Twin Demons

by Georgia Kennedy

Peter Parker declares his undying love for Mary Jane Watson, who vows to help him confront his fear and guilt as SpiderMan joins forces with Daredevil to break up a ring of international terrorists bent on wreaking havoc all over the Big Apple.

11. Summit in An Air Duct

TWIN DEMONS by Georgia Kennedy

Author's Notes

"Hazmats" is industrial shorthand for "hazardous materials."

Nunchakus, also referred to as "nunchucks," are a pair of sticks, usually made of wood, that are joined by a chain or cord and used as a weapon in various martial arts.

"Recon," is short for "reconnaissance."

Cesium 137 is a common radioactive isotope often used in hospitals. Terrorism experts believe that it could be used in a radiological device, i.e., "dirty bomb."

Peter Parker's last line of dialogue in this chapter is inspired by Russell Crowe's line in Gladiator: "At my signal, unleash hell!"

Disclaimer

This is a derivative work of fiction featuring characters copyrighted and trademarked by Marvel Characters, Inc. It is based upon: Spider-Man, copyright 2002 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., all rights reserved; Spider-Man 2, copyright 2004 by Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., all rights reserved; Daredevil - Director's Cut, copyright 2004 by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc., all rights reserved; and Hulk, copyright 2003 by Universal Studios, all rights reserved. The author is not connected with nor is this work authorized by Marvel Characters, Inc., or any of the aforementioned motion picture studios. This work is intended solely for posting on Fanfiction, for the benefit and enjoyment of its intended audience. No commercial or financial benefit accrues or is intended to accrue to the author as a result of said posting. Any unauthorized copying or redistribution of this work might subject the party responsible for such unauthorized copying or redistribution to legal action by the owners of the aforementioned copyrights and trademarks.

XI

SUMMIT IN AN AIR DUCT

A harried Ben Urich sat in his cubicle at the New York Times, trying to meet a five o'clock deadline. A balding, bespectacled, medium-sized man in his mid-sixties, Urich was a reporter's reporter. His sharp journalistic mind, knack for storytelling, and chameleon-like ability to blend into his surroundings earned him numerous accolades from his peers, most recently his fourth Pulitzer Prize for an exposé on Wilson Fisk. As the senior crime reporter for the New York Times, Urich was at the pinnacle of his career. He'd turned down numerous editorial posts over the course of his career, not wanting to leave the beats where he made his reputation.

Ben Urich was everything that J. Jonah Jameson used to be as a journalist. Many times, Urich recalled fondly how he, Jameson, and Robbie Robertson made their reputations when they were cub reporters in the 1960s, covering the civil rights struggles for the Daily Bugle. They'd endured police beatings in Alabama and been carted off to jail in Mississippi, not to mention threatened with death by no less a personage than the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan himself. But their hard-hitting, no-holds-barred commitment to getting out the truth about what was going on down in Dixie helped expose the southern segregationists for what they were and earned the gratitude of Dr. King and other civil rights leaders of the time. The three of them were jointly awarded a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1963.

Sadly, Ben and Jonah had experienced a falling out nearly twenty years ago, and had despised each other ever since. In Urich's view, Jameson had abandoned journalistic integrity to become a trash-peddler when he turned the Bugle into a tabloid after becoming its editor-at-large. If there was one thing that Urich detested more than anything else in the newspaper business, it was editors who insisted on slanting the news to fit their personal views, and Jameson had been doing that long before Spider-Man arrived on the scene. Urich had quit the Bugle in disgust after Jameson tried to put a negative slant on a piece he did on the efforts of the Manhattan borough president to institute neighborhood watches during the mid eighties. He still remembered the last conversation they had, a bitter confrontation that took place in Jameson's office:

"Damn you Ben, you're so naive! Cohen's been pushing this neighborhood watch garbage to divert attention from his own failure to get enough police on the streets. And he'sdipping into the city's payroll too, no doubt. He's not fit to be a trash collector!" Jameson screamed, furious at Urich for trying to bypass him and get the article directly to print.

"And I'm telling you Jonah that you're screwing up on this one!" Urich roared back, refusing to be cowed. "Cohen's proposal's got the endorsement of the mayor, the city counsel and the police union! Everyone thinks it's a good idea. No one's ever accused him of any financial improprieties. Just leave my article the hell alone before you damage our reputation even further!"

Urich could not recall the rest of that exchange. All he could remember was that he walked out of Jameson's office and out of the Daily Bugle within five minutes of that conversation, and hadn't been back since. He was still close to Robbie Robertson, however. They talked on the phone nearly every day and had lunch together at least twice a week. Ben hoped that new corporate ownership would eventually take over the Bugle, fire Jameson, and put Robbie in charge, so that the once-venerated publication could recover its lost reputation. That reputation had worsened when word got around that Jonah had become so obsessed with his crusade against Spider-Man that he completely missed the Wilson-Fisk-is-the-Kingpin story. That would never have happened in the old days,Ben thought, nostalgically.

