JSA: The Face Of Evil
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.
CHAPTER 13
Mr Terrific painted over Batman's False-Face with liquid latex, then applied the life mask to the False-Face face, using latex, like glue, at the edges, leaving a flap free, "For you to rip it away with appropriate dramatic flair, Batman." He had blended the mask to the False-Face face at the hairline, at the sides of the face, underneath the chin, around the mouth area and around the eyes.
Then using what Mr Terrific had called crepe hair, the crimefighter from Gateway City had constructed eyebrows and sideburns, attaching them with spirit gum to the life mask.
The face looked pink, distorted.
Mr Terrific then trimmed the facial hair to a neat appearance and utilized Creme-Stick makeup to give flesh-tone color to the latex mask, two tones lighter for highlights, two tones darker for facial shadows. He used the sea sponge again to once more simulate five o'clock shadow.
Batman caught a glance at the clock on the wall. It was nearly six o'clock.
Mr Terrific stepped back. "Subtler facial expressions are impossible. Eyebrow movement won't be much, if anything. Don't get closer to anyone than ten feet with this, and you'll make it. Good thing you'll have your mask on for most most of the time."
"Yes," Batman agreed. "I'll take the cowl off and then quickly rip the life mask off to expose the face of False-Face to the world."
"Understood," Mr Terrific nodded.
Batman walked toward the mirror, stopping about ten feet short. It was nearly the face of Bruce Wayne but Terrific had made some changes that altered the facial shape. The Caped Crusader extended his right hand to his fellow crime-buster, "Terrific, you're a genius."
"I know," he replied immodestly.
The Flash clapped Mr Terrific on the shoulder with his left hand and asked, "Is there anything else I can do, Terrific?"
"No, we're all set. While Batman's face was drying, I was doing my own," Mr Terrific explained.
Batman turned to the President, "I say we put you on a helicopter and fly you out of here in case one of the bombs goes off."
"I'll stay," The President said. "After you gain control of the House chamber, I'll come in to prove that I'm fine and retake the reins of government."
Hourman held Batman's cowl and cape. The Gotham Goliath took the cowl and slipped it onto his head and pressed the snap at the bottom that held it in place. He then took his cape and slipped it on, securing it around his neck.
He looked to Mr Terrific who had quickly changed into civilian clothes. "I'm ready when you are, Terrific," Batman said. "We have four minutes for a brisk walk."
"As you say, Batman." the disguised Mr Terrific said.
"Good luck, gentlemen," Hourman extended his hand to Batman.
"Batman took it. "Keep an eye on Catwoman for me, in case --" He didn't finish.
As the two crimefighters were walking toward the door, Selina whispered to Batman, "Come back to me."
Batman looked at her beautiful face. "I always do," he replied.
Then he turned and followed Mr Terrific through the doorway.
***
"Hold the good thought, Terrific," Batman told him through clenched teeth.
"I'm an expert at that, Batman," the crimefighter disguised to look like the President of the United States answered in a hoarse stage whisper, clearing his throat as he walked ahead. "Don't try for an Oscar. Just a good solid performance brings home the bacon."
The Nazis near the corridor beyond Statuary Hall were coming forward into the hall itself. One of them shouted, "Halt!"
"I must be allowed to enter immediately. This man with me is the President -- plans in Reddington have gone awry," Batman answered in his best False- Face German accent. The Caped Crusader prodded Mr Terrific with the palm of his hand, and then he played his card. "I am False-Face! The man in there who claims to be False-Face is a liar, an imposter, a fraud."
"You cannot --" the Nazi began.
Batman interrupted. "When history is rewritten, do you wish to be remembered as the man who tried to bar your fuhrer from the last step needed for world conquest?"
"Y-you are that B-Batman," the Nazi shouted back nervously.
In his own voice Batman said, "I am Batman." Then in the German-accented False-Face voice he added, "but only since the fiasco in Florida at Cape Canaveral. I killed Batman there and exchanged places with him in order to escape the American authorities. They actually flew me out."
