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Chapter 20   Shootout at the Yerevan Corral

“Labour, n.  One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.”  Ambrose Bierce

“It’s...” Hargrove could barely force the words out.  “It’s…”

He cleared his throat and tried again.

“It’s godawful gaudy.  That’s what it is.”

And it was.  The TICKS headquarters was a parody of what an evil organization’s nerve centre should look like.  The cavernous room was filled with strange machines made of chrome and glass.  The smell of ozone wafted from a dozen sparking Jacob’s ladders.  Throughout the room, scuttling assistants clad in immaculate lab coats made official-looking entries on the clipboards they carried.

There were computers the size of a Lincoln Town Car, spinning tape reels as big as hubcaps.  Banks of lights of every conceivable colour blinked on and off, to no recognizable purpose since none of the lights had labels. 

“Who the hell makes a secret headquarters like this?” he asked, still incredulous.  “You walk into a big room, and every single piece of mission-critical equipment is there in front of you?  Did somebody mail-order all this out of the Big Book of Villainous Clichés?”

The quintet descended the curving metal staircase unopposed.  The lab-coated technicians seemed to regard their scuttling as far too important to interrupt for mere interlopers.  Besides, didn’t they have curiously-dressed security forces waiting with infinite patience behind hidden doorways?

Well yes, they did actually.  A hissing sound was the only warning Hargrove and his companions had as two large metal panels withdrew to reveal at least 30 or 40 armed security guards.  Although each was kitted out with a sub-machine gun, none fired.  Instead they blinked against the sudden light, shaking out arms and legs that had fallen asleep, and let out elaborate groans while stretching their aching backs.  Waiting patiently behind a hidden panel five days a week played hell with your health, but the pay was good and you couldn’t exactly complain about the onerous workload.

Hargrove and his companions scrambled down the rest of the staircase and headed for cover, strafing the curiously-dressed security force as they ran.  The Webley bucked comfortably in Hargrove’s hand as the heavy bullets punched holes through the guards.  He was in his happy place – shooting his beloved revolver, taking on TICKS, and with the beautiful Frieda by his side.

He stiffened suddenly, realizing that despite what the song said, two out of three was bad.  Frieda was not by his side.  Popping his head over the ludicrously outdated tickertape machine he was hiding behind, he scanned the room.  Fine, there was Paulina, keeping up a steady stream of fire from her purloined neutrino accelerator; O’Lan was showing off his proficiency with the MM-1 by bouncing grenades off the floor, or caroming them off the wall like a billiard ball; MacGuinness was berating a technician he had pigeonholed.  His thick accent could barely be heard through the gunfire and explosions: “Y’call that a tractor beam generator?  Och, look a’ this, ye knock-kneed beastie, I can shut it doon just by pulling on this wee lever.  Now show me the dilithium crystals ye were talking about.”

But where was Frieda?  Maybe behind that desk?

Abandoning his cover, Hargrove stood up.  Oblivious to the bullets whipping past him, he called for his beloved Frieda.  There was no answer.  “Cover me!” he yelled to Paulina.

An interesting thing observed by military strategists all over the world: covering fire doesn’t.

Hargrove leapt over the tickertape machine and sprinted across the floor.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up a bolt from the alien weapon flashed past him.  The intended effect of Paulina’s covering shots never materialized, as bursts of sub-machine gunfire chased the Marxist Detective in his headlong run.  The bullets whizzed as they tore more of his clothing into deci-rags.  Shards of concrete stung his legs as shots ricocheted off the floor. He dove behind an elaborate desk, cracking his forehead on an overturned office chair, while an errant bullet buried itself in his buttock.  He bit his lip to stifle the yelp.

“Paulina!” he yelled.  “I thought you were going to cover me!”

The TOCKS agent shrugged, and returned to shooting at the security force.

Crap, he thought, obviously nursing at the hideous teat of Capitalism had stifled any instincts she had towards collectivism. Whatever happened to ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their standing in the Party’?

