Benjamin 'Ben' Cohen, also known as Archer or Stretch, is a former member of the Mossad assigned to join the Coalition of Minnows, and who now operates for Jack West Jr's team.
History[]
Early History[]
Some time after turning 18, Benjamin Cohen joined the Israeli sniper force known as the Sayaret Matkal, became an expert at sniping and eventually earning the call-sign Archer.
During 1991, Cohen was part of the forces participating in Desert Storm, and he met Jack West Jr during this time. One of his missions was to assassinate Mustapha Zaeed, but Cohen only managed to nick his earlobe, "a rare miss" on his part, as Zaeed later put it.
Sometime between the mid-1990's and 2003, he transferred to the Mossad. It is most likely that Cohen was secretly chipped by the Mossad while he worked for them, if this hadn't already been done to him while he was in the Seyaret Matkal.
In 2003, Cohen was tasked to join Jack and a coalition of small nations in putting together the ancient Capstone, primarily because the Mossad knew that Jack would be more likely to accept Cohen rather than turn him away or kill him on sight.
Once he approached the farmhouse at Victoria Station, Cohen greeted Max Epper, revealing he knew who he was and introduced himself. As Jack confronted him, Cohen told him about his orders to join their team, or else the Mossad would inform their European and American rivals of the mission and the Oracle's daughter, Lily. Though Jack reluctantly agreed to let him join the team, he demanded that Cohen not report back to the Mossad; Cohen was reluctant to accept this at first, but quickly relented.
Though this was at first hard to accept by other team members, particularly the Arabian Pooh Bear, Cohen gave no indication that he cared. He eventually began helping out on the farm, and after several months most of the other members of the team came to accept him (though Zahir remained suspicious of him). After observing Cohen practising his sniping skills on several occasions, Lily came to nickname him Stretch because of his height.
When Lily turned ten, she managed to decipher the first part of the Callimachus text, and soon afterwards Jack led Stretch and the rest of the team to the Sudan to locate the Colossus of Rhodes Piece.
Seven Ancient Wonders[]
The team made their way into the ancient mine, and once the team entered the cavern and initiated the Warblers, Stretch and the others moved to make their way through the Master Snare trap. After Jack and Lily retrieved the Piece, they began their retreat, however Stretch was very nearly brought down by their European pursuers, and it was only because of Pooh Bear that he made it out of the slipway safely. Unfortunately, once they made it back outside, the team was surrounded by Cal Kallis's CIEF team and forced to hand over the Capstone Piece, but luckily they were able to escape on the Halicarnassus.
The team began preparing their next move to recover the Alexandria Lighthouse Piece, and soon Jack located Hamilcar's Refuge in a concealed inlet. They were forced to race against Kallis and Judah's teams through the trap systems to the Refuge, and Stretch bickered with Pooh Bear along the way and accused Jack of killing them all when it appeared they were going to drown in one of the traps. He helped to provide cover fire for Jack, Zoe and Lily as they entered the Refuge and hold Judah's team off to give them a head start. Unfortunately they were unable to retrieve the Piece, and so while Jack pursued the CIEF, Stretch helped to fend their enemies off by firing his sniper at incoming RPGs until they were able to make their escape.
In the wake of their failures, Jack called a team meeting to discuss the difficulties they were having with the clues for the Statue of Zeus and Temple of Artemis Pieces, during which Stretch expressed his disdain and Pooh Bear berated him for his lack of faith in Jack and Epper's ability to solve the issue. Soon, Jack reluctantly decided they needed to liberate Zaeed, who was an expert on the Capstone, from Guantanamo Bay to help them identify the location of the Zeus Piece. Stretch was outraged by this idea, but soon relented and provided details on Zaeed's cell and helped fire rubber bullets at the defending Marines to distract them while Jack and Zoe retrieved the terrorist.
Once they had Zaeed, the terrorist taunted Stretch with his near-miss shot from years earlier and suggested that the Jewish soldier treat him with respect while he was the team's "guest". Soon Zaeed revealed the Zeus Piece was kept unknowingly in the Louvre, Stretch was a part of the team that deployed to Paris to retrieve the Zeus Piece. Stretch drove their stolen double-decker bus through the streets once the Piece was obtained and the measurements from the Paris obelisk noted, at one stage reluctantly following Jack's suggestion to roll the bus over a guard rail to help fend off their pursuers until he purposefully crashed the bus into the river so that team could swim into the maze of catacombs and escape.
