Book II Chapter 7

Molly Wu stood in front of Lt. Burke’s desk, watching as the big man examined the pages and photos of the report she had gotten from her mysterious rescuer the night before. When she had first told him about the late night contact and handed him the file, he had taken one look at some of the surveillance photos and let out a long, low whistle under his breath. Since then he had been silent, reading the rest of the report with total concentration. Molly waited patiently, knowing from her own experience just what the other man was feeling. Finally, the Lieutenant leaned back in his chair and made an appreciative noise.

“Well, whoever these guys are, they’re thorough. We’ve got at least ten known Trojans that I can spot going into that place, and almost as many Familia. That’d be enough to get a takedown warrant all by itself, but the rest of this! How the hell did your friend manage to get pictures inside this place?”

Burke indicated one photo in particular, with a caption printed on the back saying it came from the attic. The images in it were of the grainy, greenish hued kind that only came from low light photography. It showed the interior of a room with sloping ceilings and exposed beams, in the center of which was a cardboard folding table. Several boxes of ammunition of various manufacture were stacked on the table, along with at least a dozen pistols and revolvers. Four pump shotguns and a lever action rifle with a scope leaned against the table or lay on the floor, and against the back wall were two M-16 assault rifles.

“I don’t know, sir. We didn’t exactly spend the night trading life stories. I still don’t even know what his name is. But what I do want to know is, are we going to take him up on his offer to help us take this place down?”

Burke was still shaking his head, but after several seconds he shrugged resignedly. “It’s up to the Captain, of course, but I think I’d recommend it. Six guards with rifles on rooftops around the neighborhood, an unknown number of bangers inside the house, and this little arsenal! If we send SWAT in their, we’ll have a shooting war on our hands. But your Fed says that he can not only take out the guards, but get the occupants of the house to come out on their own. I think it’s worth it.”

“The Captain, right. Uhh, LT…” she stopped, hesitating. Thinking about what else she had been told last night. Should she tell him, actually confront her boss with what the man in the pea coat had told her? Because that’s what it would be, no matter how she phrased it.

But Burke was still staring at the report and muttering to himself, taking notes on a scratch pad while he read. Apparently he hadn’t noticed her hesitant opening, and now the moment was gone as Molly lost her nerve.

“I’m going to call Popiel over at SWAT, show him this file and see what he thinks. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him where it came from, but I do want his input on this. If he agrees, I want to take these guys down tomorrow night. When are you supposed to meet with your guy again?”

“Umm, tonight. Seven o’clock, at the same parking structure.”

“Good. If Sgt. Popiel signs off on this I should have an answer for you by then. If he can arrange it, I want to do this takedown tomorrow night. We’ll see if your Fed can actually deliver what he promises.”

Molly looked at her boss out of the corner of her eye. “You almost sound as if this is a test. Is that what we’re doing, testing him and his people? What happens if it turns out they’re not really Federal agents? What if they really are just a bunch of vigilantes, like we first thought? Are we still going to use them?”

“You’re damned right we are,” Burke said, grinning. “We don’t know who this guy is, no matter what he says. But he’s promised us a lot, and if he actually brings this takedown home, I’ll be willing to believe that he can do the rest of it. And as long as he keeps doing it, this department doesn’t care if he’s Freddy the Fed, or Osama Bin Laden. He’s another resource, another snitch, and we will use him as such.”

Molly could only nod, and look away. Lt. Burke was right, and she knew it. But she left the meeting with two very large questions burning in the back of her brain.

Why had the Lieutenant lied about informing their Captain about the vigilante investigation? And who was really using who?

*****

The dark blue assault vest had gotten both heavier and hotter as the night wore on. It was also too large, and the thick material dug into her forearms as she moved. Outside, it was a cool, crisp evening, but inside the SWAT van along with the eight other warm bodies that shared its confines, the air was getting more than a little thick. Molly looked around at the hard bright eyes of her fellow officers, listened to their jokes and felt the thrum of nervous energy that underlay it. Like a big bass string, vibrating all by itself along the length of her spine.

