FIRE!

A Tale of the Marvel Universe

by DarkMark

Part 4

The Stilt-Man was having more problems negotiating the hills of San Francisco than he did the streets of Manhattan. He was managing--his thirty-foot-and-more metal stilt extensions with their heavy, flat, round bottoms were able to traverse just about any solid terrain--but it really taxed his gyroscopes staying upright.
The reason why he was here was because Daredevil, his greatest (and so far only) enemy, had relocated to the Bay Area. So there he was, walking the streets...really, walking about 25 feet above them...and waiting for Frisco's two resident heroes to come after him. Along the way he put his foot through the roof of a police car, squashed a bodega, kicked in the front window of a department store, demolished a restaurant on Russian Hill, and utterly squashed a dog.

The cops had shot at him, but his armor was proof against their bullet. He was confident only Iron Man and Doctor Doom had a better rig than his, and maybe, one of these days, he could actually catch up.

So the Stilt-Man walked. Up and down the hills of San Francisco, he walked. People tended to get the hell out of his way.

Then, finally, came the familiar voice. "Hey, Stilty...couldn'tcha have phoned at least to tell me you were coming to town?"

Him.

Daredevil!

The Stilt-Man turned in the direction the voice came from, as fast as his metal-clad body would let him. It mainly had to be a turn from the waist, as it would take a few seconds to maneuver his leg extensors towards that way. Daredevil was there, crouched on the roof of a nearby building. Red costume with the black highlights, the mask with the hokey little devil's horns on it, the eyes obscured by red lenses. The skintight costume showed how powerful the man's physique was, stronger than Stilt-Man's, by a sight.

But not with the armor, it wasn't.

"I'm just making a short stopover, Daredevil," said Stilt-Man, slowly, pointing his finger. "Just long enough to kill you."

He never knew how Hornhead managed to dodge as well as he did. But the man was in motion even as the click of the projectile firer he had stuffed in his metal glove went off. Leaping straight at Stilt-Man, even as the explosive head of the tiny missle blew a ventilator unit to smithereens behind him.

Stilt-Man retracted his leg extensors, telescoping him down ten feet within a second. Daredevil was flying through the empty space where he had been when DD started the leap. But no one could underestimate the man in red. As he leaped, he'd pulled the blasted billy club out of its holster and had shaken it to send the crooked end of it flying loose, trailing a rope between both of its parts.

The thing whirled around him like a bola, and Daredevil came swinging up like a Tarzan movie stuntman. Well, Stilt-Man was prepared for eventualities, too. He held an arm in front of his vulnerable face to ward off DD's kicking feet as they made contact with him. Then he lashed out with his armored hand, backhanding the hero a glancing blow. Stilt-Man wanted better contact, but the man moved just too well.

Daredevil was hanging there, now, at the end of the billy club cable he'd tangled around Stilt-Man's torso. Stilt-Man grasped the rope, began to pull his foe up towards him. "Your jokes seem to be in short supply this trip," he noted.

"What can I say? It's the writer's strike," replied Daredevil, showing a red scratch on the exposed part of his face where Stilt-Man had hit him.

Stilt-Man grasped the rope just three feet above Daredevil's grip, and pointed his other hand at the hero's face. "I've got more than one missle in this finger," he said. "You can let go and drop oh, about 40 feet, and turn into pizza at the end. Or you can take this in the face. Either way, let's face facts. You're his--"

He never knew where she had come from before that moment. She simply wasn't in his field of vision, then she was.

Whatever the case, a beautiful and lithe redhaired woman in a black bodysuit was hanging from the roof of a building opposite him, suspended by a cable from a device on her wrist. Her other hand was pointed at his face, bent down at the wrist. He could barely see a glint of metal on her arm.

It was pointed at his face, and that was the last thing he knew before the pain.

