by Marv Wolfman
* * *
“Sorry,” he said. “I missed.”
“Yeah. Like hell.”
“No. It was the wind. There was no way to compensate for it. Not without my equipment, and certainly not while the target was moving in an unsteady chopper. Trust me. I’ve got no love for that nutjob, but you were asking for the impossible. Despite everything, I came damn close.”
Waller stalked off angry as hell. Deadshot stood, watching as Boomer gave him a reassuring pat on the back.
“Good one, mate.”
They looked up and saw Harley pull herself into the Chinook. Its tailgate closed behind her. Deadshot was surrounded by the Squad—they were cheering him for his “accidental miss.”
Waller was livid, but Flag looked at Lawton and smiled.
The head of A.R.G.U.S. reached for her phone and punched in a preset.
“Savior One Zero’s been hijacked,” she shouted. “Shoot it down.” She was determined to get her kill, Deadshot knew.
He decided he didn’t care, and turned back to Boomer, Croc, and Diablo.
“Well, this’s become a brown-eyed mullet,” Boomer complained. “We started with six. Now we’re four.”
“Not sure we needed Quinn,” Lawton said. “Maybe if she was taking her meds, but she’s a loose cannon. And we certainly didn’t need what’s his name?”
Boomer laughed. “Slipshod. Sliprope. Slip something. Who cares? But the real stinker here is we’re bein’ run by a knocker who’d shoot us all herself, if we gave her half a reason.”
“We’re better off alone,” Deadshot agreed. “Just the four of us.”
* * *
Harley was staring at the ocean, looking at it from the Chinook’s tail ramp. The water was beautiful, seductive, overwhelming, and it seemed to be endless.
Two of a kind, she thought. The ocean and Harley.
“C’mon. Get inside,” the Joker ordered. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward him. “What the hell are you waiting for? We got murdering to do.”
She turned back to her rescuer and gave him the biggest, most sincere smile she had. But he wasn’t smiling back.
“I tell you, the crap I do for you,” he said.
“Puddin’?” Harley stammered, confused. After all, he had just put his life on the line to rescue her. What could she have done wrong? Harley decided maybe they got off to a bad start. She rushed closer to hug him.
He answered by pushing her back.
“We’ll talk about this,” he said sternly. “Later.”
“Okay. Sure.” She nodded her head, still confused, but he was her Puddin’, her Mister J. Whatever her man said worked for her.
Frost broke the tension.
“Boss. We got problems.”
FIFTY-ONE
The Blackhawk helicopter had been circling Midway City, spotting enemy combatants as well as the few idiot looters who thought they had the place to themselves. They quickly learned otherwise.
Captain Hawk was the pilot. New orders came over the comm, relayed to the chopper by Amanda Waller. The Joker had stolen a Chinook, and likely murdered its crew. The captain’s orders were to find it, and then blow it the hell out of the sky.
Waller didn’t want prisoners. She wanted body parts.
The captain’s people linked into the Chinook’s GPS signal, then sent Hawk a new course that would enable the Blackhawk to intercept the chopper over the city’s downtown. The Joker wasn’t going to get away.
“First monsters, and now I’m hunting super-villains.” Captain Hawk chuckled. “Never a boring day.”
“We have our target, sir.” Steve Gardner, Hawk’s second in command, pointed to the radar. “Five hundred ninety yards due west. Just behind the Kane Tower complex.” Hawk entered the data into the nav computer, then felt the Blackhawk bank as it adapted to its new orders.
Within minutes they were shooting toward the Chinook at an interception angle. Before the target could respond, they cut it off and shifted into firing position.
The Chinook pulled up and hovered.
Hawk hit the button that launched a hellfire missile.
* * *
The Joker shouted for the pilot to evade, but it was too late. The missile slammed into the front of the Chinook, blowing the pilots out of the cockpit. The impact disabled Dr. Van Criss’s equipment.
Joker grabbed onto a handhold and angrily turned to Harley.
