April 4, 2002
Stark was sitting in the darkened room when Rasputin nudged the door open and peered inside. Stark snapped on the desk lamp next to his chair. "Come in," he said. "Shut the door."
Rasputin walked in, tossing the armload of coveralls and boots on the bed. "I found what I could. I hope this will work."
"You do realize Logan believes you will betray us when it comes down to it," Stark said.
Rasputin froze. "What do you think?"
Stark shrugged. "Whether you know it or not, this Bukharin fellow probably intended to get you close to us all along. You're an archetype playing true to form, and that's too easy to be real."
"What do you plan to do?" Rasputin asked, squaring off with him.
Stark sighed. "I need your help, Rasputin. Logan's good, but I think this is beyond him. No matter where your loyalties lie, I don't believe you'd be willing to nuke and irradiate a large section of Russia to prop up a madman."
Logan scowled through the peephole. He could waltz into that plant, nail the mobsters, and waltz out. This was definitely his speed. Stark just didn't know what he had going for him. Logan glanced over at the unconscious man slumped on the desk, then returned his eye to the peephole. He was looking out of the bottom of the picture frame through a peephole that anyone without hyper senses would have missed. Logan glanced at his watch to see where he was in his fictional trip to the airplane. Hmph. On his way back. He returned his attention to the hole.
"No," Rasputin said slowly. "No, I wouldn't detonate the nuclear plant. No matter the cost." He gestured helplessly. "Men like Bukharin… they frustrate me. He could be great. He could be an advocate for the people, to do so much good. But instead, he commands his army and crushes his enemies and ruins the lives of the poor who are just struggling to survive, to feed their families. What could make a man do that?"
"Greed," Stark said simply. "What did you do for the KGB?"
Rasputin straightened. "I was a bodyguard," he said stiffly. "I stood by important personages of the state, and if someone tried to assassinate them I shielded them with my body."
"You're a long way from home," Stark said. "So to speak."
"My home… I have no home. Not anymore. Just a country," Rasputin said slowly, a tremendous sorrow behind his voice. He turned away.
Logan rolled his eyes, then stepped out the secret door into the back of the closet in the suite next door, then to the hall and around the corner to the door. He opened it and stepped in.
"Did you find the countermeasure?" Stark asked.
"Nope," Logan said. "Forgot to bring it."
Stark was silent a moment. "Not like you, Logan," he said.
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do," Logan retorted, his voice tight. "How is Potts?"
"Fine," Stark gestured. "Lawson heard about the attack and took her to a safehouse they've built here as per standard operating procedures with Stark International. They should be fine."
"How do you know Lawson heard about the attack? Did you talk to him on the phone?"
"I checked with the restaurant," Stark said coolly. "They said that Lawson and Potts left together about half an hour after the attack."
"Somebody spoke English?" Logan pressed.
Stark narrowed his eyes. "Don't grill me, Logan. I said it's fine. It's fine. We have other concerns."
"I managed to get us a car," Rasputin said. "You two can drive close to the plant, leave the car and approach on foot."
"And you?" Logan asked.
"I will jog the distance; it is a faster way to go and I do not tire."
"Not a chance, bright eyes," Logan said, shaking his head. "You're with us."
Rasputin looked at Stark, who nodded. "We stick together," Stark said. "Otherwise this gets tactically complicated. Let's get moving." He stood, facing the other two.
"Yer gonna need a gun," Logan said.
"No," Stark replied. "I don't intend to kill anyone. I'm going to take care of the bomb. I have extensive knowledge of detonation devices, electronics, and traps. Unless one of you is similarly qualified?"
A moment of silence.
"Let's get moving," Stark said.
xXx
The truck rumbled along the empty road as the first hints of dawn colored the dark skyline to the east.
Logan shifted gears. "Didja notice bright eyes got us a different vehicle when he had to come?" he muttered.
"Sure did, Logan," Stark murmured, looking out the window. "Do you think Rasputin would have fit in that sub-compact? Logan, you need to get past your suspicions."
