"The Red Blur"
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dochermes"The Red Blur"
9/23/1944
I.
By the corner of 112th Street and Eighth Avenue, a white ambulance rolled to a halt against the curb and its motor shut off. Neither its lightbar nor its siren had been active. On either side of the chassis , the ambulance showed a narrow blue rectangle with white lettering that read CROSSTOWN MEDICAL SERVICES. In fact, there was no such company. Phone calls to the number on the sign reached a regretful-sounding middle-aged secretary from the Service who had volunteered for the cause and who redirected the caller to a different, genuine company. In the rear compartment of the anomalous vehicle, much of the original medical equipment had been retained. There was also a keg of fresh water, boxes of assorted clothing and disguise paraphenalia and a startling array of pistols and shotguns with plenty of ammo.
This was the mobile headquarters of that intriguing urban legend, the Red Blur.
Behind the wheel, surveying the neighborhood streets with restless eyes, sat the senior member of the team. Both men in front were fit, tough-looking men, all wearing sedate dark business streets and crisp fedoras. But Harry Kendrick was a few years past forty, with worry lines vertical between his eyes and a distant expression that showed he was carrying a great unseen weight. Sitting next to him in the shotgun seat was a slightly built man with thinning blond hair, Lloyd Holston, also studying the area as if expecting an ambush at any second.
In the rear compartment, lying back on the tied-down gurney, the newest member of Team Blur yawned and stretched. Lew Gardner was also the youngest, no more than twenty-two, a thin active man with curly brown hair and an insolent face. He had stripped off his business suit to lie there in a snug white undershirt and tights of plain cotton. Like his teammates, Gardner was an agent of the Treasury Department on strictly Top Secret duty. Their actions were known only to the head of the Secret Service and the President of the United States himself. There was nothing on paper about them. Their funding was concealed in nooks and corners of more mundane budgets of other departments.
"There's the building," Kendrick sat from the front of the ambulance. "2839 112th Street. Not much to look at but I bet it was a handsome joint a generation ago. This whole neighborhood is going to seed."
"I blame it on jazz. That Negro music is just a bad influence," Holston offered.
"Aw, you blame everything on jazz. Or pulp novels. Or indecent clothing on women," Kendrick scoffed. "Hey, Lew. You been kinda quiet back there."
"Yeah." Gardner sat up on one elbow and swiveled his head around toward the front compartment. "I've been wondering if there isn't a single mind guiding all these Axis agents who have been reported lately. In the past month, there have been sightings of that freak Skull-Face, the Dummy, the Hangman, even Hunchback. All turning up along the Eastern seaboard, busy as bees with sabotage and theft of secret papers. You have to wonder if there isn't a puppet master somewhere pulling all the strings to make 'em dance."
"If there is, you know his orders come from Berlin. But if Hitler is sending his monsters here, he'll get them shipped back in coffins courtesy of America's mystery men." Kendrick gave his teammates a wry smile. "Did I tell you I got a glimpse of Mark Drum leaving the director's office the other day?"
"Well. Sounds like our Blur is playing the game with the big boys," said Holston from the front seat. "Right now, we need to concentrate on our own assigment. Lew, it's your turn tonight for the velocition. I am required to ask you, do you accept the risk?"
"Hell, yes," Gardner laughed. "Proud to serve, let's get to it." He unpacked a crate beside the gurney and started struggling into a bizarre outfit. There was a bright red one-piece jumpsuit belted at the waist, with short boots and gloves of thin yellow leather. The mystery men who had sprung up during the war tended to dress in flamboyant and even irrational costumes; it seemed to boost morale in the public. Over his head went a crash helmet the same scarlet as the suit, complete with tinted goggles and gas-mask respirator that covered the nose and mouth. On the brow of the helmet were two yellow lightning bolts making a V For Victory symbol. He loosened the straps on the respirator to let it hang down and waited as his partners left the front of the ambulance and climbed in through the rear doors.
"Synchronize watches," said Kendrick. He removed a small metal case from his inner jacket pocket and extracted the single yellow pill that had been nestled within. "Here it is. Velocitin donated by Dr Mercado Vitarius. Alchemy put to the service of defending democracy and fighting fascism."
