Book Two
Chapter Seven
A half dozen jet black helicopters flew over the night time skies of the country of France. Advanced stealth systems swallowed their radar image, muffled their sounds and hid their heat signatures, and no one saw them at all. They were all of the transport variety, but each was almost as well armed as an attack copter. Onboard, dozens of men secured their personal gear and checked their weapons. While they knew any combat action was still at least an hour away, they were professionals, and they took no chances.
All but one, that is.
Pete Wisdom, special operations agent, sat back in his seat, eyes closed, chin resting on his arms which were crossed over his chest, and looking to all the world as if he was sleeping. He wasn't, of course, and every man onboard that copter knew it. Just as they knew he was the most dangerous weapon in their whole attack force. Pete Wisdom was a mutant, possessed of the ability to create and control powerful bolts of energy, which he referred to as 'hot knifes', that could burn through nearly anything. He could use that single power to create any number of effects -- and he was very good at using that power.
He'd had a lot of experience.
Pete Wisdom listened to the sounds around him, but paid them little attention. It was highly unlikely there were any 'enemy' agents on board, much less any targeting the copter. The opposition was limited in its capabilities and Wisdom doubted they even had a clue as to what was coming at them, despite whatever the Intelligence pukes were saying. These people were one-trick ponies no matter how well armed they were, and Wisdom had dealt with their type more times than he cared to remember. He took no joy in killing any of them, but he did feel pride in his accomplishments -- and the knowledge none of those scum were ever going to hurt any one else again.
But for all of that, he'd come so very close to getting out of the game and giving all of this up.
He'd been in love.
Sari St. John was her name, and she'd been a fellow Black Air agent in the espionage department. An expert in sleath and security, there had been few places she couldn't get into. Despite their seemingly opposite personalities, they'd become very close over the last year and had even begun to talk about marriage.
But then, for reasons he'd still not discovered, she'd volunteered for an experimental procedure to grant her unique, built in camouflage abilities. It worked, but it had one unexpected side effect -- it had driven her insane.
Not right away, but it had been clear to Wisdom that something was wrong; then, almost two months later she tried -- and again, for reasons he'd never been able to discover -- to kill the British Prime Minister. Wisdom himself had been part of the group who'd stopped her, and there were still nights when his nightmares were filled with the rambling spew of curses and threats she'd shouted as she'd been taken away.
And that night he'd closed off his heart.
He hadn't stopped caring, for he still had family (both just this side of loony) and friends (too damned few) that he did care for and would go to the wall for, but he knew he would never know true love again. Intellectually, he knew the odds were he would, but emotionally... well, that was a different story, and it was his emotions which were directing his life at the moment. So he'd buried himself in his work, the very job he'd been thinking of leaving... And hadn't looked back.
One day he would (he hoped!) -- but, for now, Black Air was his life (again), and he had a mission to complete.
It was rare for him to be part of so large an assualt force. Most of the time he worked either alone (his perferred method) or with at most a half dozen others. But headquarters wanted to take no chance -- and, in this instance, he didn't much blame them -- and wanted to hit the enemy with massive, fast-moving forces to keep them from doing any last minute 'spoiler' transmissions.
That was the 'official' explanation, anyway.
But Wisdom suspected the main reason was that the British government wanted them to get in and out before the French government realized anything was happening. At the very least, it would be highly 'embarrassing' for the British to be caught projecting military forces into an allied country regardless of the reasons. And, at worst... well, that didn't bear thinking about.
With all that in mind, Wisdom figured he could put up with working with a crowd for one night.
And the night would soon be heating up.
A lot.
Kitty Pryde crouched beneath the dirty tarp covering over the even dirtier interior of the back of a rusty old pickup truck. But, despite that and despite the fact that she was sure at least half of the dirt of this old rust bucket had found its way onto her, she was filled with excitement. She was out on an adventure at last, after sooooo long. And, she thought with no little trepidation, out of SHIELD too.
Not offically, of course -- not yet, anyway. She had, after all, just decided to quit.
Kitty didn't like quitting, didn't like giving up, but the situations she kept finding herself in just kept getting worse, and being dumped out in the middle of nowhere -- with a high tech port-o-potty -- after all she'd done was, without a doubt, the last straw.
