THUNDER Agents: Reactivation

[DocQuantum]

Note that I've revised some of the following story, which originally began in 1985 just after the Crisis with the present-day taking place in 1986. Given the history of Earth-4 that's been established in numerous Sentinels of Justice stories, the attack of the Warlord technology destroying cities around the world cannot happen in the original time frame. So I made the editorial decision to move it into late 1987, with the present-day THUNDER being reactivated in 1988. This also fits Hank Hennessy's history as leader of LAW (beginning in 1985 after the Crisis) into a longer, more viable time frame. Also introduced Dragunov, a character who plays an important role as Brezhnev's eventual successor in my eventual plans for "Superpowers, Book 2." I hope we can see the THUNDER Agents return soon in action. Not all of them have been introduced yet.

[DocQuantum]

THUNDER Agents

Reactivation

by Dave Barnowski

Prologue: The Kremlin

October, 1987:

Colonel Dmitri Antropov was not a happy man. He had been recalled back to the Kremlin from Afghanistan, where he was the KGB's top administrator. He had been doing excellent work there, and his field agents were beginning to make progress in gathering much-needed intelligence against the damned Afghani insurgents in the countryside of that mountainous nation.

Antropov had been angry when he first received the recall notice, which he considered as an interference with his success. That, in turn, became a feeling of apprehension when he realized that his superiors might have been unhappy with his progress despite the fact that he had accomplished more in six months than any of his predecessors had done in years. He had willed the fear away when he took a good cold look at what he had done and knew it had been a superior job. He therefore came to the meeting knowing he had nothing to be ashamed of and could hold his head up high.

All that bravado faded when he entered the main meeting room of the Kremlin. The hairs on the back of his neck involuntarily stood on end when he saw the only two other people in the room. The elderly and very sickly leader of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, was present along with the KGB's head, Vladimir Dragunov, whom many considered the true leader of the Soviet Union, though they never voiced this in public. Colonel Antropov stood at attention once he entered the room.

"Good evening, Comrade General," said Chairman Brezhnev. "Please sit down. We have read your reports, and we are pleased with the job you have done."

Dmitri exhaled at the General Secretary's words. He looked to Dragunov with questioning eyes as he sat down. The leader of the KGB merely nodded at Dmitri's questioning glance. A smile came to his lips as he took in Brezhnev's words -- Dmitri was now a general. Once he was seated, the newly promoted general asked, "Begging your pardon, sir, but may I know why I was recalled to Moscow?"

Brezhnev looked at the head of the KGB, and Vladimir Dragunov briefed him on things that had been going on in the world while he was fighting the damned Mujahideen. Over the last few months, several of the world's cities had been destroyed -- Davao in the Philippines, La Paz in Bolivia, Regina in Canada, Sofia in Bulgaria, Shanghai in the People's Republic of China, and Nairobi in Kenya. There were no survivors in any of these attacks, and they all had the hallmarks of the Subterranean Warlords.

Dmitri remembered hearing about the Warlords back when he was a young man. They were a race of subterranean humanoids who had attacked the Earth's surface in the 1960s. In 1963, a mysterious figure called the Warlord used advanced technology to steal an atomic engine from the United States government. The Warlord struck terror in the hearts of the world's governments with several more daring raids over the next two years, culminating in the murder of the brilliant inventor Professor Wallace Jennings in 1965. The United Nations had founded its global defense and intelligence agency, THUNDER -- The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves -- in 1946, but it had been little more than a think-tank until the early 1960s. With the murder of Jennings, THUNDER was changed forever into a full-fledged military force with a small detachment of super-agents given powers by inventions left behind by Jennings. Within a few years, THUNDER had done its job, defeating the menace of the Warlords and eventually driving the Subterraneans to extinction. With its mission successfully accomplished, THUNDER was largely deactivated in 1971, remaining only as a shell of its former self, with some minor intelligence work done by a handful of agents over the next fifteen years.

"So these Warlords have had the audacity to attack our ally Bulgaria?" said Dmitri with genuine anger. "I take it you want me to find them so that we can punish them."

"Yes and no, Comrade General," said Brezhnev. "Over both our objections and those of the United States, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to reactivate THUNDER. We want you to join it."

"In what capacity?" asked Dmitri.