Later, after they had landed back at Victoria Station, Stretch and Pooh Bear were in the middle of escorting Zaeed off the Halicarnassus when they suddenly came under fire from the Judah's men, and so the pair took cover on the air-stairs. After Big Ears sacrificed himself to get Lily closer to the air-stairs, Stretch and Pooh Bear both reacted with the same intention to protect Lily by simultaneously breaking cover and firing back at the Americans as they dropped their guard, grabbing Lily and getting themselves onto the Halicarnassus so that they could escape.
With the loss of Big Ears and the Capstone Piece distressing everyone, and the additional revelation that the rest of their team had been captured by the Europeans, and Pooh Bear accused Stretch of selling them out. Before tensions could escalate, Jack ordered them to stop and, rather than give up, decided that they had to locate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and retrieve its Piece.
They soon managed to determine the Gardens' location, however shortly after they got past the first trap they were confronted by a group of Sayaret Matkal led by Avenger, who requested the safe sequence of the rungs from Stretch. Avenger praised him on his work, and apologised for surprising him with their unexpected arrival, while Pooh Bear sarcastically congratulated Stretch for selling them out at their lowest ebb. Lily was confused by Stretch's apparent betrayal, but before he could try and explain himself Avenger ordered the group to make their way to the Capstone Piece. Once Jack and Pooh Bear retrieved the Piece, Avenger cut off their escape and ordered Stretch and the others to head for the alternate exit.
However, when Lily became trapped in the quicksand of the second Well of the Winged Lion, Stretch hesitated to abandon her as Avenger ordered. Instead, he decided to stay with her and allowed her to stand on top of his end as the quicksand rose, while he himself used the barrel of his rifle like a snorkel to breathe until the Americans arrived and reset the trap. Ultimately, Stretch's decision to save Lily saved his own life as he and Lily were taken into Judah's custody, while Avenger's group were executed and their Piece taken by Kallis.
Stretch and Lily were brought by Judah to Luxor, arriving just after the Europeans were ambushed by the CIEF, and were soon reunited with the similarly-captured Epper, Zoe and Fuzzy. Soon afterwards, Stretch, Zoe, Fuzzy were kept in a Black Hawk at the base of the Great Pyramid, to be used as hostages that Judah would order killed if Lily didn't comply to his commands.
During the ritual of power, however, the remainder of the Coalition team assaulted the CIEF on the scaffold from the hovering Halicarnassus, and in the confusion Stretch and the others escaped from their bonds and took control of the Black Hawk, from which Stretch sniped at the CIEF forces on the Pyramid's platform. After the battle was over, Stretch rejoined the rest of the team on the Halicarnassus and, once they had taken the used Capstone, left the area. After Stretch told Lily that he was glad he had taken her side to keep her safe, Pooh Bear made up his quarrel with the Israeli, affirming their new friendship.
In the following weeks after the battle, Stretch assisted Jack in retrieving the Pillar from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and Mirror from the Lighthouse of Alexandria from Hamilcar's Refuge.
Between Seven Ancient Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones[]
Shortly after the Capstone mission concluded, Stretch's superiors learned of his decision to ignore Avenger's order to abandon Lily and instead abandon his countrymen. While it is unclear how this information was discovered, it most likely came up during the meeting of nations that Israel attended following the Capstone mission (Avenger is unlikely to have been able to inform outside operatives before his death). As a result, Stretch was deemed a Category 5 Enemy of the State of Israel, and a 16 million dollar bounty was set up by the Old Master, Mordechai Muniz, for Stretch's capture.
Unable to return to his home country, Stretch often stayed with his former teammates in their home nations, usually staying with Jack and Lily at Jack's farm or with Pooh Bear in Dubai. Though the absence of most of her former guardians, including Stretch, was hard on Lily at first, she in turn took to visiting them whenever possible.
After reflecting on the deaths of Big Ears, Doris and Noddy during the mission, Jack realised that there would always be the risk of being killed without a chance to say goodbye, and so he suggested that Stretch and everybody in the team write an email to be read by him or someone else important to them should they perish during a mission, which he called Messages from the Other Side. Since he and Pooh Bear had become good friends, Stretch also wrote a Message especially for the Arabian.
Stretch later attended the New Year's Eve party held atop the Burj al Arab along with the other members of the team.
The Six Sacred Stones[]
After an attack on Jack's farm by the Chinese military, Stretch and the other Coalition team members were asked to meet up with Jack at the Burj al Arab. Meeting up with Pooh Bear along the way, the pair were greeted by Lily upon their arrival, and waited with the rest of the team until everyone had gathered for the meeting.
