Challenge of the Spider

I slip shadow-like into the yacht's comm room, a trail of dead guards behind me. Another successful infiltration. In my line of work they all have to be successful. There is no second place in this game, unless you consider the destruction of the free world second place. It takes a certain type of guy, a guy like me, to pull off a mission like this. To stare death in the face until death blinks.

“Checkmate, Spider,” I growl to myself as I approach the communications console. If only the Red Spider could’ve heard that voice. I've caused grown men to blubber uncontrollably when I use that voice. The Brass wanted me as an interrogator, y’know. But I need to be where the action is. Where the questions are bullets, and the answers are also bullets.

I tune into our top secret frequency, the one only I and my team use. We call ourselves the Eagle Hawks. “Hammerhead, this is Kraken,” I say. “Nautilus has been breached. Requesting go on exfiltrating Nemo.” They let me pick my own codename. They usually don’t do that, but they made an exception for me. Kraken. It was originally supposed to only be for one operation, but it fits me so well that I insisted it become my nom de guerre. That’s French, you know. La Francaise. I picked up a little back in the war. Anyway, Nemo has been deep cover for almost a year. He's supposedly one of MI5's top men, although the talent pool must be pretty shallow if Uncle Sam's boys have to do a rescue.

“Kraken, exfil is a go. Nemo is posing as a guard. Extreme caution is advised.”

Wait. A guard? I thought he was posing as a cook. This is a conundrum that I have to get to the bottom of. Time to engage my famous query skills.

“Wait, a guard? I thought he was posing as a cook.”

I hear some click-clacking through my headphones as the egghead on the other end does his egghead stuff. “Uh…negative, Kraken. Cover was compromised when he botched a Creme Brulee. Apparently he lied about finishing culinary training. He slept with the instructor to get a passing grade.” The egghead chuckles. “Can you believe that? Spies, am I right?”

“Why wasn’t I briefed on this?” I ask.

“Looks like you were. There was a flimsy on Nemo along with the special sleep darts that we air-dropped. It’s imperative that you not kill any guards before locating Nemo. Getting him out in one piece is priority one.”

Oh, shit.

“Kraken? Do you copy?”

Oh, SHIT. SHIIIIITTTT.

“Kraken! What’s your statu-”

SHHHHIIIITTTTT!

“Kraken, please respond if able.”

Well, this is a kick in the britches, I killed all the guards. Okay, I can handle this. I’ll just improvise, it's one of my skills. I depress the comm button.

“Copy, Hammerhead. I had to…I had to take care of some Tangoes.”

“Okay. You are using the sleep darts, right? Because you’ll have to get close to Nemo to recognize him. He has a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his right hand.”

What sleep darts?!? There were no sleep darts at the launch point, and definitely no flimsy. I would’ve remembered that. My mind is like a steel trap.

I think back to the guards I took out. There was the one that tried to stab me. Let’s see, he had the knife in his left hand. When I disarmed him and stabbed the knife through his right hand before pulling it out and slashing his throat, was there a scar? No, definitely not. I would have said something about it. Something like, “Looks like lightning struck twice” instead of what I actually said, which was “Gahurraraghhh” because some of the blood got in my mouth.

The one I shot in the head. I guess he might’ve had a scar. I can go back and look at where I left him at the edge of the deck pool. The other one I also shot in the head. Definitely no scar, that one was up close and personal.

There was that big brute I fought hand-to-hand. Was that him? Let’s see, he was attempting a rear strangle, and I rammed the back of my head into his face then threw a few quick reverse elbows to his jaw. Think, man, think! Use your highly-trained visualization skills! When he went down, did you see a lightning bolt scar? No, no scar. He kept trying to shield himself as I stomped on his face. I got a pretty good look at his hands. I can’t think of any-

Oh. The guy I shot from my skiff on my approach. The one who went overboard. He’s the only one unaccounted for. I was too far away to see anything more than a silhouette. I was planning on just slipping by, then he shined a light at me. I fired reflexively, one shot, and saw him fall off the boat. Helluva shot, honestly. It probably set a record of some kind. Just bad luck it was against the guy I was supposed to rescue. I mean, I didn't know. It wasn't my faul-

“Kraken, DO YOU COPY?” The voice squawks. I need time to find a solution, and being yelled at isn’t helping. There’s only one thing to do; I let the console have it. My HK shatters vacuum tubes and blows dials and switches to smithereens, chewing the comm console into a hunk of sparking, smoking junk. That's Command off my back for now, I just need to figure the rest of this out. They're not gonna like an asset being taken out by their rescuer. Who coordinated the case drop? Why wasn't I told immediately about Nemo's new cover? Something stinks. Stinks to high heaven. Like a field latrine in August.

As I'm mulling this over, I fail to see a large shadow loom up behind me. Look, even I can’t be “on” all the time, alright? I turn, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the big bastard whose face I stomped in, glaring at me with his one good eye and snarling through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. He launches himself at me. I sidestep nimbly, chopping the side of his neck with a Karate-hardened hand. He stumbles, but keeps his feet. He backswings wildly and I duck, but now I’m face-to-face with him. His hands go for my throat and I think, “Really, going for another choke?” before my air is cut off.

Even severely injured and built like a grizzly, he's fast. As I attempt to remove my neck from his grasp and vice versa, I steal a peek at his hands again to make extra sure. Yep, just as I thought, zero lightning bolt scars. I swing my shin into his testicles, pulverizing them. I feel his grip loosen, but not enough. I need a “force multiplier” as we say in my line of work. I reach for the metal microphone attached to the comm console and pull it from its housing, then proceed to bludgeon him.

