Tomahawk, Page 3

  Chapter 3

  Somewhere in the middle of the Mojave a gray fox tracked a shrew between shrubs under a blazing summer sun. The shrubs were tiny explosions of life, as if the desert sand compressed the seed until it burst with force to the surface. The hot sand shifted beneath the fox's paw. The sky was too bright to look at for more than a few seconds.

  But the gray fox pursued the shrew until it casually crawled into a hole beneath a shrub to disappear, completely unaware of the gray fox stalking it from behind. The fox's curiosity made it linger when it should have attacked, and now lunch was delayed.

  A strong wind picked up from above. Sand lifted off the ground, at first lightly, but then heavily as the wind increased in strength. The gray fox looked up—above it was the largest bird it had ever seen.

  It ran.

  "Cool looking fox over there," Raven said.

  Hawk looked over the side of the helicopter. But the gray fox was gone.

  "Where are we?" Hawk asked.

  "Our base in the middle of the Mojave. This should look familiar from the video."

  Hawk looked around.

  "You're right. But then why are we here? Don't the aliens know of this place?"

  "I suppose they do. But we launch satellites from here all the time. We're certain that your shuttle looks identical to our satellites and they won't know the difference."

  The helicopter touched down. Hawk wore running shoes, slim fit denim jeans and his tried and true black cowhide welding jacket, worn, burnt, and unbuttoned, over a white tank top. The heat was overpowering, and cowhide welding jackets were heavy as they were, so he took it off as Raven followed him off the helicopter. Horace Florence was the last to disembark.

  "Good you've kept your physique," Raven said.

  "Burritos for breakfast exclusively."

  "I'm not your friend, Hawk. I still despise you."

  Hawk shrugged. "I forgot you existed until a few hours ago."

  He withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook the pack open. A cigarette stuck out further than the others. He took it out with his lips, then with his other hand sparked it with a Zippo.

  "Those things will kill you," Horace said.

  "So will the aliens."

  The helicopter blades slowed to a stop.

  Hawk took a drag of the cigarette. "I forgot my glass with boobs on it on the helicopter."

  Raven shoved Hawk forward and growled. "Fuck off."

  Horace kept a straight face. His tie and jacket waved with the wind. "I'll keep an eye on it for you."

  "So where is this base anyway?" Hawk said.

  "You'll be surprised," Raven said.

  Hawk looked around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in sight. He took a second drag of the cigarette. "The base is underground," he said. "Makes sense."

  Raven shook his head. "The base isn't what's underground."

  Horace withdrew a remote from his pocket and pressed a button.

  At first nothing happened. But then the sand on the surface in front of them started shaking, a square area of about fifteen yards. Then, that square started to shift, and like a garage door, it opened to reveal a vehicle underneath.

  "This is the shuttle that is going to take us to our base," Horace said.

  "The base is in space," Hawk said. "Makes sense."

  He dropped his half smoked cigarette and smothered it with his shoe.

  Raven shook his head and smirked. "The base isn't what's in space," he said.

  "So what's in space?" Hawk asked.

  "What makes you think something has to be in space?" Raven said.

  "The shuttle, dumbass."

  "This is just where we park our shuttle," Horace said. "The shuttle is taking us to a different location."

  The three descended the stairs. The shuttle could fit four people—a pilot and co-pilot, and two passengers. It looked like a sedan with wheels folded outward, parked standing on its trunk. Hawk suspected that at one point it might have been a car, repurposed. Then he saw the rear and realized that it wasn't a sedan at all. It was much worse. It was a crossover.

  "No," Hawk said. "No. Hell no. Is this a Pontiac Aztec?"

  Horace nodded. "It is. Pontiac Aztecs are shuttles. You must have realized that."

  "Wait. You mean...?"

  "Yes." Horace nodded. "Most all Pontiac Aztecs are actually shuttles driven by government agents or other special agents. We suspected no citizen would actually be interested in purchasing or leasing a model of the car. The goal was to be hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately, for some reason, some people actually like the look."

  "So this is going to take us to the base?" Hawk said.

  "Yes."