Ben Urich knew more people, had more sources, and held more secrets than anyone else in the profession, including the secret identity of one of New York's costumed vigilantes. He had discovered Matt Murdock's alter-ego after years of persistent, painstaking journalistic grit. His big break came in the forensics lab of the city morgue. Jack Kirby, one of his more reliable sources, showed him that Daredevil's billy club was really Matt Murdock's cane. The give-away was the dual emblem on the handle . . . the angel's face on one side and the devil's face on the other.

The identity of the other remained a mystery. If he had really wanted to uncover Spider-Man's secret, it would've been short work for him. But fortunately for Peter, and for Matt Murdock as well, Ben Urich had a knack for knowing which stories to print and which ones to bury. Spider-Man's secret fell into the latter category. . . and with good reason. Over his long career, Ben had come to see the Big Apple as a living, breathing organism whose numerous systems had to remain in delicate balance if the organism was to survive. Spider-Man and Daredevil represented that balance. They were antibodies, constantly fighting off infections. If it weren't for them, those infections might well mutate out of control or mushroom into fatal illnesses. Bluntly put, exposing Spider-Man would upset the balance so vital to New York's fragile ecosystem, and Ben Urich wasn't going to be the one to do it.

How astonished Ben would have been if he were discover that he'd been having lunch with Spider-Man every week for nearly two years. Ben had met Peter shortly after Peter started working as a photojournalist. The star reporter took an instant liking to the bright young shutterbug, even though Peter worked for the Bugle while he worked for the Post. He was impressed with the quality of Peter's photographs and the lengths to which Peter went to get those shots. Peter also reminded him very much of his own son, Philip, now a 40-year old patent attorney in San Diego.

They often found themselves covering the same stories, and as a result, began to have lunch together at least once a week to exchange tips and tales. Ben listened in amusement to Peter's horror stories about J. Jonah Jameson's latest tirades. And he enjoyed Peter's befuddlement at the notion that J. Jonah Jameson had once been a crusader for civil rights. He was very much looking forward to meeting Peter at Ryan's on Wednesday. Ryan's was a Mid-town watering hole for journalists where they'd been getting together lately.

Hunched over his computer, Urich was still wearing the same rumpled olive-colored suit that he had worn for the last three days. The tie that went with that suit was creased and torn. His wife Laurie constantly nagged him about his chain-smoking and his propensity to dress like a skid-row bum. On the latter, he told her repeatedly that he needed that particular apparel in order to get close to potential stories. Regarding the former, he finally yielded to unrelenting pressure from Laurie and Philip, and went cold-turkey.

Urich had been nicotine free for nearly nine months, having taken up Nicorette gum instead. Unfortunately, he had gained a few pounds and was not happy about having to visit the gym regularly, something he hadn't felt the need to do for over twenty years.

He was about two-thirds away through the edits of the final draft on his article on crime statistics when his cell phone rang. Oh man, he groaned, why does Laurie always call me when I have to get something out? He flipped the phone open and held it close to his ear.

"Yeah," he snapped, thinking his wife was calling him to pick up some deli sandwiches on the way home. But for once it wasn't Laurie.

"Listen up Urich!" said a harsh masculine voice. "It's Detective Manolis."

"Nick," Urich repeated, knowing that this was not a social call. The Kingpin story that had won Urich his latest Pulitzer and his job with the Times had also won Nick Manolis a promotion to captain. Manolis, knowing that he owed his latest career milestone to Urich, developed a newfound respect for the intrepid reporter. He was anxious to show his gratitude, and thereafter, willingly became one of Ben Urich's most important sources, a privilege the sharp, streetwise detective did not extend to anyone else.

"We just got a huge tip-off," Manolis told him. "Al Qaeda's back. They're gonna set off dirty bombs in the subway system."

Urich was stunned, but he kept his reaction to himself. "Nick," he said slowly and softly, "are you sure about this?"

"Absolutely!" Manolis replied, "they set up their operational HQ at some waterfront warehouse off West 23rd Street. We're bringing in S.W.A.T. teams and bomb disposal units."

"I know where you're talking about." Urich said, still keeping cool. "It's the old Oscorp nuclear storage facility at West 23rd Street and 12th Avenue. Been abandoned for years."

"Right. Get down there as soon as you can. And keep this to yourself until things break." Anxious and agitated, Manolis hung up the phone without even waiting for Urich to thank him for the tip.

Just stay cool Ben, and above all, don't panic, Urich told himself as he reached for his cap and jacket. Suddenly, he was pumped full of adrenalin and desperate for a cigarette, which had been his chief source of stress relief for fifty years. I'm gonna have a heart attack any day now, he groaned to himself. Fortunately, he still had one last stick of Nicorette in his pocket. He popped in his mouth and started chewing the way he used to chew erasers off pencils in the days before computers.

