Superhero by Night Omnibus Read online

  It would be fun—if he didn’t run into the Wraith again.

  “You okay, sir?”

  “Cut the sir, crap. And yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  The little hatchback they sent for him was annoying as hell with its whiny engine. At least it had AC and the driver wasn’t determined to listen to some crap garage band. Plus the kid knew how to drive and where he needed to go.

  “Here it is, the Detroit Free Press. You want me to wait here?”

  Ghost shook his head. He popped open the small car’s door and stepped out.

  “No. Take my things to the hotel. I’ll make my way back on my own.”

  The kid nodded.

  Ghost turned and walked away, not bothering to watch the little car disappear down the street. No, he had more important things to look for. He pulled out his phone, turning on the screen to see Krisan Swahili’s face staring back up at him. He’d looked at it a hundred times, along without countless other photos of the woman.

  Now he just needed to find her.

  Chapter 17

  “Score,” I said landing a punch on Joseph’s shoulder. My elation was cut short as he landed an uppercut on my jaw, sending me sprawling backward. I landed on my rump. Luckily, I had remembered to keep my mouth shut so I didn’t bite my own tongue off. He didn’t hesitate to charge in. I rolled sideways onto my knees then I flexed, jumping up and back into a defensive position.

  Joseph came at me with a flurry of blows, more than I could deflect. As soon as one hit my jaw the rest landed, and I went flying to flatten against the far wall before sliding down. “I surrender,” I said.

  He kicked the wall next to my head. “ISO-1 won’t ever let you surrender. You win, or you die. Remember that.”

  I shook as a chill ran up my spine. In the three months I had trained with Joseph, we’d fallen into this easy pattern. I could see my improvements almost on a daily basis. However, complacency was one step away from disaster. “I’m sorry… but I did score a hit,” I said looking up at him with a tight smile.

  “Indeed.” He held out his gloveless hand to help me up. We’d long since stopped using pads. I went to bed every night covered in bruises. My bruises had bruises. He pulled me up and I opened my mouth to thank him when he slammed his fist into my stomach. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath.

  “Deception, misdirection, these are your tools,” he said as he knelt down next to me. “Just breathe, it will pass.”

  It did. He stood up and walked over to the closet, digging out a coat and hat for each of us. “Put this on,” he said. I did as he instructed. The coat was the military kind, with all the pockets. As I slung it over my shoulders a solid weight hit me in the side. I threw a questioning glance at him.

  “H&K 9mm. Fifteen in the mag…”

  “One in the pipe. Loaded?” I asked.

  “They always are, even when they’re not.”

  He was right, of course. To avoid any possibility of an accidental discharge, we treated all firearms as if they were loaded and ready to fire. The coat was all black, only faded a little. Enough that it wouldn’t stand out. The hat had the stylized red tire with the wing coming out of it—the local hockey team.

  “You like hockey?”

  He shook his head. “Too violent.”

  I just stared at him for a moment before he cracked a small smile.

  “That was a joke. You just told a joke?”

  “There’s a first time for everything. About the hat, there are a couple of ways to blend into a city. One: look like a homeless person—they might as well be invisible. Two: wear local sports gear. Just don’t wear too much. Only a non-native would wear a Red Wing’s jacket, hat, jersey, and so on. Just pick one. Hats are the easiest.”

  I nodded. “Where are we going?”

  “Downtown. Your friend, the one who helped you find me?”

  “Krisan Swahili? The reporter? She’s hardly a friend, I’ve only ever met her once.”

  “Regardless, she’s in trouble. We’re going to do a little fieldwork, give you some practical experience, and help her at the same time.”

  Her articles on ISO-1 had only grown in intensity in the last few weeks. Last week she exposed a smuggling ring that was trafficking girls out of the city for the southern border and importing cocaine. She had to be on the top of their kill list.

  He led me out into the garage where there were two vehicles: a ubiquitous Chevy Impala from a few years before, and a red motorcycle. The last time I was in the garage it was empty. He has no external parking, so where did these vehicles come from. The red bike drew the lion’s share of my attention. A Ducati Panigale. A bike that cost as much as a full-sized car—or a small house.

  “You have a Ducati?” I asked him slightly flabbergasted.

  “Oh, is that what it is?” he asked back as he got into the Impala. I’d driven a motorbike before, but the Ducati was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I only knew what it was because of a photo-shoot from a few years back.

  I slid into the passenger seat, buckled up and closed the door. I noticed he didn’t wear his seatbelt as we pulled out. The garage opened, followed by the wrought iron gate moving aside. I glanced back behind me one more time, looking for any sign of where he kept all this extra equipment he seemed to be able to produce at will.

  Joseph didn’t speak as we drove. Traffic sucked, as it always did this time of day. Working class people struggled on the road, trying to get away from work as fast as possible to maximize their time at home. I used to love my job. Twelve-hour days and all. I thought I could do it forever.

  Oh, how wrong I was.

  The late summer sun began its long descent to the west, casting the city in deep shadows as we drove south. Once we were on the freeway and traffic moved in a predictable pattern I asked him where we were going?

  “Her house.” Was his simple reply.