  Hawk sighed with disappointment as the Horace entered the driver's side and Raven took passenger. He pulled open the car door and stepped in awkwardly. The seats hadn't been adjusted at all, so when they were seated they were supine on their backs, parallel to the ground.

  Horace gave the car a bit of gas and the car lifted off the ground.

  "Systems are all reading, numbers are good. The capacitor is rerouting power to the impulse thrusters now."

  He turned to Raven. "Everything look good?"

  "I think we're good."

  "Alright, we're off!"

  Horace pounded the gas. Hawk's head shot backward against the cushion as they surged into the air. In a matter of seconds they were ten thousand feet above sea level. Horace leveled the car, and they flew level over the Pacific Ocean.

  "Oh, the base is underwater, hidden in the Pacific Ocean," Hawk said. "Makes sense."

  "Not even close," Raven replied.

  "So the base isn't underground, in space, or underwater."

  "Of course not," Horace said. "Too obvious."

  "So where's the base?"

  They seemed to be flying further and further away from the mainland. Hawk had no idea where they could be going.

  "The first thing you need to understand is we're not going to a base, but instead to one of many bases," Horace said. "The Planetary Observation Network of Thrust by Impulse Augmented Cars."

  Hawk figured out the acronym in his head. "You mean... Pontiac?"

  "Precisely," Horace said. "An acronym."

  "I thought it stood for something else."

  "It all began in 1924," Horace said. "That's when the Soviet Union founded the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel. In 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. Things might have gone differently if during that time we had a less cool president, but as fate would have it, we had the coolest president of all time. President Lil C-Cool, Calvin Coolidge, indisputably the coolest president the United States has ever had. He worked together with Robert Goddard and General Motors to found the PONTIAC, conjecturing that the first nation to have flying cars would be the coolest nation on the planet. For decades, Pontiacs have been driven almost exclusively by government agents, Air Force pilots, and Steve McQueen villains. They couldn't fly at first, but they could leap over pretty large gaps. But as years passed, the cars improved. Finally we created the pinnacle car, the car that Lil C-Cool dreamt while drinking scotch, smoking cigars, playing pool, and being a generally chill dude all those years ago. The Pontiac Aztec. We were sure to make it hideous, so that no consumer would actually consider buying it. Because Pontiacs are engrained in the human psyche, we hoped that the general public would just mark the Aztec down as an abomination and forget about it, allowing us to observe the planet, hiding in plain sight. Unfortunately some people actually wanted to buy a model, so we were forced to commission models without impulse thrusters. But make no mistake—ninety-nine percent of Pontiac Aztecs are shuttles in disguise, observing the planet."

  "That makes no sense," Hawk said. "How could Calvin Coolidge have known about impulse thrusters, which is a relatively new invention, in 1926?"

  "This is a history lesson, not an interrogation, Hawk," Horace said.

  Hawk grunted and looked out
the window. They were over the Pacific Ocean still, flying west, and quickly approaching an island. "Hawaii. Got it. So the base, I mean bases, are hidden inside volcanoes. Makes sense."

  "Obviously the base isn't inside a volcano," Raven said. "Do you know much it would cost to insure a base inside a volcano?"

  "Probably a pretty penny," Hawk replied. "It's too obvious, anyway."

  The Aztec began lowering. Clouds spread across the sky as if smudged by a wet finger. The air was crisp, the wind strong. Below, he saw a large lot surrounded by trees. A single road ran parallel to the lot, and in the center of the lot was a large office building with a unique oblong shape.

  They seemed to be in the suburbs off the highway. As they descended closer and closer to the ground, Hawk began to notice something strange about the parking lot. The cars were parked in a pattern, with similar looking cars parked next to each other.

  "Wait a minute," Hawk said.

  Raven huffed with a smile. "Now you're getting it."

  "We're at a car dealership—we're at a Pontiac dealership." Hawk shook his head and sighed with extreme disappointment. "Your base is a Pontiac dealership."

  "You bet your ass it is," Raven said. "Problem?"

  "I'm starting to root for the aliens."

  "It gets hard not to."

  The car touched down gently in the parking lot and the three men stepped out. The air was crisp and warm, and the wind ruffled Hawk's Waving Back hair as he looked around. There were Pontiacs everywhere, and even dealers walking around showing cars to customers.