He ventured a glance over the desk in time to see that the security guard reinforcements had arrived.  Once they finished blinking, shaking their limbs and stretching they would undoubtedly overwhelm the small group of freedom fighters.

“Pour it on!” yelled Hargrove.  “If we lay down enough suppressing fire, maybe we can drive them back long enough to escape.”  He stuck his hand over the desk and fired his revolver’s six shots vaguely in the correct direction.  From his hiding space, he could see that O’Lan had switched from the now-empty MM-1 to an M-60 machine gun on full auto.  A convenient corpse of one of the lab assistants made a suitable sandbag to keep the gun’s recoil from walking it away from him.

Hargrove suddenly learned another lesson well known by military strategists: suppressing fire won’t.

Roaring a battle cry, the android laboratory security force charged.  Submachine guns blazing, they produced an amazing shower of sparks as bullet after bullet blasted into, or pinged off of the laboratory equipment.  The ricochets headed in every conceivable direction, and no doubt downed some of the security guards too.

“Retreat!” yelled O’Lan, dragging the M-60.  He looked like a miniature Mexican bandito thanks to the ammunition belts draped over his shoulders.  “Quick, through that door on the right.” 

O’Lan, Paulina and MacGuinness bolted through the swinging door and quickly scanned the room they were in for another exit.  “Fookin’ ‘Ell, we’re trapped.”

Meanwhile, Hargrove burst through the doors and into a hallway, alone.  Where the hell did everybody go?  He replayed the scene in his mind – O’Lan yelling, everybody running, his hand slamming the door open… Ah, there was the problem.  Although his friends went through the door to the right, Hargrove had been betrayed by his left-leaning tendencies.  Peeking through the window in the doorway, he could see that his companions had all been captured, bound and were being led away to a fate unknown.

Oh well, he thought while tiptoeing down the hallway, no use in all of us getting caught.

Fortuitously, the hall ended with a short staircase and a fire exit.  A faded sheet of paper taped to the door read “Make sure door is firmly closed when leaving super-secret facility.”  Hargrove hip-checked the crash bar to open the door and sighted his Webley on anything hostile, moving, or that had a good chance of looking really cool when hit by a .45 calibre bullet.  Instead, all he found was the Nazgul, sitting on a picnic table intended for the aliens’ evil minions.

“PUH-LEEZE,” said the Nazgul to the narrator.  “EVIL MY INTANGIBLE ASS.  TAKE AWAY THEIR STOCK OPTIONS AND THIS BUNCH OF LOSERS WOULD BE UPDATING THEIR RESUMES.  NO COMMITMENT TO EVIL WHATSOEVER.”

Hargrove looked around.  “Who were you talking to?”

“NOBODY THAT YOU’LL EVER MEET, KID.”  A cigarette poked out of Its hood, at a level of where a mouth would be on a face.  The Ringwraith reached behind him.  “HERE, YOU MIGHT WANT THIS.”  He tossed the Barrett L50 (non-Bullpup version) to the famed Marxist Detective.  Hargrove barely caught it one-handed, staggered under the sudden weight, and almost dropped it while fumbling the two loaded firearms he suddenly had.  Amazingly (miraculously, even) he did not shoot himself.  Eventually he settled on the Barrett, and holstered the Webley.

Hargrove surveyed the scene.  Littering the ground were a multitude of android fragments, a virtual horde of dead mimes, enough chainsaws to open up a McCulloch franchise, and what seemed to be dozens of drugged, rabid foxes.  Looking at the fence, Hargrove saw Ninja^TM Fred and his companions, trapped on the far side.  With no enemy to face, they were contenting themselves by lobbing fox after fox over the barbed wire.  Most of the beasts were too drugged to do anything but lie on the ground.  A few stumbled drunkenly around the yard, with one vomiting loudly on Hargrove’s remaining shoe.

“By Brehznev’s superfluous nipple, Ninja^TM Fred is alive!”

