Tama sees a couple of goons drawing a bead on her from a nest of metal crates. She swoops around to avoid their shots and then dives at them, spinning her staff, using the ends to flick their rifles away. As she ascends again they yell with pain and curl up around their injured hands. If she broke their bones, well, it serves them right, and any decent prison hospital can fix that kind of damage.
There are injured and unconscious soldiers all over the place, but there are still quite a lot left to shoot at Tama, who is agitated and starting to get worried. Melanie and Batman had better finish whatever it is they're doing – she won't be able to keep this up for much longer.
The troops suddenly start falling back, towards the administrative building. Tama's not going to let them get away that easily; she keeps harassing them and manages to knock a couple down as the group flees. "Don't follow them," she hears Alex say. "They've got orders to draw you away from the warehouses. Stay in the area."
"How do you know?" she mutters as she draws back and watches her enemies warily.
"They're going to try and move Natalie out. Mel heard them. She and Batman are following – they're on the walkway to the warehouses now – but they want you around to help. Especially if they put Nat in a hovercar."
Tama dodges a few shots from the soldiers, who have figured out that she's not inclined to follow them and are advancing again. They've managed to get into relatively secure positions, so Tama's going to have more trouble with them now. "They better get out here soon," she growls.
~***~
Terry and Melanie are shadowing the man they'd overheard earlier. Privately, Terry has nicknamed him Grey Suit because of his neat, pinstriped business outfit. It seems impractical for a place like this, especially since the place is a mess after being abandoned for so many years, but he wears it anyway and somehow manages to keep it looking like it's just come back from the cleaner's. Maybe it's some kind of extra-strength, dirt-repelling nanomaterial. Terry wouldn't be surprised. But it's not the suit he's concentrating on – he's got more important things to do, like make sure that he can follow Grey Suit, the four guards and Natalie to wherever they're headed. Judging from the direction they're taking, their destination is one of the warehouses, on the opposite side of the compound from the office building they're in now.
"They're going to the same place I did," Melanie says quietly. "With the trucks."
They go through a door into a long, narrow, enclosed walkway. There are lights on the low ceiling, but they aren't working. The only light comes through the evenly spaced windows that run down each side. Terry can hear the faint sounds of shooting somewhere in the distance to his right – Kitsune's still fighting with the soldiers. He switches on his camo to follow Grey Suit and his goons down the narrow enclosed walkway to the storage buildings. Melanie has hers on too, but he can see her through his IR filter. He's glad she wasn't so well-equipped when they weren't on the same side.
No. Bad idea to think about that now.
Grey Suit opens the door at the other end of the walkway. He and the goons go through, with Natalie firmly in hand. Terry wonders if she knows that he and Melanie are shadowing her – she's giving no sign of it, but he likes to think that she's aware of it. Wayne would be, in that situation.
Terry and Melanie slip through the door before it closes. They emerge into the high-vaulted warehouse, which is lit by a series of powerful standing lamps. Even with his light enhancement Terry can barely make out the ceiling. Hanging lights – not working, of course – dangle in rows from the crisscrossing girders above. There are also four old, disused cranes, one near each corner of the warehouse. They must have been for moving the big truck-crates that are stacked all around in dusty piles. Outside he can still hear the shooting, and occasionally yelling, but the sounds are more muffled than they were in the walkway.
Part of the warehouse has been cleared of truck crates. In that place there are three actual trucks – they don't look as run-down as the warehouse, so they obviously belong to the current occupants. There are also about half a dozen vans and some cars there. Grey Suit, who is now steering Natalie with a hand placed firmly on her shoulder, is heading for one of the cars; a black one with no wheels, so it must be a hovercar. Beside it stands a huge, pale man with a shaven skull. Terry thinks he looks a lot like Mad Stan, but more stretched out on the vertical axis.
"They're about to take her out in a black hovercar. Tell Kitsune to be ready," Melanie says. Terry realizes that she's talking to a rider, someone who does for her what Wayne does for him. He wonders why she wants to do it that way – they have plenty of space to move, so they can just take out the bad guys and get Natalie away from here – but then he decides that she has the right idea. There are too many guns here, and while getting Natalie out of the car once it's airborne will pose its own problems, there will be fewer guns to worry about. That means no crossfire for her to get caught in.
Wayne seems to agree with Melanie's strategy. "Don't bother with the other people in here," he tells Terry. "Getting Natalie back is your first priority. I'll tell Barbara to move in as soon as they're gone."
Terry realizes that his mouth is dry, and he can feel his heart pounding in his ears. He watches as Grey Suit gets into the backseat of the car with Natalie. The muscleman gets into the driver's seat. One of the soldiers takes the passenger seat next to him. They seem to take forever – Terry almost wants to scream at them to take off already. Usually he doesn't get this antsy, even on an hours-long stakeout, but things like this really put him on edge.
A flash of memory: he remembers holding Tanya Wooten, the dread in the pit of his stomach, the terrible redness of her blood. And then, standing in a vandalized apartment, looking at the broken, almost unrecognizable body that used to be Warren McGinnis…
The hovercar's engine starts up with a whir, pulling him back to the here and now. His fists are clenched so tightly that they hurt. Terry spreads them out, flexes his fingers, tries to focus. He's getting distracted a lot, lately, and he's angry at himself for it.
One of the large cargo-bay doors on the wall to his right starts rolling upwards, revealing the dark shapes of buildings against the cobalt sky, and the lights of downtown Gotham in the distance. The hovercar slowly rises off the floor and begins moving towards the opening. Terry fixes his eyes on that car, making it the center of his world.
He's not going to lose this time, no matter how much it costs him to succeed.