He heard shouting after that, cries of rage and frustration. But he was used to them. People with guns expected to have success hitting their targets. Batman had made a career out of depriving criminals of that success.
But he couldn’t remain where he was—not if he wanted to live. And he had no intention of dying when there were still so many people in need of his help.
Reaching into one of the pouches of his Utility Belt, Batman took out another Batarang. But this one didn’t have a nylon line attached to it.
Peeking around the corner of the crate, he spotted the remaining gunman. Then he reached back and sent the Batarang slicing through the air.
Normally, Batman would have hit the gunman square in the forehead and knocked him out as quickly as possible. But tired as he was, his aim was less than perfect. The Batarang missed its mark and glanced sharply off the gunman’s jaw.
Still, it made him drop his gun and stagger back a step—and that was all the opportunity Batman needed. In four long strides he had covered the distance between himself and his adversary. Then he drove his fist into the man’s face and sent him flying into the nearest wall.
But Batman had no time to rest on his laurels. A fraction of a second later he heard the scrape of a boot and whirled to see who had entered the room.
What he saw was a giant of a man, six foot six if he was an inch. His immense arms and powerful chest were barely contained by a tight black turtleneck.
The newcomer wore a mask, just like Batman himself, except the mask covered his entire face. But his identity wasn’t a secret to the Dark Knight. He could identify the man by the black-and-white death’s-head pattern that covered his mouth and chin and the infrared lenses that allowed him to see in the dark.
The fellow’s name was Bane—and Batman had met him before, on the steamy, dark streets of Gotham City. Their last encounter had been a draw, interrupted by the arrival of federal agents. But before Bane had vanished, he had promised Batman that they would meet again.
And now they had.
Neither of them said anything. But then, they didn’t have to. They both knew what kind of opponent they were up against, and neither one of them was backing down.
Bane had an automatic pistol in his shoulder holster. But rather than capitalize on the advantage it gave him, he left it where it was and came at Batman like a big, black freight train.
Batman slid sideways at the last minute and kicked Bane’s legs out from under him. But the big man rolled as he hit the floor and whirled, ready to launch another attack.
Again, Bane rushed the detective. And again, Batman tried to sidestep that rush. But this time, the giant dealt him a glancing blow and sent him plowing into a nearby crate.
As Batman got to his feet, his shoulder was numb where Bane had struck him. No normal man could have done that to him without hitting him head-on. But then, Bane was not a normal man.
His strength and endurance had been increased tenfold by a serum called Venom, which had been developed by scientists to create a battalion of super soldiers for a brutal Latin American dictator.
Thanks to Batman, the supersoldier program was now defunct. But before he could do anything about it, it had produced the man-mountain named Bane.
With an agile mind and so much physical ability at his disposal, Bane had quickly risen to the top of the worldwide mercenary business. Therefore, his presence here didn’t bode well for the peace talks.
But more immediately, it didn’t bode well for the survival of the Dark Knight.
As Bane came at him a third time, Batman took quick note of his surroundings. Then he waited until just the right moment and rolled to his left, trying to protect his injured shoulder.
Unable to stop himself, Bane plunged past him— and crashed into the crate Batman had been standing in front of. The force of the giant’s charge splintered the wooden side of the crate and buried him inside it.
But only for a moment. More quickly than Batman had expected, Bane extricated himself and faced his adversary anew.
The detective had already braced himself for another attack when he heard cries coming through the open door of the storage room. They were muddled with panic but he could make out one word without any problem . . .
“Bane!”
The voices were calling for the mercenary. However, he didn’t look happy to oblige them. It appeared that he wanted to finish his fight with Batman.
But the voices kept calling. Finally, with a harshly whispered curse, the giant turned and darted out of the storage room.
Despite his lack of sleep, despite the numbness in his right shoulder, the Dark Knight went after him. But before he could make it through the doorway, he was stopped short by a burst of machine-gun fire across his path.
Batman waited for it to stop, then stuck his head out and scanned the stairway landing outside. He couldn’t see the gunman, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there anymore. He might be hiding just out of sight, waiting for the detective to emerge from the storage room.
Not that it mattered. Bane and his men were getting away. Batman couldn’t just wait here out of concern for his own safety.
He took a deep breath to clear his head of fatigue. Then he dove through the doorway and rolled.
Instantly, Bane’s henchman opened fire again. But as soon as Batman saw the blue-white flash of gunpowder, he was able to locate his adversary and analyze the man’s position.
Crouched on the winding stairway that led to the floor below. Shooting up at a fifty-degree angle. Singlebulb ceiling light shining in his eyes.
Batman processed the information as quickly as any computer and came up with a plan. Then, just as quickly, he put it into effect.
As he came out of his roll and plastered himself against a wall, he slipped another Batarang out of his Utility Belt and let it fly. It didn’t hit the gunman, but then, Batman hadn’t expected it to.
Its purpose was simply to distract the man for the better part of a second—time enough for the detective to launch himself off the wall and go hurtling headfirst down the stairwell.
