Moving too fast for the eye to see, Flash overtook each assailant and knocked him out with a wellplaced haymaker. Then he collected them in one spot and made a pile for the police to cart off.
“Nice talking to you,” he said. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
Big City Warehousing and Distribution was about fifty miles southwest of Metropolis in what was not a big city at all, but a run-down little industrial park.
There were several cars parked in Big City’s lot, but none of them was the black van Batman and his partner were looking for. If it was here, it was inside the company’s dingy, gray box of a building.
“There’s a window,” Batman pointed out as he and Hawkgirl approached the place.
“How helpful of them,” she said, and hovered in front of it to give them a look inside.
What Batman saw didn’t look like a legitimate warehousing and distribution operation. It looked like a chop shop—a place where stolen cars are dismantled and sold as parts.
“If Gorinski is in there,” he said, “he must be—”
“He’s not,” Hawkgirl said. She didn’t sound the least bit uncertain about it.
“How do you know?” Batman asked. “And don’t give me the ‘little bird’ routine. There’s no way a bird would know something like that.”
“True,” his partner conceded. “But Gorinski’s still not in there. Not when a mechanic could figure out who he is and tell the wrong person, who tells the wrong person . . .”
“And before you know it, it gets back to the police,” Batman finished.
Hawkgirl was right. He would have come to that conclusion on his own if his brain hadn’t been numb from lack of sleep.
“On the other hand,” said his partner, “the guy in charge of this operation might know something about where his van went.”
“And Gorinski along with it,” Batman noted. “At any rate, it can’t hurt to ask.”
“My sentiments exactly,” said Hawkgirl.
She lowered Batman to the ground. Then she took out her energy mace and took a vicious swing at the wall below the window, smashing a hole in the building big enough to drive a car through.
The mechanics within didn’t appear to have any weapons—a confirmation that Bane hadn’t left Gorinski here. They ran at the sight of the Justice Leaguers, fighting each other to be the first one out the door.
Only one man didn’t break for the exit, a small, heavyset fellow with slicked-back hair. He ran up a flight of stairs in the back of the building, heading for what looked to Batman like a second-floor office.
The detective went after him, but he might as well not have bothered. Hawkgirl, propelled by her great gray wings, shot across the room and took the man down before he could reach the door.
By the time Batman bounded up the stairs, his partner had pinned the crook against the wall. “All right,” she said, “where’s President Gorinski?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” said the man, his eyes darting frantically from Hawkgirl to Batman and back again.
“You’re lying,” Hawkgirl told him.
“Please,” said the guy, “I have a weak heart.” “Then you’ll want to listen carefully,” said the winged woman, in a voice that promised all sorts of pain. “I could take you up about a mile into the air and drop you a few times, or I could call a flock of birds with the sharpest beaks you ever saw in your life. Or we could skip all that and go straight to the part where you tell me what you know. Your choice.”
The crook hesitated, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Only when Hawkgirl grabbed his arm as if to carry out her threat did he say, “All right, I’ll talk!”
“Where’s Gorinski?” Batman asked, echoing his teammate’s question.
The man wiped the sweat from his brow. “He’s not here.”
“Was he ever here?” Hawkgirl pressed.
The crook shook his head. “Just the other guy.” Batman peered at him through the eye slits in his
mask. “Other guy?”
The man turned red as if he had said too much. “Uh, yeah . . . the other foreign guy.”
“Melnikov?” the detective suggested.
The crook shrugged. “I think so.”
Batman frowned. If Melnikov had been there, it was a further indication of the Kaznians’ involvement in the kidnapping.
“What was he doing here?” Hawkgirl asked.
The man jerked a thumb in the direction of the office. “Talkin’ to the boss.”
“The boss being Bane?” Batman inquired.
The crook nodded again. But he didn’t say the name. It was as if he didn’t dare.
“Did they talk about the kidnapping?” Hawkgirl asked.
The man bit his lip. “Yeah.”
“And what did they say?” Batman asked.
The crook winced. “Bane’ll kill me if he finds out I ratted.”
“Then he doesn’t have to find out,” Hawkgirl offered. “Now spill, before I lose my temper.”
“Okay, okay,” the man said. He took a deep breath. “They were gonna hide Gorinski at Susser Field. In the visitors’ locker room.”
Batman was familiar with Susser Field. It had been the home of the Metropolis Meteors, the town’s National League baseball team, until the latter half of the 1980s.
“I know where that is,” the detective said.
Hawkgirl nodded. “Good. Then let’s get out of here.”
“What about me?” asked the crook. “You’re not going to tell Bane what I said, right?”
“Not Bane,” said the winged woman. “But we might just tell the police. They love busting chop shops.”
At least, that was what Batman thought she had said. Suddenly, his mind had begun racing ahead of him, and he was doing his best to catch up.
Abruptly, he realized that Hawkgirl was looking at him. “Coming?” she said.
Without warning, Batman reached for the crook’s sport jacket and got a fistful of it. Then he pulled the man close to him.
“Don’t you tell Bane either,” he said.
