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Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold

Chapter 7: The Anti-heroes' Guide to Trespassing


Fort Morrison was named after Major Holt Enoch Morrison, unsung hero of the War of 1812, who barricaded the site to stop the advance of the British 46th Regiment soon after the burning of Washington. Though outnumbered eight-to-one, Major Morrison and his three bone-weary companies of Gotham volunteers held the line for sixteen hours before the survivors were encircled and captured.

Almost unanimously, military historians judge the man an idiot.

Besides choosing to make his last stand over a strategically irrelevant mountain pass, he had made next to no reconnaissance of the enemy's position and his logistical lines were a mess. His men hadn't eaten in two days - the only factor delaying mutiny was that the soldiers had no idea where they were. At the start of battle, one of Morrison's platoons was stationed in front of his stone barricade, allegedly with orders to stage a bayonet charge. British reports of the engagement suggest that his five mortars were aimed so low their first volley struck the grove of trees they hid behind. Falling tree limbs crushed three mortars and the artillery officer. In the final hour of the engagement, the Major privately retreated in the wrong direction and was slain during what was perceived by all as a one-man assault on the British ranks.

As occasionally happens in dynamic times, Major Morrison became a hero in spite of every effort to the contrary. The real reason his men were able to endure for so long was because their particular stretch of the Kahontsi Range featured a peak that happened to be one of the best defensive positions on the continent. Fort Morrison sat on a rounded plateau a third of a mile broad, with three sides ending in sheer cliffs and the fourth sloping down in moderate switchbacks just wide enough for a road. A single-lane bridge on the far side connected to a path on the adjacent ridge.

Military men didn't like speaking in absolutes (except occasionally to Congress), but it was widely agreed that the Fort was secure against every conventional threat.


As the evening continued, it became ever more obvious to Batman and Catwoman that the other was, to put it kindly, unconventional.

"Third drawer. Forensic reagents. Industrial glue. Industrial glue solvent. Magnesium fire starters. Boxes of AA, C, and D batteries. Microscope. Sewing kit. Rebreather. Dry ice. Nylon cord. Hemp rope. Turkish-to-Russian dictionary."

Catwoman interrupted. "When would you need that?"

Batman looked puzzled. "Both languages are spoken by tens of millions. When would you not?"

"Never mind, idiot."

The moon was high in the sky when they arrived. Batman was parked in a dense grove of conifers well beyond the sight of their final dirt road (the coupe had suspiciously rugged suspension). They were nearly invisible, but only a few minutes' hike from the edge of the Fort if his map was right.

Before setting off, Batman cataloged the equipment he kept in the trunk's hidden chamber, in case Catwoman wanted to take any along. He continued. "Fourth drawer. Wireless radio. Snowshoes. Water purifier. State atlas. Backup radio. Bordering states' atlases. Grapnels. Flares. Tire repair kit. Electromagnets. Dynamite. Binoculars. Refried be-"

"Hold up again."

"What?"

"Did you just say those tubes were dynamite?"

"Yes, then collapsible binoc -"

"You keep six sticks of dynamite in the truck of your car?"

"I admit it's not much, but tonight-"

"Absolutely not what I meant." Catwoman gestured to the Ford emphatically. "You're saying that the whole time we were driving down those bumpy roads, I was sitting on enough explosives to topple City Hall?"

"That's a gross exaggeration." He thought for a moment and equivocated. "…maybe a small post office."

She groaned and sat on a nearby tree stump. "Do you not hear yourself?"

"These use a nitroglycerin substitute." He lifted a tube up and tapped it sharply. "Perfectly stable."

Catwoman's gazed at him in wide-eyed shock. He mistook her look of shock for confusion and elaborated, "Nitroglycerin is the active agent in-"

"I know what nitroglycerin is!"

"Good. In the fifth drawer-"

She stood and elbowed him out of the way. "I'll look through the rest on my own, thanks. And put that dynamite back!"

"Fine. We need to start the climb soon."

She paused. "What climb?"

"You read the report. Our climb up the east cliff face into the Fort."

"Your report said there was an 'ascent'."

"Yes."

"I thought that meant a trail. A walking trail."

He gave her a look like factual errors were embarrassing things only children and the absent-minded suffered from. "Then ... you were incorrect."

"Fine, how long did it take you to free climb it the first time?"

"Thirty-six minutes. It's an easy route. You're a proficient climber."

