In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition (2 page)

“You’re very kind.”

“We have a deal then?”

“And very persistent.”

“I just want to make sure you’re going to stay part of the FCCSL family.”

I stood. “You make it very hard to refuse.”

He stood and glanced at his watch. “A pleasure meeting you. I have something in a half-hour. If you can stop back before then, we can set things up before the fireworks begin.”

Fireworks?
I wasn’t picking it up from context and, quite frankly, I was too tired to care. “Thank you.”

I shook his hand, then followed Penny to the vault. Petite and blonde, she was ample reason for having an office with a glass wall. She wore horn-rimmed glasses that might have been part of a secret identity; but I doubted it. Just a bit of hero-wannabe-chic going on.

She glanced at her watch a bit more anxiously than her boss had. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, but it was oversized and looked too heavy for her slender wrist.

“Interesting watch.”

Penny’s face lit up. “Thank you. It’s a Redhawk watch, and not one of those nostalgia knock-offs. My father bought it twenty-five years ago, when Redhawk was still Nighthaunt’s sidekick. He gave it to me as a bit of a consolation prize when I washed out of the academy.”

She held it up for me to study. There was Redhawk, perhaps rendered a bit more muscular than he had been in those days. Shock of red hair, red cowl, the hue of which extended to his shoulders and the stripes down his arms, flanks and sides. Red boots, too, and utility belt; with his uniform being black and form-fitting otherwise.

Penny checked the time again. “It’s not the only Redhawk watch I’ve got, but I’m not picking up any of the new stuff. So many folks have become his fans now that he’s going into the Hall. I mean, I’ll be there at the ceremony and everything, and maybe get a souvenir of that, but I’m strictly old-school when it comes to Redhawk.”

“That’s a good way to be.” I really had no idea what I was saying. Didn’t matter. She accepted the comment happily.

Penny produced the bank’s key and we unlocked the box together. I slid it out and she led me to an examining room. Aside from a table, two chairs and a Murdoch built into the wall, it was empty. I set the box down and smiled at her.

“I shouldn’t be long.”

She smiled. “Remember, there is the thing at eleven.”

“Thank you, I should be done by then.”

She flashed the watch, then closed the door behind herself.

I reached out to open the box, but hesitated. Acid burned in my throat. Twenty years. A lifetime or three. And opening the box would start another one.

Or just finish your first.

But why was I here? It wasn’t money. I could have gotten that where I recovered the key. I didn’t need to be here, in Capital City. They would have let me go anywhere. And yet, they knew. When they asked me where I wanted to go and I told them, the general just pulled the travel card from his pocket and flipped it at me.

There’d never been any doubt in his mind. Nor in mine, I guess. Finishing, starting, they’re the same when you get down to it.

And it was time for me to get down to it.

I lifted the box’s lid.

Everything was as I remembered it. The sharpness of the recollection surprised me. Twenty years gone, but the memories not faded a bit. It was like time had stopped for everything but me. Nonsense, but there it was.

The contents anchored me to a life long lost. The money, neatly banded and stacked, came to twenty thousand. I pocketed half. That was really all I needed out of the box. I could hand it to Baker, he’d give me a uTiliPod, and I’d just sink into the grey masses.

If it wasn’t the money
… I smiled. The key to the other safety deposit box–the big one–sat there. Like a grenade. Taking it wouldn’t necessarily mean I was pulling the pin, but….
Who are you kidding?

 
The identification documents were too old to be of immediate use, but I picked out four sets and slipped them into a pocket. They’d be a good place to start rebuilding identities. I’d need new pictures and have to find a way to hack the databases to remove flags from the old ones.

I snorted. My skills were twenty years old.
Note to self, find a kid to do all that stuff for you.

I pulled out a steel neck chain. A silver car key dangled from it. Of absolutely no earthly use now. I shrugged and slipped the chain over my head. I tucked the key down next to my heart. To remind me of what I’d lost.

Or to remind me of what I’d come to take back?

I wanted to laugh that thought away. I couldn’t. Thinking I could take anything back was stupid. I’d told myself that a hundred thousand times.

And a hundred thousand and one times I’d found myself thinking hard on the
how
of doing it.

I stared at the box. The key warmed against my flesh. I wasn’t the man I’d been. I hadn’t been him almost from the point I left Capital City. They’d broken my life in two–and the break had been anything but clean. For twenty years I’d tried to figure out
who
and
why
.

I should have abandoned that quest, but there were times it was all that kept me alive.

But now, exhausted and back in Capital City–a megalopolis I barely recognized when flying over it–the futility of trying to solve that mystery hit me. Clues would be two decades old. People would have died. Things would have been forgotten. People would have moved on and gotten over it. It was over before it started. I should just give in.

Then I heard his voice echoing in my head.
You just have to have confidence
.

Yeah. Confidence. And sleep.

The travel exhaustion was taking its toll. I wasn’t really in any condition to be making any decisions. And I
could
defer this one.

For a day. A week. A long time.
Another two decades?

My mind wandered. My eyes tracked to the Murdoch in the wall. Nice color, really great definition. The images flowed between advertisements for the bank’s services, to shots from the bank’s security cameras. They were artistically framed, panning here and there, moving into close-ups with robotic regularity. A long shot showed Baker in his office. He had a uTiliPod box open on his desk and was fiddling with the device.

And obsessively checking his watch.

Penny tapped on the door. “Take your time, Mr. Smith. Sit tight and I’ll be back for you.”

