“Wow?”
“What?”
“Is it a rescue?”
“What wow?”
“What’s going on?”
“Hey!”
Brad lowered himself and pulled them toward the opposite bars.
“The General’s mansion is lit up like a power company,” he whispered conspiratorially. “And beyond that is a fully outfitted airport—a small one, but one that seems to be awfully busy right now.”
“Wittenborn,” Banner muttered.
Then it was Brad’s turn to exclaim. “What?”
Bruce looked into eyes of molten lava. “Nothing,” he said hastily in defense.
“No, come on, Bruce,” Brad said in a whisper to the doctor. “What do you know about Dr. Wittenborn?”
Banner grabbed the agent’s arms in sudden kinship, unavoidably pulling Jackie’s wrist into his ribs.
“Ouch,” he said. “Sorry.”
The girl nodded absently. He returned his attention to Brad. “Who are you?” he demanded with sudden vehement concern.
“Don’t mind me, Banner,” the man smirked. “I am no one. Just a Joe on a job. Who are you?”
“I’m a doctor,” Banner blurted out, completely trusting these people who shared his predicament. “I know Wittenborn—or, at least, of his work.”
“How well?”
“Very well. Verbatim—the written material, at least.”
“You don’t know what he’s working on now?”
“No, but I feel it must be something involved with gamma radiation. He had already announced to the field that he was through with neutronics.”
“Gamma? Is that worse?” interjected Morry.
Banner turned to him, his voice deadly earnest. “In the right dose, much worse. Believe me, much worse.” He felt Brad’s hand constrict on his arm again, but with a far more painful pressure this time. He hastily spun back, a hurt question forming.
“Don’t panic them,” Brad said to his ears only. “They’re in deep enough as it is.” He paused, as if negotiating with his brain, and he came to a fast decision. “Listen, Doc, you’re a good egg. I’m going to do my best to get us out of here. You hear me? All of us. I’ll need your help. When I make my move, you get them out of here. Move for the airport runway and keep moving. Do what you have to, but get out of here. And the best of luck. Do we understand each other?”
Banner looked the man up and down. The muscular body was covered only in a pair of dirty shorts. He was unkempt, smelly, and fairly thin, but somehow Banner knew he had to trust him.
“Yes,” he said. “We understand each other.”
Brad nodded and released his arm.
At that moment, the main door at the other end of the room swung open. More light and guards poured in. Each wore two holstered guns and carried an electric prod in his hand. They swept from cell to cell in their spotlessly pressed uniforms, rattling the bars with their high-voltage clubs. Anyone unfortunate enough to have been leaning on the bars or sleeping with his chains against the metal was brutally awakened.
The warders shouted things in the universal language of terror. Before half a minute had passed, all thirty-one captives had reached their feet in wide-eyed fear. As soon as the guards were positive everyone displayed the proper amount of petrified respect, they lined up in two ranks of ten on either side of the main doorway. They reached a lethargic stance of attention and a man just to the right of the entrance shouted in a guttural voice.
Sweeping through the opening came the living mass of dark gristle know as the General. His crimson uniform was heavy with bright decorations of every color on both breasts. His torso was just a bit too small for his medicine ball of a head, but this only made him more grandoise. In one hand he carried a solid gold staff which reflected the mansion’s bright beams, as did his boots’ silver buckles and the array of buttons lining his jacket.
His hands were encased in spotless leather gloves of deep black. He looked like a Five-Star General of Death. The hands quivered and rose up. Slowly, deliberately, the General pointed to one person in each of the five cages. The line of guards ran forward to do his bidding as each victim was singled out. The screaming, cuffing, scuffling, and moaning had just diminished when the huge red-clothed arm moved up again.
Three more people were torn from their fellows, and the total of eight prisoners were joined at the wrists, necks, and ankles. Among them were Beverly and Bruce Banner. As they were pathetically marched out, Bruce turned to look back. Bradford Curtiss’s expression was empty, but his eyes held a solemn promise—a promise, Banner realized, that he was ready to die for.