The Black Widow unleashed a sub-killing bolt of energy from her Widow's Bite directly at Stilt-Man's lower face. He didn't have time to dodge, to put up an arm, to do anything. He just got it right in the chops.

A couple of seconds later, Daredevil yelled, "Timber!", and leaped away from Stilt-Man as he inertly crashed backward into the street with a terrific bang. Several cars, a kid's bike, and a garbage can or two were the worse for it.

DD landed on the Black Widow's body and grabbed her for dear life. Natasha Romanoff grunted momentarily from the strain on her wrist. "If you gain any more weight--"

"I know, I know," he said. "I'll have to go back to lawyering full-time. You did good, Natasha."

"Against oafs like that, it's not hard," she scoffed, keeping a grip on him as she eased them both to a window ledge. "Besides, he'd never seen us work together."

"I was counting on it." Daredevil rapped on the window. "I'd rather not break in unless I have to."

A woman's agitated face appeared behind the pane. DD smiled. Behind him, the Widow rearranged her hair, perched on a six-inch ledge. "Uh, ma'am? My name is Daredevil, and this is my associate, the lovely and talented Black Widow. If you would, please...we just need to get off of this ledge."

It took a little persuading for her not to call the cops right away, but she finally let them in.

Much later, Natasha made her excuses to Matt Murdock, threw on a stylish overcoat, and went to a park across town. It was, she thought as she sat down on a bench, all too cliche. The rezendevous in the public place. But sometimes cliches were cliches, she reminded herself, because they worked.

Before long Georg sat down beside her. He had the look and tweedy suit of a college professor, though his cover was a professional photographer's job. "Natasha," he said, in greeting.

"Good day, Georg," she responded. "What do you have for me today?"

"Not as much as I'd love to give you, I'm afraid."

"I'm spoken for. Give me what else you've got."

Georg sighed. "You know what the KGB and the Feds here would do to me, to you, if they caught us together? We'd be lucky to both just get deportation."

"I know, I know," she said. "I have a new life, Georg. But sometimes, part of the old life is of use to me."

"Like me?"

She inclined her head, inquisitively.

Georg leaned back on the bench, contemplating some tie-dyed types taking care of business about a hundred yards away. Most likely making a dope deal, but if one of them was FBI, or a cop... "We think some of our super-ops have been contacted by an independent agency."

"For what?"

"We don't know for what. But, Bojemoi, Widow...we've few enough of them left to us as it is. Ten years ago we had real progress. Crimson Dynamo. Destroyer. Red Ghost. Unicorn. Titanium Man. Mongu. Now, where are they? Seen the bright lights, big cities of the West, found out how much money they can make as super-criminal thieves, and bomp, they're gone."

"You left me out, Georg. Ten years ago, I was one of them, too."

"Ah. Well, what can I say? But--so far the ones who are still in our camp don't have enough information. The one trying to bribe them is sharp enough not to give them enough, at the outset. Put a hook in their mouths, and you could drag the whole KGB out with them. Too big a fish to land safely."

"Do they know anything about the operation they were being recruited for?"

"Not much. Only the size of the money they were promised. Between ten and fifty thousand per man. How are we supposed to keep operatives when they're offered that kind of money?"

"Appeal to their patriotism, Georg."

"Better we tell them that, if they accept it without being double agents for us, they'll get shot."

"I haven't got much more time. Give me anything else you've got."

Georg scratched himself and looked at the hippies dispersing from their gathering. "The only thing I've got is a word mentioned to some of them. It may be an operational name. I don't know what it is."

"What's the word?"

The brown-haired spy looked at her and lowered his voice, as he'd seen spies do in American and even Russian movies. In this case, Natasha estimated, it might be necessary.

"Fire," he said.

-F-

Captain America and the Falcon were an unlikely pair, at first glance. They didn't seem to add up, as a team. One World War II vet in a flag-based uniform with a shield, his every other bit of dialogue a speech. One streetwise but cheerful black guy in green and yellow, with a trained falcon on his arm, about a generation younger. One of them was in the Avengers and the other one wasn't. As for the one who wasn't, hanging around with a honky supercop wasn't the kind of stuff that was going to get you much credibility in the 'hood.