He could hear a stream of bullets whiz by as he plowed into the man and went tumbling down the stairs with him. By the time they were halfway down,
Batman had disarmed his adversary and come out on top. A right cross was all it took to finish the job.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the Dark Knight continued down the stairs, his black cape fluttering behind him. But he didn’t find any other gunmen. In fact, he didn’t find anyone at all.
At least until he reached the ground floor. Then he saw a handful of wounded policemen scattered around a bank of security monitors.
The doors to the building had swung wide open, admitting a breeze that carried with it the smell of car exhaust. Obviously, Bane had already made his getaway.
Fortunately, none of the wounded officers had been hurt too badly. Still, Batman stood guard over them from the shadows of the stairwell until other police pulled up and entered the building.
Then he went back up the stairs past the unconscious gunman, retraced his steps to the broken window, and used the line from his Batarang to climb back up to the roof.
After all, Batman was still considered an urban legend. Many had heard about him, but few had actually caught a glimpse of him—which gave the Dark Knight an edge in his dealings with society’s dregs.
And he didn’t want to risk losing that edge by having an extended conversation with Metropolis’s Finest.
As additional patrol cars screeched to a halt in front of the Armory, flooding the area with light, the detective swung across the street and out of sight. Then he paused and used the equipment in his Utility Belt to tap into the police band again.
Just as he feared, Bane’s heist had succeeded. He had gotten away with a crate full of powerful, stateof-the-art thermite bombs.
Batman ground his teeth together. He had had a chance to keep Bane from getting his hands on those bombs and he had failed.
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Now the most dangerous and unpredictable mercenary in the world was walking the streets of Metropolis, armed with stolen bombs that made him even more dangerous. And Batman, who knew Bane better than anyone in this city, was still the Justice League’s best bet to stop him.
It looked like he would have to do without sleep a little while longer.
Superman was circling the huge golden globe that sat atop the Daily Planet building, keeping an eye on Metropolis by starlight, when he heard his name spoken over his Justice League comm link.
“Superman,” said an urgent voice, “it’s Batman.” The Man of Steel felt his jaw tighten. “I’m listening,” he said.
“We’ve got trouble,” said Batman. “I ran into an old ‘friend’ at the Metropolis Police Armory. He goes by the codename Bane.”
Batman went on to say what Bane had stolen. It wasn’t good news, Superman noted.
He remembered reading about Bane. The League had a file on him in the Watchtower. He was a highly paid, highly successful international mercenary who had crossed paths with Batman several times already.
Bane was also a lot bigger, stronger, and faster than the average human being, thanks to some kind of experimental serum that had been pumped into his veins.
If Bane was in Metropolis, it stood to reason that someone had hired him to disrupt the peace talks. But who? The Kaznians, the Luristanians, or a third party with interests in the region?
Superman posed these questions to his team mate. But for once, Batman didn’t have any answers.
“I’m still working on it,” the Dark Knight told him.
Metropolis’s champion could only guess what that entailed. Batman seldom made his methods known even to his fellow Justice Leaguers.
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” the masked man said. “Batman out.”
Superman smiled grimly to himself. Batman wasn’t exactly prone to idle chatter. Fortunately, his value to the team wasn’t based on his social skills.
He was the best detective in the world. If anyone could find out what Bane was up to, it was Batman.
Until a few minutes earlier, Wonder Woman had never even heard the term diplomatic immunity.
“I don’t understand,” she said, eyeing a red-haired fellow dressed all in black through a pane of one-way glass. “This man helped an internationally wanted criminal break into your city’s Armory, attack the police who were on guard there, and steal a crate full of highly illegal thermite bombs.”
“Absolutely true,” said Maggie Sawyer, the nononsense director of Metropolis’s special crimes unit.
“But,” the Amazon Princess went on, “despite all this, you can’t try him in a court of law?”
Sawyer scowled. “I don’t like it any better than you do. But the dirtbag’s story checks out. He’s a member of Premier Melnikov’s Kaznian delegation, so we can’t touch him no matter what he did.”
Wonder Woman shook her head in disappointment.
Batman had asked her to sit in on the interrogation of the gunmen captured in the Armory. And out of respect for Superman and the Justice League, the special crimes boss had allowed it.
But Sawyer had barely asked her first question when Bane’s henchman claimed diplomatic immunity. And if Sawyer was right, the other captured gunmen would make the same claim—which was probably why Bane hadn’t thought twice about leaving them behind.
Wonder Woman watched as a police officer entered the room on the other side of the one-way glass and escorted the Kaznian out.
It didn’t make sense, she insisted to herself. And yet, Sawyer’s hands were tied.
“Only in Man’s World,” Wonder Woman said, “could someone be so plainly guilty and still escape punishment.”
Sawyer looked at the Amazon with an expression of confusion on her face. “Man’s World? I thought that was some kind of discount clothing outlet.”
Wonder Woman heaved a sigh. There were times when she missed Themyscira. This was one of those times.
