Batman and the associated characters are owned by DC. James Bond and the associated characters were created by Ian Fleming. With thanks to Cmar for beta reading this for me and thanks to all the reviewers and readers so far! All reviews welcome.

Golden Bat – Chapter Twenty

Bond was tumbling through the inky blackness of the Colombian sky. The dead pilot was a dead weight to him and sent him spinning uncontrollably through the air. His spare parachute did not work but that did not mean the pilot's would not.

He released his own parachute from his back, it disappeared in an instant, and he ripped the pilot's parachute off him and let the body tumble like a rag doll through the air away from him. It was difficult to put the parachute on in the slipstream. Practically impossible. The wind threatened to remove it from his back. Stop complaining! Just do it!

Somehow he managed to get the parachute on his back and he pulled the spare ripcord. With a feeling of immense relief he felt himself jerk upwards as the parachute caught the air. Seconds later he plunged through the canopy of the jungle and ended up hanging about thirty feet from the jungle floor. His clothes were scratched, ripped and torn by the branches. He studied his arms and legs almost clinically. His army clothes and Kevlar jacket had protected him from most of the damage. He looked up.

The sun was just starting to appear at the horizon and was turning the jungle from stygian blackness to a blaze of reds and yellows. Bond was not looking at this though, because the parachute material was starting to rip. If he wasn't careful he would be continuing the rest of his journey to the ground without a parachute.

Thirty feet might as well be thirty thousand feet. They can both kill you. In parachute training years ago, Bond had known a man who had landed in a tree. The fool had cut himself down with a knife and broken both his legs and crushed a vertebra. There was an ominous ripping sound from above. Carefully he started to unbuckle his harness. There was a hissing sound as he was jerked down five feet. Beams of sunshine started to pierce the canopy and it showed Bond what was below him. Nothing much, just a bone breaking fall. Meanwhile, the tearing of the canopy was good in that it sent him closer to the ground, but bad in that he was more in danger of falling.

The canopy tore some more and he was lowered another four feet. He looked up, the sweat filling his eyes, and he saw there was only another two feet of material holding him up. He was still twenty feet above the ground. On the positive side he would probably survive the fall but he would probably break something or sprain his ankle. In the jungle if you were injured you might as well dig a grave for yourself since it would be the last thing you would do.

Could he swing to the tree? No, his support would break before that. Could he clamber up to the branch? Again, probably not. What about the fall to the ground now? Twenty feet. Could he lower that? He carefully unbuckled his parachute and lowered himself down, hanging on with his hands. That reduced the distance to about fifteen feet. Getting better all the time, if he was careful he should be all right. There was a ripping sound, and the parachute material gave up the unequal struggle and sent Bond tumbling to the ground…

Bruce Wayne saw Bond try to rescue the pilot and make a last-second parachute landing. The pilot had fallen too far from him to be able to do anything about it. What was the man doing? He circled back round to where Bond had landed and found a small clearing with a wooden hut in it to land in. The four SAS men and the other pilot followed him down.

They were miles off course. He checked his watch. Twenty hours left and they had about twenty miles to go to Blofeld's lair. He landed with ease in the clearing and in seconds had wrapped up his parachute.

The SAS men landed with practiced skill by him.

Kirby grinned at him, his mouth showing several gold fillings, as he rolled up his parachute. "This looks like a real balls up, don't it?"

Wayne grunted at him.

"Where's the slime then?"

"What do you mean slime?"

"Military Intelligence," said Kirby in an exaggerated stupid voice. "Last I saw him he was dropping like a stone towards some trees. He's probably dead the speed he landed at; let's see if we can find his body, he had some Gucci boots on."

Two of the SAS men were already reconnoitring the hut. They drew blackened knives and walked into the hut. Bruce was shocked. What were they doing?

There was a muffled scream sound from the hut and Kirby grinned at him. "We don't want no-one saying we're here, do we?"

Oz walked out of the hut cleaning the knife as he went. "Just an old bird and a kid. No-body heavy."

Bruce was furious he stormed up to Oz and was about to hit him when he heard a tell tale click behind him. "Careful, Yank. You're in the jungle now. Our rules." Oz spoke slowly. "If we shoot you, who cares?"

Alvey was not alive. He was walking and breathing but that part of him that could be called life had left him a long time ago. The nano-droids had no-body else to lead them though, so they had brought him back again. The collective consciousness of the nano-droids realised they had a problem. They had infected about a quarter of the Gothamites but the rest had fled. They were not powerful enough to kill quickly in the outside world. In a week or two the weather would destroy the remaining nano-droids, those outside people or undercover, anyway.

They needed an agent to carry on the fight. Alvey was their agent. He had been changed by the droids, mutated. He was extremely powerful and he could heal himself thanks to the nano-droids inside him. The electricity had killed all the original ones inside him but the nano-droids had simply summoned all the nanos in the area to infect him again.

