10/15-22/11 - (RANDOLPH SCOTT) Libya: Black Angels and Amazons - pt. 2

SPYGOD meets the massive troop carrier at the edge of town, well clear of whatever's going on inside of it. He looks like some strange, black phantom, there in the dust and the smoke.

Of course, he's glad to see me. I get pounded on the back and asked if I slept well during the flight. When I complain about the bed he tells me not to worry. They didn't break anything getting it out the roof. Except maybe the roof.

He asks about the kids, as always. I tell him they're fine, which he doubtlessly knows. He just smiles, lights up one of those atrocious cigarettes he's always chain-smoking, and blows two rings of smoke -- one inside the other, like an eye.

'SPYGOD sees all,' in other words. Yeah, yeah. So did he see this coming? I ask as another large building in Sirte gets demolished by something I haven't even seen yet, but am quickly learning to fear.

I get an enigmatic smile this time, and another pound on the back. Today we make a man out of you, he promises by way of an answer. Then he starts cursing out his staff for getting here later than expected, and orders a complete pullback. We need to be well outside the thing's ability to throw no later than last week.

As if to counterpoint his seemingly-impossible demand, a chunk of Sirte goes flying overhead, thudding nearby into the sand. We're nearly airborne after that.

* * *

The Black Pill. Where to begin?

It was developed by a man named Wilhelm Heinrich Ganz, back in the mid-40's. Like a lot of the crazed innovations World War II produced, it is a beautiful piece of truly in-your-face, no-!@#$-around, weird science genetic engineering. It takes no prisoners and makes no apologies. 

It will give you powers, or it will kill you. Badly.

When he unveiled it during what ABWEHR still calls, perhaps unimaginatively, The Night of The Black Pill, they were careful in spite of their haste. They took blood tests and performed other measurements to determine who in the bunker was best suited to survive the transformation. Even then, the casualty rates were astounding, but enough survivors meant that the remnants of the Nazi High Command were able to plague the world for several decades thereafter as superhumans, rather than just Nazis on the run. 

SPYGOD informs me, between bouts of screaming at his underlings and then commending them for anticipating his insane demands, that they discovered Colonel Khadaffy had a stash of Black Pills only a day or so ago. They -- that is, The COMPANY -- quickly alerted a number of allies in the region, but the problem was that that they had no idea where Libya's deposed leader was hiding. Apparently he'd taken a tip from the late Saddam Hussein, and had numerous lookalikes running around the country, spreading confusion as to his real whereabouts.

In retrospect, he admits, they should have paid more attention to Sirte. This was his hometown, after all. Given his sentimentality and nostalgia it was only logical that he'd come back here to plan the next move after that life was thrown upside down by the so-called Arab Spring.

But, in time-honored SPYGOD tradition, satori came a little too late. One of the Colonel's few remaining Revolutionary Nuns managed to live through the process and gained a rather impressive power set, as they say in the halls of The Flier. 

The problem is that no one was really made to have 100 feet tacked onto their current height. 

* * *

The next morning I get a good look, through drone cameras, at what we're dealing with. I vomit after only a few seconds. I'm far from the only one.

The woman striding around the city is not instantly recognizable as female, anymore. Her body is still humanoid, but terribly misshapen, looking very much like what happens when a poorly-sculpted birthday cake is allowed to sit out in the rain for a time. 

Her skin is melted and rent open. It is stretched taut over limbs stuffed to bursting with massive, cancerous nodules that seem to make up more than 90% of her visible body mass, now. Great lumps of fat and externalized veins and organs form a strange skirt just below the seething, pulsing ruin that her breasts have become.

Only her head and face retain their original features, but those features are grotesquely distorted by the expansion of the back of her skull. COMPANY scientists along for the ride tell us that was possibly to accommodate the massive changes to brain structure needed to pilot and maintain such a massive frame around. 

But any explanation takes a back seat to the fact that she looks like someone took the head of a child's doll, split it up the back, and stuffed both their fists and feet into it. It reminds me of pictures of severely hydrocephalic children, which have always filled me with both incredible sadness and revulsion. 

And the fact that she's conscious, and has been clearly driven insane by her ordeal, does not help matters. The way her misshapen eyes dart around the landscape is truly horrible.

What can we do for her, now? Of course, SPYGOD has an answer: "She dies."

I don't know which is worse -- the answer itself, or the nonchalant way he says it. The question as to how much thought he's put into the issue haunts me the rest of the evening as the COMPANY Agents settle in for a night of quiet observation, media manipulation, and occasional sorties into the city to help trapped rescue workers.

* * *

The day after that the troops arrive, as it were. Strategic Talents from other North African and Arab states come in to assist with the situation.

They seem a rather well-mannered and humble bunch of fellows, in direct contrast to most American Supers I've observed. They also have refreshingly direct names: The Fist, The Lion, The Hammer, The Wall, and so on.

