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Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold
Chapter 9: Army Life
Sneaking was a strange skill. It was an act any child could do but very few professionals excelled at. Finding a good teacher was next to impossible by definition. Even if they wanted to, most masters of the art couldn't publicize as they didn't operate on the friendly side of the law, and the handful that were government-approved had even harsher restrictions on taking an apprentice. Trying to learn on your own was even more perilous. Sneaking was sort of like warfare or romance, there was no way to practice the real thing safely by yourself. Doing it right meant putting your neck on the line. Otherwise, you weren't learning.
As a result, the field of expertise for sneaking was terribly small and exceedingly steep. Only a handful of questionable personalities wanted to learn in the first place, the attrition rate for amateurs was devastating, and anyone who survived long enough to get really good had every reason to keep that knowledge to themselves.
One side-effect of this was that no one knew what great sneaking looked like. The odds of having a friendly neighbor or a talkative great aunt who was also a secret agent was extraordinarily small; this was just a somber fact of life. By contrast, a typical person could watch the Olympics to discover, for example, roughly how fast a human could run. But sneaking had no Olympics; there was no popular wisdom on what was possible. It would be as if people only saw running during grade school recess, unaware that an elite cadre of Olympic sprinters hid throughout the world. If a bystander ever saw such a sprinter perform, they would be in awe, for they would be witnessing the impossible.
This shock was an ancient response; the masters of stealth were always seen as supernatural. However, they were not. The Ninja couldn't actually turn invisible or command the weather. The Hashashian couldn't actually leap castle battlements or rise from the dead. And Batman couldn't actually smell your fear.
Nor could he expect to cross sixty yards of empty dirt without being seen. Not without a really good plan.
Hiding prone, Batman scanned the landscape.
In his favor, it was an unseasonably dark night and the snowfall was getting thick; he guessed four inches an hour. Though the wind wasn't as fierce here as it was on the cliff face, it was enough to slant the precipitate at a nice diagonal. As a rule of thumb, the more chaotic motion there was in an environment, the harder a moving person was to spot.
To his detriment, there was a tower nearby whose spotlight was meandering across the ground. Almost every challenge Batman faced could be negated with enough cunning, but there were a handful of risks he simply couldn't avoid. He could never be sure a roofing tile would hold his weight. He couldn't guarantee that some punk in an alley wouldn't get a lucky shot with a concealed .32. And he had no way of preventing a random spotlight from casually crossing his path.
Also to his detriment, the camp was illuminated with hanging lamps and strings of lights. It was so dark on the empty ground that he could conceivably sprint across (presuming the tower didn't spot him), but everything within spitting distance of the camp was as well lit as a bunch of cabins could be. There was no standing sentry, but soldiers ambled past every few moments. Those last steps would be the most difficult by far.
Catwoman spied on the camp next to him. She nudged his elbow
"Are you sure this is the least protected side?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's unfortunate."
"We have the snow to our advantage."
"Yeah, I guess they'll be as frozen as we are."
"I meant it conceals movement and covers tracks."
Catwoman shivered. "That's one way of looking at it."
"If we wait two hours, we could move under the accumulation."
"Are you suggesting you want to crawl through half a football field of snow on the chilliest night of the year?"
"Th-"
"Don't answer that."
The four men of Baker squad surrounded the Ford hardtop like an ancient tribe finding a fallen spacecraft.
Private Benjamin Greene, the discoverer of the car, poked at a tire with a stick.
"So … this isn't supposed to be here, right?"
Lieutenant Harrison Stephens exhaled slowly and counted backwards from ten. He didn't consider himself a proud man, but leading a dinky patrol through the woods after midnight on a snipe hunt seemed like a task beneath a lieutenant's notice. He should be reviewing his whole platoon, or at least getting some sleep, but they were all on patrols as well, and orders said all personnel of this duty shift were out in the field. That included him. One might think that actually finding something worth reporting would change his attitude. It did not; it just meant more paperwork.
Private Greene saw the expression in the Lieutenant's face. "I'm going to guess that's a negatory."