Next to him, Holsten had filled a cone-shaped paper cup with water from the keg. As they watched, Lew Gardner swallowed the pill with a good gulp and put the cup down. He shook his head and made a brrring noise. "More bitter than my ex-girlfriend...."
Kendrick had left the rear doors open. He stretched out a wrist and checked his watch. "Twelve-forty-one. It'll kick in within ninety seconds, guys."
Without a word, Lew Grade vaulted out of the ambulance entirely and stood on the street. He was visibly trembling as if freezing but it was a mild September night. "Yeah! That's the real stuff! I'm off." He took off at a full sprint that broke Olympics records by a wide margin. A crimson streak in the night, he was gone from sight so quickly that neither of his partners could have said in which direction he had gone. The Blur lived again.
Velocitin was a serum that could be created only by the most learned of Alchemists. In this era, no more than three of four practitioners of the Great Art were able to produce the drug and it was fortunate that Dr Vitarius was one of them. He had reluctantly agreed to create a limited amount of Velocitin, no more than one dose a week and he had taken serious convincing that these three Secret Service men could be trusted to not abuse it. For Velocitin was harmful. It was based on the ancient Tao-Tsin crystals which were invariably fatal to use. Even at a minimal dosage every three weeks as the men rotated the duty, they knew they would start suffering damage to their hearts and lungs in a short time.
But there was a war on. Many made sacrifices.
Left behind, Kendrick and Holston gave each other somber glances. They would wait here, ready for the return of Lew Gardner. The youngest member of the team might return jubilant and triumphant, or he might crawl back with mortal wounds or he might stagger into the ambulance and collapse with cardiac failure or respiratory distress. Other members of Team Blur had already died that way. They were all playing with fire.
II.
Burning with furious energy, his heart pounding as blood hissed through his arteries, the Blur flashed down the darkened night street and around to the side of an old brick building. He went straight through a locked side door without pausing. The sheer impacy of his velocity smashed the heavy door off its hinges entirely and he hurtled into the interior without a falter.
Sitting in a chair in the narrow hallway, a beefy thug in a cheap suit gasped and almost fell. The cigarette fell from his mouth. There was already a massive Colt 45 automatic in his hand and he began to raise it, but he didn't have a chance. The Blur's fist whistled in the air. Over each of the yellow gloves was a strip of iron molded to the shape of Gardner's knuckles. His fist caved in the gunman's face as deeply as a sledge hammer would have. Already dying, the thug slumped back against the chair and slid toward the floor, but the Blur had already rushed past him and galloped through another partly open door and down narrow wooden steps to the building's basement.
It was a torture chamber. The bare stone walls were mercilessly revealed by a naked light bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. A canvas had been spread out to catch the considerable blood around the wooden chair to which a naked young woman was tied with piano wire. No one who had known her would have recognized her now. Her face was a swollen misshaped mass of bruises which both eyes swollen shut. The gouges and burns and open wounds on her body showed how she had been mistreated. She did not seem to be breathing. Her head hung forward, the sweat-dampened black hair falling to one side.
Four of the men in that basement were obvious thugs of the most heartless kinds. They had blond crewcuts over brutal faces which showed only sullen resentment of the situation, and they started to glance up when they sensed rather than heart the whoosh of air as the Blur entered. It was the fifth man, who stood out. Very young, barely out of his teens, the leader was massively built and well over six feet in height. His brown hair was closely cropped, nearly shaved, and two pale hazel eyes glared at the strange intruder with murderous hatred. Here in Manhattan in 1944, he was bold enough to wear aristocratic clothing that marked him as European. A white silk shirt with long loose sleeves, whipcord jodhpurs and polished riding boots. In a flap holster at his side, a Luger sat ready. In one massive hand was a wicked saw-toothed knife from which fresh blood dripped.
Even the Blur came to a halt at the horror of that scene. Seeing the mystery man revealed, the huge torturer leered. "Ah, your friends have sent a noblr knight to your rescue," he said to his victim. "Not in time of course." His voice was a bass rumble surprising in one so young, and his accent was thick enough that it seemed clear he was stressing it.
"Get away from her," Lew Gardner hissed. In a single leap, he crossed ten feet and grabbed the nearest Nazi by the shirt front, swinging him completely off his feet to smash into the other agents in a tangle of arms and legs that sprawled on the floor. One of the remaining men had managed to extend his arm with a Luger in its grip but, faster than a cobra striking, the Blur seized that wrist and elbow to force the Nazi's arm back so that the gun fired directly into the man's own face. A burst of gore and bone fragments flew out of the back of that killer's head as the deafening echoes reverberated in the enclosed cellar.
