Spitfire and the Troubleshooters (1986 series) #8

Andrew Meadows is dead on arrival at a Boston hospital. Eduardo Giotti and Terry Roberts bring the news to Eric Chin and a desperate Tim Ferris, who had been trying to reach them all day. Tim explains that he was crossing the campus field that morning — on his way to drop off his M.A.X. leg units at Jenny's apartment — when Steel Hawk, posing as a snow plow driver, forced him to activate the Fastback unit one last time. Steel Hawk then launched a grenade directly in front of the running Ferris, and the explosion cost Tim both legs below the knee. Eduardo is consumed with rage and vows to find Steel Hawk and make him pay. Eric, shattered, argues that the whole Troubleshooters enterprise was a reckless mistake and walks away. Terry and Eduardo, now alone, worry that Jenny may have already been taken too — she has been unreachable all day.

The next day, Jenny Swenson wakes in a darkened room and demands to know why she has been abducted. A disembodied voice tells her the answer is three letters: M.A.X. The consortium, contracted by an unnamed client, wants the key technological secrets of her late father Karl Swensen's M.A.X. research — the breakthroughs their own incomplete attempts at replication have been unable to achieve. Jenny refuses. The voice informs her that a trained fighter named Brick has been provided as both a sparring partner and, if she continues to refuse, her executioner. She has twelve hours, alone in a fully equipped workshop, to build a working M.A.X. unit — or Brick will kill her. She is told the padded floors are there by design: they want her alive and uninjured, at least for now.

As Jenny works in the lab, the consortium's observers monitor her progress and place a wager on whether she will submit within forty-eight hours. One of them, an older man named Edmund Roth, knew Karl Swensen personally and reflects that Karl was a brilliant but naive idealist, and that his daughter has an inner fire her father lacked.

Meanwhile, Terry uses the Think Tank M.A.X. helmet to hack directly into the FBI's nationwide computer network, processing hundreds of classified mug sheets in seconds at the cost of a severe headache. She and Eduardo successfully identify Steel Hawk's file. They track Bahkti to a health spa, where Eduardo — wearing the Strong-Arms unit — confronts him. Bahkti's armed crony intervenes, and Eduardo smashes Steel Hawk through furniture and walls. Before Bahkti can be captured, he throws a Molotov cocktail and escapes through the burning building. Terry pulls Eduardo out of the flames.

Back in the lab, the twelve hours expire and Brick is re-activated. Jenny, who secretly kept a tape machine running during the first attack, has recorded the precise deactivation frequency. She blows a whistle built from lab materials that reproduces the signal, freezing Brick in mid-attack, then kicks him down. Edmund Roth steps forward and reveals that the entire ordeal was a loyalty test conducted on behalf of the U.S. government. He formally introduces himself to Jenny, while the colleague who bet against her ruefully notes that he may have just gained a partner.