It reminded her of the last time she had been surrounded by these same people, the night she had been kidnapped at the Galleria. Sitting in the conference room back at the station earlier, feeling like a little kid intruding into the world of the grownups. Feeling out of place, that she had yet to prove herself, and sure that all of these hard eyed people felt the same way.

A smile tugged at the corners of her lips, as she leaned back against the hard metal walls of the SWAT van. It was almost laughable, how much things had changed. The events of three months ago, her bringing in three armed kidnappers while bound and gagged, had taken on the dimensions of legend amongst the SFPD, and doubly so amongst the SWAT teams. Not only had they almost lost one of their own that night, but it had been someone that they had been assigned to protect. If she had died, careers would have ended as surely as night follows day. That night, and her subsequent record of good, solid arrests and convictions had earned her both acceptance and respect.

Sgt. Popiel, the same team commander she had worked with three months ago, stretched out one foot and nudged her toe with the tip of his combat boot. When she looked up he nodded at her, and spoke. “It’s getting close to jump off, Wu. How sure are you that this source of yours can do what he promised? If he can’t and we don’t want to scrub the mission, I’ll need time to set up my people.”

Molly glanced at her watch, although she was already aware of the time. 10:30pm. “We’ve still got another half hour, Sergeant. As far as trusting this guy, frankly I don’t know, this is the first time we’ve used him. But the info he gave us on this place is solid, so I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt for the rest of it.”

Popiel shook his head. “Taking out the sentry posts, and getting all those hop head gang bangers to come out of that mini fortress of theirs? I just don’t see how he can do it. Even if he used tear gas, most of them would come out shooting. And we know what kind of ordinance they’ve got in there. I don’t like it, Wu, and what I don’t like, I don’t trust.”

Molly shrugged, as if to say she didn’t like it either. But what could you do? “I can certainly understand that, Sergeant. But look at it this way; we would have to go in there to root these guys out anyhow, so what have we got to lose?”

“The element of surprise, and every tactical advantage we had. If your man fails and ends up tipping the Trojans off, they could hit the streets and blast their way out before we even had a chance to get out of this van.”

Molly had no answer for that; she had already run the same scenario through her head a dozen times. But what were they to do? People higher than either her or Sgt. Popiel had already made the decision, so here they were, and they’d just have to live with the consequences. She tried not to show how worried that made her, and across from her the grizzled veteran of a hundred takedowns was doing the same.

The meeting with the mystery Fed had taken place the night before, and although they had both left in complete agreement on what they were to do, it still left her with a strong sense of unease. The man in the pea coat had stepped out of the darkness just the same as before, only this time his manner had been much more abrupt and business like. She had a strong sense that he might have been there with her, but his mind was a million miles away. He was preoccupied, almost angry, enough so that she had been hesitant to ask him any of the questions that had been burning in her for two days. And when their business was concluded, he had abruptly turned and strode off, leaving her standing there with all those questions remaining unasked.

Molly had no idea what this meant for tonight’s operation, but it left her with a sense of unease that she tried hard not to show. She gave Popiel a look that she hoped said ‘confident but not cocky’, and ended instead with ‘inscrutably Oriental’. It seemed to work, though, because the SWAT team leader gave her a nod and then turned back to his men and the quiet conversation they had been holding. Leaving Molly alone with her own thoughts.

*****

J Dog and Jamal Sikes sat on metal chairs around the folding cardboard table, playing a card game Jamal’s brother had taught them. The game was called Euchre, something the elder Sikes had learned while he was in the Army, over in Germany, or someplace like that. They weren’t really playing, ’cause you needed at least four people to play, but Jamal was trying to teach him. J Dog didn’t really give a rat’s ass about the stupid game, but since they had to sit up here with no lights, TV or tunes for four hours, he’d agreed to give it a try. Shit, there was nothing else to do.

