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Copyright © 2004 by Alison Kent
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"With great power there must also come great responsibility!"
—Introducing Spider-Man
Amazing Fantasy #15, August 1962
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Steve
Ditko
Original Price: $0.12
Near Mint Condition Price: $48,000
SHAUGHNESSEY ACCORD
0 n e
The Smithson Group's Manhattan ops center, never a hotbed of mind-blowing excitement in and of itself, was duller these days than a plastic knife working at a stick of cold butter.
It was driving Tripp
Shaughnessey
out of his ever-loving gourd.
He understood the laid-back, uneventful, mellow-as-molasses mood; really, he did. But without something to do besides sitting and staring zombie-eyed at static surveillance feeds, he was at a huge risk for losing the rest of his mind.
The Smithson Group—Christian Bane specifically—had recently pulled the plug and sent Peter Deacon, the sleazy front man for the international crime syndicate Spectra IT, swirling down one nasty drain.
That only left, oh, another
umpty
dozen members of the organization to annihilate.
There were days it seemed nothing short of an apocalyptic, second-coming, end-of-world scenario would make a dent in the work the SG-5 team had remaining to do.
In the meantime, Tripp's eyes and ass needed a break. Even a highly trained Smithson Group operative could only sit and stare for so long without giving in to distraction.
He pushed up from a squat to his feet, righted his chair, capped the tube of bearing grease he'd brought with him this morning, and tossed it to his desk.
He twirled the chair this way, twirled it
that,
sat and drew his knees to his chest.
Bracing the balls of his feet against the edge of his desktop, he shoved. The chair sailed into the center of the ops center's huge horseshoe-shaped workstation and beyond.
He was rolling, rolling, rolling . . . slowing, slowing,
slowing ..
.
"Crap."
He glanced to his right where Christian sat holding headphones to one ear, shaking his head.
He glanced to his left where Kelly John Beach faced him, arms crossed, brow arched.
Ooops
.
"What the hell did I tell you? Inline-skate wheels, you maroon. Otherwise, forget it. You can't race Hot Wheels on a NASCAR track."
Tripp shrugged, leaned back in his chair, legs extended, ankles crossed. It was all good. He had it under control.
Laced hands behind his head, he stared up into the cavernous darkness of the twenty-fourth floor's ceiling that was nothing but a web of exposed ductwork.
"Thought I'd give the bearing grease a try before changing out the wheels.
Picked the stuff up at a skate shop down in Philly last week."
His comment was met with snorting in stereo, and Kelly John's, "Waste of money."
Tripp rolled his eyes.
"Now, how can you say that when I bested my record by ten feet at least?"
"Good to see you're keeping yourself busy," Christian said without looking up.
K.J., on the other hand, met Tripp's gaze straight on. "Yeah, don't you have some work to do?"
"Nag, nag, nag."
Yes, he had work to do. Or he would as soon as the Spectra IT agent he had on his scope
made
a noticeable move.
The agent who'd chosen Brighton's Spuds
&
Subs Sandwich Shop at the end of the block as his base of operations.
Tripp hadn't yet made the dude's cover story; he only knew the agent was monitoring the early afternoon traffic coming and going from the building across the street, housing, among other things, a privately held, family-owned-and-for-the-most-part-operated diamond exchange.
Tripp was monitoring the traffic as well. Especially since it wasn't Spectra's MO to deal with such a small-time operation as Marian Diamonds—and because word on the street said Marian Diamonds was trading in illegal conflict stones smuggled out of Sierra Leone.
Sure, the Spectra agent could've been canvassing the dealings of the entire block—a lot of high dollar transactions went on in the financial district between the hours of nine and five.
But just about the same time Spectra had shown up at Brighton's, the grandson of Marian's owner had gotten a hankering for sandwiches eaten long past lunchtime, ordering corned beef and sauerkraut on rye to go the same time every afternoon.
Of course, his hankering could've been for Glory Brighton instead.
In which case Tripp had a decision to make.
Cement shoes or defenestration, because Glory Brighton was off-limits, whether she knew it or not.
His partners having put the kibosh on playtime, he spun his chair around and shoved off in the direction from which he'd come. This time he only made it two thirds of the way across the room.
Crap and a half.
He rolled his eyes. Christian chuckled. Kelly John offered up a round of applause and a suggestion. "Why don't you make yourself useful and go grab us some lunch?"
"I could. But I'm trying to keep a low profile here.
Sticking with Hank's playbook and all that."
Tripp followed the Smithson principal's instructions to the letter, but then so did all five of Hank's original handpicked operatives as well as the newest recruit.
Each one of them owed him, if not for the fact that their names weren't yet carved into nondescript tombstones, then for keeping them from a lot of years spent incarcerated at Leavenworth or
Gitmo
.
Besides, there was something about Hank's seventy-five years of experience at staying alive that spoke to a man.
"No one said you had to go to Brighton's," K.J. was saying. "Order a pizza. Pick up Chinese."
"Besides," Christian added, "there are other delis out there."
Tripp sputtered, feigning shock.
"Heresy.
Blas-
phemy
.
Other delis indeed."
K.J. waved Tripp away and turned back to the bank of monitors at his desk. "So, phone in an order. Have Glory leave it for you with Glenn in the garage. Pick it up there if you think your mark's
gonna
make you."
Tripp wasn't too keen on the idea. The garage separating the buildings housing Brighton's and Smithson Engineering—the cover for the SG-5 team—was no better than a war zone.
The honking, the squealing tires, the exhaust fumes—not to mention the nosy punk parking attendant.
Forget getting in any quality Glory time with Glenn hovering around. And that quality time—even more than the freakish boredom—was the only reason Tripp was even considering venturing out of the ops center.
Kelly John and Christian might want food, but it wasn't too high on Tripp's list of priorities. He'd learned to do without in the weeks before Hank Smithson swooped down on salvation's wings and plucked him off a Colombian mountainside, and he'd never quite gotten back to his old way of thinking.
He ate enough to keep his body strong and able, his mind active and alert. Just not enough to start taking sustenance for granted. Not when he knew all too well the way life had of snatching away what he valued.
He glanced at the monitors on his desk. The first received the wireless feed from the camera hidden behind the marquee over the entrance to the Smithson building. He toggled left, toggled right.
Nothing out of the ordinary on the street in front of Brighton's or the diamond exchange.
Next he glanced at the monitor showing the feed from Brighton's security system. Glory had no knowledge of SG-5's video tap of her wires. The shop's surveillance cameras were simply set up to encourage employee honesty, scare straight the kids working for her,
stuff
like that.
But they told Tripp what he needed to know. Spectra
IT's
agent had not yet arrived.
Tripp pounced on the window of opportunity, shooting out of his chair and making like a rabbit for the door to the safety vestibule. The walls of the tiny chamber were constructed of sixteen-inch steel and separated the SG-5 nerve center from the floor's areas of public access.
