Iron Man saw the flare of light and knew he had only seconds. The missile was undoubtedly equipped with a heat-seeking device, but machines were only machines. They could do only one or two things at a time . . . and they could be fooled—fooled by using their own strength against them.
From his equipment belt, Iron Man pulled a small thermite bomb, capable of melting through tank armor. He ignited it and threw it off to the side with a powerful pitch. The brilliant light was intensely hot and the missile instantly picked up on it . . . and followed its prime directive.
The explosion would have seared Iron Man’s eyes had he been looking, but he was intent on closing the gap between himself and the fleeing Modok. Then the AIM Scientist Supreme fired another missile.
Iron Man was closer now and had even less time to react. He did not have another thermite bomb, but he did have his repulsor. He aimed his hand at the oncoming missile and commanded it to fire.
Nothing happened.
The faulty glove, injured in the fight with Greiner, malfunctioned. The missile was streaking straight toward him and Iron Man was simply not certain he could survive the blast. He might live, but be knocked unconscious, thus giving Modok time to escape. That must not happen.
With a furious mental glare Iron Man once again thought, Fire! The increased mental blast jumped the severed connections—and the repulsor streaked forth fire!
The missile exploded, and Iron Man flew right through the expanding cloud of fragments. They clattered off his armor but he ignored them, protecting only his exposed left hand.
Modok snarled in frustrated anger. He had no more missiles, but he did have other defenses. He activated a spurting cloud of nerve gas. Iron Man saw the almost colorless gas only because they were flying east, into the rising sun, and it was back-lighted. He closed the eye slits automatically and the suit was sealed—except for his exposed left hand.
Remembering it at the last moment, Iron Man veered upward, jetting out of the path of the drifting blob of death.
Below, in the jungle, as the gas settled, birds and insects fell from the leaves and a lone cheetah collapsed to gasp out its last breath.
Modok had to let him get closer. The force rays, built into the arms of his power chair, were powerful weapons but were not long-distance weapons. He spun in his flight, looking back, as the bottom jet thrust him along at terrific speed. He had no worries about fuel, for the large flying chair was always kept topped off with his special fuel and he could fly almost halfway around the world. Immensely powerful batteries contained enough energy for many force-ray blasts, each several times more powerful than Iron Man’s repulsor rays.
The ignorant Shellhead, Modok thought with searing anger. He attempts to conquer Modok? The immense head prepared to give Iron Man a double surprise—the force-ray blasts and a mental blast! But still the Avenger came on.
Iron Man knew that once he got close enough, Modok would attempt to mentally probe through his electronic defenses. There was no time and no equipment to do anything about that. All Iron Man could do was crowd him, force his reactions, hope Modok would make a mistake, and go for broke.
The first ethereal fingers of mental probing came but a second before the twin rays stabbed out from the arms of the power chair. The triple forces sent Iron Man veering through the sky to escape the blasts. The force rays he mostly escaped, getting a searing sideswipe, but the mental fingers were clutching at his mind as a man clutches a bowling ball.
Out! Get out of my mind!
The fingers dug deeper, like someone digging into rotten fruit—bursting through the skin, into the soft, juicy pulp—
—No!
—NO!
Iron Man set his mind against the probe, but still the mental fingers of the villainous Modok dug in, bridged electronic gaps, sealed open the scrambler circuits, dug deeper, numbed . . . clawed . . . tore away the fragile protection . . .
Crash!
Iron Man met the power chair head-on, his eyes clenched shut in desperate protection. Neither he nor Modok had realized, in their battle of minds, that they were on a collision course. The crimson-and-gold Avenger grasped the power chair, ripping at the metal sides in an attempt to hold on, to keep contact.
Die! DIE! Modok’s mind, at close range, tore into Iron Man’s. Knowing he was Tony Stark gave him an edge, a place to focus, a fulcrum from which to pry. The world grew faint and fuzzy and Iron Man fought back, struggling to maintain his hold on reality.
His metal fist pummeled the chair in a futile attempt to rip it apart—but it was a powerfully built device. He only succeeded in rupturing a side compartment. A roll of microfilm tumbled out and fell spinning into the jungle below.
Die! DIE! DIE, you puerile lout! Modok’s mind blasts ripped and tore at Tony Stark’s mind, stripping away the electronic protection, scrambling his thoughts.
Flashes of his life flickered across Stark’s mind—Professor Yinsen, giving his life so that Iron Man might exist . . . Captain America, The Avengers . . . Madame Masque . . . frozen images of beautiful women flipped past his consciousness like the pages of a magazine . . . Fury and Hogan, Pepper and—
No!
