Chapter 10

We spent the rest of the day getting to know our new home. Somehow, Genie had been able to make it lavish, yet comfortable. And he had gone a step farther, or maybe that's several steps, by giving us a day and night cycle that matched the local cycle. Not only that, he had a pseudo sun pass overhead and a moon and stars at night to match the local view. He told me that it would even rain or snow as it did on the surface. Our refuge was around 10,000 feet below a deep valley, so we would be virtually impossible to find, but Genie wanted us to feel like we were on the surface, except when it made a difference.

We reveled in the wonders we found in our new home, but the urge to get to work did not desert us for long. We went after Genie for ideas on what we might do. He said that there was a bank robbery going on in The Czech Republic, so we jumped at the opportunity to break that up.

By the time we got to the city of Dabrovia, the police had arrived, and the robbery had turned into a hostage crisis. Local TV was also on hand and was covering the situation like a glove. We knew that the local cops didn't know us from Adam's off ox, so we had to go directly to the scene of the crime if we were not going to be brushed off as a bunch of thrill seekers.

We had set our uniforms to stealth mode, so we were practically invisible. Genie had briefed us on the general situation, but we had to pick up the details after we got there. There were five bandits in the lobby of the bank with several bags of loot and 13 hostages, a mix of customers and bank employees. The bandits had automatic weapons, probably surplus AK-74s (not AK-47s). I had Genie lock down the guns so that they would not shoot. That's when I looked closely and saw that each of the bandits had himself rigged as a human bomb. There was no way to tell if any of them had the guts to set off his bomb, but there was no way we could chance it.

I asked Genie if he could defuse the bombs, and there was a moment's pause while he looked. "Yes, I can keep the bombs from going off in much the same way as I keep the guns from shooting. I have done that, so there is no danger now from either the guns or the bombs."

"OK, people, stand in front of a bandit and make yourself visible. Komodo, stand by the door to prevent a panicked rush for it."

We popped into visibility, and I swear from the odor that at least two of the bandits had shit in their pants in surprise. We all spoke perfect Czech, so they had no trouble understanding me when I ordered the bandits to put down their guns. As expected, they all tried to shoot us and panicked when their guns wouldn't work. One of them tried to set off his personal bomb—I can't imagine what he was thinking at the time. When that also didn't work, he fainted. The rest of the bandits put down their guns and raised their hands.

I reassured the hostages that everything was under control. Tegu and Salamander began serving beer and pretzels while I explained the situation to the cops. Komodo had been visible through the door, and, of course, I was immediately on TV when I walked to the door. I made sure to hold up my empty hands as I stepped outside to talk to the cops. They didn't believe me, at first, but they came around when the hostages began filing out with their beer and pretzels. Komodo propped all the doors open to let the odor of shit escape the bank lobby and to let the cops in to arrest the bandits.

The team filed out front to let the TV people get good shots of us in our uniforms. We had passed out figurines to the hostages as they had filed out the door, and, as expected, Komodo's figurine was by far the most popular. Fortunately, one of the TV crew had seen us on CNN, so they quickly knew who we were. We gave no interviews, as usual, but the hostages were eager to talk about their ordeal and rescue. By the evening news, our pictures were splashed all over European TV. Well, we had gotten a start on the publicity that we wanted. Dammit, we had forgotten to copyright the figurines, so Salamander jumped to that chore as soon as we returned home.

As Genie had predicted, there were a few news stories about the thrill-seeking vigilantes who had interfered with the police work in Dabrovia, but most of the comments were downright laudatory. The police commissioner of Dabrovia even had some nice things to say about us.

We pulled back into our shell at home and waited for the next opportunity. Over the next few months, since we were now working the world, we had plenty to do. In fact, we had to limit ourselves to hostage situations and serious gun battles; otherwise, we would not have had a moment's peace.

By now, we had a wide reputation and were welcomed just about everywhere. A few places like North Korea and Iran were not happy to see us, but those police states didn't have much need for the kind of service we were willing to give, anyway. We had made a significant inroad on the lawless violence around the globe, and were considering how we might branch out into other activities.

It was about this time that the UN took notice of us. We were asked by the Secretary General to visit him at UN headquarters, and we agonized about accepting his invitation before we finally did. We all had a feeling about what he wanted, and it turned out that we were correct. Unfocused terrorism had become a real problem and the UN wanted us to try to stamp it out.

The problem had grown into a situation where people who were mad at the world were just running around killing innocents without any real regard for who was being killed. For example, an argument boiled up between some people in Nigeria and their government about inadequate medical treatment. Because they couldn't get the world to pay them what they considered enough attention, some hot heads set off a big truck bomb in Lisbon. Over a hundred people were killed and many more wounded in the senseless attack. Interpol knew who the perps were, but there was no way that normal legal enforcers could get to them; therefore, the UN wanted us to punish the bombers. We told the Secretary that we would get back to him and returned home.

This was something that we had been dreading. We knew that if we started down this slippery slope, we might slide into thinking of ourselves as saviors of the world. As such, we could start eliminating people without adequate safeguards. Dammit, this is not what I wanted when we started out!

On the other hand, how could we refuse a legitimate cry for help? If we captured the perps and delivered them to the International Court at The Hague, their friends might retaliate by bombing the Court. Conversely, if we simply killed the perps, would that deter the next set of crazies? We needed more guidance with this question.

We contacted well known and respected philosophers for help, but all we got were ambiguous thoughts along with muddy answers that we couldn't interpret as solid advice. Finally, we said to hell with it and went for the capture plan. We took our answer back to the Secretary General, and he was not very happy to have the problem dumped back in his lap, but he needed help, so he went along with us.

Have you ever been to Nigeria? Well, we hadn't, and this was a tremendous culture shock to five people who were basically "city folks." We essentially "chickened out" and had Genie transport the fugitives to the cells already prepared for them at The Hague. This was the coward's way out and we knew it, but we were afraid of making a real mess of things if we went in ourselves. This operation was out of our league, and we knew it!

Nevertheless, the Secretary General thanked us by name at a special meeting of the UN General Assembly. He also threatened that the same thing would happen to any more fools who tried such a stupid stunt. We had to admit that we felt a great deal of satisfaction over completing this job, but we hoped that it would be a long time before it happened again. At least, it did put a significant pause to the senseless murdering of innocents for a while.

We knew that we were going to be called on again for more of the same by the UN, but we tried to put it out of our minds. What we were afraid of was that individual governments were going to start asking us to do the same thing for them, and we were going to refuse, flatly and unambiguously. This was going to make us some enemies, but we had to do it.