DC Comics novels--Batman

by Christa Faust

  Their customized wing gliders were in keeping with the motif of the two costumed crime fighters, so that from a distance they would look like gliding bats. This illusion depended on a fallacy: in truth, bats didn’t glide. Their pre-planned trajectory took them in toward a stand of trees and underbrush.

  “Now,” Batman said, tugging the release mechanism on his harness. Batgirl followed suit and released her wings. The two dropped the remaining forty feet or so to land and roll expertly so as to absorb the impact and avoid injury. Robbed of the weight needed to stabilize the wings, the gliders were caught in an updraft and flitted rapidly away across the island of Gotham.

  Moving forward quickly they entered the grove that ringed a part of the former Mount Olympus Casino. They were just outside of the city line, and Gotham’s county laws were far less strict when it came to organized vice.

  It had long been rumored that shipping magnate Maximillian “Maxie” Zeus brought in more than coffee and apricots on his ships docked in Gotham Harbor. Using his substantial profits, he had built a casino which quickly attracted sports figures, social climbers, and the movers and shakers from the city’s financial and political circles. But that wasn’t enough for Zeus. Like his namesake, his appetite for more became legendary.

  That attracted the attention of the detective. Doing some digging, Batman uncovered that Zeus had been blackmailing the power brokers who made up his clientele, setting them up in the “VIP” rooms of his casino just to tape them in… compromising situations.

  Zeus himself had been busted and sent away to prison, only to be released on a technicality. Soon thereafter he had disappeared from any radar. His casino remained shuttered, but due to various lease entanglements the property hadn’t been bought, and remained as he left it.

  Two nights earlier, Batman had been in the My Alibi bar patronized by underworld types…

  * * *

  “I’m telling you, Malone, this is a sweet deal,” Jo-Jo Gagan said. “Yeah, he’s overdoing it with that ‘god of thunder’ thing, but hell, look at the type of whacked-out criminal this city breeds.” Gagan swung his hand around the My Alibi bar, as if to take in the entire city. “I mean, jeez, Killer Croc, the Penguin, Black Mask…” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “But Zeus is cagey, I tell you. He’s got some new connection backing him. My buddy who’s on his payroll told me about it. No details, but the money’s steady and Zeus’s got a thing in the works that once he pulls it off, he’s gonna expand the ranks, see?

  “Hell,” he went on, “I got a good thing going with Python, but I might jump ship.” He had a faraway look on his face as he sipped his whiskey.

  “And he’s operating out of his old casino again?” Malone said, a wooden match dangling from a corner of his mouth, beneath the moustache.

  “He’s got it laid out,” Gagan replied. That was all he would say, though—not that he had any more, really. Malone was a nice enough guy, but Jo-Jo didn’t really know him, so they continued with some small talk. Then after about half an hour Malone headed out.

  As soon as he did, two men approached. Gagan had noticed them hanging back, and he was pretty sure he recognized them. One was sallow-faced, the other had a set of big ears. Both were lean and rangy as their former boss, the Scarecrow, who liked his henchmen skinny.

  “Hey, Jo-Jo,” the big-eared one said, clapping Gagan on the shoulders. “Let me and my friend buy you a drink.”

  “Yeah, sure Beatts,” Gagan said. He was already pretty snooted, but wasn’t about to turn away a free drink or two.

  * * *

  Leaving My Alibi, Bruce Wayne shed his disguise as Matches Malone. He headed toward the Batcave and its state-of-the-art computer system. As he drove to the outskirts of Gotham, his cell phone buzzed. He hit the hands-free control.

  “Lucius.”

  “Bruce, where are you?” Lucius Fox demanded. “The city financial board will be meeting soon. You and I need to prepare.” Fox was his business manager and ran Wayne Enterprises. He had a head for numbers, and was an ingenious inventor, as well.

  “You’ll have to handle it without me.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the call as Wayne continued at a rapid pace. It was late morning, and the streets were crowded with traffic, but he wove in and out of the flow without missing a beat.

