The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Heartland Heroes, Part 1 of 2

After the everything that went down in Tallahassee, Mickey Malloy has to pay back some favors. Unfortunately, those favors have been bought up by the enigmatic Shadow Committee for use at their discretion. With the treacherous Bastion Americana Freedom Journal stirring up anti-war sentiment, the Committee needs something big and flashy to get their citizens’ attention. Their something: the high-tech Heartland Heroes, a squadron of masked maniacs equipped with the most dangerous weapons by the richest companies in America.

And they want their own pet masked maniac to run it.

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The Heartland Heroes is the second story in The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: Old Dogs Still Got Teeth. It directly follows The Case of the Broken Fixers and also features characters from The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker.

Content warnings: Violence, animal violence, gun violence, mild swearing, alcohol use, tobacco use.

THURSDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 12, 1943
SENATE WING, UNITED STATES CAPITOL
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

“I'm not out of order!” Mickey Malloy shouted at the hooded chairman, ignoring the gavel. He had jumped up so fast that he'd knocked his chair onto the chamber's marble floor. He pointed a stubby finger at the men assembled before him. “This whole freak show is out of order!”

“Sit down, Malloy,” Inspector General Chip Klavin snapped. Mick had only Earp's boss a couple of times before and they already hated each other.

“You're going to give this the A-okay?” Mickey gaped at him. Klavin's face scrunched up hard enough to shut Mick up. He was furious that he'd had to drag Mickey along, but the ex-dick was the only masked maniac the Committee had a calling card for.

“Earp told me you were a loose cannon, and your jacket confirmed it. But if you think you can steamroll me, you've got another thing coming,” Klavin hissed. He was dead serious when he added: “Ask the six dead Bolsheviks who put this lead in my back if you think I'm kidding. Now pick up that chair and sit your ass in it.”

Mickey stared Klavin down. The I.G. was a couple years younger than him, and a couple inches shorter. He may have seen action back in the day, but he'd pushed a pencil since then, earning himself a paunch and a comb over. Still, he looked like a mean son of a bitch who had a bad side that was best stayed off of. Mick grudgingly obliged him, and sat down to face the seven hooded senators and their god-awful menagerie.

“Inspector Malloy, I find your objections to the Heartland Heroes project perplexing,” the senator to the chairman's right said. His eyeless black hood puffed out with every word. The Shadow Committee was losing patience with the buzzed old man fuming in their hearing. Despite what Mickey thought about politicians, he knew they were all scared and confused and trying in their own ways to win the war. However, the idea they'd come up with was plain insane.

“Hear, hear,” a fat Southerner huffed to the chairman's left. “The American people are terrified. Europe is burning, they are waking up to the Bloody Dawn every morning, Japan is tearing apart Asia, politicians are being attacked in the capitol, gangsters and militias are declaring Nazi allegiances, and one-in-three Americans think we are behind it all.”

“That's on the word of Nazis and traitors,” Mick grumbled. With the sky red and officials battling fifth columnists in the streets, a new movement, a scared, greedy coalition of appeasers, grievers, and cowards, had arisen to cut America's losses and pull our troops back home. They called themselves Garrisonians, a political party that was formed to make the States a fortress island, ignorant and blissful of the atrocities across the oceans. They'd already held larger rallies than the Bund ever did, and the bootlickers in Washington had taken notice.

“The Garrisonians are concerned patriots, like all of us,” a hooded New Englander declared.

“This is a secret hearing, senator, there are no transcripts for your Garrisonian constituents to faun over,” Mickey snapped. Klavin kicked his chair. The scrape of oak against marble was conspicuous in the revered chambers.

“Inspector, your Office itself was just revealed to the American public, and it scares them. Then you were attacked, here, on the home front. You look like you’re run by foreigners, deceitful to your countrymen, and worst, weak against our enemies. Forty-one officials have been killed in action in the last few months, with countless more injured. You yourself are walking wounded,” the senator snapped back. His voice reverberated in the empty chamber. Mickey's head and arm throbbed at the mention of injuries. “A mountain exploded. One of your own went stool pigeon. A newspaper shoved you from the shadows to the front page. Subtlety is over. The citizens can see you now, and they do not trust you. They need to see results that benefit this country. We need visible victories. Your war in secret is over.”

Mickey had no response for these points. The world had gone insane in the past month. The sun had been rising blood red since the Nazis had taken out Vesuvius. The Toroka creature was being dissected by the Japanese using bulldozers. People could control minds with record players. He had just lost Lobo Losa to Eizhürst and the Schmidts were still in the wind.

The stitches in his temple ached.

A fly-by-night garage-printed rag called the Bastion Americana Freedom Journal had gotten the scoop of the century by flipping a stool pigeon. Some malcontent by the name of Ned Garver had blown thirty years of Office cover. They'd coined the name 'Bloody Dawn.' That in itself might have flown under the radar as some nutjob conspiracy theory, but the Printmaster General, head of propaganda and psychological warfare for the whole Office, stepped forward and confirmed the story.

That wave of paranoia launched an anti-war political party that was snowballing everyday, threatening to bowl over Washington. It was insanity.

“What our citizens need is a bright beacon showing them that America is still in charge, working with the Office to take positive action,” a high-pitched Midwestern senator said. He stood and presented the five costumed men standing before him like he was auctioning off a piece of art. All the hoopla had to be his scheme: “The Heartland Heroes.”