A part of her knew she was letting what likely was standard operating procedure for SHIELD and its military rank and file nonsense to override her better judgement and the belief Nick Fury had in her that she could be a good SHIELD agent, but her better judgement wasn't in control at the moment.
Her temper was.
Worse, she knew it was, and she couldn't (or wouldn't) override it -- and that really bothered her, because she knew it was one of her biggest personality flaws and one she'd worked so hard to get under control. And she'd believed she had... Until now, that is.
But all that was of a secondary concern at the moment.
Kitty had been completely stunned when she'd finally noticed the small group of men dragging an overloaded old cart through the woods. Stunned, too, that they hadn't heard her silly rantings.
But at least now she knew that her calculations (which she still didn't recall from where she remembered how to) hadn't been wrong. She -- and no one else -- had considered the possiblity that the bad guys might be using a mobile transmitter.
Of course, that opened the question of why they were continuing to bring it to the same place night after night if they were that worried about being discovered. Add that to the fact that the whole system seemed nearly untraceable anyway, and you had to wonder what these people were thinking.
Not much, if what little Kitty had heard them say so far was the norm.
When she'd gotten over her shock, she'd pulled a high powered binocular out of the pod's supply section and tried to get a good look at the thing. Unfortunately, they'd set it next to a pile of shrubs and trees, and all she could see from her position were bits and pieces of it... And bits and pieces was a good description of it, because from what she could see it looked like it had been put together from a dozen 'low' tech electronics and other junk. In fact -- and unless she was totally wrong -- part of it included the inside of an microwave oven!
How it transmitted an overwhelming broadcast, much less did anything but be an oversized paper weight, escaped her.
Unless there was something in there that she hadn't seen, some piece of advanced tech that made it work? But, if they had something like that, why hook it up to a cheap pile of junk?
Way too weird for her.
But, weird or not, she had no doubt that these were the people she'd come to find. The fact that the small receiver in her 'pod' began beeping was one clue. And she could, even from where she was, hear the ungodly bad music that the past transmissions had played, blaring from the tape player hooked up to that whole mess.
That was the clincher as far as she was concerned.
The problem was what she could do about it.
Since she was no longer a SHIELD agent any more, she no longer had any of the policelike powers a SHIELD agent had... whatever they were. Of course, she hadn't gotten around to filling out the paper or giving her notice or whatever was required for someone to get out of SHIELD. And, of course, she was still wearing a SHIELD uniform. (Not that she any choice in that at the moment, not unless she wanted to run about in her birthday suit -- and she didn't want to do that.) And, in the end, it really didn't matter -- she'd been smacking down the bad guys as a member of the X-men and Excalibur without a licence or what not.
But there was another problem that came to her mind.
There might be more of these guys, and another super transmitter.
That there were more bad guys was a no brainer, but Kitty considered it rather unlikely there was another transmitter, given what the one down there looked like. Of course that thing (what she could see of it) didn't look like it should be able to do anything.
Best to play it safe, then.
Kitty had stealthily made her way over halfway down the ridge before she realized she hadn't even tried to contact SHIELD headquarters. As much as she considered herself out of SHIELD, she knew they had to be notified. After all, she hardly had the means to deal with this bunch after she slapped the lot of them silly. Then again, the local police could handle the paperwork...
Kitty hesitated, unsure, as she debated the issue. Unsure, that is, until she saw the men throw a tarp over the device and begin to drag it away. 'Ah, nuts!'
That decided her. She'd never be able to get back up to the pod, send a message and get back down in time to follow the men to wherever they were going. She'd just have to contact someone when she got to wherever these guys' base was.
It had been almost pathetically easy to follow them without being detected. She'd hardly needed her ninja skills. The men had been too busy arguing with each other to notice an army following them.
Still, Kitty was careful. For all that these guys were apparent idiots, that didn't mean their boss was -- and overconfidence, she knew from painful experience, was just as dangerous an enemy as her adversery.
But it was hard to avoid getting overconfident as she looked over their 'transport', a rusty old pickup truck that she could hardly believe still worked.
She seemed to be thinking that a lot today.
After they'd loaded the transmitter into the back of the truck, all four of them wedged themselves into the front cab.
'Oh, those crazy college boys.'
With all of them jammed up there, it had been easy to slip into the back of the truck and under the tarp. The only problem was, she still couldn't get a good look at the device from where she was and she couldn't tell where they were going.
Just another day.
End Chapter Seven, Book Two