But somehow, it did. And somehow, it worked. Both for Cap and Falc, who had finally stopped sighing at all the I Spy jokes. They worked well together. They fought well together. And if Falc was a bit p.o.'ed about sometimes being perceived as Captain America's junior partner (hell, he was too big to be Bucky Barnes), at least Cap never treated him that way.

Steve Rogers was holding down a job as a beat cop in Manhattan and Sam Wilson was working as a teacher in a Harlem school. Sometimes Sam met Luke Charles at a between-schools function, and could swear the guy seemed somehow familiar, though he couldn't tell from where.

At the moment, though, Cap and the Falcon were finishing playing drum soloes on the hatboxed heads of a unit of AIM agents. These guys, in their yellow getups and the helmets with the little mesh gratings in front, had been trying to recover something or other from an old Yellow Claw hideout in Chinatown. Cap had gotten a tip about it from an informant, possibly one of an agency which rivalled AIM, and had rousted out the Falcon to help him perform the ceremonies. When it was over, about a dozen of the guys in the creepy yellow costumes were on the far side of dreamland, some with Redwing's talon marks on their chests and arms.

"Guess we call up Fury and have him do the honors," opined Falc, Redwing coming to a rest on his gauntlet.

"SHIELD will pass the buck to the local cops for something like this, and then pick them up from downtown," said Cap. "I've seen it done before."

The Falcon peered at his partner quizzically. "They don't even care that we took down a dozen AIM agents? I mean, these are the guys that SHIELD fought just after Hydra."

Cap shifted his shield on his forearm. "AIM isn't as powerful as it used to be in the old days. Mainly, it's a bunch of little outfits running around in competition with each other, and one central bureau trying without much luck to make them all play on the same team. They're still a threat, but not the one they were when they started out. Neither is Hydra."

"Guess we can be thankful for some things," said the Falcon. "You want to go outside and make the call? I'll hang over these guys if you want. I just wanna get back home on time tonight."

"I'll go," said Cap. Then he did a double-take and leaped at one of the fallen AIM men. The Falcon didn't have enough time even to get out a "Cap, what," before the man in red, white, and blue was wrenching one of the pillbox helmets off the agent's metal collar. But, abruptly, Falc knew the reason for Cap's leap.

The AIM guy, who looked like an ordinary, balding man with his helmet off, was gasping for breath. Cap got his gloved fingers in the guy's mouth, prying it open, trying to see what was in his mouth besides his tongue and teeth. The Falcon grasped the man from the back, trying to support him, wondering if mouth-to-mouth was an option.

Then a familiar almond odor told him it wasn't.

A final rattle of breath, and the man in the yellow outfit slumped in the Falcon's arms. "Holy spit, Cap," Falc said, in a low voice. "Cyanide."

Grimly, Cap nodded, wiping his gloves carefully on the man's shirt. "Maybe the old hollow-tooth trick. I saw him make a move. He must have been biting down. There was no way to tell it, with the helmet on. Get the masks off these other guys."

Despite the fact that the motion roused some of their prisoners, Falc complied. A couple of the agents tried to resist, as getting an AIM agent to show his face was usually as easy as pulling fingernails. But a couple of judicious shots to the labonza proved instructive for both the ones experiencing it, and for those only watching. By the time they had eleven barefaced AIM operatives, most of the crew was awake. They were also staring at their dead comrade.

Captain America braced one of the men. "Tell me why he did that," said Cap.

"I don't know why--"

"Tell me!" Cap pinned him against the concrete wall with a red-gloved hand at his throat, and a fist poised before his face.

"I don't know. He was our team leader. I don't know. They don't tell us everything."

"You sure you want to stand on that?"