The Lieutenant slowly nodded.
"You realize that if this doesn't work, not only do we die, we die looking stupid."
"The path is clear."
"Good. I just wanted that on record."
"Ready?"
"In a fatalistic sort of way."
"Go."
In a recent survey among Gothamites who believed the so-called Bat Man existed (roughly 17%), only half thought that he had a cape. The other half was split between those who said it was a set of wings, some sort of prehensile eldritch appendage, or that his entire body was an amorphous and fluid shadow form. Among the cape theorists, almost all the respondents believed he wore it for the same reason that thespians, kings, circus strongmen, and luchadores did: to look impressive.
This was true, and it did, but Batman never carried a tool with only a single purpose. The cape had many other uses. Ironically, its second use was to not be seen. In a dim environment, the human eye didn't perceive people, it perceived silhouettes. If a shape that looked like a person appeared in one's field of vision, the eye would alert the conscious mind instantly. But a shape that looked nothing like a person could go unnoticed for minutes. The cape was excellent at breaking the outline of one's figure.
At the moment, two loose triangles hovered low over the empty field outside Fort's Morrison's encampment.
Some people thought Catwoman was shameless. This was untrue. For instance, crouch-walking towards a military base with her back hunched low and her arms out like a child pretending to be an airplane made her very ashamed.
Technically, crawling would be even more discreet, but veterans of the craft like Batman and Catwoman knew there were harsh tradeoffs in taking it slow. Spending time out in the open was bad. A new patrol of guards might be sent out or the weather might turn against them. No, a moderate measurable risk was almost always better than a longer list of unknowns.
Even at their steady pace, the distance soon passed and they found themselves within vaulting distance of the barricade. Without a word, Batman stood and took three swift steps. He leaped over the barbed wire loop and landed gently on the pile of sandbags. Not stopping, the Dark Knight sped forward, crossed the empty lane, and climbed onto the low roof of the first cabin. Finding a shadow to hide in, he looked back and nodded.
The choice to stagger their approach was obvious. If the first across was caught by a hidden threat, the second could retreat unseen. Though that precaution seemed moot now, the coast was clear. And not a moment too soon, Catwoman mused, that spotlight's wandering awfully close.
She stood and prepared to leap, but at the last moment Batman shook his head and pointed down. In a blink, Catwoman fell and hugged the snow. A few seconds later, a pair of soldiers rounded a corner and marched gradually towards her. She had dropped just in time. Separated by eleven feet of dim lamplight and a few sandbags, Catwoman breathed very slowly and willed herself to not be seen. She shifted her head to the side. The beam of the spotlight was arcing towards her.
Great.
Batman coolly watched this from his rooftop perch. Whatever happened, it would be over in seconds. He readied two batarangs and leaned forward.
She knew there was no point in moving backwards, the beam was too wide. The only place the light wouldn't catch her was inside the camp. She could sense the two soldiers moving past, but they were going too slowly. They wouldn't pass in time.
With numbed serenity, Catwoman watched the spotlight get closer and closer. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five feet.
With the glow edging the hem of her splayed cape, she shot to her feet, took one bounding step, and dived…
…And landed in a handstand, wedged in those precious inches between the sandbags and the barbed wire. Propped upside down, her eye was a millimeter from a line of metal hooks. She dared not breathe. On the other side she head the footsteps stop, sensed bodies turning. Her legs! She refused to be caught because her feet were sticking out like carrot sprouts.
With a final steadying exertion, Catwoman stretched her legs apart into a perfectly-balanced side split, her calves dipping just below the top of the barrier.
Minutes earlier.
"Alright. Jenkins, Nowitzki, hoof it up to the Fort and tell them what we found. They'll ask you for details. Tell them you don't know any because I didn't want you to wait. Greene and I will stay here."
"You got it, lieutenant." "Sure thing, lieutenant."
"Great. Double-time it, but keep an eye out, we don't know who drove here, but I got an itch he ain't friendly."
Privates Jenkins and Nowitzki did an about-face and jogged up the hill. Lieutenant Stephens watched them leave. He took his cap off and idly brushed away the snow.