As the two Nazis started to struggle back up onto their feet, Gardner swerved over and his gloved fist whipped out three times faster than the best punch Joe Louis ever threw. The agent's jaw snapped audibly and hung to one side as the dying man collapsed. Backing up frantically, the remaining Nazi spy stared at the unreadable face with its thick goggles and gas respirator showing no expression. The gunman's nerve broke. He screamed out loud and started to turn to flee, but two hands gripped the back of his head and smashed his face against the rough stone wall with a hideous crunching sound.
All this carnage had taken less than two full seconds. The Blur wheeled around and saw that the spy cell's leader had not moved and showed no sign of going for his gun. Slowing to normal movement, the man in red went over to the woman tied to the chair. One gloved hand touched her hair but he did not try to raise her head. There was no point. Her open eyes were glassy and unseeing.
"If it is any comfort, she did not talk," the young giant announced as he watched. "For a Jewess, she showed courage that merits respect."
The Red Blur stepped toward the final enemy in this chamber of horrors. "You tortured her."
"Isn't that obvious?" the huge German replied. "Such is the risk a spy must take. The game of nations is not child's play."
"You rotten son of a bitch...."
"Come now. There is nothing personal in all this. Tonight, even as we speak, thousands of brave men and women are dying all over the globe. It is the price of world domination. Why, you yourself have slaughtered three of my best agents right in front of me."
"Yeah. And I'm not done yet." From where he stood, Gardner flung himself forward in an attack no normal Human could have defended against. The big German youth did not move. Between them, a blast of incredibly bright red lightning detonated and threw the Red Blur hard entirely across the cellar to knock over a chair and land on top of one of the bodies. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the colorful jumpsuit. Shaking and disoriented, Gardner flopped over onto his stomach but could not get up. He felt as if he had stepped on a third rail.
"The tiniest sample possible," smirked the German. "You are dealing with Karl Eldritch now, American. I have mastered the forbidden arts you never dreamed of. Ah, I see your unusual abilities are not natural. No. You take a Velkandu serum that is even now eating you up inside. That damned Vitarius again, no doubt."
"What... what hit me?"
"Gralic force," Eldritch said. "Transcendental energy beyond what science can explain, the greatest secret of this world. It is interesting that you have survived it. Perhaps your rather gaudy uniform protected you. This incident is closed and I have other projects which require my attention." The giant warlock pointed and a second bolt of lurid force picked the defenseless Gardner up off the stone floor entirely and flipped him over. Thunder crashed in that basement and burning cloth added to the stench of sweat and blood and terror which already made that chamber unbearable.
Without giving the Blur or his own men or their victim another thought, Karl Eldritch picked up a white trenchcoat from the back of a chair and draped it over his shoulders. This spycraft was not his real life's work. Circumstances demanded he work with that madman in Berlin until the war was over, but Eldritch's true desire was already turning to what he had learned of the lost secrets of Zhune. When he left the basement, his thoughts were already dwelling on his real obsession. The knowledge of the ancients...
Behind him, four corpses remained motionless and silent. Then, with infinite effort, a yellow-gloved hand twitched and a faint groan could be heard. The Red Blur had survived.
III.
In another minute, Lew Gardner got shakily to his feet. He had the resilience of youth and had been training as rigorously as any athlete for the past year. More importantly, the effects of the Velocitin were still coursing through his body and filling him with extrahuman vitality. He was bruised and scorched but he lived and got his bearings again. Taking deep breaths, the Blur gave a final sad glance at the dead woman in the chair. He hadn't even been told her real name, she had been mentioned in his briefing only as Agent 93. But as least she had died for a cause she had believed in, Gardner thought... as he himself was prepared to do.
Feeling almost normal, rubbing his aching chest, the Red Blur made his way down the hallway and back out onto the sidewalk just as a long black Bently rolled past. In the back seat, a huge round head stared straight ahead and did not notice him, but Gardner saw Eldritch. Escaping. The Blur shook himself and started loping in pursuit, quickening his pace as the Bently accelerated.