She sighed. "I don't mind being outside on some mountain in December, but I didn't plan on hugging a glacier for half an hour. How's the wind-chill up there?"

"It's a concern."

"Well, as much as I hate playing the damsel in distress, you've probably noticed I'm clad a little light for the occasion." She gestured towards her slim violet outfit, which did look warm but was hardly tundra gear. "Are you sure we don't have any other options?"

"The roads into the Fort are guarded. This is the shortest cliff."

"And you're absolutely sure we can't punch our way through?"

"We can't be seen."

"It's what you usually do."

He growled. She couldn't tell whether it was disapproval or amusement.

"We can't alert the perpetrators. Until we know more, the soldiers are innocents. But I anticipated this. Open the bottom drawer, left side."

Curious, she did so and pulled out … some sort of green, hooded ... poncho?

"Uh, Batman? What's this?"

"Insulation."

"Is that so?"

"It's my fault for not mentioning the climb during our original meeting."

"Got that right."

"So I'm rectifying the situation."

"And your solution was to let me know at the last possible minute that you wanted to play dress-up?"

He looked blankly at her. "Yes."

Ask a stupid question, Catwoman thought.

"I don't suppose you considered that a lady in my line of work might be very particular about what she's wearing? You know, to test for balance ahead of time? Or dexterity? Or noise? "

He crossed his arms. "Try it or don't. We have to get going."

She raised a finger to protest but was interrupted by a gust of bone-chilling wind. It was elementally powerful. They both crouched low to keep from falling. As the wind blew, a wall of powder rushed off the tree limbs with a hiss and coated the landscape. Several eye-watering seconds passed before it finally blew through.

They stood up. Catwoman frowned and struggled to brush the ice crystals off her mask and hair. Batman had a rare frivolous thought: she looked like a cat!

He snorted.

Catwoman glared at him, sliding on the green outfit. "See, if you had even thought for a second ab-," she paused, mouth slightly open, "Wow." Catwoman gently touched the fabric on her arm. "Oh, wow."

The poncho was really warm!

It was good material: a wool blend, light and flexible, and definitely warm. She wasn't in the mood to put up with more wind. And a hood would be nice if it snowed. Batman could be rude and pompous, but he never did anything halfway. It was even her size (which raised as many questions as it answered) and it did match her eyes (there was no way that was deliberate, right?)

Hmm ...

Well, she could always get rid of it later.


Several hours earlier.

Like any big organization, the Army had good postings and bad postings. If you were Johnny On The Spot and played your cards right, you could be the lucky GI getting your tan at Pearl Harbor. But if you had bad reports or cut a rug with the wrong dame at the Easter ball, you might find yourself organizing the weekly cleaning of the mule stable in Mosquito Swamp, Mississippi.

Of course, there were certain assignments so strange that no one knew quite how to judge them. Classic military logic dictated that these were given to officers so strange that no one knew quite how to judge them.

Colonel Abner Tanner was aware of this system and didn't like what it implied about him. For the thousandth time, he considered calling up Sam Lane and demanding a reassignment. It wasn't that Fort Morrison itself was unbearable. Yes, it was remote and the weather wasn't ideal, but a man didn't become a colonel in the U.S. Army by being a weak-kneed Nancy. No, he was getting second thoughts because this operation was far too questionable for him to stomach much longer.

For Tanner, that was saying something. Some people were magnets for scandal and most ended up disgraced or hospitalized, but a few of them had a knack for always coming through the mud smelling like daisies. Abner Tanner was the smelliest daisy in the Army. His two decades of service read like a morbid Three Stooges script- showing up at every botched operation and giving testimony at every dishonorable discharge hearing. His career was the repeating story of a man in a train wreck who is miraculously flung clear but lands in another train about to wreck.

This put senior officers in a pickle. Sure, his survival was commendable; who had more integrity than the man who's proven it thirty times? But the sheer volume of bad luck smacked of carelessness. A man could be in the wrong place once or twice, but soon it got suspicious. And no one wanted to be that close to the years of dirty laundry Tanner was wrapped in. He had signed more non-disclosures than he could count. His security clearance was radioactive. The fact that he was a legitimately great officer only made things tougher. He couldn't be sidelined. No, they had to keep promoting the son of a gun. Fortunately, there were always special postings his clearance was uniquely suited for. After all, it's not like another state secret could make him more of a liability.

So when a guy like Colonel Abner Tanner reported that operations at this logistics depot were questionable, "questionable" became Army understatement for "Dr. Moreau-meets-Frankenstein-I thought only the Krauts did this sort of thing-equsue horror."