Private Greene stood respectfully nearby. "Now what, sir?"
"That's a very good question. We have ourselves a car that managed to drive through this rocky forest nearly a tenth of a mile, presuming it arrived from that dirt path just south of here. The doors are locked and the windows are somehow tinted. I'm no mechanic, but tinted windows are a luxury feature."
"As far as I know, sir."
"As it happens, both the locks and the tinting make it very difficult to know what's inside. I suspect that may be intentional."
"We could break open a window."
"We could. But we live in strange times, Private Greene. A great many things are possible, a number of those things outrank us, and quite of few of those things would get angry if we bashed up their automobile."
"Oh. What then?"
"Do you know how to jimmy open a car lock?"
"No."
"Neither do I. This is what the philosophers call a quandary"
There were many feats that separated the true athlete from the dilettante: the marathon, the iron cross, the home run, the one-handed pushup. Catwoman wasn't sure where her current pose fell in those rankings, but it had to be awfully impressive because holding it steady was the most tiring move she had tried in a long time. If she leaned forward ten degrees, she would fall onto barbed wire. If she leaned backward ten degrees, she would bounce off a wall of burlap and fall onto barbed wire. If her arms buckled, she would hit her head on the ground and then fall onto barbed wire. She had to keep her handstand split perfectly upright and perfectly stationary.
Now the blood was rushing to her head. Her hamstrings were beginning to ache, and her fingers were getting very cold. She waited as long as she could bear, then she waited a little longer. Catwoman could hardly hear her own breath now; there was no way to tell if the soldiers had passed. She couldn't wait any longer. Gingerly lifting her feet, she tried to find traction on the top of the pile. With an errant slip, her whole body wobbled, bringing her stomach and chest and nose distressingly close to an impromptu piercing. Catwoman wasn't going to try that twice. She resumed balance with a classic knees-bent handstand and tried to think of a plan.
Despite her fatigue, Catwoman sensed a Bat the moment before he whispered.
"Catwoman."
She took a deep breath. Just responding might have knocked her over. This was embarrassing.
"They're gone," he muttered quietly above her.
She idly wondered how awkward it was for him, having to talk to her butt. Catwoman snorted. She wished she could see the look on his face. It probably didn't even register; if anyone could be stoically humorless enough to take her predicament at face value, well, he was the best candidate she knew.
"You can get up."
Thanks for that sterling insight. She closed her eyes. After a moment of struggle, she slowly hissed, "I ... Can't ... Move."
She felt a motion above her and found herself airborne.
In a move reminiscent of a figure skater's lift or the net hefting of a crab fisherman, Batman gripped Catwoman around the legs and stomach and plucked her up, sliding her past the wire without a scratch and landing her upright beside him. She fell back on the sandbags, trying to get her bearings with old-fashioned gravity.
He glanced at her. "Hurt?"
"Huh? Uh, no. Just give me a sec-"
"Good. Let's move."
He turned and raced back up the adjacent roof. She struggled but jogged after him. A few careful leaps later and they made it to the top of an empty mess hall well inside the camp. They hid between a pair of smokestacks on the second floor, far from any lights.
"We'll rest and reorient here."
"That's nice. And thanks, uh, you know, for the save."
He gave a brief head-tilt. "That was clever evasion at the barrier. Unorthodox."
She leaned forward and grinned. "I am pretty flexible."
"I agree, impressive lateral thinking."
She sat back and blinked.
"... Wow."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Anything?"
"Hard to say. Can I please get out of here, sir?"
"You have somewhere better to be?"
"Permission to speak freely?"
"Sure, Private Greene, speak away."
"All this snow is soaking my trousers, lieutenant. The moisture is cooling into very abrasive frost crystals. I am literally freezing my butt off." He coughed. "Sir."
"Where you from, Private?"
"Florida, sir. This is the second time I've seen snow."
"This year?"
"In my life."
"Fine. Get out of there."
"Thank you very much, sir."
"Whatever."