“We gotta get out of here fast,” he shouted.
They rushed toward the tail ramp when the chopper swerved and spun. Harley fell forward, out the open ramp, even as the Joker fell back, into the plunging copter.
* * *
Before she knew what was happening, Harley was hurtling out of the helicopter. The loud sound of the rotors was replaced by the whoosh of empty air. She was plummeting toward the ground, but she also had forward momentum, and it carried her over the roof of a low building.
I’m flying, she thought. Gliding. The city below spiraled crazily, but Harley closed her eyes, spread her arms out like the wings she knew they were, stuck out her tongue, and let the winds and momentum carry her wherever they might.
She came in at a low angle and skidded across a building’s roof rather than pancaking directly into it. Scraping painfully along the rough surface, letting out a couple of unladylike grunts, she finally rolled to a stop. Sure, she might have a broken bone or two, but miraculously she was still breathing.
Best. Landing. Ever!
Lying on the rooftop, bloody and partially broken, she looked up to see the Chinook spiral down, then crash into the Groiler building. It exploded on contact.
“No. Nonono. Puddin’!” she exclaimed. Tears streaked her face. She howled in pain even as the Blackhawk thundered overhead, heading back for the Federal Building.
FIFTY-TWO
Flag and the others stood on the Federal Building roof as the Blackhawk arrived and hovered alongside the edge. Captain George Hawk opened the door as Katana and Flag helped Waller board.
“Stand by,” she ordered. “I’ll send another helo for the rest of you.” The Blackhawk lifted, moved off, then screamed to the street in a near freefall, leveling just yards before it would have hit the ground. It slowly regained altitude and fired off amber flares behind it to distract any incoming missiles.
She leaves us behind and takes off all by her lonesome, Lawton thought. That’s one paranoid bitch.
* * *
“Okay, let’s go,” Waller said to Hawk. “The fun’s just beginning.”
He laughed. He’d known Waller since the day she started at A.R.G.U.S. She was a self-professed bitch on wheels then, and she hadn’t changed the slightest in all these years. There was little reason to. Despite her style, she was usually right.
Hawk flew the Blackhawk as low as he safely could, maneuvering it between the fallen skyscrapers and damaged buildings that had yet to crumble. He needed to keep them off enemy radar.
* * *
Deadshot watched as the Blackhawk disappeared into the distance.
Why the hell didn’t Waller let any of them join her? They certainly had room for most of the Squad. Then again, Waller only cared about Waller, and he knew that would never change.
Well, he thought, she has to live with herself. In the back of his mind he knew others said the same about him, but he had resolved that problem years ago.
He turned to Flag. “Signed, sealed, and delivered, big guy. Time to pay the bill.”
“You earned it.” Flag sighed in relief. His job had been to use the Squad to rescue Waller, not specifically to fight the EAs. Waller and the Army were better set up to do that.
Deadshot looked to the ground and saw something metal glistening in the light. He picked it up and recognized it. Harley’s cell phone. He slipped it into his pocket. Might as well keep it.
She wouldn’t need it any more.
FIFTY-THREE
The Midway City Bank building was completed in 1926 and somehow managed to make i
t through the 1929 Great Depression, an uneasy economy during the war years, and the bank closures of the early 21st century. It survived the EA’s initial bombardments and as SEALs, Army, and Marines joined and launched their assault against the beasts, it continued to stand as a tall and proud reminder of the way things had been and could be again.
Then hell plummeted from the sky in the guise of a crippled, out of control Chinook helicopter that skidded across rooftops and shredded its way down Ninth Street, only to careen into the bank’s facade, destroying glass, stone, and mortar before its sturdy all-steel vault put an abrupt stop to the aircraft.
The copter was on fire. Nothing inside could have survived.
From across the way, on another rooftop, the Joker watched the flames rising into the sky. He had jumped just in time. If he had waited even another ten seconds, he would now be little more than ash.