“What do you think,” said the crook, “that I’m nuts? As far as I’m concerned, you guys never caught up to me.”
Batman held the man a moment or two longer. Then he thrust him away.
“Make sure you don’t change your mind,” he rasped.
Then he followed Hawkgirl out of the place and let her carry him in the direction of Susser Field.
Hawkgirl had already taken to the air with Batman in tow when the detective said, “Find some cover. Quickly. Then double back.”
She looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Double back,” he repeated.
Hawkgirl didn’t understand. “You told me Susser Field was this way.”
“It is,” said Batman. “But we’re not going to Susser Field.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because,” said the detective, “our friend at the chop shop was lying through his teeth. Melnikov couldn’t have met with Bane in that office.”
Now it was Hawkgirl’s turn to frown. “How do you know that?”
“There’s no elevator in the building. The only way up to the office is via the stairs.”
“And?” she said.
“And Melnikov can’t climb stairs. The last few years, he’s been afflicted with Crossley-Hart Syndrome, which attacks the spine and reduces mobility. He can’t even walk without a cane.”
The winged woman hadn’t known the extent of Melnikov’s disability. But then, she had always relied on her instincts as a hunter rather than on any particular research or preparation.
“Then if it wasn’t Melnikov,” she said, “who was it?”
“That’s the question,” Batman agreed.
Superman alighted beside Flash and Green Lantern, who were standing side by side in front of one of Metropolis’s largest electronics stores.
“What is it?” he asked his teammates.
“See for yoursel
f,” said Green Lantern.
In the store’s display window, a large-screen television was showing a major military mobilization. Tanks were trundling along the ground like giant alien insects.
And Superman recognized the insignia on the side of the tanks. “Those are Kaznian,” he observed.
“And a minute ago,” said the Flash, “they were showing the Luristanians doing the same thing. So much for peaceful coexistence.”
Just as he said that, Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter joined them on the sidewalk.
“What is it?” asked the Amazon.
“Kaznia and Luristan are mobilizing for war,” said Green Lantern. “All because of what’s gone on here in Metropolis. Somebody’s going to have to go over there and keep an eye on things.”
Superman felt the eyes of all his teammates on him. But then, he was the most powerful of them— the best suited to keep a lid on hostilities.
“I’ll go,” he told them.
“I’ll go with you,” Wonder Woman chimed in. “So will I,” said J’onn.
“We can’t all go,” the Green Lantern noted. “Metropolis is still at risk.”
Flash grinned. “Sounds to me like you just volunteered to stay on the home front.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Superman said. He turned to the Flash. “And I’d like you to stay with him. You can cover more ground in this city than any of us.”
Flash sighed. “Looks like I’ll have to put off that Kaznia-Luristan vacation a little while longer.”
John frowned at the speedster’s remark. “If you don’t start taking this a little more seriously, there may not be a Kaznia or Luristan.”
“Easy,” said Superman. “We’re all in this together.” Green Lantern frowned. “Agreed.”
Superman took a last look at the skyscrapers that rose around him like glass-and-steel fingers prodding the sky. Then he said, “This is my city, gentlemen. Keep it safe until I get back.”
“Don’t worry,” said Green Lantern. He cast a meaningful glance in the Flash’s direction. “We’ll guard Metropolis with our lives.”
“Yeah,” added the Fastest Man Alive. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Superman didn’t want to think about that. “Come on,” he told Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter.
Then he rocketed into the sky with them, his sights set on the land across the ocean.
Hawkgirl shook her head as she crouched behind some bushes and watched the parking lot of Big City Warehousing and Distribution. “When did you have a chance to plant a tracking device on him?”
“When I grabbed his sport jacket and warned him not to tell Bane about you and me.”
Batman was crouching beside her, seemingly as comfortable with staking out this place as he was that hotel room back in Metropolis.
Of course, they had only been waiting for a few minutes. But to the Thanagarian, who was used to a different kind of pursuit, it already seemed like an eternity.
Suddenly, that eternity appeared likely to come to an end. The little creep who ran the chop shop was emerging from it—and not through the hole Hawkgirl had made in the wall.
“There he is,” Batman pointed out.
She nodded. “I see him.”
The crook got into a maroon sedan, pulled out of the lot, and headed north on the highway. Hawkgirl waited until he was out of sight.
Then she said, “Shall we go?”
Batman consulted the receiving device he had pulled out of his Utility Belt. “We’ve waited this long. Let’s give him a couple more minutes.”
Sighing, Hawkgirl flexed her wings and did as her teammate recommended.
Superman and his teammates soared eastward toward Kaznia and Luristan, a landscape of wooded, rolling hills and farmlands sliding beneath them. By the Man of Steel’s reckoning, the Chemeltekov Valley was just minutes away.
“It’s puzzling,” the always-pensive Martian Manhunter said through his comm link.
“What is?” asked Wonder Woman.
“Armaments seem to cost a great deal of money,” said J’onn. “But from what I have read about Kaznia and Luristan, neither country has a great deal of money.”
“That’s true,” Superman confirmed.
