Chapter 9

The returns were pretty well routine until Gecko showed up. She was in tears and collapsed into my arms as I rushed to meet her. "I don't know if I can keep this up, Josh! I've seen too much tonight! I threw up twice over what I saw, and I actually laughed when I killed one of the bastards. How can people be so depraved?"

I called for Genie to knock her out so that she could get some sleep. I didn't know what else to do for her. Up until tonight, she has been my rock of strength and determination. All of those years she kept us going by turning tricks. I didn't know how she did it, but it never seemed to phase her. Now, to see her like this was like seeing Mt. Rushmore collapse to dust. Komodo took her away to bed and I collapsed back to my lounger.

I don't know what I would have done if Babs had not been there to comfort me. I know I cried some, and I cursed some, and I don't know what else I did, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed with Babs holding me like I was her child. Babs was already awake when I opened my eyes. I asked, "What have I done to my mother? Have I destroyed her? Can she ever love me again after what I sent her out to do?"

"You didn't send her out. She wanted to go. She just didn't expect to see all that she encountered. She's a tough old bird and she will recover. Don't worry about her, worry about yourself. Are you tough enough to stand up and be a rock for her? She has done all she can for you, now it's your turn to be the strong one. You can handle it, I know you can. Take yourself in hand and be the person she can depend on; the leader she needs right now."

"OK, I'll try. But I just never expected to see her fall apart the way she did yesterday. She caught me by surprise, and I just wasn't ready for it. You've given me the push I needed in the right direction—I can handle it now. Thank you!"

I got up to find that Genie had knocked all of us out for about 18-20 hours. It was now morning, and we all needed breakfast, whether or not we were hungry. "Genie, please get every up and in the kitchen for some breakfast. I would appreciate it if you would fix us coffee and a Western omelet.

About half an hour later, we were all in the kitchen, including Mom, and we were eating the omelet with gusto. Genie had a flair with food! There was some small talk around the table, but not as much as we normally would have had. Everybody was still feeling some effects of our raid into Saudi Arabia.

I stood up and said, "Genie, please clear the table except for the coffee stuff ... Thank you. Folks, we have some serious decisions we need to make. I know that we all feel lousy after what we did a couple of nights ago, but, is there anybody here who regrets doing it?"

Mom started to raise her hand, but then stopped, with a determined look on her face. Everybody else sat there with a kind of dazed expression, as if they didn't know how to answer.

I continued with, "Well, I don't regret doing it! It had to be done! Those evil parasites were hurting defenseless people, and most of them had been doing it for years. If anybody wants to drop out of the group, now is a good time. Genie can erase the memories from your mind and return you to the person you were before you joined the team. I will say that I hope that you don't leave. We make a good team, and we have just proven to ourselves that we have a conscience, so we are not going to become some sort of megalomaniacs who will try to run the world.

"Sure it hurt to kill those people, but I'll bet it hurt more to see some of the evil things that they were doing. I, for one, plan to continue this crusade as far as I can, even if I have to do it alone. I could not live with myself if I quit now without doing all I could to rid the world of those vermin and to help the poor slaves any way I can.

"There are still those unspeakable individuals in Yemen who have to be attended to, and we still have done nothing to rescue the people held in their slave camps. We still don't have firm plans on what to do with those people, and they cannot be kept in limbo forever.

"Genie, is there some place you can put those people and keep them on ice, so to speak, until we can figure out what to do with them?"

"Yes, I can keep them in a harmless coma stowed away in a safe warehouse sort of place until you are ready to bring them back to life. I can keep them in such a way that they will not even know that they have been in storage, unless they have access to a calender. When do you want them snatched?"

"I'm not sure, yet. Give me some more time to figure it out. In the meantime, do any of you want to opt out?" There was no reaction as I looked around the table. "Look, there is not much time left to make the necessary decisions. Innocent people are in pain and maybe dying while we sit here, so I am going to put some pressure on you. I need a straight yes-no answer.

"Basilisk, do you want out?" "NO!"

"Salamander, do you want out?" "NO!"

"Tegu, do you want out?" "NO!"

"Gecko, do you want out?" "Uh ... no, I guess not."

"Gecko, you have to be more certain than that. This is a crucial life-choice you have to make. Do you want out?" "NO!"

"OK, that part is settled, then. I propose that we take care of the Yemen connection immediately, that is, in the next few hours before they have time to hear what happened in Saudi Arabia. Does anybody have a better idea?"

There was silence in answer to that question, so I said, "OK, we'll handle them the same way we did the Saudis. But each one of us will have only two parasites to eliminate, this time. Genie, can you handle Komodo and also snatch the slaves at the same time?"

"Yes I can. When should I start?"

"Start the snatch as soon as all of us have been sent to Yemen. We'll meet back here the same way we did before. Genie, kill all of the guards and supervisors in the camps. I'll leave it to your discretion how much pain they suffer. While you are about it, kill anybody else you think deserves it."

"OK, boss."

Mom asked, "If Genie can do all of that, why doesn't he just kill the people in Yemen instead of us?"

"That's a good question. And the answer is that we need to be an integral part of this operation, so that we will know what it is like and not be tempted to have Genie kill just anybody on our whim. We need to know at a gut level what we are doing when we call for an execution. Does that answer your question?"

"Yes, Son, it does. Now I understand what you are doing, and I want to say how proud I am of you!"

There was a murmur of agreement around the table, and I admit that I blushed. I think that I had as last gotten through to everybody just how serious this was and how much real power we had. I had been afraid of getting carried away with ourselves and trying to correct all of the world's problems by killing people we thought "deserved" it.

An hour later, we were ready to go, and Genie jumped us to Yemen to do our job. All of us had returned in about 20 minutes, and even Mom seemed to be reconciled to the necessity of what we did.

That night, we went out on our usual patrol and broke up a couple of small-time robberies. It actually felt good to be able to relax and keep innocents from being hurt, but being able to turn the punishment over to the police and the courts. Stopping trouble was fun, but meting out justice was not fun, by any stretch of the imagination.

There were 267 sex slaves that we had to take care of. A few were easy to handle, they were just returned to families who were overjoyed to get them back. On the other hand, most of the slaves had no place to go, so we tried to set them up with jobs and places to live. We had a few false starts, but mostly, we were able to find suitable lives for the slaves within about six months. The rest took longer, but we all felt like we had achieved a major accomplishment when the last person was given a new life.

Handling the sex slave problem was traumatic for all of us, so we took a kind of working vacation. We spent a month doing nothing but clearing the South Florida area of petty crime. We didn't get all of it, but we knocked a big hole in the small-time crime that had been bothering our area. But this began to get boring because it was the same old same old. What we were now doing did not need a team of six superheroes—hell, one part-timer could handle it. We all realized this about the same time, and the rest of the team turned to me for the change we all wanted.