DOGS OF WAR

Part III: The Hard Part

By Clayton Tooley

Author’s Note: This story-arc takes place just after Avengers #6 and just after the beginning of West Coast Avengers #1.

Quick Recap: John Walker a.k.a. Jack Daniels a.k.a. the USAgent, received a new photonic/holographic shield from Henry Pym at Avengers Mansion. Tony Stark then told him that the Watchdogs were back in action in his hometown of Custer’s Grove, GA, and soon they received news footage of his family home burning to the ground. Playing a hunch, John dropped in on his long-lost sister and her no-good husband, who live in Custer’s Grove. His hunch turned out to have been right on as he discovered Dave was a Watchdog in disguise! Ostracized by his dog brethren because of his brother-in-law, Dave turned to Jack for help, leading to the three of them barreling towards the woods near Dave’s home, dozens of Watchdogs on their heels. To buy his sister some time, Agent leapt free of the Jeep, sealing the trail behind them, and turning to face these purple and orange demons from his past…

He hit the ground on his shield and launched back up into the air farther than he’d prepared for. Captain America had told him that the new generation of photonic shields were more advanced than his old shield in Force Works, and had excellent reflective properties. As he flipped forward at about twenty feet off the ground, the USAgent would have had to agree. He took control of his flight, bringing his boots down on the hood of a quick-moving pickup. He sank his red-gloved left hand into the roof of the truck for stability and raised his right arm back. The shield on his arm, reacting to his thoughts, formed into a sharp blade around his hand, and he slammed it down and through the engine block of the truck.

Leaping clear of the fire-balling truck, Jack tucked and then flexed suddenly, angling his body to dodge the bullets coming at him as he reached out, snagging a tree limb. As he spun himself around, he took his now-normal shield in his hand and hurled it like old times at the shooter, who was standing in the back of a Dodge Durango.

The holographic properties of the shield covered the photonic nature perfectly, making the shield he threw look exactly like his original without the white stripe. It even felt like a metal shield to the man it cracked in the chest as it propelled him bodily from the back of the truck and shattered his hard, bullet-proof vest. He landed in some brush with a *whuf!*

Agent mentally turned his shield off then re-initialized it on his arm and leapt for the ground. As he landed, a half-dozen ATVs, both motorcycles and four-wheelers, roared around from in front of the main pack of vehicles, which were now behind him and trying to turn from the forest to attack him. The smaller, more maneuverable ATVs reached him first and attacked. The four motorcycles were simply ridden by guys trying to shoot and drive at the same time, to little effect. The two four-wheelers, however, had designated drivers and shooters, and their shots were mainly the ones impacting on the Agent’s shield.

“So, you wanna trade impacts, huh?” Jack said as he dove to the side, performing a one-handed handstand with his shield arm as he dug into the pockets of his army pants with his free hand. He had changed his costume recently, opting for more military fatigue pants and boots with streamlined mask and gloves. He also had a few tricks aside from his shield.

Withdrawing his hand, he flicked his wrist towards the group of bikes coming his way and a rain of small pellets impacted their front wheels and goggles. Gas poured from some, small explosions from others and oil from still others. All four bikers were shocked and one began coughing from the tear gas and crashed, flipping painfully away into the trees. Another found himself covered with oil and lost control of his bike, slamming into the guy next to him who was trying to stabilize a blown-out front tire. They ended up in a smoking pile, groaning. The fourth biker had the fortune of wearing a full-face mask, so he was spared the gas and charged ahead, an axe held high in his hand, like a British soldier waving his sword, leading a bayonet charge.

The Agent, however, cared little for the axe and focused on the guy driving. At the extreme last second, he jumped. Not aside or back or forward, but up. He let the axe come in and deflect off of his shield just as he planted both feet into the chest of the driver. He heard ribs snap and a shriek from the dog as they fell to the ground, but only Jack jumped up, refreshed from the experience, holding the axe.