He did not feel his best, but Lew Gardner clenched his teeth and tried harder. This was no time to falter. How could he go back to Kendrick empty-handed? Earning his place on the Team Blur had meant passing test after test, competing with the best the Secret Service could offer and pushing himself harder than he thought he could. He had to do that now. Gardner had been clocked at fifty-three miles per hour, but that had been on a cinder track wearing appropriate shoes. He was determined to beat his best time now, no matter what. The powerful Bently accelerated and ran a red light without even slowing.
Any pedestrians on the sidewalks or peering out a window would have been greeted by the astounding sight of a man in a bright red jumpsuit racing after a speeding car... and catching up to it. The Blur uniform had been designed to prevent windburn and dehydration. The goggles protected his eyes and the respirator kept dust from being forced into his lungs under the pressure of his velocity. Head down, leaning forward, Gardner began to close the gap.
In the rear seat of the car, Karl Eldritch spotting their pursuer. He laughed sharply. "The fool is not as weak as I had thought. Perhaps he has Aryan blood in his family. Faster, Klein."
The driver slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the heavy car shot forward through an intersection where it missed a taxi by inches. As the cabby sounded his horn in outrage, he gasped to witness a man on foot hurtling right behind the speeding car. Lew Gardner had emptied his mind of anything except catching up to the Nazis. He did not even have a clear idea what he was going to do if he did grab hold of its rear bumper.
The Red Blur's boots were handcrafted for a perfect fit, with a gelatin pad built into each insole to absorb some of the shock of running at such abnormal speeds. Barefoot, he would have broken his ankles or flattened his arches before making fifty yards. A lot of planning and testing had gone into crafting the suit. Gardner felt a pleasant jolt flowing through his body, easing the strain. His adrenalin reserve was activating what remained of the Velocitin in his system. He knew that this meant he had another five or ten minutes of enhanced ability before collapsing.
Behind the concealing goggles and respirator, the Red Blur was grinning savagely. The driver's window was wound down. Gardner intended to make a final lunge, reach inside and wrench the steering wheel far to the right. After the Bently crashed and hopefully rolled over, he would deal with Eldritch with finality. He would prove he was the best man of the three who filled the Red Blur role. Almost there, he thought, come on, only another few inches...
The wicked snout of a Luger jabbed out from the driver's window and three flashes crashed into the night. One of the bullets creased along the top of Gardner's helmet but the other two punched home directly into the center of his chest. The impact redirected his considerable momentum. The Red Blur whirled completely around and slid across the street on his back. He bounced up over the curb and came to a halt on the sidewalk next to a streetlamp.
The black Bently kept going. In its rear seat, Karl Eldritch leaned back and decided not to reprimand his driver. Klein did not know yet of his master's strange ability and he had thought he was protecting them both. Later, he would explain. For now, it was enough that one of these stupid American 'super-heroes' had been eliminated.
Lights flickered on in a few windows of the tenements, but no curtains were drawn aside. A few gunshots were not all that rare in this neighborhood and people were inclined to mind their own business. After a full minute, not a single door had opened nor a passing auto done more than slow down briefly before continuing on its way. Then a white ambulance skidded to a halt where the motionless figure in red sprawled face down on the sidewalk.
In the next few minutes, the two men loaded Gardner into the rear compartment. While Hodgson remained there with the body, Hendrick hopped up behind the wheel and roared off. Before they had gotten more than a block away, Hodgson announced, "He's gone."
"I thought so. Somehow you can tell dead weight. How many did he catch?"
"Looks to me like two slugs, one high up by the shoulder but the other right in the heart. At least it would have been quick. It was only Gardner's third time out as the Blur."
Feeling they had gotten enough distance between them and the shooting scene, Hodgson pulled over on a dark side street. "Listen, I'm going to radio in what happened to our base. They'll alert the police to watch tunnels and bridges for that car full of spies. Whatever that weird lightning was that we saw flash inside a building, that needs to be investigated too."
"And what about Gardner here?"
"What do you mean? Nothing we can do for him, I'm afraid. Cover him up, we'll bring him home. He makes four men who have died as the Red Blur. He won't be the last. You or I might be chosen to serve next."
Hendrick sounded weary beyond bearing. "I know, I know. Lots of brave boys are fighting and dying all over the world tonight. Don't you know there's a war on?"