All of them are friendly except for The Lion. I am told that he isn't thrilled to be here, but no one will say why. There is clearly something better left unsaid between him and SPYGOD, though: neither will look at the other for very long, if at all, and they're going to great pains to avoid speaking directly to one another. 

Item number one on the agenda is what to do with the 100 foot tall woman. They don't like SPYGOD's solution, and unlike him they think there is a better solution. Apparently someone from Egypt is a magnificent healer, and might be able to reverse what was done to her. SPYGOD surprisingly defers to their judgment and says to bring him here in 72 hours, or at least before they deal with item number two. But after that, he's calling her collateral damage.

Item number two is something I hadn't even thought about. There has to be some reason why the civilians aren't running away in well-deserved fear. Rumor has it that the Colonel has another Super who's capable of keeping people from seeing certain things. Her presence has been verified by COMPANY Agents who went into the city to rescue humanitarian workers, last night; try as they might, they could not see the giant at all. 

Item number three is other Supers. It's doubtful that the woman is the only survivor of what SPYGOD calls "a black pill party." There could be any number of them in there, either with or nearby the Colonel. They'll have to be dealt with, "just like the last time." 

No one seems to have any problems with that, which leads to another, more heated discussion about the ethics of dealing with the 100 foot tall woman. Apparently the fact that she's clearly brain damaged is what's making the other Supers balk at "the obvious thing," and no one's pleased by his use of the term "put down a mad dog."

After a few go-arounds, each more heated than the last, I take my leave of the planning session and go outside to get some air. It's still hot and humid in late October, but one can feel the seasons shifting. I do my best to not look at the city, and the horrible thing stalking around it.

One of the Agents comes over and hands me a bottle of water. He insists I drink the whole thing down over the next half an hour. It's his job to ensure everyone's hydrated and sunscreened. Not a bad job to have, apparently, but he's cursing his lot in life. He tells me he'd rather be shooting at something, instead.

"It's the waiting that kills you," he announces before chasing off after a pair of returning Agents, bottles in hand. Hearing the Arabic screaming from the planning room, I can only imagine.

(Randolph Scott is listening to Mama (Genesis) and enjoying some tea)

10/15-22/11 - (RANDOLPH SCOTT) Libya: Black Angels and Amazons - pt. 1

Dateline: Sirte, hunkered down in a dusty alley full of garbage and dead Libyans.

I'm hot and tired and genuinely scared for my life. Superhuman monsters are beating each other to pieces less than a block away, and the only thing keeping me safe, much less sane, is standing two feet away smoking a cigarette while putting some impossible gun together.

"It's okay, kid," SPYGOD tells me, holding up some equally impossible bullet: "One hit from this baby and I'll have killed her before she was ever born."

Is it true? Can that even be true? I know better than to ask.

Another scream, another crash. Another building reduced to rubble. People are panicking and running, and he just stands there, holding the weapon ready, a steady trail of smoke floating up from the cigarette.

He's humming a song. I think it's "Gunning for the Buddha," but that would be too postmodern. Even for him.

He steps out onto the street, hefts the gun, and fires once, seemingly without aiming. There's a scream so loud windows shatter, and for a moment I forget how to hear. He doesn't even blink. He just turns on a dime and walks back into the alley with me, ejecting the impossible casing.

He smiles and says something I can't make out, right now. It just makes the scene more horrible and surreal as the creature's death throes crash more buildings, especially since the only way I know it's happening right now is to see the rubble flying, and feel the earth shaking in my feet.

Later on, after it's all over and I've got my hearing back, he tells me what he said was he might have exaggerated a little about the "before she was ever born" thing. I don't need more than my meager lipreading skills to know that's a lie. The truth is just going to have to go under the bridge on that point.

Like so many other things in Libya, this week.

* * *

This is how it begins. I'm asleep and dreaming in Hamburg, Germany, and suddenly I'm in a plane bound for Libya.

I'm awakened from a very pleasant dream involving me and Edward R. Murrow grilling Ronald Reagan in a no-holds-barred interview on the last day of his Presidency. For some reason, this is taking place on the American side of Niagara Falls. Maybe we're going to toss his remaining credibility over it in a barrel when we're done.

But for some reason the waterfall noises are replaced with mechanical thrumming. Then I'm the one going over in the barrel. Then I'm hearing people laughing at me, but not seeing them.

I open my eyes. The thrumming is all around me. I am no longer in my apartment, but in the back of a cargo plane, still in my bed.

Somehow they moved me, bed and all, out of the apartment without waking me. By "they" I mean Agents of The COMPANY, all of whom are watching me wake up and laughing at my expense.

If this was any other time in my life I might have freaked out and demanded my rights. I've lost all semblance of that since SPYGOD decided to take me under his wing, though. He decided he was going to make me his special project, and since then I've had to get used to the fact that, at any moment, I might be abducted by his "roaring boys" and sent somewhere else without any time to pack.

The roaring boys do it for me, which leads to some interesting fashion choices.