Stretch listened as Jack revealed what he had learned from Wizard's notes; a zero-point field referred to as the Dark Star was due to enter the solar system, and unless it was repelled, then its deadly energy would destroy all life on Earth. To this end, they needed to gather six oblong diamonds called Pillars and set them at various locations around the world to rebuild an ancient machine. In order to find the Pillars and Vertices, determine when each Pillar had to be set and cleanse them, they would need to find the Six Sacred Stones. Stretch was skeptical of the reality of such an advanced machine being made by ancient humans, asking if it was alien technology, however Jack couldn't be certain based on Wizard's notes. When the Burj was set to be struck by a plane, Stretch and Astro helped Jack to gather up their notes before being forced to parachute off the building's helicopter pad to safety.
Because Wizard was been held prisoner by the Chinese at Xintan prison, Stretch joined most of the team in preparing to liberate him and Tank. Using one of the Jack's Gull Wings, Stretch landed on top of the prison's transfer train during transit, helping Jack to hijack it and drive it forward as Jack retrieved their friends, before lifting Tank to safety while the train crashed.
Stretch and the others then made their way to Witch Mountain to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone from Laozi's trap system. Stretch teamed up with Pooh Bear's brother Scimitar to navigate the lower path, awaiting Jack, Wizard and Astro's clearance of their traps. As they made their way through the crawling tunnel, Scimitar noted the Old Master's bounty for Stretch's capture and how he wanted to make an example out of him. Stretch replied that he had done what he had out of loyalty to his teammates, including Scimitar's brother, and upon affirming that he would lay down his life for them, questioned what Scimitar believed in. After they encountered the final trap guarding the Philosopher's Stone, Stretch prepared to back Jack up as he raced through the speed-trap to retrieve the sacred stone, and caught hold of his teammate before he fell into the mercury lake.
Reuniting with Zoe, Lily, Alby Calvin and Julius and Lachlan Adamson at Mortimer Island, Stretch joined the procession as they identified the location of the First Vertex at Abu Simbel, learned the Pillar-laying dates from the Killing Stone of the Maya (to which Stretch dryly remarked on how close they were cutting it to the deadline for the First Pillar), and cleansed the two Pillars they had with the Philosopher's Stone. With the first components they needed in hand, Stretch joined the rest of the team as they headed out to lay the First Pillar.
While the team went to lay the Pillar, Stretch remained onboard the Halicarnassus with Sky Monster, but soon they noticed an invading force heading towards them. After they eventually made contact with Jack to warn them and prepare a pickup, Stretch was dropped in a Land Rover near the team's location to drive them to the nearby highway. In the course of the ensuing chase, Stretch helped to fight off their assailants, but soon Jack realised that they would not make it onto the Hali in time and ordered Sky Monster to take off without him, Stretch and Astro. As they reluctantly took off, Stretch, Jack and Astro were surrounded by the enemy, knocked unconscious and captured.
Along with the rest of his captured teammates, Stretch was taken to an Ethiopian mine run by Jack's father Wolf, who was leading their opposition, however Stretch was kept separated from others. It was revealed to Pooh Bear by the traitorous Scimitar that Wolf intended to send Stretch back to Israel so that the Old Master could deal with him appropriately.
After Jack and Pooh Bear later escaped, Pooh Bear resolved to find and save his friend from the Mossad.
The Five Greatest Warriors[]
While his teammates were being held captive in the mine, Stretch was kept tied up and blindfolded in a truck outside. When Wolf returned, he mocked Stretch regarding his choices to stand by his friends rather than his nation before informing him of his decision to take him to the Old Master.
Stretch was personally taken by Wolf to Muniz's headquarters at the Dimona Nuclear Research Centre, awakening after the journey's end to find himself being imprisoned in a tank filled with formaldehyde. Muniz told him that his punishment would be worse than death, and would be forced to suffer inside the tank and never be allowed out.
Nearly two months after being imprisoned in his tank, Pooh Bear figured out where Stretch was being held and broke into the facility to try and free him, only for Muniz to paralyse him and told Stretch that he would get a rare event in watching Pooh Bear die. But then Jack and Zoe attacked the facility, freed Stretch and escaped with him and Pooh Bear to an old salt mine, where Jack had them traverse it to safety while he tricked the Israeli forces into believing they were trying to escape another way. When it was over, the sickly Stretch was looked after by his teammates, and thanked Jack and the others for rescuing him.
