The warehouse was lit by a single bulb and by a single shaft of moonlight lancing in through a high window that wasn't covered by the black paint that coated the rest of the panes. It smelled of must and dust and crimes past, Roderick Kingsley noted, and that made him feel slightly more comfortable, oddly enough. If he had been doing this in the boardroom, he would have felt more like Roderick Kingsley, millionaire, and less like the Hobgoblin.
He preferred this identity for the moment – it gave him more scope for protecting himself if the situation turned sour, for one thing (a definite possibility, he realized, especially with the Kingpin and Don Fortunato getting ready to rip New York to bloody shreds), and for another, only a very few hoods would be willing to take him on. They probably still believed the Hobgoblin to be one man, not two, and given Jason Macendale's limited qualms about killing messily and frequently if the situation needed it, that could work to his advantage if need be. He gave a cursory examination to the rest of the warehouse for a second with a superior eye, and then returned his attention to the man standing opposite him. Though Kingsley could clearly see the man's face thanks to his Goblin-formula-enhanced physiology, he supposed that the gentleman fancied himself a mysterious shadow-dweller. Besides, if they were being observed, only someone with an ultra-expensive night-vision scope would be able to pick him out in the darkness, so it had a practical as well as a theatrical purpose.
"So why'd you do it, Kingsley?" the man asked. "Why'd you leave the easy life?"
"Norman Osborn's incarceration," Kingsley said simply. "I thought this an ideal juncture to make sure that Kingsley International was pried from Osborn's grasp for good. Even if Daniel has to reclaim it for me, at least we Kingsleys will finally have what belongs to us." He sighed. "And there was also the fact that this life is hard to walk away from completely. Becoming the Hobgoblin again has been very tempting these past few months – and your greasing the wheels with a few million dollars was the final straw." He laughed sourly. "You know, there's a certain irony here. I helped to make you, and here I am accepting business from you like a peddler." The other man raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, you could say that," he replied flatly. "It's odd how things can change so abruptly, isn't it?" He steepled his fingers. "Now then, to business. The Kingpin is expecting a shipment of heroin from Bangkok tomorrow morning at six a.m. What I need is for you to disrupt its movement as much as you can. My sources inform me that Don Fortunato has ordered a seizure of the goods as well, which makes this a lot easier for both of us. Do as much damage as you can to Fortunato's troops, but be sure to inflict a good deal of harm on the Kingpin's gang as well, just to allay suspicion. Once you've done that, destroy the shipment and get out of there as soon as you can. Do we understand each other?"
Kingsley smiled slightly and looked at the Hobgoblin mask he clutched in his right hand. "Perfectly," he said softly.
The alarm clock crowed loudly, making Peter's head pulse with its shrill tone. Peter sat up in bed as gently as he could, trying to disturb MJ as little as possible. She grunted softly as he moved over to his closet and slipped on his Spider-Man costume with practiced ease. Putting on a warm flannel shirt and thick jeans on over the insulated costume, he laced up his boots and buttoned his shirt before grabbing his leather jacket from the hook on the inside of the door and giving MJ a little kiss on the cheek.
"See you later, sweetheart," he said quietly. "I have to go meet Ben now, but I'll be home later, I promise."
MJ lay still for a second and then opened her eyes slightly and whispered "Be careful, Tiger." Peter smiled.
"I will, sweetheart. I promise." He touched her cheek and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be back later, I promise. I love you."
"I love you too, Peter," MJ said. "Don't make me wait up." Peter shook his head.
"I won't, honey, I swear. I'll see you later, okay?"
He held her in his arms for a moment, letting her linger there, stroking her hair and whispering reassuring words in her ear before he left the room and went downstairs to leave the house. As he did so, MJ whispered "Good luck, Peter."
Peter found a quiet alley to switch to his union suit and fired a thick strand of webbing from the web-shooter on his right wrist out onto the corner of a house across the street. Swinging up and out, he launched himself into the air gracefully and fired out another line of webbing towards his next target. Soon he was in Manhattan and he was able to swing for longer distances, as well as run across rooftops to conserve precious web-fluid – the liquid itself was expensive to make and store, and he didn't want to waste any unnecessarily. He made his way towards the waterfront, picking a darkened alleyway to slip his civilian clothes back on and remove his camera from the web-sack that he had had stuck to his back on the way to the pier. He saw Ben Urich crouching down behind some oil drums, clutching a small notepad in one hand and a pen in the other, a cigarette held between his lips, and quickly ran over to join him.