“Hrmph,” Mick grunted.

“After the information that came to light regarding last month's attack on Senator Connally's bond drive, you should welcome new allies in your crusade,” the standing senator said. The garishly-dressed men before him shifted in place.

“We don't need any more nut cases running the streets,” Mickey objected. “Regardless of who they are sponsored by.”

“You and your fellow officials, Ortíz and Beasley, and your other two un-named accomplices, operated without oversight for years,” the chairman said.

“And that worked fine,” Mickey replied.

“Until it did not, official,” another senator growled. The candle before him flickered. “What about when one bullet goes astray? Or the bomb goes off? Who takes responsibility then?”

“I will,” Mick answered.

“That is simply not good enough,” the chairman snapped. “You solved your last case inebriated.”

“And every other recruit you have brought into your organization has been a pirate, killer, or criminal,” another hooded man added.

“You can't argue with the results,” Mickey retorted.

“True, the Ice Pick Brigade and the Black Prince II projects have shown marked success,” the chairman conceded, “But your last operation, uniting the criminal underworld, required a leap of faith from this committee that you must now reciprocate.”

“Quid pro quo,” Mick grunted. “Wouldn't expect anything less from Washington.”

“Shut it, Malloy,” Klavin muttered through clenched teeth. Mick stared him down. The inspector general might have been a bruiser back during the Russian Intervention, but he was stuck being the Committee's yes-man, and he was damn-near glowing red. Mickey sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“All right,” he groaned. “Show me what this three-ring circus can do.”

“It would be my pleasure,” the standing senator said. He cleared his throat like a ringmaster. “Once your vigilante activities made mainstream news, private companies were clamoring to gain legal status to have their own heroes patrolling the streets for criminals and spies.”

“Great,” Mick grumbled.

“Sergeant Smith,” the chairman said, “Bring in the demonstration materials.”

Mickey turned in his chair, searching for the brooding, scarred Shadow Sergeant-at-Arms of the House. Instead, a massive Black man entered the room pushing a cart laden with mannequins. Mick had forgotten that the Committee had appointed a Sergeant pro tem while their usual thug was aboard Quijano Corbeau's Black Prince II. They had a new warrior, a new Smith, who’d surrendered his identity to them. Their new man wore the same paramilitary uniform the last sergeant had. The mace swinging from his hip looked even more vicious than the True Mace of the Republic: rustier, with more spikes. The new Smith set up five mannequins in a row without speaking, then took his place at the back of the room.

The standing senator clapped his hands and rubbed them together like a greedy fly.

“Allow me to introduce the Heartland Hero sponsored by Bell Labs in New York City: Archie Bolton, the Blue Bulb,” he called just some kind of freakshow barker.

The first sideshow attraction stepped forward at his beck and call.

Bolton was wearing a padded, insulated asbestos jumpsuit that covered him from toes to neck and looked like it would boil whoever was inside. His outfit was crisscrossed with bare copper wiring that connected a pair of bulky brass gauntlets to the large battery pack on his back. The grin on his unmarred face was wide and dazzling. His blonde hair was carefully combed straight back, and shaved on the sides. He was smiling so hard that wrinkles formed around the black welding goggles he wore on his forehead.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “Observe the next generation of energy transmission, brought to you through joint cooperation between American Telephone and Telegraph's Bell Laboratories and the Office for the Cataloging of Unusual Occurrences' Bureau for Research and Development.”

Mickey was most impressed that Bolton had done the whole speech from memory, until he actually thought about what the man had said.

“Hold on,” he interrupted. “You're telling me that Office technology has been released to private industry?”

“A few items, to better adapt and understand them. In exchange, this committee has secured private funding to equip the Office for the fight ahead,” the chairman said. “The war has changed, Inspector Malloy. The Nazis can blow up mountains, the Japanese are harnessing city-devouring monsters, militias are forming in our own backyards, and the Russians are up to who knows what. We need all the help we can get.”

“By selling exotic weapons to robber barons?” Mick objected. “How did Gonzales okay this?”

“The Researcher General has no horse in this race,” Klavin hissed. He and the head of the Bureau for Research and Development were notorious rivals. The Inspector General puffed up and snapped: “This is an American affair.”

“You'd be convinced if you just just your trap and watch,” the presenting senator snapped. “Mister Bolton, show this official what Bell Labs has accomplished in just a month.”

“Yes, sir,” Bolton replied. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes, squared himself and raised one armored hand at the first mannequin. He pressed a button on his gauntlet with free hand, causing a trio of panels to snap open. Small glass globes popped out, already glowing with ætherial blue light.

“Wait a second,” Mickey started, but Bolton continued his presentation, oblivious to Mick's objections.

“Bell Labs has perfected ion activation technology to create a daisy-chain crash-overload effect,” the quilt-suited man explained in fake words.

Mick knew exactly what he was looking at, he didn’t have to understand hot nonsense to call it like he saw it:

“You're selling Nazi tech!” he roared at the chairman, throwing his chair over again. The new Smith was on his feet and between Mick and the committee in an instant, mace drawn and ready to cave in the old man's skull. Klavin wrapped an arm around Mickey's neck and tugged him back.