He watched as the bank erupted into a blazing inferno. The fire consumed the building, destroying ninety years of solvency. What the Great Depression couldn’t shutter, the Joker did without even trying.
He picked himself up and laughed as the bank burned. It was a glorious sight, knowing that millions of dollars of cold, hard samolians were being reduced to worthless ash.
What’s next, he wondered, but he already knew the answer.
He had to find Harley.
He’d accepted that one day she’d be the death of him, and perhaps that was why she was so enticing. Every day with her was like running through a shifting mine field. Having to survive kept him stimulated. Knowing one day he’d strangle the very life out of her kept him focused. Life with Harley was always an adventure. A dangerous, corrosive one, but hey, he was the Joker.
How could he complain?
He checked his weapons, then turned back to the bank and breathed in deeply.
“God,” he said, “I love the smell of burning cash in the morning.”
* * *
Hawk angled the Blackhawk low to the ground and sped through the city canyons.
“Are we at all close to being in the clear yet?” Waller asked.
Hawk checked the GPS. “Less than a mile, ma’am. Just a few more minutes, then it’ll be all she wrote.”
Waller sighed. “Thank you, George,” she said. “This turned out to be a real hell-storm. How could we have known?”
Hawk didn’t answer. Whatever she was talking about was above his pay grade, and she knew it. He was a convenient listening post, and with him there would be zero recriminations.
“Ma’am,” Hawk shouted suddenly. She looked up.
He was pointing to a figure standing in the distance. A man, far taller than a normal human being. Waller saw him raise his hands. She saw them glow, and then he released a bolt of burning energy. Toward them.
“Evade,” she shouted. “Get us the hell out of here. Hurry.”
Hawk adjusted the throttle as he pushed up the collective. The Blackhawk jerked upward, but the bolt struck home, shearing off the Blackhawk’s rotor, dissolving its metal frame.
Hawk turned to Waller.
“Ma’am, I hope your seatbelt’s fastened. This isn’t going to be gentle.”
She held on as the Blackhawk belly flopped onto the street, then ground up the asphalt while spitting sparks and smoke, until finally it plowed into an abandoned bus.
As they came to a rest, Waller checked herself out, looking for blood, feeling for broken bones.
“I think I’m okay, George,” she shouted. “You did great. We survived. I don’t know how you did it or where we are, but we’re breathing. Thank God for that.
“George?” she said. “George?”
He didn’t answer.
She leaned to look into the cockpit. It was a jumble of twisted steel. The cabin had been crushed when the Blackhawk slammed into the bus. Hawk wasn’t moving. Parts of the helicopter’s steel frame had skewered him.
She told herself not to panic, recited her mantra, coined when she was still in the field, before she became one of the top brass she used to hate.
If you get yourself into a bad situation, you can get yourself out of it. The pounding of her heart, so loud she could hear it in her ears, started to abate.
Waller saw several EAs skittering over the debris. They were headed for the Blackhawk. One of them was wearing a SEAL uniform.
She tried to get out of her seat, but she was still belted in. Smoke was filling the cabin and she could smell the stink of hydraulic fuel. It was dripping into the broken remains.
Propelled by sheer instinct, she clawed at the seatbelt until the buckle finally released. She tried to push herself out of the seat, but her left leg was trapped in the twisted steel tangle. Controlling her growing panic, she tried to pull her leg free.
George’s neck had broken in the crash. She reached for his carbine, lying on the floor beside him. She hooked a finger on the sling and dragged it to her.
There was a reflection in Hawk’s window.
She whirled and fired through the cabin’s aluminum wall. Kept firing until the carbine ran dry. She reached for Hawk again—his chest rig was filled with full magazines. She strained to reach one of the mags and managed to pull it free with two fingers, but it slipped and fell to the ground, just out of reach.
She keyed her radio.
* * *
Flag was on the roof of the Federal Building, along with GQ and the others, when his comm feed buzzed. He saw Waller’s ID flash across his screen.
