12/3/11 - Blood in the Big Orange

Jesus H Christ I !@#$ hate Tel Aviv. Mostly because, every time I come here, it's to kill someone. And it's never over anything good and simple.

Tonight's no different. I just did it, in fact. Which means I have about ten seconds to make sure the !@#$ is dead, ten more seconds to sanitize my presence, here, and then less than an hour to get the !@#$ out of the country before someone starts asking questions.

And I owe the pleasure of this little homicidal excursion to one Randolph Scott, boy reporter, who was !@#$ unable to do what I told him. More specifically, what I !@#$ told him not to do.

Namely: do not take our kids to Israel.

Anywhere else would have been fine. South Africa, to see how a formerly segregated society is coming together again and dealing with its problems? Fine. Germany, where their !@#$ up fathers tried to engineer a 1000 year Reich based on forced eugenics, slave labor, and genocide, and no one wants to remember it happening? !@#$ groovy.

Take 'em to North Korea, Myanmar, or Yemen. Have them be rude as !@#$ in Canada, or sell Bibles in Saudi.

!@#$, drop them off in !@#$ Singapore with handfuls of chewing gum for all I care. But not Israel. Anywhere but Israel.

But he didn't listen to me. And now two of our kids are dead because of it.

Why didn't he !@#$ listen? Why?

I mean, you think he'd be smarter than that. You'd think he would know that I occasionally know what the !@#$ I'm talking about. Did he stick metal forks into electrical sockets as a kid, too?

(Come to think of it, that could explain why he's such a bleeding heart. I find that early childhood brain damage accounts for most liberals, anyway. That and too much TV. Or too little.)

So did he think that embarrassing little slip in Libya made us buddies, now? Did he forget that, if he's riding in my car, I'm the one who says when we pull over for a !@#$ break?

There are no words to describe how angry I am, right now. I feel like a parent coming home from a night out and expecting the babysitter to have the kids in bed and be doing her homework, and instead finding the kids in the liquor cabinet, and the sitter upstairs turning tricks in my bed for crack. Except that that would actually be kind of funny, in a "honey, you put the kids in their rooms and call the cops, I'm getting the gun" kind of way.

This? No so much. Not even !@#$ remotely.

You know, when I took Randolph under my wing, back in Antarctica, I really wanted to do right by him. I didn't want him to wind up like the last guy, and be turned some cracked-up version of myself, stumbling through war zones ripped on snake whiskey and wondering if he can get into the press pool with a necklace of human tongues instead of a tie.

But after a while, I realized that's exactly what I was doing. and I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Someone had to look after that last batch of conveyor-belt children that ABWEHR was cranking out for the Fourth Reich. Someone with the kindness, time, and sympathy to help them learn about our world, and how beautiful it is, and how they didn't need to follow through on what the !@#$ up freaks that made them wanted.

And that someone was not !@#$ going to be me. I'd either fold them into The COMPANY, somewhere, or they'd be back at my apartment, ripped on Martian speed, watching Adult Swim, and hallucinating Advanced Supersonic Nazi Hell Reindeer from Below the Hollow Earth. Or trying to sell their stories to get a reality TV show, which could be a million !@#$ times worse.

So I tapped Randolph for the job.

"Show them the world, kid," I said. "Show them the good parts and the bad parts. Show them what we live for, die for, and kill for. Show them !@#$ everything. And I bet your pants-wetting liberal !@#$ editors back at Retardnet will eat it up if you call it an ongoing series."

So he did, and they did, and all was well. Until today.

Today, I'm in the middle of getting reservations for the most !@#$ expensive restaurant on the Eastern seaboard as payback for a certain Director of DAMOCLES for helping us out during the fight with The Skull. And no sooner to do I finally get the person on the line than my phone gets another call, and it's Randolph, and he's crying and scared !@#$less.

"It's Geri and Johan," he says: "They're dead. Someone shot them both at the hotel. They weren't feeling well so we left them and went for dinner, and when we came back...."

"Where are you?" I ask, getting ready to call the Flier, and then remembering it's in the drink halfway between New York and !@#$ Gibraltar.

"Tel Aviv," he says, and starts giving me the name of the nearest street, and the hotel name, and the alleyway he just threw up in, but I stop him.

"Randolph, I'm sorry. I must be hearing things. Did you just say Tel Aviv?"

"Yes, I did," he says.

"And that would be in Israel, right? Not Tel Aviv, Morocco? Brazil? !@#$ Moldavia?"

"Yes..."

At that moment I could have said a lot of things. Really nasty and mean things that would have made his brains blow out of his ears. Literally.

But two of our kids were dead, and he was most likely being hunted, and there was no !@#$ time for any of that !@#$ right then and there. Like a parent who gets a call from a drunk teen at a party they shouldn't have been at, the important thing is that they were at least smart enough to !@#$ call for a ride instead of driving home drunk and wrapping your corvette around a McDonald's.