“I’ll be done soon.”

“No hurry. It’ll all be okay.”

Before I could ask
what
would be okay–and finding no comfort in the word
fireworks
bursting into my head–Penny locked me in.

The Murdoch went full screen on bank’s lobby. Armed robbers, a dozen of them, wearing psychedelic tie-dyed spandex, poured through the doors. Half of them hauled huge tubes connected to cylinders on their backs, the others carried something that looked like a blunderbuss, complete with wide, conical muzzles.

Screams and shouts resounded through the examination room’s door. On screen, Penny ran into the midst of the hostages. She must have panicked.
But did she just mug for the camera?

Just my luck. At best it was a bank robbery. At worst, a messy hostage siege.

I have to do something.
I reached toward the box.

I stopped.

In fact, I didn’t have to do a blessed thing. Stopping the robbery wasn’t my responsibility. I didn’t owe these people anything. As friendly as Baker had been, or faked being, he wasn’t my friend. He saw me as an account balance and annual fees, nothing more. Penny, cute kid, but if she’d not gone running out into the lobby, she’d probably have been able to sneak out a back door and summon help.

This wasn’t my problem.

They didn’t need my help.

I’d probably make things worse.

Since when has that stopped you?

Good point.

I slipped the other safety deposit box key into my trousers. Then I reached in and felt along the recessed part of the lid. The small packet came free with the ripping sound of Velcro.

Burglary tools.

I glanced at the door’s lock and smiled.

Somehow, I’d caught my second wind.

I went to work on the lock.

Chapter Two

So I didn’t get through the lock in world record time. I still got through. Pocketing the picks, I slipped into the corridor, closed the door behind me.

Things looked promising. Left was the vault and then the lobby beyond it, though a bend in the corridor hid it. To the right were a staff break room, utility closet, and a couple of offices that would have been below Baker’s office suite. Best of all, at the end of the hall stood a fire door. Opening it would set off an alarm.

First rule of rescue operations: secure an escape route. Not so much for me, but the hostages. The robbers had the front doors covered to keep police out, and the police would have them covered to keep the robbers in, so the fire door would be it. Best part, the bank employees knew exactly where it was.

Next rule: he who has the most firepower wins. I needed weapons. Thank God for the utility closet. The poor man’s chemistry lab. There’d be enough noxious chemicals in there to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. A little ammonia in an air-conditioning vent and eyes would be watering. Hitting anything those guns would be tough.

Two steps into the corridor and I had to shift to rule three: don’t get caught. One of the thieves turned the corner. “Hey you, pops. Where do you think you’re going?”

Without looking at him, I dropped to my knees. I covered my head with my hands and I slumped against the wall. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.”

The guy groaned. Boots clicked as he closed. “Get with this century, old man. No one is going to hurt you. On your feet. “

“Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I don’t want to die.” I pumped fear into my voice–all too easily, actually. Very convincing. That was all that mattered.

He stopped and poked my shoulder with his blunderbuss. “You’re not going to die, pal.”

“Oh, thank God.” I spun quickly, hooking the gun’s barrel with my left elbow, jamming it against the wall. My right hand came up fast. Open-palm strike to the groin.

He wasn’t expecting that. He gurgled and squeaked. He jackknifed forward. I caught him by the throat and tugged, slamming him face-first into the floor.

A tooth skittered down the hall. He slumped, moaning.

I smiled.
Not bad for an old man.

I grabbed him by his web belt and dragged him to the utility closet. Another trip to retrieve his gun, then I closed us both in. I used some handy zip-ties to secure him, then returned to that firepower thing.

The pistol at his right hip was a taser and a pouch at the small of his back had replaceable electrode packages.
Better than nothing.
I stripped the gun belt off and tightened it around my waist.

I cracked the blunderbuss open. It had a short shotgun shell for a load. No shot and a weird configuration for the firing chamber.

I set it aside. Another handy rule: never mess around with a weapon you don’t understand. The taser I could use, but that thing, nope.

Had to move fast. The gang already had one man down. When he didn’t return, they’d send two, maybe three to find him. They’d be doing that soon.

I pillaged the closet. I borrowed someone named Jorge’s coveralls. Big man. They hung on me that way an elephant’s skin would hang on a Shetland pony. I didn’t zip the front all the way up, though. I still wanted access to the taser. An ammonia bottle with sprayer went in one cargo pocket and a bottle of cleaning fluid in the other. I set the nozzles for stream.

I appropriated a push-broom with the screw-in handle. I pulled a set of white uTiliPod headphones from a lost and found box, wiped them off and stuck them in my ears. The cord I tucked down into my shirt. Disguise complete.

Almost.

I grabbed a utility rag, folded it into a triangle, and tied it around the lower half of my face. No mirror to check my appearance. Didn’t need one. Ridiculous is easy to picture. Looks a lot like absurd.

Jorge the super-janitor, head bobbing to music only he could hear, emerged from the closet. I was still counting on a search party, so I set a trap. Heading back up the hall, I laid down several lines of industrial cleaner. I retreated toward the fire door, exposing my back toward the lobby, and just started sweeping.

Thirty seconds later, three of them came into the corridor.

“What the…?”

“Hey, old man.”

I ignored them.

The first voice became insistent. “You. Old. Man.”

Yeah, slower and louder
always
works for the deaf.

My head bobbed. I started dancing. Tossed in a hip wiggle, too, and a quick salsa step. That broom was a hot date in a tiny dress.