The room they were in was on the second floor of a run down, abandoned house, totally dark except for near the window where they had set up the card table. A street light just down the block gave them just enough light to just make out what cards they were holding, while at the same time letting them see the darkened street below. The street they were supposed to be watching, and covering with the two assault rifles that leaned next to the wall within easy reach.

J Dog hated this sentry shit, but he was smart enough to know how important it was. If the pigs ever tried to take down the lab up the street, him and Jamal and the other Trojans at the end of the block would have to use those guns to cover their homeboys. Shoot the pigs in the back, pin them down long enough for the Trojans and the spics to bail through the tunnel into the house behind. Or maybe, if there weren’t too many of them, to catch Porky in a crossfire. Show the man that the Richmond was still Trojan turf, fuckin’ A right.

J Dog wasn’t sure which option he preferred, pinning the pigs down or cutting them up like sandwich meat. You’d score some major street points for offin’ some blues, but it could bring a whole hell of a lot of heat down on a brother’s head. In the end he decided that if it ever came down, he’d play it however it happened. Just as long as he got to shoot somebody with that fuckin’ big assed Ruskie rifle, he’d be happy.

Jamal was just dealing out another hand, trying to explain one more time why they only had twenty four cards in the deck, when a tapping sound interrupted him. They both looked up, surprised, at the window, seeing a movement in the faint light. J Dog blinked, then focused on the end of long black cable that was hanging down, moving across the glass pane with an annoying scratching noise.

Jamal laughed, joked “Fuck, man, I didn’t know we had cable.”

J Dog snorted. “Wind must’ve knocked it down. Hey, whatchu doin’?” he asked, as Jamal started to fumble with the window.

“I’m gonna pull that sucker down, man. Be makin’ too much noise to play, that tappin’ gonna drive me crazy.”

J Dog watched, as the other man worked the window open, grunting at the way the old pane stuck in the warped frame. When Jamal had finally got it open J Dog frowned, noticing the absence of any sort of wind at all. How did that fuckin’ cable dance all over the window like that, if there wasn’t any wind?

Jamal leaned forward and reached for the dangling black cable, only to have it slip through his fingers as it suddenly dropped free, plummeting to the ground below. Instinctively Jamal looked down, following the cable with his eyes, and completely missed what came next.

A big, dark figure, all in black and therefore a blur in the dim light, came hurtling through the window. The feet came first, a pair of boots that struck Jamal squarely in the chest, hurling him backwards from his chair and halfway across the room with a thud. The figure in black came with him, but instead of falling bonelessly to the floor as Jamal had done it landed like a cat, as light and silent as the shadows it looked so much a part of. In its hand something gleamed, a long stick with the silvery glint of chrome.

The stick moved, fast as a striking snake, hitting Jamal once on each arm as he struggled to rise to his feet. A choked gurgle of pain came from his lips, as the big gang banger collapsed back onto the floor. The figure in black didn’t waste anymore time with Jamal, apparently knowing he was no longer a threat. Instead it spun, its head turning, its gaze seeking out the only other occupant in the room.

J Dog had fallen backwards from the table, taking the folding metal chair with him, briefly becoming entangled with it. He didn’t bother to get to his feet, twisting instead on the floor and frantically scrambling to the Kalashnikov assault rifle leaning against the wall by the window. His fingers had barely touched its cool metal, when he felt it slip from his grasp, as some incredible force seemed to grab him by his shirt collar and suddenly fling him backwards. J Dog felt himself dragged across the floor, helplessly, almost as fast as Jamal had flown across it seconds before. He slammed against the back wall, the breath knocked from his lungs. He barely saw the knee that came up and smashed into his chin, bringing a flash of bright light followed by darkness.

