JSA: If Looks Could Kill
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
An Elseworld's story: Stories, situation or events involving familiar characters in unfamiliar settings.
Chapter 5
The dark-haired girl's body writhed, her bare rear end twisting to the pounding drumbeat thumping out over the record player system. The two large speakers made the room pulse with sinister life. Abdul al-Kafir could feel his palms sweat as he watched the girl from his glassed-in gallery. The girl's barely postpubescent body was rolling across the tiled floor beneath him.
He rubbed his palms on his thighs and raised his small swarthy left hand. He'd always had small hands. It had disturbed him as a boy, he remembered, watching his manicured left index finger as it pressed the red button.
The button emitted a buzzing sound, and he could see the girl's body tense, felt part of himself tense as he watched.
From where he sat, he could view the entire room. Drool began to drop from his lips as a gleaming stainless-steel door slid up into the upper wall and the glistening black bodies of three well-muscled Dobermans bounded in. The gleaming door closed.
He could see the tension in the girl's body as she became frozen with fear. He felt himself go rigid with anticipation.
Through the microphone feed he could hear her scream over the deep-throated growls of the Dobermans.
His left hand trembled as he turned up the volume.
The screaming grew louder.
The girl edged back toward the far wall on her right, slipped on her bare feet and fell spread-eagled.
The three Dobermans had stopped, watching her, their bodies quivering.
Abdul al-Kafir's body quivered with them.
He poised his left index finger over the green button. He was almost ready, his body trembling as he watched the dogs slowly advance on her.
She was screaming something incomprehensible in the dialect of his native tongue.
He liked white girls better -- they screamed in English and screamed so much louder.
The girl was pleading, sobbing, as he lowered his finger on the green button.
Suddenly, he heard the hiss of the door behind him as it opened.
Enraged, he moved his hand from the button and looked up.
Akhmed, his security chief, stood in the doorway.
"Get out of here!" al-Kafir screamed.
"But, master," pleaded Akhmed, his beady eyes shifting between al-Kafir and the scene in the room beyond the glass wall, "a small number of people have been spotted approaching the chalet from the mountainside. And a car comes. I fear, master, fear that they come for you."
A part of Abdul al-Kafir went limp.
He stood quickly and zipped his pants, kicking over an eighteen-karat gold bowl with his left foot. "Allah curse them!" He felt his mouth twist into a snarl. "Kill the girl. But do not harm the dogs -- to train them for this takes too long. See that the dogs are evacuated in the van. Immediately! And my car. It is ready?'
"Yes, master."
Abdul al-Kafir looked at the girl once more, heard her pleading. She was praying to him.
"About the killing of the girl -- never mind that, Akhmed." Abdul al-Kafir pushed the green button. There was a buzzing sound different from the earlier noise and the three Dobermans lunged toward the girl, one for her face, one for her neck and one for her abdomen. She tried to twist away, but the drooling, white-fanged mouths of the dogs ripped into her flesh and began to tear her apart as if she were a rag doll.
Al-Kafir sighed, but the magic of the moment was ruined for him.
The screams died, and he saw a proud Doberman raise his blood-soaked head as he turned to leave the gallery.
***
Al-Kafir personally supervised the leading of the blood-splattered Dobermans into the special kennels in the dark-blue van. The attache case he clutched against his chest contained the sum of his available cash outside his Swiss bank accounts -- eighty-five thousand dollars in American currency -- and his address book. The latter was worth more to him.
Akhmed -- tall, dark, robust -- exited the sprawling chalet and joined the three other members of the security force who surrounded al-Kafir as he started toward his vintage black Mercedes. Like the three others, Akhmed carried a submachine gun.
Al-Kafir climbed into the rear seat of the Mercedes as Akhmed prepared to slam the door closed.
A car -- another Mercedes -- was coming up the road fast, skidding slightly on the hard-packed snow.
Al-Kafir's breath steamed in large clouds as he settled inside the cold car. Beside him, Akhmed shouted in English to the three German guards, "Stop that car -- quickly!"
Al-Kafir hit the floor, feeling Akhmed shoving him down. He held his hands over his head. Gunfire roared. The clattering of submachine guns stuttered over the roar of the car's engine.
Suddenly, the car wasn't moving. A short burst of submachine-gun fire was followed by a scream from one of the Germans.
He waited there, huddled on the floor of the car for what seemed a long time.
Finally he felt a hand on his shoulder. A powerful hand.
He looked up into a broad black-cowled face, a large man with tremendous strength.
"Would you join us, sir?" said a determined Hourman as he pulled a reluctant al-Kafir from the Mercedes with the vise-like grip of his right hand.
Al-Kafir sagged back against the cold metal of his Mercedes and surveyed the scene.
He didn't like what he saw. Akhmed, looking to be only partially conscious, was sitting against the bumper that was below the open rear cargo doors of the van housing the dogs. Inside, the animals were in a frenzy, throwing themselves against the doors of their cages. Two of the Germans were down in the snow. They were bleeding. The third German was on his knees in front of a big man dressed in what appeared to be a dark cat costume. The German's left arm hung limp and dislocated from the elbow down.
A man in a gray and black costume with a bat on his chest was walking toward the other Mercedes. A gust of wind caught his long dark cape. Though attired oddly, the man looked very dangerous.
Then a woman stepped from the back seat of the second Mercedes, black leather gloves disappearing under the sleeves of a midcalf-length coat. As she picked her way across the hard-packed snow of the driveway, a gust of wind caught at the coat, revealing a purple outfit with a slits running high that showed off her incredible legs. She also wore a purple and black cowl to hide her identity.
Her green eyes stared through him. The wind caught at the hair protruding from beneath the cowl, and it shook like the mane of an Arabian stallion in its blackness and vibrance.
In her hands was a whip.
