Sons of Liberty: We Were Soldiers

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Armed with more information, Jean and Kyle press Isaiah, and find out a lot more than they suspected.



Bradley was repairing his mailbox as they pulled up. The older man had removed it from the post and set it down beside him on the grass to repair later. The three inch nails, now badly twisted, were proving to be difficult, and he strained as he pulled each one out slowly from the wooden post. As the car stopped, he paused, looking at them with the twisted nail still held in the grip of a pair of pliers.

Kyle opened the passenger door once Jean put the parking brake on, but didn't get out. He just turned to face Bradley and rested his elbows on his knees. "I like that spray cooking oil for those. Loosens stuff up just enough that you don't gotta tear up the wood to get the nails out, and it doesn't stink like WD-40." He shrugged at the man's incredulous expression. "Hey, I figured if we were gonna bother you again I'd be nice and suggest something."

Jean maintained an impassive expression save for the hint of a sparkle behind her eyes and a light smile that faded once she spoke.

"Mr. Bradley. We have a serious situation. And you're one of the few people left who can help us."

Isaiah gave Kyle a nod for his suggestion and dropped the pliers into his toolkit.

"Look, I appreciate you folks letting me know about Will. But I don't really know how I can possibly help you."

"Really, anything you can think of might be useful." Kyle said. "It's like, sometimes the most random stuff is actually useful but it's so minor that you don't think about it. Anything really like, weird hang-up phone calls or Mister Naslund saying he'd gotten emails from people he didn't know, or some strange people showing up to bug you." He paused, and cocked his head. "Okay, that last one is us, but besides us."

"We know what happened to Mr. Naslund now. He was murdered," Jean said softly.
She shook her head. "And there may be more. You may be the key to helping us stop that from continuing to happen. Please. I know you don't think you are doing any good but you are."

"You better come inside." He said, turning back towards the house, leaving his toolkit sitting out. The man was obviously rattled, and he only waited a moment once they were through the door before speaking. "What I'm going to tell you is top secret. The army brass still has it classified, and if you tell anyone, I'll be spending my last years in a federal prison hospital somewhere."

"Right, we're good at secrets, Mister Bradley. I mean really good." Kyle said. He leaned against a wall, and tucked some loose hair behind his ears, casually drawing attention to their odd shape. ~Doc, he's kinda freaked out. Heart's going about a mile a minute there.~ He thought. "We're not gonna say anything, least of all not to the government."

Jean folded her arms, not sitting as she watched Isaiah, nervous, almost frantic. ~I'm surprised he hasn't been targeted yet if he knows anything.~ she thought back. Someone thought two people were enough of a threat to what they were doing to murder them, why not him yet? Perhaps it was dependent on what he knew.

How far did this thing reach? How many people were involved?

Isaiah took a deep breath. "The reason that Will used to keep in touch with us was because we had all been part of the same military test program." The older man walked over to a bookshelf, and pulled down a hardcover full of LIFE magazine images from the Second World War. He opened it up to a famous image of a man in a mostly blue costume, pulling free of his parachute during Operation: Market Garden; Captain America. "The military let most people believe he was just a figure for selling war bonds and helping soldier morale. Colours of the flag, blue helmet with an A on the front, and a stupid shield." He turned the page, showing an image of the man during the last landings in the Pacific. "The first Captain was killed in Europe at the end of '44. This one, under the mask, was Will Naslund."

"Testing, you mean the medical testing your spoke of before?" Jean said. She knew far too much than she liked about what types of things people did to other human beings in the sake of 'science' and 'progress.' She wasn't liking where this was going.

"Why would they choose to cover up the death of the previous Captain America?" There was an obvious reason, but was there a more sinister one? Or was she thinking too negatively into things?

"Aw, geez, seriously, does our government just -like- super-powering people. Don't they know that never actually ends well?" Kyle said, putting a little extra sarcasm in his voice. "So, you all did this Captain America thing, or just Mister Naslund?" He leaned forward to look at the magazine. "I mean, nothing personal, but that dude is as white am I am, and you are way not a white dude."

"The project was called SUPER SOLDIER. Will said he once heard that the first incarnation was started back in the 20s. The idea was to try and create a perfect soldier; someone who was physically at the apex of human potential for the battlefield. The first Captain America was the result of that program in 1942. However, the chief scientist was killed by a Nazi agent and a lot of the original process was lost. Will was the first attempt to recreate the process." Isaiah sat down, closing the book slowly. "When the original Captain America died, they thought that it would hurt morale, so they put Will in the outfit and he served until the end of the war. After the war ended, he worked with the military to help recreate the program, but as it turned out, the effects were wearing off of him. By 1948, there were no traces left of the abilities."

He leaned back, obviously glad to finally be sharing the information, despite his concerns about being persecuted. "Since then, every so often, the military makes another attempt to relaunch SUPER SOLDIER using new technology or scientific discoveries. For example, in 1974, I was selected with four others to go through a new program that was based around some kind of chemical augmentation. Didn't do much. I put on ten pounds of muscle, but I was a tall, skinny kid when I was drafted, so that might have just been normal growing up."

"Do you know when was the last time they did it before 1974?" Jean said. There was one other deceased man, Jeffery Mace. If he was part of a previous group of 'volunteers' then the program might've been the lynchpin behind Naslund and Mace's deaths. Not that she had much doubt.

Kyle grunted. "That's our government, take kids and try to turn 'em into walking weapons." He sounded just a little bitter. "Do you keep track of the other guys you were with when you did it? Cause, you know it's just that well, it might be good to know if they're all okay, or if something's up with them." He wasn't going to outright suggest that maybe those men were danger too, they'd already given this guy enough bad news about his friends, but it seemed important.

"Boy, just what do you think a soldier is, if not a walking weapon? I volunteered. Will volunteered. We all volunteered, because if there was a way to make an ultimate soldier, it meant a lot more American ones don't have to come home in bodybags." He said, silencing Kyle with a sharp word. "Will made sure to keep in touch with guys after they left the military. No one knew what possible side effects could come up years later from one of these programs. After a while, it was just like any other veteran's group, swapping the same old stories and making sure to pass the hat when one of us died. There aren't many guys from before my time left. Will, Bill Burnside..." He paused. "About eight months ago, Burnside gave me a weird phone call, saying all kinds of crazy stuff that the SUPER SOLDIER program worked and that the government lied because it was scared of us. He always was a bit of a nut - did a lot of early special forces stuff in Asia in the sixties. Naslund figured the old bird needed therapy but was too stubborn to get any. Anyway, he said he could show me the truth if I came and met him. I told him to back off."

"Why would he think it worked now after forty years?" Jean pondered aloud.

"Did he say where he wanted to meet? Did he mention asking anyone else to come?" Perhaps Naslund and Mace? If he was behind it somehow, if he killed them, why? Because they didn't believe him?

"I know he talked to a couple of the other guys, but that's the last I'd heard from him. Frankly, I'm not interested in feeding his paranoia, and I sure as hell don't feel like no Super Soldier. My knees and ankles still ache from thirty years with the Oakland Fire Department, and there's no way I could even carry a field kit for more than ten minutes, much less run a mile at a sprint with one. Burnside is just a crazy old man. If he hurt Will, I'll do what I can to help put him in jail."

"Sorry about the, you know, crack about the government." Kyle said, looking sheepish. "Burnside, you said, right, that's the guy's name. If he's barking up the paranoia tree, and trying to get everyone else to go there too, maybe that's something to look into. At least we've got his name." He stood up and dusted off his khakis. "Thanks, Mister Bradley. That might actually be what we needed."