9/23/1944
I.
By the corner of 112th Street and Eighth Avenue, a white ambulance rolled to a halt against the curb and its motor shut off. Neither its lightbar nor its siren had been active. On either side of the chassis , the ambulance showed a narrow blue rectangle with white lettering that read CROSSTOWN MEDICAL SERVICES. In fact, there was no such company. Phone calls to the number on the sign reached a regretful-sounding middle-aged secretary from the Service who had volunteered for the cause and who redirected the caller to a different, genuine company. In the rear compartment of the anomalous vehicle, much of the original medical equipment had been retained. There was also a keg of fresh water, boxes of assorted clothing and disguise paraphenalia and a startling array of pistols and shotguns with plenty of ammo.
This was the mobile headquarters of that intriguing urban legend, the Red Blur.
Behind the wheel, surveying the neighborhood streets with restless eyes, sat the senior member of the team. Both men in front were fit, tough-looking men, all wearing sedate dark business streets and crisp fedoras. But Harry Kendrick was a few years past forty, with worry lines vertical between his eyes and a distant expression that showed he was carrying a great unseen weight. Sitting next to him in the shotgun seat was a slightly built man with thinning blond hair, Lloyd Holston, also studying the area as if expecting an ambush at any second.
In the rear compartment, lying back on the tied-down gurney, the newest member of Team Blur yawned and stretched. Lew Gardner was also the youngest, no more than twenty-two, a thin active man with curly brown hair and an insolent face. He had stripped off his business suit to lie there in a snug white undershirt and tights of plain cotton. Like his teammates, Gardner was an agent of the Treasury Department on strictly Top Secret duty. Their actions were known only to the head of the Secret Service and the President of the United States himself. There was nothing on paper about them. Their funding was concealed in nooks and corners of more mundane budgets of other departments.
"There's the building," Kendrick sat from the front of the ambulance. "2839 112th Street. Not much to look at but I bet it was a handsome joint a generation ago. This whole neighborhood is going to seed."
"I blame it on jazz. That Negro music is just a bad influence," Holston offered.
"Aw, you blame everything on jazz. Or pulp novels. Or indecent clothing on women," Kendrick scoffed. "Hey, Lew. You been kinda quiet back there."
"Yeah." Gardner sat up on one elbow and swiveled his head around toward the front compartment. "I've been wondering if there isn't a single mind guiding all these Axis agents who have been reported lately. In the past month, there have been sightings of that freak Skull-Face, the Dummy, the Hangman, even Hunchback. All turning up along the Eastern seaboard, busy as bees with sabotage and theft of secret papers. You have to wonder if there isn't a puppet master somewhere pulling all the strings to make 'em dance."
"If there is, you know his orders come from Berlin. But if Hitler is sending his monsters here, he'll get them shipped back in coffins courtesy of America's mystery men." Kendrick gave his teammates a wry smile. "Did I tell you I got a glimpse of Mark Drum leaving the director's office the other day?"
"Well. Sounds like our Blur is playing the game with the big boys," said Holston from the front seat. "Right now, we need to concentrate on our own assigment. Lew, it's your turn tonight for the velocition. I am required to ask you, do you accept the risk?"
"Hell, yes," Gardner laughed. "Proud to serve, let's get to it." He unpacked a crate beside the gurney and started struggling into a bizarre outfit. There was a bright red one-piece jumpsuit belted at the waist, with short boots and gloves of thin yellow leather. The mystery men who had sprung up during the war tended to dress in flamboyant and even irrational costumes; it seemed to boost morale in the public. Over his head went a crash helmet the same scarlet as the suit, complete with tinted goggles and gas-mask respirator that covered the nose and mouth. On the brow of the helmet were two yellow lightning bolts making a V For Victory symbol. He loosened the straps on the respirator to let it hang down and waited as his partners left the front of the ambulance and climbed in through the rear doors.
"Synchronize watches," said Kendrick. He removed a small metal case from his inner jacket pocket and extracted the single yellow pill that had been nestled within. "Here it is. Velocitin donated by Dr Mercado Vitarius. Alchemy put to the service of defending democracy and fighting fascism."
Next to him, Holsten had filled a cone-shaped paper cup with water from the keg. As they watched, Lew Gardner swallowed the pill with a good gulp and put the cup down. He shook his head and made a brrring noise. "More bitter than my ex-girlfriend...."
