1/4/13 - Lone Rangers and Strangers - Pt 1

So, we were talking about how the spy game actually !@#$ing works, the other day. And I told you about having things on people, and !@#$ like that. 

You remember that, son? Or are you still scared some dog!@#$ing punk with no brain, a !@#$ longer than his arm, and more guns that Al !@#$ing Capone is going to hunt you down, eat your skin, and bang your skull because you got hold of his sister's favorite marble?

Well, put that fear aside, son. Bloody Dogkill street's long-since gentrified. Now you're in more danger of being hit up by yuppies selling Civet Cat coffee than what used to go on in that place.

(Or maybe it's gotten worse. Ever tried that cat butt stuff? I'm still tasting it, years and years and ten million beers later.)

Anyway. That !@#$ about the fine art of blackmail, threats, and cooperation? That's only half the story, son. Because while it's one thing to have something on someone, you can't !@#$ing blackmail your allies into doing what you want if you actually want them to be !@#$ing allies, as opposed to people who will turn around and !@#$ you in the back with a very large knife the first chance they get.

No, son. For that, you need something different. You need favors. 

Yes, son. Favors. As in "Do this for me and I owe you one." Or "I will do this for you, but I'll ask for something in return, someday."

Or, even more rarely, "Now we're even."

It's a dangerous game. You need a lot of memory and a !@#$ good sense of bargaining. But if you can keep it all down in your little black book, you'll be ahead of the game.

Especially when you can combine favors and threats into one tasty package...

Now, you got all that? I mean, I know it's a lot to !@#$ing take in, son, but what do you expect? There's a reason us superspies make the big !@#$ bucks. Or get to !@#$ing steal them, anyway.

(But that's another big !@#$ story for another day...)

So let me give you a perfect !@#$ing example of how this all !@#$ing works. And that would be the tragicomic tale of one Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. Would-be Moroccan astronaut, accidental interplanetary revolutionary, space pirate of the Viridian Sea, the greatest nemesis of the Emperor, the current head of our new Space Service.

And the last man in the Solar System you want to !@#$ with, after yours truly.

How he got to be where he was, and is now, is a quiet little story with loud !@#$ing consequences. It also perfectly illustrates what a massive cluster!@#$ the international superspy game can be.

It all starts in the mid-60s, when our friends in ABWEHR decided to hook up with people who !@#$ing hated Jews as much as they did. This meant making some inroads with various governments in Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, and some of those folks were !@#$ing stupid enough to bite.

Now, some of these relationships would never quite get off the !@#$ ground, thanks to Israel finding out and kicking !@#$. And some would eventually have severe !@#$ing ramifications, especially in Libya, and some eventually bled into things like the Yom Kippur War.

But some of them went right the !@#$ under the table, because, to those countries' credit, they decided to take what their new Nazi !@#$buddies had given them and did not advertise it, nor get really deeply involved with any heavy !@#$ that came after.

That's what happened in !@#$ing Morocco, for example. In the 50's and 60's, they were buddies with the !@#$ing Soviet Union, mostly because everyone else was. After that, they kind of swung our way, if only because they wanted better trade partners, not to mention better !@#$ing weapons.

But, all along, they maintained a number of alliances with creepy !@#$holes, if only because it worked out to their benefit, and it made them a lot of !@#$ing money. And when they got caught, they could always claim they were shocked, shocked to find out that super villain bull!@#$ was going on in their country.

(You do know Casablanca's in Morocco, right? Just making sure, son.)

So, one of the wedding presents that Morocco kept, post-divorce with ABWEHR, was the functioning start of an actual, for-!@#$-real, !@#$ing space program.

No, really. I'm sure you knew that some of those mother!@#$ing Nazi scientists had some amazing !@#$ ideas on getting into orbit, and beyond. But you may not have known that not all of those folks got snapped up by Operation Paperclip, grabbed by the !@#$ Soviets, or shot in the back of the !@#$ head at the end of the War. Some of them actually made it out with ABWEHR, and their researches continued, just along slightly different lines.