"He's telling the truth, Fancy Pants," said another AIM man, a blonde with the look of a garage mechanic, who probably had a college degree, nonetheless. "We were told not to ask questions on this one. We were just out to lift something from this place."

"Something so valuable a man would kill himself over it," said Cap. "I wonder what?"

"How the hell should I know?" scoffed the other.

The Falcon raised his arm and let him look Redwing right in the face. The great bird crowed and fluttered his wings. He looked like he hadn't had lunch yet.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!" said the agent, cowering against the wall. "Keep that thing away from me!"

"Better," pronounced the Falcon, folding his arm towards his chest.

"I think we should call SHIELD," opined Cap. "And tell them they should come directly for this bunch."

"Okay," said his partner, taking out Redwing's hood from his belt.

Cap stood before the band of AIM men and took their measure, coldly. To the Falcon, he said, "You make the call. I'll stay right here."

"You got it," said the Falcon, and went up the nearby steps.

-F-

Nick Fury took the call in the heli-carrier right in the midst of a budget meeting. "Damn," he damned, and punched a button on his phone. "Nick Fury."

"Hi, Nick," said the Falcon. Fury recognized his voice. He'd worked with him and Cap on a few cases recently. Even though Fury and Cap were currently not the best of pals, he had nothing against the Harlem hero.

"Afternoon, Falc," rumbled Fury, taking a smouldering cigar from an ashtray. The fumes were driving Jasper Sitwell bats, which effect Gabe Jones noticed and grinned about.

"We've got an even dozen AIM agents for you to pick up in Chinatown," the Falcon told him. "Eleven of 'em are living."

"What happened to number twelve?"

"Poisoned himself. That's why Cap thought I ought to maybe call you first, instead of the cops."

Fury positioned the stogie in his mouth and took a satisfying draw before he answered. "They were after something in one of the Yellow Claw's digs, right?"

"How'd you know that?"

"I'm SHIELD, youngster."

"Thanks for reminding me." Fury had the feeling Falc wanted to add the words "old man," but didn't.

Dum Dum Dugan shifted in his chair and pulled his derby a little lower on his forehead. He wanted this danged meeting to be over and done with. How much money do we get from Congress? How much money does Stark International have tied up in us? What about the Stark-Hughes rumors? That last bit was the only thing interesting to Dum Dum. If Tony Stark really was getting ready to sell out to the Hughes Corporation, you could bet there'd be some changes around SHIELD.

He wanted the meeting to be over mainly so he could go a few rounds in the gym ring with Nick. One bout of boxing with the Old Man could make a whole lousy week in the Heli-Carrier worthwhile. Almost.

"So. Cap feels this one is enough for us to handle directly, huh?", Fury continued.

"If somebody kills himself rather than risk spilling secrets to us--yeah, man, I'd say so," the Falcon confirmed.

"Okay, Falc. Tell me where."

The Falcon gave him the address. "How soon can you be here?"

"We'll have a pickup unit within the hour. But call the NYPD too, okay? They get kind of antsy when they're not even told about it."

"Will do," said Falcon. "Thanks, Nick."

"Don't mention it," said Fury, and punched off the connection. "Where were we?"

Val de Fontaine said, "Congress is still holding firm on that extra ten million. But Senator Dirksen has sent word that he wants to see more results."

"Of what kind?" asked Sitwell, all crewcut and round glasses of him. "Our success against recent HYDRA operations is a matter of record. The initial showing of your Female Furies Battalion, Val, was a success. AIM is doing penny-ante stuff compared to what they were into when I joined up, six years ago. What's his objection?"

Val, a European contessa of considerable beauty and just as much espionage and fighting skills, replied, "Mainly that HYDRA and AIM aren't as big a threat as they used to be, and a lot of our recent operations have been spearheaded by an unpaid consultant. Captain America."