Kendrick had left the rear doors open. He stretched out a wrist and checked his watch. "Twelve-forty-one. It'll kick in within ninety seconds, guys."
Without a word, Lew Grade vaulted out of the ambulance entirely and stood on the street. He was visibly trembling as if freezing but it was a mild September night. "Yeah! That's the real stuff! I'm off." He took off at a full sprint that broke Olympics records by a wide margin. A crimson streak in the night, he was gone from sight so quickly that neither of his partners could have said in which direction he had gone. The Blur lived again.
Velocitin was a serum that could be created only by the most learned of Alchemists. In this era, no more than three of four practitioners of the Great Art were able to produce the drug and it was fortunate that Dr Vitarius was one of them. He had reluctantly agreed to create a limited amount of Velocitin, no more than one dose a week and he had taken serious convincing that these three Secret Service men could be trusted to not abuse it. For Velocitin was harmful. It was based on the ancient Tao-Tsin crystals which were invariably fatal to use. Even at a minimal dosage every three weeks as the men rotated the duty, they knew they would start suffering damage to their hearts and lungs in a short time.
But there was a war on. Many made sacrifices.
Left behind, Kendrick and Holston gave each other somber glances. They would wait here, ready for the return of Lew Gardner. The youngest member of the team might return jubilant and triumphant, or he might crawl back with mortal wounds or he might stagger into the ambulance and collapse with cardiac failure or respiratory distress. Other members of Team Blur had already died that way. They were all playing with fire.
II.
Burning with furious energy, his heart pounding as blood hissed through his arteries, the Blur flashed down the darkened night street and around to the side of an old brick building. He went straight through a locked side door without pausing. The sheer impacy of his velocity smashed the heavy door off its hinges entirely and he hurtled into the interior without a falter.
Sitting in a chair in the narrow hallway, a beefy thug in a cheap suit gasped and almost fell. The cigarette fell from his mouth. There was already a massive Colt 45 automatic in his hand and he began to raise it, but he didn't have a chance. The Blur's fist whistled in the air. Over each of the yellow gloves was a strip of iron molded to the shape of Gardner's knuckles. His fist caved in the gunman's face as deeply as a sledge hammer would have. Already dying, the thug slumped back against the chair and slid toward the floor, but the Blur had already rushed past him and galloped through another partly open door and down narrow wooden steps to the building's basement.
It was a torture chamber. The bare stone walls were mercilessly revealed by a naked light bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. A canvas had been spread out to catch the considerable blood around the wooden chair to which a naked young woman was tied with piano wire. No one who had known her would have recognized her now. Her face was a swollen misshaped mass of bruises which both eyes swollen shut. The gouges and burns and open wounds on her body showed how she had been mistreated. She did not seem to be breathing. Her head hung forward, the sweat-dampened black hair falling to one side.
Four of the men in that basement were obvious thugs of the most heartless kinds. They had blond crewcuts over brutal faces which showed only sullen resentment of the situation, and they started to glance up when they sensed rather than heart the whoosh of air as the Blur entered. It was the fifth man, who stood out. Very young, barely out of his teens, the leader was massively built and well over six feet in height. His brown hair was closely cropped, nearly shaved, and two pale hazel eyes glared at the strange intruder with murderous hatred. Here in Manhattan in 1944, he was bold enough to wear aristocratic clothing that marked him as European. A white silk shirt with long loose sleeves, whipcord jodhpurs and polished riding boots. In a flap holster at his side, a Luger sat ready. In one massive hand was a wicked saw-toothed knife from which fresh blood dripped.
Even the Blur came to a halt at the horror of that scene. Seeing the mystery man revealed, the huge torturer leered. "Ah, your friends have sent a noblr knight to your rescue," he said to his victim. "Not in time of course." His voice was a bass rumble surprising in one so young, and his accent was thick enough that it seemed clear he was stressing it.
"Get away from her," Lew Gardner hissed. In a single leap, he crossed ten feet and grabbed the nearest Nazi by the shirt front, swinging him completely off his feet to smash into the other agents in a tangle of arms and legs that sprawled on the floor. One of the remaining men had managed to extend his arm with a Luger in its grip but, faster than a cobra striking, the Blur seized that wrist and elbow to force the Nazi's arm back so that the gun fired directly into the man's own face. A burst of gore and bone fragments flew out of the back of that killer's head as the deafening echoes reverberated in the enclosed cellar.