Then he called in Dave Harris, a cub reporter whom he was mentoring. "I gotta go," he told Harris hurriedly. "Finish this article for me. The info's all there. Get it in on time and the byline's yours." Harris, grateful for the opportunity to shine, eagerly got down to his new assignment.

XXXXXXXXXX

Matt Murdock was standing on the roof of some unnamed mid-town skyscraper a short distance from Hell's Kitchen. He felt incredibly uneasy about having to appear as Daredevil while the sun was still up. He'd worked very hard over the years to keep his alter-ego's exploits below the press's radar screen and to remain safely ensconced within the realm of urban legend. A daylight appearance, possibly in the presence of witnesses or the ubiquitous news media, would turn the legend into reality, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Unhappily, he realized that he had no choice, because the potential for disaster in this situation was far greater than anything he'd ever faced before.

For the last hour, Daredevil had been moving rapidly along the rooftops of the city, picking up bits and pieces of police band radio traffic. It took extraordinary concentration on his part to zero in on particular frequencies without other noises drowning out what he was searching for. Unfortunately, most of what he'd been listening to had been routine police communication. Now he badly needed a break—the intense concentration was starting to give him a splitting headache.

Daredevil was about to give it a rest when all of a sudden he picked up two calls on a high-frequency band that were occurring almost simultaneously. Exerting tremendous effort to focus in on the first transmission, he learned that an arrest had just been made at the corner of 6th Avenue and West 28th Street. Only moments earlier, Spider-Man had nailed the two bozos who had tried to kill Rahi Aziz. He turned them over to the police after effectively interrogating them himself. Apparently, they told Spider-Man about some kind of terrorist plot to explode dirty bombs throughout the subway system. They proved remarkably cooperative, preferring the relative safety of a jail cell to another encounter with the webslinger. However, they had very little additional information to provide and, in all likelihood, would be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, where God-knows what awaited them.

The second call came from Detective Captain Nick Manolis to Ben Urich's cell phone. Manolis tipped Urich off that the terrorists were using the old abandoned Oscorp hazardous materials warehouse at the corner of 12th Avenue and West 23rd Street as a staging area for their operation. That's where I'm heading, Daredevil thought as he swan-dived off the ledge of the building and fired his grappling hook at another building across the street.

From the intelligence gleaned from these two conversations, Daredevil was able to surmise that Al Qaeda was behind the plot, and that the attack could occur within the next few days, if not the next 24 hours. This did not leave much time. The few disclosed details reflected an extremely sophisticated operation that had to have been in the works for years. He speculated that the global terrorist network had been recruiting and training highly educated operatives, many of whom had likely received engineering and science degrees at American universities. They'd probably been extensively mapping the subway networks, painstakingly identifying those stations where bombs could inflict the most damage. Then they'd had to have set up elaborate counter-surveillance strategies to avoid detection in the face of enhanced security. Even Daredevil, the man without fear, admitted to himself that Al Qaeda's methodical preparation and careful attention to detail would horrify anyone with a sense of humanity.

But something else was troubling Daredevil as he closed in on the warehouse. Where did Rahi Aziz fit into all this? he wondered. Aziz was obviously not part of the operation, but the fact that he'd been targeted was a frightening reminder of how sophisticated terrorists had become after 9-11. Aziz must have been set up as a patsy. Someone, maybe Hagdabi or one of those other clowns who had testified against Aziz, must have impersonated him, making it appear that he was intimately involved in the planning and execution of a terrorist operation. Based on a large body of false evidence, the immigration authorities took the bait and tried to deport Aziz. They would have succeeded if it were not for Peter Parker's testimony and his credibility as a defense witness. The feds would have congratulated themselves on foiling Al Qaeda once again while the real operation was being carried out right under their noses. If Peter hadn't been summoned as a witness, if Aziz hadn't gotten off, and if those two goons hadn't tried to shoot him, no one would've had an inkling of what was going on and the city would've had a disaster on its hands that rivaled 9-11.

Another chilling thought plagued Daredevil as he made his way toward the terrorists' base of operations — Why the hell did they try to kill Aziz if he didn't know anything? The only answer he could think of was that they must have panicked. A much tighter security infrastructure had been put into place around various ports of entry, including New York City, during the years following 9-11, which significantly narrowed the windows of opportunity for terrorist strikes. They probably figured that Aziz's acquittal had blown their decoy strategy. With their timetable thrown off, they decided to carry out the operation before the security net closed around them, wanting toplug any leaks that might have sprung as a result of Aziz not getting deported. But they had blown it . . . badly. It was the attempt on Aziz's life itself that had broken the whole thing wide open.

Like Spider-Man, Daredevil began to feel enormous rage begin to well up from deep within him as the fog around Al Qaeda's latest plot began to lift. Unlike his younger counterpart, however, he did not try to suppress it. He looked forward to turning every single one of those one hundred and eighteen animals into unrecognizable lumps of flesh.

XXXXXXXXXX

The gigantic warehouse overlooking the pier at West 23rd Street encompassed two whole city blocks. It was a forty-story behemoth of a building, designed for one purpose . . . to provide secure storage space for the most dangerous substances that man was capable of creating.