She spoke to her companions, "I see, boys, that Mr al-Kafir's men didn't give you too much of a problem."
"Thank you for the compliment, Catwoman," the big man in yellow and black with a grip on al-Kafir answered.
"Catwoman? Catwoman?" Al-Kafir's jaw dropped.
"Abdul al-Kafir, what a thrill to meet you after so long," the woman smiled, making a limp-wristed gesture with the whip in her right hand. "I think we've had mutual friends for years, haven't we? It's lovely, I think, for competitors to be able to meet so openly, on such an intimate basis."
"Yes, isn't it?" The man in the dark cat suit laughed.
Catwoman approached al-Kafir, the wrist no longer limp. She started to slap the leather weapon into the palm of her left hand and stepped back as if to start snapping -- at al-Kafir's face. Al-Kafir felt himself swallow hard. "Uh, Catwoman," he faltered, "I --"
"Al-Kafir," she chided, her lips full, the voice a soft alto. "You are the soul of the right-wing underground. We seek its most ardent devotee -- one False-Face. He's stolen something we want. Where can we find him?" The whip snapped out and struck the ground beside him, snow flew upwards into the air.
"I do not know, Catwoman. His face is unknown to all -- he is a mystery, he is dangerous, too, this False-Face," pleaded al-Kafir.
"Hourman?"
It was the man with the bat on his chest who had spoken. The man who stood next to al-Kafir answered, "Yes, Batman?"
"Al-Kafir has a peculiar habit and he needs his hands to have fun with it. Start breaking his fingers."
"Sure thing." Hourman smiled. He started to reach for one of al-Kafir's hands.
"Wait!" Al-Kafir had never heard such panic in his own voice.
"For what?" Catwoman smiled.
"Akhmed!" Al-Kafir shouted the name as shrilly as the girl had screamed for his mercy from the dogs, and immediately threw himself onto the snow away from the reach of Catwoman's whip.
Akhmed had not been searched -- at least al-Kafir had not seen him being searched.
A sudden burst of blazing gunfire sent the four costumed figures diving for cover. As al-Kafir rolled around the end of the Mercedes, he heard the wild barking of the dogs and Akhmed's familiar voice, somehow strained, shouting, "Kill!"
***
The Sandman peered through his specially made binoculars, faintly amused. It was interesting to watch someone else working instead of himself. The Arab, al-Kafir, had thrown himself to the ground, shouting something that was incomprehensible at a distance. Sandman watched from the tree line, part way up a slope that ran at an oblique angle to the driveway leading to the chalet. He shuffled his feet and watched. Hourman wheeled toward the Arab-looking man by the open cargo doors of the blue van. But Batman had moved first, throwing a Batarang. The Arab continued to fire his gun. More gunfire cracked through the air and Sandman watched as the Arab with the gun pushed a fat al-Kafir through the side cargo doors of the van. He didn't see anyone fall.
The Sandman settled his gaze on Batman. Suddenly, there was a blur of blackness, then another. Sandman saw two dogs, Dobermans, large ones, spring onto the snow, their lips pulled back in vicious snarls, their man- killing teeth exposed and deadly. Wildcat straight-armed one of the Dobermans in the chest, knocking it to the snow. Catwoman snapped her whip and the other dog took stinging leather in midair, twitching, lurching. Batman threw himself at the animal as it tried to lunge at Catwoman.
Batman and the dog rolled in the snow, the hurt dog trying to force its teeth into Batman's neck. Sandman then heard a bellowing yelp from the dog and saw its muscled body go limp. The Caped Crusader rolled away from the magnificent dog of Satan after incapcitating it.
Hourman grabbed the third dog and it went down and didn't move.
The blue van was moving, and suddenly Sandman, taken up with enjoying the spectacle of the fight, realized al-Kafir and his tall Arab guard were gone.
The door of the van on the driver's side was slamming shut, the van already fishtailing as it skidded along the snowbank on the side of the driveway, sideswiping the Mercedes Batman and the others arrived in.
Involuntarily, The Sandman recoiled as a grenade or some other explosive device with similar force went off. The Mercedes lurched skyward, a fireball of orange and yellow and black belching around it.
Batman and Wildcat were running after the blue van. Hourman was helping Catwoman up from the snow, the back of her dark, midcalf-length fur coat white with the slick powder.
Above the dying roar of the explosion, Sandman heard a familiar chopping sound coming from above him.
A helicopter. He looked up and saw it. "What the hell?" was all he said.
His weapons were secure in the interior pockets of his suit jacket, and now it looked as if he'd be needing them. Beneath the gas mask that covered his face, The Sandman felt the corners of his mouth turn down in a frown. Either more of al-Kafir's people had shown up, or a new player had sat down at the table. "At any rate," he said, "they're no friends of mine."
Sandman, under cover of the tree line, started to move after al-Kafir. There was a still a job to be done and that meant making al-Kafir talk about stolen nerve gas canisters.
***
Colonel Flagg shouted to Ed Benson, "Stop this damn thing. The file says that blue van belongs to al-Kafir!"
He threw open the door of the rented BMW and stepped out on the passenger side, a Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol gripped tightly in both his fists. He fired skyward as the van bore down on them. It was stupid under the conditions, but the driver's-side window was open and he shouted it anyway. "Halt! In the name of the law!"
The midnight-blue van kept coming.
"Shoot the S.O.B's!" shouted Flagg's assistant, David Palms.
Against his better judgement, but because it was the only thing practical, Colonel Flagg shouted, "Palms take the tires, Benson go for the radiator. I've got the open driver's-side window!"
He swung the muzzle of the .45 on line, firing. It had a smooth trigger, he thought, for a factory gun. He let loose two shots and the van swerved, two more, the van's headlights were shot out. The blue van wasn't stopping. Flagg shrugged, maybe the tires were bullet-resistant.