“Are you kidding me?” the Inspector General snarled.

Mickey had recognized the I-A technology, the same weapons that brought down Vesuvius. He looked frantically at the other four men: one in bulky, piston-driven armor; another with shiny ray guns on his hips like they were Colt .45's; a stout, bearded grunt with a long gun hooked to a pressurized tank; and the leader, a scarred soldier wearing a leather Lone Ranger mask, his right arm angular steel ending in a vicious claw. Each man carried gear based on recently captured Axis weaponry.

“Can I ask you something?” Mick snarled at the committee through Klavin's chokehold, “Do any of you hang out with a guy named Schmidt?”

Klavin tightened his lock around the bigger man's neck. Mick began seeing spots.

“Any port in a storm,” Klavin snarled into Mick's ear.

“Order, order!” the chairman was yelling, pounding the podium with a oak gavel. Mick stopped fighting, and Klavin eased off just a bit. Mickey twisted out of Klavin's grip, shrugging the smaller man off his back.

“I'm done, I'm done, I'm not going to do anything,” he said, hands in the air. He took a deep breath, smoothed down his rumbled tie, and picked his chair up again. Mick finally turned to the reeling committee and asked over their enforcer's head: “I am curious, though. What gives you the right?”

“This is an existential crisis, official,” the chairman explained. His voice was calm and assured: he meant every damn word he was saying. “We are obligated to use every resource at our disposal, regardless of the moral cost.”

“I seem to recall using that argument a time or two,” Mickey said. He remembered saying something similar when he testified in favor of Quijano Corbeau's Letter of Marque.

“That is why we have turned Department Three's weapons against them,” the Southern senator said. “The krauts ran their own bath, son. These boys are going to make them stew in it.”

“I've seen what I-A does to the human body, boys,” Mickey said. He sat back in the chair. “That's a hell of a stew.”

“Stand down, Sergeant Smith,” the chairman said. Their bruiser, six-five and wider than a pickup truck, threw his spiked mace onto his shoulder and sauntered back to his seat, glaring at Mick the whole time. The chairman gestured at the waiting man in the insulated suit, who smiled at the attention. “Continue the demonstration, Mister Bolton, there will not be any more interruptions.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Bolton beamed. “Bell Labs has perfected a means to focus and direct the energies created during the ion activation process. Observe.”

The arctic light pulsing within in his triple-bulbed gauntlet grew in intensity from lightning bug to arc lamp, and the gnat whine rose in volume and pitch to a fox's scream. His stripe of slicked-back hair caught static electricity and rose until it pointed straight up in a line atop his head.

A thundercrack shook the room and the wooden mannequin before him burst in half. Smoke pooled on the distant ceiling. as splinters showered the Blue Bulb.

The hooded committee nodded and took notes while the presenter clapped. Bolton tried to slicked his hair back down but couldn't get it to lie flat, so he gave up, bowed, and accepted the praise.

“Exploding Nazis all over Main Street, USA doesn't seem like the most propaganda-friendly approach,” Mickey whispered to Klavin, loud enough for everyone to hear over the ringing in their ears. Bolton scowled, but stepped back in line. A throbbing vein in Klavin's forehead popped out and pulsed. The hooded senator who had introduced the Heroes ignored Mick and stood back up.

“Next, from Detroit, US Army Captain John Calderone pilots the Lincoln Landstrider designed by the Ford Motor Company,” he said. A slate-faced Mexican man clad in a gleaming suit of armor stepped forward, his heavy boots clanking against the marble floor. Every movement hissed and scraped glossy black steel plates together.

The dour pilot of the Landstrider had a stubbed-out cigar clamped between his teeth and had to growl around it when he spoke:

“Ford Motor Company has generously donated this walking tank, the Lincoln Landstrider, built nearly entirely from stock parts off the 1944 Lincoln Continental, to the home front war effort. She is diesel-powered, and capable of operating in combat conditions for one hundred hours before refueling. Bullets bounce off her American-pressed steel skin. She can lift three hundred pounds with each arm and is capable of mounting any man-portable weapon system in the Allied arsenal. She currently carries six Browning Auto5 shotguns loaded with lockbreaker slugs and the Office's proprietary rubber ball bullets as well as a complement of drum and smoke grenades.”

Calderone stomped forward, picked up the closest mannequin by the head, and crushed its wooden skull with a single armored hand. He dropped the broken body, then maneuvered the bulky armor around in lame attempts at strongman poses, the pistons whining with every movement Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he bit halfway through his cigar with the effort.

“Panzerritter,” Mickey whispered the Klavin, who responded with a sharp elbow to Mick's ribs. The presenting senator spoke up again.

“Thank you, Captain Calderone,” he said. The armored man clomped back into line and a smaller man stepped forward.

This man was stocky, wide, and bundled up tighter than the Blue Bulb had been. He was wearing a white fur-lined parka with leather mittens and boots. He kept a thick crimson scarf wrapped around his neck and wore ski goggles on his forehead. A blonde beard poked out from under the scarf, twisted and braided into wiry ropes. The frost-covered tank strapped to his back had a long hose that ran from it to a flamethrower-looking weapon clutched in his hands. The senator introduced him:

“From Glouchester, Massachusetts, General Foods sends Gunnar Agnarsson, the Blizzardier,” he said. Agnarsson grunted, then started his spiel:

“General Foods, using their proprietary blast freezer technology, along with research supplied by the Office, have created the blizzard gun,” he said in a gruff Scandinavian accent. He looked disgusted to be spouting the company line, and seemed like he was going to spit each word on the floor of the Senate chambers. He slid his goggles down and pulled his scarf over his lumpy red nose.

