The trio sped across the treetops, farther and farther away from the riverbed. The Greek continued to pull at his shirt, while pressing the JH 4 pilot for details.
“Do you see any of the crew?”
“No.”
“The girl?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Well . . . something’s with her.”
“Who?”
“Uh . . .”
“Speak up, man! What’s happening?”
“I really think you should see this for yourself.”
“Visual contact,” the JH 1 pilot broke in.
“All right. All right, I’ll take a look.”
The trio of copters came upon their fellow hovering over a patch of avodire trees near a creek. JH 1 moved to its side and the Greek once again broached the Wittenborn subject.
“Look,” replied the JH 4 pilot. “Look for yourself. I saw it going in. It should be coming back out any moment now.”
The Greek looked over and down, trying to keep his view clear. He was planning to rake the JH 4 pilot over the coals again when one of the avodires fell down.
Actually, there was a loud crack and then the top half of one tree went spinning into the open, followed by a fist as big as a boulder.
“What was that?” shouted the Greek. “What was that?”
“I saw a missile,” cried JH 3’s pilot.
“A bazooka?” mused JH 2’s pilot.
“A catapult,” said JH 1’s pilot quietly, with assurance.
A second later, the missile, catapult, or bazooka blasted out of the patch of wood, more powerful than all three put together, and as green as the tree’s leaves.
“Wha’ the . . . ?” said the Greek with unusual lucidity.
The Hulk smashed across the landscape, holding the girl against his chest like a pet cat, while swinging his right fist as if battling the air. The buzzing metal birds enraged him. He had faced such enemies before and they didn’t play fair. They moved down slowly and dropped pain on him, then moved away before he could fight back. But he had a chance this time, because he was smart. He knew something they didn’t know he knew. They didn’t know he had faced their kind before. He was ready for them. They wanted his angel. Let them come and get her. His fist raised in defiance and he roared at them.
“Is that beast familiar in these surroundings?” asked the Greek in amazement. “Is this that thing’s natural habitat? I mean, I’ve never even seen a picture of anything like that!”
“It’s not an ape . . . exactly . . .” said JH 2’s pilot.
“Hey, if there are pygmies around here,” said JH 3’s pilot, “couldn’t this be a sort of opposite tribe? You know, giants as opposed to midgets?”
“Green?” asked JH 4’s pilot incredulously. “Green? Come on!”
Unfortunately for the Greek, not one of the pilots was African. “To hell with definitions!” he screamed into his mike. “This is a reconnaissance, not a wildlife seminar! JH 4, did you see any other members of the crew?”
“No, just the girl and that . . . thing.”
“All right, then let’s move in and get them,” the Greek commanded.
The four aircraft banked in unison and moved after the rampaging Hulk. While they caught up, the Greek called back to the General’s headquarters.
“We’ve located the girl,” he reported.
“Fabulous!” came a voice that nearly blew his eardrums into the center of his head. “Do you have her?”
“Located, I said,” the Greek responded, irritated. “But we’ll have her as soon as we figure out how to handle her, uh, shall we say, companion.”
“What do you mean?” boomed the deep, jolly voice.
The Greek explained, waiting for the inevitable explosion, but, uncommonly, the response was full-throated merriment. “But that is my friend,” said the General. “It is the Hulk. Oh, my, my, my. The last Russian report mentioned an extra guest, but I little imagined . . .”
“But, but, but,” the Greek sputtered. “It’s ten feet tall! It’s green!”
“And I am a different color, too, am I not?” the General raged. “The Hulk and I understand each other. Bring them both in.”
“But . . .”
“Both, I say.” The General signed off by disconnecting his microphone.
“May your olive oil always have pits!” the Greek shouted into the dead mike. “May your ocean dives always meet with rocks! May your cheese always be Limburger!”
“What is it?” inquired the pilot.
“Both,” said the Greek, watching as the four super-powered whirlybirds circled the green beast. If anybody could bring this monster to his knees, it was these babies. “The General wants both of them alive.”