  "Are those real dealers?"

  Horace nodded. "Most of them. With real customers."

  Hawk watched a dealer who wore an expression on his face that could only be described as pure horror enter the passenger seat of a test car about to be driven by a five-foot-tall sixteen year old with a Mohawk, pierced ears and nose, and glasses. The Mohawk gave him an extra three inches in height. The test car was a yellow sedan, and as soon as they sat down the car lurched backwards and skidded to a stop. Hawk could hear the dealer inside the car scream, "Gently! Gently!"

  Horace nudged Hawk. "This way," he said.

  Hawk followed Horace and Raven into the dealership. The floor room was filled with about fifteen display model cars that gave Hawk the feeling that they were touring some kind of theme park museum.

  Straight ahead of him, in a strange circular carpeted area were eight round high-top wooden tables. Seated at one was a man in a white stained t-shirt, reading a newspaper with a cup of black coffee in a Styrofoam cup. For some reason there were balloons everywhere, as if some kid decided that this Pontiac dealership was where he wanted to throw his birthday party.

  Horace walked away to take a phone call. Raven and Hawk shared a contemptuous glance, and then walked off in opposite directions.

  "What the hell are you celebrating?" Hawk asked a nearby dealer.

  The dealer grinned condescendingly. "This is the Solar Eclipse Super-Special Zero-Down Lease Giveaway Extravaganza! Right now you can lease a brand new Aztec with zero-down and a ten-year, one hundred thousand mile warranty with an Aztec hybrid battery lifetime guarantee and three point nine percent APR for fifty months! Did he say fifty months? Fuck yes he did! Don't tell my manager I cursed or I'll get fired! Want to take one of these babies for a quick spin around the block, my man?"

  "I'd rather shoot myself," Hawk said.

  "Listen my brother, I'm not supposed to do this, but my boss is out for lunch, so I don't care. I'm a couple thousand away from my sales quota and I need to sell a car quickly. If I can get you to in one of these bad boys today I'll throw in one thousand dollars purchase bonus cash, no questions asked."

  Horace walked over, done with his phone call, and Hawk turned to him and said, "Can I shoot him or is he a special agent?"

  The dealer looked at Horace wide-eyed. "Horace Florence?"

  "That'll do, agent. Drop the act."

  "It's an honor, sir. We haven't seen coats here in years. What's the occasion?"

  The two shook hands. Hawk stared at both men incredulously. "Remind me again what's stopping me from shooting the both of you?"

  "Your patriotism," Horace said.

  "Don't count on it."

  Horace nodded his head to the dealer. "This is Gary Davison. You might be seeing a lot of one another, so play nice. Gary, this is Hawk Abrams. Yes, the real Hawk Abrams."

  Gary held out his hand, "Whoa. I've heard a lot about you Mr. Abrams. It's great to finally meet you."

  Hawk shook his hand, but narrowed his eyes. "You're off to a bad start, bucko."

  Hawk let go and watched Gary pretend that his hand hadn't just been crushed. Gary looked at Hawk with a strained smile. "Can I call you Hawk?"

  "No."

  Raven returned. Gary took a look at him. "Raven himself! I should've recognized you sooner."

  Raven growled at him. "Shut up. Let's get moving."

  He walked over to a display car in the center of the floor room and wordlessly pulled open the driver's side door and sat down and buckled in. Hawk looked at the others. Certainly they weren't going to drive the model car out of the floor room?

  But the others followed suit. Horace took the passenger seat and Gary a seat in the back.

  Hawk grumbled and entered the backseat after Gary. The three others were buckled in.

  "You're going to want to buckle in, Hawk," Horace said.

  "Why the hell are the four of us grown ass men sitting in a display car in the middle of a showroom?"

  "You'll find out in a second if you just buckle your seatbelt."

  Raven pretended he didn't hear their conversation. "The coast is clear. Here we go," he said.

  He put a key in the ignition and twisted.

  With a sudden lurch, Hawk was thrown against Gary, and then thrown against the ceiling of the car. His world was literally turned upside-down. The instant Raven turned the key, the floor below the car had rotated, and their vehicle rotated beneath the floor. The four of them were now upside-down in the sedan, except Hawk, who was supine on the ceiling, his head bent at an awkward angle, and his hip in Gary's face.