As he approached the gargantuan facility, Spider-Man observed a red metallic sign with reflective white lettering on its huge front door: Property of Oscorp Industries — No Trespassers — Violators Will Be Prosecuted. Beneath it was a smaller sign that displayed the symbol for radioactive waste. It said: Danger — Radioactive Materials — Keep Clear.

Those two bastards must've given me the wrong dope! thought Spider-Man frantically as he read the no-trespassing sign and realized who owned the building. The mere thought that his one-time best friend would provide logistical support to American's sworn enemies was just too bizarre to believe. Harry may have hated Spider-Man, and blamed him for the death of his father, but that did not make him a traitor. Then suddenly, he recalled that Harry had once told him that Oscorp had abandoned the facility ten years ago, after outsourcing its storage functions to some company in India. Unfortunately, Oscorp had never been able to find a buyer for the facility, and was still its registered owner. That meant that if the terrorists succeeded in carrying out their attack, Oscorp would be held responsible for failing to safeguard its property. How much more trouble could Harry possibly get into? Spider-Man groaned to himself. First Octavius, and now this?

The place seemed deserted enough. But as he got closer to the door, his spider-sense started tingling wildly. Alarms, he thought anxiously. They've probably set up an alarm system throughout the building. This place was once a high-security installation, which probably meant that the windows as well as the doors were rigged. He realized that he needed to find a way to get in without alerting the terrorists inside to his presence.

Spider-Man scurried up and down the North side of the building, looking for an entry point where he would attract the least attention. But every time he approached a window, his spider-sense went off. He could feel his skin crawl as he realized that he was losing time trying to find a window that would not trip an alarm. This is getting depressing, he thought. I could be out here all afternoon just trying to find a way in . . . wait a minute. Three quarters of the way up, his spider-sense suddenly stopped giving him a danger signal. He found himself in front of an air vent. This was it! Air vents were never hooked up to alarms. But just to make sure his spider-sense was telling him what he needed to know, he moved toward the nearest window. Sure enough, as if it were playing the children's game, Hot Hot Cold, his spider-sense once again signaled caution. As soon as he returned to the vent, the warning ceased.

The grating consisted of crisscrossing steel bars that were an inch thick. Using his feet to adhere to the building and give himself the necessary leverage, Spider-Man grasped the panel and pulled. Half-inch screws, made of reinforced steel, tore loose from the wall and fell, taking small chunks of concrete with them. He kept bending the grating until the opening was large enough for him to slip through.

Once inside, he found that the square-shaped air duct was quite large, nearly four feet on a side, which was more than enough to accommodate him. Unfortunately, there were no lights. He soon realized that navigating the warehouse's huge network of air ducts would be like trying to find one's way through a gigantic, three-dimensional maze in utter darkness. I could be crawling around in here for miles before I find these guys, he thought as moved forward, refusing to become overwhelmed by the task.

So focused was he on trying to figure out what to do next that he never saw the crimson figure that had been tracking him for the last half hour.

XXXXXXXXXX

Daredevil had locked onto Spider-Man's heartbeat from a distance of ten city blocks. That heartbeat, with its strong, steady rhythm, stood out like a homing beacon against the cacophony of background noise that constantly bombarded him. Daredevil landed gracefully on the roof of the warehouse after a sixteen-story leap from an adjacent office building, just as Spider-Man vanished. Peering over the side,Daredevil perceived jets of blue luminescence shoot out of the wall in several places, the closest being ten stories directly beneath him. Standing out against that blue current was what appeared to be a grating that had been ripped open.

Smart move, Daredevil thought admiringly, he's avoided tripping the alarms. Even from as far away as several blocks, Daredevil could hear the low hum of the alarm system that coursed throughout the building, covering every door and window. Maybe this Spider-Man wasn't quite such a cowboy after all. He seemed to know exactly what to do in order to avoid detection by his adversaries.

Daredevil quickly flipped open his grappling hook, secured himself to the railing and lowered himself toward the open air vent. As he got closer, the noise from the air currents grew louder. To his sensitive ears, the breezes made by the industrial air-circulation system sounded like a fierce hurricane. When he reached the vent, he found three other telltale signs of Spider-Man's presence besides the ripped-up grating: the faint, barely perceptible scent of perspiration mixed with spandex; tiny traces of the electrical charges left by Spider-Man's hands and feet; and the webslinger's signature heartbeat. He could also detect numerous other heartbeats as well, over one hundred. But the webslinger's was so strong and powerful that it was almost drowning out the others.