“Uh yeah,” said Fred, his blushing barely visible through the narrow slit of his ninja mask.  “Fancy meeting you here, all alive and everything.”  The rest of the Iga Ninja^TM were suddenly very interested in their fingernails, or started whistling aimless tunes.

“I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t join in the attack.”

“Well, uh, we weren’t really prepared for a barbed wire fence.  We’ve got all the shinobi-zue and sode-garami one could ever want, but we left the bolt-cutters in the tool shed back at our ruined headquarters.  The boys and I were sort of expecting that you and your companions would blow the gate for us.”

“Absolutely,” said Hargrove, preparing to shoot the padlock off the chain holding the gate shut.  “We have no time to lose.  Paulina, Paddy and MacGuinness have all been captured, and Frieda is missing.  We need to get in there and rescue everybody.  Oh, and it turns out Sir Edmund is a double-agent for the TICKS.”

There were more fingernail inspections and aimless tunes.  Ninja^TM Fred rubbed his temples in ill-disguised resentment.

“Did I not express concerns about Trundle?” he asked of no one.  “Did I not mention at the staff-meetings that I thought he was filching change from the jar next to the coffee machine?  Who was it that noticed he was taking unwarranted gimme’s at the clan’s team-building golf day?  Well, who?”

There was mumbled assent that, well yes, possibly Fred might have had a point.

“And who was told that he had seen Five Days of the Condor too many times?”

More murmured comments, the shuffling of tabi-clad feet, cough, cough.

“And who,” he said sweetly.  “Is now telling you that there had better be a few ritual suicides after this is all over?”

Nodding of heads, a few thumbs drawn across throats accompanied by glottal “cccchchchchck” noises.

“Good, now let’s bust open this gate and squish some TICKS.”

“WOULDN’T BOTHER IF I WERE YOU.” said the Nazgul, butting out his cigarette on a convenient mime corpse.  “WHILE YOU LOT WERE MAKING WITH THE BLAH-BLAH-BLABBITY, ALL THE REMAINING TICKS AGENTS AND THEIR CAPTIVES WENT OUT THE BACK GATE IN THAT TRUCK OVER THERE.”

The delivery truck It indicated was driving furiously down the road.  As it swerved to hit a moped, Hargrove saw a flash of brunette hair in the truck’s back window.

“They’ve got Frieda!” Hargrove yelled.  “Quick, Fred!  Flag down a car!  We must commandeer one to have any chance of catching them!”

Several of the Ninja^TM complied, but with disastrous results.  The few cars on the road ploughed through them, as if they… didn’t… see them…  Ninja^TM Fred buried his masked face in his hands.  “I am surrounded by idiots.  I knew I should have joined the Koga® Ninja^TM clan when they were recruiting on campus.”

Sighing, the Nazgul bodily hoisted Hargrove into the air and carried him over the fence.  Spotting a taxi, It stuck two fingers inside Its hood, presumably into whatever It used as a mouth, and whistled.  The taxi driver slammed on the brakes, hit by a noise that sounded like the result of sheet metal being fed through a high-speed document shredder.

“SHOTGUN,” called the Nazgul as It climbed into the taxi.  Hargrove and Ninja^TM Fred scurried into the back seat, while more of the Iga Ninja^TM  clung to the roof.

“Follow that car!” yelled Ninja^TM Fred, then to his companions: “Sorry, I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“JUST DRIVE, I’LL PROVIDE DIRECTIONS.” The taxi driver looked at the Nazgul and shrugged, easily merging into what little traffic was around at this time of the morning.

“Soyouzeguysfromouttatown, hanh?” said the driver.  Hargrove, Fred and the Nazgul exchanged quizzical glances.  Although he responded appropriately to the Nazgul’s directions, any attempt to communicate verbally with the driver seemed useless.  He would say incomprehensible things like “Baddaboombadabing!” “HowzaboutdozMets?” and “Heyfuggedaboudit!”