Death by screaming can take place tomorrow. Save them now.

So I gave him the address of the nearest bolt hole in the Tel Aviv. I could have given him the bigger one, of course, but it was halfway across town, rather than, lucky him, just a few blocks away. I told him the combination for the door, and told him to run there as quick as he could with the kids and lock the !@#$ thing behind him. No exiting, no visitors, no more phone calls to anyone. I'd open it myself when it was safe to come out.

No, no worries. He was safe. I would take care of it. We'll talk about things later.

And then I strapped on by last Man Missile, screaming abuse at every thing in my path (sorry, kitty; sorry, METALMAID) and took off for Tel Aviv as fast as that !@#$ thing would take me. Which probably wasn't fast enough, but thankfully the !@#$ who killed those two were !@#$ stupid.

The whole !@#$ thing is stupid, really. But that's why I told him not to bring those kids to Israel.

Why, you may ask? Other than the obvious fact that someone wanted to kill them all while they were there? Well, let's see if I can explain this and not make you feel as stupid as I'm going to make Randolph feel when I go back on the safehouse door in about ten minutes, maybe about fifty minutes before we all GTFO.

This is Israel. This is the country whose chief intelligence agency, Mossad, is absolutely excellent at hunting down Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice. This is the country whose Strategic Talents organization, Molchanie, has been working on picking the likes of ABWEHR off, one splattered head at a time, since the state was created.

ABWEHR didn't hole up at Antarctica because they liked making beer out of !@#$ penguins. They hid down there because they knew that, whatever kind of weird, "attack us and we blow up the Earth" detente they had with everyone else, the Israelis were not !@#$ worried about it.

So the last thing in the world that anyone should have done was taken a bunch of kids who were grown in vats by Super Nazis to Israel. At best they'd be arrested, disappeared, and turned inside out on a table, somewhere, to find out how they ticked.

At worst... well, we've seen halfway to worst.

The good news was that the assassin was clean and professional. He slipped into the room, just put two in each of their heads. No torture, no mindgames, just bullets in the brains.

Then he sat there was waited for the others. Luckily, when they came and saw what happened, they started making noise and running away. He didn't want to try and hit them in the street, so he started calling his buddies for backup. Maybe an accident, somewhere?

That was about when Randolph called me, and I told him where to do. They lost sight of Randolph and the others before they ducked into the safe house, thankfully. So all the assassins could do was run around that part of town and try to find them. After all, how far could those kids get?

Wrong !@#$ question. The right one was "How far could I get?" And since I was able to steer the !@#$ thing for once, the right answer was "right up your !@#$ back door after I heard your com chatter, you dumb !@#$."

Yeah, that's why there was that bit on the news about an explosion in Tel Aviv earlier today. I guess some van went boom. They're blaming terrorists, but a little light on the specifics. Gee I !@#$ wonder why.

They're also not saying much of anything about claims that some guy was seen actually !@#$ surfing what might have been a rocket, right into that van. I mean, that's just impossible, right?

And all that nonsense about said person leaping off the !@#$ thing, somersaulting over the fireball, and running away? Call the Weekly World News, amigo. Batboy needs a !@#$ date.

There was, of course, no mention of that person who didn't exist running down some other people who didn't exist, either, and plugging them one by one. Nor was there any hint of anything about a rather vicious showdown between him and the !@#$ who shot those kids, mostly involving the guns in question and his holes at either end.

Not too subtle a message, I figure. But neither Mossad not Molchanie do subtle very well, and they sure don't !@#$ understand it, either. This'll make them understand they crossed a !@#$ line.

As for whether they'll learn anything, well... this is another land that's sadly well-known for generational hatred. "I killed your uncle because he killed my father because he killed your mother because your friends burned down my house because my friends tore down your olive tree because ad !@#$ infinitum," going back several lifetimes and going !@#$ nowhere fast.

So of course they'd kill some kids whose only crime was being born of supposedly-corrupt genetic stock, and whose fathers and mothers killed their kinsmen for something approaching the same reason.

No reason, no rhyme. Just hate, blinding and white like the snows at the !@#$-end of the world that these kids came from.

I told Randolph not to cushion them. I said no sugarcoating reality or history.  Show them the best, show them the worst, and hopefully they'll learn to put one over the other, or learn the difference between the two.

And here he did the one thing I told him not to do, and wound up teaching them the harshest, ugliest lesson of all. Some people don't give a !@#$ about what you have to offer, or what you could become, or escaped to get here.

Some people just want you dead because they figure you got bad genes.

Right now I want to just go have a drink, or maybe ten, and steady myself before calling a friend to handle the cleanup, and getting Randolph and the kids the !@#$ out of town. Lebanon sounds nice, right now, and I know a hundred ways to get over the border without being seen. And I'll worry about turning the air blue tomorrow, or maybe the day after that.