  “Bruce, you’re one of the wealthiest men in Gotham,” Fox said, carefully controlling his words. “Your input is essential. You know the risk of letting them make a move without you.”

  “You understand the data as well as I do,” Wayne said. “Most likely better. They know you have the authority to speak for both of us—for all of Wayne Enterprises. Just make certain they don’t do anything foolish.”

  “It’s not the—”

  Wayne turned the wheel and headed toward the hidden entrance to his underground lair. The car was top-of-the-line, and could steer itself, but he preferred the hands-on approach.

  “Lucius, it’s fine,” he said, interrupting his friend and associate. “Just handle it. Listen, I’m about to enter a dead zone, so the phone’s going to kick out.” Before Fox could reply he cut the connection.

  * * *

  Batgirl was there, in uniform, sitting at a computer terminal.

  Logging in to the most secure system in all of Gotham, he quickly confirmed what Gagan had told him. Although the casino was shuttered, satellite imagery confirmed plenty of activity around Mount Olympus, particularly at night.

  That bore investigation.

  He’d intended to go in alone, but Barbara insisted on accompanying him. She’d been on the trail of a drug kingpin they called Python Palmares, seeking to identify and eliminate his pipeline. When Zeus had been sent up, there’d been a scramble among various parties in the underworld to absorb his assets—among them a truck line and distribution system that had been an offshoot of his fleet of freighters.

  Palmares had made a grab for it.

  The system included a group of “safe houses,” the secret warehouses Zeus used to store and distribute his contraband in and around town. The deeper Batman dug, the more evident it became that her inquiries paralleled his own.

  So he relented. Not that he really had a choice.

  * * *

  The two moved silently through the underbrush, the confines of the faux Mount Olympus rising before them, all open-air columns and too-white marble and stone.

  Batman held up a hand signaling caution. In his other he held a rectangular device that had a small screen on it showing an oscilloscope-like readout. This was for detecting ground sensors. There were none present, and he returned the gadget to his utility belt. From their vantage point they saw Zeus’s henchmen, dressed in military garb as befitting the setting, a theatrical affectation to humor their boss. This included polished steel-alloy armor protecting their torsos, tunics, the puttees, the laced-up leg bindings, and absurd plumed Corinthian helmets.

  They did not carry swords, though, but modern deadly efficient assault rifles no doubt converted to fully automatic.

  “Yeah, no sweat,” Batgirl whispered next to him. “I’ll go left, you go right.” She didn’t wait for his response and moved off quickly.

  Batman took a breath and crept forward. He came up quietly and quickly behind one of the guards, clamping a gloved hand over his mouth, bending him back, and delivering a swift chop with the edge of his hand to a specific nerve point at the base of the neck. The burly man collapsed before he could make a sound, and Batman caught the gun before it hit the concrete.

  Following a path that paralleled Batgirl’s, he didn’t encounter any more sentries. Most likely Zeus thought he was running entirely under the radar. Coming around a corner, he found his companion, two guards lying prone at her feet. She had her hands on her hips and tossed him a playful look.

  “About time,” she chided.

  “Let’s go,” he said, slipping past her without another word, cape swirling slightly in the still air.

  “A
woman’s work is never done,” she wisecracked, scooping up one of the assault rifles and falling into step.

  “Put it down,” he ordered without looking back.

  “Aw, I’m just going to use it to make them, you know, compliant. A little nick here and there. No permanent damage.”

  He stopped without turning.

  She cocked her head and removed the magazine, tossing it into the bushes. Then she tossed the weapon aside.

  Next to a high wall, they proceeded below a bleached white balustrade. Peering upward, Batman pulled a gun-shaped device from the rear of his belt, covered by his cape. Extending his arm he shot a grapnel hook and line. The hook flew upward with negligible sound, powered by the release of compressed air.

  “That’s a new model,” Batgirl said, unlimbering a silken line of woven steel cable. It had a lightweight collapsible grapnel secured to the end. She gave it a practiced spin, twirling it faster until she released it and sent it hurtling upward to catch hold above.