“Watch,” was all he said. Mickey liked this character the most. Agnarsson leveled the wide pipe-barrel of his blizzard gun at the third mannequin, then pulled the trigger.

A long jet of blue-white gas roared out of the gun and collided with the target. The air crackled, the wood snapped, and the temperature in the chamber dropped ten degrees. Mist rose, blocking Mickey's view. Agnarsson released the trigger, cutting off the freezing stream. The mist dissipated quickly, leaving only the mannequin, covered in six inches of blue ice, standing before them.

Agnarsson lowered his scarf, raised his goggles, straightened his beard, then took a nip from a flask. He nodded to the senator and stepped back in line without comment.

“Japanese Cold Touch and some of Rosales' freezer work?” Mick asked Klavin. The inspector general chose not to reply; he was not about to egg Mickey on.

“Very impressive offering from the fine folks at General Foods,” the senator said. “Now, from Beverly Hills, California, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures brings us: MGM's Starpower and his faithful friend, Tanner.”

A smarmy man stepped forward. He was dressed in a sharp black tux, complete with satin cummerbund and silk bow tie. His hair was meticulously sculpted into a Clark Gable-esque part and loaded down with enough pomade to choke a dalmatian. He even had that damn movie star smirk. The man's hair was raven black, his posture perfect, and his teeth whiter than elephant ivory. The chrome guns on his hips, if those shiny Buck Rogers hair dryers were even guns, gleamed under the weak lighting.

“Hello, folks,” the man said. He was totally accent-less, and his voice had all the false gravitas of the politicians who had invited him there. “You may recognize me from more than a few feature films. My name is Peter Gimball, and I'm here to fight the war on our streets with patented technology from MGM.”

Gimball smiled, winked, and drew the ray guns in the blink of an eye. He spun both pistols on his manicured fingers and pointed the one in his left hand at the wall. It whirred to life and a shined a bright beam out of its barrel.

A squad of four heavily-armed police officers materialized on the wall, projected with more definition and detail than Mick had ever seen. Hidden speakers on the threw sound to the moving image.

“You are surrounded,” the spectral cop said. His comrades raised their pistols. “Drop your weapons!”

The sounds were undercut by a slow, steady tapping that Mick recognized instantly.

“They're using Daniels' hypnosis crap?” Mick asked Klavin, who shushed him. Mick couldn't comprehend why the Office would be so shortsighted as to sell the means to control minds to a private business.

“Put down the weapon or we will forced the fire!” the two-dimensional cop shouted. The tapping had melted into Mick's ear until he no longer noticed it, and he found himself unable to take his eyes off the officers. The cop shouted again, raising his own pistol as he did so: “Last chance, punk!”

Mick stared down the barrel of the revolver. A vein bulged in the cop's forehead. His knuckles whitened as his finger pressed against the trigger. Mick could smell nervous sweat coming off the four officers. His heart hammered in his chest.

He was wrong, it was no illusion: there was a group of men fixing to gun him down.

“Fire!” the cop shouted. Mick dove to the floor.

Booming shots rocked the stone chamber. Powdered marble blasted out of each of the cops' foreheads, and Sergeant Smith dashed across the room, firing. He put himself between the cops and the Shadow Committee.

The projection cut out immediately, leaving only the cratered wall behind him. The chopped-down shotgun that had puckered the wall smoked in one of Smith's hands, while he held his mace in the other.

“Stand down, sergeant!” the chairman yelled. “Stand down!”

Smith shook his head, clearing his mind. Mick did the same. He didn't even noticed that he'd instinctively dove to the floor, taking cover from the cops' phantasmal bullets. Gimball had dropped, too. The man was curled into a ball. The last thing he had expected was real bullets to start flying.

Mick got up and fixed his tie, hoping no one noticed that he'd been taken in by the ruse himself.

“Very impressive, Mister Gimball,” the chairman said. He straightened his hood. He was playing off having fallen for the illusion as well. Gimball hopped to his feet, re-arranged his hair, and took a bow. He spun his projector-gun and holstered it, as if the whimpering pile he had curled up into was part of his act.

“Projections, that is all, indistinguishable from the real thing,” the actor said. “No need to panic, Sergeant Smith.”

The sergeant-at-arms audibly growled at the thin Californian. He reloaded his shotgun and marched back to his seat. He was so angry that he could fry an egg on his bald head.

“Starpower, huh?” Mick chuckled, trying to play off the whole incident. “And where's his faithful friend...”

“Tanner!” Gimball called. A growl sounded out, so deep that it rumbled through the polished stone floor. Gimball raised his other chrome pistol and shone a red spotlight on the fourth mannequin, lighting up a crimson circle on its wooden chest.

A lion the size of a maned Model T and rippling with feral muscle burst into the chambers. It caught sight of the red light and pounced; its daggered paws and razor fangs made short, messy work of the poor mannequin.

