with the ugly T-shirt is my brother, Mike.”

Murray shifted his weight from foot to foot, swallowing uneasily. “Uh, hey, Dieter. Nice to see you again, guy. Hey, uh, Tom and Mike where just over here helping me on something, but they’ve got to go now. Just let me say goodbye, and I’ll, uh, be right with you in just a—”

“Forget it, Pablo,” Tom said, his calm gaze still fixed on Dieters’ own. “He knows. He didn’t show up here by accident.”

Dieter fought hard not to laugh at his old friend. The look of inevitable doom on Pablo Murray’s face was so comical, his distress so real, that he couldn’t help himself. Unfortunately his efforts to hold back the smile caused it to look like a self satisfied smirk. The expression transformed Murray’s uneasiness into anger, and he scowled back at his old friend.

“Okay, you fucking Kraut, spill it. How the hell did you find out about us? Where did we screw up?”

Dieter wiped the smile off of his face, and looked around at his captive audience. An old friend, a stranger, and the enigmatic man who performed miracles and had saved his life. No, Pablo was right, this was not a time for levity. He was going to make demands on these people, and the very least he owed them was to take the matter seriously. Slowly, deliberately, he took a seat, and waited as they took theirs. When he spoke he addressed his words to the whole group, but for the most part he kept his eyes fixed solely on Tom Blackwood.

“During my recent recuperation, I had a great deal of time to reflect on my encounter with Mr. Blackwood. After some thought, it became obvious that his presence that night was no coincidence. You did not just stumble across us, you called out my daughter’s name, and you knew to speak to her in German. I began to suspect that you had been watching over us, and maybe for some time.

“As soon as I was able to move around, I went looking for evidence that you had us under your surveillance. Although for all I knew you could have just hovered in the air, I did not believe that was likely, and so I looked for someplace that you could have used as an observation post. The burnt out school building seemed the logical choice, especially for a man with your particular abilities.”

Dieter reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the cheap pair of plastic binoculars that Tom had used to watch over the Reisbachs. He gave it an underhanded toss back to its rightful owner. “I believe these are yours.

“After my suspicions were confirmed, I began to wonder why a perfect stranger would be so concerned for our safety. The obvious answer was that someone had put you up to it, and the list of people who knew about my problems and would care enough to do so was not very long. And after our first meeting in the dojo, where you revealed that you knew my true name and history, I knew that only one man could have told you about us. My good and trusted friend, Pablo.”

The tone in Dieter’s voice was more wry than angry, but Murray still had the grace to look embarrassed. Before anything could be said that couldn’t be taken back, Tom stepped in.

“Don’t be too hard on Murray, he was only trying to help you when he sent me out there. And when I decided I wanted to bring you in on this, he only told me about you and your past because he knew that I needed to know. He also figured that if you knew the whole story, you would’ve wanted him to tell me.”

“And in that, he would have been correct,” Dieter said, and looked at his old and dear friend. “It is alright, Pablo. All of my enemies are long dead, and my secrets are no longer of importance. And you were correct, I would have agreed to this, if I had only known the full story. The truth is, I want in.”

The three members of the Planning Committee exchanged puzzled glances, before turning their attention back to the big German. It was obvious that his last statement had left them with many questions, but they seemed unprepared to ask them.

“Yes,” Dieter said, breaking the tension that had begun to creep in. “It is true. For the last twenty years my life has been dedicated to my daughter, and to my business. I had no other reason for living. Don’t take me wrong, that life was fulfilling, I would not have traded any of those years for the world. I am proud of Holly, and proud of what she and I have built together. No man has a right to complain when he has been as blessed as I have.

“But when I was in Die Gruppe, my life was different. It was bigger. We had a mission, something we believed in wholeheartedly. We knew that what we did was important, that the world was a better place because of our actions. As the years pass, I find that more and more, I miss that feeling.

“Pablo, my old friend. Tom has told me some of what you are planning, to use his unique abilities to help others. I want to be a part of that. And not just as a trainer of others, I want to be a full member of your Gruppe.”

Dieter watched his old friend closely, saw the hesitation in his eyes a moment before he turned them to glance at Tom Blackwood. Inside himself the old warrior nodded, as something that he had suspected was now confirmed. His friend Pablo may have been the genius behind all of these wonderful weapons and gadgets that he had already seen, and maybe this whole masked vigilante idea was his, also. But that look had told him that there was only one leader of this conspiracy of madmen, and Pablo was not him.

Tom Blackwood proved his assumption to be right, when he crossed his arms and leaned back, giving Dieter a long, measuring look. Finally he said, “Okay, I can understand why you want to be more involved in this. Hearing about everything afterwards is nothing compared to being part of the planning and carrying it out. But other than training me to fight, what else do you have to bring to the table?”