Mr Terrific turned, staring at him. Batman had not outlined his plan fully. Either Terrific, disguised as the President, was truly a consummate actor or he was actually beginning to believe the Masked Manhunter's story himself, Batman thought.
"That is --"
"Impossible?" Batman finished the Nazi's statement. "But I am False-Face, and you should know that the word 'impossible' is meaningless in the face of inexorable destiny of the Reich. Flank the sides of the corridor, and order your men in the hall beyond and as I enter the House chambers to do the same. I will enter now!" Batman pushed Mr Terrific in the back, then started forward.
"I sure hope you're a good actor and I'm not a lamb being led to the slaughter," Mr Terrific whispered.
In his own voice Batman muttered, "Relax." He thought he detected a slight nod from the advocate for 'Fair Play.'
The Nazis were fanning back. He was no more than six feet from the nearest of them. He wondered suddenly about Mr Terrific's makeup job. There was nothing he could do if it didn't work, despite the fact he was close.
The Nazis were staring at him -- but they had never seen Batman, he realized. He prodded Mr Terrifc ahead, through the corridor and into the hallway. Submachine-gun-armed Nazis were ranked on each side of him, assault rifles brandished, as he passed through the cloakroom areas and into the House chamber itself.
On the intermediary dais stood the man he had been told was False-Face.
Batman started down the central aisle, pushing Mr Terrific ahead of him. As Batman, he spoke. "All of you! The man who calls himself False-Face is an imposter. He is an American agent. I am False-Face!"
The man at the podium laughed. "Liar!" he shouted.
Batman kept walking as Nazis closed in on each side. He could recognize the bomb expert "the Boomer" the man responsible for setting all the charges. The Boomer stood beside the man at the intermediary dais. In his False-Face voice the Dark Knight from Gotham City shouted "The American agent had all of you fooled then, even you, Boomer!"
Batman could see the muscles twitch in the Boomer's face as he drew nearer to the dais. The Gotham Avenger changed his plan. If he could get Boomer, he would have all the bombs. For the moment Boomer's survival would have to be his main concern. And then he could take care of False-Face, as he had wanted to all along.
In his False-Face voice, Batman kept talking -- there was nothing else to do as he walked toward the dais. Snipers were everywhere in the gallery. "It was an elaborate plan, Boomer, to force you into revealing to him the exact whereabouts of the remaining bombs."
On each side of Mr Terrific and him as they walked, Batman recognized faces he had seen in newsfilm, in the papers, in magazines, senators, members of the House. Ahead, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, justices of the Supreme Court, members of the cabinet.
"At the last moment he was to have engineered some agreement from the Americans. They were to acquiesce," Batman said as he saw that armed Nazis guarded each entrance and exit. Beside the exit at the left side of the dais, sat the chief sergeant at arms.
"Liar!" the figure yelled from the podium.
Suddenly Batman heard the voice of Colonel Flagg coming from the television monitor placed on a desk to the right of the dais. "False-Face, the other powers have acquiesced. Please, False-Face, stop the bomb in Reddington. It's a minute before six, sir. Please!"
Batman stopped a dozen feet from the dais. "Did you really think, Boomer," the Caped Crusader shouted, laughing, in his best False-Face voice, "did you really think the Americans would so easily acquiesce? Don't let him contact Reddington -- let the bomb explode!"
It was the Boomer who spoke. "How did you free the President?"
"I did not free him, Boomer. I went to Reddington, I established my identity and alerted them to the American agent's having substituted for me. But I escaped the Americans. And with me the President as my hostage, I came here. There is still time. They do not know where the bombs are beyond those in the Capitol complex."
"They know of these!" the Boomer exclaimed, surprised.
"The detonator -- you designed it." It was Batman's biggest gamble. Doctor Mid-Nite, Green Lantern, and the Atom had found all the bombs -- at least the Nazi they interrogated had indicated six to be all there were. But the gamble wasn't on his fellow crimefighters. The gamble was that the detonator would trigger only those bombs immediately beneath the Capitol. "Go ahead, Boomer, activate the bombs beneath the building. If I am lying, what do I have to gain by all of us dying? Better yet, ask the man who calls himself False-Face, he who stands beside you, ask him to work the detonator for the bombs beneath our feet. I know there were six. Does he?"