The two older men looked at one another, and Vladimir Dragunov said, "We wanted you to be the director of operations, but the General Assembly wanted a former member of THUNDER because he was a hero to many nations, even if he was an American. It seems this Leonard Brown worked in the former director's office and was also the agent known as Dynamo. We were able to insist that a Soviet citizen become the deputy director."

Dmitri didn't like the idea of working under a capitalist pig like Brown, but he kept his dislike to himself. "What are my orders?" he asked.

"Your primary mission is to assist THUNDER in every way in defeating the Warlords. But you are also to do whatever you can to discredit Brown and any other American agent -- especially NoMan whenever you can -- while at the same time promoting any and all agents from the Soviet Union and her allies, so long as it does not interfere with your primary mission. Once the Warlords have been defeated, you are to help in deactivating THUNDER."

[DocQuantum]

Chapter 1

New York City, 1988:

Leonard Brown was in a center chair sitting in front of the shadowed men and women who made up THUNDER's High Council. The members' voices were distorted as well, and no one but the Secretary General of the United Nations knew who sat on the council. Len had been grilled for the past several hours about how he thought THUNDER's reactivation was going.

He was now used to the daily grind of these meetings and smiled as he remembered twenty years earlier during the first time he stood in this room. That was the day he found out that he had been chosen to wear the Thunderbelt and become Dynamo. For the next six years, Dynamo was THUNDER's premiere super-agent. Then THUNDER was deactivated by the United Nations as the global organization no longer saw the need for the agency, save for a small handful of intelligence agents. NoMan was the only super-agent from those days who was allowed to stay as Dynamo and Raven were retired. Both Mentor and Lightning had died by that time.

Len settled in New York City and soon married the woman he had long pursued -- Alice, his boss's secretary. Together they had three children -- Guy and John, named after the fallen THUNDER super-agents, and a young daughter named Roxanne. He worked for UNICEF until 1976, when he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a congressman. He won his seat then and won relection every year until the 1984 Reagan re-election landslide cost him his seat. Len was a liberal Democrat and opposed almost all of Reagan's policies. He knew that the Reagan Administration didn't like him being THUNDER's operating director, but the choice they had offered instead was unacceptable to the majority of the members of the THUNDER High Council.

He had written a book about his days as Dynamo and had been on an international tour when the Warlords first struck last year. He happened to be in India when he was approached by the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, to become the new director of operations for THUNDER.

With the absence of the THUNDER Agents since the early 1970s, a team of action-heroes called the Sentinels of Justice had stepped into the forefront, tackling many of the challenges THUNDER had once handled. But the Sentinels were an American team with a focus on the security of the United States, while the world was becoming more complex by the day, and it was determined that an international team of super-agents was needed to protect the rest of the world from threats like the Warlords.

Len had told the Prime Minister that there was no way THUNDER could deal with the threat unless it was reconstituted as it was in the 1960s. Ghandi agreed and said that his government was leading the drive to start THUNDER up again but the Prime Minister said finding the right man to lead it was imperative. Len agreed to put his name in and was chosen within a week, the day after Davao in the Philippines was razed to the ground.

He had to fight to get other department heads chosen, primarily because he chose former members of THUNDER, which in the old days was dominated by Americans. The three surviving members of the Thunder Squad were his first choices.

The former Kitten Kane, who now went by her late husband's name, was THUNDER's new software and communications head. Kathryn Gilbert no longer went by the name Kitten. She was a scientist and technology expert in her own, but she found that she now preferred using practical applications and trouble shooting problems in the field, rather than working in the lab. Tony Dunn had asked her to join his team, but Kathryn said she had been with THUNDER throughout the lean years and deserved to head a department of her own. Both Len and Tony agreed.

Dynamite John Adkins (who had the plus of actually being a Canadian) was picked to be the head of Ordinance as he was an expert in military equipment. John wasn't happy with the standard sidearm of THUNDER, the U.S. Colt .45 automatic, but they were donated by the U.S. government because they still had an overabundance of the weapon in their arsenals. Dan was much happier with THUNDER's new standard rifle, the Soviet-made AK-47, by far and away the best military rifle available today. The Israeli's were supplying THUNDER's submachine gun, the Uzi. This weapon too had flaws in field combat situations according to Dan, but it was perfect for security personnel. The former Dynamite also had access to a wide variety of explosives.