Well, the Moroccans wanted to go into !@#$ing space. And if they'd managed to make it work, using ABWEHR's tech, they'd have cleaned up pretty !@#$ well. Especially if the Silbervogel spaceplane worked as advertised, and they could deploy a payload during the flight.

Oh, that surprises you? You think that NASA, the ESA, and the Soviets were the only major players in the outer space game? Think the !@#$ again, son. There were bunches of folks trying their hand at the table. It's just that we were the only ones who had any real !@#$ success, for one reason or another. 

I mean, !@#$, son. You know about the Space Race. You know about the probes, the satellites. The Moon Landings. Alpha Base Seven. You even know about Deep Ten, rest its massive soul.

But there's tons of !@#$ you never !@#$ing heard about. Big !@#$ science that was not done by governments with rational, well-funded research divisions. Reckless experiments by high-science weirdos, all tweaking the !@#$ boundaries of the possible and impossible.

And occasionally they'd find some gold, up there in the black, but more often than not they just crashed and burned.

I mean, you think the early American space program had some really big !@#$-ups during the testing stages? You should have seen some of those poor fools who thought they could fly to Mars or beyond on a literal wing and a !@#$ prayer. There's !@#$ing dozens of dead spaceships floating between here and the outer and inner planets. Silent eternal graveyards in space, their crew flash frozen in the moments between life and death when something went horribly wrong.

Or worse. Much worse.

So just imagine, son. Imagine a reusable spaceplane that was actually based on sound, scientific principles. Imagine it being accelerated up to speed by a rocket sled, and then using its own engine to get up into the deep blue sky. Imagine it skipping across the atmosphere, tossing a satellite up, and then coming back down half the !@#$ world away.

Imagine us having that kind of technology in the !@#$ing mid-70's, instead of having to go through that sorry, expensive farce with the !@#$ing Space Shuttle for all those !@#$ years.

Well, that's all well and good. But come the late 70's, when Morocco managed to put all the !@#$ pieces together, no one was really wanting to see them come out on top. Especially not Israel, considering that Morocco had helped out during the Yom Kippur War.

So, as soon as Israel realized that this country was about to beat it to the stars, not to mention beat America to having a reusable suborbital spaceplace, they decided to !@#$ing do something about it.

But here's the problem. Israel could do a lot with what it had. Unfortunately, it needed to do it quietly, so as to make whatever it did look like a massive !@#$ing accident. The kind of mishap that sets a space program back years, if not decades.

So sending Supers over to smash the Silvervogel? Not going to !@#$ing happen. And they can't sabotage it on the ground, thanks to some talents the Moroccans had watching over the program. And they can't blast it out of the !@#$ air on the way up or someone might !@#$ing see.

No, son. In order for this !@#$ to work they needed to blast the !@#$ing silver bird out of existence while it was out of our atmosphere, and skipping along to its destination.

Now, Israel does not a !@#$ing space program. However, it has understandings with various organizations that do. It's got us, of course. And it's got the !@#$ing Space Service, which is mostly us. And it's got the COMPANY, too, and MI-10, Direction Noir, and anyone else involved in the !@#$ ESA.

Now, the ESA people all beg off, mostly because they want to see this !@#$ thing work and buy the tech, so as to steal a march from NASA, which is still having a problem getting it's !@#$ing Space Shuttle off the ground. NASA's keen to stamp on this !@#$, too, but they're not going to make a !@#$ recommendation until they see which way the Space Service is going to !@#$ing jump.

But the Space Service? Get this, son. They say no. 

Why? Well, I doubt it's because they wanted to take the high road (stop laughing) but they do say that, if they started shooting at !@#$ing humans, instead of alien invaders, no one would ever be able to !@#$ing trust them again. That and they did not want others to learn what kind of weapons capability they ahd.