Tom stepped back to the center of the room, quickly looking around, making sure that the two gang bangers were no longer a threat, as least for now. The first one he’d hit was rolling around on the floor, moaning, his arms hanging uselessly. They weren’t broken, but the bruises went down to the bone and for the next hour or so they might as well be. The second one was slumped against the back wall, blood drooling from his nose as his head hung down to his chest, unconscious. Quickly Tom glided to the single door leading out of the room, sticking his head out in the hallway and listening for sounds of life from the rest of the house. Satisfied, he returned to the scene of the recent single sided combat, and dropped the collapsing baton onto the floor where it would be in easy reach. He reached into one of the pockets of his bandoleer, bringing out a handful of cable ties. He squatted down to the first gangster at his feet and quickly secured him, hand and foot, and then did the same for the man’s companion. Only when they were completely immobilized did the man in black pause to search them, removing two knives and a .22 pistol that they had been carrying. He threw the weapons out the window, to fall to the ground two stories below next to the length of coaxial cable he had used to get inside. The assault rifle followed. He also found two cell phones, which he crushed under the sole of his boot.

“Nice going, Flyboy. But don’t pause to admire your work now. We’ve got a busy night ahead of us.”

The call from Murray came over the headphone built into his costume. Tom grunted, not bothering to answer. He picked the baton up off the ground, reversed his grip and knelt, then jammed the tip of it into the floor with one practiced move. The baton collapsed into itself, locking with a loud click. He stowed it in the spring holster on his hip, then crossed the room and eased through the window, moving like flowing water. He dropped silently to the ground, retrieving the cable he had dropped earlier. He would need it once more tonight.

*****

Despite her hard work at trying to appear calm and unconcerned, Molly still jumped when the cell phone in her pocket chi-iirped. She pulled it out and quickly put it to her ear, not saying a word, simply listening. The voice that spoke was harsh, mechanically altered.

“It’s now. Get your people outside and into position. Stay down, out of sight, and wait. They’ll come to you.”

The phone clicked, and went silent. Molly took a deep breath as she folded the device up and returned it to her pocket. She looked at Popiel and nodded, silently mouthing the word ‘Now’. The SWAT Team Sergeant turned to his men, using hand signals, and then led them out of the door at the back of the van. The heavily armed and armored cops crouched low, and seemed to disappear into the night. Molly stayed behind Sgt Popiel, her pistol drawn, following him through the shadows as closely as she could.

They passed by the abandoned house where the first of the sentry posts were supposed to be, but although they felt the burn of imaginary eyes on them the whole way, nothing happened. Eventually they passed by, shadows in a darkened street of more shadows. They ghosted unseen down the sidewalks and through the front yards, moving in short bursts, never visible for more than a few seconds at a time. Eventually they arrived in front of their target, and with nothing more than a few hand gestures Popiel quickly had his squad positioned in a half circle surrounding the house. Three of them had already split off some time ago to circle around to the backyard and cover that exit, and a double click on his radio told them when they were in position.

After seeing that all his people were settled and ready, Popiel turned to Molly, where they both crouched down behind an old green station wagon across the street from the crack lab. In the darkness she could not make out his features, but she easily imagined the expectant look on his face. Molly had time to lick her lips nervously, once, before they heard a commotion coming from inside the target.

Shouting, voices raised in confusion and anger. A woman screaming, but strangely not in fear. A crashing, followed by others. And then the front door burst open, spewing a veritable flood of frantic gangsters. Molly tensed, clutching her pistol, knew that Popiel and his SWAT team were doing the same. But training and discipline held, and no shots were fired.

“What the…? Backdoor, what’s your status?” Popiel snapped into his radio, his eyes fixed on the puzzling antics of the drug dealers in front of him.

“Frontdoor, we have three targets just came bailing out the back. Two males and one female. One handgun present, but it’s in the guy’s belt, he’s not touching it. Uh, Frontdoor the targets are, uh, rolling around on the grass. They’re, uh, rubbing at they’re faces. They seem to be in distress, and, uh…oh, crap; did you get a whiff of THAT?”

In the front yard Popiel and his people were watching their own targets doing much the same thing as those in the back. Almost a dozen men and women in various states of dress were stumbling around the front lawn, half blind, frantically rubbing at their eyes and swearing. One man had turned on the outside faucet, and now several of them were fighting over the gush of water.

