Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(61)

Clark flipped the switch on and off and held the glasses out to Gloria.

She grinned. “You try them.”

Clark turned away from her and pulled off his normal glasses. Then he slipped on these thicker-framed glasses. He shifted slightly so he could see his vague reflection in the window. He looked more bookish. A thought occurred to him as he discreetly lifted his shirt to peek at the blue suit beneath his clothes. Maybe looking bookish was a good means of fitting in. There was no way someone with superpowers would need glasses with such thick lenses.

He turned to Gloria. “What do you think?”

She nodded. “Ooh, I like the cute, brainy look.”

Lana spun around. “Whoa, Clark, I agree. You might want to rock those full-time.”

“You think I can keep these?” Clark asked Lex.

“Let’s do the mission first,” Lex said humorlessly. “We can divvy up the tech later.”

“So that’s it?” Clark said, still wearing the glasses. “We’re just trying to figure out what they’re up to? And recording them if we can, so we have evidence.”

“I also lined up an interview with Corey tomorrow,” Lana said. “During the festival. I want to see if he knows who cosigned for the Joneses’ farm. I’m thinking Dr. Wesley might still be connected to those mob leaders who used to bankroll his work back in Metropolis.”

“There was a cosigner?” Clark asked. Maybe Dr. Wesley wasn’t doing all this alone.

“I did some digging around in public records,” Lana said. “As usual, the devil’s in the details.”

They pulled off the gravel road near a large human-made pond. The sun had fallen below the horizon, but there was still a bit of light in the sky. Lex maneuvered behind a broken-down Caterpillar tractor, put the car in park, and cut the engine. When he got out, Lana, Gloria, and Clark followed. Lex grabbed a second backpack from the car and locked the doors.

“We’re still pretty far away,” Lana said.

“Look,” Lex said, “I can’t have anyone tracing this shit back to me. But don’t worry—if we need to get out of there quickly, I’ve got us covered with vehicles for extraction.” He lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned their surroundings. “Now, let’s get our stuff on.”

They geared up with body cameras, miniature flare guns, and their special glasses. Each of them wore a backpack filled with various other equipment. Clark felt like it might be overkill, but he went along with it anyway. Obviously, Lex had put a lot of thought—and money—into all this stuff. Which told Clark that Lex believed the payoff would exceed his investment. Clark was almost as interested in Lex’s motivation for being out here tonight as he was about what was happening on the Jones farm.

Clark turned to Gloria, watching her adjust her glasses. He was hit with a sudden bout of nerves as he remembered what had happened the last time he was here. If there was more gunfire, it would be impossible to position himself in front of both Lana and Gloria.

“What?” Gloria said.

Clark shook his head. “Just…we have to be careful.”

Gloria nodded.

“We walk due east for about a half mile,” Lex instructed them. “There we should encounter one guard, who we’ll have to take out. At that point we will have a clear path to these new structures I was telling Lana about. They have rotating lookouts every twenty minutes, so we’ll have to be quick. In and out. And then to our getaway location. Got it?”

“How do you know so much about what’s going on out here?” Clark asked.

“Satellites.”

“Satellites?” Lana repeated.

“Look,” Lex said smugly, “LuthorCorp is light-years ahead of everyone else when it comes to defense and weaponry, okay?” Lex gazed off into the distance, a grim look washing over his face. “And we plan to keep it that way.”

Here it was, Clark thought. Lex’s real motivation.

“Now, they’ve built two temporary structures at the back of the Jones farm,” Lex continued. “A large one and a much smaller one.” He looked from Clark to Lana to Gloria, adding, “I should warn you: my most recent satellite images have revealed what might be minor military hardware. And a bunch of trucks and jeeps. Suggesting there may be a dozen or more people out here now.”

They walked a long way down the road, then cut through the rear of the farm. As they began picking their way through the field of knee-high corn, Clark marveled at the scale of this operation. When they’d been here for the party, he had no idea the space would soon have two mysterious structures.

What exactly was Wesco up to?

When they finally neared the edge of the field, they crouched among the short cornstalks. Then, seeing that they were in the clear, they hurried across a small opening, into a thick grove of trees. It was the same grove where Clark and Lana had hidden the last time they were here. But this time, Clark reasoned, they were approaching from the opposite side.

From behind the base of a thick tree, Lex motioned to the right, but Clark had already seen it: maybe fifty yards away, on the edge of the grove, was an armed guard in familiar black military fatigues. He was guarding some kind of perimeter.

“We gotta take that guy out,” Lex said. “Quietly.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Lana asked.