Gimball smiled, then thumbed a toggle on his spotlight pistol. Its beam switched from red to blue, and Tanner calmed. He licked his fallen prey once, then padded over to sit at Gimball's side. Even seated, the beast was a head taller than the man who directed him.

“You might recognize Tanner from his film work at MGM as well,” Gimball said. “Though he has put on a bit of weight since his last screen appearance.”

The masked senators chuckled at the terrible joke, but Mickey sat in furious silence. Everyone knew the MGM lion, but that creature was another beast entirely. They had warped the once-majestic cat down to the marrow, perverting him until he was more weapon than animal. Thick black hair glistened just beneath his ebony coat, not unlike that of the Vargulf Mick had read about. Tanner's eyes glowed red, not his former regal amber. The lion had a touch of gremlin in him as well.

“Freaks, the lot of 'em,” Mickey mumbled. A rumbling growl reverberated deep in Tanner's throat.

“Can it, Mick,” Klavin muttered. “They're giving us command of this circus. We'll find a use for 'em.”

“I'd put 'em to work testing rubber walls for softness in the loony bin,” Mickey snapped.

The senator from New England snorted then interrupted their conversation:

“The field leader of the Heartland Heroes is a member of the Office himself, gentlemen. This is Quintín Castaño, our Captain Garand.”

The muscled soldier trudged out of line and stood before his fellow officials. Mickey had only heard about Quint Castaño, the volunteer who'd gotten his right arm bitten off by a trench shark in Norway. That had gotten him shipped back stateside where Nikola Tesla had installed a diesel-powered mechanical prosthetic himself. The enormous metal arm Quint was left with did not look anything like the one Mick had seen in photos, but a lot had gone down during Operation Arm Breaker. Even short an arm, Quint had come back in better shape than many of his colleagues.

“Boys, I am not going to bullshit you,” Quint started. Every word he spoke twisted the web of scars that ran down his neck and disappeared under his collar. “This whole thing is a rolling train wreck. But it's a train wreck with firepower. We could make a difference.”

“Official Castaño,” the senator chided.

“Yeah, yeah, your honor,” Quint sighed. He went into his pitch: “The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, using methods recovered from Office archives, have designed my new arm. They called it the New Haven Combat Prosthetic. Bigger and heavier, still packs a punch.”

Quint snorted indignantly, then continued:

“Basically they couldn't figure out Tesla's original designs, so they started from scratch. This one's not as strong and doesn't have as many gizmos, but it sure is pretty.”

He flexed the silvered arm, showing off the shining plates. At the shoulder, it was about as big around as his real arm, with curling exhaust pipes wrapped around his steel bicep. It grew wider after the piston-powered elbow ball joint, terminating in a claw that looked like a set of hydraulic pliers. Quint Castaño was ready to tear the bumper off a Buick.

“Official Castaño!” the senator protested.

“Sorry, your grace,” Quint said. “I'm still not used to being stateside. There's a lot of to do back there, and less jabbering.”

“There's a lot of work to do here, too, sergeant,” Klavin reminded him. “If we few don't stand and fight here, soon enough every American will have to, against the krauts, the wops, or even the Ivans.”

“That's what they tell me, sir,” Quint said. “And you all didn't come here to hear me talk.”

“No we didn't,” Mick said. He leaned back in his chair. It looked like Quint was as tired of this dog-and-pony show as Mickey was.

Quint smirked, pulled a key out of his pocket, and inserted it into his shoulder. The arm's internal motor hacked to life, coughing black exhaust toward the ceiling. The arm shuddered with a life of its own, hissing and clanking with every movement. Its claw snapped open and shut, clacking like hungry steel teeth. Castaño twisted the mechanical limb, and his forearm opened like a butterfly bursting from its cocoon. A dizzying array of weaponry appeared on segmented spokes. Mick counted flare guns, shotguns, carbines, and a grenade cup among the armaments.

A chair scraped. The new Smith was on his feet in the back once again.

“Don't worry, boy scout, I'm not lighting off in here, that's your job,” Quint assured him. He twisted the arm again, and the spidery weapons retracted, folding into its riveted skin. Smith eased back.

The official leveled his arm at the final mannequin. His vicious claw shot off in a whoosh of compressed air and clamped around his target's wooden head. A high-pitched whine emanated from the arm, and it reeled the target back toward him on a thin cable. A spring-loaded bayonet popped out of his wrist in time to spear the mannequin through the chest.

Quint's claw reconnected to his wrist with a loud click. He retracted his bayonet and the mannequin clattered to the marble floor. A belch of exhaust escaped from the shaking pipes on his shoulder. The official turned to Mickey.

“Satisfied, old man?” he asked.

“Never,” Mick muttered. Klavin shot him daggers, so Mickey cleared his throat and addressed the hooded Committee. “So you lot are putting me in charge of this circus? Well I don't want it.”

“You have something better to do, inspector?” a New Englander asked.

“As a matter of fact...” Mick started, only to catch Klavin's boney elbow in his ribs again.

“Now's not the time for your 'cascade' talk,” Klavin hissed.

“What kind of talk?” the southern senator wondered, leaning forward to eavesdrop.

“Hearsay and rumors, senator,” Klavin said. He elbowed Mickey once more for good measure.

