Minuteman #3: Stopwatch

Jeff Weston reaches out and steadies the crystal tumbler of vodka as it slides slightly across the table. The turbulence subsides and he raises his eyes to face Maxwell. Weston's left eye is blackened and his lip is still bloodied and swollen. Combined with the burn scars down the right side of his face, he looks like he has been in a war zone. With his other hand he idly toys with a peanut before flicking it across the empty cabin. The jet levels out and Maxwell looks up from his laptop.

" Are you ready to proceed?" Maxwell raises an eyebrow towards Weston.

" Yeah, just don't expect me to be too perky. I'm still cleaning out that crap Von Strueber pumped into me."

" The antidote takes some time to fully work, but I assure you that you'll make a full recovery. Now you understand the reason for this debrief? There is a critical situation brewing back home and we need you on it."

" Why me? There are at least twenty Minutemen assigned to the United States - surely one of them would be more suitable? Anyway, I told you when you recruited me that I would be doing one mission - finding the scum who killed my brother - and that's all. So thanks for the ride back from South Africa, but I'm retired: effective now."

" We predicted this response but we need you rather than any of the other Minutemen to deal with this threat. You have a ... special interest in the outcome that we feel will focus your efforts somewhat."

" And what the Hell might that be, Maxwell?" Weston slams his glass down, a splash of vodka spilling out and scattering across the table. Weston's eyes are burning with anger.

Maxwell runs his finger through the spilled liquor and dabs a little on his tongue. " Don't even think about threatening me, Minuteman-13. I assure you that when you know about the situation I think you'll see things in a different light. Now, tell me about South Africa?"

Weston shakes his head. "What do you want to know?"

" Has it been that long since you had a debrief? Start at the beginning and run through to the end?"

" The flight to Jo'Berg was simple enough and the office had been good enough to clear me with the South African branch. I arrived at 05.15 and check in and then made my way to the Jo'Berg safehouse. Nice place they have there - remind me to have a word with my lot about a swimming pool? You can tell Grandfather that it isn't just their offices that are good. MM-57 is running a great operation. She had her Seconds crawling all over the Von Strueber estate. Well, the Johansen estate as it is named over there. Hardly a secret in the underground that Johansen was actually the cover for Von Strueber. 57 reckoned that he was just so damned dangerous that none of the local hard-balls would set foot near him. Didn't hurt that we had someone on the inside.. 'had' being the operative word.

Turned out that the estate was in mourning as his wife, who had dropped dead in their favourite restaurant. Justine Johansen was one of 57's Seconds, deep, deep cover. 57 had the post-mortem on her desk before the Coroner, doctored and back again. The official cause of death was an aneurism. The real cause was a delicate little contact poison. A M.O. that tied in nicely to the Von Strueber family legacy."

" Yes, his grandfather was The Black Poet, yes? A Nazi assassin that crossed metaphoric swords with your grandfather."

" Yes. 57 wanted Von Strueber dead, but I really needed him alive. We needed to know what he was after in STAR Labs when Bobby started hunting him and why some rumoured genetics project in the Ukraine would have him assassinate MM-29. too many unanswered questions for a straight kill mission.

Von Strueber arrived back in South Africa before I got to Jo'berg and 57 had him under surveillance. I need you to know that there was some debate over when we should take him. 57 wanted to try the stealth approach, but I reckoned that there was something going wrong on the inside. Someone was tipping people off about our operations - I mean, how many people knew where I was in Amsterdam?"

" You suspect we have a leak?"

" Yes I do, and you can tell Grandfather that I expected better of him than this. When I was first with the ..."

" We don't need your management advice, Weston. Please continue?"

" I recommended we try a direct approach. He would have people watching us if we had people watching him. The place he would expect the least was a sanction in the middle of the street."

" And that is your justification for a fully-fledged gun fight in the middle of one of the world's biggest cities?"

" Maxwell, there were ten shots fired. That's a quite disagreement in Los Angeles. We tried to take him as he was coming out of his bank. 57, myself and one of her assault team. We need to reassess Von Strueber on our files as well. For some stupid reason you have him down as a Level Three threat with guns? On what scale is that? I've done the Deadshot simulations and this guy was easily as good. He took the Second down with one shot across the chest, under the collar bone and through the windpipe. Sublime shooting. 57 took him in the shoulder and he took her in the stomach. Twice. How is she?"

" Critical."

" I fired three shots and disarmed him."

" Why?"

" You're not listening are you? I wanted him alive. Problem was, he wouldn't go down and started to run. His streets, not mine. He had the advantage even though he was injured. I managed to get one more shot off before there were too many bystanders."

" There are never too many bystanders, especially foreign nationals, Minuteman-13. Basic training."