* * *

In true SPYGOD fashion, I don't find out what's going on until I'm on the ground. We land somewhere well southeast of Tripoli, at a runway thrown together at mere seconds before we land. As soon as we're down I'm hustled out of the plane, still in my pajamas, by the Agents, and as soon as we're well clear the plane starts up and takes off again, at which point the runway somehow disassembles itself and walks away.

"We're heading for Sirte," the Agent in charge of things tells me, leading me to a nearby tracked vehicle that looks like something out of a 70's G.I. Joe catalog, only a lot larger: "SPYGOD's there with others, dealing with a Black Angel situation. He says he wants you to see this."

"What kind of situation?"

"Black Angel," he repeats, helping me up into the vehicle: "Someone gave Khaddafy the ability to make his own Strategic Talents, and he's done it. This is now a job for The COMPANY."

"Someone?" I ask: "Who?"

"A ghost from the past, Mr. Scott," is all he wants to say in the open. But it's a few hours' ride from wherever we landed to the coast, and in that time they bring me up to speed, so I can hit the ground running. 

Everything I'm told scares me.

* * *

Simply put: ABWEHR may be dead, but their diseased legacy lives on. 

Back in the mid-sixties, ABWEHR quietly linked up with various Middle Eastern governments and terrorist outfits. They recognized in them a similar goal in wiping Israel off the map, though their motivations were, obviously, quite different.

Why would Arab governments link up with superpowered racists, who also considered them to be lesser beings? It was, to use the cliche, a case of "enemy of my enemy." The Jewish state has always had a large percentage of Supers living there, and after the Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, their embarrassed governments were hoping the Nazis could even the scales for the next showdown.

That their questionable allies wanted their help completing the Final Solution, avenging the insult of the end of the Third Reich, and getting revenge for the Israel's daring capture, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann, was a lesser concern. 

The outlook was good, initially, but the Arab governments made the mistake of showing their hand a little too soon. Once Israel realized who was responsible, they responded to the mobilizations with a massive preemptive strike, spearheaded by Supers. In a mere week they flattened their neighbors' ability to make war for some time, and then swooped into their capitols and military bases to hunt down ABWEHR.

After The Seven Day War, Israel's chastened enemies weren't in the mood to be browbeaten into another losing fight. Add to that the fact that ABWEHR wasn't the easiest of partners to work with, by all accounts, and you can understand why the situation eventually reversed itself.

However, some people were still willing to tolerate their presence longer than others. One such person was Colonel Khadaffy, who was quietly moving towards taking power in his own country.

The Colonel knew that, as soon as he and his people took control, elements in the West and Middle East might seek to remove him in turn. As such, he was looking for any support he could get at that time, and ABWEHR -- still lurking in the region -- was willing to offer a hand.

To his questionable credit, the marriage did not last long, or end well. After the bloodless coup of 1969, and his consolidation of power, the Colonel realized he didn't need a gaggle of demanding Super Bigots to hold onto power. So he quietly informed various international interests -- including The COMPANY -- that they were there, and claimed he'd been threatened into accepting their aid when they were publicly routed.

Whether anyone actually believed him is questionable. I'm pretty sure neither SPYGOD nor the Israelis were fooled. But what they didn't know was that, while the marriage was a short sham, Khaddafy still kept several of the wedding gifts.

Including a handful of Black Pills, in case he needed Supers in an emergency. 

Again, to his questionable credit, he never used them. He didn't pull them out when President Reagan launched cruise missiles at him over the Line of Death incident, killing members of his own family. He didn't resort to them when he had a massive plot to assassinate him by his own military in the 90's, or after Islamic extremists started making alarmingly-frequent attempts on his life.

Part of this was because he had excellent protection. After the American strikes, he surrounded himself with a well-trained cadre of "Amazonian Guards" -- really "Revolutionary Nuns" -- who were reputed to have been altered, somehow. Exact details were never made clear, but there were dark hints of the involvement of Soviet, SQUASH-era replicant technology.

He also cultivated a number of Libyan Supers to rally to his side, and be symbols of his will and determination. That the "Green Brotherhood" was mostly made up of foreign meta-mercenaries with criminal pasts was not reported on by state media. But their presence made it more difficult for foreign governments to justify further attacks.

However, to use another cliche, a people united can never be defeated. Once the revolution took full swing, the "Green Brotherhood" was brought down by defections within their own ranks, angry Libyans, and what might have been quiet intervention by other Arab supers. Worse still, the Revolutionary Nuns were mostly taken out of the equation by forces yet unknown, leaving the Colonel only a handful of loyal soldiers to his name.

So it would appear that Khadaffy, no longer in control of his own destiny, took a long, hard look through his back catalog of unused tricks and decided it was time to roll some dice.

Which is why, when we got within five miles of Sirte, I could hear the earth trembling and the sound of something large and terrible smashing it to pieces.

(Randolph Scott is listening to Turn It On Again (Genesis) and having some water)