I hope they're happy, whoever okayed this hit. I hope they are really !@#$ happy. Because tonight is going to feel like an accidental !@#$slip up the !@#$hole when I'm done with them.

They call this city The Big Orange for some !@#$ reason or another. I'm gonna give it one !@#$ of a squeeze before I go.

(SPYGOD is listening to Israel (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Razormaid remix) and having a Bazelet Double Bock)

9/13/11 - The Question You Just Don't Ask.

It never fails. Every few years, maybe twice a decade, I'll be at a D.C. power party, having a good time, and some jack!@#$ came on up and ask me THE QUESTION.

The last time it happened was maybe three years ago, perpetrated by some new guy I didn't recognize. He didn't look drunk, and he didn't look like a rube, so I supposed he was doing it of his own sound mind and volition. Poor fool probably just didn't know any better.

Having said that, I still had to lobotomize with his own !@#$ champagne flute. I think I got about halfway through the operation before a massive security detail managed to strong-arm some sense into me, or at least get my hands off his perforated noggin. But I think that, following that nasty display of attempted poolside brain surgery, the message was made clear as crystal once again.

That message is !@#$ simple: you do not !@#$ ask SPYGOD about his secret vulnerabilities.

"Are you impervious to bullets?" I'll tolerate, because anyone ought to know by now the answer to that is yes. Usually.

"Is it true you once took on fifty ninjas armed with swords and the only blood on the floor was theirs?" is acceptable, because while it isn't !@#$ true, it makes me sound like an even bigger bad!@#$ than I already am. Plus the blood was actually someone else's.

And "You can jump out of airplanes without parachutes and live?" is also acceptable, because I've got an image to maintain, and, as we learned once again just yesterday, the answer is "!@#$ yes." I don't !@#$ recommend it if you're supposed to be jumping into battle, of course, but every once in a while it feels strangely liberating to take the space junk express down and kiss the sweet, sweet Earth at terminal velocity.

But all these people trying to needle me into giving away my kryptonite at a party? !@#$ that.

!@#$, !@#$ that in the ear with a spoon. A really big !@#$ spoon that's been sharpened into a shiv by a man arrested for !@#$ dead cows outside his ex-girlfriend's kindergarten window. On a dare. For beer.

I mean, I don't mind if people understand that even I have limits. I may be immortal but I'm not invulnerable. I have my stress limits and breaking points, just like everyone else.

The big difference is that, unlike most people, I get to bounce back from that kind of trauma.

Like last night, for example. Remember how I fell out of the sky while avoiding being barbequed in my flying car? Remember that I fell Gods know how many !@#$ stories and slammed face-first into a shiny new Lexus? Anyone else would be a big, wet splatter, or maybe a large helping of bone and meat soup served in a skin wrapper.

Me? I broke everything, but then it all knitted itself back together (painfully) while I lay there and grunted. It was all back to normal in about ten minutes, and I could actually move again after another five. Which was nice because I was getting really !@#$ sick of telling the person whose car I just smashed to shut the !@#$ up or I'd... well, I'd do something. Once I could aim again.

(And yes, he shut the !@#$ up once I sat up and glared at him. And prolapsed into his pants. Sometimes lady fate is kind to me.)

But yes, I hurt like a mother!@#$. I still do. You know that awful feeling you get in your back muscles, right above your hip, when you move it just wrong and it snaps? And then you can't bend down and get back up again, sit down, sit up, or !@#$slam the three katooeys you brought home to make up for a failed Thai food run, without that nasty limiting twinge?

Well, I've had it all night and all day, and it !@#$ sucks. It'll be gone by tomorrow, I'm sure, but still.

So yes, bones come back together as they should be, but muscles still hurt a while thereafter. Bullets bounce off but sting like !@#$. Sharp surfaces dull but sting. Crush and splatter injuries reform. Spilled blood comes back.

Burns... that's a different subject.

Now, keep in mind that I'm immortal. I can't die. But some injuries take a lot longer to heal than others. And fire, for some weird !@#$ reason, takes !@#$ forever.

There was this one time, early on, when I rushed into a towering inferno to get something for The COMPANY. I managed to do it, but by the time I got out of the building I was a literal walking skeleton: black skin hanging from bones, charred organs falling out of ruptured skin. It hurt like living unholy !@#$, even without nerve endings, and when they started to regrow it itched like I was the center performer in an ant orgy.

And it took me six !@#$ months to heal up completely. Six months of itching, burning, and the nasty, wet tickling that comes as your body slowly puts its charred self back together again.

That, son, is why SPYGOD is very leery of fire. I'll take a burn or two for America if I have to, but no more "run into the conflagration wearing only an eyepatch and a smile" bull!@#$ for me.