Batman stood to the far right of the dais, near the door where the chief sergeant at arms sat. He judged he could count on the white-haired, older man's grabbing a gun at the first opportunity.
No one moved. The Boomer said nothing.
Batman heard a voice behind him shouting, "Go ahead, press your damn button!" He knew the voice as a familiar politician.
Boomer reached in front of the man at the podium. "I push the button, for good or for bad!"
"The man at the dais shouted, "No, Boomer!"
The Boomer wrestled the detonator free and held it high over his head. While Batman watched, the mad bomber's right index finger moved to the button.
Batman judged that everyone in the House chamber could see him, except perhaps for a few dozen legislators immediately behind him. He took off his cowl and then reached for the flap of the latex life mask, ripping the mask away. A snapping peeling sound echoed in the otherwise total stillness.
"This is the face of False-Face!" Batman shouted. He turned to survey the room, watching, then focused his attention on the man who stood behind the podium. The man's jaw dropped, and he stared in open-mouthed astonishment.
When it came, the voice was not from the figure Colonel Flagg had addressed as False-Face, but from the white-haired chief sergeant at arms.
"Damn you, Batman! This time I'll kill you myself!" His eyes were wide and filled with pure hatred, and the shout of vengeance cut through the tension- filled room like a knife through flesh. The chief sergeant at arms wrestled an assault rifle from the bewildered Nazi standing next to him and ran through the side exit from the House.
Batman tried to grab the fleeing figure but missed.
Hearing the sound of a disturbance in the chamber, Colonel Flagg gave the word to Wonder Woman and the Flash to crash into the House.
At that moment, the voice of Mr Terrific shouted out, and Batman turned back to the podium. The crimefighter from Gateway City wrapped his arm around the Boomer's head.
"We're members of the Justice Society of America. False-Face's men -- lay down your arms. Boomer is the only one who can activate the rest of your bombs, and he's now under my control. If you don't surrender, I'll just twist his head off! Either way, your game is up!"
No shots were fired.
The Flash sped through the entire House chamber and disarmed anyone he saw with a weapon. As one person later said, "I just saw a red blur."
One of the Nazis threw his hands up. "It's finished," he said, "perhaps for good this time."
Batman shouted, "Mr Terrific, I'm going after False-Face!"
The Dark Knight from Gotham pulled his cowl back over his head and started running. Once through the doorway, he could hear gunfire to his right, toward the Senate side of the Capitol, and he dashed toward it. Running toward the sound of a fight was something he had been doing all his life, he reflected.
Batman could see Colonel Flagg ahead of him near the spot where the corridor spilled from Statuary Hall. "Colonel, get some men back to check out every office, every closet, I'm looking for the chief sergeant at arms -- it's False-Face."
"Holly shit!" Flagg shouted. "He went past me less than two minutes ago, running toward the Senate side."
"Wonderful," Batman muttered, turning into the corridor. Flagg ran after him, shouting orders the Masked Manhunter didn't want to listen to.
Batman's feet padded the black-and-white floor tiles of Statuary Hall. The gunfire ahead of him louder now.
"What's going on out there, Colonel?" Batman called over his shoulder.
"Maybe a couple of Nazis in the Rotunda. I don't know. Our guys were more interested in getting inside than taking prisoners!"
Batman skidded on his heels, hugging against the wall of the corridor that fed into the Rotunda. To the east, to his right, he could see Doctor Mid- Nite and the Atom fighting a number of men on the far side of the Rotunda.
Flagg was behind him. "I'll get some more men up here. Looks like --"
"No," Batman snapped, and ran into the Rotunda. He was tired of people getting in his way.
The Atom, he saw, dodged a bullet that bounced off a statue.
A Nazi armed with an M-1 carbine pushed out from behind a statue, and Doctor Mid-Nite tackled the man.
Batman found one Nazi hiding behind another statue and dispatched him to a nap on the Capitol floor.