“Queen Bee,” he said. “You copy? Havoc for Queen Bee.”
GQ lowered his own phone. “Operations just confirmed she’s down on K West.”
Flag turned to Deadshot, but Lawton already guessed what was coming next.
“Let’s go,” the colonel said. “The mission’s not over.”
“It is for me.” Deadshot stepped back. He wasn’t having any of this. “We had a deal.”
Flag shook his head. “The deal was to get her to safety. She’s not there.” He turned and raced down the stairwell, followed by Katana, GQ, and the half-dozen or so surviving SEALs. Deadshot and the Suicide Squad watched, angry about the sudden shift in events.
“So, what now?” Diablo asked.
Deadshot was seething. “Got no choice,” he said. “The rescue blew up in our faces. Let’s get this the hell over with.”
* * *
“Hooray. I’m back!”
As they exited the Federal Building, Harley sat on the hood of a Beemer, looking beat-up beautiful.
“I missed you guys sooo much.”
She was smiling at them, but Deadshot could tell the grin was forced. Grime clung to her face where there had been tears.
“Aren’t you dead?” Croc said.
“I got better,” she replied. “These things happen, you know.”
Deadshot gave her a thumbs up. “Well, I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you made it,” he said, offering his hand to help her off the car.
She took it and slid to the pavement.
“So who are we supposed to kill now?” She leaned close to Deadshot and talked to him in a stage whisper for everyone to hear. “Tell me it’s him,” she said, theatrically pointing at Flag, who was staring back at her.
“You’re hilarious, Quinn,” the colonel said.
She curtsied then danced off, joining the others.
“That’s exactly what Mister J always tells me.”
“Hey, Craziness!” the deep voice called to her. She turned, catching the baseball cap Boomer tossed to her. She laughed as she dropped it on her head and thumbed it to a sexy tilt.
Like it or not, she was one of the guys.
PART THREE
THE GODS
FIFTY-FOUR
Before the Eyes of the Adversary, hundreds of thousands of suburban commuters yawned their way into the crowded subway cars each day, to begin the hour-long journey into the Midway City Rail Station, only to reverse the trip nine hours later.
Amanda Waller didn’t care
about the efficiency of Midway’s transit system. She was being dragged against her will into its bowels by two hideous creatures, one still wearing his SEAL uniform, the other her police blues.
Waller resisted and tried to squirm free, but their grip was firm. She saw one of the EAs hunkered by the case that contained Enchantress’s desiccated heart. Incubus stood behind him, towering over the creatures that were scurrying about. Enchantress joined them at the man’s side.
“Bring her here,” Enchantress ordered. “Her thumb goes on the machine.”
Waller tried to pull back, but they held her firmly.
“I’ll fight you all the way to hell.”
Incubus looked down at her and smiled. “Resist and we will cut off your thumb and put it into the machine.”
Enchantress laughed as she watched Waller squirm. “We would prefer to preserve your living flesh for as long as we might need it, but we will do whatever we need to. One way or another, my heart will be freed and returned to me.”
The two EAs forced Waller’s thumb to the scanner. She heard the machine tick as if gears were grinding into place. The case lid slid open and Incubus looked inside. He was pleased.
“It is here, sister. Ready to rejoin with you.” He held up the shriveled organ and showed it to her. She lightly brushed her hand over it, caressing it.
“Now, brother,” she said. “I do not want to wait a moment longer.”
He carefully picked up the heart with both hands and pressed it into her chest, pushing it inside her ribcage. It started to beat again, and grow. They could both see it glowing green through luminous skin that was crisscrossed with thick black veins. She seemed to be wearing a cape made of smoke that pumped out of her body, and looked like a demonic god.
She thought she was one, too.
Waller stared at her in horror. What have we set loose? The witch had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
She waved her hands and created an image between them. Flag was walking on a street, just outside the rail station. He was holding a weapon, looking worried, maybe even frightened, but he wasn’t about to stop.