  “You know where she lives?”

  He nodded. “Information is power. Know yourself, know your allies, know your enemies. Who does the battle go to?” he asked as if we were I a class instead of a car.

  “The trained and informed,” I said automatically.

  “Good.”

  It was dark by the time we arrived in her neighborhood. She lived in a dump. The apartment complex was the kind that had doors opening onto external balconies and the occupants had to walk down staircases exposed to the elements. Lucky for us, it wasn’t raining. It wasn’t even cold yet.

  Joseph parked us across the street and half a block down. “She’s on the third floor at the end.” He pointed as if that helped. I counted up and found the apartment he meant. I looked around, taking in the neighborhood. Trash filled the street. While there were no burned out houses, only about half the living quarters I could see had lights on.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” I asked him.

  He looked over at me and gestured toward the street. “What would you do if you were them? You’ve been studying their tactics and methods. If you were ISO-1 and this reporter was printing stories about you, what would it take to shut her up?”

  I thought about it for a second. They couldn’t just kill her. It would add validity to everything she had printed about them. I closed my eyes for a second.

  Just like Mom and Dad. It needed to be an accident.

  “They need two things, as far as I can tell. They need her death to be an ‘accident’ and they need to cast doubt on her story,” I said. A city bus drove by, obscuring our view for a moment. “An accident won’t do,” I continued, my mind swirling with all the possibilities. Joseph looked at me as I spoke, a slow smile spreading on his face as I came to the only possible conclusion. “Suicide.”

  “Got it in one. If they can cast doubt on her mental stability, then it will throw all her recent work into doubt. Plus, she’ll be dead. Other reporters and people in the industry will know the truth. The horror of her forced suicide will ensure no one comes after them for a good long while.”

>   The bus drove off and I saw her. Krisan, with her arms full of groceries, her laptop, and a bag full of books. She made her way to the metal staircase that was the only way up to the apartments above the ground floor. I reached for the door and he stopped me.

  “We need to warn her,” I told him.

  “No. Warning her won’t do any good. Put yourself in her shoes; she faces threats all the time. She’s confident in her status as a journalist to protect her. The irony here is, the only reason I know she’s in danger is because she’s a journalist.”

  “She’s right then?” I asked.

  “For the wrong reasons, but that’s for another day. For this to work, every single man they send has to disappear. Not just die, vanish. Leadership will order another hit, but they’ll have a tough time finding anyone willing to try it.”

  “Damn,” I whispered.

  “You can’t fight a shadow.”

  “I guess not. How do we do this?”

  “Follow me.” He exited the vehicle and walked around to the back, popping the trunk. “This is the first and only time I will ever do a mission with you, understood?”

  He seemed very certain of that fact. Admittedly, he’d never really told me why he quit. I had assumed it was because he was too old. Maybe there was another reason? Regardless, I nodded. “Yes.”

  He handed me what looked like an arm-sized harpoon gun attached to a line. “Go around back, use this to climb to the roof. Climb down to the floor above her front door and be ready.”

  I didn’t ask any questions because I was fairly certain I knew what he meant. After I took the gun, he also handed me an earpiece. “There’s a radio built into the jacket, this syncs with it automatically. You can whisper and I’ll hear you.”

  The chain-link fence that cordoned off the property was easy enough to climb—the wire at the top had long since gone missing. I was up and over in a few seconds without even breathing hard. I had to admit, I was impressed with myself. In just two months I had come so far.

  I had turned that pain and anger that permeated my heart and focused it into an iron will. I couldn’t be broken. Nor could I fail. Once I was over the fence I sprinted to the back of the buildings. The apartment complex was made of three buildings. One on either side attached to a central unit. From the air, I imagine it was shaped like a ‘U’. I decided to go up the very back and make my way across the roof to the right side wing where her apartment faced the courtyard. The building was five stories, so I would have to make my way down two stories without being seen.

  Piece of cake.

  I aimed the grappling gun and fired. It puffed as the compressed air canister sent the hook flying high into the air. Right past the roof and then back down toward me.

  Crap!

  I dodged backward as the lump of metal fell to the earth with a thump. I was sure I aimed it right.

  “What do I do if I miss?” I asked Joseph over the comms. While I waited for him to answer I tried rewinding the reel, but it was stuck—or locked. “Faulty piece of shi—” I muttered, stopping myself when I remembered he could hear everything I said. “Joseph,” I said slightly louder, “how do I reload this thing?”

  Nothing. Great. I tossed the gun down and started looking for an alternate way up. The walls were stone, uneven and oblong. Maybe I could scale it? I shook my head. No, that wouldn’t work. Even if I could, it would take me too long and I would be at my physical limit by the time I got up there.

  I slapped myself in the face. The answer was so obvious. I’d just go up the stairs and go past her apartment.

  I went around to the other side and back up the chain-link fence. As I dropped down a black Ford Econo-van screeched to a halt in the ‘no-parking’ lane in front of the building. Six men piled out and threw the sliding door open. They silently pulled gear out of the cargo area.

  Oh boy.

  Chapter 18

  It was well into evening; the sun was down and dark shadows stretched out from the building in the moonless night. Few lights on the block even worked. There were plenty of places to hide.