Once the whole team was reunited at Sea Ranger's base in Zanzibar to prepare their next move, Diane Cassidy suggested they focus their research on a prophecy in which five figures throughout history known as the Five Greatest Warriors would affect the Machine, the Pillars and the Vertices. As Cassidy explained, Moses, Jesus Christ, Genghis Khan and Napoléon Bonaparte all fit the descriptions in the prophecy, while the Fifth Warrior was unknown and set to be present during the Dark Star's return. Cassidy's suggestion turned out to be quite fruitful, and Stretch, even as he slowly began recovering from his time in the Living Tombs, helped the rest of the team research the Five Warriors' connections to the Machine over the next two months.
After Alby's investigations into Napoléon led him to discover that the final Sacred Stone, the Basin of Rameses II, was at the British Museum under a different name, Stretch, Pooh Bear, and then twins were dispatched to London to steal the Basin. As the twins snuck the Basin out in the commotion Pooh Bear caused, Stretch waited in a nearby van and drove away once they had obtained the Stone. When they finally got in touch with the rest of the team, Stretch and the others were saddened to hear of Wizard's death in Mongolia, and Jack set them the task of locating the Spring of the Black Poplar to obtain the water they needed in the Basin.
Stretch and the others made their way to Loch Ness, where some research into Isaac Newton suggested the Spring resided. After nearly a week, they finally found the Spring of the Black Poplar and collected enough of its water to give the remaining Pillars their second cleansing. Despite the lack of word from Jack's team since the laying of the third Pillar, Stretch and the others began making their way back to London. However, moments after Julius uncovered the Fourth Vertex's location, their train was halted and Royal Marines led by Iolanthe Compton-Jones moved in to surround the group.
Stating she was only there as a messenger, Iolanthe established a video-call to Siberia, and Stretch and the others learned that the Russian royal Carnivore had imprisoned most of the people involved in the Machine's restoration, including Jack's team. Carnivore revealed his intention to take the Pillars and their rewards and manipulate everyone else into completing the Machine's restoration for him, offering them the chance to free Sheik Abbas, Alby, Lois, Zoe and Astro if Stretch and his team placed the Fourth Pillar and gave it to his British relatives.
Reluctantly agreeing to Carnivore's demands, Stretch and the others were escorted to Lundy Island by Iolanthe's Marines and made their way into the Vertex. However, as he and Pooh Bear were figuring out the trap system, they got caught on a separate ledge and forced to guide Julius and Lachlan down to the inverted pyramid's peak, which Stretch complained about due to their comparative lack of fitness. Once the Pillar was laid, Stretch and his teammates left the Vertex, and were surprised to find themselves being rescued by their Irish liaison Cieran Kincaid.
Establishing contact with Jack, they made plans to reunite and find the Tomb of Jesus Christ to recover the final Pillar before Scimitar, Vulture or Mao Gongli. Upon arrival in the Dead Sea, Stretch and the others found the Halicarnassus and disabled the guards before he and Pooh Bear made their way into the abandoned Roman salt mine. Following Jack's trail of glowsticks, they soon found their teammates at Vulture and Scimitar's mercy. Engaging Vulture in close-combat, Stretch was outmatched by the Saudi, worsened by his continued sickly health after being entombed by Muniz, and was soon stabbed brutally in the back and manacled to an old slave wheel. Luckily Pooh Bear was able to overcome their foes and release Stretch and the others.
Jack, Lily and Iolanthe helped the injured Pooh Bear and Stretch out of the mine, only to find that Carnivore and his forces were waiting for them at the Halicarnassus, led their by Kincaid. In his injured state, Stretch could do nothing to stop Carnivore from taking the final Pillar and Lily, and once Jack had patched up the team as best he could, opted to head to the final Vertex on Easter Island himself. Stretch watched with the others as Jack took flight on the damaged Halicarnassus, and then they prepared to make their way back to civilisation.
Despite his injury, Stretch joined Pooh Bear and the others in venturing to Carnivore's base and releasing the captives from the Living Tombs. A few weeks later, Stretch was present to watch as Jack and Zoe got married in a small civil ceremony.
Between The Five Greatest Warriors and The Four Legendary Kingdoms[]
During the course of the next eight years, the members of the Coalition team continued largely as they had before, returning to their home nation (aside from Stretch, who continued to stay with other members of the team) while making the odd visit to one another. At some point during this time, Stretch met Jack's mother Mae Merriweather, who couldn't help but comment on his thinness and suggested he eat more.
In 2016, after Jack's presence was requested at Pine Gap for his expertise in relation to something they had discovered through the Square Kilometer Array, Stretch and Pooh Bear agreed to meet Jack and the others there as soon as they could.