Weed Wiley was given the over all job of security. Weed no longer smoked, but he had an ever-present toothpick in his mouth. A former thief was the perfect man to handle security as far as Len was concerned, though his new number two man Dmitri had his doubts.

THUNDER had had a squadron of fighter jets back in the day as well as transport jets. Today THUNDER had order a small set of three new transport jets which were actually Boeing 747's built to THUNDER's specific recommendations, and another six were being taken out of mothballs and refurbished. The French were donating a squadron of Mirage fighters. Len knew that they were doing so in a way to promote their jet in hopes that other countries would purchase the jet. Len asked the former super-agent known as Raven to head THUNDER's aviation and transportation section. Craig Lawson readily agreed. Craig had gone back to being a mercenary after his days as Raven. Len took quite a bit of flak by hiring a former mercenary but his predecessor had hired Craig to be Raven years before and the man had turned out to be one THUNDER's top agents. Len believed in the man who had once been the super-agent Raven.

NoMan had been the chief operating officer, field agent and in charge of research and development during the lean years of THUNDER's operation. Now that it was going back in full gear Tony Dunn went back to being just a field agent, granted it was as the super-agent known as NoMan. Len decided to let Tony choose who his replacement in R&D was going to be, but Tony hadn't decided yet. Len had the feeling that Tony wasn't willing to give up that position, especially when Tony said no to his suggestion of naming Kathryn Gilbert. Len sighed at the memory and realized that he's cover for Tony and let him stay head of R&D. THUNDER owed the man that much.

THUNDER had a bevy of field agents in the old days who were either spies or special operations type forces. Len's choice to head the Special Operations forces surprised everyone in that it was an old foe of THUNDER: Cho Ling, the former SPIDER agent once known as Red Star. (*) SPIDER, or the Secret People's International Directorate for Extralegal Revenue, had been an organization sponsored by the Chinese Communists. Red China was now a member of the U.N. and Dynamo knew first hand how good Cho Ling was because they had often fought back in the old days and Red Star could go toe to toe in a fight with Dynamo even though Red Star was only an expert martial artist. He was as good as anyone ever was, including the legendary Judomaster. Len was aware that there was much debate as to who was better in martial arts circles. Ling Cho was also selected by Len because he was a former enemy and as such Ling Cho would see vulnerabilities in THUNDER that he and his other former agents wouldn't or couldn't see. It was also politically a smart move having a hero from the PRC and its allies publicly being a high ranking member of THUNDER. Among all the special operations agents, the best would be chosen to be in the new Thunder Squad.

[(*) Editor's note: Red Star is not to be confused with Redstar of the USSR, introduced in Secret Origins: Times Past, 1965: Redstar Rising.]

One change that from the old days was that THUNDER now had a full team of medical specialists, heading that team was an American living in Kenya named Dr. Thomas "Ramar" Reynolds. Reynolds had acquired some degree of fame as he brought modern medicine to the still primitive areas of Africa and Asia like Dr. David Livingston had years earlier. He had an international reputation as a humanitarian. He joined THUNDER after the Warlord's horrific attacks on several cities around the globe. His team would oversee the Team Lightning usage in conjunction with R&D. They would also supervise the melding of the Thunderbelt with the agents who would use it most often.

Given the damage his body had taken and the amount of time he was out of commission because he was hospitalized had led him to the decision that two men would be chosen to wear the Thunderbelt. Only one could wear it at any given time, but if history was any judge there would be a need for another agent to wear the belt. He wanted to have the power of the Thunderbelt available to him at all times.

There were many other pieces to fill, but the organization was getting up and running. as Soon the super-agents were to be selected THUNDER and would be in full swing shortly after their training was complete. He had had none when he was chosen to be Dynamo and found that it had been a gross mistake that he would not repeat. Besides having two Dynamos, the only other difference between now and the past as far as the super-agents besides new people would have the code names was the fact that the Lightning speed suit would be worn by a variety of highly trained individuals. The reason was simple: using the suit slowly killed the wearer every time he used it.