"Glad you could make it, kid," Ben said quietly, not taking his eyes off the warehouse that lay a few hundred meters away.
"No problem," Peter replied. "What've you seen so far?"
"Not much. There's been a few punks here and there but nothing major. I'm going to stick around here for a little while longer and see if the situation changes – you might want to go and find yourself a nice little spot for taking those photographs of yours. I'm sure Jonah'll appreciate it a lot more if you actually live up to his expectations." Peter did his best to look wounded.
"Don't I always?" he said in mock-disappointment. Ben smiled.
"That's right, kid, you keep believing that." He shrugged. "We'll need good photos if we're going to have any kind of story, though. It'll save my neck and Jonah's if you can get us some pictures of the Kingpin's gang doing the dirty work – it'll make it harder for the Kingpin to refute what's happening here if we have some concrete proof of it. And if you can get some pics of Fortunato's gang, all the better – we'll need all the photos we can get."
Peter nodded. "Okay, Ben. You have a deal – on one condition."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Which is?"
"Keep yourself out of harm's way, all right?"
Ben laughed. "Kid, I've been busy keeping myself out of harm's way since before you were in short pants. I think I can handle a few idiots with guns." He clapped Peter on the shoulder. "Thanks for the concern, though, junior. Now go do your thing, Peter – the sooner you get those pictures, the sooner we can go home."
Peter nodded again and left Ben, creeping quietly away from the older man's hiding place, towards another darkened passage between two storehouses, where he quickly switched back into his Spider-Man costume, pulling his mask down over his handsome features and clipping his web-shooters back onto his wrists. Now, then, he thought. Time to find Matt, if he's even here yet. Looking around, he tried to find an ideal place to sit and wait for Daredevil to show up. The top of the nearest warehouse seemed to be the ideal spot, as it towered above the dock and offered the best view of the surrounding area because of it. Crawling up the side of the building, Spider-Man found Daredevil already there, sitting cross-legged and with his head pointed towards the sky.
"Hello, Peter," Daredevil said softly. "I heard you and Ben talking down there a moment ago – I wondered when you'd come and find me." Spider-Man crouched down beside Daredevil and looked out across the harbor, smelling the rancid odors of a thousand shipments of goods, the New Jersey garbage ferry, and sweating, over-ripe humanity as the wind blew it in his face. He grimaced beneath his mask. If it was this bad for him, he wondered, how bad was it for Daredevil, with that super-sensitive nose of his. If there was any discomfort, Matt sure wasn't showing it. Though that doesn't prove a lot, he thought wryly. Matt's a lawyer – bad smells are part of the job description.
"So what are we looking at, Matt?" he said finally. Daredevil sighed.
"I can sense at least twenty heartbeats down there, Peter, and from what I heard when I did a little recon at ground level – from what I can still hear now – they're the Kingpin's men. I couldn't sense Fortunato's troops anywhere – not without bursting a blood vessel in my brain, anyway. I think they're going to make their move as and when the shipment of dope comes in."
Spider-Man sucked his teeth dejectedly. "Which means we're going to have to wait as well, right?" He smacked his forehead with the heel of his right hand. "For this I left my wife alone in bed?"
Felicia Hardy crouched, one gloved hand pressed to the tiny speaker in her ear as she listened to Wilson Fisk calmly relaying orders into a portable telephone. His frustration that the shipment he was expecting was running late and had not even been unloaded yet, let alone transported to a secure safehouse, was clear from the sound of his voice, even through the bullet-proof glass that shielded him from the outside world. The laser microphone that Felicia was using to spy on Fisk was excellent at picking up even minor vibrations, and had come in useful more than once in her private investigations business, and as such it had helped her put away countless minor thugs. She hoped that it might be able to do the same for the Kingpin, the biggest thug of all, but she knew that she would need more than circumstantial evidence to do that. She knew she'd have to leave soon – there were armed patrols prowling the grounds of the Kingpin's townhouse, and though she had been lucky so far, she knew that that luck wouldn't last forever. She had no desire to end up bleeding to death because of her own foolishness. She gathered her trench coat closer around her and refocused her attention on the window in front of her.