  “I try to keep up with the times,” he quipped, starting up the wall, hand over hand on the knotted line.

  “Old dogs and new tricks.” She gave her line a tug, confirming a firm grip, and followed.

  Ascending to the gangster’s version of Mount Olympus, they cleared the wall and found themselves on a patio near the main structure, a large building styled like an ancient Greek temple for worshipping the gods. This had been the casino where the players had come to pray for luck. The patio boasted fixed marble benches, and the topiary was manicured in the shape of deer, horses, rams, and bulls.

  “Jeez,” Batgirl said, taking in the scenery. “Kinda swank for a hoodlum’s getaway.”

  “He’s not making much effort at hiding,” Batman said, nodding toward a number of guards standing in plain sight. “That suggests that whatever Zeus is up to, he feels rather secure about it. Maybe like in legend, he’s looking to defeat the Titans.”

  Batgirl shot him a puzzled look, but he didn’t react, maintaining the perfect deadpan. A quick scan showed that the casino’s security cameras were inoperative—more overconfidence on Zeus’s part. The two darted across the patio and reached the side of the building, searching for an unobtrusive way in.

  With a deafening roar, sections of the wall above them disintegrated in a rain of stone and mortar, as a hail of bullets tore into it.

  4

  “The hell,” a guard bellowed from the patio. “We got company!”

  He rattled off more bullets as the two bats split apart, making themselves harder to hit. Batgirl wrapped her cape around her upper body, the material a weave of Kevlar and other polymers developed by Lucius Fox’s research and development division of Wayne Enterprises. Still, the force of the impact drove her back against the wall of the former casino.

  Batman dove and spun, pulling a bat-shaped collapsible boomerang from his belt. It was designed with the aerodynamics of a ninja’s throwing star, and he threw it even before he landed. His aim was true, and its sharp edge sunk into the guard’s shooting hand, causing him to swear and drop the weapon. Even as the gun clattered on the stone flooring, Batman covered the distance between them. A roundhouse kick and two swift punches sent the guard down on his back.

  Two more would-be soldiers ran up, the clatter of their boots drowned out as they leveled their assault rifles and opened fire. Not wishing to be knocked off balance again, Batgirl sought relative safety behind a large potted plant in a stone urn some four feet high. The high velocity rounds destroyed the stonework, but were stopped by the urn’s swath of earth. Recalling those old WWII movies she’d watch with her father, she plucked two small plastic balls from her utility belt and lobbed them over her head like a soldier in a foxhole throwing a hand grenade.

  Colors swirled below the translucent surfaces of the spheres as they landed and rolled across the patio. When one of the guards stepped forward, jagged bolts of electricity erupted from the things and engulfed the man’s body. He shook and drooled and, when the discharge ceased, he collapsed, his clothing tattered and charred from the raw voltage.

  “No need for subtlety now,” Batman said, taking advantage of the distraction and decking the other newcomer.

  “You’ve got that right,” Batgirl agreed, rushing forward as yet another guard arrived. The first non-male member of the squad, she hunkered down behind the balustrade. Though more of a generalist than a history expert, Barbara the librarian was pretty certain there had been no female soldiers in the male-centric world of ancient Greece. Not that Maxie Zeus seemed concerned with historical accuracy. Indeed, she recalled, most soldiers preferred the company of other men, thinking they were the only ones capable of higher intellect.

  “How modern of old Maxie,” she muttered as she threw down an object that released a smoke screen, obscuring her location.

  As the guard fired blindly, Batgirl raced around the topiary, coming near her target. The woman spun toward the crime fighter, firing, but Batgirl was a blur, kicking the barrel aside, rounds zinging close, grazing her armored shoulder and severing hairs of the red wig sticking out beneath her cowl. Before the guard could recover, she used a combination of American boxing and kung fu, dislocated her shoulder and, knocking her helmet off, punched her unconscious.

  She rejoined Batman as he twisted a knob atop a slim canister and tossed the object toward the massive double doors of the main entrance. Each portal was adorned with a large bas-relief of Maxie Zeus’s sneering face. The doors were made of iron, and the magnetic canister stayed where it struck. The resulting blast from the explosive device ripped one of the doors off its top hinge, and it dangled at an awkward angle. The opening this created was large enough to allow them entry.