The party was in full swing when the captives arrived. The fifty-yard-long throne room was brimming with delirious revelers, who were drinking huge magnums of champagne, tooting little silver horns, and hurling their glasses into an enormous fireplace. There was even a corner where a shooting gallery had been set up.
The only place in the massive hall that was not a site of celebration was a gigantic plexiglass box that sat on the far side. Filled to the brim with scientific machinery, it was a hollow reminder of sanity amidst the madness that raged on three sides of it. The eight slaves were marched in a satiric procession across the slick marble-covered floor.
They passed the huge blocks of stairwells on either side. They saw the quiet expanse of the African night beyond the open balconies. They saw the huge tree table, and the drunken faces swirling by them as if warped in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Feet appeared to trip them. Toes poked their shins. Wine slopped across their torsos. Spittle rained across their heads. The guards screamed and gave out mock orders, strutting like toy Hitlers.
Finally, they were dragged before a tarpaulin covering a structure that reached up fifteen feet. They were turned to face the jeering crowd, which gathered before them like an expectant audience at an ancient Roman game. Banner turned and looked into the plastic cage. Sitting in the midst of the metal, looking like a zombie, was Maxwell Wittenborn. He met Bruce’s gaze for a moment and then turned away.
Banner also turned. He was on the end of the chained line and had to lean back to see clearly. There at the head of the huge wooden table was a massive, golden throne. It was carved in glorious detail and outfitted in red velvet and black leather. Seated on it, her head spotlighted by a circle of soft crimson, was Rosanne.
She was dressed simply in a long white robe. Her head twisted and her eyes screwed shut, but it wasn’t because she had spotted Banner. Bruce saw her fingers curl above the lip of the table and her upper arm muscles bunch. He realized that she was strapped to the arms of the chair. A harsh cry snapped his attention back to what lay before him. A high-ranking government official, resplendent in a perfectly tailored three-piece pinstriped suit, was addressing the gathered dignitaries, soldiers, representatives, rowdies, and floozies.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” were his first words. “We present the entertainment of the evening. For a truly fitting convocation, I give you the leader of all leaders, the ruler of all rulers, the master of all masters, everyone’s commanding officer, the General!”
That buffoonery over, the real farce began. The General moved ponderously forward with an expression which was meant to demand attention, but which actually made it look like he had a bad case of gas. A monumental ovation accompanied his approach, one that shook the hall and stung the shackled people’s ears. Then a black hand rose and the cheer subsided like a tape recorder being shut off.
“Gathered friends,” the General said in his best Sunday voice, “this is a momentous occasion. I will not go into ponderous detail, but you have been chosen to witness a night which will change the course of history.”
Things are proceeding according to form, Banner thought. Every power-mad demon played to the same tune.
“Tonight is the beginning of a reign never before witnessed in this puny world. Tonight I will prove . . . with a little might”—one gloved hand reached for the ceiling—“and a little genius�
�—the other hand flew up across from its opposite—“that the General can bring the planet Earth to its knees!” The two palms slapped together with an echoing bang and slammed down onto the head of an invisible enemy.
The gathered throng reacted like a drag-crazed rock-concert audience getting a first glimpse of their idols. It wasn’t serious to them, Banner realized. They were just watching a favorite entertainer.
“Behold!” said the man of the hour. One hand gripped the tarpaulin and pulled. The cover fell in a dusty heap at the slaves’ feet and the crowd gasped. For there, in the midst of them, was another plexiglass box with an almost exact recreation of a middle-class American living room, circa 1979.
There was the couch which could be pulled out into a convertible bed. There were the rows of bookshelves with the encyclopedia, the dictionary, and a set of gilt-lettered, leather-bound classics. There was the artificial wood paneling and the fake stone chimney surrounding a fireplace that didn’t work. There was the plush recliner chair placed one inch from the clear wall. There was the stereo component set with the long row of records. There was the twenty-five-inch color television in the oak-simulated frame. There were the card table and the standing lamps and the white Touch-Tone telephone and the glass ashtrays and the ceramic coasters.