He saw it as the driver tossed it. "Grenade!" he yelled, and Flagg launched himself over the snowbank, out of the way, his gun in his right hand, another ammo clip in his left.
He heard the explosion, his ears ringing with it, felt the concussion as it rippled over him, felt the snow pelting down on him.
He pushed himself up, ejecting the old clip from the semiautomatic, then ramming a new clip up the gun's butt. As he emptied the clip again against the rear doors of the fast vanishing blue van, he could see his hands -- pink flesh in tiny shredded bits, flecked with blood.
Flagg stepped back, stumbling in the snow and clambored over the snowbank. Ed Benson was moving, getting to his feet, gasping, "I'm okay, I think." But David Palms would never move again -- the whole left side of his body was ripped away, just like the roof and the hood of the BMW. Thick steaming splotches of dark-red blood and ragged chunks of pink flesh dotted the snow.
Colonel Flagg wheeled and shouted after the van, "Dammit!"
***
Batman skidded on the slick ice at the end of the driveway where it met the road. He watched the van speed away. And there had been another explosion perhaps a half mile down the road, just over the hill. Another grenade.
Overhead, the sounds of a helicopter filled the air with a staccato fury, and behind him, Catwoman screamed.
"Batman!"
Batman slipped again as he spun around, caught his balance and started to run. He could see Wildcat midway between him and Catwoman, Hourman beside her. The injured German guard was now sitting with his back propped against the side of al-Kafir's abandoned Mercedes.
The Caped Crusader was trying to figure out just whose helicopter was coming at them and what to do about it when ski-borne commandos armed with assault rifles and machine guns appeared from both sides of al-Kafir's chalet. The place was beginning to get crowded, Batman thought to himself.
Wildcat was already getting ready to do battle.
The Sikorsky was close, but Batman couldn't look up and keep his balance on the ice-coated snow as he ran.
"The chopper, Hourman -- the chopper!"
As if the occupants of the helicopter had heard him, knew of the impending threat, machine-guns echoed fire overhead. Both sides of the snowpacked driveway on which Batman ran were churning under the impact, and the Masked Manhunter's hands came up to protect his face.
He could see Catwoman through the storm of snow spit up by the machine-gun fire. Hourman was keeping her down beside the smoldering wreckage of the Mercedes.
The ski troops -- he counted twelve of them -- were less than two hundred yards from the chalet, their assault rifles and subguns starting to spit fire.
"Dammit!" yelled Wildcat as he dropped to his knees to where Batman came to a rest to take cover. The snow around them churned as machine-gun fire rained down from the chopper as it made a second pass.
Batman knew their only chance was to disable the aircraft.
"Hourman," the Caped Crusader yelled over the gunfire, "You've got to bring that chopper down!"
Hourman pushed Catwoman closer to the car and then took off for the nearest line of trees. He moved not quite as fast as The Flash, but it was at amazing speed. His eye caught just the size tree he was looking for. With his enhanced strength, the Man of the Hour snapped the tree near the base.
Lifting the tree easily, he started to move back into the open.
Batman could see the helicopter was coming in low and fast, its machine guns sending out invitations to death.
Suddenly, from seemingly out of nowhere, a small tree flew and hit the helicopter with a loud thud. With a sickening jerk, the rotor mechanism stopped. Like a giant bug, the chopper and tree seemed to hang motionless in the air for a split second. Then it started to come down.
"Wildcat," Batman yelled. "The snowbank -- hit it!"
Batman was moving fast, throwing himself over the snowbank, shouting to Catwoman and Hourman, "She's coming down. Take cover!"
His right shoulder hit the snowbank hard, his body taking the roll. His mouth filled with snow as he skidded down, and then the ground began to shake under him as he heard the first sound wave, felt the first shock wave.
Bits of flaming debris rained down, and the snow was whipped into a skin- searing blizzard. Over the dying roar of the fatally wounded helicopter, Batman heard something that sounded almost like a scream but barely human enough to be recognized as belonging to a man.
He rolled onto his back, his left hand protecting his face from the intense heat of the fireball that had erupted from the chopper's ruptured fuel tanks.
"Catwoman!" He screamed her name. He was up and running now. The ski troops had taken cover beside the walls of the chalet, but they were moving again.
Their automatic weapons opened up and hurled their cargo into the devastating scene in front of the chalet.
"Catwoman!" It was a loud whisper, like something from inside him rather than the sound of his own voice. She was moving, held tight against Hourman's hip.
The snow beside Catwoman and Hourman ripped up in a wave, bursts of automatic-weapon fire hammered into it but missing the fast-moving Man of the Hour who was carrying Catwoman. Batman glanced to his right. Wildcat was still alive, had survived the burning wreckage of the helicopter which covered the width of the driveway. He was running.
Batman was less than fifty yards from Catwoman. She turned and saw him, and he could see her eyes suddenly widen. "Batman -- save yourself!" she yelled.
He kept running toward her and Hourman.
Twenty-five yards. Twenty. Hourman was running, leaving Catwoman for an instant by the side of their Mercedes. The powerful hero drew fire as he rolled across the snow toward the end of the driveway. Then he was up on his feet. Hourman ran, diving into the snow near the far edge of the driveway. Batman narrowed the distance to Catwoman to ten yards.
Seeing a movement coming toward him, Batman wheeled half-right, dropping a man with an M-1 rifle as he skied down toward Hourman. He saw Wildcat diving for a snowbank as more shots rang out.
Batman dodged left, toward Catwoman crouched beside the wrecked Mercedes.
"Get down, dammit, Selina," the Caped Crusader rasped as he skidded across the snow and dropped beside her.
He pushed her down hard.