As fights go, Batman thought, this one was no more than a brushfire, over almost as soon as it started. Wonder Woman arrived to join Doctor Mid-Nite, Colonel Flagg and a half-dozen law enforcement officers. They had quickly and efficiently overcame any resistance from the Nazis.
Batman addressed his allies. "I want False-Face. He's impersonating the sergeant at arms --"
"Good God!" shouted Doctor Mid-Nite. "He ran past just a minute before you arrived here in the Rotunda. He ran through that doorway over there," the Master of Darkness pointed to the rear of the Rotunda.
"He couldn't have gotten through," Colonel Flagg said. "There are Capitol police all over that side, not a chance. They were told to shoot anyone on sight -- anyone, even their mothers."
"Wonder Woman, where would he go -- you know the Capitol," Batman asked.
The Amazon Princess answered. "He wouldn't go down. We had a radio link into the television cable set up from the House chamber, and I heard what you told them about what happened in the tunnels beneath the building. If False-Face thought there was a remote chance you were telling the truth, he wouldn't go down."
"What about up?" said Batman, scanning the inside of the dome with his eyes.
"There's a winding staircase, kind of old, not such in good shape, really,"Wonder Woman said, "leading up to the top."
Batman concentrated on the robed figures painted on the ceiling of the dome one hundred eighty feet above him.
Wonder Woman spoke again. "They used to let visitors up there, but they threw things or scrawled on the walls. Some of the stairs just plain wore out. Now you can get up there with a security guard for a companion. But that's the only place False-Face could go from here. You can get out onto the outside of the dome but what will he do after that?"
"I don't think False-Face's thinking about 'after that,'" Batman told the female hero. "He knows -- and I know. He couldn't rebuild from this, never get an organization like this going again. He's waiting for me."
"I'll go with you," Wonder Woman volunteered.
"No, I'll go alone. That's what he wants now, and I'm more than happy to give him what he wants."
Batman looked down at the floor. "Get somebody to interrogate the Boomer. We need to know where the rest of those bombs and VX nerve gas canisters are located and get them back, if we can."
The Caped Crusader made for the doorway in his search of the Nazi madman.
To be concluded in the final chapter ...
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.
CHAPTER 13
Mr Terrific painted over Batman's False-Face with liquid latex, then applied the life mask to the False-Face face, using latex, like glue, at the edges, leaving a flap free, "For you to rip it away with appropriate dramatic flair, Batman." He had blended the mask to the False-Face face at the hairline, at the sides of the face, underneath the chin, around the mouth area and around the eyes.
Then using what Mr Terrific had called crepe hair, the crimefighter from Gateway City had constructed eyebrows and sideburns, attaching them with spirit gum to the life mask.
The face looked pink, distorted.
Mr Terrific then trimmed the facial hair to a neat appearance and utilized Creme-Stick makeup to give flesh-tone color to the latex mask, two tones lighter for highlights, two tones darker for facial shadows. He used the sea sponge again to once more simulate five o'clock shadow.
Batman caught a glance at the clock on the wall. It was nearly six o'clock.
Mr Terrific stepped back. "Subtler facial expressions are impossible. Eyebrow movement won't be much, if anything. Don't get closer to anyone than ten feet with this, and you'll make it. Good thing you'll have your mask on for most most of the time."
"Yes," Batman agreed. "I'll take the cowl off and then quickly rip the life mask off to expose the face of False-Face to the world."
"Understood," Mr Terrific nodded.
Batman walked toward the mirror, stopping about ten feet short. It was nearly the face of Bruce Wayne but Terrific had made some changes that altered the facial shape. The Caped Crusader extended his right hand to his fellow crime-buster, "Terrific, you're a genius."
"I know," he replied immodestly.
The Flash clapped Mr Terrific on the shoulder with his left hand and asked, "Is there anything else I can do, Terrific?"
"No, we're all set. While Batman's face was drying, I was doing my own," Mr Terrific explained.
Batman turned to the President, "I say we put you on a helicopter and fly you out of here in case one of the bombs goes off."
"I'll stay," The President said. "After you gain control of the House chamber, I'll come in to prove that I'm fine and retake the reins of government."