And now he was being 'persuaded' to order a lock-down. Great.

"Miss Waller, are you absolutely sure this isn't an overreaction? You know I'd sooner sell my mommie to a commie than jeopardize this site, but we can't be up and soiling ourselves over every little shadow."

"Colonel, any firm evidence of intrusion, no matter how isolated, deserves our most thorough attention. I hardly need remind you that secrecy is of the highest priority."

Or, in bureaucrat-speak, Shut your pie-hole, you dunce.

He didn't respond; there was nothing more to say. He leaned back in his chair and downed a glass of water. It would be scotch without visitors. What self-respecting man let himself get lectured to by a woman? A woman! It was a fundamental insult to the right order of things. Yep, first light tomorrow (or whenever she turned the phones back on), he was calling Sam Lane and getting out of this farce. He breathed deeply and tried to let go of some tension. The maze of wrinkles around his eyes shifted and settled. If Amanda Waller could read his thoughts (she sure acted like it), she didn't seem to care. She smoothly tapped a long, filtered cigarette from its case and lit it with a chrome lighter. Blue smoke hazed over his office, blotting the green lampshade, rolling over the filling cabinets, fading the flag in the corner

Col. Tanner looked past her. Waller's pet bulldog was still relaxing against the wall with his arms crossed. When Amanda Waller arrived months ago, she brought along four valises, three footlockers, two hatboxes, and one "personal assistant": Lt. Slade Wilson. At least the lady made sense, her methods and agenda were obvious, but this one was a mystery. He wore a silver bar like every other lieutenant but was utterly beyond the chain of command. As colonel, Tanner could get him to salute and that was about it. He didn't seem to do much "assisting" either. He never carried Waller's bags or took her dictation (she casually stole his enlisted men for that). No, he just followed her around except certain evenings when strange civilian cars would pick him up to leave the Fort.

He did know that Lt. Wilson was the most naturally threatening person he had ever encountered. The lieutenant had the air of a predator, primal and unmistakable. He was muscled and tall, with shoulders as wide as a sequoia. And that impression was just unarmed. He always carried an arsenal of the most blatantly regulation-defying weapons one could imagine. It reminded the colonel of old photos of Mexican revolutionaries or Russian partisans, figures burdened up to the eyeballs with firepower. To begin with, he always wore a sidearm or two. Then there were three or so bayonets strapped to different appendages. Sometimes there was a Bowie knife on his hip, sometimes a naval saber, sometimes both. When he went out he had a Thompson or an M1 carbine, usually with an honest-to-God bandolier. Whatever room was left Wilson reserved for grenades- he invariably carried at least five. The only silver lining in this absurd show of force was that he never took munitions from the Fort's stock; evidently he brought it all himself.

Wherever he came from, however he found himself in Amanda Waller's employ, and whatever he did on his excursions, Col. Tanner was certain they weren't good.

The Colonel poured himself another glass of water. "At least tell me one thing. You've already led a mighty intense reconnaissance of the grounds and found no other proof of infiltration. But say we implement your very long list of precautions, despite its inconvenience to my subordinates."

Waller scrutinized him with lidded eyes and blew out another plume of smoke. "I didn't hear a question."

"Based solely on this ... footprint, how much longer do you think these measures are warranted? A day? Two days? A week? The entire warehouse staff has been reassigned for your manhunt. You've cut communication and closed the roads. Our food might last till the end of the month."

"When I said 'until further notice', Colonel Tanner, I meant precisely that. I will notify you when I feel the threat has passed." She read his sour expression and shifted tack. "Listen, I do what it takes to get results. That's why our mutual superiors trust me. Our interactions would be much smoother if you could too."

"So I should let the men know that it's triple shifts indefinitely?"

She chuckled and put out her cigarette in his ash tray. "Well, I wouldn't phrase it like that. But you're the grand military leader. Try to make it sound ..." she gestured vaguely to his chest of medals, "noble."


Several hours later.

Some believed that climbing a building and climbing a rock wall were wildly different beasts. As one of the rare few qualified to compare the two, Catwoman didn't think so. Once you understood the surface you were on, they both used the same toolbox of grips and maneuvers. Other laymen assumed they were both a test of upper body strength. Not really. The upper body was important, but most of a climber's thrust came from the legs. If you could climb a tall ladder, you could probably manage a basic wall. Hand grips were for holding still while you found a better foothold. Very few routes looked like a long series of pull-ups.