  "What the hell was that?" Hawk shouted. His head hurt from being slammed against the ceiling, and his hip hurt from smashing Gary's nose.

  "The secret entrance to our secret base," Horace said.

  "A little warning would have been nice," Hawk replied. He shifted on the ceiling to lie more comfortably and crawled for the door.

  Gary lifted a hand to his nose and touched it, then looked at his fingers and saw blood. "Nobody panic, but I think my nose is broken."

  "Nobody cares," Raven replied. He swung open his door, then with one hand on the seat and another on the belt buckle, he released himself and rolled deftly out of the car, landing on the floor four-feet below.

  "We definitely need a better secret entrance," Horace said. He released himself from the seatbelt gently, and worked slowly to rotate his body in the car to reorient himself upright.

  Hawk swung open the door and summersaulted out, landing on both feet.

  "I'll catch up," Gary said. "I'm losing a lot of blood. I think I need a quick nap."

  Hawk looked around the facility. It looked like a small warehouse surrounded by a lot of offices. In the center of the warehouse was a blue tarp covering a sedan-shaped object. Against the back wall was what appeared to be a futuristic weaponry rack, and next to that rack was another with an array of high-tech gadgetry.

  A man wearing a light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into black pants approached the group of them and held a hand out to each of them one at a time.

  "Horace, Raven, Hawk. Good to see all of you."

  Horace and the man shook hands. "Gentlemen," Horace said. 'This is Boris Ivanov."

  Boris continued. "We've already been briefed on the situation. Unless there's anything else, we can take it from here."

  Raven looked at Hawk. "I think I've handled as much of him as I care to for the ne
xt fifty years." He held out a hand to Hawk. "Good luck, Hawk. I may hate you, but you're our only hope, so don't screw this up."

  Hawk grabbed his hand for a second. Horace put a hand on Hawk's shoulder.

  "Hawk. This is you verses them now. You can forget everything else but that."

  He and Hawk shook hands. Then the two of them walked back over to the car and climbed in, which took a few moments because they had to rotate their bodies into the seats of an upside-down sedan stuck on the roof.

  Boris held out a hand towards the weapon rack. "Shall we get started, Hawk?"

  "In a moment, I have to see this."

  Hawk watched as Raven and the others got settled. Raven put the key in the ignition, and a moment later the car rotated on the ceiling again and disappeared to the floor above, and where it was an identical empty car appeared.

  "That's cool," Hawk said. "But also incredibly bizarre."

  Boris nodded his head. "You'll find that a majority of the gadgets and gizmos we're equipping you with can be described exactly the same way."

  Hawk turned and looked at Boris. He was a few inches shorter than Hawk, but then again, most men were. He had brown hair that stuck about one inch straight up and long sideburns. He wore thick-framed glasses and had a decent build with a slight gut.

  "You don't have much of an accent," Hawk said.

  "I was born in the States. You wouldn't understand a word my folks say though."

  Hawk nodded and looked around the facility. "So what's the plan?"

  "We teach you how to use the equipment you'll need to sneak onto and subsequently off of the alien mother ship, and give you the tools you'll need to disable their weapon."

  "So you know about the aliens."

  "We were briefed about ten minutes ago. Not that any of us were surprised. We are a division of NASA after all and it would be pretty embarrassing if NASA didn't notice a gigantic spacecraft in our exosphere."

  "I suppose it would be."

  "Alright so let's get started. The schedule is to have you up in the air within forty eight hours, which probably won't be enough time to teach you how to handle high-tech weaponry, how to navigate through space in a powered exosuit for your necessary EVAs, how we suppose you'll break into the alien mother ship and subsequently leave, how you'll eventually disable the equipment, and most importantly and most difficultly, how you'll fly up to space and land back down on Earth. But we'll do the best we can."

  Hawk nodded. "Sounds doable. So where do we begin?"

  Boris beckoned Hawk to follow. "Let me show you to your quarters first."

  They walked to the back of the warehouse. At a small lab table stood a man and woman, twins, wearing lab coats. They worked on one of the devices from the wall. The device looked like a syringe. It made a strange tick noise, and the twins cursed simultaneously.