“Thanks for the ride, chump,” he said, picking up the still-idling bike and kicking it around. He put his shield over the front windshield and charged for the four-wheelers with the axe in one hand. One of the guys driving decided he’d had enough and started to veer away. His buddy on the back didn’t seem to like that idea and started screaming for him to stop. Agent passed them by, heading for the other four-wheeler.

He came in hard and the Watchdog driver did as well. It was like a jousting match back in the days of Knights and Princesses. They closed on one another and the Agent swung his axe around with the flat part facing the two and knocked them both off of the four-wheeler with one swing of his strength-enhanced arm. The two dogs rolled painfully to the ground, the momentum carrying them along a ways before they stopped moving.

Jack kicked his bike around, taking a peek at the main force of trucks that had righted themselves and were coming back. He heard a pistol report and turned to the other four-wheeler and his temper shot past safety levels. The shooter on the back of the four-wheeler with the panicked driver had apparently shot his own ally in the back of the head. He now strode across the clearing towards the Agent.

Killing the bike and tossing it and the axe away, the Agent began to angrily walk towards the murderous dog. “Why did you kill him?” he asked angrily.

“You’re going to ask me about killing, you slaughtering bastard?” asked the Dog, incredulously. “You killed eleven of us with your bare hands!”

“You killed my parents!” Jack said, tightening his grip on his shield. “How many of you have died today?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

“Not enough if you aren’t dead yet,” the Dog said, drawing his pistol and firing. He might as well have been using a water gun for the good it did him as the Agent closed in, slamming his shield into the man’s stomache, then up into his chin, followed by a roundhouse right that laid the man out on the ground with a broken jaw.

“No, one is too many,” Jack said as he turned and ran for the returning trucks.

In the woods, Dave Tollifson was cursing. “How in the holy freak’n hell am I supposed to get past that?!” he screamed, pointing wildly at the huge oak tree laying across their path. “John’s going to rip my motherloving heart out and it’s not my fault!”

“Oh, Davey Boy, why don’t you and the missus step out of that there Jeep, hmmm?” said a voice that sent cold chills down Dave’s back. He looked out the driver’s window to the Jeep and saw nothing, then he looked out Katie’s side. He didn’t see anything, and felt discouraged by the way she pulled back from being close to him.

“Where the fuck is he?” Dave asked, his voice low. From within the pouch on his belt he withdrew his huge pocket knife and flicked the blade out. Katie pulled back from him more, moaning a little in her fear, but he shushed her. “Hey, it’s all right honey, nothing’s going to happen. I promise.”

“Then you lie even to your wife, Pup,” said a voice behind him a second before the door to the Jeep was torn off and a cold metal hand landed on Dave’s left shoulder, shattering it as he was drug from the truck. Katie screamed in fear along with his shout of pain, and she continued to scream as he was roughly bounced across the road into a tree.

Standing between Dave and Katie was an abomination in purple and orange. Standing at just under seven feet tall, it was obvious that whatever it was now, it had at one time been a man. The left half of the face remained, with one green eye shining out, but the right side of the face was metallic, as was the largest percentage of the visible body parts. His movements were quick and unnatural as he reached back into the Jeep and pulled Katie out more gently, dropping her to the ground. The red right eye on the face, peeking out from under the visor-less orange helmet peered into her, as if analyzing her into its memory banks.

“Wha…what are you?!” Katie screamed, backpedaling on her hands and heels.

“Me?” the abomination asked in a horrible grating voice, standing back as if shocked. “I am, or was, Curtis Richins, a Watchdog involved in our righteous retribution against your brother when he was Captain America. I was left for dead in a barn in this god-forsaken place with my spine destroyed and half of my face shot off. Your brother was thorough enough, but he should have killed me. He should have killed all of us.”

“Who are you?! What do you want?!” Katie screamed! “What else can you take from us?!”

“I’m called Redeye and we honestly didn’t want anything from you, my dear,” the Watchdog said, shrugging. “We didn’t even care about you, just your brother’s death. And things were going fine until your moron of a husband screwed things up for us. Now there has been a change in plans.”

“What do you mean?” Dave asked, as he pulled his pained body to a sitting position. He nearly blacked out from the pain.

