Punisher spoof

28 August 2003

On-the-fly Supplement to the Punisher's War Journal

"Incoming, Frank."

My hands are sweaty, and I wipe them swiftly on my jeans, not daring to take my eyes off the monitor.

"How many?" His voice crackles over the microphone, barely audible.

"Two. White male, five ten, tops. Hispanic male, six plus. Bulky jackets. Likely armed."

"Roger that."

This will not change the mission.

The microphone is sensitive enough to pick up the creak of his leather jacket as he moves–any more sensitive and I'd get his heartbeat. There's another device that monitors that, though; heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, brain waves. I am holding my breath, and I ease it out. Doesn't really matter how loud I am, but the tension gets to you after a while.

"Executing." A nice double-entendre, that. Frank moves in, and the only thing I hear before the gunfire starts is a distant "what the fu–"

I jerk back, muttering an oath as the gunshots start. Frank arms himself with an —16 as a matter of course, and I hear crashes, more gunfire, and a thud as he throws himself down. I can see it in my head as clearly as if I were there–he rolls, toward the closest cover, snaps out and shoots again. Move. Move. Move.

I'm whispering it as I watch the monitors. There's nothing on them; an empty street, the street lamp where I hid my camera two nights ago. The door of a warehouse that is theoretically empty; at least so far as the average citizen and the cops know.

More bursts, and a "Shit" from Frank. His heart rate spikes and then levels off. No drop in blood pressure, though. A close call, but no hit. I can hear the clicks in the background as he reloads, slamming the magazine into place, ready to rock and roll. I touch the Glock 37 at my hip; my own personal security blanket. A bit big for my hands, but stopping power is stopping power. If I have to use it, my wrists will hurt like a bitch tomorrow.

The gunfire goes on for a few more minutes, and then silence. Frank is probably peeping over his cover now, and–there. Slow, deliberate shots, making sure the things that look dead stay dead. I hear groans, from a great distance, and as they continue, I can only assume that this is someone Frank wants alive, for the moment.

"One ducked out the door, Ange-girl."

This is code for watch your ass. I glance at the monitors that display the area around the van, dividing my attention between the surveillance equipment near Frank and my own vicinity.

"Who's Howard Saint?" Frank's voice comes through abruptly, and it feels like I'm quartering my mind, trying to watch the monitors and listen.

"Go fuck yourself," someone spits. I can imagine the smile on Frank's face, and the cold deadness of his eyes as he bends closer to the lone survivor.

"Wrong answer," Frank says, and I hear shrieking. "You want to go for two?"

"He'll fucking kill me, man!"

"What do you think I'm going to do? Only–" Here Frank moves in closer, his K-bar an inch from the man's nose. "I'll kill you slow. Now, who is Howard Saint?"

Obstinate silence, this time, and then the shrieking starts again.

"You've got eight more of those, and ten more on your feet. Then I start on bigger things."

The man breaks–whatever Howard Saint might do to him, it could not possibly be worse than this. One more gunshot.

"Mission complete."

"Roger that." I get up, start the van, and then return to my seat in the back. If the one that ducked out headed this way, it would not be the first time. Frank appears on the warehouse camera, apparently unharmed. I breathe a sigh of relief, but this won't be over until he actually reaches the van.

His shape appears in the van cameras about fifteen minutes later, and I slide into the driver's seat. "Where to, boss?"

"The garage." He belts himself into the passenger seat, watching the mirrors as we ease out of the alley and onto the main road. The tension has slipped a notch, but until we are back in the garage, Frank considers us in enemy territory.

The garage is twenty minutes from tonight's rendezvous point. Another abandoned warehouse, near the shipping yards, but far enough away from the struggling businesses that the chances of anyone stumbling on the van are small. And even if they did, the side windows are blacked, the van will be locked, and it would take a tank to break it open.

The garage itself is only home for the van. We vacuum it out silently, destroy all fingerprints, and lock it. The pit below is home–if you would call an arsenal and war room home.

Frank doesn't talk, and I don't pry. The mission-complete drill is as familiar as my morning training, and I could say every word before Frank does, tell you what he would do before he does it. In this, Frank is as predictable as the sunrise. In all else–earthquakes are more predictable.

The north wall of the warehouse is six inches thicker than the others, and Frank palms a panel six feet from the northeastern edge. The panel slides left, revealing a chute that drops twenty feet, a ladder stretching the distance. Top and bottom, there are two blast doors, which would both withstand a nuclear weapon. Lucky Frank; he found a fallout shelter two years ago, and made it home. Sort of.

The chute is narrow, but large enough for a hundred-pound girl to slip down, with a two-hundred pound man following her. Whatever else I could say about him, I could never accuse Frank of not being careful with me.

I move into the living room, out of his way, and I hear Frank screwing the blast door shut. Stretch–the muscles in my neck and shoulders are in knots–and bend down with straight legs to touch the floor. Most of the van's arsenal is hidden, from the casual glance–which means it's tucked in the floor, in the wheel wells, and under the seats. Good for secrecy; uncomfortable for extended sitting. I'd need an ass made of iron to tolerate it happily.