“What are we going to do?” the pilot retorted. “Drop a copter on his head?”
“If we have to. But I think somewhere among all this gadgetry we can figure out a better way.”
The Hulk ran along indefatigably. He was waiting for the metal birds to come lower. And he could wait for a long, long time. The dynamo charged thighs rocked to and fro; the slab-like soles pressed everything in their paths. The free right arm swung independently from his racing momentum, and the jungle shook in rhythm with his lumbering flight. Rosanne held on with her teeth clamped as the sights moved by in a steady stream. The small rivers and brooks the Hulk couldn’t ford by foot, he leaped across. Wild animals for miles around returned to their homes in deference to a superior creature. The Hulk was loose!
He ran and kept on running until he came to what he had been hoping for with his simple cunning. The Hulk slowed and then stopped before a gigantic hill of rock. The stone tower rose above the jungle like an arm of the earth. This was a perfect stage on which to enact his battle! He gently lowered Rosanne between two closely wedged stone slabs, creating a makeshift teepee. With one open palm, he made it clear that she was to stay exactly where she was. He pushed his palm forward still farther. Exactly where she was, no matter what happened. Once he was sure of her understanding, he began to climb the rock mountain.
“Bruce, be careful,” she called after him.
“There he is!” shouted JH 2’s pilot.
The green monstrosity appeared above the lip of the trees, laboriously mounting the stone hill.
“Ah, so he wants a fight, does he?” the Greek said. “A pistachio’s last stand, eh? All right, Mr. Hulk, but remember, you asked for it.” The Greek giggled at the sight of this lime satire of a muscleman. “I knew my tenure with the General was going to be different, but . . .”
He let the sentence drift off as the jet copters moved in.
The Hulk had reached the mountain’s peak and was snorting like a maddened bull as the metal birds whirled around his perch like persistent wasps. The Greek, in the meantime, gave last-minute instructions concerning the plan they had formulated while on the monster’s trail.
“JH 2 and 3, all darts loaded and ready?”
“Ready.”
“Move in.”
Two of the copters tightened their patterns until they were swinging back and forth like pendulums in front of the Hulk. Then, in rhythm, the two began to spit long silver darts dipped in a paralytic agent. The speeding projectiles looked like diamond beams in the equatorial sun as they smashed around the beast’s feet. Stone exploded out like buckshot and the darts ricocheted in a “W” pattern as the jet copters swung by each other. Even as one fired, the other was correcting its aim.
On the next bypass, both pilots were dead on target. The metal arrows flew down on the Hulk with the precision of laser beams. The beast leaned down and let the speeding projectiles bounce off his shoulders and neck like an especially refreshing shower. His cry was one of repellent humor—a hyena’s laugh. The pilots continued to pour it on, but the Hulk’s only response was one of derision. The second time he punched most of the attack away with flailing arms, but the third pass he allowed to catch him full in the chest—to no effect.
<
br /> The two jet copters retreated as the Hulk waved and shouted.
“All right JH 4, you set?” asked the Greek, rolling up his sleeves.
“All set.”
On cue, the two remaining copters swung into their attack patterns. They came in on an “X” pattern over the summit where the green giant was perched. On their screaming approach, Rosanne peeked fearfully out from behind her makeshift shelter. In a second the attack was over. Two bombs sped out from the bottoms of the metal birds and met at the Hulk’s feet as the machines’ paths crossed behind the mountain.
There was a flash, a hollow-sounding explosion, and two huge clouds of thick smoke covered the hilltop like a hunk of cotton candy on a cardboard stick. The smoke reached ever outward, creating ever new formations, but it lost none of its concentration. Just when it seemed about to dissipate at the outer edges, it fell in on itself again, making a more compact, but just as powerful, gas bomb. Rosanne watched in horror as the cloud continued to wrap itself around the peak. The pilots and the Greek held their breath as the smoke billowed and turned.