“THERE LIES OUR DESTINATION,” said the Nazgul, pointing to the Sudden Stop convenience store at the next intersection.  “FRED, BE A PAL AND PAY THE MAN, WOULD YOU?”

They exited the taxi and stared at the garish lights of the store that lay before them. 

“We must attack immediately,” replied Hargrove.  “My beloved Frieda is inside, probably being brutally interrogated in unthinkable ways.”  Actually, he could think of several, but the resultant shortness of breath was making him dizzy.  Time for action.  “Fred, take your Ninja and attack through the skylight.  We’ll take the front door.”

Hargrove and the Nazgul sauntered into the store, acting as casual as a man with multiple lacerations, punctures, gunshots, contusions and abrasions, wearing a suit that even a compost heap would abandon, and a seven-foot-tall, black-clad Ringwraith could.  The pimply teenager behind the counter didn’t notice anything amiss.

“To the back,” said Hargrove.  “The secret entrance is through the dairy case.  We will position ourselves accordingly and when the Ninja burst in, we’ll go.”

They didn’t have long to wait.  A thudding noise made them look up, to see a half-dozen Ninja flattened against the bulletproof glass of the skylight.  “HOW ABOUT WE JUST GO AND THEY CAN CATCH UP.”

Pushing open the sliding glass door, and shoving the jugs of milk to one side revealed the entrance to the TICK stronghold.  The Nazgul stepped back and indicated that he would politely allow Hargrove to take point.  The famed Marxist Detective demurred, but relented when he was picked up one-handed and tossed into the tunnel.  “LET ME KNOW IF YOU SEE ANY OF THOSE PASTY-FACED ARTSY BASTARDS.”

Hargrove moved as quickly as he could through the sloping tunnel, hampered by its low ceiling and the heavy firearm he was toting.  Soon enough it ended with a room and, he supposed, the TICK android facility.

From the mouth of the tunnel, Hargrove peered as far as he could down the several hallways leading from the room. “So!  The laboratory under the Embassy was indeed an incredible ruse.  Although we faced many android replicas of my deadly foes, there were no facilities for actually producing more of them, and there were none of the duplicates intended to replace the various heads of state.  Obviously it was a decoy meant to lure us away from the Sudden Stop, and into a fatal trap.  And that information must have been fed to the Iga Ninja^TM by none other than Sir Edmund Trundle!”

“Absolutely correct, Marxist cretin,” said Trundle, pointing an AK-47 at him from around a corner.  Curiously, he had changed into a black and white striped body suit, and had painted his face white as well.  With a laugh, he started up the chainsaw mounted like a bayonet on the front of his assault rifle.  “So, which is it going to be?  Shall I shoot you or cut you to ribbons like I will your black-robed friend?”

Hargrove rolled out of the tunnel onto the floor and into a shooter’s crouch.  But before he could fire, a three-round burst from Trundle made him leap again.  The famed Marxist Detective dodged, leapt, rolled, somersaulted, dived, spun, crawled, skipped and danced, all the while barely escaping the bullets that chased him around the room.  Where the hell did he get a drum magazine for that thing?  And can I get one for the Barrett too?  Suddenly, during a very impressive cartwheel, his head slammed against the wall.  Trundle had herded him into a corner. 

“Ha!” he gloated.  “Where are your friends now, rebel scum?”

“Rebel scum?”

“Sorry, slip of the tongue.  Pay it no mind, since I am about to shoot your head clean off your neck.”  But Hargrove wasn’t looking at the man about to end his life; instead he was looking over Trundle’s shoulder.  “And you can quit with the ‘somebody is behind you thing.’ We all know it doesn’t work.”  A shiver ran up Sir Edmund’s spine, like none he had ever felt before – comparable to a handful of icy-cold worms, all recent graduates of the newly formed dental-chiropractic school.  He decided that maybe he would perhaps take a look behind him.