  Shadows… use the shadows… I could almost hear Joseph’s voice. A crazy plan leaped fully formed into my head. Just at the bottom of the stairwell that led to her apartment were the dumpsters. If I was fast enough…

  I checked what they were doing. All six were loading up on gear, all focused on the inside of the van. Two of them were putting together some bizarre contraption, for what purpose I had no idea.

  I sprinted as silently as I could around the front of the building, timing it so the men were looking into the van and not at the building. I tucked myself behind the dumpster and waited. They’d have to walk right by me to go upstairs. I opened my coat and pulled out the black H&K along with the suppressor that went with it. Carefully, as not to make a sound, I screwed on the suppressor. Once it was on, I slowly pulled the slide back until it wouldn’t go any further, then using my coat to muffle the sound, I let it jam forward, pushing a bullet into the barrel.

  And to think, three months ago I didn’t even know what a suppressor was.

  The men were done preparing and they started for the stairs. This probably wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t a moonless night. Or if the owners of the slum Krisan lived in paid for proper lighting.

  I closed my eyes for a second, picturing Sara’s face as she died. While these men weren’t directly responsible, they certainly were guilty. I couldn’t spare any mercy for them. It was now or never.

  They walked by me, not speaking as they jogged up the stairs. The first two men were heavies, big men with coats and gloves. They were there to physically control their victim. The next two had the funky equipment that looked like some kind of giant motorized fishing wheel. The last two had their guns out. They were there if something went very wrong. From what Joseph had taught me I could tell they were a professional team. They just weren’t used to any opposition.

  As the last man stepped past, I slid out silently behind him. They were all so focused on the stairs up, they didn’t spare a glance backward. I put a bullet in his lungs, grabbed his coat and pulled him backward and put another round in his heart. They were banging up the stairs in heavy boots like a bunch of soldiers on the way to a strip club. When number five didn’t notice I jumped up and got right in line behind him. I’d come back when I was done and dump all the bodies in the dumpster. Trash collection was in a few hours; with any luck, it would look like they just disappeared.

  Just like Joseph had taught me.

  We rounded the first landing, then the second and as we passed right above the dumpster, I stuck the gun up to the side of five’s head and pulled the trigger. With a push, he went right over the railing to fall squarely in the dumpster with a crash. The four ahead of me froze, all of them leaning over the side of the railing to see what happened.

  I couldn’t have asked for a better position. I took one step back and fired. The first one slumped as the bullet took him in the back of the head. Number three had just started to turn around when my next shot impacted with his head, splitting his skull open and killing him instantly.

  Number two dropped the contraption and was jerking his gun out when I shot him in the chest. I had to waste a second bullet on him because my first one didn’t kill him.

  That’s when three hundred pounds of Italian mobster slammed into me, swatting the gun out of my hand like it wasn’t even there. I rocked backward avoiding his follow up blow which just swished in the air in front of me. I needed space. I lunge kicked him, knocking him back a foot. I reached behind me and pulled out the K-bar I’d spent countless hours training with. I didn’t let him see it, though, I hid the black blade in the shadows of my right arm. To him, it would just look like I had my fists up and was ready to fight.

  Thinking he had the advantage, he charged, arms out wide, confident he could take any blow I landed. He was right. No punch or kick would stop that charge. I dropped down, spinning around his leg like a can opener and stabbed the
inside of his leg just below the groin. The blade bit hard, its razor sharp edge cutting through flesh and tendons. He grunted, not even howling in pain. Damn he was tough. He stumbled forward a few feet before he composed himself. He didn’t realize the fight was over.

  He shook his head trying to steady himself as he swayed.

  “What… what did…” then he dropped to his knees, his face going ashen white before he hit the metal staircase with a thump. The only sound I could hear was his blood dripping down the stairs to the next floor as his femoral artery did its level best to drain all his blood.

  I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Number four was slumped against the railing. Using it as leverage I toppled him over. My aim was true and another shuddering crash came from the dumpster. I quickly sent his three friends after him. Only the last one missed—by then my arms were shaking with strain. Moving carefully so I didn’t slip and knock myself senseless, I went back downstairs.

  “Joseph,” I said again on the radio when I reached the bottom. Nothing.

  I mustered the last of my strength and hefted the last two bodies into the dumpster, along with the device. Whoever came up with it was a sadist. From what I could tell, it was designed to hang someone on a timer, tightening the rope around their neck until they died. When removed it would just look like she choked to death on the rope. Bastards.

  I climbed in the dumpster and searched all six, taking their wallets and removing the batteries from their cell phones. I then arranged the trash to sufficiently obscure their bodies, climbed back out, and closed the lid and slid the bar across so only the garbage truck could dump it. I didn’t want anyone discovering them. Joseph was right; they just needed to disappear. It would be all the more terrifying for their compatriots if the bodies were never found.

  I risked a second to look for Joseph’s Impala, it was gone. At first, I thought something had happened to him. But driving the Ford van to the lake, I thought I figured it out. He had left me to fail. Anger erupted in me. How could he? After everything I had done, all I had suffered, he just left me to die and…