Len decided that at all times there would be five individuals in training to wear the suit. Originally he wanted no one to wear it more than a month, but both the R&D and Medical departments were telling him that he may have to revise that decision. Thereafter they would not be allowed to use it. He was calling the men who would wear the suit Team Lightning. On Tony Dunn's and Dr. Reynolds recommendation they also had to be younger than 26 years of age and in perfect physical condition.

His report was made and the Council's questions were answered. Len Brown headed back to his office with a slight headache. Once back in the main complex of THUNDER Headquarters Len was greeted by his newly appointed deputy Dmitri Antropov.

"What's new, Dmitri?" Brown asked in perfect unaccented Russian.

"I have the final list of candidates for our super-agents that have passed their physical tests from the medical, psychiatric, and security departments. The list for Team Lightning is down to twenty-five, as we may have to use all of them before this is over. Agent Dynamo candidates are now down to the final ten, as are the Agent Raven candidates. Undersea Agent still has fifteen candidates, as I'm afraid the Medical department is running behind on this assignment, and I don't even want to mention how far behind schedule we are on the Agent Vulcan Project," said Dmitri in perfect, nearly unaccented English. Dmitri enjoyed this banter he had with the Operations Director. He liked the man, too. That didn't change his orders, however. He was still eventually going to have to discredit Brown. He just wouldn't enjoy doing it.

[DocQuantum]

Chapter 2: The Thunder Squad

Len Brown was starting to feel as though THUNDER might actually get started. The super-agents were now down to a list of finalists. He had wanted to wait and select the members of the Thunder Squad from those finalists who hadn't yet been selected, but other members of his executive team disagreed with him. The fact that the members were either the three surviving members of the original Thunder Squad or had extensive military training persuaded Len to change his mind.

Their argument was that the Squad would have to have intense training together as a unit in order to have a sound elite force. The task then became selecting the men and women of the team for the Thunder Squad, regardless of the various super-agents programs. Ling Cho used to go be the name of Red Star as the People's Republic of China's premiere costumed hero. He was also a member of a Chinese spy agency known then as SPIDER and Len's old foe when he was the THUNDER Agent known as Dynamo. Len specifically asked the People's Republic of China for Ling Cho to head the military and special operations section of the new THUNDER, because even though they were enemies back then, they had a great deal of grudging respect for one another.

Ling Cho headed all of THUNDER's military ops, but for the planning of specific covert military missions Len wanted an experienced hand. Dmitri Antropov, Len's deputy director, had suggested several candidates from various Warsaw Pact countries, but Len knew that the Soviet Union and its allies had a somewhat flawed moral compass in his eyes. That's not to say that Len considered the West to be far superior in every way, but he did think it was better because they came from societies with a tradition of a free press, and a free press would hammer you if you stepped over certain moral boundaries. It was the fear of getting caught that stayed the hand. Len therefore decided that he wanted a westerner to lead the Thunder Squad.

Len therefore decided that he wanted a westerner to lead the Thunder Squad, and wanted Hank Hennessy, the former head of the famed international group of mercenaries known as the Fightin' Five to be the team's planner and strategic head. He had left the U.S. Military and had formed the Fightin' Five, an international team of special operations mercenaries who had fought for a time in the 1960s and 1970s. Hennessy had been severely injure on a mission and lost an eye and an arm, and from then on had only planned the team's missions. Time caught up with the team as they grew older, and the world changed. In 1973, after all of the members of the team except for Hennessy and Antonio "Granite" Gallero were killed in a battle with operatives of the Mars Council, Hennessy had retired. He'd been out of the field for more than a decade afterward, before being recruited in 1985 by Sarge Steel to work for CHESS. There Hennessy had led a team of American super-agents called LAW, which was short for Living Assault Weapons, and had proven himself to still be a capable leader. (*) Hennessy wouldn't be able to go on field missions because he was missing an arm and eye, but he would be excellent in planning the missions of the Thunder Squad. Hennessy was a former Green Beret and had once served alongside Guy Gilbert. Having resigned from CHESS just a few months earlier, Hennessy had accepted the new position after being approached by Gilbert's widow, Kathryn, who had first suggested Hennessy to Len in the first place.

[(*) Editor's note: See L.A.W.: Living Assault Weapons.]