As the two Nazis started to struggle back up onto their feet, Gardner swerved over and his gloved fist whipped out three times faster than the best punch Joe Louis ever threw. The agent's jaw snapped audibly and hung to one side as the dying man collapsed. Backing up frantically, the remaining Nazi spy stared at the unreadable face with its thick goggles and gas respirator showing no expression. The gunman's nerve broke. He screamed out loud and started to turn to flee, but two hands gripped the back of his head and smashed his face against the rough stone wall with a hideous crunching sound.
All this carnage had taken less than two full seconds. The Blur wheeled around and saw that the spy cell's leader had not moved and showed no sign of going for his gun. Slowing to normal movement, the man in red went over to the woman tied to the chair. One gloved hand touched her hair but he did not try to raise her head. There was no point. Her open eyes were glassy and unseeing.
"If it is any comfort, she did not talk," the young giant announced as he watched. "For a Jewess, she showed courage that merits respect."
The Red Blur stepped toward the final enemy in this chamber of horrors. "You tortured her."
"Isn't that obvious?" the huge German replied. "Such is the risk a spy must take. The game of nations is not child's play."
"You rotten son of a bitch...."
"Come now. There is nothing personal in all this. Tonight, even as we speak, thousands of brave men and women are dying all over the globe. It is the price of world domination. Why, you yourself have slaughtered three of my best agents right in front of me."
"Yeah. And I'm not done yet." From where he stood, Gardner flung himself forward in an attack no normal Human could have defended against. The big German youth did not move. Between them, a blast of incredibly bright red lightning detonated and threw the Red Blur hard entirely across the cellar to knock over a chair and land on top of one of the bodies. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the colorful jumpsuit. Shaking and disoriented, Gardner flopped over onto his stomach but could not get up. He felt as if he had stepped on a third rail.
"The tiniest sample possible," smirked the German. "You are dealing with Karl Eldritch now, American. I have mastered the forbidden arts you never dreamed of. Ah, I see your unusual abilities are not natural. No. You take a Velkandu serum that is even now eating you up inside. That damned Vitarius again, no doubt."
"What... what hit me?"
"Gralic force," Eldritch said. "Transcendental energy beyond what science can explain, the greatest secret of this world. It is interesting that you have survived it. Perhaps your rather gaudy uniform protected you. This incident is closed and I have other projects which require my attention." The giant warlock pointed and a second bolt of lurid force picked the defenseless Gardner up off the stone floor entirely and flipped him over. Thunder crashed in that basement and burning cloth added to the stench of sweat and blood and terror which already made that chamber unbearable.
Without giving the Blur or his own men or their victim another thought, Karl Eldritch picked up a white trenchcoat from the back of a chair and draped it over his shoulders. This spycraft was not his real life's work. Circumstances demanded he work with that madman in Berlin until the war was over, but Eldritch's true desire was already turning to what he had learned of the lost secrets of Zhune. When he left the basement, his thoughts were already dwelling on his real obsession. The knowledge of the ancients...
Behind him, four corpses remained motionless and silent. Then, with infinite effort, a yellow-gloved hand twitched and a faint groan could be heard. The Red Blur had survived.
III.
In another minute, Lew Gardner got shakily to his feet. He had the resilience of youth and had been training as rigorously as any athlete for the past year. More importantly, the effects of the Velocitin were still coursing through his body and filling him with extrahuman vitality. He was bruised and scorched but he lived and got his bearings again. Taking deep breaths, the Blur gave a final sad glance at the dead woman in the chair. He hadn't even been told her real name, she had been mentioned in his briefing only as Agent 93. But as least she had died for a cause she had believed in, Gardner thought... as he himself was prepared to do.
Feeling almost normal, rubbing his aching chest, the Red Blur made his way down the hallway and back out onto the sidewalk just as a long black Bently rolled past. In the back seat, a huge round head stared straight ahead and did not notice him, but Gardner saw Eldritch. Escaping. The Blur shook himself and started loping in pursuit, quickening his pace as the Bently accelerated.