  "Those two are Jordan and Casey. They make sure all the devices work properly."

  Jordan and Casey looked at Hawk.

  "You must be Hawk."

  "He looks like a master infiltrator."

  "He's taller than I was expecting."

  "We should introduce ourselves."

  The man walked up. He had short brown hair, thin wire-framed glasses and had a smaller, slightly feminine look about him. "The name is Jordan."

  The woman approached next. She had long brown hair set in a ponytail and thick plastic framed glasses. She was an attractive, obviously feminine version of her brother. "He's kidding. I'm Jordan. He's Casey."

  "Guilty as charged."

  "Guilty of having a name?"

  Hawk held up a finger and they both immediately fell silent. He pointed at the man and then the woman. "Thing One. And Thing Two."

  Casey looked at Boris. "Are we hooking him up to the brain destroyer?"

  Hawk shook his head. "I'll take this one, Boris." He looked at Casey. "No. The answer is a no."

  "It's a misnomer," Jordan said. "We prefer to call it the mind destroyer."

  "Still a no."

  "Still a misnomer," Casey said. "We're going to teach you kung fu. We hook up nodes to your head and when you wake up tomorrow you'll know kung fu."

  "I already know kung fu."

  "So what are we teaching him?"

  Boris pointed to the sedan with the tarp over it. "How to fly Tweety."

  "Ooh that's a good one."

  "A personal favorite of mine, personally."

  "That was redundant."

  "Not since we amped up the code."

  Hawk interrupted them. "What's Tweety?"

  "A prototype," said Boris. "We'll get to that tomorrow. First things first—"

  "My quarters. Right." He looked at the twins and nodded to them both. "Thing One and Thing Two."

  "Hawk," they replied simultaneously.

  Hawk and Boris turned left at the back wall and entered a thin hallway. In the center of the hallway on the left wall was a large metal door with a peephole in the center.

  "Well, this is it," Boris said.

  "Honestly Boris, I don't need a room. And considering how much I have to learn, I doubt I'll have much time to sleep."

  "Sleep is how you'll learn. We are going to knock you out cold for the next forty-eight hours broken into two sessions, and upload a montage of everything you need to learn into your brain. When you wake up, you'll have downloaded approximately two hundred gigabytes of data."

  "Including kung fu?"

  Boris shook his head. "We can't actually teach kung fu or anything with the body. We can teach fundamentals, but most of that sort of thing comes down to experience, instinct, and training."

  "Good," Hawk said. "I like that better. I don't want someone being able to simply download what I've been training to do my whole life."

  "I agree. Our system is actually crap and never works as intended. But we're short on time and it's the only way we can possibly have you prepared in forty-eight hours, so we feel comfortable risking it."

  "Well, I am certainly relieved that you feel comfortable risking damaging my brain."

  Boris opened the door to the room. "Glad you feel that way. Go inside and relax. The twins will be with you shortly."

  Before Hawk could reply, Boris walked off. Hawk sighed and grumbled, then walked inside and took a look around.

  The room looked as if it had been underwater for some time and had recently been drained. Every metallic surface was rusted. But despite the age of the furniture, all the equipment was new and state-of-the-art. There was a twin-sized bed against the wall, and on the other side of the bed was a desk with a computer. The computer was hooked up to what looked like a salad bowl with wires sprouting from it like hair. Dangling from the salad bowl helmet was a chinstrap. Hawk doubted he'd be able to fall asleep for even a minute in that thing.

  There was a knock on the door. Hawk walked over and looked through the peephole. Outside stood the twins, holding their faces strangely close to the door, so that the fisheye lens of the peephole exaggerated their noses and eyes.

  Hawk lifted the latch and pulled open the door.

  Jordan handed Hawk the phone. "Phone call."

  "Who is it?"

  "The president."

  Hawk took the phone from Casey's hand and raised it to his ear.

  "Hello?"

  He heard Frank Garraghan on the other end. "Hawk?"

  "Speaking."

  "Don't fuck this up. And go fuck yourself." Click.

  Hawk turned to the twins. "That was pleasant."

  "He sounded angry," Casey said.

  Jordan shook her head. "I wouldn't call it angry."