Then a small shower of rocks dropped out of the bottom of the smoke, followed by the falling form of the Hulk. Rosanne screamed as the body dropped like a dead weight, smashing brutally against an outcropping, rolling with ever-increasing speed, spinning with a bone-shattering crack against a boulder, and then dropping at least twenty feet into a crevice.
“Got him!” the Greek cheered. “JH 2 and 3 land and retrieve the girl. Then we’ll set up some kind of netting for whatever’s left of our green friend.”
The two choppers dropped easily into a clearing just beyond the miniature mountain, their pilots only too eager to comply with the Greek’s orders, now that the monster was vanquished. They landed side by side and the two air jockeys hopped out. As they trotted off to the base of the mound, a boulder the size of an automobile rose out of the crevice. It flew gracefully through the air, and it collided with jet copter number 2 with a crash that was heard jungle-wide. The metal bird crumbled and slid, sprinkling shards and sparks in a triangular trail as it went.
Just as the rock rolled off it, the chopper began to topple over onto its twin. JH 3’s pilot began to run toward his plane, but he thought better of it after the two machines met in a dying embrace. The roto blades split first, bending and cracking, and then the body metal cracked open like fresh eggshells.
“Holy mother of God!” the Greek screamed before the dust had even risen. He held his breath. “Pull back! JH 4, pull back!”
But it was too late. A massive green body bounded up out of the crevice with its eyes bright and its lips pulled back in an evil grin. Its forehead was bunched in an effort to concentrate its monumental power down into its legs. The fourth jet copter began to move away, but it was a second too slow.
The green knees bent, the arms made right angles, and the face was turned toward the sky. Then the fists swung up, the mouth opened to scream, and the legs straightened out. As if in slow motion, the Incredible Hulk rose. The copter seemed to turn to meet him, and in midair the broad hands slapped across its landing gear. The entire craft tilted sickeningly to the right and began to lose altitude.
“Jet thrust!” instructed the Greek in panic, knowing it to be the only way the ship could remain airborne. “Turn on the power!”
The pilot of JH 4 pushed on the air power and the chopper twisted like a caught fish. The Hulk held on. The copter bucked like a wild pony. The Hulk held on. It spun like an insane merry-go-round. The Hulk held on.
“Pull up!” commanded the Greek, hovering above in his own craft. “He’s got to let go when the air gets thin.”
JH 4’s pilot added additional thrust. The copter remained stationary. He turned it up a bit more, but like a truck stuck in the mud, the craft shook and settled back. The engines whined like banshees, but JH 4 didn’t move.
“He’s holding me down!” the pilot cried out in fear. “I can’t get any altitude!”
“That’s impossible!” the Greek called back. “Take it easy. Just try it again.”
The pilot pulled back on his jets and then applied pressure again. The ship shook, but it began to move.
“It’s coming!” he shouted with relief. “It’s working now.” He added more thrust.
“All right. Good,” said the Greek. “Move straight up until the giant suffocates.”
JH 4 moved across the sky on the diagonal.
“Straight! Straight!” repeated the Greek. “Move straight up!”
“I’m trying,” spat the pilot, fear gripping his bones again.
The Hulk’s muscles were twisted into eccentric sculptures across his arms and chest. Sweat poured in rivulets across his torso and down his face. As the copter moved, he moved, seemingly doing chin-ups and body presses on the landing gear. The metal securing the rods and swells to the main body of the craft began to moan softly as the Hulk’s hands were turning the steel into clay.
The chopper continued to struggle upward, but on a diagonal.
“Don’t panic,” the Greek said, trying to remain calm himself. “Just keep coming slowly. You’ll make it. We’ll guide you up.”
The pilot of JH 4 pushed the jet thrust all the way up. The joystick was vibrating in his hand as if possessed by an evil spirit. The copter continued to move laboriously upward, with the green beast securely in tow.
Then the landing gear broke off.