Hank Hennessy in turn suggested one of his surviving comrades from the Fightin' Five to lead the new Thunder Squad. His name was Antonio "Granite" Gallero, and he was an Italian-born weapons expert. He had been the youngest member of the old Fightin' Five, and was currently part of Italy's anti-terrorist, anti-Mafia police. At forty-six he was a little older than most of the assembled department heads wanted for a field agent. But Granite passed muster in an exacting series of physical exams and tests. He was in remarkable physical condition, and Dr. Reynolds, the head of THUNDER's medical department, said he had the body of a man ten to fifteen years younger. That added to his experience made him the perfect man for the job of squad leader. He was a big, burly man with curly black hair that was starting to thin on top.

Indira Katragada from India was selected to be the assistant team leader. She was an excellent back-up for the specialties that Granite wasn't qualified for, as she had a scientific and medical background as well as being a top field agent in India intelligence agency. She was also extremely proficient with communications gear and was an amazing linguist who could speak a dozen languages fluently. She was a lithe, attractive woman with shoulder-length black hair.

Hennessy felt that the one thing that many military teams lacked was an inside man (or woman) and wanted a consummate spy on the team. By that he meant a man adept in the art of disguise. Sir Roland Smyth-Davies was a famed actor who had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI-6. He had been instrumental in breaking the back of a particularly vicious IRA splinter group. Unfortunately for him, his testimony in a British court made him a marked man, and he could no longer act on the stage. Smyth-Davies was a small, wiry man who could disguise himself as a woman or with the proper equipment pass himself off as a much bigger man.

Any commando team would need men who knew how to handle small weapons, and preferably one who was a superb marksman. In Wolfe Von Marks, the Thunder Squad had a world class marksman. He was an Olympic gold medalist in all sorts of firearms. He was also a silver medalist in the Olympic Winter Games in Biathlon, a sport combining cross country skiing with marksmanship. The East German had grown bored with the competition of sport. He was a career military man who craved the action of combat, but his nation was at peace. He actively volunteered to join THUNDER soon after the U.N. began reactivating the organization. He was a big, brawny bald man with a walrus mustache.

A team of the sort that the Thunder Squad was envisioned to be also needed an expert with demolitions; in this vacancy came Hector Jimenez of Guatemala. Jimenez was the descendent of native Indians and African slaves. He was a medium build, and his handsome face displayed more than a few gold teeth when he flashed a smile. He was a cheerful man prone to mirth and took great delight in explosions.

Heavy weapons was not usually a specialty of commando units, but Hennessy and Ling Cho both thought that the team should have an expert in the field. Hence came Marcel Montoya of Argentina. Montoya was veteran of the recently completed Falkland Island War with the British. He was the polar opposite to Jimenez, as losing the war had left a bitter taste in Montoya's mouth. He also had little love for the Argentinean military government. He joined THUNDER as soon as his enlistment was up. Montoya was a well-built, athletic, clean-shaven, brown-haired man.

Every commando would need to be well-versed in the art of hand-to-hand combat, and the former Red Star wanted someone who was better than even these proficient experts. Ling Cho had been able to fight Dynamo when Len's belt was on, and he had the ability to lift twelve tons, and he wanted someone like that on the new Thunder Squad. He chose a protégé, Rae Dou Lai. She was a small, lithe woman who was better because the People's Republic of China had automatically chosen a man to replace Ling Cho under the name of Red Dragon instead of her. Rae Dou Lai's main goal in life was to be Red Dragon and had felt she was the better fighter, and after that was taken away from her, she was determined to prove the selectors in the People's Army wrong.

One thing that made the original Thunder Squad unique was that one of its members was a reformed criminal. Weed Wiley had been an expert locksmith and escape artist. This ability had aided the Squad on more than one occasion, and it was decided to once again have an expert thief on the team. That role was filled by a smiling Israeli named Mary Levine. She had the same abilities as Weed did, but she was also a renowned cat burglar and confidence woman. She had been arrested in Iran when she'd been caught trying to steal antiquities, in a country hostile to Jews. Iran had given her a life sentence of hard labor. Tony Dunn approached her Iranian captors within weeks of the first Warlord strike and asked the Ayatollah if he'd release her to U.N. custody. On the very day that Mary Levine planned to escape prison, she was released. It still irked her, because she had wanted to prove that no prison could hold her.