Hourman held Batman's cowl and cape. The Gotham Goliath took the cowl and slipped it onto his head and pressed the snap at the bottom that held it in place. He then took his cape and slipped it on, securing it around his neck.
He looked to Mr Terrific who had quickly changed into civilian clothes. "I'm ready when you are, Terrific," Batman said. "We have four minutes for a brisk walk."
"As you say, Batman." the disguised Mr Terrific said.
"Good luck, gentlemen," Hourman extended his hand to Batman.
"Batman took it. "Keep an eye on Catwoman for me, in case --" He didn't finish.
As the two crimefighters were walking toward the door, Selina whispered to Batman, "Come back to me."
Batman looked at her beautiful face. "I always do," he replied.
Then he turned and followed Mr Terrific through the doorway.
***
"Hold the good thought, Terrific," Batman told him through clenched teeth.
"I'm an expert at that, Batman," the crimefighter disguised to look like the President of the United States answered in a hoarse stage whisper, clearing his throat as he walked ahead. "Don't try for an Oscar. Just a good solid performance brings home the bacon."
The Nazis near the corridor beyond Statuary Hall were coming forward into the hall itself. One of them shouted, "Halt!"
"I must be allowed to enter immediately. This man with me is the President -- plans in Reddington have gone awry," Batman answered in his best False- Face German accent. The Caped Crusader prodded Mr Terrific with the palm of his hand, and then he played his card. "I am False-Face! The man in there who claims to be False-Face is a liar, an imposter, a fraud."
"You cannot --" the Nazi began.
Batman interrupted. "When history is rewritten, do you wish to be remembered as the man who tried to bar your fuhrer from the last step needed for world conquest?"
"Y-you are that B-Batman," the Nazi shouted back nervously.
In his own voice Batman said, "I am Batman." Then in the German-accented False-Face voice he added, "but only since the fiasco in Florida at Cape Canaveral. I killed Batman there and exchanged places with him in order to escape the American authorities. They actually flew me out."
Mr Terrific turned, staring at him. Batman had not outlined his plan fully. Either Terrific, disguised as the President, was truly a consummate actor or he was actually beginning to believe the Masked Manhunter's story himself, Batman thought.
"That is --"
"Impossible?" Batman finished the Nazi's statement. "But I am False-Face, and you should know that the word 'impossible' is meaningless in the face of inexorable destiny of the Reich. Flank the sides of the corridor, and order your men in the hall beyond and as I enter the House chambers to do the same. I will enter now!" Batman pushed Mr Terrific in the back, then started forward.
"I sure hope you're a good actor and I'm not a lamb being led to the slaughter," Mr Terrific whispered.
In his own voice Batman muttered, "Relax." He thought he detected a slight nod from the advocate for 'Fair Play.'
The Nazis were fanning back. He was no more than six feet from the nearest of them. He wondered suddenly about Mr Terrific's makeup job. There was nothing he could do if it didn't work, despite the fact he was close.
The Nazis were staring at him -- but they had never seen Batman, he realized. He prodded Mr Terrifc ahead, through the corridor and into the hallway. Submachine-gun-armed Nazis were ranked on each side of him, assault rifles brandished, as he passed through the cloakroom areas and into the House chamber itself.
On the intermediary dais stood the man he had been told was False-Face.
Batman started down the central aisle, pushing Mr Terrific ahead of him. As Batman, he spoke. "All of you! The man who calls himself False-Face is an imposter. He is an American agent. I am False-Face!"
The man at the podium laughed. "Liar!" he shouted.
Batman kept walking as Nazis closed in on each side. He could recognize the bomb expert "the Boomer" the man responsible for setting all the charges. The Boomer stood beside the man at the intermediary dais. In his False-Face voice the Dark Knight from Gotham City shouted "The American agent had all of you fooled then, even you, Boomer!"
Batman could see the muscles twitch in the Boomer's face as he drew nearer to the dais. The Gotham Avenger changed his plan. If he could get Boomer, he would have all the bombs. For the moment Boomer's survival would have to be his main concern. And then he could take care of False-Face, as he had wanted to all along.