Two men attacked from opposite sides of the auto. Batman rose and quickly dropped the two of them in quick fashion. A third spun into the snowbank after trying to confront Hourman.
"Batman!"
It was Wildcat.
"More of them coming up!" he yelled.
Batman twisted around. At the far end of the driveway, where it met the road, he could see two men running beyond the smoldering ruins of the helicopter. They were dressed different. Not the same as the ski troops.
His photographic mind recognized one of the men as a Colonel Sam Flagg. They had met some years ago on another mission.
"The CIA -- all we need," Batman yelled to Catwoman.
"Here?" she asked incredulously.
"Don't ask me, this isn't my scenario." Heavy assault rifle and subgun fire ripped into the steel of the scorched and twisted trunk lid. Another member of the ski troops tried to sneak up on him while his attention was diverted. But the Caped Crusader from Gotham City dropped him quickly.
"Keep your head down!" he yelled to Catwoman again.
Batman shouted to Wildcat as he pointed, "Those guys are CIA -- Colonel Flagg, remember?"
"Here?" screeched Wildcat.
"Same thing Catwoman said," Batman shouted back across the snowpacked driveway. Then he turned toward the wreckage of the helicopter. Flagg and the other CIA man were crouched beside the mangled tail section. "Flagg! The bad guys are the ones on skis. Stay back!" Batman shouted.
He didn't wait for an answer. There were at least ten of the ski troops still moving; there must have been more of them than he had originally seen. They slalomed along the sides of the slopes, firing their weapons with each pass.
Wildcat and Hourman stood shoulder to shoulder, two big men fighting for more than just their lives. Their hands reaching out and three more ski troopers went down.
Batman heard a voice shouting something, but he couldn't make it out. The skiers changed their pattern of movement, forming a wedge and started down the slope on the far side of the driveway, their weapons blazing death.
"Did you hear what he said?" asked Catwoman.
"I couldn't make it out," Batman said.
"Something like ... forget them ... we want al-Kafir. Something like that."
"Keep your head down, now!" Batman lurched against her, shoving her down, shielding her with his body. Seven skiers were coming fast, shooting up over Wildcat and Hourman's position. The wedge broke toward the twisted Mercedes.
Gunfire echoed and reechoed from the body of the Mercedes as Batman covered Catwoman with his body.
He managed to get up and drop one of the skiers, but six slipped away across the drop of the slope paralleling the driveway and sped toward the road. "They're out to get al-Kafir, dammit!" Batman exclaimed. He was up, hauling Catwoman to her feet.
He ran across the driveway with Catwoman and pulled back the mask on an unconscious skier. German possibly. Definitely European. Who, he wondered, had sent them? They were well trained, and their equipment was first rate. They must have been dropped higher on the slope by the helicopter.
Hourman ran up next to the Caped Crusader, glancing down at the unconscious skier's boots. The foot size was too small.
He ran toward the snowbank and yelled to Wildcat, "Find me one of those goons with a size twelve or so boots, hurry!"
He crossed the snowbank and checked another knocked out skier. This one was a younger man, Hourman guessed. Again, the boots were too small.
"Here, Hourman!" It was Wildcat, and Batman ran toward him. "His gunboats look as big as yours."
Hourman began putting on the ski boots, Wildcat helping.
Behind him, Batman could hear Colonel Flagg, "What the hell is goin' on here, Batman? What are you costumed freaks doin' here?"
"Not CIA business, so don't push it, Colonel, or you'll be all over the front page of Pravda. American imperialist secret police invade Austria -- shit like that."
"What are you doing?" Flagg continued.
Still without looking, Hourman slipped a boot on his foot. Sitting in the snow, he told Flagg, "I've got to stop that scum in the blue van."
"Abdul al-Kafir?" Flagg remarked, raising his eyebrow slightly.
"Yeah," growled Hourman, "got to get him -- probably want him for the same reason you want him."
"On skis," questioned Flagg, "you're gonna catch him on skis?"
"You drove up the same way we did probably," Batman told the man. "Past Kandahar. Now al-Kafir's going to have to go around it. But it looks like there's a side trail there," said the Masked Manhunter, pointing along the mountain, "that would intersect the road."
"You're crazy, Batman --" retorted Flagg.
Ignoring the government man, the Caped Crusader turned his attention back to Hourman. "Do you ski?" asked Batman.
"I'll learn," the Man of the Hour replied, looking at his watch, calculating how much time he had left on his Miraclo pill.
"The bastard blew up our car," Flagg snapped.
Hourman stood up. Wildcat had set out the skis and was finding a set of poles. Hourman stepped into the bindings and locked them. Catwoman was picking her way across the slick, iced-over snow, and Batman watched her for an instant.
"Is this what it always feels like to be on the good side?" she asked. "People shooting at you, risking your life? How do you guys do it?"
"Someone has to do it," Wildcat replied.
Flagg rolled his eyes skyward. "You costumed freaks need to just walk away from this and allow the proper authorities handle it."
Before Batman could answer, Hourman said, "Sir, just because I do respect the rule of law, please don't labor under the misapprehension I wouldn't break your legs should that become necessary."
Catwoman and Wildcat laughed.
Catwoman reached out to Hourman and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "I still don't like you," she said with a grin.
"The feeling is ever mutual, madame." That was Hourman. Cuddly as ever.
There was something like the flicker of a smile in Catwoman's green eyes. "And please don't get killed. I was rather looking forward to that pleasure myself some day," she said jokingly.
"I'll do my best," Hourman nodded. He stabbed his poles into the snow. They weren't quite the right height but they'd do. He shouted, "Meet you in the village. Have a nice walk."
He didn't really think they'd walk. There was likely another car in the garage under the base of the chalet. But cross-country was the only way to catch Abdu al-Kafir and the blue van -- maybe.
To be continued ...