After running out of other ideas to try, Lieutenant Harrison Stephens had ordered his subordinate to search under the car for identifying markings that might help them enter the Ford or learn more about it. Private Benjamin Greene had tried to explain that underneath a modern car were floor panels, parts of the frame, elements of the drive train, exhaust pipes, and other unhelpful bits of metal. None would offer meaningful information. The Lieutenant retorted that he wasn't a "car guy" and didn't give a "hoot".
Private Greene had the stick-thin build often seen in young Army men and was able, with a great degree of discomfort, to fit just below the vehicle. Now he was shimmying out from under the mysterious Ford. With a final squeeze, Greene's last leg popped out. He unsteadily stood up, flipped off his flashlight, and stretched.
"Whew! That was ... that was something. I'm not a big fan of tiny ... uh ... tiny places. They make me, um ..."
"Are you saying you're claustrophobic, soldier?"
"I don't know, sir. What's that mean?"
"Don't worry about it. So you're certain there's no way in?"
"I'm positive, sir."
"And you didn't notice anything useful? Anything at all?"
"I'm not awfully familiar with the nitty-gritty on these sorts of machines, sir, but I will say the suspension was peculiar."
"How?"
"I thought most mid-sized cars had the springs and shock absorbers to fit mid-sized cars."
"What do the springs on this one fit?"
The private shrugged.
"Maybe the Eiffel Tower."
The security business had many useful contradictions. For instance, most institutions had much of their scrutiny at some arbitrary perimeter, so that if you made it past that shell you could look around unopposed. Guarded buildings cared very much about the people going in and very little about what the people already inside were doing. Once inside, a clipboard and a busy attitude could get you just about anywhere. Catwoman found that the last leg of an infiltration was also the easiest surprisingly often. This was certainly true in her occasional civilian disguises, but even in costume, the occupants of a so-called "secure zone" just paid less attention.
Like so many things, that contradiction was unfortunately not proving to be the case tonight. Coming in, she had seen plenty of guards. As she ventured further, she saw even more guards. And she wasn't calling any soldier walking around tonight a guard (although this was functionally true), she was only counting the big ones standing deliberately at street corners, perpetually frowning into the middle-distance. If the trend continued, the center of camp would be a hundred armed men waiting shoulder-to-shoulder in a big square.
... Which, come to think of it, was actually a thing the military did regularly.
Ulgh, this place was unsettling. She was already sick of prefabricated structures, stenciled signs, the strangely omnipresent smell of rubber (there couldn't possibly be that many tires around), and the color khaki. In the faint glow of the moon and the weak lamps below, it wasn't hard to discreetly traverse the roofs and empty courtyards of the strange environment. True, the snow was slick and all the single story architecture in their corner of the camp made concealment a challenge (the warehouses were on the other side), but at least the snow muffled their noise and, as Batman pointed out, anyone inside the cabins would be sleeping like a log at this hour.
The intrepid pair finally moved past a stack of oil drums and saw his mystery fortress. The building itself wasn't impressive: single story, dull red brick, ninety feet long, forty feet wide, no windows. The place looked boring, benign. It was all the security around the building that made it interesting. As Batman had mentioned the other night, there was an obvious main door in the front. You really couldn't miss it. She spied two soldiers flanking the door and another manning a screening station nearby. These were serious hombres - steel helmets, bayonets fixed, the whole nine yards. Bright lights shone above them in every direction. All the party needed was a chained rottweiler and a moat to complete the message: nope, Uncle Sam says you're not getting in here, scram. While she watched, another pair of troops marched by, undoubtedly circling the site.
Keeping a wide berth, they navigated around to the side. They soon passed the vehicle entrance, paying careful attention to its own light show and nearby complement of biceps. Sliding though and over a maze of alleys, they approached the rear with bated breath. Anything could have changed. They might have stationed a tank there tonight.
But then they saw it - as shabby and unsupervised as an orphan in the arctic - the all-important rear door. Batman and Catwoman gave each other a microscopic nod.