The Four Legendary Kingdoms[]
Immediately upon their arrival at Pine Gap, Stretch and Pooh Bear noticed that the Sky Warrior wasn't present and that there were no guards anywhere. Upon entering the main building they found several dead guards and the body of General Eric Abrahamson, but there was no sign of Jack or the others. After Stretch detected the odor of chloroxipham in the air, they searched the base for any messages Jack might have left them, finding a spoon with a symbol and the initials for Jack's mother on it. Realising that Jack meant for them to seek Mabel out, Stretch and Pooh Bear opted to go and speak with her before they could be delayed by authorities that might question them, but before first recovered the injured Horus.
As they journeyed to Broome, Stretch and Pooh Bear looked the GoPro footage Horus had captured with the camera on her neck, discovering that Iolanthe was behind the capture of Jack and the others. After leaving Horus at an animal shelter, the pair went to speak with Mae, and when she spied them she again commented on Stretch's thinness. After explaining the situation and showing her the symbol, Mae explained to Stretch and Pooh Bear her life-long study into the shadow rulers of the world known as the Four Legendary Kingdoms, which she suspected included the Deus Rex line Iolanthe belonged to, and that the symbol matched a galaxy Isaac Newton had theorised the existence of.
During their research into the Hydra galaxy symbol, the trio briefly discussed the birdman races of Easter Island and how they may have been influenced by a set of ancient great games. After Pooh Bear brought up information regarding Anthony DeSaxe, Mae revealed her suspicion that the DeSaxe's were members of one of the Four Kingdoms. Upon looking at tapped phone transcripts regarding DeSaxe, Stretch and the others discovered that DeSaxe had recently spoken to Iolanthe regarding a substitute in the great games, and concluded that Jack and the others had somehow been roped into a modern set of great games. Needing to find out where the games were taking place, Mae suggested they visit the blood antiquities dealer Sunil Malik.
Upon arrival in Karachi, Stretch monitored Pooh Bear and Mae from a nearby building as they approached Malik's mansion. When Malik turned on them, Stretch covered Pooh Bear and Mae's escape through the streets by sniping at the target killers until they reached him. As they went over the information they had gathered thanks to Malik, Mae concluded that with the Underworld's suspected location being on land owned by DeSaxe that he was the modern-day Hades, and so the group prepared to make their way there.
After arriving in northwest India, Stretch and the others began searching along the coastline for signs of an entrance to the Underworld, eventually coming across Alby, Sky Monster and others being harassed by a chopper. After bringing it down, Stretch and the others reunited with their friends and their new allies, who explained that Jack had been forced to participate in the Great Games of the Hydra and that he and Lily were still in the Underworld. After Alby came up with a plan to get an army of minotaurs to aid them in getting their friends back, Stretch and Pooh Bear helped Sky Monster repair the chopper and flew on to the Underworld.
Arriving just as the ceremony to divert the Hydra galaxy was underway, once Sky Monster brought down the camouflage netting covering the Underworld and the relay antennae linked to an explosive in Jack's neck, Stretch and Pooh Bear manned the guns and fired at the mountain while their others joined the minotaurs in locating Jack and Lily. Once they and their other allies had been recovered, they journeyed on to the mine where the Sky Warrior was parked, and from there Stretch and the others proceeded on to the West farm to recover from the ordeal.
The Three Secret Cities[]
After a brief catch-up between the group and Zoe, Stretch and Pooh Bear headed back to Dubai, agreeing to take Iolanthe with them along the way.
A few days later, as the rest of the team was en-route to New York, Hades received a message from Minotus that a silver coffin had opened and unleashed a monstrous "bronze man" that was attacking the minotaurs. Since his friends were closer, Jack tasked Stretch and Pooh Bear with going to the Underworld to investigate.
Upon arriving at the Underworld, Stretch and Pooh Bear were led to Minotus, who explained to the pair that they had managed to trap the bronze man, at the loss of 150 minotaurs. When he gazed upon the inhuman-looking automaton, Stretch stared at it in shock. Minotus added that to every person it met, the bronze man asked them a question in an unknown language and killed everyone who failed to answer. Having a suspicion, Stretch called Lily and goaded the automaton to speak its question, asking Lily if it was speaking Thoth. Lily confirmed and translated the bronze man's question, "Are you my master?", leading Jack to recall that an army of these Bronze Guardians was a reward for the King who was supposed to receive the Mysteries. As Minotus confirmed that there were hundreds more of the silver coffins containing the bronzemen, Jack instructed Stretch and the others to do what they could to prevent the rest of the silver coffins in the Underworld from opening.