Nick Fury's good eye rolled to the ceiling. At one time, he and Cap had been the best of friends. But since learning that Val, his lover, also had a lust for Star-Spangled Steve, which remained unconsummated but which had led to Cap's girlfriend Sharon Carter leaving SHIELD...well, things hadn't been so cordial between them.

Plus there was the fact that Cap was such a glamor-pants, the guy all the papers liked to plaster on their front page, the joe that always had a great speech to throw out for the microphones. Like he was a Southern Democrat in blue tights. Even back in the War, that was how it was: Fury and the Howlers slogging down there in the mud, while Captain Shield-Slinger and Bucky punched out guys in fancy costumes with the Invaders. He'd since learned that Cap had been a common soldier in his secret identity, and Fury's deepest wish was that he could have had him in the Howlers for just one week. After that, he wouldn't be good for anything.

"Yeah, well," said Fury, "you can tell Senator Dirksen that we plan on using Captain America a lot less in the future, if at all. And you can furthermore tell that ornery white-haired so-and-so that the only thing keepin' HYDRA and AIM down where they are is a strong SHIELD doin' what it does. If we don't get the bucks, we can't do the job. Savvy?"

"Received, Nick," said Val, with a bit of a sigh.

"Some of them are talking about retiring the heli-carrier," ventured Sitwell. "They want us to use the ground installation exclusively. The jet fuel bills alone..."

"Well, some of them can take their wants and shove 'em where the sun don't shine, Sitwell," snapped Fury, standing up so quickly he shoved his chair against the wall. "And some of them can put on a SHIELD uniform and come out with us in a fire fight against those goons in the chicken-scratchin' green hoods, if they wanna see how it is. And some of them can try goin' up against everybody in HYDRA Island single-handed, like I had to do once, and see how they like it. And if there's any of 'em left after that...well, some of them are just gonna have to learn how to live with it."

"Hey, Nick, cool out, brother," said Gabe. "Sitwell's just tellin' ya what he heard. I've been hearin' some along that line, too."

"You have, huh? From who?" Fury puffed furiously on his stogie. Val waved her hand in front of her face to dispel the smoke.

"Around." Gabe met Fury's gaze without flinching. "It ain't 1965 anymore, Nick. Vietnam ain't an easy sell anymore...and neither is SHIELD."

Silence.

Then Nick said, "That's what they're saying, huh?"

"Some of 'em are, Nick," Gabe replied.

Fury put his hands on the table top. "War's always an easy sell, up until people start dyin' in it. Now...what the hell. The war doesn't turn out like they like it, they blame the army. They blame the government. They blame the cops. I guess we had to get blamed sometime."

"We don't have a thing to do with the Vietnam war, Nick," said Val.

"That's not what Nick's sayin', Val," said Dum Dum. "What he's sayin' is, we're authority. If people in this country don't like authority, they don't like us."

"Not all of the country sees it that way," Sitwell put in. "Only a vocal minority is involved in the militant movement, both in the antiwar and the black militancy factions. Most of the country is still pro-American, even if sentiment is growing against the war."

"Yeah, Jasp," said Gabe. "But most of the country isn't what you see on the evening news. The guys with the signs and the guys with the Panther Party...that's what you see."

Fury sighed and sat down. He took the cigar from his mouth. "Okay. I'll talk to the Congress. Sitwell, think you can set it up?"

"Me, sir?" Sitwell sat a bit straighter. "Why, I'd be honored to. I'll inform them that you'll be willing, at the earliest possible window of availability, to address a joint session of Congress that--"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Fury. "Just tell 'em I'm coming to give a talk. Think you can do that?"

"Absolutely, sir," said Sitwell, and saluted.

Fury said, "That's all from me. Anybody got anything for me?"

Gabe said, "About the Yellow Claw thing, Nick. Jimmy Woo asked me to pass on something. He was talking to his old FBI boss, Phil Kane, the other day. It's not confirmable all the way, but as far as they know, the Yellow Claw has not been confirmed outside of the PRC in the last ten to fourteen years."