“Batman?” she said, activating her comm link with the sound of his name.
“Yes?” her teammate replied, transmitting from wherever he was at the moment.
“It seems,” said Wonder Woman, “that we have run into something of a dead end.”
Bane sat back and watched Alexi Melnikov endure the half-dozen microphones that had been pushed in front of him at the entrance to the World Assembly building.
“I regret,” the Kaznian premier told the assembled TV reporters, “that members of my delegation were implicated in the unfortunate incident last night at the Metropolis Armory. However, these men were acting entirely on their own. Neither I nor my government had anything to do with their crime.”
As always, Melnikov did a good job hiding whatever emotions he was feeling. But Bane knew what kind of turmoil was seething under that façade.
In fact, Melnikov was the one who had hired him to steal the thermite bombs. And it was Melnikov as well who had given Bane some of his most experienced Kaznian commandos in order to increase Bane’s chances of success.
With so much help, it had been child’s play for the mercenary to do what he had been paid to do. Despite Batman’s interference, Bane had obtained the bombs for his employer.
Unfortunately, he had been forced to leave a few Kaznians behind in the process. But that wasn’t his problem. It was Melnikov’s.
“I hope this will not in any way hinder the progress of our negotiations with the Luristanians,” the premier continued soberly. “That is all I have to say at this time.”
As the camera pulled back, it showed Melnikov entering the World Assembly building with the help of a cane, a small army of unsatisfied reporters left standing in his wake. The Kaznian had taken a difficult situation and handled it more smoothly than anyone had expected.
Bane admired professionalism, no matter what field a person might be in. And without question, Alexi Melnikov was a professional.
But then, so were the superbeings who comprised the Justice League. The premier’s skills had never been tested against the likes of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter.
And in Bane’s estimation, even those flying juggernauts weren’t half as formidable as Gotham’s Batman. He boasted no superhuman abilities, no blinding speed or emerald energy, but the Dark Knight was still the most dangerous Leaguer of them all.
The mercenary’s only regret was that he had failed to put Batman’s career to rest back in the Armory. But he assured himself that he would have other opportunities to do so.
And soon.
Ever since she was a little girl back on her homeworld of Thanagar, Hawkgirl had prided herself on her powers of observation.
It wasn’t that her vision was so much more acute than anyone else’s. It was just that she noticed things other people tended to overlook.
What Hawkgirl had noticed a few moments earlier was a dark spot on a kitty-corner wall of the stately Metropolis Armory. At first glance, it had looked like just another shadow. Then it had occurred to her that the shadows on that particular building were running in a different direction entirely.
That was when she had swooped down lower to take a closer look—and saw that the shadow was really a silken cape with a familiar saw-toothed edge to it.
Batman, she thought.
He was hanging by a line too slender for even Hawkgirl to make out, peering into a window of the hotel. But what was he up to? What kind of prey was he hunting?
Had it been any of her other teammates in the Justice League, she would have received word of his intentions in advance. But Batman was different. Secretive, as she had told Martian Manhunter.
Hawkgirl wondered what the Dark Knight found so interesting. However, she wasn’t about to distract him by posing a question over their comm links. And the only way she could peek over his shoulder was to hug the wall that he was hugging.
But that wasn’t the winged woman’s style. When she hunted, she was a flurry of wings and a flash of c
urved beak. She wasn’t the kind to hang around indefinitely, waiting for her prey to make a wrong move.
Which was why this whole standing-guard-over- Metropolis thing was beginning to get on her nerves. But for the sake of establishing peace between two old enemies, she would continue to scan the city.
And she would leave “the mysterious Batman” to his curious, lonely vigil.
Batman blinked and opened his eyes . . .
. . . and wondered with an unfamiliar jolt of panic how long they had been closed. A second? A minute?
Several minutes?
It wouldn’t have alarmed him quite so much if he hadn’t been hanging by a rope twenty stories above the ground. Had his arms and legs not been entwined in the line, his lapse might have cost him his life.
Batman refocused his gaze on the hotel room he had been watching. It was the room that Bane’s redhaired henchman had occupied before he was arrested.
The man was being deported at the moment, so he himself couldn’t have been in the room. However, one of Bane’s other men might have showed for some reason.
That was why the detective had been hanging outside the window for the last few hours. But it was becoming increasingly clear that he had come to a dead end.
If Batman was going to find Bane and stop him from carrying out his plan, he would have to do it some other way.
J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, had been standing guard at the door to the World Assembly’s amphitheater-shaped conference room for the last twenty-seven minutes.
Of course, no one except the Assembly’s chief of security knew it was him. To maintain a low profile, he had used his shape-changing ability to assume the guise of a human security guard.
In the time he was standing there, he had seen both the Kaznian and Luristanian delegations and an Assembly mediator enter the room. Then he had seen them take their seats around the oval table in the center of it.
The Kaznians and the Luristanians had exchanged terse but polite greetings. They had made what the Flash might call “small talk.” But they had not yet begun to discuss the outlined areas of conflict between their two countries.
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