He struck out blindly, his armored hand ripping and tearing, reaching for the flesh of Modok. Iron Man’s flailing feet passed through the jet stream from the chair. He hung from the flying machine by his unarmored hand, beating at the machine, grasping protuberances, and tearing.
Modok flamed his mind at Stark, relentlessly cruel. Then he noticed the unarmored hand. Instantly, he grasped the significance and since he could not reach it himself or with any of his on-board devices, he changed direction. The directional jets shifted the flying chair from an eastward horizontal flight to an almost straight-up direction. Modok’s hands pulled forth an oxygen mask. He had a one-hour supply, built in to protect himself from any gases he might have to release.
Iron Man almost lost his grip as the craft changed directions. He hung on grimly, still beating on the well-built machine. Something gave; he tore off a panel and smashed his fist into the interior. There was a flash, but nothing else happened. The chair continued to rise.
Iron Man was weak and his suit was almost totally depleted of energy. He realized he was cold. The suit’s climate control had failed or run out of power. He opened his eyes to look up into the glaring triumphant eyes of the leering Modok.
“Either way you lose, Iron Man. Hang on until your hand is frozen in the upper atmosphere . . . or let go and I escape.” His voice was muffled by the mask, a special enormous rubber device spread across his huge head.
His hand was cold. Iron Man looked at it, realizing he could not feel—and his grip was slipping. He grasped the edge of the chair with his armored hand but that was within the range of the nerve tangler which Modok pulled from a compartment. The AIM chieftain aimed the grid at the hand even as he sent another mind blast at Iron Man. The Avenger yanked his hand back, out of range, but the movement caused his frozen hand to lose its grip. Iron Man fell away from the rapidly rising power chair and Modok laughed.
“Good-bye, fool!”
Iron Man sent the mental impulses to his boot-jets, hoping to catch up with the escaping villain—but nothing happened. He was falling and the air jets did not work.
He tried again and again as the jungle below grew larger and the rising power chair grew smaller. His weary mind, buffeted and confused by the close-range mental battle, sought to blast through the circuits as he had earlier with the faulty repulsor ray.
But nothing happened. He continued to fall . . . power out, a hand frozen, with only one glove and no boot-jets.
Modok watched the gold-and-red figure drop away. He would have loved to be close enough to see the great Iron Man smash into the ground. With the weight of his armor and from that height, there was no telling how far he would penetrate. It was an interesting problem in physics and mathematics, but he had no time for such games. It was getting cold. Even his built-in body heaters, set around the ch
air, were not enough. He must return to level flight and get away.
Modok touched the controls to change the direction—and nothing happened.
Frantically, Modok ran a status check on his complicated power chair. Plenty of power, enough for hours of flight. Fifty-nine minutes of oxygen. Full drive on the main jet. Only the controls were smashed.
Modok’s massive head tried to reach over the edge. He could barely see the smashed side compartment. The microfilm of the plans was gone . . . and a bit of circuitry was hanging by a thin wire, flopping in the thinning air. The attitude-jet control mechanism! Modok’s spindly arms tried to reach for it, but he was restrained by the leather-and-metal harness that held his huge head into position. Without that harness he would fall over, a grotesquely top-heavy creature with a puny body attached almost as an afterthought—just something to pump blood and manufacture enzymes.
Nevertheless, Modok undid the clamps. He had to reach over and see the damage, to repair the stupid Avenger’s crude attack. And he had to do it swiftly. There was no time. The powerful main jet was carrying him into space at a fantastic speed. As the air thinned the craft rose faster and faster, beginning to escape the gravity of Earth itself.
Modok’s hands fumbled at the clamps. They were only removed occasionally, one at a time, for medical reasons. But he had to release all of them to be able to bend over far enough. His fingers touched the last buckle and it felt cold in his hands. It opened. The strap fell away. Modok turned his head but he was unbalanced and he fell backward, sliding down the backrest to the left side, away from the damaged right side. His bulging eyes stared upward. His arms moved weakly, blindly probing at the controls built into the arms. He activated the last blast left in the force rays, but it did nothing but spin the power chair on its upward axis. He could not raise his head, he could not turn off the main jet, nor change its direction.
Modok was going straight up, straight out into space. He had fifty-six minutes of air and hours of jet fuel, but he would be frozen long before that. Out in airless space his body would burst from the interior pressure.
Modok stared upward, helpless. Already the blue of the sky had turned to dark blue, then black. He was seeing stars, as well as the unfiltered sun.
Fifty-five minutes.
Fifty-four.
He was very, very cold.