At that moment, behind and slightly above her, a figure, cloaked in shadows, watched Felicia as she listened to the Kingpin's conversation. Can't see exactly who that is, he thought. There's too much vegetation in the way. Still, I can't just take the chance that they're friendly. I have to put them down before they give me away. He leaped.
Felicia heard the vegetation behind her rustling loudly, and she whirled, a fraction of a second later, to see something black hurtling towards her. She screamed.
Spider-Man yawned beneath his mask. "This is getting ridiculous," he said to no one in particular. "Nothing's happening, Matt. Are you sure your information was correct?"
Daredevil nodded. "My information's correct, Peter – they're just behind schedule, that's all. It's not uncommon for these kinds of things to go slower than they should." He stiffened suddenly. "There's a ship coming into the dock, Peter. Let's get going." Spider-Man looked out towards the waterfront and saw what looked like a medium-sized fishing trawler steaming into the harbor, cutting through the early morning mist like a scalpel. Immediately, the dock burst into action like a hive that had just been kicked over. Swarms of the Kingpin's men erupted from their hiding places, armed with crowbars and semi-automatic weapons. They moved into the belly of the ship and brought out crates stamped with innocuous labels on pallets. One of them cracked the top off the crate nearest to him and slit open a packet of white powder with a switchblade. He dipped the tip of his finger into the white crystals and licked. The smile on his face told Spidey all that he needed to know.
"Come on, Matt," he said. "We'd better get moving." Daredevil nodded silently and fired his billy club's nylon line out across the harbor, where it caught onto the side of a tall wooden pole that carried telephone wires across the tops of the buildings. He leapt off the lip of the building and seemed to hang suspended in mid-air for a moment before gracefully swinging towards his quarry. Spidey followed him, webbing his way across the concrete. As he did so, he saw in horror that what he guessed had to be Fortunato's gang was arriving in droves as if from the ether. He risked a look over at Daredevil and saw that Matt was thinking the exact same thoughts as he was.
"Where did they come from?" he shouted. "I thought you said you couldn't sense them?"
"I couldn't," Daredevil replied as they neared their targets. "Either they've just arrived, or they've been hiding where I couldn't find them, or they figured out how to fool my radar sense." Peter thought he could see Daredevil shudder in mid-swing. "None of those possibilities makes me very comfortable."
Spidey let go his web and somersaulted a few times before landing spread-eagled against the wall of the warehouse closest to the action. He crawled up the side of the building quickly and set his automatic camera up, gluing it to the wall with a sticky glob of webbing, and then leapt back down to where gunfire was already starting to erupt. Flashes of fire burst from gun barrels on both sides, and the smell of powder was thick in the air already. He landed in the middle of the firefight, and quickly fired out three or four sticky web-balls that clogged the gun barrels of the men closest to him, and forced them to take cover as fast as they could. He kept half an eye on them as they ran, feeling a little happier when he knew that they were out of the firing line, and then grabbed the gun of the Fortunato soldier closest to him, bending it into a solid ball of metal and using it to knock the guy cold. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ben Urich scurrying closer, moving from patch of cover to patch of cover, careful to keep as low as possible. Peter wanted to scream at Ben to get away as fast as he could, but he knew that Ben was sure of what he was doing, so he concentrated on saving his own skin instead, punching a soldier of the Kingpin with a solid right cross and then kicking him backwards into another hood, sending the pair of them sprawling. A bullet suddenly winged his arm, and he felt his flesh split, immediately burning with pain even though it was just a graze. He bit his lip and tried hard to ignore the intense discomfort. Spraying a little web-fluid on the wound he hoped that that would keep it safe for the moment. He couldn't exactly wait for it to heal at this point. Suddenly, to his right, a couple of explosions rocked the pier, blowing large holes in the wooden floor and turning two of Fortunato's soldiers into bloody chunks of meat and bone. Maniacal laughter filled the air like the song of an insane bird of prey. Spidey looked upwards, as he suspected everyone else bar Daredevil was doing right about now, and then he saw it – a grinning, pale-faced apparition that he had hoped he would never see again.
"What a pleasant surprise, Spider-Man – I hadn't expected to see you here!" crowed the Hobgoblin as he swooped and snapped the necks of two of Fortunato's soldiers in his gloved grasp. "Such a shame we won't get to reminisce before you die."