Even from my position–upside down, head near floor–I watch Frank from the corner of my eyes. The main room is actually three rooms; living area, kitchen, and the largest space, which is Frank's war room and armory. Several long tables, two along the walls and one in the center, which are used to clean weapons, make and study maps and plans, and occasionally for emergency surgery. He goes into the war room and starts shedding his weapons, always a lengthy process. His main weapons, the —16 and an 9 mm Browning pistol first, his derringer, and an assortment of knives and grenades, as well as a few flash-bangs. And even I don't know what he has on him at all times; Frank always has a weapon unless someone takes it from him. Which, in living memory, happened exactly once.

With the focus that is one of his trademarks, he sets to disassembling and cleaning his weapons, including a K-bar that has the slightest hints of blood left on it.

"Howard Saint is our target," Frank says abruptly. I glide over, picking up a notepad and pen on the way. I know the drill.

The notes are lengthy, culled from his near-faultless memory, and I jot down the facts first, then the correlations with other information we've both picked up on the way. Saint's habits; the depth of his involvement in organized crime, the strength and numbers of his organization. Anything that is based on surmise rather than cold fact, I highlight. Frank will confirm that information later.

I don't show it, but the name sends a chill down my spine. Frank already knows everything I know about Howard Saint, and the bit that I know is unpleasant. Once upon a time, I worked–under duress– for one of Saint's lackeys. I had just been brought personally to Saint's attention when Frank came barreling, literally, into my life. Eight months ago, and Frank had decided that I could be useful. Grateful, and having no other pressing business, I accepted his offer.

For the first two months of our acquaintance, I was cannon fodder, according to Frank. I studied. I trained. I learned to shoot, to spar, to kill. Not in the interests of actually doing so; my true functions are surveillance and hacking into computers, wherever necessary. Basically, what Saint had had me doing, but Saint would have shot me himself the second I'd outlived my usefulness. Well, he likely would have had someone else shoot me. Doesn't really matter who pulls the trigger, though, does it?

I also developed and expanded a knowledge of explosives, which was occasionally fascinating, but mostly involved nerves of steel and a fondness for tedious and meticulous detail. Movies glamorize this kind of thing, but trust me–intelligence-gathering, bombs, surveillance, and the like are mostly painstaking and patient work.

Notes completed, I leave them next to the computer. Frank will add them to his war journal later, along with any other plans and connections he makes. Then the training will begin again, the planning, the intelligence-gathering. I know Howard Saint, and it will take a helluva lot of planning to get to him. Though if we do, it will bring one of the biggest crime organizations in New York City down.

Frank is nothing if not ambitious.

And, I sometimes think, suicidal.

He knows, and I know, that this can't go on forever. Eventually, one of us will make a mistake. There will one day be someone who is better–faster, a better shot, or hell, just luckier. It'll likely be Frank that goes first, but if he goes down, I won't be long in following.

The trick to continuing this work is not to think about it too often or too deeply. Focus on the mission. Take out the bad guys. Though if Frank and I are on the side of good, it doesn't leave a whole lot left to fight against.

The explanation there is that we are defending the innocent. Something Frank made a career of, a while back. The difference is that he fought who the US government told him to fight back then. Not exactly pointless, but misguided; why defend innocents overseas when there are victims in our own country who never see justice done?

He has a point. And though his vendetta is less altruistic than he says, I can't argue with results. There are a good number of his "targets" that I would dearly love to see dead. Given the opportunity, I'd pull the trigger myself.

I am cooking, lost in my thoughts, something neither of us will really taste, but enough to keep us going. The story of our lives.

I am also watching Frank, because he fascinates me. No, that has nothing to do with my decision to stay with him.

Frank is tall, a bit over six feet, and every inch of it muscled. Black hair, and the coldest blue eyes this side of hell. His face is permanently tanned, despite the fact that both of us rarely see the sun, which makes me think that there is something darker than Italian somewhere in his background. Indian, most likely; he surely moves like one when he wants to. A semi-permanent stubble on his jaw. While Frank is absolutely fanatical about many things, he occasionally lets shaving slide. That's about the only thing he lets slide.

I, on the other hand, look like I've never seen the sun. My freckles have faded over time into a pure, unblemished ivory. Or fish-belly pale, if I wanted to be negative about it. It's the Irish; with my red hair and green eyes, I'm a living stereotype.

He is sitting at the computer now, typing away. Some information he will share; most, he won't. Security reasons: the less I know, the less I compromise the mission if I get caught. And Frank made it abundantly clear on the first day that the mission comes first, above life, death, and act of God.

I have a lot of nightmares. That's to be expected, I suppose. It would take a fundamentally damaged person to be unmoved by some of the things I've seen. Knowing that nightmares mean I'm mentally healthy is not much comfort at three o'clock in the morning, as I try to push the images out of my head with the palms of my hands. I'll sleep, I know I will, when I'm too exhausted to stay awake any longer. In the meantime, it sucks.

"Dammit," I mutter, rolling out of bed with the vague thought of getting something to drink from the kitchen. The light is on in the living room, and Frank is reading, the radio on.