After eventually managing to do so, Stretch and Pooh Bear were called up by Zoe to help rescue Jack, who had been imprisoned in the Royal Prison of Erebus by the Four Kingdoms for his actions at the Great Games. Together the trio infiltrated the area by swimming up the Algerian coastline in the hopes of avoiding any detection systems. As they found Jack embedded in stone and prepared to set him free, Yago DeSaxe and his guards revealed they had been aware of their approach, and informed them that they had earned their own place on the Wall of Misery. Luckily help arrived completely unexpected when a man dropped in and took down all of the guards single-handedly. Introducing himself as bounty hunter Aloysius Knight, an old friend of Scarecrow's who had asked him to help Jack, he helped Stretch and the others free Jack and Hades from their slabs.
Once Jack asserted that they would next rescue Lily and Alby from the Knights of the Golden Eight's base at Aragon Castle, Stretch joined the assault. Following Knight's suggestion for a shock-and-awe approach, Stretch and Pooh Bear took up a risky task by sitting in a Challenger 2 similar to the one the Knights had recently used in London as it was dropped by parachute onto the island. Landing as the rest of the team began their assault, Stretch and Pooh Bear dove to where Alby's cage had been dropped, rescuing the young man before he could drown.
With Lily having being taken by the Trismagi Sphinx and the Trial of the Cities still needing to be completed, Stretch joined the rest of the team in setting out to reach the Cities and ensuring the Immortal Weapons were empowered in case Orlando's people failed. Flown to Iceland by Sky Monster, Stretch and Pooh Bear planned to locate the Secret City of Thule using the coordinates Iolanthe, Mae and Nobody has obtained from Francis Drake's coffin.
After convincing the Trismagi watchman Sir Bjorn to let them pass, Stretch and Pooh Bear entered Thule and observed the situation, seeing Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza and his Swiss Guards trapped between hundreds of Bronze Guardians and a few silver ones on a cupola preceding the City's vault. While Pooh Bear lamented about not having a Maghook to help get them past the Bronze Guardians, Stretch instead came up with the idea to climb around the outside of the battlements to make their way down to the bridge.
Having been informed by Jack that the Weapons were the key to getting past the Silver Guardians, Stretch took the Sword of the Rock from Mendoza and engaged the Guardians, with Pooh Bear defending him as Stretch brought down the first three automatons. But when the Israeli was cut badly by the final Guardian, Pooh Bear took up the Sword and finished it off. Though Pooh Bear demanded Mendoza treat Stretch's wounds, by the time Pooh Bear returned with the empowered Sword, Mendoza and his remaining Swiss Guards threatened to kill Stretch unless he handed over the Sword. After reluctantly giving up the Sword, Mendoza left Stretch be as he and his remaining men departed with the Weapon.
Unfortunately, Jack was too late to prevent Sphinx and his associates from sacrificing Lily on the Altar of the Cosmos. A couple of days after the trial had concluded, Stretch, Alby and Pooh Bear made their way to the Altar with the intention of retrieving Lily's body to give her a proper burial. Alby and Stretch kept watch as Pooh Bear carefully chiseled off the stone around Lily's face, but soon Pooh Bear was surprised by something he found, and happily asked for his friends to call Jack immediately.
The Two Lost Mountains[]
As Pooh Bear discovered, it was Alexander's body in the sacrificial pool at the Altar of the Cosmos and not Lily's, and so, after they extracted the abandoned Immortal Weapons and rendezvoused with the rest of the team at Hades's Estate, they began using facial recognition software to comb the world's security cameras in the hope of finding Lily. Over the next few weeks, working on the Weapons in the hope of finding ways to counter Sphinx's new army of bronze and silver automatons. Stretch spent hours using a grinder to get slivers of the Sword's blade off while Easton affixed them onto numerous bullets and shotgun shells, in the hope that the metal that the Sword's blade was made from would enable them to penetrate the armour of the automatons.
After a few weeks, Lily was discovered to be is Moscow, and so Stretch, Pooh Bear and Sky Monster set off for Russia in the Sky Warrior, with Jack, Knight and Alby intending to catch up. Once they arrived over Moscow, Stretch borrowed Jack's Gull Wings and used them to to glide down to Red Square, with the Israeli noting the numerous comatose bodies before coming across Lily. As he undid her bonds and removed her gag, Lily warned Stretch that he shouldn't have come for her since it was a trap. Jaeger Zwei, who was observing and unable to see Stretch's face, assumed he was Jack and reported in to Jaeger Eins, who had Sphinx's Chinook, carrying a Siren bell, rise up. Knowing that there was nothing they could do to keep from entering the Siren sleep, Lily begged for Stretch to warn Sky Monster and Pooh Bear to put the Sky Warrior on autopilot and don noise-cancelling headphones while she wrote out a warning for Jack before she and a confused Stretch succumbed to the bell's effect.