Now he had just had one driving purpose. To kill anyone he found. True it was not much of a purpose, but it kept him going…

Bond was only about ten feet from the ground when he finally fell. He landed heavily but rolled with it. His twisted his ankle slightly and winced a bit with it but other than that he got off lightly.

He started thinking about what had happened so far. The bomb was set to explode just after they had left the plane. One of the pilots had been killed. Shot at as he was parachuting down. That took some fearsome shooting.

It had to be the SAS. Why though? Only one possible reason. Blofeld must have got to them. He shrugged. It had happened before. More times than people cared to think about. They had been in the jungles of South America for many months hunting down drug barons in Belize. Blofeld was known to have taken over a lot of the drug running in Central and South America. Blofeld and his men might have paid them to look the other way.

Who knew how far that loyalty lies? Take Donnington Speen. Former MI6 man like Bond himself. It doesn't take much to persuade a man his loyalties lay elsewhere. In Bond's estimation about $2,000,000.

People had tried to pay Bond off before but for him it was never about money. It wasn't really for Queen and Country either. It was about the challenge. About being better than anyone else. No money could replace that feeling of exhilaration. At being the best; at being the top of the tree.

BANG!

There was a shot in the distance, a flock of green parrots erupted from the trees at the sound. Bond started jogging towards the noise. His ankle hurt at first but after a few paces he had locked the pain away and ignored it.

Alfred peered nervously around the corner. The CIA men were dead and Alvey was standing in the middle of them, clutching a broken and bloodied broom handle. Quietly he backed away from the room and started running nervously towards the clock. He needed to get to the cave, quickly.

His hands shaking, he changed the hands to the time when Bruce's parents had died and opened the door. He quietly closed it behind him and pattered down the stairs towards Tim. Could he stop Alvey? He has his choice of Master Bruce's weapons down here.

He shook his head. How could he stop him? Mr Bond had thought him dead, and although he did not approve of the man, if he thought someone was dead, who was to say different? If Bond could not stop Alvey, how could he?

He ran up to Tim. "Tim! Tim!" He hissed. "Wake up! Wake up!"

Tim, still looking very pale, woke up. "Alfred? Where am I?"

"You're in the cave," said Alfred. "You have to get up!"

Tim tried to lower his feet to the floor but was very shaky. "What's wrong with me? Where's Bruce?"

"Master Bruce is in Colombia with Mr Bond," said Alfred. "They are trying to stop a man called Mr Blofeld. He is responsible for these nano-droids apparently. He is the only one who can stop them!"

"Where are we going?" muttered Tim.

"In the car," said Alfred. "Come on! Come on!" It said something for his mood that he was trying to hurry along the sick Tim. Normally he would not even think of such a thing. "Please hurry up!"

Alfred had picked up the remote locking mechanism from the cabinet as he ran down the stairs. He pressed the button. There was a clicking sound and a grinding sound. "Come on! Come on!" From the top of the stairs was a sound like a door being kicked down, which was rather apt because that is what it was. The long shadow of Alvey travelled down the stairs, almost to where Alfred was.

"You must die," said Alvey in a monotone.

"Please work!" cried Alfred. "Please work!" He pressed the button vainly again but nothing happened. The engine was growling and not sounding at all healthy. He clicked a button on the remote locking mechanism and the hood shot up. Underneath the engine had been eaten away by the nano-droids, hungry for materials.

Alvey, looking pale and battered with dark rings under both his eyes walked towards Alfred and the sick Tim; he was clutching an old blood stained broom handle in one hand…

The SAS men were grinning as they looked at Bruce.

"Can't believe our luck. Blofeld pays our wages," said Oz. "Those numpties at Head Shed gave the job to us! Blofeld has promised us ten mill to lose you lot…" He licked his lips. "Permanently. We tell headquarters we couldn't find Blofeld and lost you lot in a skirmish with tribesmen or something. Everyone's a winner!" He thought about this a moment. "Well, everyone but you, to be fair."

The other pilot, who had landed about a hundred yards away, walked up to the menacing group of SAS soldiers. "Okay lads," he said in a posh English accent. "Pilot Officer Davis reporting for duty! What's next? Do we send off a radio signal and get help in?" He was looking about the jungle. "I say, what a place this is! You know I normally fly above all this shrubbery. It looks like my garden at home, you know. My wife is always on at me to get out the lawn mower."

"Shut it," said Oz viciously.

"Shut it, of course shut it," said the Davis, mulling over those words. "But what a parachute jump! I mean I've done a couple in training of course, but nothing like that!" He looked over at Kirby. "What happened to my co-pilot by the way? Bill? I lost sight of the old chap, he owes me a G & T in the officers mess."

Kirby got his snipers rifle from his shoulder. "This happened to him, I shot him just as he jumped from the plane. Run."