He did not feel his best, but Lew Gardner clenched his teeth and tried harder. This was no time to falter. How could he go back to Kendrick empty-handed? Earning his place on the Team Blur had meant passing test after test, competing with the best the Secret Service could offer and pushing himself harder than he thought he could. He had to do that now. Gardner had been clocked at fifty-three miles per hour, but that had been on a cinder track wearing appropriate shoes. He was determined to beat his best time now, no matter what. The powerful Bently accelerated and ran a red light without even slowing.
Any pedestrians on the sidewalks or peering out a window would have been greeted by the astounding sight of a man in a bright red jumpsuit racing after a speeding car... and catching up to it. The Blur uniform had been designed to prevent windburn and dehydration. The goggles protected his eyes and the respirator kept dust from being forced into his lungs under the pressure of his velocity. Head down, leaning forward, Gardner began to close the gap.
In the rear seat of the car, Karl Eldritch spotting their pursuer. He laughed sharply. "The fool is not as weak as I had thought. Perhaps he has Aryan blood in his family. Faster, Klein."
The driver slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the heavy car shot forward through an intersection where it missed a taxi by inches. As the cabby sounded his horn in outrage, he gasped to witness a man on foot hurtling right behind the speeding car. Lew Gardner had emptied his mind of anything except catching up to the Nazis. He did not even have a clear idea what he was going to do if he did grab hold of its rear bumper.
The Red Blur's boots were handcrafted for a perfect fit, with a gelatin pad built into each insole to absorb some of the shock of running at such abnormal speeds. Barefoot, he would have broken his ankles or flattened his arches before making fifty yards. A lot of planning and testing had gone into crafting the suit. Gardner felt a pleasant jolt flowing through his body, easing the strain. His adrenalin reserve was activating what remained of the Velocitin in his system. He knew that this meant he had another five or ten minutes of enhanced ability before collapsing.
Behind the concealing goggles and respirator, the Red Blur was grinning savagely. The driver's window was wound down. Gardner intended to make a final lunge, reach inside and wrench the steering wheel far to the right. After the Bently crashed and hopefully rolled over, he would deal with Eldritch with finality. He would prove he was the best man of the three who filled the Red Blur role. Almost there, he thought, come on, only another few inches...
The wicked snout of a Luger jabbed out from the driver's window and three flashes crashed into the night. One of the bullets creased along the top of Gardner's helmet but the other two punched home directly into the center of his chest. The impact redirected his considerable momentum. The Red Blur whirled completely around and slid across the street on his back. He bounced up over the curb and came to a halt on the sidewalk next to a streetlamp.
The black Bently kept going. In its rear seat, Karl Eldritch leaned back and decided not to reprimand his driver. Klein did not know yet of his master's strange ability and he had thought he was protecting them both. Later, he would explain. For now, it was enough that one of these stupid American 'super-heroes' had been eliminated.
Lights flickered on in a few windows of the tenements, but no curtains were drawn aside. A few gunshots were not all that rare in this neighborhood and people were inclined to mind their own business. After a full minute, not a single door had opened nor a passing auto done more than slow down briefly before continuing on its way. Then a white ambulance skidded to a halt where the motionless figure in red sprawled face down on the sidewalk.
In the next few minutes, the two men loaded Gardner into the rear compartment. While Hodgson remained there with the body, Hendrick hopped up behind the wheel and roared off. Before they had gotten more than a block away, Hodgson announced, "He's gone."
"I thought so. Somehow you can tell dead weight. How many did he catch?"
"Looks to me like two slugs, one high up by the shoulder but the other right in the heart. At least it would have been quick. It was only Gardner's third time out as the Blur."
Feeling they had gotten enough distance between them and the shooting scene, Hodgson pulled over on a dark side street. "Listen, I'm going to radio in what happened to our base. They'll alert the police to watch tunnels and bridges for that car full of spies. Whatever that weird lightning was that we saw flash inside a building, that needs to be investigated too."
"And what about Gardner here?"
"What do you mean? Nothing we can do for him, I'm afraid. Cover him up, we'll bring him home. He makes four men who have died as the Red Blur. He won't be the last. You or I might be chosen to serve next."
Hendrick sounded weary beyond bearing. "I know, I know. Lots of brave boys are fighting and dying all over the world tonight. Don't you know there's a war on?"