" You know, that's one part of my training I always seem to forget? I drove him into a car park and ... what's the official term? 'Engaged him in single combat'?"

" That is the recommended phrase for reporting."

" I took him down and restrained him, but he had some sort of injection device on him. Son of a bitch stabbed me and pumped me full of that stuff.. he nearly did for me, so I had to take him down."

" And what did you do?"

" you just want me to admit it don't you?"

Maxwell doesn't reply.

" I blew his brains out. Point-blank shot to the back of the head. It was the last thing I could do before I passed out."

" You were picked up by the Seconds and evacuated. Anti-venom was applied and you have been in our care since. Excellent. You will be pleased to know that with Von Strueber out of the way we accessed his dwelling and discovered the following. He had some real state-of-the-art equipment, including some drained bio-tech which we haven't seen before. The information he was after in STAR labs was on genetic manipulation and cloning. The subject matter pertained to some experiments the US government carried out some time ago. It fits together nicely with your Tidetech lead as one Dr. Benson, a former US scientist on the project was rumoured to have been going to sell the information to those Canadians. We had him assassinated some time ago. It looks like Tidetech wanted that information badly and we have managed to stop them."

" So where does MM-29 fit with this? That situation in Kiev?"

" Another genetics project? We have someone moving in on that as we speak. If the two are related we will have that destroyed as well."

" And then we take Tidetech, yes? They killed Bobby and MM-29 and precipitated this entire mess."

" We have bigger fish to fry at the moment." Maxwell taps a few extra notes into the laptop and closes it down. He adjusts his tie and presses a button on his arm-rest. In seconds, a lithe, dark-haired woman enters, dressed in a formal stewardess style uniform. Without speaking, he gestures to their empty glasses and nods. The woman turns on her heel and then stumbles slightly as she steps in the peanut Weston flicked earlier in the flight.

" Don't tell me? One of your Seconds?" Jeff raises an eyebrow.

" Yes. Normal Agents have no need for support, but Grandfather has designated some to me within my roving brief. It's a perk.

Moments later the stewardess returns with two new drinks. Jeff takes his, swirls it and takes a mouthful.

" By the way, what do you know about Agent Cameron Chase in the DEO?"

" Cam? Young, intuitive, damned effective in the field. She's got a lot to learn but she's definitely in The Wall's good books."

" Her electronic fingerprints have been all over out firewall for the last few days. Determined thing, I'll give her that, but we have enough virus infiltration in their system to hamper anything she can try."

" You've been bugging the DEO?"

" *WE* have out digital fingers in just about every vital computer system in continental North America. The digital war is one that we are winning, thanks to Grandfather."

" Shouldn't we be on the same side as the DEO?"

" We are, Minuteman-13, we are, it just doesn't appear that anyone has told the DEO that simple fact."

The two sit opposite each other, wondering just what will happen next.

" So what's more important than taking down Tidetech? You still haven't told me about the problem back home? What's so hot that you need me, above all other agents, to deal with it?"

" The Balin Protocol has been compromised."

" Sorry Maxwell, you're going to have to fill me in a bit more - obviously when you zapped my head to unlock my training, you missed that one out. I get the reference - Arthurian, yeah?"

" Yes. Balin and Balan were brothers. One struck a blow that crippled the other - the Dolourous Blow that condemned England to blight and suffering."

" This isn't good is it?"

" No it is not. You understand that our relationship with the British is somewhat false?"

" I know that whenever a diplomat is sent to embassy in London, they consider it as good as a contract termination." Jeff takes a sip of his vodka.

" We're holding a member of their royal family hostage."

A fine mist of the best Russian spirit erupts from Jeff's mouth. " Tell me you didn't just say that!"

" We have been for three generations. The latest is Stephen Windsor, the eldest son of Charles and Diana. Diana was pregnant when they got married and gave birth prematurely - most of the post-wedding publicity shots were done using a shapechanger. When the child was born we traded the young blood for his senile uncle. Well, trade wasn't exactly how the British would put it, but kidnapping is such a dirty word. We've been holding him in Kentucky for the last nineteen years."

" And how exactly does this effect the British?...oh Jesus! You're blackmailing them? You're blackmailing a country!"

" It would be inappropriate for me to disagree with that statement. I can assure you that it is wholly necessary. Do not underestimate them. Never."

" Why?"

" They have ... resources. Things that we are making them keep under wraps. There's no other way of putting this Jeff. If we didn't have their Prince under our control, and he somehow got back to Britain, in all probability, the United Kingdom would declare war on the United States."

" And lose, right?"

" Maybe."

" Maybe?"

" They have resources. That's all I can say."

" No - you can say a whole lot more! C'mon Maxwell, time to spill the beans.."