Many times a commando team would be asked to take out certain targets. Publicly, governments did not like assassins and denied that such individuals were on their payroll; THUNDER would, too, as it called its top assassin a Ninja to confuse the moral implications of assassination. He was a Cambodian named Chanthou Kim. He had been brought to Japan by a Japanese man named Toshiro Kinshima from one of the refuge camps in Thailand for the express purpose of being trained to becoming a Ninja for the Yakuza. At age twenty-two the young man had turned against them and was instrumental in bringing down several leaders of one of the syndicates. Unfortunately, that meant that he had a high price on his head and could no longer live safely in Japan. He also found that he was uncomfortable around his Cambodian family of origin and the camp that they still lived in. He was a man without a country, and when he heard THUNDER was recruiting new members, he jumped at the chance. He was a quiet, taciturn man who used no firearms, but merely the traditional weapons of the Ninja.

Any team would need to be dropped in to the area of attack and then again picked up when the mission was over. This assignment was given to a Canadian who could pilot anything that had a motor, whether it was on land, sea, or air. He was a native of South Africa who had sought political asylum in Canada because of Apartheid. He was cocky little man who wore mirror sunglasses named Wilbur "Shades' Tomas, and almost always wore a cowboy hat to hide his balding head.

It was decided that the team should have a scientist/engineer expert. Finding someone who fit that description while at the same time could meet the physical demands of being a member of the Thunder Squad was a daunting problem until Ali Mohammed Musharaf applied to join THUNDER's R&D team. Musharaf was a genius whose gifts were overlooked in his native country. He often clashed with the religious elders of his country, thanks to his Western education. He was, however, a devout Muslim and had already engaged in several arguments with the Israeli, Mary Levine. Team leader Granite Gallero said he thought the root of the problem had more to do with a mutual attraction than cultural and nationalistic hostility.

Lastly, the team needed a medic. At least that's what was originally called for, but the head of THUNDER's Medical Department pushed a full-fledged doctor on the team. Tony Dunn, who as NoMan had lost more android bodies due to injury than anyone could remember, agreed. The former Royal New Zealand Navy Commander Niles Thompson was chosen out THUNDER Medical to be the team's doctor. At thirty-eight, he was the second oldest member of the team (not counting the leadership) and its only married member.

Today was the day for the team's first official photograph. Len Brown and the other department heads were there, and Len saw for himself that while they looked impressive, he knew that Hank Hennessy, Granite Gallero, and Indira Katragada were going to have their hands full meshing them into a truly cohesive fighting force. He was glad he relented and listened to his department heads instead of waiting until after the super-agents had been selected before assembling the Thunder Squad.

[DocQuantum]

Chapter 3

Leonard Brown was an unhappy man as he watched the slide show of the latest damage done by the Warlords. Tony Dunn was presenting to the assembled department heads a report of THUNDER's investigation of the Warlord's latest act of destruction. Every single research station in Antarctica had been destroyed a week ago, and not a single human  had survived the massacre of the continent's entire population. The nations of the world were all screaming for the heads of the perpetrators of this action and allowed THUNDER access to the ruined stations, with the exceptions of the U.S. and the USSR. Len had used whatever leverage he had in Washington as a former congressman to get information about the American facilities and gain full knowledge of all American bases except for one called X1, but he only learned that it was manned by five military researchers. He couldn't even get the names of the researchers, and THUNDER was not allowed access to the site.

Leonard Brown's deputy director was a Soviet KGB general, and even he couldn't find out that much about a Soviet base named Base Stalin. Again, THUNDER was denied access to the base.

Still, he sent down the Thunder Squad as well as a team of scientists headed by NoMan. The team came up empty with any information or evidence. It was the lack of evidence that Leonard Brown found intriguing. It was intriguing enough that he had Tony Dunn's scientists go over the archived Warlord equipment and scenes of destruction that they had caused back in the 1960s. Len sat back in his chair as the report was given until Tony addressed the comparison of the attack of the two eras and the evidence that was left behind.

"In the final analysis," said Tony Dunn, "we cannot say for certain that the Warlords are active again. We can only determine that their equipment is being used and their tactics are being duplicated."

