Marty Morgan rode with the ranger up into the forest. He pointed out the path for the

other man to drive up to where they had engaged with Watson Security.

“The road is for a firebreak,” said the ranger. “Let’s pull off and walk down to make

sure we don’t run into trouble.”

“This is close to where we left the monkey,” said Marty. “I don’t see him laying

around.”

“They might have took it with them,” said the ranger. He parked his truck just off the

trail. “Let’s have a look around.”

The ranger got out of the truck and pulled a rifle off a rack mounted in front of the

back window. He looked around, sniffing the air.

“I can see signs of a big fight,” said the ranger. “Bullet holes are in the trees that I can

see.”

“We wrecked the Scout van over there,” said Marty. He pointed at the slightly bent

tree.

“All right,” said the ranger. “Let’s walk along here and follow the trail. Maybe we’ll

find some of their wounded to talk to about all this.”

“Hopefully they didn’t leave them out here for the bears,” said Marty.

“We’ll see,” said the ranger. He led the way down the trail, sticking to the side of the

road. The trees should give him some cover as they trekked down the road.

“When did you meet the Scouts?,” asked Marty. He trailed behind the ranger. He sent

a squirrel ahead to give them some head’s up before they walked into a war party.

“About fifteen years ago,” said the ranger. “We had some kind of problem here in the

park. The local animals were attacking people in droves. Campers were getting killed

or driven out of the park. Never seen anything like it.

“One day, these weird people show up. One of them said they were the Hazard Scouts

and they wanted to look into the problem. The service wasn’t getting anywhere.

Charlie Connelly, the ranger in charge of the district, told them to go ahead.

“They found some nut with a ray gun to stir up the animals. We busted in there, and

I got in trouble with a bear. Positive Man saved my life that day. I heard they picked

up some kid after that. Then they were wiped out, except for the kid.”

“These guys wiped out the Scouts,” said Marty. “They got away with it too.”

The ranger nodded at that as he kept walking.

After an hour, the ranger held up his hand. He turned his head to take in the scene. He

sniffed the air. He started forward slowly.

When they reached a clearing, he pointed at the sky. Smoke drifted upwards. He

shook his head.

“Looks like they’re burning the evidence,” said the ranger.

“We’re too late to catch them,” said Marty.

“Let’s see what they left behind,” said the ranger. “We could catch some of them

before they leave the building.”

“Let’s see if I can whistle up a ride,” said Marty. “At least I can get us there to watch

them leave. There’s no way we can arrest them all without help.”

Marty called up a horse to carry them toward the smoke. He mounted and then pulled

the ranger up behind him. He urged the horse into a trot. He kept it going toward the

column of smoke in the distance.

They topped a ridge. Below them, the smoke drifted upwards from a hole in the

ground. The ranger whistled as he slid off the horse.

“There was an underground bunker,” said Marty. “It was huge.”

“Looks like it’s a cavern now,” said the ranger.

“What do you want to do?,” asked Marty. He dismounted and let the horse go back

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to where he stored it.

“We need to go down and see if there are any survivors around the edge of that

mess,” said the ranger. “Then we’re going to have call some firefighters out here to

put that out.”

Marty looked around. He didn’t see anything moving. He didn’t have an animal

capable of putting out a fire in his arsenal.

He called up a hawk. He sent it to circle around the cave. It would point out if

anything was moving for them. He waited for the bird to alight, but it simply circled

and returned to him to be dismissed.

“No one was moving down there,” said Marty. “It looks safe.”

“Let’s call in the calvary,” said the ranger. “The rest of this is going to take a week

to clean up.”

“All right,” said Marty. “How do we do that?”

“I got a radio,” said the ranger. “MacBride can get things moving from his end.”

“So that’s all?,” said Marty. “I would have loved to have busted the rest of those

guys.”

“The FBI will want to talk to you guys soon enough,” said the ranger. “Your

testimony will put people on the most wanted list.”

“I will certainly want to talk to them,” said Marty.

The ranger spoke into his radio. He gave a series of directions. The other personnel

would know where he was as soon as MacBride told them two of the landmarks.