The ship reacted like an arrow loosed from a bow. Still on a diagonal, it shot into the sky with nearly supersonic speed. The Greek had time to scream, but JH 1’s pilot did not have time to get out of the way. The two ships met in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. Their whirling blades sliced across each other’s bodies a split second before the head of one slammed into the side of the other. The resulting crash made the previous collision sound like a paper bag popping open.
And this time, the two planes’ jets were on and the motors were engaged. The friction sparks had running fuel to ignite—which they did, with a vengeance. The midday sun was put to shame by the fireball that engulfed the remains of JH 1 and JH 4. Pieces of the copters were spread from one end of the forest to the other in a perfect circle. The rotted, flaming husks seemed to stall, motionless in the air, for a moment; then they dropped to the ground like shot ducks. The base of the mountain looked like a junk yard on fire.
Rosanne Wittenborn reluctantly left the cover of her stone hut, which had been liberally showered with metal hail. She walked like a zombie to the edge of the four wrecks, and she stood there for a moment.
“Bruce?” she called weakly. “Bruce?”
Smoke curled around one pair of twisted remains, then parted as a huge green man walked slowly out holding a set of landing gear.
Rosanne fell to her knees in hysterical relief, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Bruce . . . oh, Bruce, thank God!”
The beast drew near her and, with a last, confused glance, threw away the heavy set of wheels and rods. He looked down at his tearful angel, who was calling a name he didn’t know.
“Hulk,” he told her, pointing to himself. “Hulk.” Then he laid down at her feet and went to sleep.
Seven
The general was not in a good mood. It was evident not so much from his manner, which would pull Henry VIII up short, or his expression, which was just this side of psychotic, but rather from the fact that he wasn’t breathing. Whenever his cheeks puffed out, his color got purplish, and his head literally vibrated, his closest advisors stayed as far away as possible. They knew he was avoiding thinking about a problem.
And when the General spent his time avoiding a problem, one could be sure the General would be feeling positively foul. At the moment he was stalking through his impeccably outfitted mansion, playing with the veins in his neck, which bulged when he held his breath. He strode through the beautifully designed hallways lined with rare Dutch paintings; he stamped along under the detailed stained-glass skylights; he trudged up the wide marble st
airs. Finally, he moved down a dark blue carpeted hallway to two huge white doors outfitted with large gold doorknobs.
The doors were never latched, and the General simply jarred them open with his shoulder. Inside was a room as large as half a football field. At the twenty-five-yard line, two stairways rose to two balconies which overlooked his kingdom on one side and the jungle on the other. At about the thirty-five-yard line was a huge round table made from the trunk of a tree. Seated around it were uniformed men of almost every nationality, each heavily decorated. And in one corner of the room was a completely self-enclosed laboratory.
Its walls and ceiling were made of clear but extremely powerful plexiglass. Inside were machines that no one around the table could understand. There was a trio of padded chairs outfitted with leather straps on the ends of small cranes. There were rows of what looked like X-ray machines. There were several items that defied description. They would be vaguely familiar to anyone who had ever visited a doctor’s, optometrist’s, or dentist’s office, but the warning labels in eight languages bore witness to the fact that they were anything but beneficial.
Seated quietly in the midst of all the equipment was a crestfallen black man in a tweed suit and sweater vest, perspiring on the plexiglass floor without complaint. The clear box was essentially a prison and the dapper man was the prisoner. The man was Dr. Maxwell Wittenborn.
As he entered the room, the General released his breath and strode across the room like a cocky elephant. His three hundred sixty-five pounds swung back and forth as he bore down on the scene. His tiny features perked up as soon as he saw the captive doctor. He directed his body toward one shiny wall, stopped in Wittenborn’s eye line, and pounded the plastic.
“We’ve got her,” he merrily called in the voice which had been described as a meta-decibel tuba. At the sound of his words, the man within the walls buried his face in his hands. The General spun around and laughed. The heavily curtained walls caught his booming outbursts and buried it in their folds.
Marvel Novel Series 03 - The Incredible Hulk - Cry Of The Beast Page 8