By Bruce Wayne
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
An Elseworld's story: Stories, situation or events involving familiar characters in unfamiliar settings.
Chapter 5
The dark-haired girl's body writhed, her bare rear end twisting to the pounding drumbeat thumping out over the record player system. The two large speakers made the room pulse with sinister life. Abdul al-Kafir could feel his palms sweat as he watched the girl from his glassed-in gallery. The girl's barely postpubescent body was rolling across the tiled floor beneath him.
He rubbed his palms on his thighs and raised his small swarthy left hand. He'd always had small hands. It had disturbed him as a boy, he remembered, watching his manicured left index finger as it pressed the red button.
The button emitted a buzzing sound, and he could see the girl's body tense, felt part of himself tense as he watched.
From where he sat, he could view the entire room. Drool began to drop from his lips as a gleaming stainless-steel door slid up into the upper wall and the glistening black bodies of three well-muscled Dobermans bounded in. The gleaming door closed.
He could see the tension in the girl's body as she became frozen with fear. He felt himself go rigid with anticipation.
Through the microphone feed he could hear her scream over the deep-throated growls of the Dobermans.
His left hand trembled as he turned up the volume.
The screaming grew louder.
The girl edged back toward the far wall on her right, slipped on her bare feet and fell spread-eagled.
The three Dobermans had stopped, watching her, their bodies quivering.
Abdul al-Kafir's body quivered with them.
He poised his left index finger over the green button. He was almost ready, his body trembling as he watched the dogs slowly advance on her.
She was screaming something incomprehensible in the dialect of his native tongue.
He liked white girls better -- they screamed in English and screamed so much louder.
The girl was pleading, sobbing, as he lowered his finger on the green button.
Suddenly, he heard the hiss of the door behind him as it opened.
Enraged, he moved his hand from the button and looked up.
Akhmed, his security chief, stood in the doorway.
"Get out of here!" al-Kafir screamed.
"But, master," pleaded Akhmed, his beady eyes shifting between al-Kafir and the scene in the room beyond the glass wall, "a small number of people have been spotted approaching the chalet from the mountainside. And a car comes. I fear, master, fear that they come for you."
A part of Abdul al-Kafir went limp.
He stood quickly and zipped his pants, kicking over an eighteen-karat gold bowl with his left foot. "Allah curse them!" He felt his mouth twist into a snarl. "Kill the girl. But do not harm the dogs -- to train them for this takes too long. See that the dogs are evacuated in the van. Immediately! And my car. It is ready?'
"Yes, master."
Abdul al-Kafir looked at the girl once more, heard her pleading. She was praying to him.
"About the killing of the girl -- never mind that, Akhmed." Abdul al-Kafir pushed the green button. There was a buzzing sound different from the earlier noise and the three Dobermans lunged toward the girl, one for her face, one for her neck and one for her abdomen. She tried to twist away, but the drooling, white-fanged mouths of the dogs ripped into her flesh and began to tear her apart as if she were a rag doll.
Al-Kafir sighed, but the magic of the moment was ruined for him.
The screams died, and he saw a proud Doberman raise his blood-soaked head as he turned to leave the gallery.
***
Al-Kafir personally supervised the leading of the blood-splattered Dobermans into the special kennels in the dark-blue van. The attache case he clutched against his chest contained the sum of his available cash outside his Swiss bank accounts -- eighty-five thousand dollars in American currency -- and his address book. The latter was worth more to him.
Akhmed -- tall, dark, robust -- exited the sprawling chalet and joined the three other members of the security force who surrounded al-Kafir as he started toward his vintage black Mercedes. Like the three others, Akhmed carried a submachine gun.
Al-Kafir climbed into the rear seat of the Mercedes as Akhmed prepared to slam the door closed.
A car -- another Mercedes -- was coming up the road fast, skidding slightly on the hard-packed snow.
Al-Kafir's breath steamed in large clouds as he settled inside the cold car. Beside him, Akhmed shouted in English to the three German guards, "Stop that car -- quickly!"
Al-Kafir hit the floor, feeling Akhmed shoving him down. He held his hands over his head. Gunfire roared. The clattering of submachine guns stuttered over the roar of the car's engine.
Suddenly, the car wasn't moving. A short burst of submachine-gun fire was followed by a scream from one of the Germans.
He waited there, huddled on the floor of the car for what seemed a long time.
Finally he felt a hand on his shoulder. A powerful hand.
He looked up into a broad black-cowled face, a large man with tremendous strength.
"Would you join us, sir?" said a determined Hourman as he pulled a reluctant al-Kafir from the Mercedes with the vise-like grip of his right hand.
Al-Kafir sagged back against the cold metal of his Mercedes and surveyed the scene.
He didn't like what he saw. Akhmed, looking to be only partially conscious, was sitting against the bumper that was below the open rear cargo doors of the van housing the dogs. Inside, the animals were in a frenzy, throwing themselves against the doors of their cages. Two of the Germans were down in the snow. They were bleeding. The third German was on his knees in front of a big man dressed in what appeared to be a dark cat costume. The German's left arm hung limp and dislocated from the elbow down.
A man in a gray and black costume with a bat on his chest was walking toward the other Mercedes. A gust of wind caught his long dark cape. Though attired oddly, the man looked very dangerous.
Then a woman stepped from the back seat of the second Mercedes, black leather gloves disappearing under the sleeves of a midcalf-length coat. As she picked her way across the hard-packed snow of the driveway, a gust of wind caught at the coat, revealing a purple outfit with a slits running high that showed off her incredible legs. She also wore a purple and black cowl to hide her identity.
Her green eyes stared through him. The wind caught at the hair protruding from beneath the cowl, and it shook like the mane of an Arabian stallion in its blackness and vibrance.
In her hands was a whip.
