Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

He stepped straight out of the chopper and floated to the ground, arms folded across his chest.

He was the only serving military man we had — I did my twenty and got out in the mid-Seventies, myself. He was second-generation Chinese-American, but he looked Central Asian. It gave us something to play on, since Iran has a sizable Turkmen minority up in the northeast.

Informally he was known as Dive Bomb. He could adjust the weight of any or all parts of his body at will, sort of like Hiram Worchester. He could add mass to a punch, or he could make himself feather-light and drift on wind currents. We figured to use him for recon, or if we needed someone to get over the ten-foot wall that surrounded the compound or onto a roof.

I watched him tightly as he grounded and walked away. He had an attitude too, what you usually call your Small Man Syndrome — not everyone handles it as gracefully as I, though then again I'm more middle-sized. I'd been hoping he was too professional — or too smart — to start a dustup with our ride out of here.

The Marine in the doorway muttered something about "ragheads" and turned away. When the sun had come up Chung had gotten on his knees and bowed toward Mecca to pray; though American-born, he was a practicing Muslim. The Marines got quite a kick out of that. I decided he might not need a chewing-out after all.

Amy Mears appeared in the door, blond, frail, and ethereal as a Maxfield Parrish nymph. A good-enough looking kid with short black hair and eyes of startling green materialized beside the chopper.

"Here, honey," he said. "Allow me."

She nodded. He grabbed her by the waist, plucking her neatly from the suddenly-helpful hands of the crew, and swung her down. He offered her his forearm.

"I never knew you were such a gentleman," she murmured.

"Yeah," the kid said. "I got class coming out the ass, baby."

Her smile slipped. She gently liberated her arm.

That was Billy Ray. A kid he truly was, too; he was all of twenty years old, still a student at Michigan University. He had been on his way to NFL stardom as a running back until he busted his leg in three places in the first quarter of the Rose Bowl. People began to suspect there was something unusual about him when he tried to get back into the game before halftime. A blood test for xenovirus Takis-A ended his hopes of an athletic career; he had jumped at the offer from Justice to get in on a secret mission.

He was security for our team. He was a hand-to-hand combat expert, stronger than a nat, quicker, and a great deal meaner. There was anger in those green eyes, lots of it. If he could direct that anger against the enemy he could be a lethal — and silent — asset.

Ackroyd materialized at Mears' elbow, guided her away from Billy Ray with a greater degree of deftness than one expects from window-peepers, at least outside of detective fiction. Ray's eyes tracked them like green laser beams.

I watched him tightly. If he couldn't control his rage he'd blow the lid off the mission. There had not been time enough for me to decide which was most likely. Roll the bones, roll the bones …

The choppers lifted with a whine and headed for their own hideout. The team had rattled around inside one of the big RH-53s; two of them would be enough to lift off team and hostages both, if something should happen to Mr. Ackroyd, which God forbid. The third was along as backup. Choppers are unreliable beasts.

We were truly out in the boondocks, and unlikely to attract more trouble than we could handle. Just in case, I issued disguises and weapons and turned a deaf ear to grumbling. We took shelter from the lethal sun in a fossilized shack with busted-out windows that let the hot Persian wind blow right through to our bones.

I was hoping my team would get some sleep during the day. Naturally, that was optimistic. Everybody was keyed up to the extent they barely fit inside their skins. They didn't have the soldier's knack for snatching sleep where you can find it, or a soldier's gut appreciation of why that's needful.

Harvey Melmoth volunteered to take first watch. I went out to pick him a nice spot on a little hardpacked sand hill where he could keep watch on the surrounding desolation.

"I don't need that ," he said in a whisper — he couldn't talk any louder than that. He pushed away the Kalashnikov AKM I was trying to hand him. A fold of his red and white checked kaffiyeh fell in front of his mouth, further muffling his words. "I won't take life."

He was a little balding guy dwarfed by his baggy Western-castoff Third World battle dress. He had a prissy little mouth and blue eyes swimming behind round spectacles thick as armor plate. He looked as if a walk back into the stacks would tax him; an obstacle course would drop him dead in his tracks. And yet here he was, key component in the hairiest commando mission since the West Germans took down the hijacked airliner at Mogadishu.

His ace name was "the Librarian." His power was to project a zone of absolute silence for a radius of about five meters. He would be crucial in enabling us to gain entry to the Embassy, neutralize any guards we encountered, and get to the widely-scattered hostages without alerting our enemy.

"Think of it as a prop," I said, pressing the rifle on him. "The point is, if people see you holding that thing, they're liable to reckon we're too mean to mess with. If we don't have to fight, it's less likely that anyone gets hurt. Us or them."

He showed me a timid little chipmunk smile beneath his moustache. "I'm not worried, Major. Adventure fiction is bad fiction. We're having an adventure. Surely I can't die in a bad novel?"

"Uh- huh ," I said. "Make sure to lend your guardian Muse" — he nodded brightly — "a hand by keeping your eyes open."

He reached inside the baggy tunic he wore. "Is it all right if I read?" he asked, pulling out a paperback copy of Jude the Obscure .

"Later," I said and walked back to the shack.

"I'm not afraid," Chung was saying when I got back. "Whatever happens, I can handle it."

"I like to see confidence," I said, "but a man who feels no fear is either stupid or psychotic. We're in danger every minute we're on the ground here, and I don't want anyone to forget it. Fear is our friend; it's Evolution's way of keeping us on our toes."

Ray was sitting on the table kicking the heels of his cowboy boots against the dusty plank floor. "What's to be afraid of? Nobody ever died from pain."

I gave him a hard look "Say that after you've done time in the basements of Evin Prison with SAVAMA beating on the soles of your feet with a steel cable."

He jutted his jaw. Ackroyd made a contemptuous sound.

"The Mechanic versus Kid Wolverine! The fight of the century!" He gave a sideways look to Damsel. "What do you think, kid? If the macho bullshit gets any deeper in here, we could always stand on the table to try to keep an airway open."

Lady Black had turned her cape reflective side out. She looked entirely cool. Her laugh sounded the same.

"You've got your own swagger, Popinjay," she said. He scowled at the nickname. "They've got their tough talk, you've got your smart mouth. It's all insecurity talking."

Ackroyd glowered and found something fascinating in the white-bright landscape outside. He did not savor the taste of his own medicine.

Joann Jefferson — Lady Black, so-called for obvious reasons — was a Justice Department operative, a cool, tall woman in her mid to late twenties. Her skin was black, but nowhere near as black as her form-fitting suit, or the flip side of the cape she had pulled about her clear to the eyes. The garments seemed to suck in light like a black hole.

Her power was to draw energy into herself. She would be useful for turning out the lights at need — during our wonder week of training at Delta's Camp Smokey in North Carolina, she had shown that she could blow out a generator in seconds flat. Since she could also drain electrochemical energy from a human body, she could render a sentry quickly and quietly unconscious — or dead, an alternative she abhorred.