“Oh, I didn’t mean a change in plans that would leave you alive, Pup Sixty-Six A,” Redeye said, pointing his right arm at Dave. Before Katie’s horrified eyes, the arm lengthened and slammed into and through Dave’s face, and on through the tree. In his last second of life, Dave had looked at her in sorrow. Katie burst into tears as sobs wracked her body.

Redeye reeled in his arm and looked impassively at his hand. “Yes, it is a shame, my dear. I hate scrubbing the gray matter from my knuckles.” Seeming to forget that annoyance, Redeye bent and picked her up with the same bloody hand and dragged her off into the woods.

The trucks were now all out of commission, but the USAgent found himself fighting a dogfight between the shattered remains of the trucks. He had caught a piece of shrapnel from the explosion of a Ford F-350 he’d shot in the fuel tank with one of the unconscious Dog’s guns and his left arm was useless. The hot, sharp metal had pierced his chain-mail uniform easily, and in the back of his mind he was making a note to see about a new material. Addled by the pain, he was having trouble getting his shield to form anything other than its regular shape, which didn’t really concern him, but a big aspirin would have been nice.

As he hunkered down behind a Toyota Tundra he’d ripped the axle out of, he quickly calculated. There were at least eight Dogs left, scattered around the field, and that was only if some of the unconscious ones didn’t wake up. That wasn’t a problem, so long as no surprises popped up.

As if he’d been predicting the weather, a surprise popped up.

It was actually the hatch from the back of an overturned Chevrolet Blazer. It twirled up, drawing the attention of everyone, including the Agent, until it crashed down through the roof of Dave and Katie’s house. From within the truck stepped a new Watchdog and Jack swore under his breath.

It was the same Watchdog Stark had shown him on the monitor at Avengers mansion a day before. He wore the Watchdog armor, but had a mechanical arm with detachable hand, was missing an ear and wore a neck brace studded with sharp-looking spikes. His left arm was obviously super-strong and, from the way he moved, Jack wondered about his legs. The man jumped from the truck, landing over ten feet from its bed.

He looked over toward where the Agent hid, knowing unerringly where he hid. Jack watched his nose flex open and shut and realized the son of a bitch could smell him! “Come out, USAgent,” the man said in a raspy voice. “Spike has a message for you.”

“Spike?” Agent said, standing defiantly. “And Barton used to accused ME of watching too much ‘Buffy’.”

Jack heard all eight junior Watchdogs point shotguns at him and he prepared himself to fight. His left arm was still numb but he was now able to force it to move through sheer force of will. He put his shield on that arm and prepared to give Spike a taste of his right fist. “What’s your message?” he asked Spike.

“That your sister will not be harmed, unlike her husband,” Spike said, smiling.

“You mean…?” Agent began, before he realized he knew exactly what Spike meant and with a cry of wordless rage he hurled his shield to his left and charged Spike. The unarmed leader of the Dogs didn’t go for a gun. Instead, he waited until Jack was committed then sucker punched him with his mechanical arm. Reeling from the impact, Agent stumbled back. ‘Damn,’ he thought, ‘this joker’s arm is as strong as me!’

Without hesitating, before his adrenalin rage wore off, he dropped to his right arm and scissor-kicked Spike’s legs, snapping the Watchdog over and into the ground. Spike rolled quickly, leading Agent to believe one if not both of the man’s hips had been replaced, and then Spike was on his feet and swinging.

Jack used his dead arm to block the blow, then reached up with his right hand and caught his shield. When he’d hurled it to the left, it had been meant to look as if he were so angry he wanted to rip Spike apart with his fingers, which he had been. He’d also been planning ahead, confident in his victory over Spike, and wanted a way to even the odds against the other Dogs. His shield had ricocheted off of one of the trucks before clipping one Dog in the back of his neck, just under his helmet. The sideways ricochet flicked the shield over and across the fingers of the next Dog, causing him to scream as three broke, and he dropped his gun. Lacking good momentum, the shield kicked off the snapped digits and back into Jack’s waiting hand, just as he’d planned.