Not long after Jack arrived and found the catatonic Stretch and Lily, several of Sphinx's bronzemen were deployed, and Jack and Alby struggled to get the unconscious Stretch, Lily and Knight to safety, but eventually managed to escape.
Stretch was taken back to Hades's estate, where he, Lily and Knight were given IVs to keep them nourished, with Alby and Easton remaining at the estate to look after them while the rest of the team set out to begin the Trial of the Mountains.
When Yago and his contingent of bronzemen arrived, Alby and Easton rushed to get Stretch and the others out before they could be captured.
After it was determined that Dr Tracy Smith might be the team's best chance to awaken Stretch, Lily and Knight from the Siren sleep, Zoe and Sister Lynda Fadel took them to the field hospital in Aleppo, where the doctor agreed to help. Once Lily was awoken thanks to a synthetic endolymph fluid injected into her ears, Stretch and Knight were also treated and awoken as the team headed to Jerusalem to catch up to Jack.
Arriving not long after Jaeger Zwei used a Siren bell to put Jack, Pooh Bear and Easton to sleep, Stretch, Lily, Zoe and Knight fended off the bronzemen before awakening Jack.
Once the team arrived in Egypt so that Jack, Lily and Zoe could undertake the Fall at the final iron mountain beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza, Stretch and Pooh Bear joined them as they drove as police cruiser to the Sphinx. As they approached the monolith and heard radio chatter from the Order of the Omega monks, Stretch looked up breaking news when the monks in Arizona were cut off, discovering a report on a nuclear explosion. As the West family headed in to perform the Fall, Stretch and Pooh Bear remained up top by the Sphinx to guard the entrance.
Once Jack, Lily, Jack and Zoe received the burning key needed for entrance into the Supreme Labyrinth and the team began preparations to break through Sphinx's defences at the gates, Jack took Stretch and Pooh Bear aside and tasked them, Lynda and Tracy with finding out what the Four Legendary Kingdoms were planning for after the Omega Event, since they might not all support Sphinx. Stretch encouraged Jack to not think that he would not survive the Labyrinth when he insisted on giving them his Message from the Other Side, but after hearing Jack out, the usually-stoic Stretch hugged his friend before watching the rest of the team head off for the Supreme Labyrinth.
The One Impossible Labyrinth[]
To begin their mission to discover the Four Kingdoms' plans, Stretch, Pooh Bear, Tracy and Lynda made their way to a U.S. base in Bavaria, where they began working to intercept communications between the shadow royals. Eventually, Stretch was able to intercept enough calls between the royals to understand what they were up to, reporting to to the rest of his team that their enemies were enacting a refuge plan called the Storm Cellar Protocol, in which royal families given approval by Sphinx's underlings were to head to one of three shelters to wait out the chaos occurring because of the Omega Event. Soon they determined that the man in charge of the affair, Sir John Marren, was the Four Kingdoms' royal banker and an old friend of Sphinx's, and so Pooh suggested to his allies that they kidnap him to get more information.
Stretch and Pooh Bear went to Salzburg and laid in wait in a limousine for Marren to arrive at the Salzburg Airport, with the former waiting by their stolen limousine's door as Marren approached, assuming Stretch to be his intended driver. Once Marren was in the limo and Pooh had him at gunpoint, Stretch swiftly drove back to their plane, with the group taking off before anyone realised what was going on.
Stretch's team landed in Lyon and began heading to Marseille by road in a police van to throw off any pursuers and obtain a less conspicuous airport to reach the United States. Marren raged at Stretch and the others, assuring them that he would have them tortured and begging for death once he was rescued, though Stretch ignored the barbs and questioned the meaning of the transition mentioned in the phone intercepts, learning of the nature of the world Sphinx intended to rule. Once he had Marren confirm that he possessed a master list with all of the royal families of the Four Kingdoms and their loyalists, Stretch asked to see the list, but Marren refused and insisted that they were idealists who would fail.
Once they had acquired a new plane and set course to Washington, D.C., the team prepared to wait out the journey, and though Stretch suspected that Marren still had a means of contacting his allies, he decided to allow the royal banker the opportunity so that they could learn where their enemies were based out of. Soon he and Lynda were surprised as they found Pooh Bear and Tracy deep in conversation, both amused and glad to see them getting along so well. Stretch assured Lynda that his friend was the last true gentleman on Earth and that he was indeed single. Their discussion was rudely interrupted as their plane was remotely hacked and their course changed, as Stretch's assumption about Marren panned out.