“You're still calling it rumors after Tallahassee?” Mick asked, ignoring his sore ribs.

“Tallahassee is why we need these men, and someone as outspoken and brash as you to lead them,” the Midwestern senator said. His hooded comrades nodded in agreement.

“Official Castaño can handle it,” Mick stated.

“I agree,” Quint piped up. “I was there for the fall of Eberkopf. You boys even know how I got this hood ornament?”

“We are all aware of your service record, official,” the southern senator drawled.

“I got eaten by a damn trench shark and lived to eat him right back,” Quint snapped. “I can handle spies and mobsters.”

“There will not be open warfare on our streets,” the Midwestern senator insisted.

“The Committee is right, official,” Klavin finally spoke up. “Inspector Malloy has experience dealing with domestic terrorists.”

“I heard we're running into mutated bugs, Brotherhood soldiers, and rocket launchers these days,” Quint said. “Sounds a lot like Europe to me.”

“With the weapons you got here, a battlefield is your best bet,” Mickey said. “You're going to have roasted guts hanging off lamp posts and a lion eating peoples' faces off in front of Woolworth's. Sounds like soldiering, not policing.”

“As Official Castaño has said, we are facing an enemy eager to sow chaos in our country. And we know your service record as well, inspector. You shall command this unit.” The southern senator's tone left no room for argument.

“Inspector Malloy would be happy to do whatever the Committee asks of him,” Klavin interjected. That got a few approving nods from hooded heads.

Mickey was about to growl something smart but saw the granite look on Klavin's face. He sighed and surveyed the five men standing before him. Bolton itched in his asbestos suit, his stripe of hair sticking straight up. Calderone looked tired in his massive armor as he chewed on his soaked cigar. Agnarsson was bored with the whole affair, shifting his shoulders under the weight of his frosted tank. Gimball simply smirked and stroked Tanner's wiry mane. Quint watched in frustration, clearly insulted that the Committee placed more faith in a fat old man than in him.

“So what do you want me to do with 'em?” Mick asked.

“The Heroes will represent our efforts to combat quislings to our constituents,” the Midwestern senator told him. “Their victory needs to be decisive.”

“And public,” Mickey concluded.

“Quite,” the senator agreed. “If they make an effective unit, I have more corporations interested in lending their support.”

“Focus testing shows that the Garrisonian Party would love them,” one senator pointed out.

“And that communists hate them,” a hooded New Englander added.

“Which makes the Garrisonians like them even more,” the other senator reiterated.

Mickey couldn't give a good God damn about scoring political points with reds or frothing isolationists.

“How's your Socialist-in-Chief going to like a corporate-sponsored team capitally-punishing citizens on the street?” Mick asked, parroting a line straight out of the Journal. Klavin practically ground his heel through the top of Mick's foot.

“President Roosevelt is not the only body concerned with this nation's security,” the southern senator snapped.

“Well if blood's what you want, gather your lobbyists and line up some reporters,” Mickey said. He stood up and pushed his chair out behind him. The broken mannequins smoked and steamed in pieces before him. “I'm going to find your freaks a fight to win.”

SATURDAY MORNING, AUGUST 16, 1943
“THE GRAVE”, LEVEL -06
CAMP X, OTTOWA, CANADA

“Just finished up those intercepts, Malloy,” Cabhán Walsh said, his Boston accent thick as molasses. The Irish thug rose out of his plush velvet armchair and put out a hand as his cell door groaned open. Mick entered and stayed silent until the masked guards sealed the hatch behind him, staring at that mitt for a long moment before he took it. Walsh had a thick stack of annotated HYDRA intercepts in his other hand, and those were worth a shake. A radio in the corner of the room was pumping out cheerful big band music and Walsh's bare feet had sunk into a thick carpet.

It was almost as if the man wasn’t buried under eighty feet of bedrock.

“Tell me what you found,” Mick said.

“Take a seat,” Walsh offered, and Mick obliged him. The old detective sat on the foot of Walsh's feather bed and listened.

“Inter-cell Silver Legion communications,” Walsh explained. He handed Mickey the papers.

“We already knew that,” Mick said. It was actually why he was so keen to get them translated. Doriane Tremblay had gotten HYDRA dialed in on the Legion and they were getting flooded with intel. The stack he’d sent Walsh to parse through would be another nail he could hammer into the Legion's coffin.

Mickey pulled a pair of tiny glasses out of his breast pocket and examined Walsh's work. The Irish gangster might not have been smart enough to stay out of the Nazis' employ, but he knew how to sell his information. Walsh's currency was code names and he knew them all. After three months of trading names for amenities, his cell was swankier than anywhere Mick had ever laid his head.

Mick hated trading with scum but read through Walsh's notes anyway.

“Texas, you sure about this one?” Mick asked. He laid his thick finger on one line in particular. Walsh leaned over and looked.

“Yeah, Knight of Eagles is what Wilbur Gutermuth calls himself. He was part of the Klan before the Legion recruited him. Runs a cell on the Gulf coast called the Traditionalist Heritage Party,” Walsh explained. “He's the one that found Nordholm and Elf those trucks, that's where I first heard his terrible radio handle.”

“Why didn't you flip on him after we got you back from Kansas?” Mick asked, but he already knew the answer.