Suddenly, another pair of soldiers marched past, different from the circling pair before. So there were two sets of roving sentries! Batman ran some mental numbers: the building perimeter was 260 feet; a marching path around it would be about 272 feet. Standing in front of the door made them visible to a soldier occupying 28 of those feet. Assuming the two teams of sentries were evenly spaced and marched at five feet per second ...
"Worst case scenario: we have twenty-two seconds out of cover."
"That's ... going to be a challenge."
"But I doubt the pairs are optimally distant."
"How much more time might that give us?"
"Not much."
"Great."
"We can still leave."
"What? Oh no. No, no, no."
Catwoman slid a thin black case out of her hip satchel.
"Social rule number one," with a flick, her black case accordioned into five layers of pockets and loops holding three dozen fine lockpicks, "you don't invite a girl to the dance and not take her out on the floor."
He wasn't amused.
She prompted him, "And then your line is, 'Grrr. Alright honey, let's dance'".
"Fine, get ready."
She rolled her eyes. "You're really bad at this."
Amanda Waller's "quarters" composed the entirety of what was once the junior officers' club, one of the few stone buildings in camp and among the rare set with indoor plumbing. By the standards of most officers they could have fit three beds inside. By the standards of the enlisted men they could have fit twelve. The official justification for all her extra room was that, as a woman, Waller needed her own space as a matter of decorum. Her private justification was, well, nonexistent; Amanda Waller didn't justify herself to anyone, not on this side of the Potomac. And privileged or not, she still found the place primitive and cramped. She had known poverty; she wasn't eager to recreate it.
Waller went to sleep most nights around eleven, but tonight she sat in her paisley nightgown on her wooden chair reading a fresh issue of Ladies' Home Journal with a smile. After a long day supervising military projects and sensitive affairs of state, Amanda loved nothing more than sitting down and pouring over the latest fashions, child-rearing tips, marital tiffs, and those silly comics from the body odor ads. Everybody needed a way to blow off steam, but what could a stubbornly undomestic goat like her get out of it? Mockery? Novelty? Voyeurism? Wistfulness? No one knew. She sure wasn't talking.
There was a knock at the door.
Amanda took off her reading glasses and closed the magazine. "Enter."
If it seemed strange that she answered an interruption so politely, it was because every soul in Fort Morrison knew that bothering her at night without an emergency was suicide.
Also, her guests were screened by a very effective doorman.
The door opened. Lt. Slade Wilson ducked to fit through the entrance. "Captain Roach has a message for you, ma'am."
She stood. "Thank you, lieutenant."
Behind him shuffled in a fit, balding officer roughly two feet shorter than Wilson. He put his hat under his arm and nodded. "Miss Waller, one of our radio boys just got a curious report from the traffic checkpoint at the foot of the hill."
"Yes?"
"Two members of Baker squad ran to the checkpoint claiming they found a car hidden in the woods while performing reconnaissance southeast of the Fort."
Any tiredness in Waller's features disappeared. "A car?"
"A, uh, Ford Model 48, ma'am. Unoccupied. Sitting in a grove of evergreens."
She squinted thoughtfully. "Baker squad, that's Lt. Stephens' platoon. What did he have to say?"
"He wasn't present, ma'am. The two messengers claimed he sent them on ahead with the news so he and the remainder of the squad could keep inspecting the vehicle. We've sent a pair of mechanics with a radio to meet them and find out more."
"Good. Did the messengers have anything else to say about the car?"
"Well, it had tinted windows. Besides that and the fact that it got as far as it did through a forest, nothing remarkable."
"Very well, Captain. Listen closely: we are now in a state of active intrusion. Take whatever men and measures you need, but no one gets in or out of the Fort. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I want us on alert ten minutes ago. The colonel and I will arrange search teams once your perimeter is firmly established. Dismissed."
It was seven paces from the all-important rear door to the nearest cover, a shoulder-high pile of frozen, half-rotted potatoes. Batman knew there was surely a story involved, but potato mysteries failed to spark his interest at the moment. He did find it interesting that, after watching a few circuits, the gap between patrols averaged just over a half minute, and he suspected that moving to and from cover quietly would take perhaps six seconds.