“Reinforcements are on the way,” said the ranger. “There’s not much more we can do

about that mess. We’ll need a water drop to smooth some of that out so we can go in

and see if there’s anyone stuck inside.”

“So we wait,” said Marty.

“That’s all we can do right now,” said the ranger. “There’s no point in going in there

to look around.”

“I totally got that,” said Marty. He wanted to go in and look around. He wanted to

make sure that some of the forces were out of the picture.

A helicopter floated overhead. A bucket dangled under the flying machine. The

bottom of the bucket opened. A stream of water dropped down on the crater.

“That’s great,” said Marty. “How many more buckets do you think they’ll need?”

“I don’t know,” said the ranger. “They might have two of them rotating through by

now.”

Trucks full of men came to a stop behind the pair of watchers. They climbed out and

began putting on gear to fight a fire. Cog and Ren dropped out of the last truck.

“Looks like my partners are here,” said Marty. “This is the end of our partnership.”

“Too bad,” said the ranger. “You guys have done a number on these guys.”

“We had help,” said Marty. “It looks like the ladies made it out okay. I’ll have to let

them know they are witnesses now if they want to testify about what went down.”

“What about you, kid?,” said the ranger. “You staying a hero after this?”

“I don’t know,” said Marty. “We got the guy behind all this locked down. All we have

to do is hand him over to the proper authorities and see if the system will put him

away.”

“Hopefully there will be enough left in the crater to help with that, but we won’t

know until we get this fire under control,” said the ranger.

“We don’t have anybody who can help with this on our side,” said Marty.

“It’ll be another few hours but we’ll get this under control and go in,” said the ranger.

“Maybe we can send in Cog,” said Marty. “He’s maybe fireproof.”

“That’s two maybes,” said the ranger. He smiled. “We can send him in and see what

he can do about fighting the fire while he’s down there.”

“I’ll ask him and see what he thinks,” said Marty. “He might prefer that to fighting

soldiers and powered humans.”

“We don’t have any water to roll down in there without the helicopter,” said the

ranger.

Another helicopter arrived. It dumped a ton of water in the crater before moving out.

That damped down the smoke so the hole in the ground was clearer. The top of the

elevator shaft and steps drifted into view.

“Let me talk to Cog,” said Marty. “Maybe he can help get things done.”

“Go ahead,” said the ranger. “I’ll see if we can rig up some kind of hose to take down

into that hole.”

Marty walked over to where Cog and Ren watched people going about their business.

Ren nodded as the Scout approached.

“I need you to go in and look around, Cog,” said Marty. “Can you do that?”

“Why?,” said Cog.

“We need you to check to see if there are any survivors,” said Marty. “Maybe put out

some of the fire so we can find any more evidence to make our case in court.”

“All right,” said Cog. “It sounds counterproductive.”

“Every little bit helps,” said Marty. “We can’t hold Watson forever.”

“Technically we can,” said Ren. “I just don’t think it would be in the interest of

justice.”

“I’ll go in and look around,” said Cog. “It should be easy enough to do.”

The alien cyborg glided over to the edge of the crater. He descended into the smoke.

The last thing they saw was a headlight snapping on to show him the way.

“Do you think he will find anything?,” said Ren.

“I don’t know,” said Marty. “It never hurts to try.”

The first helicopter arrived as they watched the crater. It dumped water in the hole.

It circled to get more fire fighting ammunition.

Cog returned minutes later. He glided over to the group, floating quietly to a stop.

“They left their wounded at the bottom of the place,” said Cog. “Then they blew them

up.”

“It wasn’t like they could carry them out of here in the time we gave them,” said

Marty.

“What do we do now?,” asked Cog. “I would like to get back to Chicago before it

falls in the lake.”

“The Bureau will want to talk to you about all this,” said Marty.

“They can visit me in my home,” said Cog.

“I’m sure they’ll love that,” said Marty.

“Let’s let the professionals do their job,” said Ren. “There’s not much more that we

can do here.”

“All right,” said Marty. “We can wait for someone to talk to us there. I feel useless

here.”

“I agree,” said Ren.

“I’m concur with both of you,” said Cog. “Maybe we can arrange for transportation

from there.”

“Maybe,” said Marty. “We’ll at least be able to grab something to eat.”

The three started away from the mess.