Dieter felt Pablo and Mike shift nervously at the question, looking between him and Tom warily. But the old counterterrorist was far from insulted. In fact, he would have been disappointed in his student if Tom had simply accepted him into the fold. What they were playing with was quite simply life and death, and not to be taken lightly. Dieter rested his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingertips, as he considered his answer.

“I have training in much more than just the martial arts. I have also been schooled in strategy and tactics, and in the deployment of small units in a combat environment.”

“Useful if we were in an army or even a small squad, but I’m the only one who’s going to be out in the field. What else?”

“I am rated as expert in all small arms, from pistols to assault weapons, and also anti-personnel explosives. I am also a qualified sniper and gunsmith.”

“Yeah, and once again, I’m the only one who’ll be going into combat, and I don’t use guns. And as far as explosives go, I’m betting Murray would know even more about them than you do, especially the non-lethal kind. So far, Dieter, you’re not showing me anything that I need.”

“I–I was a police officer before I was GSG-9. I was in the Bundesgrenzschutz, I know police procedures, how to conduct an investigation…”

But Tom Blackwood was shaking his head. “I read up on the BPol, Dieter. They’re the border police, they don’t conduct regular criminal investigations. And that was twenty years ago, in another country. Your training is both out of date and irrelevant.”

Dieter felt his jaw clench, and the skin across his forehead began to tighten. This was not going as he had expected! Why was Tom doing this to him? Was it some sort of punishment, a payback for the harsh way he had treated him during their few training sessions? Was he trying to humiliate him?

The big German rose, his back straight and tense as an iron bar. When he spoke his voice was taut, and his hands began to unconsciously clench into fists. “If you do not want me in on this, just say as much. But if you intend to shame me—”

“I’m trying to make you think, Dieter!” the flying man snapped, also rising to his feet. “I’m not going to war, and I don’t need a freaking military adviser. I’m trying to help people, like I helped you and Holly. No scorched earth, no dead bodies lying around, and no fucking headlines. In and out, and if possible without leaving a single trace. Try thinking like that, and then tell me what you have to offer.”

Tom’s words stopped him, made him blink in thought. Dieter suddenly realized that the younger man was right, he had been thinking of this as some sort of quasi-military action. If he was going to be of any use in this endeavor, he had to start thinking differently. And abruptly, he knew just what it was that he had to ‘bring to the table’.

“Surveillance. Information gathering. Infiltration and exfiltration techniques. I am also an expert in the restraining and handling of prisoners.”

Tom met his gaze and then nodded, and the tension level in the cavernous room suddenly dropped. Pablo and Mike both let out breaths that neither knew they had been holding.

“Now you’ve got it, Dieter. And I’m sure there’s a hell of a lot more that you can offer. Okay, if you’re crazy enough to want in, then we’re smart enough to want you. One thing, though. This is my team. My ass is the one on the line, so I’m the one who calls the shots. So are you absolutely sure that you can take orders from me?”

The big German smiled, and nodded. “Believe me, my friend, the one place that you must learn to follow orders is in the German Police. Do not worry, Tom, I will obey you in all things, but I do have one condition of my own.”

The flying man studied him for a moment, and then nodded. “Holly,” he replied, and felt no need to elaborate.

“Yes, that is correct. My daughter. If she finds out about our arrangement, she will insist on being a part of it. I buried her mother twenty years ago, I have no intention of doing the same for her. She is not to be a part of this, not for any reason.”

Tom seemed to consider this, and then shrugged. “Okay, I can live with that. But maybe you’d better try telling that to her,” he said, nodding in a direction over Dieter’s shoulder.

A startled look came over the old warrior’s face, just before he spun around to gape at the figure behind him. Across the wide room, standing in the shadow of a doorway with her arms crossed and a ferocious scowl on her face stood his daughter, the topic of their conversation.

Tom slid his hands into his pockets and turned to Mike and Pablo, both of whom appeared as stunned by this turn of events as Dieter was.

“Get used to it, guys,” he said, casually. “She seems to do this a lot.”

*****

“So what are they saying now, Pablo?”

“The same. He’s saying it’s too dangerous, that he’s not going to watch her die just like her mother did. She’s saying that it’s her life and she can live it the way she wants. He says she’s a disrespectful daughter who ought to be locked in her room until she grows up. She says she’s twenty six years old, and he should stop treating her like a child. Yadda yadda yadda…”

Mike shook his head in disgust. “Jesus, how long are they going to keep this up? It’s been over half an hour already!” With a sigh of irritation the lanky hacker turned back to Murray’s computer and restarted the game of Quake he had been playing.