As soon as Daredevil slid through the opening, he found a space large enough to crawl around in. But what looked like silent darkness to Spider-Man was for him a loud, rushing river of blue luminesence . Daredevil began to follow the trail Spider-Man had left. After he had gone about one hundred feet, he noticed that the mixture of sweat and static electricity that he'd been honing in on suddenly stopped. No . . . it simply changed direction . . . dropping straight down for two hundred and fifty feet. Such a jump would normally be routine to him, but this situation was anything but routine. Above all else, stealth was required, and the sound of his boots hitting the bottom after a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot drop would betray his location to whomever was holed up inside the building. Slowly and carefully, he lowered himself into the vertical shaft, pressed his arms and legs against the sheet metal walls to keep from free-falling, and descended ten to fifteen feet at a time.

When he reached the bottom, Daredevil encountered a perplexing intersection. There were two crisscrossing horizontal passages that were perpendicular to each other. One of the ducts ran in a North-South direction while the other ran from East to West. Where to next, my enterprising young friend? he asked himself as he detected the webslinger moving East. Spider-Man's trail was much easier to follow now. Not only was the perspiration still present, but the traces of his electrical handprints and footprints were much brighter.

Twenty feet down the shaft, the trail suddenly stopped. Daredevil looked around, momentarily confused, since he was still picking up Spider-Man's heartbeat, which by now was quite loud, almost overpowering. He looked up . . . and saw Spider-Man's electrical imprints on the "ceiling."

Daredevil followed the upside-down imprints through a maze of passages, until he found another long shaft. Light was coming from the far end of the shaft, illuminating the blue haze more intensely. Straining to "see" into that rippling, phosphorescent blue field, Daredevil was able to make out a shadowy figure about one hundred feet ahead of him . . . crawling upside down along the ceiling. The figure stopped its forward movement when it reached the bright light. As he moved closer to that light, Daredevil perceived that it was coming from an enormous room within the warehouse, and that a grating similar to the one he had observed outside was covering that vent as well.

Appearing to Daredevil as a dark silhouette, Spider-Man crouched upside down, peering out of the grating. Daredevil was quite impressed with the way that Spider-Man had unerringly led him right to their quarry. But the intense pounding of Spider-Man's heart, coupled with the faint scent of perspiration, warned Daredevil that the younger man was under tremendous stress. He moved forward cautiously, not wanting to startle a tense, wired Spider-Man into making any sudden, violent moves. Spider-Man's heartbeat was so loud that it ricocheted off the walls of the air shaft, and nearly obscured the one hundred and eighteen heartbeats coming from beyond the grating.

XXXXXXXXXX

The darkness turned out not to be such an insurmountable obstacle for Spider-Man after all. Apparently, his genetic alterations included an arachnid's three-sixty spacial orientation and navigational prowess. These capabilities enabled him to move in any direction, and to use his spider-sense not only to avoid obstacles, but to find the shortest passage to his destination. Earlier, his spider-sense had alerted him to the presence of a very long drop, which he was able to scale without any difficulty whatsoever. He also discovered, rather quickly, that he could move much faster, and in complete silence, if he crawled upside-down along the top of the ducts rather than the bottom.

Spider-Man began to hear voices as soon as he reached the bottom of the vertical shaft. He followed those voices as they became louder, making three sharp turns, two to the left and one to the right. As soon as he made that last turn, he saw a another vent about a hundred feet away, also covered by a thick steel grating. Once he reached that vent, he peered into what looked like a colossal storage room. Rows of full-strength industrial halogen lamps on the ceiling lit up the room. Unfortunately, one of those lights hung directly in front of the vent, partially obscuring his view of the floor, five stories down. On the opposite wall, he could barely make out a white board covered with diagrams. But he was too far away to comprehend any details of those drawings.

The voices he'd been hearing were very distinct now. But, to his utter dismay, no one was speaking English. He could make out conversations in French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Of the latter he could understand only a few words here and there, since the speech was too fast and most of his high-school Italian was long forgotten. But two words he heard repeatedly almost caused him to panic: esplosione and radioattivo. He recognized those words only because his physics professor required her students to become cognizant of foreign developments in the field. Goddammit, he screamed silently, time's running out and I still don't know what the hell's going on down there!

All of a sudden, his spider-sense spiked. Someone's spotted me! Spider-Man thought frantically, and he's coming up from behind! Jesus Christ, did they have closed-circuit TV monitors or something? He whipped around to face the intruder, still adhering to the top of the ventilator shaft. As he did, he saw a figure gradually emerge from the shadows.

"Who are you!" Spider-Man demanded in a whisper.

"An ally," answered a voice that was shockingly familiar.

XXXXXXXXXX

Even in the relative darkness of the air shaft, Spider-Man could discern who the mysterious stranger was. The man crawled right up to the vent and positioned himself directly beneath Spider-Man. The light partially illuminated the crimson-clad warrior, particularly the holster on his right thigh. It held a pair of silver and red nunchakus. One of the sticks had dual emblems on its handle . . . an angel's face on one side, a devil's face on the other, just like . . . Matt Murdock's cane . . . Oh, my God!

The fluttering of Spider-Man's heartbeat warned Daredevil that his secret was out. "I see that you recognize me, Peter," Matt said softly, not wanting to take a chance on tipping off the enemy.