Popiel gasped and screwed his face up, as the smell finally arrived. He turned to Molly and stared, his eyes wide in disbelief. Once more all the young cop could do was shrug; she didn’t know what to say any more than he did. Popiel grunted, and spoke into his radio, stilling the chatter that had begun to rise.

“Alright, people, move in. By the numbers, take them all down. Just…don’t get too close.”

*****

“Skunk?”

Molly nodded at Lieutenant Burke, who sat at his desk the next morning, blinking. “Actually butanethiol, according to the lab. Also called butyl mercaptan.” She gestured at the eight inch long metal cylinder in the evidence bag on Burke’s desk. “They say it’s almost identical to the stuff that skunks spray, except it’s got commercial uses. It’s some sort of industrial solvent, and believe it or not in small doses it’s a flavor enhancer. We found two of those attached to air vents outside the house, with radio activated release valves.”

Burke was studying the black painted cylinder she had indicated, shaking his head in disbelief. Molly could sympathize, the absurdity of the whole thing was making it hard to grasp. “But skunk?”

“Think about it, LT, it makes a kind of sense. At least from a practical point. Those perps were ready for any sort of takedown; they even had some Army surplus gas masks. If we had tried teargas or anything else, they would have come out of there shooting. Automatic weapons, assault rifles, they even had two hand grenades in there. That neighborhood would have been a war zone.

“But everybody on the west coast knows what a skunk smells like. No one in that house thought about anything other than getting outside. Only two of them even had guns, and they weren’t in any shape to use them.”

Burke was shaking is head, chuckling. Molly had seen a lot of that in the last twelve hours. She had done a lot of grinning herself.

“Well, it may have been the most unorthodox operation I’ve ever heard of, but I can’t argue with success. Nineteen arrests?” he asked. Molly nodded.

“Counting the six in the sentry posts. Plus over thirty firearms, twelve of them full autos. Plus enough packaged crack cocaine to fill a couple of large suitcases. An added benefit seems to be that most of last night’s collars are so demoralized that they didn’t put up much of a fight in interrogation. Once they started talking, we couldn’t get them to shut up. Half of them didn’t even ask for their lawyers. There’s going to be a hell of a domino effect from last night, sir.”

Burke grunted, his eyes no longer focused on the report in front of him, lost in his own thoughts. Abruptly he grinned, then threw his head back and laughed, a full throated sound of amusement. He slapped his desk and hooted.

“Oh, Christ, I can just see it! All of those bad, tough, dangerous gang bangin’ assholes. Curled up in the corner of a holding cell, because they stink so much all the other scumbags won’t go near them. Oh God. Sometimes, Wu, I really love this job.”

Molly grimaced, remembering. They had had to send a couple of uniforms out in a squad car to an all night grocery store, to pick up three cases of tomato juice. To wash off all the skunk stink, from both the ten suspects from the house, and themselves after handling them. The forensics team that had the task of collecting evidence from the crack house had been particularly loud in their complaints about the effects, whereas Sgt Popiel and his team had seemed almost easygoing about the whole experience. Of course, they had also seen all the ordinance that had been brought out of that house, guns and bullets which they didn’t have to face. As one of them had put it, it sure beat the hell out of bleeding.

Maybe Molly would be able to laugh and joke about this, too, some day. But not while all her clothing from last night was still soaking in tomato juice in her kitchen sink, or while the upholstery in her car smelled like skunk roadkill.

The LT was still grinning when he finally got down to business. “Alright, as far as I’m concerned your boyfriend and his team have proven themselves. If they’re still interested in giving us an occasional helping hand, I’m inclined to let them. Next time you hear from this guy, you can pass on some cases we’re interested in. If he has anything he wants us to check out, well, we’ll still have to do that on a case by case basis. We’re not going to hand them a blank check based on one good bust. And I still want to find out more about these people. Was Forensics able to come up with anything on these gas canisters”?