And they were !@#$ right to be leery of that, as we've since learned. 

Now, that leaves the COMPANY. And, given a chance to stomp Supernazi !@#$, however removed, you know I'm going to leap at that !@#$. Normally.

But here's the thing, son. At the time, the COMPANY was in a bit of a !@#$ing match with Israel over turf. Israel's two major spy organizations, HAGANAH and Molchanie, were at cross purposes over what to do with a certain other science criminal organization. And while we really could have just !@#$ing settled the matter over a few drinks and a good argument, the two groups were not wanting to talk to each other, but rather around each other, using the COMPANY as a go-between.

So I was pretty !@#$ing sick of them, by then, and decided to try and use the issue as a big !@#$ bargaining chip to get to the table. And I figured it'd work, right? I mean, it wasn't like they were going to go to the !@#$ing Soviets, were they?

(And, yes, they did. But the Soviets told them to suck it up, too. Go figure.)

Well, they drag their !@#$ feet, and eventually stop calling me. So I figure they're playing hard to !@#$ing get. And the time to the launch gets closer and closer, and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to kick !@#$ all by myself.

However, the Moroccans get wind that something's !@#$ing up, somehow. And they bring the launch forward a whole !@#$ week, which if you know !@#$ing anything about space travel is just !@#$ing unheard of.

At or around 6 in the AM, local time, they strap Captaine Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir into the cockpit of the Silbervogel. The preflight checks are rushed though as quickly as possible, the area cleared by force and fire. He waves once and smiles, saying that he's as ready as he's ever going to be, and all systems are go, go, go.

So they hit the big !@#$ red button, and the rocket sled takes off. They travel at ridiculous !@#$ speeds until they get just below where they need to be !@#$ing going. And then Faraj somehow presses the !@#$ button to activate the ship's own rocket engine. There's a burst of white-hot fire, and the ship flies off the sled, nearly straight up into the atmosphere.

It goes up, up, up. Faster and faster. The light blue of the desert sky turns into indigo, and then into black, and Faraj becomes the first Moroccan to see the stars from outside the atmosphere.

Only then, something goes terribly wrong. There's a flash of light, brighter than the Sun. A ring of fire floats in the upper atmosphere, just about where the Silbervogel would have been.

And, so far as anyone knows, the ship is lost, and Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. is dead.

What happened? Well, son, you remember me telling you about el Wedjat? The Mukhabarat's occult secret police? The kind of people you call when the !@#$ing Sphinx wakes the !@#$ up and starts munching down tourists?

Well, remember this was just after the Camp David Accords, son. This was when, after years of being !@#$ing enemies, Israel and Egypt were going to try being peaceful neighbors, again. And that opened a number of diplomatic options back up, not to mention a few back-channels.

So yeah. When we were stalling, and they couldn't !@#$ing agree, HAGANAH got in touch with el Wedjat. They explained the situation, and their people agreed that they didn't want any !@#$ing supernazi tech in space.

Plus, getting one over on a former partner in the Yom Kippur War would make certain there was no question that Egypt was now on the side of the angels.

So they had one of their more powerful ceremonial magicians do... something. !@#$ if I ever knew what, or ever will. All that we know is that it was supposed to make it look like the ship blew the !@#$ up at the most critical point in the mission, setting the Moroccan space program back enough to give NASA the breathing room it needed to make the Space Shuttle a reality, and everyone else enough time to deal with the ramifications of what just almost !@#$ing happened.

And it worked, but not without consequences far beyond what they !@#$ing thought...

Yeah, more on this later. I need another !@#$ing beer, and you look like you've had your mind blown enough tonight.

Because if that was some crazy and complicated !@#$, what happened next is going to turn your brains to Moutabal. And !@#$ am I hungry for some of that stuff, right about now.

(Unfortunately, we can't order out, anymore.)

(SPYGOD is listening to Silver Bird (Mark Lindsay) and having a Flag Speciale)

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)