“Didn't seem relevant at the time,” Walsh replied, giving the same coy answer he always did, grinning like he always did. He pulled a cold beer from an ice bucket by his feet.

“Never does,” Mick muttered to himself.

“What's that? Want a Schlitz?” Walsh asked. He pulled the bucket's last sweating bottle and tossed it to Mick, who caught it. “You're always grousing about how they take your flask before they let you down the shaft.”

Mick's throat was a little dry, so he took Walsh's church key and pried the cap off. It was a thin, yellow, German-style lager, but it hit the spot. It felt good, ice cold as it ran from his throat to his stomach. He couldn't help but lay back and sigh.

“Good, right?” Walsh said. He took a long sip himself and patted his gurgling stomach. The gangster wasn't the hulking thug he had been when captured. Incarceration had shrunk him, made him paler and doughy. Beer had bulged the gut he was so happy to pat.

“You don't give me much Silver Legion chatter these days,” Walsh observed. Mick merely grunted, so the Irishman continued: “Your lot been cleaning them up?”

“Working on it,” Mick replied. The Silver Legion had gone mostly quiet. The Office had taken down dozens of cells over the past few weeks, along with the scores they delegated to Hoover's boys and the local fuzz. The only sign of the Silver Legion they found in their last couple raids were abandoned training camps, each large enough to house hundreds of men.

“Those traitors were always yellow,” Walsh said with a chuckle. He slurped on his beer. A trickle ran down his chin.

Mickey figured Walsh could be right. Each time they found an occupied Legion outpost it was smaller than the last, and they always brought home more corpses than prisoners. Only the hardcore Abwehr recruits were left, and they fought to the death. The regular foot soldiers, manipulated Americans trying to do their best for their families, had seen the tide turning. The possibility of ending up on an Office slab or buried in the Grave was enough to send them packing.

Mickey scanned the intercepts again, looking for more of the little red pencil notes Walsh had written. There should have been more if the Abwehr were activating one of their few remaining Legion cells.

“Where do you get this stuff, anyway?” Walsh asked, interrupting Mick's thoughts. His bottle was resting comfortably on his belly. Mick glared at him, and Walsh chuckled, pointing out: “You boys aren't going to let me out of here until there's no krauts left that I could go clucking to. Let me in on the secret.”

“I suppose you're right, no harm unless you escape,” Mick said. He took another swig of beer, then belched, smiling. No one leaves the Grave. “For a long time, our big antenna up top, HYDRA, seemed like it was only picking up random number transmissions and that kind of gibberish. Then about two months back one of our guys secured the jerries' coding device, one even stronger and rarer than what the regular German military uses. They call it the Enigma-X. We hooked that sucker to HYDRA and now we can suss out every damn thing they're broadcasting in this hemisphere.”

“Enigma-X? Looks something like a Buck Rogers typewriter?” Walsh asked. He scratched his stubbly chin.

“You've seen one?” Mick asked. He could feel his face going red.

“Might have,” Walsh replied, coy. This was one of his favorites tactics: pretending he knew something or that he didn't, just to see what the Office would offer him. Mick didn't have the time for his brand of bullshit.

“I don't have the time for your brand of bullshit,” he grunted. “Don’t start playing games with me, kid. Hundreds of people have died in the time it took us to crack that thing.”

Walsh sat back and took a long, quiet sip of his beer, unconsciously scratching at the ‘11’ branded onto his sternum. He wiped the soft cotton sleeve of his jumpsuit across his lips and saw Mickey staring.

“I couldn't have stole it!” Walsh objected, “That Elf guy had it. I seen him gut a guy for calling Hitler 'Charlie Chaplin.' I wasn't about to touch his gear.”

That made sense. Bruder Elf had been one of Hitler's elite, the Brotherhood; of course he'd’ve had an Enigma-X if anyone did. Mick took a breath and let himself simmer for a second. He took another long slurp of beer.

“Why do the Nazis always go for gutting first?” he asked after a moment.

“How’s that?” Walsh wondered.

“They all make the same damn threat, it’s getting stale,” Mick replied. “We lost too many men to find an X.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I am, too,” Mick replied. He drained his bottle in one last go and set it on the stone floor. “You said I'd be excited. What else do you have for me?”

“Dates,” the Bostonian replied. He crossed his arms over his chest. Mick sighed. Kraut agents used an as-yet-decrypted code to signify dates, be they for operations or anything else. Walsh had the codes memorized.

“What day is today?” Walsh asked.

“The sixteenth,” Mickey answered. Walsh hesitated, so Mick clarified. “Of August.”

“Still forty-three?” Walsh asked. Mick nodded. The paddy knew it was still 1943, he was just toying with Mickey. Walsh kicked back and concluded: “Then you might have enough time to get there.”

“Where?”

“Houston, that's where Gutermuth and his boys will be. Midnight on the eighteenth,” Walsh said. “They're looking for a cigar that one of their contacts spotted during a hurricane.”

“'A cigar,'” Mick said. He tried to piece out what the word was code for himself as there was nothing he wanted to do less than grant Walsh any more perks. “The Abwehr took Lobo Losa, I highly doubt they need Legion goons to get them good Cubans.”

“They finally bumped off Losa, huh?” Walsh said. He considered the idea and snatched at his beer bucket. It was empty.

“You know something about that?” Mick asked.