  “Be alert,” Batman said, sprinting forward.

  “Aren’t I always?” she quipped, flowing close behind.

  He made a sound in his throat as he peered inside. Abruptly he swung around, wrapped his muscular arms around Batgirl, flinging them from the doorway. Before she could react a lightning bolt sizzled from somewhere inside and struck the spot where she had been standing. The force of it was such that it blew the listing door completely free of its damaged moorings.

  It toppled away with a metallic clang.

  “What the hell caused that?” Batgirl asked.

  “Come and get me, you pointy-eared freaks,” Maxie Zeus taunted from inside his would-be temple. “Let’s see if your Bruce Lee moves can get the best of me, as I now truly harness the power of the gods.” His laughter receded as he went further inside his headquarters.

  “Brag much?” Batgirl remarked. She pulled out two more of her electro-spheres and Batman another of his mini-bombs and a smoke grenade. He ignited the latter at the broken entrance as guards on the other side riddled the doorway with automatic fire.

  While the soldiers concentrated on the smoke-filled doorway, their two targets burst in through a side window. Batgirl collided with one of the soldiers and together they went over. It was like slamming into a brick wall. He was big but not flabby, and when he connected with her jaw, a mortar went off in her head.

  If he hit her again, she’d be cooked.

  Landing in a roll, Batman sprang to his feet and jabbed an elbow into one guard’s throat, while planting his boot dead in the chest of another, sending him into a column.

  The brick wall pinned Batgirl beneath him, and she couldn’t leverage her knee between them.

  “Always dreamed I’d get one of you costumed broads under me,” he gasped, a pleased leer on his face.

  “Keep dreaming, dude.” Envisioning the various nerve paths that ran through the body, she pressed the tip of each index finger against a particular location below the edge of his helmet, close to the collar bone. As he shifted to react, reaching for her shoulders, she jabbed inward with precise force.

  His hands came away and curled inward as if he’d been hit with a severe carpal tunnel spasm. The tension left his arms as they twitched uncontrollably.

  “What did you do
to me, bitch?”

  Batgirl twisted out from under him and landed a well-aimed kick that sent his helmet flying. Several rapid blows to his face, unopposed, put him out. Turning, she gestured toward three remaining opponents.

  “You get Zeus,” she said to Batman. “There are only a few more of his goons to deal with.”

  “Very well,” he rasped. But before he left he used his grapple line gun to shoot what at first looked like a wad of plastic at one of the guards. As it flew the material expanded, hitting the guard in the chest. Then ropey extensions of the stuff wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms so that he couldn’t raise his weapon.

  Before he hit the floor, Batman was gone.

  “Show-off,” Batgirl said, but she had two more to handle. Her lithe figure went prone and she slid across the polished floor as gunfire followed her. As bric-a-brac exploded into pieces above her, she stopped behind a marble statue of Zeus—the one from history, who fortunately sat on a substantial throne.

  * * *

  Batman ran deeper into the complex, his battle senses on alert. Dodging around idle slot machines and gaming tables, he passed lush tapestries and friezes of cavorting creatures such as satyrs and centaurs and luscious maidens.

  Angling around a column he felt the air heat up in front of him, and dove to one side. A nanosecond later, a lightning bolt sizzled millimeters past his shoulder, shattering plaster off the column.

  “Bow before the power of the heavens, Batman.”

  Maxie Zeus held a futuristic-looking rifle, gripping it in both his hands. The barrel was smoking. Unlike his guards, the goateed Zeus wore a business suit, but no tie. On his head was perched a gold laurel leaf crown, his one conceit.

  He shot another bolt from the weapon, sending it searing into the gloomy hallway as Batman disappeared into the shadows. With a grunt of disapproval, Zeus turned and rushed away.

  * * *

  One of the guards moved confidently toward the Zeus statue, laying down a barrage of gunfire.