In his False-Face voice, Batman kept talking -- there was nothing else to do as he walked toward the dais. Snipers were everywhere in the gallery. "It was an elaborate plan, Boomer, to force you into revealing to him the exact whereabouts of the remaining bombs."
On each side of Mr Terrific and him as they walked, Batman recognized faces he had seen in newsfilm, in the papers, in magazines, senators, members of the House. Ahead, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, justices of the Supreme Court, members of the cabinet.
"At the last moment he was to have engineered some agreement from the Americans. They were to acquiesce," Batman said as he saw that armed Nazis guarded each entrance and exit. Beside the exit at the left side of the dais, sat the chief sergeant at arms.
"Liar!" the figure yelled from the podium.
Suddenly Batman heard the voice of Colonel Flagg coming from the television monitor placed on a desk to the right of the dais. "False-Face, the other powers have acquiesced. Please, False-Face, stop the bomb in Reddington. It's a minute before six, sir. Please!"
Batman stopped a dozen feet from the dais. "Did you really think, Boomer," the Caped Crusader shouted, laughing, in his best False-Face voice, "did you really think the Americans would so easily acquiesce? Don't let him contact Reddington -- let the bomb explode!"
It was the Boomer who spoke. "How did you free the President?"
"I did not free him, Boomer. I went to Reddington, I established my identity and alerted them to the American agent's having substituted for me. But I escaped the Americans. And with me the President as my hostage, I came here. There is still time. They do not know where the bombs are beyond those in the Capitol complex."
"They know of these!" the Boomer exclaimed, surprised.
"The detonator -- you designed it." It was Batman's biggest gamble. Doctor Mid-Nite, Green Lantern, and the Atom had found all the bombs -- at least the Nazi they interrogated had indicated six to be all there were. But the gamble wasn't on his fellow crimefighters. The gamble was that the detonator would trigger only those bombs immediately beneath the Capitol. "Go ahead, Boomer, activate the bombs beneath the building. If I am lying, what do I have to gain by all of us dying? Better yet, ask the man who calls himself False-Face, he who stands beside you, ask him to work the detonator for the bombs beneath our feet. I know there were six. Does he?"
Batman stood to the far right of the dais, near the door where the chief sergeant at arms sat. He judged he could count on the white-haired, older man's grabbing a gun at the first opportunity.
No one moved. The Boomer said nothing.
Batman heard a voice behind him shouting, "Go ahead, press your damn button!" He knew the voice as a familiar politician.
Boomer reached in front of the man at the podium. "I push the button, for good or for bad!"
"The man at the dais shouted, "No, Boomer!"
The Boomer wrestled the detonator free and held it high over his head. While Batman watched, the mad bomber's right index finger moved to the button.
Batman judged that everyone in the House chamber could see him, except perhaps for a few dozen legislators immediately behind him. He took off his cowl and then reached for the flap of the latex life mask, ripping the mask away. A snapping peeling sound echoed in the otherwise total stillness.
"This is the face of False-Face!" Batman shouted. He turned to survey the room, watching, then focused his attention on the man who stood behind the podium. The man's jaw dropped, and he stared in open-mouthed astonishment.
When it came, the voice was not from the figure Colonel Flagg had addressed as False-Face, but from the white-haired chief sergeant at arms.
"Damn you, Batman! This time I'll kill you myself!" His eyes were wide and filled with pure hatred, and the shout of vengeance cut through the tension- filled room like a knife through flesh. The chief sergeant at arms wrestled an assault rifle from the bewildered Nazi standing next to him and ran through the side exit from the House.
Batman tried to grab the fleeing figure but missed.
Hearing the sound of a disturbance in the chamber, Colonel Flagg gave the word to Wonder Woman and the Flash to crash into the House.
At that moment, the voice of Mr Terrific shouted out, and Batman turned back to the podium. The crimefighter from Gateway City wrapped his arm around the Boomer's head.
"We're members of the Justice Society of America. False-Face's men -- lay down your arms. Boomer is the only one who can activate the rest of your bombs, and he's now under my control. If you don't surrender, I'll just twist his head off! Either way, your game is up!"
No shots were fired.