The black bulk of the Nazgul stood, as menacing and implacable as if it were the proto-menacing-and-implacable thing, from which all other menacing and implacable things had descended and were but pale shadows of.  Trundle plunged the chainsaw-equipped assault rifle deep into the Nazgul’s robes.  An unearthly roar split the air as the chainsaw chewed away at the Ringwraith.  “I hope you are watching all of this, Hargrove.  You’re next!” crowed Trundle.

Suddenly, the Nazgul stopped writhing, reached down and plucked the AK-47 neatly from Trundle’s grasp, and tossed it behind him.  “AW, SO CLOSE.  YOU ALMOST HAD ME THERE, BUT THEN YOU HAD TO OPEN YOUR BIG YAP.  Y’SEE, IF YOU ARE TALKING, YOU ARE NOT A MIME AND THEREFORE NO PROBLEM FOR ME,” It said, before loosing the horrific Balor’s Nasal Implosion spell.  Trundle’s left nostril made an ominous whistling sound, that grew louder until suddenly, the majority of his head was immediately sucked up into his sinus cavity and his corpse tottered and fell backwards.  “AMATEUR.  MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE TRIED SOME OF THAT MIME-KWAN-DO ON ME.”

“My thanks, comrade.  Truly you are a stalwart example of revolutionary fervour, although not technically a member of the proletariat in the orthodox sense since you do not sell your labour-power to an owner of capital.”

“BOO FRIGGIN’HOO.  LET’S SPLIT UP AND FIND YOUR FRIENDS.”  Hargrove nodded agreement, and they headed down different hallways.  The Nazgul’s voice drifted through the air.  “STALWART EXAMPLE OF REVOLUTIONARY FERVOUR… GEEZ, WHERE DOES HE GET THIS GARF?”

Hargrove had not gone far down the hall before he heard another voice, one that could only belong to one man.  “Ye costume-wearing, buck-toothed, crapulent pustules!  Loosen these handcuffs fer a wee moment and I’ll teach ye all how to dance the Glasgow two-step!”

He raced down the hall, the heavy Barrett in his hands thirsting to be fired at TICKS agents.  Soon Frieda would be in his arms again and the world delivered from the alien menace and safe for the conflagration of the inevitable class struggle.  He kicked the door open and strode into the room.

In the centre of the room was a gigantic, cone-shaped pit, with each of his comrades dangling from chains over it – all of his companions save one, Frieda.  From inside the pit came a ferocious, continuous buzzing roar.  From where he stood, Hargrove could see that the sound was coming from dozens and dozens of belt-sanders mounted on the walls of the pit.  Only minds as demented as TICKS could come up with such a fiendish but overly-complicated device, he thought.

“All right,” he called, to the few oddly-uniformed TICK technicians manning the device.  Unless you tell me where you are imprisoning Frieda Engles, I’m going to have to get all October Revolution on your asses.”

“Then look behind you, Hargrove.”

He spun to face Frieda, and her really big gun.  She had equipped her derringer with the revolving multi-barrel attachment, backpack ammunition case, motor-driven belt feed, and the largest recoil dampers seen outside of an artillery piece – and all of it was aimed at Hargrove. 

He had just learned the third great military truth: friendly fire isn’t.

“Frieda?  You’re a double-agent?”

“To be honest, I haven’t a clue.  There are so many countries and organizations I work for, I think you would have to plot it out in 3D just to keep everything straight.  The essence of it all, though, is that I am working alongside TICKS, in a side project that the aliens have been putting together.  Now put down the gun and step away from the pit.”

Gingerly, he lay his gun on the floor.  Suddenly the door burst open again, as a young man kicked it wide.  He could barely walk in his low-hanging, baggy pants, and his baseball cap kept falling over his eyes.  Stuck in the waistband of his exposed boxer shorts was a pistol.  “Whoa, duuude!  This is, like, heinous!”

“Who the hell are you?” asked Hargrove, as the newcomer stood next to him.