“Just that no Nazi's gonna leave a brown man as the linchpin of their whole east coast operation,” Walsh answered. His smirk was enough to make Mickey's knuckles ache. He continued: “Speaking of cigars...”

“I got something better,” Mick replied. “Talk.”

“A carton of stogies would be nice,” Walsh said to himself.

“I got something better, I said,” Mick grumbled. “I promise.”

“It'd be nice is all. As to your query, 'cigars' are what the southern Legions call U-boats.”

Mick quickly scanned the intercept.

“They're going to Houston to secure a U-boat,” he concluded aloud. “What does 'hurricane' mean?”

“A big storm I think,” Walsh replied. Mick glared at him and his dumb grin faded. “If it's code, it's new.”

“I hadn't heard of any hurricane,” Mick said to himself.

“Me neither,” Walsh agreed. Mick grunted. He'd have to follow up with Earp, but this seemed like the perfect outing for the Committee's carnival show: an ambush against domestic terrorists. Walsh scratched his chin again and asked: “What's a U-boat doing in Houston?”

“I couldn't tell you,” Mick said. The gears were already turning in his head. The Heroes' first mission was coming together. Walsh could see he'd given up something valuable, so before he could leverage some other amenity Mickey flipped through Walsh's intercepts until he found another page conspicuously missing annotations, a transmission from the mid-Atlantic that HYDRA had gobbled up two days previous.

“How about this?” he asked, holding up the page.

“Oh, that is a good one,” Walsh replied. “Seems as though a friar is calling up six haymakers to stand-by status to hunt down an old wizard in a couple weeks.”

Haymakers. Mick remembered that code name.

“Tridente Cremisi,” he said. Italian insurgent cells, as dangerous as the Silver Legion. They'd been lower on the Office's threat index than the Legion because they had been far less numerous. Recently though, after the latest raids, he figured their numbers were near-even. For either organization, however, it would take a big target to mobilize six units at once. “Who is the wizard?”

“That is what they call one of your scientists,” Walsh said.

“And 'old' means that he has been a long-term priority target,” Mickey added. Walsh's eyes grew wide. He didn't realize he'd given up that much of his code over the months. Mick snorted. He knew the paddy would clam up once he realized his leverage was slipping away, word by word, but he asked anyway: “Anything more specific on the wizard?”

“The what?” Walsh muttered. He slumped back in his chair and nursed his last beer.

“I could have a twelver of those down here and on ice in five minutes with one call,” Mick said. Walsh looked at the brown glass, tempted.

“What else?”

“Looks like that brand’s been bothering you,” Mick pointed out. Walsh’s hand moved to touch the deep burn Brüder Elf had left below his clavicle.

“Yeah, and?” Walsh asked, suddenly self conscious.

“The Physician General is in town and she specializes in reconstructive surgery,” Mick answered. “You ready to get that off your chest?”

“I, um, yeah, yes,” Walsh stammered. “Yeah, I am.”

The mercenary’s gears took a moment to catch up, but when they did he smirked and asked:

“And what'll you give me for the friar?”

“Nothing,” Mick said. He knew that code word well enough and the thought of encountering either a friar or the Tridente turned his stomach. “I want more on this wizard.”

“No idea, the friar never says, you can read that same as I can,” Walsh snapped. “Says they’re mobilizing on the twenty-fifth, though. So we got time to think.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick said. He was impatient again. ‘Think’ meant Walsh would try to wrangle more out of him, and even a week out, every second he toyed around could cost lives. Mickey snatched the intercept out Walsh's hands and jabbed a stubby finger at one circled line. “He's advising the Legion to bring heavy weaponry. Which facility are they hitting? Which one is Niflheim-1?”

“You do your homework, Malloy?” Walsh asked.

“Niflheim is a figment of Norse mythology,” Mick replied. He'd called up Beasley at the Library with that question. “Legendary realm of cold.”

“Well when the infiltrating Nazis carved up the States into operational regions on their maps, they picked the world of ice to represent New England. Elf used to call me a Nifling.”

“They've never been to Minnesota, I take it,” Mick said.

“Oh, they've been everywhere, Malloy. They call the northern Midwest 'Niflhel.' The frozen hell.”

“Makes sense. So Niflheim-1 is...”

“The Nazis work very logically, they name north-to-south,” Walsh explained.

“Maine,” Mickey said to himself. “Who the hell do we have in Maine?”

“I don't know,” Walsh said. “But six haymakers and a friar is more than they called for when Elf recruited me, and he was planning on wiping out the food supply for half the country. Whoever they're hitting, the guy is big, and whoever is planning it is desperate.”

“Well, Hell,” Mick grumbled, suddenly wishing he hadn’t drained his beer so fast. He had a day to herd cats to Texas and stop the Silver Legion from stealing a God damn U-boat with a spectacle loud enough to impress politicians, lobbyists, and reporters, three of his most detested flavors of patriot, then a week to figure out why a Brotherhood assassin needed a six-cell kill team in Maine.

His stitches burned and he was close to going at them with a thread cutter himself.

“Better get moving, Malloy,” Walsh chuckled. He flopped back in his big soft and chair and sank in. He smirked up at the sky-blue ceiling, saying: “Let me know if you need anything, I’ll be here.”

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.