Lt. Gordon put a tracking beacon on him disguised as a pen, and had him back on the street less than an hour after they bought his story. They had wanted to put a wire on him, but Lom refused flat out, fearing for his life. He also had Gordon's work number plugged into his cell phone, under the name of "Hot Blonde at Starbucks". Grovenor liked that touch. In another world, Gordon could have made a good spymaster. He had the instincts if not the training for it.
Grovenor could tell that it killed the cop to let him out into circulation again. Lom Shishani wasn't a trained turncoat, a professional rat. There was no telling how reliable Lom would be under pressure. But remorseless logic drove Gordon to trust the Chechen. If one of Sayed's henchmen disappeared, there would be no way to know where the terrorist would go to ground next. The payoff of having a man on the inside outweighed the risks.
Grovenor allowed himself two seconds of self-congratulation once he hit the concrete outside the police station. Inventing cloak and dagger conspiracies out of whole cloth was not as easy as it seemed.
The day was overcast and slightly smoggy. A parade of humanity washed around him as he pushed his way east to the suburbs of Gotham. Businessmen, churchgoers, high schoolers, cops on patrol, yuppies, hippies, blue collar joes. They were all straights. They were blind to the nature of the world, and to the plots and schemes and filthy tricks that happened right under their noses.
Grovenor hated them all, though only in a low key, barely concious way. They were priveleged and self-satisfied and kept themselves deliberately ignorant, and Grovenor despised people who kept themselves stupid on purpose. Grovenor saved his sympathy for the crack whores, homeless, and gangbangers that also shared the street. They, at least, understood how the world worked. There were only two kinds of people in the world- the ones you could exploit, and the ones you left alone because they posed a threat to you. It was as true in the hills of Afghanistan as in the ghettos of Gotham. There's no more reason to dispute that worldview than there is to dispute gravity. A homeless woman understood it better than a housewife, because the homeless woman stayed up the night before making sure no one robbed her while she slept.
Once he returned to Sayed's safehouse- or, in the real world, the ambush site- he tossed the tracker it on the floor. The tracker was accurate to within twenty meters, so he could just slide it around every hour or so to keep things realistic.
Grovenor opened the fridge and got himself a bottle of Coke as he checked the time on the watch. Call it, oh, another five hours till the phony bomb came in. He had the safehouse to himself. He tapped out a call to Gordon.
"Hey, sexy, what's up?"
Grovenor almost broke character to laugh. Gordon had a chick cop on standby to answer his own phone. He wished that he had someone as dedicated to their craft backing him up in the old days.
"I'm alone right now. It's just me and two other guys, but I'm in the bathroom right now. Listen. The bomb's arriving some time tonight."
"When?" Now it was Gordon on the line.
"I don't know. I'll shoot you a text when I get word. No codes or nothing. Just, if you get a text from me, it's a warning that it's inbound. The second text means it's here."
"Understood." Gordon hung up.
Grovenor went to the equipment closet in the back room. Inside were several firearms, ready cash, and three untraceable cell phones with prepaid minutes already loaded. He picked one and called Brezhnev.
"Grovenor? What's the situation?"
"They bought it. Hook, liner, and sinker."
"Good. I'm sending Ivan and the others into position in the surrounding rooftops. Georgy and the boys are on their way to you at the safehouse."
"Excellent. Also, while I'm speaking to you. Has the Dmitry matter been solved yet?"
The briefest of pauses raised the hairs on the back of Grovenor's neck as Brezhnev responded, "Yes."
"Really? Permanently solved?"
Another pause, much longer this time. "Not how you mean. I am sending him out of town for a while. A long while, of course."
"Fuck! Fuck! God damn it, Benedikt!"
"Calm down."
Grovenor slammed his fist into the stucco wall, denting the soft material into a crater. "Why isn't that guy wearing a pair of concrete shoes? His blood is at a crime scene."
"You are paranoid, Grovenor. This is Gotham. Evidence here vanishes when I tell it to vanish. The police here are even more corrupt than the ones back home. There is nothing they can make stick to Dmitry, and I will not kill him just in case."
"You're putting my ass on the line. He slips up, and they put pressure on you. They put pressure on you, who knows what you give them for ten years off your sentence!"
"Shut up."
Grovenor heard the snarl in Brezhnev's voice. The last time he had heard it, Brezhnev had been torturing a mujahedeen. He shut up and listened.