A chill ran up Banner’s spine and across his entire body. He got the awful feeling that the true nightmare was only about to begin.
Bradford Curtiss moaned. It was a soul-shaking rattle of woe that came from his lips, one that was as professionally perfect as he could make it. If done exactly as taught on the fourth floor of the Boston, Massachusetts, training center, no one, no matter what his nationality, could believe you weren’t suffering from at least a ruptured spleen or appendicitis.
Sure enough, the remainder of his companions looked over at him in concern. Kelli raised her head from Morry’s shoulder. Jackie placed a tentative hand on his leg. He moaned again.
“Hey, Brad,” Jackie said, “what’s the matter?”
Curtiss let the exclamation wheeze off.
“Hey, he’s sick,” said Morry.
Curtiss added a slight groan.
“Hey, I said he’s sick!” Morry shouted.
Curtiss started to gag.
“Hey! Hey, he’s sick!” Morry bellowed. “Somebody get in here! He’s sick!”
As best as they could in their chained position, they made a racket. Their feet pounded, and the ones who could reach them rattled their metal links against the bars. Curtiss continued to add counterpoint to the clatter by howling unbearably. Luckily, a few guards were conscious or he might have been performing all night. Three came in angrily, looking into the different cages, their eyes bloodshot.
They finally spotted Curtiss’s prone body and Morry’s frenetic gesturing. They grouped outside the bars and stared like it was the monkey cage at the Bronx Zoo.
“Hey!” Morry exploded. “Hey, hey, hey, you! Hey, come on! He’s sick! Can’t you see that?” Curtiss moaned his most realistic moan.
The man in the middle of the guard trio turned his head and spat behind him. He grimaced, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and drawled in a language only his fellows—and Curtiss—could understand.
“The General don’t need these people anymore, anyway. Take the guy out and kill him.”
Bradford groaned really realistically.
“Make it quiet,” said the guard as an afterthought. “We don’t want to panic his friends.” He grinned, displaying his tobacco-stained teeth. The two other guards quickly unlocked the cage and moved in, anxious to do their superior’s bidding. Morry moved sullenly back as keys were fitted into Curtiss’s lead necklace and bracelets. The locks clicked open.
Then one warder grabbed his legs while the other took his shoulders. They began to haul him out.
“Be careful,” said Jackie. “He could have appendicitis.”
“Good luck, Brad,” called Kelli.
The three remaining in the cage huddled together, their faces as gray and blank as headstones. Curtiss rolled his eyes up for a quick last look. Then he moaned again and curled a hand across his face as the jail cell door slammed shut with an empty clang.
The three guards took him into the hallway, practically licking their lips in anticipation. As they laid him down on the tile floor and conferred how best to end his life, Bradford Curtiss, supposedly in great pain, did a very strange thing.
He picked his nose.
One smiling guard turned back to him, screwing a silencer onto his service revolver. They had decided to put a bullet into his chest here, and then do something enjoyable outside, like chop off his head and use it as a soccer ball. The smiling guard got down on one knee. He placed the pistol barrel in Curtiss’s stomach.
Curtiss’s hands stretched out as if tying an invisible shoelace. Then one hand moved up.
The smiling guard leaped backward off the floor to a record height of ten feet, smashing into the ceiling at the corner of the hall. His back slid down the wall and he fell head first to the floor, still smiling. His arms and legs shook even after he was dead. His hands were empty. His gun was in Curtiss’s fist.
Curtiss’s back hunched as he shot the gun. The two remaining guards dropped as if hit by a killer germ.
Curtiss leaped and slid on his knees toward the guard who had ordered his impromptu execution. He began to pull the late man’s uniform off. He had planned well. The dungeon had none of the advanced security devices such as a video camera system. So as long as no one decided to get productive and go on a surprise round, he could change clothes in peace. He thought about those who remained in the cells. I’ll be back, he silently promised them. If not me, then someone. It’s a promise. He thought about himself. One weapon down, three to go. At least the fingernail, acid ball, and toe pin weren’t as embarrasing to implement.