She spoke to her companions, "I see, boys, that Mr al-Kafir's men didn't give you too much of a problem."
"Thank you for the compliment, Catwoman," the big man in yellow and black with a grip on al-Kafir answered.
"Catwoman? Catwoman?" Al-Kafir's jaw dropped.
"Abdul al-Kafir, what a thrill to meet you after so long," the woman smiled, making a limp-wristed gesture with the whip in her right hand. "I think we've had mutual friends for years, haven't we? It's lovely, I think, for competitors to be able to meet so openly, on such an intimate basis."
"Yes, isn't it?" The man in the dark cat suit laughed.
Catwoman approached al-Kafir, the wrist no longer limp. She started to slap the leather weapon into the palm of her left hand and stepped back as if to start snapping -- at al-Kafir's face. Al-Kafir felt himself swallow hard. "Uh, Catwoman," he faltered, "I --"
"Al-Kafir," she chided, her lips full, the voice a soft alto. "You are the soul of the right-wing underground. We seek its most ardent devotee -- one False-Face. He's stolen something we want. Where can we find him?" The whip snapped out and struck the ground beside him, snow flew upwards into the air.
"I do not know, Catwoman. His face is unknown to all -- he is a mystery, he is dangerous, too, this False-Face," pleaded al-Kafir.
"Hourman?"
It was the man with the bat on his chest who had spoken. The man who stood next to al-Kafir answered, "Yes, Batman?"
"Al-Kafir has a peculiar habit and he needs his hands to have fun with it. Start breaking his fingers."
"Sure thing." Hourman smiled. He started to reach for one of al-Kafir's hands.
"Wait!" Al-Kafir had never heard such panic in his own voice.
"For what?" Catwoman smiled.
"Akhmed!" Al-Kafir shouted the name as shrilly as the girl had screamed for his mercy from the dogs, and immediately threw himself onto the snow away from the reach of Catwoman's whip.
Akhmed had not been searched -- at least al-Kafir had not seen him being searched.
A sudden burst of blazing gunfire sent the four costumed figures diving for cover. As al-Kafir rolled around the end of the Mercedes, he heard the wild barking of the dogs and Akhmed's familiar voice, somehow strained, shouting, "Kill!"
***
The Sandman peered through his specially made binoculars, faintly amused. It was interesting to watch someone else working instead of himself. The Arab, al-Kafir, had thrown himself to the ground, shouting something that was incomprehensible at a distance. Sandman watched from the tree line, part way up a slope that ran at an oblique angle to the driveway leading to the chalet. He shuffled his feet and watched. Hourman wheeled toward the Arab-looking man by the open cargo doors of the blue van. But Batman had moved first, throwing a Batarang. The Arab continued to fire his gun. More gunfire cracked through the air and Sandman watched as the Arab with the gun pushed a fat al-Kafir through the side cargo doors of the van. He didn't see anyone fall.
The Sandman settled his gaze on Batman. Suddenly, there was a blur of blackness, then another. Sandman saw two dogs, Dobermans, large ones, spring onto the snow, their lips pulled back in vicious snarls, their man- killing teeth exposed and deadly. Wildcat straight-armed one of the Dobermans in the chest, knocking it to the snow. Catwoman snapped her whip and the other dog took stinging leather in midair, twitching, lurching. Batman threw himself at the animal as it tried to lunge at Catwoman.
Batman and the dog rolled in the snow, the hurt dog trying to force its teeth into Batman's neck. Sandman then heard a bellowing yelp from the dog and saw its muscled body go limp. The Caped Crusader rolled away from the magnificent dog of Satan after incapcitating it.
Hourman grabbed the third dog and it went down and didn't move.
The blue van was moving, and suddenly Sandman, taken up with enjoying the spectacle of the fight, realized al-Kafir and his tall Arab guard were gone.
The door of the van on the driver's side was slamming shut, the van already fishtailing as it skidded along the snowbank on the side of the driveway, sideswiping the Mercedes Batman and the others arrived in.
Involuntarily, The Sandman recoiled as a grenade or some other explosive device with similar force went off. The Mercedes lurched skyward, a fireball of orange and yellow and black belching around it.
Batman and Wildcat were running after the blue van. Hourman was helping Catwoman up from the snow, the back of her dark, midcalf-length fur coat white with the slick powder.
Above the dying roar of the explosion, Sandman heard a familiar chopping sound coming from above him.
A helicopter. He looked up and saw it. "What the hell?" was all he said.
His weapons were secure in the interior pockets of his suit jacket, and now it looked as if he'd be needing them. Beneath the gas mask that covered his face, The Sandman felt the corners of his mouth turn down in a frown. Either more of al-Kafir's people had shown up, or a new player had sat down at the table. "At any rate," he said, "they're no friends of mine."
Sandman, under cover of the tree line, started to move after al-Kafir. There was a still a job to be done and that meant making al-Kafir talk about stolen nerve gas canisters.
***
Colonel Flagg shouted to Ed Benson, "Stop this damn thing. The file says that blue van belongs to al-Kafir!"
He threw open the door of the rented BMW and stepped out on the passenger side, a Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol gripped tightly in both his fists. He fired skyward as the van bore down on them. It was stupid under the conditions, but the driver's-side window was open and he shouted it anyway. "Halt! In the name of the law!"
The midnight-blue van kept coming.
"Shoot the S.O.B's!" shouted Flagg's assistant, David Palms.
Against his better judgement, but because it was the only thing practical, Colonel Flagg shouted, "Palms take the tires, Benson go for the radiator. I've got the open driver's-side window!"
He swung the muzzle of the .45 on line, firing. It had a smooth trigger, he thought, for a factory gun. He let loose two shots and the van swerved, two more, the van's headlights were shot out. The blue van wasn't stopping. Flagg shrugged, maybe the tires were bullet-resistant.