"This is not Afghanistan, and you're not in charge here. You do not wave a hand like a king and tell me which of my men I must kill. I decide who lives, and who dies. And I say Dmitri lives. He's a good man, and an assest to our organization. And I say that the threat he poses is minimal. Your job, Kuznetsov, or Grovenor, or whoever you are, is to kill the Batman. Focus on that and leave personnel decisions to me. Do you understand me?"
Grovenor dented the wall again, hurting his hand, but kept his voice even. "I understand."
"Good. Georgy should be there in ten minutes. You have operational control. Make sure you obtain at least two bodies when the Special Forces attack. We need to be able to blow the lid on the conspiracy, not merely kill a few individuals. We must produce evidence that the United States government is behind the Bat."
"I understand. But remember- the police might have decided to cover this on there on."
"You said the bait as perfect."
Grovenor snorted. "There's no such thing as perfect. If it's just a SWAT team, we'll shoot them up and run. That'll prime the pump for the next trap, which the Green Berets will be forced to respond to."
"Alright. Happy hunting, Grovenor."
"Good bye, Brezhnev."
Grovenor disconnected, and said, "Go fuck yourself, Brezhnev."
The walkie talkie crackled. "Boss, this is Gargoyle. Spot to the south."
Grovenor snapped up from the couch in the safehouse's living room and grabbed the walkie talkie. He stalked to the window facing south. "Talk me on."
"Garage rooftop. Two story house with the wide windows, SUV in driveway."
Grovenor peered out through the blinds and spotted the house Ivan described. The streetlamp on the street glowed a low, sickly yellow, but didn't reach the garage. "Contact garage, but no joy."
"I have eyes on with thermals."
"Describe the target. Is it a Bat?"
"Standby."
Grovenor kept his eyes fixed above the white garage door, staring into sheer blackness. Whoever was up there was absolutely motionless.
He spoke to Georgy and his gunmen over his shoulder without breaking eye contact with the garage. "Safeties off. We might have some action soon."
He heard the clicks and clacks of seven guns being checked and prepped.
"Boss, Gargoyle."
"Send it, Gargoyle."
"I can only get a clear view of part of his face. I think he's wearing some kind of suit that's dampening his heat signature."
Grovenor closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. It was them. The Special Forces. The "Batman" was here. The technology was a dead giveaway. Chyort, with suits designed to defeat night optics it was a miracle the man on that rooftop had been spotted in time. But you couldn't get excited. Excited agents make mistakes. Calm agents win everytime. Control the breaths. In and out.
"I copy. Keep your eyes on. Don't lose him."
"I can take the shot from here. Easy."
"Negative, negative. His friends are out there somewhere. We wait until they show themselves."
"Copy."
The American on the garage rooftop is an absolute pro. Grovenor didn't see so much of a twitch in the darkness.
He raised the walkie talkie to his mouth and said, "Gargoyle, Boss."
"Send it."
"Keep two pairs of eyes to the north of the street too."
"Copy."
Grovenor left the window and inspected his kill team. He made sure every window and door had a rifle pointed at it, then he went back to watching above the garage.
They had an advance scout in place. They must be manuevering onto the house somehow. But from where? North and south were covered by Ivan's sniper teams. Georgy had a clear field of view east and west.
Think outside the box. How else could they get at us? Air insertion through the roof? But we would hear the chopper. Burrow down and come up from underground? Impossible.
Minutes passed. He saw beads of sweat dripping down his kill team's faces as they scanned their sectors. A lifetime spent reading faces left him with no doubt- his men were scared. Not just nervous, but actually scared. The Bat's hold on their imaginations was tighter and surer then expected. He tried to think of something to say, some speech to give that would give them their edge back and put them in the zone, but nothing sprang to mind.
He wanted to spit once he realized he was scared too. Of what? God damn it, what was there to be scared of? The Bat wasn't real, and he had a plan to deal with the flesh and blood men who were coming. This wasn't the first time warriors had stalked him in the darkness.
No. He was scared because they clearly had a plan and he couldn't suss them out. Natural to be nervous. Adds an edge to his performance on the battlefield, that's all. Maybe that was their game plan. They'd exposed one scout just to make us jumpy, and then froze their tempo to wear us out worrying when they'd come. The real attack would come after all the guards were exhausted and complacent.
Nonsense. They had no way to know we were laying for them, and no way to be sure their observer on the garage roof would be seen. Paranoia was betraying him.
Grovenor realized he was tapping his foot rapidly. He stopped.