He held no optimism for his continued chances. But there were good odds that he might make it—maybe. Actually, the odds weren’t so good. Really, they were pretty lousy. Face it, Curtiss, he told himself, Jimmy the Greek wouldn’t even cover your bet. He was about to walk into the den of the African Devil himself: the General, several hundred pounds of immature insanity. He was going against the guards, the guns, and the government. But he had to make it, he told himself. He had to. After all, he had made a date for the weekend with Dr. Porter back at the C.I.A. lab.
The eight captives had been sealed into the plexiglass box by a team of craftsmen. Their doorway, like the one on Wittenborn’s box, was locked with a clear bolt as strong as six-inch steel. The eight walked around the living room in uncomfortable confusion, fingering the furniture and testing the appliances. They all worked. The lights flicked on and the television was soon showing a situation comedy.
The craftsmen then moved the Wittenborn enclosure over toward its twin. The General smiled benignly, looking like a rotten, split grapefruit. Soon the two clear cubes were side by side and some of the slaves were beginning to get restless. One, a burly, bald man, hurled a lamp against the wall closest to the guests. But the General only giggled.
“That’s right, my friend,” he called. “Get angry. Get as angry as you want. It will only help.”
The huge body raised its right hand. On cue, half a dozen guards, perfect examples of spit and polish, moved over to the chair where Rosanne sat and made a rough semicircle around her. The General moved his other hand like an arrow toward Wittenborn, who sat amongst his machinery like a tragic Greek statue.
Suddenly the scientist rose and walked over to the two walls that now stood between him and the captives. He put both palms against the plastic and placed his lips close to the transparent partitioning. The hall quieted as the once-proud researcher opened his mouth to speak. As the words were croaked out, the cavernous room was as silent as an empty vault.
“Please,” Maxwell Wittenborn said first, “forgive me. I would not do this if there were any choice left open. But you do not know what the General is capable of. He knows just enough t
o keep you alive for months, even years, of excruciating torture. Just when you expect that nothing could cause you more pain, he devises a new technique. And you cannot die.”
The General pursed his lips in a grin, as if about to modestly deny a compliment.
“This I would gladly suffer for having allowed myself to fall back into his hands. This I would gladly suffer, instead of revealing to him the technique of my new gamma treatment.”
Banner rose unsteadily from behind the card table, his mind filled with a new dread.
“But he would not try to entrap me that way. He knew too well.” Wittenborn’s tears were now in evidence, rolling down his cheeks, across his lab coat collar and onto his soiled striped shirt. “He knew too well that he need only threaten my children with it. He told me that my son had already died horribly on the Congo River. He told me that my daughter would not be so lucky.”
Rosanne’s head arched forward and her mouth opened. The guard to her immediate right cupped one hand under her chin and gripped the back of her neck with another. The guard on her left placed a strong palm on her forehead and clutched her larynx. Together they choked off her words and brought her head back to the red velvet.
“He knew,” the scientist said, fighting sobs. “He knew that was all he would have to say. He knew that he would leave me helpless. So I must apologize. I must say that I am sorry. But, considering what tortures he can inflict, you may be fortunate to die this way.”
As Wittenborn finished and turned away, the captives stumbled up and ran to the wall, screaming. All but one of them pounded at the glassy division. All but one of them cried and shouted and swore and retched and ranted. That one stood in back of the card table like a victim of Medusa. But the hands gripped the table rim with a white intensity.
The crowds and the General did not notice him. They were enjoying the overture to the show. The rotund dictator’s voice boomed out as a counterpoint to the slaves’ hysterical protests.
“Yes, the Gamma Treatment, ladies and gentlemen! The device that guarantees my manifest destiny! Tonight the world is mine! Watch, witness, and believe!”
Marvel Novel Series 03 - The Incredible Hulk - Cry Of The Beast Page 13