They crept up to the two locks. Catwoman held her flashlight in her teeth and for just a moment touched the cold rim of the deadbolt. The best artists had an affection for their materials that bordered on intimacy. A violinist knew the merest texture and tension of her instrument before she lifted a bow. A smith recognized the right alloy of molten steel from scent and hue alone. So it was with lock breakers, sensing infinitesimal yet useful truths of the device's temperature, quality, weight, and age from just a caress. But unlike most crafts, locks didn't lead to a loyal marriage. Lock breakers were seducers, each lock a new paramour, a fresh challenge.
Catwoman raised a pair of choice lockpicks. In moments the deadbolt fell open like wrapping paper. Out of habit, she had hunched her body to hide her light, but then noticed Batman was keeping her concealed with one cape-arm.
Once the deadbolt was loose, they scurried back to the potatoes to wait for the next opening.
"Hey, that was clever hiding me with the cape. Is that how you took photographs with a flash last time?"
He nodded indifferently, focused elsewhere. She preferred to interpret that as "Why thank you for noticing, Catwoman. Yes I did. The cape is such a versatile acccessory. Happy to help." Of course, she knew this was a ridiculous translation - he would never use the word "happy".
On the next run, they faced the real monster, the combination lock. Catwoman gently knelt down and put her ear to it, teasing the knob ever so gently. Batman waited patiently as she worked, but soon time was running short and he tapped her on the shoulder. She elbowed him in his shin and kept working. He grabbed her under the arms and pulled her out of sight.
On their next try, she found the first number.
On their next try, she found the second and the third. The combination lock clicked open. They crept back to hide, readying for the final approach.
On their next try, they each put an ear to the door, waited a moment, then nodded together. This was it. Batman pulled the handle ...
... and stopped abruptly nine inches out. The hinges were so warped or rusted that the heavy door was stuck. He pulled and pulled, planting his boot on the wall for leverage, until he heard a harsh metal grinding. Any more force and he would damage the door; they wouldn't be able to hide that.
Catwoman watched helplessly. We're not getting this open, are we?
He glanced back. Not without leaving a door on the ground.
I guess that's why they stopped using it in the first place.
He scanned the building corners. We have about eight seconds.
Close it and we'll think of something else.
Batman nodded and shoved a shoulder into the door. It slid three inches and stuck again, narrowly open. He tried to push it closed, but the stubborn door wouldn't budge. He tried to rapidly pull then push, shaking it harshly to loosen whatever was jammed. The door barely shifted an inch in either direction.
She grabbed his arm. Just leave it. Let's go.
If they notice the door is open, we're compromised.
No one will notice that it's open an little, but we're definitely compromised if they see us. Go!
They hurried back to cover, not a moment too soon. The next sentry pair was right around the corner and marching towards them. Batman's thoughts raced through plans and consequences as he watched them approach. They were steps away from the incriminating entrance ...
Suddenly, a tremendous horn erupted through the camp like an air raid siren. The deep note echoed over the mountains miles away. Catwoman could feel her teeth vibrating. A cloud of nesting birds burst out of the treeline. The deafening noise almost knocked the two sentries over. They turned and sprinted away towards some distant rally point.
Batman and Catwoman slowly left cover.
She held her forehead as if it might shake loose.
"OW! It's like I fell in a tuba!"
"Hh."
"Really? That didn't startle you at all?"
Batman grunted. "I don't-"
The tremendous horn sounded again. Mounds of snow vibrated off of roofs. Yelling and running could be heard in all directions.
"ARRGG! Will they stop that?!"
"We've been compromised."
"What gave you that idea?"
Batman shot her a stern look. "We need to leave. They're starting a manhunt."
But Catwoman had already grabbed the door, planted both feet on the wall, and pried it open. She hopped lightly down and slipped through the half-open gap.
She glanced back. "Coming?"
He stared at the door. "You damaged the bracket screws."
She covered her mouth in shock. "Oh no! Now they might get mad at us!"
He frowned, but she was already gone.