He finally lets go and sinks to his knees. I pull my hand back into a Leopard Fist (another little trick I picked up in the Orient), intending to crush the man’s larynx like he tried to crush mine. As I'm thinking of something clever to say, maybe “It doesn’t pay to stick your neck out”, the brute mumbles something. “What?” I ask.

“Long…live…the Jade Mantis!” the brute says, then, clamping his huge hands to either side of his head, breaks his own neck.

I stare at the body. Who the hell is Jade Mantis? Ever since Tonkin it feels like every week there’s a new enemy popping up out of the East. And their ridiculous animal names. It's embarrassing.

That's when I hear a beeping sound coming from the brute’s torso. I bend down and rip open his shirt. A bomb. My God. This man was a double agent for Jade Mantis! Or maybe he was a commando like me. Or maybe he-

A harsh steady beep brings me out of my reverie. A Dead Man’s Switch. Of course. No more time for sleuthing, now’s when I have to use my considerable physical skills to escape. I have, judging from all the previous times I've outrun explosions, around 10 seconds to make it off the boat and onto my skiff. At least this gives me cover for the whole Nemo debacle. I’ll just tell Command that an agent for Jade Mantis got to him first. Jade Mantis, yeesh.

I’m two steps from leaping gracefully over the railing when the yacht goes up. The force of the blast sends me airborne as pieces of oak, marble, and steel fly all around me. As I fall toward the water, head over heels, I spot a man racing from the burning wreckage on a jet ski. I swear he looks at me while I’m falling, red-lensed glasses glinting in the firelight as the ship burns. The Red Spider. Well son of a bitch. He was hiding on the yacht this entire time. “Damn you, Spider,” I think, then I hit the water and it all goes black.

I come to slowly. When I open my eyes, I see the sun climbing over the horizon, and below it the remains of Red Spider’s yacht, pouring out a stream of oily smoke into the morning sky.

“It's hard to make a shot like that from open water,” a plummy voice says to me. British, but with a put-on quality, like he’s trying for fancy. “I suppose I should thank you for only grazing me, though I daresay there were other ways to get me off that ship.”

I turn my head. Sitting on my left is a slim man with an equally slim mustache, wearing a guard's uniform. He and I are both on a bit of wreck, probably from the ballroom floor judging by the buoyancy and feel of the wood. “Good work with that, by the way,” he says, nodding toward the sinking wreck. “With Red Spider’s ship gone, he has no choice but to retreat to his island fortress. And I just so happen to have the location.” He taps the side of his head with his index finger. “Mind like a steel trap”. I roll my eyes. Internally. He extends a hand to shake. On the back is a lightning bolt scar arcing from his pinky knuckle to the base of his thumb.

“Kraken, I presume?”

“You presume right.”

“Your reputation precedes you! John Challenger, at your service. When I discovered you were the one come to rescue me from the corner I painted myself into, I thought, “Why, I should sleep with my instructors more often!” He chuckles. “Only ribbing you, of course. But as they say, ‘En art comme en amour, l’instinct suffit.’ That’s French, you know.”

I roll my eyes even harder. Still internally, though. There is such a thing as professional courtesy, but the boys and I have all heard of John Challenger. He has his own reputation, one accompanied by lots of penicillin.

“You knew about the rescue?” I ask. “This was supposed to be a top secret operation.”

“I overheard one of the other guards mention capturing you when you showed up,” Challenger says. “A rhino of a man. He kept going on about some chap named Jade Mantis and revenge and something about justice of the oppressed. A bunch of Red bollocks if you ask me.”

Well slap my face until I grin and call me slap-happy. There's only one explanation for anyone else knowing about this mission: someone in the Eagle Hawks is in bed with Jade Mantis.

It all clicks into place now. The missed drop, the briefing that came too late; it was all a revenge-fueled subterfuge to get me captured and Challenger killed. This is why I hate low casualty missions. It’s always, “Don’t kill this person. These workers have families. Why did you shoot him? I just ordered you not to do that. You’re a loose cannon. Blah blah blah.” It’s messy, leaving people alive. Every survivor has an axe to grind.

“Well, chum,” he says brightly, “I suppose we should figure out a way back to shore. Say, what’s that?” He points toward a metallic glint a few dozen yards away, out beyond the yacht debris.

“Could be our ticket home,” I say, and squint enigmatically. I can’t show Challenger that this whole Jade Mantis situation is really bothering me. Gotta stay cool.

Between the two of us, we manage to paddle our way to the glint using our arms. What we find is a large metal case. A parachute floats behind it like a giant dead jellyfish.

“Looks like a supply case,” I say. “Could be food, water, weapons…”

“Perhaps an inflatable raft,” Nemo says. “Or radio equipment.”

“Sure, yeah,” I say. “Maybe even a jetpack! Maybe even two jetpacks!”

He laughs…well, heartily is the only way I can put it. “Ah, the American sense of humor! How I’ve missed it! I was attached to an American unit during the war. Belgium. What a, what's the parlance, swell bunch of guys!”

This guy. Insufferable.

“Well, let’s have a look, shall we?” he says, then pulls the case toward our makeshift raft and we drag it onboard. He pops it open, and a puzzled expression comes over his face. He holds up the object of his puzzlement: a long, thin metallic dart. At its tip a small drop of liquid beads out, catching the morning light.

“Peculiar,” he says. “I wonder what this is for?”