Molly shook her head. “No sir. The tanks themselves are old oxygen bottles, spray painted black. They were originally military issue, but you can buy them at surplus stores and swap meets almost anywhere. The radio controlled valve systems where put together from parts you can buy over the counter at Radio Shack. No finger prints, no trace evidence, nothing.”

“Well, I guess that’s not really surprising. Can you contact this guy?”

“He gave me an e-mail address. It’s a Yahoo account, generic, you don’t need to pay for it so there’s no way it can be traced. But I can use it to send a message, and he has my cell number, so he can always get a hold of me.”

“Good. I want you to set up a meeting between me and him. I want to see what we’re dealing with myself.”

Molly frowned, looking unsure of her answer. Finally, she replied, “I’ll try, sir. I don’t know if he’ll go for it, though.” She hesitated, then decided to risk it. “What does the Captain think about this? Should I brief him on last night’s operation myself?”

Burke waved his hand dismissively. “Not necessary, Molly, I’ll brief him myself, later this morning. But I can already tell you, the Captain is all for it. He thinks we might have a valuable resource in this group. He wants me personally to evaluate just how useful they can be. And how far we can trust them.”

“Yessir,” she said, rising to her feet. She gathered up the evidence bag from his desk, but left the file for him to finish with. “I’ll take this back down to the Evidence Room, and then I’ll send an e-mail.”

“Let me know as soon as he contacts you, Wu,” Burke said, his attention already turning to the report on his desk. Molly nodded, not bothering to reply as she let herself out of the office.

Once outside she paused, a frown forming in the crease between her eyebrows. And uncomfortable itch was crawling up the back of her spine. She had no proof, no real evidence at all to support the mysterious Fed’s suspicions. That there was something wrong with the way Burke was handling this whole situation. That maybe her boss, the next major link up in the SFPD’s chain of command, had plans and agendas of his own. She had watched, and the LT hadn’t done one thing off key during that whole briefing. She should have been relieved, the knot of worry at the back of her neck untied by the lack of any proof that Burke was not what he seemed. Relieved, that he was not playing her. And truth be told, she was.

Still, she really wished that he had let her talk to the Captain.

*****

The old utilities room for the burned out high school where Dieter had his Martial Arts Academy was big and spacious. With twelve foot ceilings crisscrossed with heavy steel beams, the room had bare concrete walls and was located underground, so that it had escaped the long ago fire that had destroyed the rest of the school. The industrial furnace and air conditioning equipment that had once filled it had been stripped out and sold long before the property was leased to Dieter. But they had left behind a large and cavernous room, that the old counter-terrorist had quickly converted for use in the highly specialized training he was developing for his most unique pupil.

From rings set into the overhead beams and ceiling now depended chains of varying length, currently attached to an even dozen punching bags. The heavy bags hung at differing heights and sported painted circles, six to twelve inches across and placed haphazardly over the surface of the bags, in various bright colors. At one end of the room Dieter and Tom stood, the older man facing the bags while his student faced the concrete wall in the opposite direction. At the opposite end of the room, on the other side of the hanging bags, lay a white line painted on the floor.

Dieter stepped forward making his way across the floor through the hanging forest of heavy bags. As he passed, he gave each one a hard shove, sending it swinging in a wide arc. By the time he reached the line on the other side of the floor, the path he had followed had disappeared, replaced by a constantly shifting mass of canvass-covered padding. Dieter crossed the line and turned, clicked the stop watch in his hand and yelled, “RED”!

Across the room his pupil spun around and moved, flowed, into the changing obstacle course, his body shifting and sliding across the floor in a manner no other creature on earth could duplicate. He shouted, and a fist flashed out, striking the bag directly in the center of the red circle. He spun, his opposite foot spearing into the red circle of the bag behind him, then spun again and struck another with his elbow. Dieter shouted out “BLUE!” and the fist that was already flying changed it’s arc in mid flight, striking a blue circle instead of a red. Tom yelled again, twisting in mid air as he advanced, his foot flashing out to hit the blue circle of the next bag as he advanced a step further through the obstacle course.