He saw it as the driver tossed it. "Grenade!" he yelled, and Flagg launched himself over the snowbank, out of the way, his gun in his right hand, another ammo clip in his left.
He heard the explosion, his ears ringing with it, felt the concussion as it rippled over him, felt the snow pelting down on him.
He pushed himself up, ejecting the old clip from the semiautomatic, then ramming a new clip up the gun's butt. As he emptied the clip again against the rear doors of the fast vanishing blue van, he could see his hands -- pink flesh in tiny shredded bits, flecked with blood.
Flagg stepped back, stumbling in the snow and clambored over the snowbank. Ed Benson was moving, getting to his feet, gasping, "I'm okay, I think." But David Palms would never move again -- the whole left side of his body was ripped away, just like the roof and the hood of the BMW. Thick steaming splotches of dark-red blood and ragged chunks of pink flesh dotted the snow.
Colonel Flagg wheeled and shouted after the van, "Dammit!"
***
Batman skidded on the slick ice at the end of the driveway where it met the road. He watched the van speed away. And there had been another explosion perhaps a half mile down the road, just over the hill. Another grenade.
Overhead, the sounds of a helicopter filled the air with a staccato fury, and behind him, Catwoman screamed.
"Batman!"
Batman slipped again as he spun around, caught his balance and started to run. He could see Wildcat midway between him and Catwoman, Hourman beside her. The injured German guard was now sitting with his back propped against the side of al-Kafir's abandoned Mercedes.
The Caped Crusader was trying to figure out just whose helicopter was coming at them and what to do about it when ski-borne commandos armed with assault rifles and machine guns appeared from both sides of al-Kafir's chalet. The place was beginning to get crowded, Batman thought to himself.
Wildcat was already getting ready to do battle.
The Sikorsky was close, but Batman couldn't look up and keep his balance on the ice-coated snow as he ran.
"The chopper, Hourman -- the chopper!"
As if the occupants of the helicopter had heard him, knew of the impending threat, machine-guns echoed fire overhead. Both sides of the snowpacked driveway on which Batman ran were churning under the impact, and the Masked Manhunter's hands came up to protect his face.
He could see Catwoman through the storm of snow spit up by the machine-gun fire. Hourman was keeping her down beside the smoldering wreckage of the Mercedes.
The ski troops -- he counted twelve of them -- were less than two hundred yards from the chalet, their assault rifles and subguns starting to spit fire.
"Dammit!" yelled Wildcat as he dropped to his knees to where Batman came to a rest to take cover. The snow around them churned as machine-gun fire rained down from the chopper as it made a second pass.
Batman knew their only chance was to disable the aircraft.
"Hourman," the Caped Crusader yelled over the gunfire, "You've got to bring that chopper down!"
Hourman pushed Catwoman closer to the car and then took off for the nearest line of trees. He moved not quite as fast as The Flash, but it was at amazing speed. His eye caught just the size tree he was looking for. With his enhanced strength, the Man of the Hour snapped the tree near the base.
Lifting the tree easily, he started to move back into the open.
Batman could see the helicopter was coming in low and fast, its machine guns sending out invitations to death.
Suddenly, from seemingly out of nowhere, a small tree flew and hit the helicopter with a loud thud. With a sickening jerk, the rotor mechanism stopped. Like a giant bug, the chopper and tree seemed to hang motionless in the air for a split second. Then it started to come down.
"Wildcat," Batman yelled. "The snowbank -- hit it!"
Batman was moving fast, throwing himself over the snowbank, shouting to Catwoman and Hourman, "She's coming down. Take cover!"
His right shoulder hit the snowbank hard, his body taking the roll. His mouth filled with snow as he skidded down, and then the ground began to shake under him as he heard the first sound wave, felt the first shock wave.
Bits of flaming debris rained down, and the snow was whipped into a skin- searing blizzard. Over the dying roar of the fatally wounded helicopter, Batman heard something that sounded almost like a scream but barely human enough to be recognized as belonging to a man.
He rolled onto his back, his left hand protecting his face from the intense heat of the fireball that had erupted from the chopper's ruptured fuel tanks.
"Catwoman!" He screamed her name. He was up and running now. The ski troops had taken cover beside the walls of the chalet, but they were moving again.
Their automatic weapons opened up and hurled their cargo into the devastating scene in front of the chalet.
"Catwoman!" It was a loud whisper, like something from inside him rather than the sound of his own voice. She was moving, held tight against Hourman's hip.
The snow beside Catwoman and Hourman ripped up in a wave, bursts of automatic-weapon fire hammered into it but missing the fast-moving Man of the Hour who was carrying Catwoman. Batman glanced to his right. Wildcat was still alive, had survived the burning wreckage of the helicopter which covered the width of the driveway. He was running.
Batman was less than fifty yards from Catwoman. She turned and saw him, and he could see her eyes suddenly widen. "Batman -- save yourself!" she yelled.
He kept running toward her and Hourman.
Twenty-five yards. Twenty. Hourman was running, leaving Catwoman for an instant by the side of their Mercedes. The powerful hero drew fire as he rolled across the snow toward the end of the driveway. Then he was up on his feet. Hourman ran, diving into the snow near the far edge of the driveway. Batman narrowed the distance to Catwoman to ten yards.
Seeing a movement coming toward him, Batman wheeled half-right, dropping a man with an M-1 rifle as he skied down toward Hourman. He saw Wildcat diving for a snowbank as more shots rang out.
Batman dodged left, toward Catwoman crouched beside the wrecked Mercedes.
"Get down, dammit, Selina," the Caped Crusader rasped as he skidded across the snow and dropped beside her.
He pushed her down hard.