Twenty
Iron Man fell in the other direction, toward the thick jungle below. His boot-jets were useless. He tried to angle his fall as a sky diver did, to slow and control the descent, but he was still falling. The jungle was coming up with disconcerting speed. Iron Man did the only thing he could think of doing.
He headed straight down, stiffened his armored right arm and gave the mental command to his repulsor ray.
Nothing happened.
The ground was coming up fast.
Desperately, Iron Man sent the mental command through the helmet pickup and into the circuitry of his suit. Fire, damn you, fire!
At the last moment, almost at treetop level, the one repulsor fired. It was a single burst, abruptly cut off as the damaged circuitry overloaded and shorted out. The trees below him exploded into wet splinters as he plunged into the wreckage. The ripping, rending sound sent startled birds flying. The last of the leaves and twigs fell to earth, slithering from branch to branch.
It became silent in the surprised jungle. Then a bird some distance off caa-caaed loudly. Another answered, and soon the normal jungle noises returned. Animals in flight from the explosive sounds stopped and began to eat.
There was no movement in the circle of damaged trees. In the tumble of wood and greenery there was a bit of color—red and gold. It did not move.
Nick Fury glared at the Costa Verde general. “Listen, General Villareal, you’ll send out another patrol!”
“Colonel Fury, we have been searching all day. My patrols . . .”
“Do it again.”
“My men are tired. They have fought, then transported the prisoners to the capital; they need rest.”
“No.” Fury glared hard at the general. “They’ll go out again, you hear me?”
“Colonel,” the general said, his dark eyes getting hard. “Must I remind you that you are here only as an observer, at the request of the United Nations. You have no legal authority here.”
“I have a friend here. Iron Man, somewhere out in that green stuff. He may be dead—in which case, I want the body. Or he may be dying—in which case I want to save his bum.” The one-eyed officer stood glaring at the short general and the field officer wilted.
“Of course, I respect your bonds of friendship. But your friend, he fell from so great a height . . .” The general shrugged delicately. Before Nick Fury could answer the officer held up a hand. “But we shall go again.”
“I’m going, too,” Fury said. He turned and climbed into the nearest chopper. “Get this dragonfly off the turf, amigo.” The startled pilot stared, then did as he was told. The helicopters took off one by one, spreading out.
The general shrugged. Too great a height. He turned to a captain, to have a coffin ordered. They must honor the man who had saved Costa Verde. It was the least they could do. Perhaps rename a plaza as well.
“What’s that?” Nick Fury said, pointing.
“A place where lightning struck, mi coronel,” the pilot responded.
“Go take a look, anyway,” Fury said, poking a finger into the pilot’s back. The Latin aviator shrugged and banked over the site.
There was a buzzing in Iron Man’s ears. He struggled back from the blackness slowly. Everything hurt, it seemed. He opened his eyes and saw green. Green and black and a raw, ragged brown.
A shattered tree. And overhead, through the shattered leaves, a Costa Verde helicopter. He raised an arm, heavy without electrical power. He saw Nick Fury’s face appear in the open hatch, unshaven and with the cigar butt in place, as always.
“Hey,” Fury shouted over the whirlybird’s noise, “that ain’t no way to chop wood!”
“Ya feel okay now, boss?” Happy Hogan said. Iron Man nodded and pulled the ex-pug closer.
“What has Tony Stark been doing while Iron Man has been out of the country?”
“Inventin’. Ya know how he is.” Hogan gave his employer a solemn wink. “I dug that electrostatic gizmo ya thunk up out o’ the files and made like Stark had just invented it. Nobody caught on.”
“Good,” Iron Man replied, getting out of his armor. Hogan opened the briefcase and the armor went neatly into it.
“No one is alive who saw Stark in the Iron Man suit?” Hogan asked. Stark nodded and began combing his hair. They were in Stark’s quarters in Stark International. The Aero Costa jet that had returned Stark and Hogan to the United States was already airborne, returning to the Central American nation.
Hogan watched his boss put on a new suit. “Ya goin’ out, boss? Ya sure this is a good thing? Maybe ya oughta take some more rest, huh?”
“Got plenty of rest on the jet, Happy. And I wouldn’t want to disappoint a lady.”
“What lady?”
“Sharman DiVono, the belly-dancing mechanic. I sent her a cablegram from San Felipe. She’ll want to hear all about the latest adventures of ol’ Shellhead.”
“She ever gonna meet him?”
Stark smiled. “Perhaps. But first, I’m going to give her a lot of opportunity to get to know Tony Stark.”
Happy Hogan almost smiled. “Pepper’ll like that.”
Table of Contents
Back Cover
Preview
Titlepage
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
&nbs
p; Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Marvel Novel Series 06 - Iron Man - And Call My Killer ... Modok! Page 16