Dunn let that settle in on the group before continuing. "I can say with certainty, though, that there is no evidence that any Warlord has participated in the attacks. Back in the '60s we discovered blood stains in their atrocities, usually caused by a human who fought back. We have found no trace of Warlord blood anywhere. We found human blood, which we believe came from the perpetrators, some of whom we believe by the scenes were killed, but the bodies have always been taken away by other perpetrators."

"There's no trace at all of the Warlords? You're certain, Comrade Dunn?" asked THUNDER's Deputy Director Dmitri Andtropov.

"Yes, and that leads me to believe that the Warlords are not a part of this worldwide destruction," said Tony Dunn.

"I agree with Tony -- there was also no trace of Warlord communications signals before or during any attacks. We were always able to trace the distinctive signal of the Warlords back in the '60s," explained the head of THUNDER's communications, Karen Gilbert. "Especially since Tony tells us that it appears the attacks are using Warlord technology, which doesn't appear to have been upgraded whatsoever. We can therefore conclude that their communications haven't been upgraded, either, and that they're not using them."

Len Brown leaned forward and said, "The Warlords never fully trusted their human agents, not even the ones they raised like Andor. If they are not on the scene and not in close active supervisory communication with the men who are doing these atrocities, the Warlords likely aren't involved and are all dead as originally believed."

"Then we're dealing with a human threat that acts in an inhuman way," said Ling Cho, the former Red Star and current head of THUNDER's military wing.

"So where do go from here?" asked Greg Larson, the former super-agent known as Raven and current head of transport.

"I want to see if we can find some old Warlord operatives," said Leonard Brown. Turning to Ling Cho, Len asked, "Is the Thunder Squad ready to go on a combat mission?"

When Ling nodded yes, Len said, "I want them to go to Demo's old island base and see what they can find. Len then turn to the head of THUNDER Medical section and asked the naturalized Kenyan Dr. Thomas Reynolds if the medical section had finally decided who was best suited to wear the Thunderbelt, because Len wanted the new Dynamo to go and find his old enemy Andor, who had superhuman strength and was highly resistant to harm, although the last Len knew he was blind. Len knew from his own battles with Andor that even a highly trained team of military personnel like the Thunder Squad probably couldn't capture Andor without taking casualties. Len knew he was going to lose people eventually, but he didn't want to go out of his way to lose them.

Dr. Reynolds was the oldest man at the table, with the exception of Tony Dunn, whose android body belied the fact that he was an even hundred years old this year. The doctor had gained fame as a medical doctor treating the poor and backwards tribes of Africa during the early 1950s and came to love his adopted home so much that he, like the famed British family of anthropologists, the Leakeys, became a citizen of Kenya. He lit his pipes and blew out a puff of smoke as he said, "We're down to our final three candidates."

"Who are the top two biological fits for the Thunderbelt?" asked Director Brown, who noticed that his deputy director momentarily looked discomforted before resuming his usual flaccid pose.

"Well, let's see... there's the Polish airman named Casmir Proska, and the Liberian named Monroe James. And there's a Soviet agent named Sergey Ianovitch who is only a few points behind James."

"Never mind him, Doctor," Len said, holding up one hand. "Nationality isn't going to be a consideration as to who is or is not selected as a super-agent, unless that country is already represented. Since Dynamo will be our first new super-agent, his nationality is not a factor."

"Understood, Director Brown," said Dr. Reynolds. "There are only decimal points between the three men."

"Understood, Doctor, but I want the top two, with the number one man as Agent Dynamo and the second as his backup. I know from painful personal experience that we'll be using both men. Ianovitch will more than likely have to wear the belt sooner or later as well. I can tell you, gentlemen, that given my experiences as Dynamo, I should well be dead. I don't think Providence is likely to shine as well on our next generation of agents as it did our first."

The group of department heads sat in quiet for a few moments before until Leonard Brown closed the meeting.

The End

[DocQuantum]

I removed all references to Irv "the Nerve" Haganah, as he was shown to have died in the original Fightin' Five stories, replaced by Sonya on the team. Also added CSyphrett's backstory about the deaths of most of the Fightin' Five, with Hennessy and Gallero the only known survivors. It's possible others may have survived but are thought dead, much like certain Blackhawks have been thought dead in past stories, only to be found alive later on (Andre and Boris, for example).