  "Furious?"

  "Incensed."

  Jordan and Casey entered Hawk's room and continued their conversation as if he wasn't there.

  "Interesting word."

  "How so."

  "Incense, the holistic kind, is allegedly calming."

  "Never used any myself."

  "Neither have I, but that's not my point."

  "You have a poi
nt?"

  "Naturally."

  "Not always."

  "If you were to use incense in a room to calm someone, and they became incensed, then your incense failed."

  "Have you brought our non-holistic incense?"

  Hawk began to grind his teeth.

  "Hawk."

  Jordan said his name, but Hawk couldn't hear her over the grinding in his mind.

  "Hawk?"

  He shook his head. "Yes. What?"

  "We need to light our variation of incense. It relaxes your mind, allows our machine to do its thing more effectively."

  "How does that thing work anyway?"

  "It resets the dorsal cerebral proton resonance with an antimatter nanosphere," Casey said.

  "Really?"

  "No. He made all of that up," Jordan said.

  "You think I'm going to waste time explaining a machine that took decades for us to understand, which has no relevance to your life whatsoever, when we're already short for time, to a man who won't understand any of it anyway?"

  Hawk stared at the both of them for a few pronounced seconds.

  "You realize I can kill you both in ten different ways with just my pinky, right?"

  "We are well aware," Casey said.

  "Don't, however, bother explaining how," Jordan said. "Our brains are full enough as they are."

  Hawk grimaced. "Just hook me up to this machine and let's get this over with."

  "That's the plan," Jordan said. "Forty-eight hours from now and you'll be an expert on machines you've never touched or seen before."

  Casey patted the mattress. "Take a seat, make yourself comfortable. My sister will take off your pants."

  Hawk took a seat on the bed. "I've watched the X-rated version of this."

  "I'm sure you've watched plenty of pornography, Hawk," Casey said. "Now scoot back over here so I can put this salad bowl on your head."

  "So that's an actual salad bowl?"

  "I'm guessing this is where real life and your videos deviate."

  Hawk smirked. "You'd be surprised."

  "I'm more surprised that you're this drunk on a Tuesday afternoon an hour after meeting with the President of the United States."

  "It was his liquor."

  Jordan began unbuckling his belt. "Not anymore," she said.

  "Evidently," Casey followed up. There were bolts on either side of the salad bowl. As Casey twisted them, the bowl tightened on Hawk's head.

  Jordan grunted as she yanked his pants down towards his ankle. "You have extremely pale thighs."

  Hawk winked at her and smiled. "I get that a lot."

  "You should turn off the lights when you sleep with women."

  "Should probably turn off the engine as well but then you lose all the fun of doing it on the highway."

  "You can take your pants off while driving a car on the highway?"

  Hawk looked at Jordan and smirked. "I could do that in my sleep."

  Casey and Jordan, for the first time, didn't reply immediately. They looked at each other with an awed sort of nod.

  "Now I'm impressed," said Jordan.

  "Wait until you take off my boxers."

  Casey knocked on the salad bowl. It echoed loudly and Hawk winced. "We're all set," Casey said. "And that's not happening."

  "At least let me change my relationship status to 'it's complicated'."

  Jordan ignored him and took some sticks of incense out of her lab coat.

  Casey withdrew a glass holder and a lighter from his. He took the incense from his sister, set them up beside the bed and lit them. "Try not to dream," he said. "Sleep tight. See you in forty-eight hours."

  He turned off the light and closedshut the door. The room dimmed as the door shut, and when it closed it was pitch black. Hawk looked around, although he couldn't see anything, and breathed in. The incense smelled faintly of fresh-mowed grass and strawberries. As Hawk continued breathing in, his brain seemed to grow heavier. He allowed himself to lie back on the bed and focused on the air going in and out, in and out, in and—continued to breath in.

  "Wake him up!"

  "He's out cold! We set it to forty-eight hours!"

  "The upload is still in progress, it's not a good idea."

  "None of this is a good idea."

  "We're fucked. We're so totally fucked."

  "Snuff the incense!"

  "Pry his eyes open!"

  "Unhook the salad bowl!"

  There was noise all around him. He was trying to sleep. Now he had a massive headache. What was going on?