"Hey, one of us should be suspicious," Logan snapped, and his mouth shut.
"There," Stark said, pointing at the dim lights some distance away. "That's the plant."
Logan drove the truck off the side of the road and parked it in some brush. It was conspicuous, but not the first abandoned vehicle on this stretch. He hopped out as Rasputin hit the ground with a thud.
Stark yawned, a jawcracker.
"You gonna be okay?" Logan asked as he walked around the front of the truck.
Stark waved him away and popped pills into his mouth. He swallowed. "Jet lag," he muttered. "Been going nonstop for over twelve hours now since touchdown."
"So what's the plan, chief?" Logan asked, his eyes hard.
"Simple is best," Stark replied. "Rasputin, go in and get their attention, try to single-handedly stop this. Meanwhile, Logan and I will infiltrate and get to the bomb. If this Bukharin fellow has any brains, he'll set explosives by the reactor core, to keep the graphite cooling rods from entering the reaction chamber so it melts down. He could either sabotage the controls or blow the room up. So I'll head there. Draw their fire, Rasputin."
"That I am qualified to do," Rasputin agreed. They headed for the facility, still almost two klicks away. They did not speak as they trudged through the cold pre-dawn, they simply endured. Finally they could see the fence and the buildings in greater detail.
Stark and Logan moved around to the side, headed for the coolant towers. Rasputin knelt and waited, giving them a head start.
Logan looked over his shoulder at the kneeling giant, narrowed his eyes, and hoped Rasputin was just giving them a head start.
xXx
Rasputin peered through the fence. Perimeter guards at ten meters, armed with assault rifles. Such puny weapons could not harm him. Snipers in the towers; those bullets could sting, but he would survive their hits. Bazookas, one on either side of the road approach. Sensible. There, on the walkway—
His eyes narrowed. Bukharin was supervising personally. And he expected trouble.
On the walkway, a man in brilliant red armor stood with his fists on his hips. He wore prototype armor developed in the darkest years before the fall, armor technology developed in case the Cold War heated up. With a rush of adrenaline, Rasputin realized the armor was staring at him too.
The armor leaped from the walkway and fired a backpack jet, guided by boot jets, that carried him over Rasputin.
"Hello," came the mocking voice in Russian. "Seems you've failed, Little Brother. Have you come to stop the plan?"
Rasputin tucked his head down and sprinted for the fence, followed by haunting laughter. Bullets rang off Rasputin's armor flesh as he charged into and through the fence; these men were worse than animals. He did not spare them.
He slapped one, killing him instantly, and he tore a fence pole up and hurled it through the sniper in the tower. Tearing loose a section of fence, he swung it like a net; it did not slow down much as it lashed across the row of soldiers shooting from beneath the walkway. They spun away, most of them no longer able to scream.
He nimbly ran to the side, launched off a tower support, and crashed with his body into the emplacement of one of the bazooka gunners; the concrete alcove collapsed with a disturbing crunch. Tearing loose a chunk of concrete, he threw it through the slit in the other alcove, nailing the other bazooka gunner with a single hit. The other soldiers pulled back.
Rasputin faced the armor.
A mechanical filtered chuckle drifted from the armor as it hovered on medium burn, ten meters above the ground. "And here I thought you were a patriot," the armor said.
"Speak not to me of patriotism, butcher!" bellowed the steel man as he dug in and ripped loose a slab of concrete.
A compact minigun snapped out of a compartment on the armor's forearm, and caseless explosive rounds tore into Rasputin; he staggered, and shifted the slab to cover him from the withering hail of fire; the slab cracked, then shattered as he sprinted away.
Bukharin laughed, and burned through the air after him.
xXx
The soldier raced down the stairs, speaking excitedly in Russian. Stark and Logan exchanged a glance, and Logan shrugged.
"Wait here," he whispered. "You sure this is the coolant control?"
Stark nodded. Logan stole around the corner, moving low and silent. Stark listened. The soldiers were having a heated discussion; an argument about what to do next.