"Mr. Murdock!" Peter whispered, his eyes widening in shock beneath his mask. He half-expected it, but was still dumbfounded nonetheless. Now I know how Mary Jane must have felt when she saw me without my mask on, he thought excitedly as his mind raced to process this latest challenge to reality."But you're . . .you're . . ." He couldn't quite get the last word out.

"Blind?"

"Well . . . uh . . . now that you mention it . . . yeah," Peter said, still not believing what he'd just learned about the blind lawyer from Hell's Kitchen.

"Some of us see the world a little differently than others," Matt replied quietly, clearly not offended. If the truth be told, even Matt himself would not have believed that a blind man could have such capabilities . . . if he were not that man. All the same, Peter felt a little embarrassed at the snap judgment he'd just made.

"But how did you find me?" Peter asked, his sense of stupefaction giving way to an overwhelming sense of relief that the cavalry had come over the hill just in the nick of time.

"Police radios are an excellent source of intelligence" Matt replied. "And you did a terrific job in finding a way to get in here without setting off the alarms. By the way, feel free to call me Matt . . . except when we're in public." He thrust his hand up toward Peter. Peter shook it, feeling a powerful, vigorous grip.

Matt stuck his head close to the grating, trying gather as much information as possible. The radar-like images his brain was processing made the room appear to him as an enormous cavern that ran nearly the entire length and breadth of the facility. It was surrounded on all sides by alternating layers of lead and reinforced concrete. No doubt that it was a storage area for extremely large containers of nuclear waste and other hazmats. Even though the facility had been abandoned nearly ten years ago, Matt was still able to detect traces of radioactive isotopes flashing throughout the area.

Two significant obstacles hindered his ability to gather information on the terrorists themselves. The first was the enormous industrial lamp hanging directly in front of the grating. The second was Peter's heartbeat, which, in the confined space of the air shaft, assaulted his ears like a howitzer.

"They're going to destroy the subways using dirty bombs!" Peter whispered frantically. Matt could see that the young man was really overwhelmed. He must be thinking that he's in over his head, Matt thought dispassionately, wondering if Peter had ever faced this kind of uncertainty before. He knew immediately what he had to do first.

"Peter," he said slowly, wanting to make sure that he was understood. "Believe me, I'm fully aware of the gravity of this situation, but I really need you to calm down. Your heart's beating so loudly that I can barely hear anything else. I can't tell what's going on down there."

"What!" Peter responded, wired as ever. "My heartbeat . . . how could you possibly . . . ?"

"It would take too long to explain," Matt said, his voice as calm and smooth in the face of a massive terrorist operation as it had been in court earlier in the day. "For now, just trust me, please."

"I do trust you," Peter replied earnestly. But he was baffled at what Matt was asking him to do. "I don't know how to gain control over my autonomic functions . . ."

"Just breathe deeply. . ." Matt told him, trying to be as reassuring as he could. "And while you're breathing deeply, focus on whatever it is that's most important to you."

Well, since he put it that way, Peter thought as he allowed his mind to drift back to the roof of the Met Life Building, where once again he found himself kissing Mary Jane upside down. He could smell her perfume, taste her delectable lips, and feel her delicate tongue sliding over his teeth. And as he envisioned himself in his beloved's arms once more, being consumed in the fires of their passion, his breathing grew slower and deeper, and the intensity of his heartbeat began to lessen.

"Much better," Matt said, after a minute or two. He seemed to be looking at Peter through the opaque eyepieces of his spider-mask and straight down into his soul. Even though Matt Murdock was still very much a stranger, Peter sensed some sort of bond forming between them. It was a different bond than the one he shared with M.J. It was more the sort of bond one might have with an older brother. He realized that, in the figurative sense, Matt Murdock was exactly that.

"Peter," Matt continued, turning up his empathy dial to maximum in order to make sure that Peter wouldn't start to panic again, "I realize how much stress you are under. I can feel it. But believe me, we can stop these bastards if we keep our heads and work together. All right?"

"Sure . . . absolutely," Peter whispered enthusiastically. He was more than happy to relinquish some of the burden and accept guidance from the older and presumably wiser man.

"I can pick up everything that is taking place in that room," Matt whispered as he stuck his head as close to the grating as possible. Peter watched as Matt gritted his teeth concentrating intently, struggling to separate vital data from background noise.

"There are one hundred and eighteen men down there," he said, straining to listen to myriad heartbeats and conversations taking place in multiple languages. He stopped his concentration long enough relay what he could learn to Peter.

"Variety of nationalities . . . mainly French, Italian, Spanish . . . and a few Germans."

"Any Arabs?" Peter asked anxiously.

"No one seems to be speaking Arabic." Matt responded as he continued to listen intently.

"But this is an Al Qaeda operation, I'm sure of it," Peter said, his anxiety starting to rise again. "One of the clowns who tried to take out Mr. Aziz was an Arab."