The Flash sped through the entire House chamber and disarmed anyone he saw with a weapon. As one person later said, "I just saw a red blur."
One of the Nazis threw his hands up. "It's finished," he said, "perhaps for good this time."
Batman shouted, "Mr Terrific, I'm going after False-Face!"
The Dark Knight from Gotham pulled his cowl back over his head and started running. Once through the doorway, he could hear gunfire to his right, toward the Senate side of the Capitol, and he dashed toward it. Running toward the sound of a fight was something he had been doing all his life, he reflected.
Batman could see Colonel Flagg ahead of him near the spot where the corridor spilled from Statuary Hall. "Colonel, get some men back to check out every office, every closet, I'm looking for the chief sergeant at arms -- it's False-Face."
"Holly shit!" Flagg shouted. "He went past me less than two minutes ago, running toward the Senate side."
"Wonderful," Batman muttered, turning into the corridor. Flagg ran after him, shouting orders the Masked Manhunter didn't want to listen to.
Batman's feet padded the black-and-white floor tiles of Statuary Hall. The gunfire ahead of him louder now.
"What's going on out there, Colonel?" Batman called over his shoulder.
"Maybe a couple of Nazis in the Rotunda. I don't know. Our guys were more interested in getting inside than taking prisoners!"
Batman skidded on his heels, hugging against the wall of the corridor that fed into the Rotunda. To the east, to his right, he could see Doctor Mid- Nite and the Atom fighting a number of men on the far side of the Rotunda.
Flagg was behind him. "I'll get some more men up here. Looks like --"
"No," Batman snapped, and ran into the Rotunda. He was tired of people getting in his way.
The Atom, he saw, dodged a bullet that bounced off a statue.
A Nazi armed with an M-1 carbine pushed out from behind a statue, and Doctor Mid-Nite tackled the man.
Batman found one Nazi hiding behind another statue and dispatched him to a nap on the Capitol floor.
As fights go, Batman thought, this one was no more than a brushfire, over almost as soon as it started. Wonder Woman arrived to join Doctor Mid-Nite, Colonel Flagg and a half-dozen law enforcement officers. They had quickly and efficiently overcame any resistance from the Nazis.
Batman addressed his allies. "I want False-Face. He's impersonating the sergeant at arms --"
"Good God!" shouted Doctor Mid-Nite. "He ran past just a minute before you arrived here in the Rotunda. He ran through that doorway over there," the Master of Darkness pointed to the rear of the Rotunda.
"He couldn't have gotten through," Colonel Flagg said. "There are Capitol police all over that side, not a chance. They were told to shoot anyone on sight -- anyone, even their mothers."
"Wonder Woman, where would he go -- you know the Capitol," Batman asked.
The Amazon Princess answered. "He wouldn't go down. We had a radio link into the television cable set up from the House chamber, and I heard what you told them about what happened in the tunnels beneath the building. If False-Face thought there was a remote chance you were telling the truth, he wouldn't go down."
"What about up?" said Batman, scanning the inside of the dome with his eyes.
"There's a winding staircase, kind of old, not such in good shape, really,"Wonder Woman said, "leading up to the top."
Batman concentrated on the robed figures painted on the ceiling of the dome one hundred eighty feet above him.
Wonder Woman spoke again. "They used to let visitors up there, but they threw things or scrawled on the walls. Some of the stairs just plain wore out. Now you can get up there with a security guard for a companion. But that's the only place False-Face could go from here. You can get out onto the outside of the dome but what will he do after that?"
"I don't think False-Face's thinking about 'after that,'" Batman told the female hero. "He knows -- and I know. He couldn't rebuild from this, never get an organization like this going again. He's waiting for me."
"I'll go with you," Wonder Woman volunteered.
"No, I'll go alone. That's what he wants now, and I'm more than happy to give him what he wants."
Batman looked down at the floor. "Get somebody to interrogate the Boomer. We need to know where the rest of those bombs and VX nerve gas canisters are located and get them back, if we can."
The Caped Crusader made for the doorway in his search of the Nazi madman.
To be concluded in the final chapter ...