It abruptly stopped. Low voices, full of suspicion. Then the door opened, and a spine-chilling growl rolled through, and there were sounds of combat; a few guns fired wildly, Stark heard the meaty smack of fist into flesh, and in five seconds the fight was over. He peeked around the corner, looking into the dark room.
Logan snapped the light on. "They don't do so good in the dark," he said.
Stark saw thick red blood oozing off his fist. He raised his eyebrow.
"Fittin reward for the one who kindly showed me where the bomb trigger is," Logan said, expressionless. He held up a box that looked like it belonged to a remote control car. "Git in here so we can shut the damned door."
Stark walked in and saw four soldiers sprawled in various positions. Two were bleeding; one was on the floor on the other side of the room, nearly sheared in half. His blood had sprayed over a device about a meter on each side; a pile of C4 with a detonator that was steadily clicking away.
"Do your thing," Logan said, nodding at it.
They faintly heard the scream of a minigun outside.
"Logan," Stark said slowly, "maybe you better check on Rasputin."
"I'm on it," Logan said. "You got enough firepower around here to knock down lotsa Commies, Stark." He kicked an assault rifle across the floor, watching it slide to a stop by Stark's foot. "Don't get shot." He turned, passed through the door, and silently vanished down the hall.
Stark closed and locked the door, picking up an assault rifle on his way back to the bomb. He squatted down, looked it over, pulled out a kerchief and smeared some blood off. He recognized the detonator type.
The bisected Russian had a tool kit by his body. Stark snapped the kit open. Time to get to work.
Hardly breathing, Stark teased the housing off. There, the timer. Five minutes forty seconds.
It was timed to blow with the soldiers still on site.
Stark's smile was grim. No wonder the counter wasn't visible from the outside.
xXx
Rasputin lay with his back to the wall, his vast chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He glanced down at the shining puckers in his steel hide where the bullets slammed him, and he wondered if he would live long enough to see those transformed into shallow cuts on his flesh.
The crimson armor that pursued him shut down one minigun, retracting it. Bukharin blasted around to hover near Rasputin once again, a mere ten meters away. Crossing its arms over its chest, the armor looked very satisfied.
"I will beat you, Bukharin," Rasputin shouted hoarsely, the metallic tang in his voice resonating.
"Hah," replied the armor. "You cannot fly, tin man."
Moving as fast as he could, Rasputin spun hurling a chunk of the wall at the armor. The armor blasted to the side, then hung in the air on low burn. Far away, the hurled chunk hit the pavement.
"Is that the best you can do?"
"I will do better," Rasputin said, rising. "I will defeat you."
The shoulder plates of the armor popped up, revealing mini-missiles. Some launched, with a sharp snap and hiss, tearing towards the steel man. Rasputin leaped, and one hit where he had been, one slammed his calf, one plowed into his hip. He screamed as he was thrown through the air, smashing into the wall of the office wing.
Rasputin rolled through the hole he made and dropped flat. "Come and get me, Bukharin!" he shouted.
"Ah ah, no, I will not," chuckled the armor. "I prefer to stay out here, where I can fly. I, of all people, know what you can do with those metal fists of yours, Rasputin. Besides, in five minutes this whole place," he said gesturing widely and looking around, "will be a crater. The timer cannot be stopped. Of us all, only I have the speed to reach safe distance in time and the protection if I don't quite make it. So you have one minute to stop me or I escape and you die. I like those odds. Even if you escaped, you have only a few hours before you die anyway."
"Sounds t'me," growled a voice by Rasputin's ear, "like you need somethin ta throw."
xXx
The nest of wires was exposed, and Stark coolly picked through them. There, the ground. There, the trigger. There, the decoy. But the reflex array would trigger the bomb if the current dropped. He nodded to himself. Not a bad bomb, but even an amateur like himself could defeat it. He snipped the wire, not even holding his breath.
He heard a click, then a whir. He smiled broadly. Then the bomb beeped.