“Like, I’m Chad, the Gen-X Detective.  And, like, uh, I’m here to, like, rescue you.”

Without looking away from Frieda, Hargrove shoved Chad into the pit.  The buzzing of the belt sanders quickly drowned out the screaming and the sound of the body being knocked back and forth.  A fine red mist rose from the pit, drifting down and coating everyone in a thin, crimson sheen.

Hargrove rolled his eyes.  “Now, where were we?  Ah yes, I guess this is the part where you shoot me.”

“Hardly,” said Frieda.  “I didn’t go through incredible machinations to get you here just to kill you.”

“That makes no sense.  Why would you want to bring me, the famed Marxist Detective, to your secret facility, knowing that I would be able to destroy your plot single-handed?”

Frieda smirked.  “Oh please.  I have manipulated you in a thousand tiny ways to get you here.  Left to your own devices you wouldn’t be able to find your own ass with both hands and a flashlight.  If you don’t believe me, tell me why you were on board the Hoobe-Entwhistle, and in a first-class cabin, no less.”

“Because, uh…”

“Exactly.  Knowing your phenomenal recuperative abilities, we had to use an outrageous amount of phenylcyclidine to drug you and one of my operatives delivered you to the ship.  And how was it that the First Mate was killed by one of Santiago’s daggers, thrown from an elevated position, when we both know he was afraid of heights?”

“By Trotsky’s well-trimmed dogwood bush!  I forgot!  That’s why I was able to defeat Santiago in that Barcelona cable car.  You killed the First Mate?"

“He was actually a low-ranking TICKS agent.  He knew nothing about my grand plan and was trying to prevent you from stumbling on the Captain’s chamber and finding out about the aliens.  And how did the TOCKS get the map to the fake android facility under the US Embassy? ”

“From the plans hidden in your crate, salvaged from the ship,” said Hargrove, feeling more miserable every second.  “But what about Tobermorrey?  Was he one of your agents too?”

“Pah!  If he hadn’t managed to kill himself with that lifeboat, I would have had to do it for him.  The traitor was stealing the plans to the cryogenics chamber in an attempt to bring the line of Czar Nicholas back into power, but without all the haemophilia – no way was he going to have people make unkind comparisons with the Hapsburgs.  He knew that TICKS had Princess Anastasia on ice, right next to Elvis, and with the bomb he put on the Hoobe-Entwhistle, he figured we’d be too busy dealing with that to stop him or the submarine. Little did he know that Captain Borisovitch was himself an alien, and that he was about to put himself into the clutches of the very forces he was fighting.”

“But what about Santiago?” asked Hargrove.  “He was working for you, but you shot him.  Why?”

“Because he’s an idiot.  He was a moron when he was alive, and his clones weren’t any better.  He had to go and spill it that I was working for the French.  And he was going to kill you, against my orders and in defiance of the plan.  In fact, I seemed to have nothing but idiots for my entire staff.  Santiago, Serapion, Trotsov, Largent – every last one of them couldn’t be trusted to tie their own shoes without explicit instructions.”

“Largent?”

“An imbecile.  First he goes and blabs to you that I was his personal guest on the ship, when in reality he had been dealing with my clone.  When he finally does meet me, the decrepit sot can’t remember what the hell I look like.  Is it any wonder I popped him with a wrench?”

The revelations spun around in Hargrove’s mind like a bunch of bumper cars navigating a traffic circle in Rome.  His subconscious had long ago given up trying to sort any of this, and was reduced to stacking things in a corner.  If Hargrove lived through this, there’d be plenty of time to file it properly. 

Furiously, the famed Marxist Detective tried to find a solution.  Frieda’s multi-barrel wasn’t running at the moment, so he would have a few seconds to act before the barrels revved up to the proper rpm.  There would only be the one barrel in a proper firing position to deal with, and a single bullet wound was something commonplace to him.  He glanced at the chains holding his companions over the Belt Sander Pit ‘o Doom (as the helpful sign at the rim said: Please Keep All Non-Replaceable Limbs out of the Belt Sander Pit ‘o Doom) and thought about how he might swing them all to safety.  Paulina was the closest, followed by O’Lan.