"Hmm. Makes sense." Fury mused on how he and SHIELD had fought what appeared to be the Yellow Claw, a powerful Oriental genius, some years back, only to learn that the "Yellow Claw" they fought was only a robot. They had never learned who built him. But it had been a good enough duplicate to deceive even Jimmy Woo, who had fought the real Yellow Claw back in the late Fifties.

"The other thing is, there's unconfirmed that some agency has been trying to contact both the Claw and the Mandarin. All they know is that it's evidently somebody from the West. They don't think it's HYDRA, AIM, Secret Empire, or anybody else we know."

"Have they made contact?" asked Fury.

"Don't know that, either," said Jones.

"Well, then, somebody better find out real quick."

"Want me to send for Jimmy?"

"Yeah," said Fury. Woo was still in love with Suwaan, the Claw's daughter. If anybody wanted more to come to grips with the Claw than Jimmy, Fury didn't know about it.

"That's it," Fury continued. "Meeting adjourned. Get back to work, guys. Doin' a great job."

The five of them began to get up from the table. Val came near Fury, touched his arm. "Nick," she said. "After work tonight, I'm available. Is it still--possible?"

Fury stubbed his cigar out in the ashtray. "I'm gonna have to work late, Val."

"How late, Nick?"

"You still know the number of my room up here," he said.

Val smiled. "I've still got to put the Furies through their paces. Then I'll put one Fury through mine." She sashayed through the door in her white suit, and Fury followed her with his good eye all the way.

Dum Dum was next. "Still feel like you've got a few more in ya, Nick? If I don't get some action here, I'm gonna go so stiff you'll have to bend me five times to get me in a meetin' chair."

"I'll take ya on, you ol' walrus," said Fury. "Gimme about half an hour to get finished up here, and I'll be in the gym."

"Attaway, Nick." Dum Dum punched him in the shoulder. He'd started out as Nick's corporal back in the Howling Commandoes, and served much the same role now in SHIELD. The redheaded man in the derby left, followed shortly by Gabe.

Fury turned his head and saw Sitwell still at the table. "Well, youngster?"

"I'm sorry, Colonel," Sitwell apologized. "I was just--thinking."

"What about, that Madame Masque dame?"

"No, surprisingly enough, not her," said Sitwell. Madame Masque, aka Whitney Frost, was a reformed villainess both he and Tony Stark had fallen in love with, and there was no telling where she was now or who she would choose. "It's just...the bit Gabe told us about the Mandarin and the Yellow Claw. I've been wondering if there's a link between that and a recent drop in supercriminal activity."

"According to the papers, the super-types are still around," Fury said.

"Not to the same extent they have been," Sitwell answered. "It's as if a large number of them may have gone to ground for awhile. They used to pop up all over the place, and now...there's enough to keep the current complement of super-heroes busy, but not more than that."

"Think there's something you could find out?"

"It's something I'd like to try, sir," said Sitwell. Then he added, "After I arrange your speech, of course."

"Go to it, kid," said Fury, and walked out.

After a moment, Sitwell followed him.

-F-

"The answer is no."

"But, your excellency--"

"NO. Doom does not conspire. Doom is not used. Doom uses! This conversation is ended." He stabbed a button on his console that would not only break the contact, but prevent further contact from being made.

The gall. The insufferable, common-man gall of the representative. To think that he himself, Doctor Doom, would possibly--could possibly--be induced to participatory activity with a too-large band of costumed inferiors in a disruptory mission of ill-defined intent.

Doom was not a soldier in an army. He led the army, if one was needed. For the most part, Doom needed only himself.

Unless, of course, there was a possibility to exploit the chaos that might result from the army's operations.

That, indeed, was a consideration.

The cloaked man in the iron armor decided that the situation would bear watching. From a distance, of course.

Until it was time to strike.

To be continued...