This was ridiculous. He had set up a big housewarming party, but no one was showing up on time. Why weren't they coming to him. His bait was impeccable.
Something went wrong. The thought punctured his usual self-confidence. Something went wrong, and this plan won't work. Grovenor quelled the doubt. He was the best freelance espionage agent on the market. He held the trump cards. He would win.
"Boss, the is Gargoyle. I just lost the target on the garage."
"Say again?"
"He's gone. I don't have a heat sig up there anymore."
Grovenor swore and jogged for the south-facing window. "Were you watching him or not?"
"Yes, but he just disappeared!"
Grovenor muttered, "Useless fucking shit." He keyed his walkie talkie and said, "Keep scanning south and north."
He peered at the rooftop of the garage and gasped. Smoke tendrils were fading into the circle of light around the streep lamp. They seemed to be drifting down from the roof.
"Gargoyle, Boss, be advised, enemy has used smoke to cover his exfil."
"Copy."
Grovenor paced away from the window and drew his pistol from its holster. He double checked to make sure a round was in the chamber and flicked the safety off.
Long, painful minutes passed.
One of Georgy's gunmen fired off a long burst. Someone else did too. The air stank of sweat, fear, and gunpowder. He contacted George over the radio.
"King, this is Boss, report! Who's shooting at what?
"We hear them on the roof. Yevgeny shot through hoping to hit them."
The roof? Fuck, who did they get up there? Every route was covered!
"King, have the men double up in teams, no one is to be isolated! I am coming down the hallway, hold fire."
Once he linked up with his kill team, he contacted Ivan. "Gargoyle, are you copying this? Possible enemy on our rooftop."
Nothing.
"Gargoyle, Boss, radio check. God fucking damn it. Georgy, try and raise Gargoyle, my walkie talkie is down."
"No, it's not. I heard you through mine. They're just not answering."
The two men locked eyes for a split second as they mulled over a theory why Ivan wouldn't answer. Grovenor snarled in frustration.
One of the gunman screamed and emptied his mag at full auto down the hall Grovenor had just entered from. The rifle was inches from Grovenor's left ear and his was completely deafened, knocked half senseless by the concussive forces slaming into his eardrum. He recovered just in time to see a small grenade no bigger than a baby's fist rolled by his feet and detonate.
Thick, coarse, sour smoke filled the room in just a few heartbeats. The whole team was sucking it in, coughing it out, gagging on it. It felt like lemon juice on the eyes and hot pepper spray in the throat.
The next few seconds were like a hallucination. Georgy charged out of the cloying black mist down the hallways. He met a demon halfway, a looming figure with bat wings and wide, white eyes. They fought briefly until the former Spetsnaz had his forehead slammed through the wall. More gunfire demolished Grovenor's right ear drum as panicked killers tried to slay the Bat that was coming for them.
Grovenor struggled to rise, but his comrades were bunched up around him, stepping on him, impeding him. The Bat had brought utter howling chaos to Grovenor's structured operation.
Grovenor crawled, coughing and snarling, away from the smoke. Away from the Bat. Back to the living room that the smoke hadn't got to yet. Behind him he heard fighting. Gunshots. Once, he heard what might have been bones shattering, if that wasn't just his imagination.
He was free from the smoke now. He hauled himself to his knees and went for his pistol.
And a gloved hand grabbed his gunhand with a grip of iron.
He spun around and faced Gotham's terror in the face. Its face was black as tar, misshapen, with inhumanly thin ears. The arms were spiked and swollen. But the eyes burned white in the darkness.
Grovenor dropped the pistol to the floor. The Bat kicked it away.
"I give up," Grovenor whispered. "Please don't hurt me."
The Bat seemed to glare before letting him loose. The second he was free, Grovenor punched him in the face as hard as he could, twisting his hips to create more striking power. The blow might have killed a lesser man, but the Bat merely staggered back and sagged a little.
Grovenor sprang to the gun and swept it up as the Bat charged him. He lined up the sights to Batman's center of mass and pulled the trigger.
He couldn't believe it when his enemy ignored the bullet and got to him anyway. An armor piercing .45 round should have killed any armored opponent in the world.
The Bat struck Grovenor in the gut hard enough to make him drop the gun form nerveless fingers. The second blow to the jaw dropped him to the floor like a corpse. He scrambled for the gun again in what felt like slow motion, until the Bat reached down and broke Grovenor's right wrist.