“But then,” said Wonder Woman, “other aspects of their societies must suffer.”
“They do,” said the Kryptonian. “If it weren’t for all the money earmarked for military uses, the Kaznians and the Luristanians could be buying computers for their schools, or state-of-the-art farming equipment to feed their people.”
J’onn sighed. “It seems like such a waste.”
Superman nodded soberly. “War always is.”
Just as he said that, he caught his first glimpse of the verdant Chemeltekov Valley. There were already clouds of dark smoke rising from it, shot through with lurid lightning flashes of artillery.
Listening closely, Superman could hear the accompanying booms. Obviously, he thought with a pang of regret, the shooting had begun.
Batman put his fatigue aside and glanced at the tracking receiver in his gloved hand. “He’s stopped,” he said of the chop shop boss.
“You sure?” asked Hawkgirl, who had been following the ribbon of highway as she flew north with Batman in her grasp.
“I’m sure,” the detective replied. “He’s been in one spot for three minutes now. Too long for it to be a red light.”
“Then let’s see where he’s led us,” said Hawkgirl, picking up speed precipitously.
In a matter of minutes, they had homed in on the man’s destination—the pale brick edifice that housed Conklin Carnivals, or so it said on the side of the building in a tumble of primary colors.
The chop shop boss’s car was visible in the parking lot, but he was no longer in it. Obviously, he had gone inside the building to tell Bane how he had hoodwinked the costumed heroes.
Or thought he had.
Unfortunately, the only windows in the build ing were on the ground floor, and those were obscured with pull-down shades, so the Justice Leaguers couldn’t get a peek at what they were up against.
But it wouldn’t be the first time Batman had charged into a place full of unknown dangers. And with any luck, it also wouldn’t be the last.
“Around back,” he said, “there should be a loading bay. Let’s go in that way.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Hawkgirl.
She had a gleam in her eye as she flew him around the corner of the building. It seemed she was relishing the fight to come. But then, the detective reflected, she had never fought Bane.
“Be careful in there,” he said.
“Careful’s my middle name,” his partner told him.
Batman scowled. From what he had seen of Hawkgirl, he doubted her expression of assurance.
Tired as he was, he would have to be careful enough for both of them.
Batman waited for Hawkgirl to smash a hole in the corrugated metal of the loading bay door. Then he watched her dart inside and swept into the Conklin Carnivals building in her wake.
The sound of the heroes’ entry put them at an unavoidable disadvantage. By the time they saw their adversaries, Bane’s men already knew they had a fight on their hands.
Anticipating the chatter of automatic-weapons fire, Batman was able to dive behind a merry-go-round. Bane’s henchmen managed to chip pieces off the ride’s horses, but the detective moved too fast for them to draw a bead on him.
Working his way around the perimeter of the merry-go-round, he got close enough to one of Bane’s men to swing around a safety pole and kick him in the jaw. But as that gunman went sprawling, Batman attracted the fire of two others.
Again, chips went flying off the merry-go-round steeds. But this time, Bane’s men came for the detective from two different directions—leaving Batman no choice but to slip through the herd of ceramic horses.
As he did this, he caught a glimpse of Hawkgirl— and didn’t like what he saw. She was corkscrewing her way through a half
-dozen gunmen, chopping and kicking as she went. But another of Bane’s men, standing apart from the rest, was ready to cut her down as she emerged from the crowd.
Batman couldn’t let that happen—even if it exposed him to the same kind of danger. Vaulting onto the back of one of the merry-go-round horses, he stepped onto a second and then a third and took a flying leap across the room.
Just as Hawkgirl broke away from the main concentration of her adversaries, the other gunman lined her up in his sights. Batman plowed into the man just in time to spoil his aim.
As they went down in a tangle of arms and legs, the Dark Knight managed to come out on top. A moment later, he found himself delivering an uppercut to the gunman’s jaw.
As he felt the man go slack beneath him, he immediately went darting for cover again. This time, it offered itself in the form of some bumper cars.
But before Batman could quite reach them, he felt something grab his cape from behind. Then he found himself whipped off his feet with unexpected force and sent flying into a stack of Ferris wheel compartments.
Twisting in midair, he managed to hit the nearest compartment feet first and absorb the impact with his knees. Then he flipped backward and rolled to his feet—just in time to see an immense, white-knuckled fist come flying at him.
Batman couldn’t avoid it—not entirely. But he was able to move his head in time to make it a glancing blow. Even then, there was enough power behind it to make him see stars.
The detective had felt that power before. He knew whom he was up against even before he saw the mountainous terrain of muscle and the black-and-white mask with the red-tinted lenses.
Bane.
Got to move, Batman told his fatigue-numbed brain. Stay here and he’ll pound you to paste.
Somehow, he flung himself out of the way of the next attack. His opponent’s fist hit one of the Ferris wheel compartments and put a dent in it the size of Batman’s head.
Bane spat out a curse. Then he wheeled to make another pile-driver charge at his enemy.
Move, the detective told himself again. Keep going until you can think of something.
But he was so tired. So drained of everything that made him what he was.
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