  Hawk opened his eyes. The light was on. Boris and the twins scrambled around him. Jordan was over him, unhooking the salad bowl, Casey was delicately trying to snuff the incense, and Boris was struggling to put back on his pants.

  "What's going on?" Hawk asked. But his words came out as just an exaggerated vowel.

  "He's up! Sort of."

  Hawk tried to sit up. "What's going on?" he asked again.

  "Sit him up," Boris said. "Give him the coffee."

  Casey handed a cup to Hawk. He took it and took a sip.

  "Keep drinking. That's an extra-sweet black eye. Chug it."

  Hawk lifted the cup and drained the coffee, strong and sweet.

  "Have you finished with the salad bowl, Jordan? Can you help him with his pants? I have to brief him quickly."

  "Sure," Jordan said.

  Hawk wanted to say something witty, but his brain wasn't functioning yet.

  "Hawk, we've had a major setback. We thought President Douchebag said forty-eight hours, but what he actually says was 'four to eight' hours. Eight hours passed thirty minutes ago. We need you in the air thirty minutes ago."

  Hawk squeezed his eyes with his fingers. "Ain't that some shit."

  "Can you move?"

  Hawk pushed himself upright and shifted to the edge of the bed. "Not the first time I've been drugged and forced to move."

  With an extra heave, he pushed himself to his feet.

  "How's it going with the pants, Jordan?"

  "He keeps moving, sir."

  "Funny you should say that," Boris said. "Considering we have plenty of time for your bullshit excuses. Oh that's right. We don't."

  Hawk laughed as Jordan frowned. "Why doesn't he put on his own pants?"

  "You're doing a stand up job, doll," Hawk replied. Jordan shot him an angry look.

  She got the pants to his waist. Hawk buttoned them, then buckled his belt.

  "Alright, brief me. Let's walk and talk."

  Hawk pulled open the door and walked into the hallway. Boris turned to the twins. "Grab the arsenal."

  "He won't know what any of the devices are!" Casey said.

  "He'll figure it out."

  Jordan sighed. "He knows roughly sixteen point two repeating threes percent of what he needs to know to use any of the equipment."

  "I know how to kill a man using ten percent of my fingers," Hawk said. "I can figure out a way to use the weapons with sixteen."

  They arrived in the main warehouse room and Casey grabbed a crate of gadgets from their lab table. Jordan grabbed a gadget from the top and showed it to Hawk.

  "This is the most important gadget," she said. "You'll need it to disable the alien weapon. Do you know how to use this?"

  Hawk stared at it. It looked like a hammer.

  "That looks like a hammer."

  "It is a hammer. But it actually has alien—"

  "I'm pretty confident that I know how to use a hammer."

  Boris shoved Hawk along. "Good enough. Hawk, take off your shirt."

  Jordan reached into the crate and pulled out a torso-long metal centipede looking device with hundreds of needles along where the legs would be. Hawk looked at it "Um. Why?"

  "Do you know the effect of outer space on bare skin?" Boris asked.

  Hawk shook his head, still eyeing the device. "I wasn't aware that we've sent bears to space."

  "Not bear skin. Bare skin. As in your naked flesh."

  "No id
ea."

  "You would pretty much freeze and boil simultaneously. This device prevents that from happening."

  "How's it work?"

  Boris narrowed his eyes. "I look like a scientist to you? Take off your damn shirt."

  "Well she does."

  "None of us have time to explain how this highly technological piece of machinery works, Hawk," Jordan said. "Just accept that it works and move on."

  "That's a very flimsy excuse to avoid explaining a strange piece of equipment that seems like an integral part of this plan."

  Boris shouted. "Stop stalling and take of your shirt!"

  Hawk frowned. "Fine. This better not hurt. No touching." He looked at Jordan. "Except for her. She can touch."

  He took off his shirt. Jordan approached with the centipede device. "That's the plan," she said.

  "Don't think I'm not aware that this is going to hurt," Hawk said as Jordan placed the device against his spine. "I've seen how Alfred Molina acted in this scene."

  Casey raised an eyebrow. "Who just casually namedrops Alfred Molina?"

  "Guess how many times I've seen Spider-Ma—OW."