This was good, because Catwoman wasn't in the mood to do pull-ups for half an hour. Climbing a slick wall was slow, climbing an unfamiliar wall was even slower, and managing both in the dark was practically a line at the doctor's office. Batman actually brought a set of headlamps in his big Trunk o' Tricks, but they agreed it wasn't worth being spotted. They proceeded by touch. He went first as he already knew the wall. This helped her more than one might expect: as an expert climber, Catwoman could roughly sense his movements above her and copy them.

What Batman said was right: this was an easy wall. The problem was the wind. Heavy gusts barreled past every few seconds, almost scraping them off the cliff like a chisel against paint flecks. Her new outfit did wonders to help her stay cozy, but the extra weight was awkward, and now was NOT the time for awkward. If she turned a certain way, the hood had a tendency to catch the air like a sail and pull her sideways. To her chagrin, his cape didn't seem to have this problem. Somehow it was fastened to flap in the breeze without pulling on him. Otherwise, it settled onto his shoulders as well as any coat.

About twenty minutes in and halfway up, they crossed a small ledge. It barely offered seven inches of clearance from the wall, but it might as well have been a couch with the world-class poise of a Bat or a Cat. So they sat, staring down into space, balancing on a few inches of stone.

Catwoman rubbed her hands together, trying to get the feeling back for the next twenty minute effort. Batman was motionless beside her, looking every bit the usual gargoyle. The wind passed through, shifting the hem of her green poncho and tugging at the hood. That was starting to get annoying.

She leaned into his ear and spoke up. "Hey, hand me one of those throwing knives you carry around."

He looked at her incredulously. "What?"

"With that bat-shape, you know, the, uh, bat ... boomerangs, the batarangs."

He grunted in amazement. "That's ... actually what I call them."

"Swell. Can you hand one over? Please?"

With a twitch, one instantly appeared in his palm. She made a mental note to figure out how he did that.

The gadget had a tiny hinge that opened into a fine edge four inches long. She took her impromptu knife and, with an uncanny ease considering she was on a cliff, shimmied out of the woolen poncho. The wind almost yanked the garment out of her hand but she held fast and laid it across her lap. Despite him trying to look ever-so-disinterested, she noticed Batman watching her and smirked. With careful deliberation, Catwoman started by slicing off the annoying hood.

Then she realized a dilemma: what to do with it? She went to stuff it into her discreet hip satchel but felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw Batman make an abrupt gesture into space. The implication was pretty clear:

We'll grab it on the way back. If they're patrolling this far out before then, we'll have bigger problems to worry about.

Catwoman nodded and flung the green cloth, watching it swirl away in the wind, then returned to her work. She was glad to have the batarang; her claws could cut fabric, but they had too little leverage to do the job cleanly.

Another minute and she was done. Catwoman closed the hinge and handed back the weapon. "Thanks."

He nodded. With a twitch, the batarang was gone. She pointed above her and he dutifully turned and began to climb. Before following him, she took a moment to tie on her new green cape.


Another eighteen minutes of painstaking ascent finally brought them to the edge of the cliff.

In swift movements, the two pulled over the top and dropped prone among some frozen shrubs to scan their surroundings. Batman and Catwoman were so accustomed to darkness that the scattering of tall searchlights was nearly blinding, seeming halos of eerie brightness floating in the distance above the landscape. When Catwoman's vision adjusted, she realized that eight yards in front of her was a towering chain link fence topped with loops of barbed wire. Beyond this, she finally saw Fort Morrison.

The Fort's plateau was a plain of bushes and stunted trees stretching for acres in every direction - all bathed in moonlight. She knew that beyond the edges of her perception was the encampment: lines of tents and cabins, parked trucks and oil drums, and those sturdy watchtowers gleeming above the low canopy.

She heard muttering beside her. "No. No. No. No."

She crawled over. "No?"

Batman was surveying this base through his binoculars. "The cables are down. The towers are manned."

"Cables?" She pulled out her own miniature spyglass.

"The first time I came in, I-"

"Yeah, I remember the report. You climbed a tree and jumped to a telegraph cable. That's how you got over the fence."

He nodded. "Now the cables are gone. And all ten watchtowers are operational."

"Isn't that what they do at night?"

"Last time it was two."

"Are you saying that- ... what are you saying?"

"We've been made. Abort mission."