But I don't advertise that weakness. There's only a few people who know about it, and then know that I know that they know, and they know that if they tell anyone else I'm going to do something really bad to their lower descending colon with a pound of sand and a blowtorch.

So what does it mean if I've had four, count 'em, four assassination attempts in about three months that are all !@#$ fire based? It means either one of them blabbed, which I highly doubt, or one of my foes found out.

Or, worse still, a friend is now a foe, and is trying to have my crispy !@#$ served on a platter.

It doesn't involve clones or giant metal insects, so I doubt it's HONEYCOMB, and this doesn't seem like GORGON's style. So that leaves either SQUASH or someone from the Legion, and I did just tweak their noses twice in the last few weeks.

Which means that, in time honored style, I am now contractually obligated to find out who the !@#$ it was, and respond in kind. For America. Let the games begin!

(As soon as I can get out of bed and stand up straight again, anyway...)

(SPYGOD is listening to Disco Inferno (The Trammps) and having some maximum strength elephant knock-out drugs for pain killer)

6/17/11 - An Ocean Not to Break

Had another unpleasant run-in with Mr. USA this morning. I think he's starting to get the idea that we're not exactly happy to have him and his blue helmet party friends here at the Ice Palace. I don't know what could possibly have given him that crazy idea, but he chewed me up one side of the commissary table and down the other.

Or he would have, if I hadn't reminded him just how much SPYGOD hates to be interrupted in the middle of my first cup of coffee of the day.

(I stir it with a tjbang stick to take some of the non-alcoholic edge off. Trust me when I say it's nothing you want to have to resort to. Stay away from the brown bean heroin, kids.)

So, one almost irreversible intra-national incident later, and a number of The COMPANY's best agents somewhat bloodied and battered keeping one of us from doing the obvious thing under the circumstances, he's off on his side of the Ice Palace, and I'm in mine. And it'll probably stay that way until one or both of us leaves.

This is what we've been reduced to, the two of us. Squabbling children, fighting over a toy that neither of us really wants anymore.

We weren't always enemies, he and I. We knew each other before I was SPYGOD and before he was Mr. USA. Back in the war, when we had crazy patriotic codenames that had nothing to do with our ranks.

(Me not a Sergeant, he not a Captain. You know how that goes.)

Whatever we started off as, wherever we came from, and whatever background we came from, we all came out of Camp Rogers as good friends. We'd been through the crazy hell of science gone patriotically haywire, together, against all odds. And that forges a bond you don't break all that easy.

And going into action together? That just made it all the more stronger. We weren't just fellow soldiers, son. We were brothers and sisters, together.

But then I had to go and do the one thing he wanted to do.

What can I say? We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hitler was supposed to be north of Berlin, where he was, not east, where I was.

The official story makes it sound like my unit had been tracking him for days, scrabbling for information and putting pieces together. Knocking over informants and kicking in doors, looking for the most evil person in the world. Just the sort of thing you'd expect out of the man who would one day be heading up The COMPANY.

Except it's bull!@#$. We got lucky was all.

Hitler was on his way to the Fuhrerbunker and stopped at a church. From what I heard, he was trying wheedle some favors out of the god he'd spent the last few years letting his SS pagan !@#$ friends try to tear down and replace with some weird-ass, pre-new age Viking mystery religion.

And if one of my people hadn't wanted to stop there to pay some respects, we'd have missed him completely. He probably would have wound up in the bunker, months later, on the night of the Black Pill, and we'd have had a real problem on our hands.

But we didn't miss him, and we snuck in, and then I did the deed that's made me so famous over the years. While the other guys were tangling with his U-Men bodyguards, I leaped on top of him and tore his !@#$ head right off his neck.

The guys later told me I looked like one of those gargoyles we saw in France, all smashed up and lying on the ground around a demolished church. I sat there bathing in his neck stump juices like I'd wanted to drink them, or just received some cosmic message from the gods and was taking the time to process it.

I don't know what was thinking right then. Maybe just amazed that this !@#$ little !@#$ of a man who'd caused so much trouble just came apart in my hands like a roast pig. And I had his head in my hands and didn't know what to do with it, yet.

I killed our enemy, but in doing so I made another one.

I wasn't there when he got the news but he was apparently livid. I didn't find out how livid until Korea, when we were operating on the same side under new names, and finally had a chance to have it out. I think we tore half of one town apart going at it, that day.

But I've never learned really why it was that important to him. He refuses to discuss it, even to this day. And for all my digging and all my probing, nothing concrete has ever come to light.

All I know is that's how love turns to hate, kids. One wrong move in someone else's zen garden and suddenly you're a sandbox wrecker.

Two more days and I punk GORGON, again, and hopefully get the show on the road. I don't like living in a confined space with someone I want to love again, but have to hate because he's decided that's the way it is.

(SPYGOD is listening to Terrible Love (The National) and drinking more of that nasty black bean heroin)