He looked at Spike and smiled, “I can make it sit up and beg, too.”

“Begging might do you some good,” Spike said as his foot was suddenly in Agent’s face, knocking him back painfully. Spike closed, using his human arm to annoy the Agent and his mechanical one to kill him slowly. His unresponsive arm was becoming a serious drain to his chances, and with one last powerful shot, Spike laid Jack out low, then straddled him. Lowering himself to one knee, Spike withdrew a horribly wicked curved knife and brandished it before Jack with his metal arm “Then again, it probably wouldn’t.”

Beside the Tollifson home, a figure had stood in the darkness for the past few moments. He’d watched Jack fight, and was pleased to see he hadn’t killed anyone and seemed in control of himself, even after Spike mentioned his sister. Shrugging off his trench coat, the figure took up his weapon and aimed for the pack of Dogs around his fellow Avenger. Jack wouldn’t like his help, but then again, dying wasn’t likely on the stubborn idiot’s short list of things to do, either.

Jack’s eyes were locked on the knife and he was focused on trying to get his good arm free from where Spike’s left knee was holding it, but his ears were working fine. When he heard the slight *WHOOSH* of displaced air, he stopped struggling and laid back against the ground, a furious look passing across his face. Spike, unnerved by the seemingly quitting nature of the Agent, stopped and said, “Do not try to trick my vengeance, Walker.”

“I’m not, but this fight is over,” Jack said just as the red, white and blue disk blazed between their bodies, striking Spike’s detachable wrist joint with enough force to snap his hand off, and Spike watched in disbelief as his hand and knife fell to the ground. Taking advantage of the unwanted assistance, Jack bucked back, bringing Spike’s face within reach of his now-freed hand and with a haymaker he sent Spike flying off of his body, to crash into the ground a few yards away.

Even as he scrambled for his discarded shield, Jack felt the figure leap over him, following the other shield. “You okay, Agent?” asked the no-nonsense voice of Captain America as he neatly flipped to his feet behind one of the Dogs, and laid the man out with a neck chop. His shield had continued past Spike to drill the Dog with broken fingers and then landed neatly in Cap’s hand without a look.

Cap was always doing stunts like that. When John Walker had been studying with the Commission on Superhuman Activities to become the newest Cap, he had watched hours of footage of Cap’s impossible shield tricks, and while he himself could do many of them now, he had nowhere near the talent with it that Cap had.

As if to make his point for him, Cap did the most improbable thing Jack had ever seen him do. He threw his shield directly at his feet, instead of at the five remaining Dogs closing on him. The shield impossibly hit a small chunk of gravel, popping it back up into a lazy curl that went unnoticed by the Dog that was aiming a shotgun directly at the back of Cap’s head. There was no way Cap had seen the man move, yet he just seemed to know it was happening. The shield completed its arc, slamming down into the stock of the shotgun, its edge catching the sight on the gun just right and deflecting directly into the face of the shooter, busting at least three teeth and his nose. A move like that needed precision speed, perfect spin on the shield and a thrower who was thinking at least seventeen steps ahead of the game. Cap didn’t only make his shield beg, it fetched his slippers and newspaper too!

Reflecting from the now bleeding, sobbing man, the shield flew almost broadside to the next Dog, who got the bright idea to shoot it with his shotgun. His blast deflecting the shield all right, but the backlash of shot and gunpowder left him with excruciating burns on his exposed face, leaving him screaming on the ground. Knocked loopy by the blast, the shield spun like a coin, passing between the two unconscious, airborne Dogs Cap had taken out in the two seconds after he threw his shield in the first place, and landed in the waiting outstretched fingers of the Living Legend, who spun, slamming the shield full-on into the face of the last Dog, who thought he had a clear pistol shot at Cap. Continuing his spin, Cap bounced his shield off of the temple of the flash-burned Dog, leaving all of the Dogs on the ground within five seconds of entering the field of play.