As they neared their new destination at the Raven Rock base - where some of the Four Kingdoms were sheltering - Stretch and the others began preparing a plan to turn the tables on their enemies. After they had landed and sent Marren out, Lynda marveled at Stretch's prediction about Marren and the Four Kingdoms' actions in bringing them to Raven Rock, though Stretch wryly remarked to Lynda that he'd hoped he'd be wrong. Once he confirmed they were ready, Stretch had Pooh Bear detonate some explosives and destroy the plane. As the Golden Knight and Delta commandos were caught off-guard, the quartet leapt into action and started firing on their enemies, and during the brief fire-fight Stretch took down the Knight, allowing Pooh Bear to take his Ring of Command and usurp control of the battalion of bronzemen present.
Taking the master list from Marren's body, Stretch and the rest of the team then used their bronzemen to roll a Siren bell into the base and had it rung, sending the families of the Four Kingdoms taking shelter within into the siren sleep. They were soon contacted by the rest of the team, learning that Jack had successfully thwarted the Omega Event, and Stretch relayed how his team had used the Siren bell to put the royals to sleep.
As the world got back to normal in the aftermath of the events of the trials and Sphinx's actions, Stretch later served as Pooh Bear's best man during the wedding between Pooh and Tracy.
Personality[]
A dry humour and slightly dreary personality has been Stretch's staple even before his introduction to the team, a trait he has never let go of but has diminished over the years. Stretch has been the most isolated of the group since his assignment to them came late in the mission to look after Lily. Though he had no problem with even as the rest of them team slowly came to accept him, after three years alongside them, Stretch eventually came to realise that he cared deeply for them, especially Lily, whom he opted to rescue over following his country's orders.
Though at first he lacked of faith in other members of the team, occasionally questioning their decisions and believing their actions would be the death of him, Stretch now trusts them with his life. Among the most drastic of the changes his friendship with Pooh Bear, going from constantly bickering allies to close friends despite the prejudice and differences their rival upbringings that caused them to initially clash.
Skills[]
- Expert Combatant: As a former soldier in the Sayaret Matkal, Stretch has been trained in several forms of hand-to-hand combat. While he is an accomplished fighter, Stretch's skills were overshadowed by Vulture during the skirmish in the Roman salt mine, due in part to Stretch still recovering from his imprisonment in the Living Tomb. He was also able to cut down three of the silvermen with ease at Thule before being brought down by the final silverman.
- Expert Marksman: Being a trained soldier, Stretch is a highly accurate marksman and capable of using a variety of different firearms. Due to being a former member of the Sayaret Matkal, he is also proficiently skilled in using a sniper rifle to hit long-distance targets. He was even able to quickly take aim and fire upon RPGs being fired at his position from a considerable distance with ease.
Equipment[]
Weapons[]
- Barrett Sniper Rifle: .
- Sword of the Rock: One of the Three Immortal Weapons needed to empowered at Thule, Stretch used the Sword to take on the Silver Guardians baring the way, dispatching three of the four Guardians himself before being injured and forcing Pooh Bear to finish the last one off.
Vehicles[]
- Airbus A340-200: An airliner belonging to the President of Egypt, which Stretch and the others took to transport themselves to Europe during their mission, but later left behind due to the need to be inconspicuous.
- Air France 737: A French airliner which Stretch and the others in his team used to cross from Europe to the United States. After being forced to land at Raven Rock, Stretch's team disembarked the plane, at which point Pooh Bear then blew up the plane to catch their enemies off-guard.
Other Equipment[]
- Gull Wings: A carbon-fiber wingsuit used for reconnaissance, stealth infiltration and rescue operations. Stretch first used one during the rescue of Wizard and Tank from the Xintan prison train, using it to break into the train's cab and carry Tank to safety once the train derailed. Stretch next used a pair of Jack's gull wings to glide down from the Sky Warrior down to Moscow's Red Square during the mission to rescue Lily, although his use of it led Jaeger Zwei to mistake him for Jack.
- Siren Bell: One of the 14 bells that can induce a catatonic sleep-like state, which Stretch and Pooh Bear took control of while at Raven Rock, and used to knock out the gathered royals taking shelter within the base's bunker.
Trivia[]
- The name Benjamin is traditionally given to the youngest son of a family.
- Stretch earned his nickname from Lily due to his tall and thin appearance.
- Stretch, along with Jack, Lily, Zoe, Sky Monster, and Pooh Bear, is among the few characters who have appeared in every novel in the Jack West Jr Series.