Before he could spring into action, there was a loud click-Click-CLICK DING! and the chain holding Paulina was released from the ceiling, plunging her into the pit.  Again, there were shrieks and a second coating of red mist.  Oh well, he thought, that leaves just O’Lan and MacGuinness to save.  Now that he was aware of it, he could hear the clockwork ticking.  Unless he acted soon, the rest of his friends would share the same fate.

“HELLOOOOOOO,” called the Nazgul from the door.  Relief flooded through Hargrove.  With his powerful ally here, and no mimes, Frieda and her plot would be crushed, literally.  “JUST WANTED TO SAY THANKS FOR THE FUN, AND PICK UP MY MACE.  THE SUBWAY IS GOING TO START UP IN A HALF-HOUR AND I WANTED TO PICK UP A COFFEE BEFORE THE COMMUTERS START UP.  IT’S BEEN A SLICE, OR A SMASH, DEPENDING.”  And so saying, It found the mace scattered among the other confiscated weapons and sauntered out the door.

“By Lenin’s scalp polish!  Is there not a single comrade to stand with me?”

Frieda snorted.  “Actually there will be many more than you could ever imagine,” she said.  “I still haven’t revealed to you the rest of my plan.  You see, I don’t really work for the French.  Veni, vidi, Vichy – I came, I saw, I capitulated to the Germans.  They made me a better offer, and had a more cunning plan so I went with them.  They had the know-how, the technology, and had a scheme in the works for 50 years.”

With growing horror, Hargrove asked the question.  “And what was that plan?”

“Germany wanted to restore the Reich, a plot recently invigorated through the prospects of the alien cloning technology.  You, and 200 other passengers aboard the HMS Hoobe-Entwhistle, are the result of an artificial insemination program.  Your mother’s egg was fertilized with a single sperm cell taken from a sample of…”

“Himmler?”

“Nope.”

“Goering?”

“Try harder.”

“Goebles?”

“Everyone knows poor old Goebles had no balls at all.”

Hargrove suddenly was aghast.  Could it be?  Could his father really be…

“Hess?”

“No, you idiot!  Hitler!  Your father was Hitler!”

“That’s impossible, because… well just because it’s impossible!  Mother told me my father worked in a tractor factory, and starved to death during an interminably long committee meeting.”

“She told you that to hide her despised secret, one she hoped had died with her.”  She checked her watch.  “Now it is time to proceed to the secret processing facility next to the Mercedes dealership on Nalbandian Ave.  I don’t mind telling you it has been rough collecting the lot of you.  The Hoobe-Entwhistle was supposed to dock in Bremen, where our major facility is, not Yerevan.  We’ve had to divide our resources between setting things up here and finding all of your half-brothers and sisters.  If it weren’t for some of them bobbing in life boats in the ocean, popping out of your pocket universe, wandering the streets of Yerevan or still stuck in the wreckage of the ship, I could have dispensed with the attack on the Iga Ninja^TM.  Instead I was forced to stall for time until we were ready.”

“Boys from Brazil,” said a voice from the shadows.  “Your scheme – it’s kind of derivative, isn’t it?”  Frieda dodged away from the dangling Ninja^TM Fred, and started revving up her multi-barrel derringer.  Before she could perforate the ninja, a sword stroke from behind severed both of her bionic legs.

“Sensei^ã Lloyd!  You’re alive,” exclaimed Hargrove.

Stepping out from his hiding space, Lloyd wiped the hydraulic fluid from his ninja-to before sheathing it.  Casually, he booted Frieda’s heavily accoutered derringer away from her as a half-dozen ninja stood guard over her.  “Yeah, that trick is always great at parties.  Here’s another.”  Sensei^ã Lloyd reached behind Hargrove’s ear.  “Hey presto!  See, you were hiding a shuriken behind your ear.”