Jack was stunned, but so was Spike. Neither had ever seen a performance quite like that. Every Watchdog in two years had been trained with the ultimate hatred in mind for what John Walker did to them when he wore Captain America’s uniform. Most had transferred that anger over to his new identity of the USAgent, but many, especially the Pack, knew it was also Captain America who had killed them in that barn, and whether it was John Walker or the original, Captain America was just as big an enemy.

But Spike wasn’t supposed to win; he laid his guns on the ground, raised his one hand and one stump in the air, and said, “I surrender.”

“Bullshit you do!” Jack said, stalking forward, his shield on his right arm reacting to his thoughts and forming into a noose. “Where the hell is my sister?!”

“Agent, stand down!” Cap ordered, stepping bodily between Jack and Spike. The two men had played this game many times before, usually to not amiable results. “He has surrendered.”

“Don’t make me move you, Cap,” Agent said, flexing his one good arm. He and Cap had tussled many times, each drawing their own victories, but Jack didn’t want to fight Cap today. “My sister is out there somewhere. I have no doubt the Dogs have her and I will have her back.”

“Not today, you won’t,” Spike said. Distracted, Cap let Agent get by him and he landed a strong punch to Spike’s face, bursting the man’s lip. Jack then grasped the man’s shoulders and slammed him bodily into the smoking wreckage behind him.

“I will kill you,” Jack said and behind one shattered goggle he saw fear flit across Spike’s eye before confidence returned.

“Not with the Boy Scout there, you won’t.” Jack knew that was true, but he didn’t let that stop him from wanting too. “Relax, Walker,” Spike continued. “Every dog has its day.”

And then he laughed, hard and long and cruel, until Jack couldn’t take it any longer and decked him.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. cleanup crew arrived just as the two Avengers returned from the woods with the body of Dave Tollifson, which had its head wound compounded by the hundreds of bite marks of animals in the woods looking for a hot meal. John felt a pang of guilt for sending the man to his death, but not one twinge of regret. He was saddened by what the loss would do to his sister, but not really upset that the scumbag was gone. It was Katie who occupied his thoughts.

“So, let me guess,” Jack said, giving the body to the authorities and walking with Cap to the Quinjet. “Pym and Stark sent you after me.”

“No,” Cap said, placing his hand on the touch panel next to the landing ramp, cycling the door. “I actually had come to the mansion after you, I forgot to ask a favor of you in the alley. They told me what had happened and where you were going, and yes, they had concerns about how you would handle the situation.” He paused, unsure about his next statement, but went ahead anyway. “But I wasn’t. You’re an Avenger, and regardless of your past you’ve earned that title and our respect, and I told them so.”

“I…” What? Was he supposed to thank Cap for finally waking up and seeing him for what he truly was? Was he supposed to bow and tell the great leader how damned smart he was? Or…was he supposed to take it as the compliment that Cap meant it as, and shut his fight-picking big mouth? For a moment he didn’t say anything, then with a goofy smile that betrayed the gruffness of his voice, he said, “‘Bout time.”

Cap smiled, realizing that was as close to a thank you as he’d ever get from the USAgent, and entered the ship. “Listen, I talked to Fury and Sharon and there are no traces of the Watchdogs in Custer’s Grove any more. They’re searching the forest, but you and I both know they won’t find them. For now, we’ve got nothing.” For a moment in his disgust, the years and struggle that had consumed his life since 1941 were clearly visible to Jack, and he stopped for a moment to wonder about all the pain and frustration that this man before him had faced and carried in his life, and he wondered if he, Johnny ‘Jack’ Walker, really had it as bad as he acted as if he did.

Then, as if a switch were flipped, the confidence and power poured back into Captain America, and his bright blue eyes locked onto John’s own, and he smiled. “But we’ll get them, and your sister, one way or the other. On that note, I have an offer for you and a favor to ask, Jack, if you’re interested in listening.”

“After you helping me out today, which I really didn’t need but I appreciate,” Jack said, pulling his mask off, “of course. Won’t promise I’ll like or agree with what you say, old habits die hard, but we’ll see.”

“Yes, we will,” Cap said, turning to the controls with an eager smile.