  The device stuck its hundreds of needles into Hawk's back in a matter of seconds.

  "How's that feel?" Jordan asked.

  "Painful."

  "Do some Master Infiltrator techniques or something to make sure this doesn't hinder your movements."

  "Some infiltrator techniques?"

  "Yes."

  "Whatever that means..."

  Hawk looked at the others, who were looking back at him expectedly. He sighed.

  "Fine."

  He threw himself forward and summersaulted. Then he summersaulted again, and again, and then rolled onto his back and wiggled around, looking up at the ceiling with his feet and hands in the air.

  "What the hell sort of technique is that?"

  "I call it 'Dog Scratching Its Back on Carpet.'"

  Hawk kicked up from his back to his feet. "Device doesn't hinder me at all. I barely feel it."

  "Good," Boris said. "Next, quickly..."

  Jordan handed Hawk a ring that bent on the sides, as if it were the frame of a clock from a Salvador Dali painting.

  "That goes around your neck," Jordan said. "It's a helmet for oxygen. Press the button on the ring to engage and disengage it."

  "Try it now," Boris said.

  Hawk placed it around his neck. The curves conformed to his shoulders. He pressed the button, and a blue-tinted force field-esque helmet wrapped itself around his head.

  Hawk looked around. "Cool."

  His voice had a hint of static to it.

  "Oxygen is flowing good," Casey said.

  "Flowing well," Jordan corrected

  "Well," Casey said a split second after his sister. "I know. Damn it, Jordan."

  "If you know don't say it wrong."

  Hawk pressed the button again and the force field disengaged.

  "What's next?" he asked.

  "You'll like this," Boris said. "Last thing before you're off. We're almost forty minutes late now. You'll have to figure the rest out once you're up."

  Boris walked over to the sedan-shaped vehicle underneath the blue tarp. Hawk and the twins followed.

  Boris grabbed the tarp. "Ready for this?"

  Hawk nodded.

  With a dramatic flair, Boris ripped the tarp off the vehicle.

  Hawk stared for a few seconds.

  "I don't understand," he said.

  Boris looked as if he were expected a different reaction.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Raven said my shuttle was supposed to look exactly like our satellites..."

  "Yeah, and?"

  Hawk stared at him incredulously. He then looked at the muscle car body of the shuttle—with its long black body, crosshatch pattern grille, cabin roof, and hood scoop.

  "My shuttle is a freaking special edition 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am..."

  "Wait until you see our satellites."

  "This is my shuttle?"

  "You were supposed to learn how to fly it during the mind destroyer, but we had to end it early. How much do you know?"

  Hawk looked at the Firebird. It looked somewhat familiar to him.

  "I think I know a little bit."

  "We programmed the Firebird instruction first," Casey said. "It jumps around a lot, but he should know a bit more about piloting the Firebird than he knows about any of the other devices."

  "Good enough for me," Boris replied. "Hop in, Hawk. Let's get you in the air."

  Hawk hopped in and sat down. Casey handed him the box of gadgets, which he took and placed in the backseat. Boris tossed him the key. Hawk inserted it into the ignition and twisted. The Firebird roared to life.

  "We call her Tweety," Boris shouted over the roar of the engine. "She's the only one of her kind. She sacrifices the ability to hover for incredible speed. The only way to launch is to go fast enough and hit an embankment of some kind, so that you can launch into the air. You land her like you would an airplane. Once you're in the air, pull back on the wheel and you'll engage the thrusters. Push the wheel back in to disengage the thrusters and have the wheels return to their normal positions. Any questions?"

  "Can I keep her?"

  Boris grinned. "Get moving. You save the world and we'll talk."

  He pointed a small remote at a large garage door along the opposite wall. "Follow that tunnel," he yelled as the garage door opened. "At the end is a ramp. Hit it with enough speed and you're golden."

  Hawk put the car in reverse and backed out of the spot, then put the car in neutral and revved the engine. Somehow he knew which button to press to close the cabin windows.

  He looked at the twins and Boris and gave them a thumbs-up. Then shifted the Firebird into drive. The tires screeched as he slammed the gas. His head shot backward with the force of the acceleration, and in a second he was roaring down a pitch-black tunnel.