" In 1944 your grandfather was involved in a retrieval mission into Maxi occupied Europe, under his assumed identity as Minuteman. Private Weston had recruited a number of non-metahuman heroes to participate in a strike against the Germans. We needed some sort of success against them without putting our own - like the Justice Battalion - at risk."

" At risk from what?"

" The Spear of Destiny. Well, that's what we told everyone officially. No metahumans could enter the European arena for fear that they would be possessed by Hitler. Weston discovered that one of the mystery men was stupid enough to take his kid sidekick into the field with him and then get himself killed. Your grandfather was determined to find the lost boy. He parachuted into the area that we last heard from the missing mystery man with two dozen hand picked soldiers. They moved through the countryside and eventually managed to link up with the local Resistance. The Nazi war machine was in retreat at the time, so it was a little difficult to pinpoint exactly where the mystery man had been killed. Weston was a tenacious one though and eventually they discovered that little Kid Dandy had indeed been captured and was going to be executed before the local Commandant."

" This is sounding more and more like one of those rather black and white war stories? The innocent victim, the evil Nazi commander, the plucky resistance fighters and my grandpa, the One-Man-Army?"

" You wouldn't believe the half of it. You know how things were back then? Your grandfather went in dressed to kill in his full red, white and blue fighting gear and did what he did best- kicked butt. Reports by the men that went in with him suggested that the Germans had been conditioned to never expect to see a mystery man up close and personal - the Spear of Destiny again. When Weston went at them, they never thought that he was simply a normal man driven by some insane patriotism and that their Fuehrer's scheme must have somehow failed. Demoralising apparently. In the end there wasn't that much resistance and they got the kid. He was in a real bad way - post traumatic before they even imagined what that could be like. Your grandpa took a bullet as well, in his arm. He carried on though and did whatever any good soldier would have done - trawled the commandant's offices for information. It was there that he found the papers pertaining to Agent Percival - or Parsifal as the Germans called it."

" More Arthur?"

" I'm afraid so. Agent Percival was born in a laboratory in Chicago. We knew that the Germans had substantial metahuman resources and that they had to be neutralised if we were to win the war. Our genetic manipulation capabilities were nowhere near what they are today, but those men in the war years managed some magnificent things. We created the world's first neutraliser..."

" And then the Germans stole it from you."

" Absolutely. They not only stole it but they refined it. Made it far better - and replicated it."

" So there was no Spear of Destiny, only a lost US defence project which amounted to the same thing?"

" Exactly. So when your grandfather came across the notes and the plans with all those British soldiers, we had a serious problem. A damned serious problem. Luckily, we also had a solution. There was a reason those soldiers were hand-picked. It wasn't pretty but our plants gunned down over twenty British soldiers to keep our part of the problem a secret. The Dolorous Blow, as it were..."

" And the Brit's got to know this?"

" Yes. It was leaked to them in the late 40s by persons unknown. Not only that we had massacred some of their men to cover our back, but also that we were the source of the neutraliser that held back their own metahuman forces, that we never told them and that we had a solution."

" A solution?"

" A form of nerve gas that would have interacted with their enhancement and selectively killed them. And before you ask, this is why we never used it. Despite what the history books tell you, the British were never an empire in demise. They had just changed their emphasis. Gone were the days of colonialism, now they had found their true advantage and that was in metahumans. Their metas outstripped ours totally. We needed to have them pinned back. We needed to keep them on the back foot. The British wasted 23% of their metas trying to find a way around the Spear of Destiny when they were simply walking into a wall of fully-powered German metas. That suited our purposes. We knew we would win the war. It was just a case of when Project Manhattan would come on-line rather than if. This was planning for the future."

" So let me get this straight? We lost a neutraliser in the middle of a war to the enemy, but rather than kill it with the weapon that we had, we let them proliferate their capture so that we could neuter our primary ally's metahuman capability. Some of their soldiers found out about it, we slaughtered them in cold blood and then later the news leaked and we kidnapped one of their royals to cover up our war crimes. The Brits have been waiting fifty years for their revenge and we've been demanding most-favoured-buddy status from them for the favour. You don't need to tell me what's happened at home. Someone's kidnapped Stephen Windsor, haven't they?"

Maxwell nods.

" And if I don't get him back before the Brits realise he's gone, they are going to unleash Hell on the USA - and the memory of my Grandpa is going to take it in the neck?"

Maxwell nods again. Jeff can never remember seeing him this scared.

Next Issue: Minuteman#4 - Everything comes together and then falls apart!

Sixty Second Sound Off!

The first Minuteman story-arc comes to a crashing conclusion next issue. Thanks again to everyone who has been letting me know what they think about the series. It's been an absolute swine to write, but great fun.

Neil