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Run," said Kirby. "You too, Wayne. Let's make this interesting. You've got five minutes, then we come after you."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Kirby put the rifle to his eye and sent a shot through Davis' sleeve, just lightly nicking him. "Ouch!" The pilot looked at his sleeve. "I say, good shot! Are you one of those trick shootist chappies? You should appear on telly, they've got a program for people like you."

Bruce grabbed his bag and grabbed the pilot. The SAS were too spread out for him to do anything about it in the open. If he got them alone in the jungle he might stand a chance… Might…

"Come on, let's go!" growled Bruce and he pushed the hapless pilot in front of him.

"Where are we going?"

"RUN!"

Bruce Wayne and the pilot were swallowed up by the jungle in seconds.

Kirby put down the rifle and grinned. "Are you mad?" said Oz. "We might lose them!"

"Not really, we'll just track 'em," said Kirby. "It saves us carrying the bodies into the jungle." He looked at his watch. "Come on, let's go."

"You said you'd give 'em five minutes?"

"I lied," said Kirby. He slapped himself on the wrist. "Naughty Kirby! Come on lads! We have to kill a loony pilot and an American civvy. How hard can it be?"

Bruce Wayne dragged the hapless pilot through the undergrowth. He was lumbered with a real dead weight here, but he couldn't just leave him to the tender mercies of Kirby and Oz. Where the hell was Bond?

Was he really dead? He was certainly headed that way. In the distance was a figure running towards him.

Silently Bruce ducked down, hiding his form in the undergrowth in a second.

"Yoo hoo!" yelled the pilot. "I say! Over here! It's James isn't it? Splendid to see you again, how are you keeping?"

"Hello," said Bond. "What's going on? Where's Wayne?"

"Bruce is just down here," said the pilot, pointing downwards. "It's a fearful bore but those SAS chappies seem to have gone bad. Like cheese you know, left in the sun too long. They've curdled. Or is that milk?" He pointed to his sleeve. "Have you seen what they've done to my sleeve? They've added an air vent. I'll have to replace it. You know my wife won't pick up a needle at home to save her life. Did you know she fixed my white collar with blue wool? I told her if she did that again I'd mend my own clothes. I gave her a last chance with my spare pilot's shirt and you'll never guess what she embroidered in the back? She knows my name is not Dick, I don't know what she was thinking!"

"Talk a lot, don't you?" said Bond, dragging Davis with one arm westwards. He looked at his GPRS device. "We've got to keep heading west for twenty miles before we come across Blofeld's base, but I doubt the SAS will make life easy for us." There was a whistling sound overhead and something tore a chunk out of the tree above his head. "Get down!"

Davis and Wayne crouched down low behind a rock. Bruce got out a small dentist's mirror from his bag and lifted it up above his head. "One's got us pinned down to the east of us."

"Where are the others?"

"They are trying to flank us," said Bruce, looking around him. "Damn!" Another shot smashed the mirror he was holding above the rock.

Bond got out his Walther PPK and fired off a couple of shots above the rock, more in the hope of distracting them than doing any damage.

"Okay Bruce," said Bond. "I don't know if you've got a plan but…" He looked about. "Bruce? Bruce?"

Kirby was feeling very pleased with himself. Trying to follow Wayne and Davis was like trying to follow a herd of elephants. It looked like they had met up with Bond! Bonus! He was wearing the very pair of boots that Kirby wanted.

Oz had let Blofeld know that they had arrived. He told him he couldn't stop the Marines turning up but it would at least buy him some time. He had been told to kill Bond and Wayne and there was an extra five million in it for him. In sterling as well, not dollars. Very nice little nest egg that would be, he already had plans to buy a bar in the Bahama's and just invite a few of the lads over for a party. It would be sweet. Blofeld said a group of local fighters would be joining them soon. Oz said they didn't want them. A bunch of amateurs ruining the show would just get in the way but Blofeld was pretty insistent.

He peered through the gun sights at where Bond, that pilot and Wayne were. He chuckled to himself. They were keeping a low profile, not that it would do them any good. He saw a mirror appear above the rock.

He let half his breath out and, froze a moment to steady himself and let loose one shot. The mirror disintegrated. Tricky bunch, but it would them no good. Oz was creeping up on their position with a grenade launcher. When they were in range he would simply blow them up.

What was that?

He could have sworn he saw something. Something dark climbing the tree behind where Bond, Wayne and Davis were. Must have imagined it. These woods are full of shadows. Probably a monkey or something?

Bond fired a couple of shots over the rock towards them. They whistled overhead but went no-where near them. He crawled closer towards them keeping a very low profile.

There was a small chirruping sound to his right indicating that Oz was in place. He gave a small whistle sound and Oz fired a grenade launcher at where Bond, Wayne and Davis were last seen.