Two men attacked from opposite sides of the auto. Batman rose and quickly dropped the two of them in quick fashion. A third spun into the snowbank after trying to confront Hourman.
"Batman!"
It was Wildcat.
"More of them coming up!" he yelled.
Batman twisted around. At the far end of the driveway, where it met the road, he could see two men running beyond the smoldering ruins of the helicopter. They were dressed different. Not the same as the ski troops.
His photographic mind recognized one of the men as a Colonel Sam Flagg. They had met some years ago on another mission.
"The CIA -- all we need," Batman yelled to Catwoman.
"Here?" she asked incredulously.
"Don't ask me, this isn't my scenario." Heavy assault rifle and subgun fire ripped into the steel of the scorched and twisted trunk lid. Another member of the ski troops tried to sneak up on him while his attention was diverted. But the Caped Crusader from Gotham City dropped him quickly.
"Keep your head down!" he yelled to Catwoman again.
Batman shouted to Wildcat as he pointed, "Those guys are CIA -- Colonel Flagg, remember?"
"Here?" screeched Wildcat.
"Same thing Catwoman said," Batman shouted back across the snowpacked driveway. Then he turned toward the wreckage of the helicopter. Flagg and the other CIA man were crouched beside the mangled tail section. "Flagg! The bad guys are the ones on skis. Stay back!" Batman shouted.
He didn't wait for an answer. There were at least ten of the ski troops still moving; there must have been more of them than he had originally seen. They slalomed along the sides of the slopes, firing their weapons with each pass.
Wildcat and Hourman stood shoulder to shoulder, two big men fighting for more than just their lives. Their hands reaching out and three more ski troopers went down.
Batman heard a voice shouting something, but he couldn't make it out. The skiers changed their pattern of movement, forming a wedge and started down the slope on the far side of the driveway, their weapons blazing death.
"Did you hear what he said?" asked Catwoman.
"I couldn't make it out," Batman said.
"Something like ... forget them ... we want al-Kafir. Something like that."
"Keep your head down, now!" Batman lurched against her, shoving her down, shielding her with his body. Seven skiers were coming fast, shooting up over Wildcat and Hourman's position. The wedge broke toward the twisted Mercedes.
Gunfire echoed and reechoed from the body of the Mercedes as Batman covered Catwoman with his body.
He managed to get up and drop one of the skiers, but six slipped away across the drop of the slope paralleling the driveway and sped toward the road. "They're out to get al-Kafir, dammit!" Batman exclaimed. He was up, hauling Catwoman to her feet.
He ran across the driveway with Catwoman and pulled back the mask on an unconscious skier. German possibly. Definitely European. Who, he wondered, had sent them? They were well trained, and their equipment was first rate. They must have been dropped higher on the slope by the helicopter.
Hourman ran up next to the Caped Crusader, glancing down at the unconscious skier's boots. The foot size was too small.
He ran toward the snowbank and yelled to Wildcat, "Find me one of those goons with a size twelve or so boots, hurry!"
He crossed the snowbank and checked another knocked out skier. This one was a younger man, Hourman guessed. Again, the boots were too small.
"Here, Hourman!" It was Wildcat, and Batman ran toward him. "His gunboats look as big as yours."
Hourman began putting on the ski boots, Wildcat helping.
Behind him, Batman could hear Colonel Flagg, "What the hell is goin' on here, Batman? What are you costumed freaks doin' here?"
"Not CIA business, so don't push it, Colonel, or you'll be all over the front page of Pravda. American imperialist secret police invade Austria -- shit like that."
"What are you doing?" Flagg continued.
Still without looking, Hourman slipped a boot on his foot. Sitting in the snow, he told Flagg, "I've got to stop that scum in the blue van."
"Abdul al-Kafir?" Flagg remarked, raising his eyebrow slightly.
"Yeah," growled Hourman, "got to get him -- probably want him for the same reason you want him."
"On skis," questioned Flagg, "you're gonna catch him on skis?"
"You drove up the same way we did probably," Batman told the man. "Past Kandahar. Now al-Kafir's going to have to go around it. But it looks like there's a side trail there," said the Masked Manhunter, pointing along the mountain, "that would intersect the road."
"You're crazy, Batman --" retorted Flagg.
Ignoring the government man, the Caped Crusader turned his attention back to Hourman. "Do you ski?" asked Batman.
"I'll learn," the Man of the Hour replied, looking at his watch, calculating how much time he had left on his Miraclo pill.
"The bastard blew up our car," Flagg snapped.
Hourman stood up. Wildcat had set out the skis and was finding a set of poles. Hourman stepped into the bindings and locked them. Catwoman was picking her way across the slick, iced-over snow, and Batman watched her for an instant.
"Is this what it always feels like to be on the good side?" she asked. "People shooting at you, risking your life? How do you guys do it?"
"Someone has to do it," Wildcat replied.
Flagg rolled his eyes skyward. "You costumed freaks need to just walk away from this and allow the proper authorities handle it."
Before Batman could answer, Hourman said, "Sir, just because I do respect the rule of law, please don't labor under the misapprehension I wouldn't break your legs should that become necessary."
Catwoman and Wildcat laughed.
Catwoman reached out to Hourman and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "I still don't like you," she said with a grin.
"The feeling is ever mutual, madame." That was Hourman. Cuddly as ever.
There was something like the flicker of a smile in Catwoman's green eyes. "And please don't get killed. I was rather looking forward to that pleasure myself some day," she said jokingly.
"I'll do my best," Hourman nodded. He stabbed his poles into the snow. They weren't quite the right height but they'd do. He shouted, "Meet you in the village. Have a nice walk."
He didn't really think they'd walk. There was likely another car in the garage under the base of the chalet. But cross-country was the only way to catch Abdu al-Kafir and the blue van -- maybe.
To be continued ...