Matt reflected on this new wrinkle. "You're probably right. I'm sure that this is an Al Qaeda operation. But think about it for a moment. Since 9-11, the government has been using an elaborate profiling system to screen out potential terrorists, right?"

"Right," Peter answered, slowly beginning to understand where Matt was taking him.

"And, under that profiling system, who would most likely get screened out?"

"Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East."

"Exactly. So, if you're Al Qaeda, and you know that people who fit your profile are being denied entry into the United States, what would you do?"

"You'd recruit people who don't fit the profile!" Peter exclaimed. He was both amazed and frightened at Al Qaeda's sophistication, technical prowess, and broad appeal across nationalities."But who?"

"European Muslims, perhaps," Matt answered. "There are large Muslim communities in France, Italy, and other countries. Or maybe non-Muslim sympathizers. There are still plenty of extremists and fanatics out there." He paused, realizing that the terrorists were one step ahead of the authorities in getting around security barriers. "It doesn't matter," he finally said. "The only thing that matters is that they're here. And they're going to strike if we don't stop them."

"What about English?" Peter wanted to know. "Are any of them speaking English?"

Matt put his ear back up close to the grating and listened. "None that I've heard so far," he replied. "They must be concerned about security for this operation. We need to find out how may cells are involved."

Finally, a question I can answer, Peter thought as he breathed a small sigh of relief. "There are eighteen people who are the actual masterminds. The rest are there for logistics and support," he responded.

Matt did not have to ask Peter how he came upon this information. He already knew. "Can you see any of them?" he asked.

Peter tried to peer down through the grating, but because of the large ceiling light blocking their view, he could only see a small portion of the floor directly beneath them, and the far wall. "No," he said, "we'll have to get a closer look."

"I'm afraid we don't have time to find another way into that storage room," Matt concluded. "We'll have to get this grating off."

"No problem," Peter said eagerly, gripping one side of the grating between his fingers and getting ready to push. Like the grating outside, it was held in place with half-inch screws.

"Quietly," Matt warned.

"Right, boss!" Peter responded, his sense of humor starting to come back to him, as he pushed against the grating with his entire body to muffle the sound made by screws tearing loose from the wall. Once the grating was off, he gently set it down inside the air duct. Miraculously, no one below heard them.

"I'd like to get out there on that ceiling and do a little recon work." Peter told Matt.

"That would be most helpful, Peter," Matt assured him. "But just stay above those lights, where they won't see you."

"Right," Spider-Man said as he quietly slipped through the opening. He crawled around the ceiling, upside down, looking for a vantage point that would give him a commanding view of the entire facility. He couldn't find one, so he had to scout from several different locations. Fortunately, he was well camouflaged. The ceiling lights were so close together that he could move around above them without being seen from the floor. In addition, when he moved about on walls and ceilings, he did not have gravity to contend with, and consequently was able to proceed in complete silence. For good measure, there were four gigantic ceiling fans that drowned out any noise he might have made.

Spider-Man returned to the air shaft twenty minutes later. Like a scout briefing his superiors after a reconnaissance mission, Spider-Man gave Daredevil extremely detailed descriptions of what he'd observed.

"You were right, Matt," Peter whispered as massive amounts of adrenalin continued to pump through his body. "I counted one hundred and eighteen . . ." But suddenly Matt winced, putting his hands to his ears in obvious pain.

"Hey, what is it?" Peter asked in an agitated whisper, his spider-sense reacting to Matt's distress.

"You're getting wired again, Peter," Matt admonished sternly through short gasps. "Your heart is pounding so loud it's drilling my ears. Please, get hold of yourself!"

"Oh, man, I'm sorry," Peter apologized as he struggled to keep the what-if scenarios from invading his mind.

Seeing that the enormous stress that Peter was under was beginning to take its toll, Matt decided to try a different tack. Totally out of the blue, he said to Peter, "She's really something special, isn't she?"

The left-field nature of the question caught Peter off guard. "Who?" he asked, momentarily disoriented.

"Your girlfriend," Matt answered softly.

"Oh yes, she is," Peter replied, his heart rate slowing down and becoming softer even as he pictured Mary Jane framed in the doorway of her apartment, beckoning him inside, waiting for him to make love to her. . .

"You'll see her again, Peter, I guarantee it!" Matt promised as if he had all the confidence in the world.

Grateful that his senior partner could figure out the right buttons to push, and a little embarrassed that he, a super-hero, needed reassurances, Peter continued with his recon report.

"None of them look like they're from the Middle East. As you said earlier, they're all talking in French, Italian, Spanish, and a few other languages I didn't recognize. As far as I can tell, none of them know we're here."

Matt already knew that they had weapons, but was not sure what type. "What are they armed with?"

"AK-47's" Peter told Matt grimly. In his two years as Spider-Man, he'd seen that weapon so often that he could recognize it instantly, even from a distance.

"What are they wearing?" Matt asked, the courtroom lawyer in him once again coming to the fore.