“GREEN!” Dieter shouted one last time as the exercise progressed, watching with a face that showed no more expression than a Sphinx. A few moments later and Tom stood before him, crossing the line, at which point the tall German clicked the stopwatch and the test ended.

“Twelve seconds less than the time before,” Dieter said, disgustedly. “Which was eight seconds slower than the time before that! Your performance has dropped to an all time low today, Tom. Why are we even wasting our time, if you are not going to do better than this?”

“Oh, give me a break, Dieter! I’m just getting tired.”

“If you were only tired, I would give you a break. But you are not tired, you’re angry. Your strikes keep getting harder and wilder each time through the course. This last time, each blow you threw could have killed or crippled an opponent.

“When you first asked me to train you, you told me you did not want to become a killer. Has that changed?”

Tom swore, ripping off the protective gloves and padded headgear, then throwing them angrily across the room. He paced across the floor, waves of nervous energy and frustration almost visibly rising from his body. Dieter waited patiently to the side, giving him enough time to get control of his emotions. Finally Tom stopped, taking a deep breath before he faced the older man.

“You’re right, coach. I have been wasting our time. I guess my mind just isn’t in the game today.”

Dieter snorted, he intensely disliked sports analogies, but he let it pass. He said one word only, “Holly,” which caused Tom to jerk.

“Don’t go there, coach. This is none of your business. It’s between me and her.”

“The ‘her’ that you refer to is my one and only child, the last living member of my family, so it very much is my business. I live with her, remember? Since you booted her out of your life a week ago, that has not been an easy thing to do. Do you want to tell me what happened now, or later, after you accidentally kill someone in the streets?”

The younger man, his student and his friend, glared at him for a moment before giving a quick, negative jerk of the head, his jaw clenched. Dieter sighed. “Very well, then. We will discuss this later. For the rest of today, practice with the shuriken. Maybe trying to improve your aim will also improve your concentration.”

Tom grunted, but followed his teacher’s orders. From a nearby cabinet he took a double handful of the star shaped throwing knives, then retreated to the far side of the underground room where a practice range had been set up. The wall here had been completely covered by raw wooden boards, and a series of objects had been set up around the floor. A chair, a table, boxes and furniture of various sizes, and several indescribable items made of thrown together scrap wood and metal.

Tom started at a length of thin rope, strung between two four foot tall posts. Flexing his knees slightly, the flying man leapt to the center of the rope, where he crouched with perfect balance, and weighing so little that the line barely bowed beneath him. He took a deep breath, trying to center his thoughts, to clear his mind and concentrate only on the silhouettes painted on the wall twenty feet away. Suddenly his hand whipped out, throwing the first star. His body twisted, rotating in midair, using the rope beneath his feet as the axis. He spun completely around, twice, his feet still welded to the thin strand of rope, then froze underneath just long enough to throw another star with his other hand. He twisted again, leaping to the back of a chair, a trash can, the side of a coat rack, pausing barely a second on each to throw another star.

Dieter watched the incredible dance, but amazing as it was it brought no joy to his face. He thought about the out of shape man in his thirties that he had met just a scant few months before, and compared him to the athlete he now watched. He was strong, and fast, amazingly so. Maybe inhumanly so. Perhaps the shards of plastic super conductor in his back had gifted him with more than the ability to fly. He could see the change even now, but it was not as controlled, as focused, as it had been a week before. Not nearly so.

He had seen Tom run this same exercise many times before, and he knew that his pupil’s performance was definitely below the norm. With a sigh he retreated to the stairwell, heading back to his office in the gymnasium, and the phone he had there.

That Tom and his daughter had quarreled was obvious, but neither of them would say about what. The miraculous man who had turned their lives upside down was still in many ways a mystery to Dieter, but he sensed no trace of guilt in his stubborn silence. And his Holly he knew better than he knew himself, her sullenness told him as much as a signed statement that she had once again done something foolish, but was too proud, too stubborn to admit it. Without a doubt, this situation was his beloved, exasperating daughter’s fault. And it was up to her to fix it.