I pretend that it affects me not at all to see him only in his boxers and go about my business, gulping down a glass of cold water. A cold shower would be better. He glances over at me.

"Can't sleep?"

I shake my head, and go to him, sitting on the recliner opposite. I've learned not to waste the rare opportunities when he's talkative. Besides, I'm feeling vulnerable. The dream was a nasty one.

"Do you dream?" I ask quietly. "About the things you've–we've–done?"

"Sometimes. But there are worse things to dream about, Ange-girl." Like watching your family die before your eyes, unable to save them. He doesn't say it, and I won't, but the words hang there. That was what had driven Frank to this two years before. Two years ago...I had been living in a crummy apartment, working a crummy job, before my extracurricular activities had brought me to Saint's attention. I was still safe, if bored, at the time Frank was watching his life crumble around his ears.

There are things that should be said, but if I do, the walls will go back up, and I relish this quiet time with him. Even at three o'clock in the morning.

I reach for a cigarette, offering him one, and we smoke for a while in contemplative silence.

"How long until the next mission?" I ask finally.

"Two weeks." He blows a smoke ring, staring at the ceiling.

I really don't want to talk about business. But what else? The weather? The economy? It's been so long since I've talked about anything other than the mission, nothing else seems real.

"Do you want out?" he asks softly, eyes still on the ceiling.

"Do you want me out?"

He shakes his head, grinds out his cigarette. "That wasn't the question, Ange. You're second-guessing. That can get you killed."

I pause, thinking it over. He won't take any quick answer. "What else would I do?" I ask finally. "I'm already in this, and enough of them have seen me that I wouldn't be safe anywhere." I pause, the memory of them enough to harden my will. "And there are still some that should be dead, and aren't." Yet.

"Focus," he says, "is a good thing. But no one can focus constantly on one thing, especially if that thing is war. You get battle fatigue. You need to think of other things."

"What other things do you think of?"

"What might have been, mostly," he says, and returns to his book.

Thus resolved to find a hobby–a hobby?–as a way to stay sane, I go back to bed ten minutes later, for another few hours of sleep before training begins.

The morning routine, regardless of what actions are pending, is always the same. Depending on the time we'd gotten in–most of the missions were night missions–we aimed for a minimum of seven hours of sleep. My alarm clock buzzes promptly at 0700, and I can hear Frank already stirring as I lie in bed, trying to talk myself into getting up.

Grumbling, I stretch, stand, and tug a pair of shorts on, padding barefoot out to the kitchen. It's Frank's morning to make breakfast, but the only thing that interests me is coffee. The smell wafts throughout the kitchen, and I gulp my first cup down appreciatively, savoring the second, rubbing my eyes sleepily.

Frank regards me with something akin to amusement.

"What?"

"Good morning, merry sunshine," he says, arching one dark brow, and burying himself in the morning papers.

Breakfast is steak, eggs, and fried potatoes, cooked in the same skillet. Like they say, you can take the Marine out of the Corps, but you can't take the Corps out of the Marine.

I dig in, eying Frank in standard amazement as he inhales most of the food.

The morning papers are average fare, from which we will cut clippings later. No outrageous court cases in the public eye right now–our side missions consist of criminals that Frank deems have escaped justice. Lest anyone think that his judgements are arbitrary, the evidence against these secondary targets has to be on par with, oh, say OJ Simpson, before Frank will move against them. Cop killers are his special loathing.

Not much risk in those missions, but there is some satisfaction to be had all the same. Justice may be blind, but there are times when, for whatever reason, she looks the other way.

I clear up and wash the dishes, and join Frank in the training room. Two of everything: treadmills, weight machines, and a set of free weights that starts at five pounds and goes up. Five pounds are strictly warm-up for my triceps; I don't care what anyone says, most women are not capable of building their triceps up much past five pounds with free weights. If the burn is there, don't argue with it.

I run for forty-five minutes, five minutes warming up, thirty-five minutes at a near-sprint, and five minutes cooling down. I used to hate running, but there is nothing like armed bad guys to motivate you to exercise. Weight lifting for another forty-five minutes, full body, and the agony of my leg routine never fades. Upper body workouts are no problem for me, but doing squats always makes me want to throw up, pass out, or die.

Sparring and grappling next; not much of a test for Frank, but I occasionally manage to surprise him. With Marines, it's more sheer viciousness and will that carries the day. There's some technique to it, but the martial arts is secondary. The difference, really, is in the targets on the body. A Marine's goal is to maim or kill, while most martial arts are for self-defense: incapacitate the enemy, and escape. The applications for me personally are to do the most possible damage in the shortest amount of time, and get my ass out of there. Speed is my ally; I've got nothing in the way of size and strength on most men. The funny thing about combat is that feminism has very little to do with realities. God only gave women so much to work with.

Then, to the showers with both of us, and the rest of the day will be spent planning, combing newspapers, and picking out surveillance points. When Frank says two weeks until the next mission, that means two weeks until we go and start asking questions, likely at gunpoint. There's a lot to do between now and then.