"Most are dressed like subway maintenance workers. The rest are wearing security guard uniforms." Peter responded, very much falling in line with Matt's analytical approach to their current situation.

"What's the layout of the place?" Matt asked, continuing his line of questioning about the logistics of the operation. "Could you see any entrances or exits?"

"Two doors," Peter reported. "One on the South side, one on the East. There's also a very large garage door directly beneath us, about three stories high. But it doesn't look like they're using it."

Matt stuck his head out of the opening and went into a deep state of concentration. The beads of sweat breaking out around his nose, chin, and mouth spoke volumes to Peter about how hard it was for Matt to isolate particular sounds and smells, even with his enhanced senses. After what seemed to be an eternity, Matt suddenly snapped out of it and retreated into the air duct.

"The South door opens directly to the main access corridor," Matt explained to his eager young co-crusader. "The East door leads to an auxiliary storage room, which is also surrounded by walls made of lead and reinforced concrete. I count six devices in that room, all lined up on a work bench." He paused and cocked his head slightly to the left. "Ordinary C-4 plastic explosive, with charges set to detonate via electrical impulse. Each device has approximately one hundred grams of cesium 127 dispersed throughout the explosive material.

Peter was too preoccupied with making his next point to show any of his amazement at Matt's uncanny precision in pinpointing the location and composition of the bombs.

"But we still don't know where they plan to set those bombs off, or how many they're going to use." Peter hissed, his frustrations building again.

Matt remained unflappable even as precious minutes were ticking away. "Chill out Peter," he reminded his colleague in a firm but gentle whisper. "Did you see any maps, drawings, diagrams, anything of that nature?"

Peter suddenly remembered the whiteboard. "I saw a rough diagram of what looked like lower Manhattan with a bunch of X's drawn all over it. But I couldn't get close enough to get a really good look at it."

"All right then," Matt said as he began formulating battle strategy. "We'll need to get down there and . . ." He suddenly stopped talking and stuck his head out of the opening again, this time in the direction of the south door. He was locking onto the sounds of two police cars pulling up to the main entrance of the warehouse. Shouldn't there be more cops than this? he thought, his outer expression changing from relief to concern before Peter's eyes.

"What is it now?" Peter asked, becoming agitated again at seeing Matt's reaction.

"The police are here." Matt told him. "They wisely decided not to use their sirens."

"Well, that's good," Peter said, relieved that the police had taken his tip-off seriously. "How many?"

"Five," Matt responded. "No, wait a minute. . . four NYPD officers, and an FBI agent."

"That's all? Only five!" Peter was about to yell. He could not believe that, after everything he told those two cops, they'd sent in only five people. Fortunately, he remembered where he was and lowered his voice to a whisper . . . a harsh whisper. "Where the hell are their back ups? I told them to bring in a goddam army!" He knew right away that the cops were in deep, deep trouble. Without back ups, those five were as vastly outnumbered as Custer's army was at Little Big Horn.

"Peter, how many times do I have to tell you . . . relax!" Matt whispered angrily as he again stuck his head through the opening. "I guess it's up to us to even the odds," he told Peter firmly. "I'll need you to kill the lights."

For a second, Peter just looked at Matt, wondering why they needed to cut the lights and how he was supposed to do that. Somehow, Matt read his expression and had the answers waiting for him. "The cops are outnumbered, and heavily outgunned," he explained, gesturing in the direction of the approaching police. "They don't stand a chance unless we can take these guys out fast. The only way we can do that is if we take control of the environment. Are you with me?"

"Yes," Peter acknowledged.

"There's a large fuse box on the ceiling, in the dead center of the room. The cables from all the lights feed directly into it. Did you see it when you were out there?"

"I saw a large metal box attached to the ceiling, behind the lights," Peter confirmed.

"That's it. I'll need you to yank those cables out of that box. We'll be in control once the lights are gone."

"But how can we see what's going on without the lights?" Peter asked incredulously.

"I own the dark!" Matt responded in a low but decisive tone that struck Peter as reassuring and ominous at the same time. "And you seem to have acquired an insect's knack for moving around in dark places."

"Arachnid," Peter corrected him.

"What?" Matt asked, completely baffled by Peter's remark.

"Spiders are not insects. They're arachnids. Thought you lawyers knew that," he joked, somewhat flippantly, causing Matt to raise his eyebrows.

So, that's where he gets his wise-guy rep, Matt mused as he watched Peter move back toward the vent and get ready to assault the fuse box. "Once you're in position, wait for my signal before you pull the plug." he told Peter. Then, in a surprise gesture of big-brotherly affection, he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"Are you okay?" he asked, a seemingly genuine concern for Peter's welfare plainly evident in his voice.

"Yeah," Peter said confidently, a smile breaking out beneath his mask as his pessimism evaporated in the face of imminent action. "Let's get out there and unleash hell on those bastards!"

At least the lad's enthusiastic, Matt thought, tempering his initial judgment of his junior partner, and respectful of his elders. I wonder, though, is he always this cheerful before a fight?