“By the way, how long were you aware of Holly being here?” Murray asked Tom, putting his cleated feet up on the coffee table.

“I first saw her right after Dieter came in. At first I thought she came with the old bastard, but after awhile I realized he didn’t even know she was there. I figure she must have followed him.”

“Yeah, I’m getting the same feeling. She told me awhile back something about how she always knows when he’s going hunting by the look on his face.”

“Okay,” Tom said, leaning back into the couch and stretching out his legs. “My German is still pretty rusty. Which one of them do you think is winning?” He passed the little hand exerciser from his right hand to his left, and once again started the endless cycle of repetitions. One.. two.. three..

Murray snorted. “Your German sucks, Blackwood. It always has. But it looks to me like Holly is finally beginning to wear her old man down. Won’t be long, now.”

Tom nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off of the two combatants. Unlike his brother, he wasn’t the least bit bored with watching the father and daughter conflict going on in Pablo Murray’s workshop. In fact, he had come to believe that he could watch Holly Reisbach go on like this for hours.

Christ, but she was something else. As tall as a model, but long and lean, and muscled like a wild animal. The resemblance was increased by the way her eyes flashed as she and Dieter argued back and forth without any sign of letup. The fire in her that seemed to leap and roar so fearlessly, was providing one of the most fascinating shows he had ever seen. And the fact that she was now raking that overbearing father of hers over the coals was pretty damned hot, too.

Tom had to work hard to keep the grin off his face.

It appeared that Murray was right, though, the argument was finally winding down. Dieter was now talking softly to Holly, his hands raised in an entreaty. But the lovely girl was shaking her head adamantly. She reached up and touched her father on one broad shoulder, the touch becoming a tender stroke, as she looked into his eyes and answered. The big man’s shoulders finally slumped in defeat, as he took Holly into his arms and hugged her, kissing the top of her head. For her part Holly melted into the embrace, seemed to draw strength from it. Tom was suddenly very uncomfortable, as if he had been caught spying on something private, and felt the need to turn his eyes elsewhere.

Finally Dieter turned around and, still with his arm around her shoulder, walked his daughter across the cold concrete floor to where the three members of the Planning Committee waited. He stopped, and before the big man said anything he gave Tom a hard, not-quite hostile look. Tom replied with the blankest expression he could come up with.

“Holly, the man in the corner is Michael Blackwood. You have not met him before, and I myself have only just now done so. I believe, though, that we will be working closely with him in the near future.”

Holly gave Mike a wave and a mega kilowatt smile. “Hi, Mike. Pleased to meet you.”

“Umm, yeah. Likewise.”

“And this… this is Mike’s brother, Tom. Him you have already met.”

“Hello, Holly.”

Holly looked at the man before her, a line forming briefly between her eyes when she did not recognize the voice. But then she saw those same grey eyes that had been on her mind for weeks, and her doubts vanished. She smiled at him, and held out her hand.

“Hello, umm, Tom,” she answered, then suddenly smiled. For a timeless moment they held hands, until the man she had just met, Mike, cleared his throat loudly.

“Umm… we got pizza?”

*****

The meeting between the Reisbachs and the Planning Committee went on for over two hours, both sides taking the time to feel each other out. At first it was a slow and often painful progress, even with Murray acting as the go-between. Their worlds were so different, the two computer techs and the people from Hollywood, that at first they had trouble finding common ground, and instead milled around in the discomfort of those newly met. But then Holly asked Tom how he came into his powers, and the flying man soon found himself playing story teller.

Slowly it all came out. The explosion at Lydecker Labs, the stay in the hospital. The day he had argued with Mike and suddenly found himself levitating off the floor. He told them about the experiments he and his brother had performed, and they listened in fascinated silence as he described the heady rush of his first solo flight in the night-time skies outside of Sacramento. And then they laughed when he told them about Murray’s reaction when Tom had first shown him his miraculous new ability.

Tom had to get up and pace for awhile before he went on to the next part, but Holly and her father waited patiently, having guessed what was coming. Eventually he sat down again and, after taking a deep breath, he told them about that week in San Francisco.

“I screwed up. I didn’t take it seriously, and I never even tried that cell phone to make sure it worked, and I didn’t bring any sort of weapon, either. And when those bikers surrounded you guys, the first thing I did was freeze. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say, just, I’m sorry.”

Dieter shared a look with his daughter, then shrugged when he turned back to the penitent man before him. “One thing you must learn when you become a warrior, Tom, is that hindsight is 20/20. There is always something you could have done differently. Yes, you were surprised, and you hadn’t prepared adequately. But in the end you saved our lives, and isn’t that all that matters?”