“Yes,” said Hargrove, distractedly.  “Very nice.  But we don’t have time for that, we must rescue my friends from the Belt Sander Pit ‘o Doom!”  Before they could move, the infernal machine made a click-Click-CLICK DING! noise and O’Lan dropped into the pit.  Between his screaming, and the crimson mist slicking everything, Hargrove and the Iga Ninjas^TM had a difficult time pulling him free.  O’Lan looked like a choice selection of Hargrove’s wardrobe at the end of a mission.  Rolling the diminutive secret agent onto what was left of his back, Hargrove struggled to hear O’Lan’s last words.

“Hargrove, in my pocket is a roll of money.  I want you to take it.  My life’s ambition was to set up an annual motocross race,” he gasped.  “I guess I won’t live to see that now, but promise me you’ll do this.” 

“I promise.  Rest in peace knowing that the Paddy O’Lan Tournament of Stars will be the grandest motocross race ever.” 

MacGuinness had been taken down from his chains, and came over to pay his final respects to his drinking partner.  “Looks like you got your knickers, and everything else in a twist.  Doon be hanging around, Green Lantern.  Some of us still have work to do.”  O’Lan gave MacGuinness the finger, and then died. 

“Well, enough o’ that sentimental claptrap,” said the hulking engineer as he turned to Sensei^ã Lloyd.  “Och, so how do ye intend on stopping TICKS?”

“Easily.”  He reached over and seized Hargrove’s belly.  With a twisting motion he ripped an object free, and held it, gore and all, up to the light.  “This is a standard Iga^TM Ninja low-yield tactical nuke.  We implanted it in the wound made by the neutrino accelerator, figuring that it would come in handy.  In fact, we suspected Frieda for quite some time, and so added a camera and microphone to the bionic leg we replaced.  Ninja are at this moment planting similar bombs in the other locations she mentioned.”

“And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and their dog,” she snarled.

Hargrove looked at her curiously.  “Sorry, slip of the tongue,” she said.  “Now just leave me here to die.  I have no wish to live after my master plan has been defeated.”

Setting up the small but powerful device, Lloyd continued.  “With Frieda dead and her laboratory destroyed, the alien invasion is scuttled.  It is a close-kept secret that the aliens actually worked for her, since they have only the most rudimentary comprehension of how the human mind and politics actually functions.  Anyway, it is time to go – the baby nuke is armed.”

As they left the doomed secret base, Hargrove looked back one last time at his beloved Frieda, legless and lying on the floor.  He looked into her eyes and sighed.

“Oh can it.  It was all business, Hargrove.  I could never love a man who doesn’t even have a first name.”

He sighed again.  Sensei^ã Lloyd put an arm around his shoulder.  “Come on, Hargrove.  We need to get your abdomen fixed up.  There’s a deli not far from here, and safely out of the blast radius.  We buy a length of kielbasa, use it to plug the hole and you’ll be good as new.”

“D’ye think they might have kosher breakfast haggis?”

“I’m sure they do.  Come along, Fred - this place is going to be a smoking crater in about 15 minutes.”  Swiftly, they made their way back up the tunnel.  Hargrove was the last to leave, closing the Sudden Stop convenience store dairy case behind him.  He turned to the pimply teenager behind the counter, and said, “If I were you, in the next five minutes I would stage a very hasty walk-out protest against the bourgeois management of this store.   Capitalism crushes the life’s breath out of the valiant workers, as you will shortly discover if you stay here.”

*          *           *

Sensei^ã Lloyd, Ninja^TM Fred, MacGuinness and Hargrove had just ordered breakfast at the deli, when the floor shook from the bomb’s detonation.  They looked at each other and smiled.  “After breakfast, we hit the pubs,” said Hargrove.  “Drinks are on me.”

THE END

On to Chapter 20 (Version 2)