Reluctantly tipping the top of the bomb case back, he saw an auxiliary digital timer. Twenty eight seconds. Twenty seven. Twenty six.
For a moment, just a moment, Stark felt paralyzed. The stakes had never been higher. Not only his life, but thousands of others would be forfeit if he failed now.
Only a genius could figure out this device and disarm it in twenty five seconds.
The question hit him like a faceful of cold water: "Do I want to live?" he whispered. "Enough… to fight for it?"
The number counting down was hypnotic; so peaceful, and there were worse ways to die.
xXx
Bukharin glanced at his suit timer. Another forty seconds to enjoy taunting the dead, then he really must be streaking off. He checked his power levels. Running smoothly. He had restrained himself from donning the armor for far too long. He smiled.
Like a diver cutting through the surface of a pool, a man streaked out of a window in the office wing, slicing through the air at incredible speed right towards the armor. Too startled to fire, Bukharin tilted his jets to fling his armor out of the way, but the man was moving like he had been shot out of a cannon, too fast! At the last moment, the armor tilted out of his reach—
Snikt—
Bukharin let out a hoarse bellow as pain sheared through his leg, pain worse than bullet wounds. The flying man had ejected claws from his hand and rammed them through Bukharin's retreating ankle!
The claws managed to change the direction of the flying man's momentum, slinging him around to clang to a halt gripping Bukharin's belt from behind, right under the backpack jet. He swung precariously around to the side of the armor as Bukharin fired his afterburners; Logan got out of the way of the exhaust.
He popped claws from his other hand and rammed them into the side of Bukharin's knee; the claws punched all the way through the armor, the leg within, and the armor on the other side. Bukharin nearly fainted from the raw agony; the world was spinning and for a moment his gyroscopics lost track of "up".
His assailant said something uncouth in English. Then the claws tore free, and as Bukharin wobbled without one stabilizing boot jet and with an additional weight (so heavy, for such a small man) too late he realized what the clawed missile was doing.
He understood right before the claws punched through his jet pack.
Locked together, they sailed down and rammed into the earth.
Jarred and a bit dizzy, Bukharin pushed himself up. The small man had survived the fall and he was… jumping back?
Heavy footfalls.
Bukharin struggled to rise before it was too late.
Before Rasputin reached him.
xXx
Stark touched something primal inside; something that had been lulled to sleep by the power, the wealth, the detachment. Something in him suddenly blazed; something in him desperately wanted to live.
He bent to his work, focused, and time slipped away; his mind applied itself to the electronics as it had not been applied to anything in too long. Seconds slipped away as his deft fingers and his deft mind tugged at the deadly puzzle. He uncovered the pulse center; jury rigged the processor, autokinetic feedback switch, timer mesh recalibrated, bought himself another ten seconds, but that's it; then the heart of the weapon.
He held his breath and clipped the wires.
xXx
"Butcher!" roared Rasputin. Bukharin popped out his other minigun, the one with the armor piercing rounds made just for the steel man. Raised the gun.
"Aint sportin," came a voice from the side, and those horrific claws caught the gun in an uppercut. There was no time for revenge; Bukharin leaped to the side to try to break up Rasputin's momentum.
Didn't make much difference.
The vast steel fist crashed into the armor with such fury sparks flew, and Bukharin found himself airborne again, however briefly. He was conscious enough to wish he had not hit a wall.
Rasputin leaped, and Bukharin registered his movement too late:
The steel man tucked into a cannonball in mid-air and smashed all his weight and velocity into the red armor. Both of them went through the concrete and rebar wall into the offices.
Logan peered after them with academic interest, then pulled out a cigar and lit it up. Clanging and banging sounds like a blacksmith gone mad came from the dark hole, and grunted Russian words Logan didn't want translated. Then all was silent.
Rasputin stumbled out of the hole, red paint scraped on some lacerations on his metal form. "Did Stark succeed?" he asked intently.
Logan glanced at his watch. "We'll know in two minutes," he said. He took a long pull on his cigar. "Let's go find him."