Holly gave him a reassuring smile, obviously agreeing with her father. Tom sighed, feeling a weight of guilt he hadn’t realized he had still been carrying abruptly vanish. Now he put it all behind him, and continued his story.

Tom held nothing back, he told about the rest of that night, and about the little girl in the alley. Then he told them about the return to his apartment, and the resulting two days of soul searching, his penetration of Lydecker Labs, what he found there and the resulting lawsuit. And then his talk with Murray and his brother Mike, and the day that they had formed the Planning Committee.

“So I left everything in their hands for a couple of weeks, and took some of my new money and went to Japan to straighten a few things out with my ex. See, I’ve got a son, an eight year old boy named Benny, and his Mom took him overseas and was trying to get sole custody. She seemed to think that since she made more money than I did, that that made her the better parent. So I went to Osaka and waved my brand new checkbook under her nose, and suddenly she was a whole lot more reasonable about the visitation rights.” He carefully bypassed just how reasonable Miko had ended up being.

Tom had to pause for a short while before he continued. The pounding he took from Carlton Biggs was still too fresh in his mind, along with the humiliation of it. He shouldn’t have worried, Dieter had seen him in actual battle, and knew that his powers would have made it easy for him to defeat this crooked ex-cop. If he knew how impressed the old warrior was with his restraint, in the way that he had allowed himself to be beaten rather than give away his secret, he would have felt an embarrassing blush of pride.

Which brought them up to the point where Tom had re-introduced himself to the Reisbachs, which Dieter now took as an opportunity to ask questions. Before long Mike and Pablo were enthusiastically going over all the many innovations they had come up with in the past few months to aid Tom in his endeavors, and all that their experiments had managed to unveil about his abilities. When told about the recording properties of the outfit’s surveillance gear, Holly immediately asked to see the record of Tom’s last workout at the dojo. She laughed uproariously, and Dieter groaned and buried his head in his hands, when Tom ended up knocking him down and perching on top of him like a black clad gargoyle, but by the third replay even he was laughing at himself.

*****

The rest of the evening took on a party air, and the good cheer and camaraderie began to flow along with the beer that Murray had brought out. Finally, while Dieter, Pablo and Mike were enthralled with the disc of last nights adventure, Tom managed to quietly catch Holly’s eye. With a gesture of his head he indicated the far back reaches of the old building, then turned and silently slipped away from the others. He could just barely hear the soft schufff ¬of Holly’s shoes as she followed.

When they far enough into the shadows for privacy, he asked her softly, “Do you want to get some fresh air?”

Holly looked puzzled. She had been to Murray’s workshop several times before, and she knew that there was only one entrance to the building, and it was at the other end. But then Tom grinned and gestured upwards with his thumb, and she suddenly understood when she looked to the skylight windows. With a grin she jumped into Tom’s arms and wrapped hers around his neck. Tom was surprised, but then his hands locked around her waist firmly and Holly gasped as they slowly started to rise into the air.

At the ceiling Tom had to let go with one hand in order to unlatch the widow, and then they slid effortlessly through and out into the night. He floated, guiding them across the expanse to the edge of the low parapet, before settling them both down on the graveled roof. Holly reluctantly stepped out of his arms, and looked out at the lights of West Sacramento.

There wasn’t really all that much to see. She was used to the sights of San Francisco and Los Angeles, which easily outshone Sacramento’s industrial area at night. But the breeze was fresh and cool, and smelled of the nearby river and the abundant trees the town was famous for. And she had just flown, held in the arms of the man who had so recently rescued her and her father from death. What the hell did she care about the view.

“Uhh, sorry about the troubles between you and Dieter. I really didn’t want to cause you guys any problems.”

She looked at Tom and then laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about Poppa and me. We have a knock-down, drag-out fight like that about once every other month. Now that I’m back home, he’s having a little trouble remembering that I’m old enough to vote. And live my own life.

“Umm, Tom? I… I wanted to say thank you again. For that night that you saved our lives. I just… I was never so scared in my life, you know? When that psycho had that shotgun held to my head. And then you called out to me in German to get ready. By the way, your German sucks.”

Tom threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, so I’ve been told. But at least you understood me, and the guy with the shotgun didn’t.”

“Yeah, there is that. So where did you learn to speak it from, the Army?”

“No, I was stationed in England, I never even got over to the continent. But in high school I belonged to the German club.”

“The German club? Oh my God, you really were a geek!”

Tom laughed again, and then reached out his hand. Holly took it and held it as they sat on the roof and watched the twinkling lights of the ships down by the harbor. They didn’t talk or even think about her father at all, nor about the strange circumstances that had brought them together. The future they were facing was unknowable, and by silent consent they didn’t talk about that either.

Right now was good enough.

END OF BOOK 1