CHAPTER 23

Exiting the bank had been as easy as robbing it. The van was armored, so they hardly cared what sort of retaliation they got back at the moment. They had gone through a lot of trouble to complete this job. They had had to first get a hold of someone who could supply them with a quality armored vehicle. Nate’s people, who some said had helped supply the Joker during his reign, had found a way to get it to them.

Donny was driving the van. It was a Level VI armored vehicle, the highest level of protection that existed for a vehicle. Manufactured with a quarter-inch of the cutting-edge TC-212 aluminum and a high-performance synthetic composite, it could be used as either protection for VIPs or for prisoner transfer, and was therefore designed to be airtight in case of gas attack or escape attempt. The vehicle was as formidable as any vehicle could get, with only one area near the front outfitted with a duct for ventilation. The van was a real monster, capable of withstanding high-powered military ammunition such as 7.62 NATO rounds.

When the first cop car came on the scene, Marshall opened one of the back doors and sprayed armor-piercing rounds from his AA-12. The automatic shotgun blasted through the windshield of the squad car and the vehicle veered immediately off the round, smashing through a mailbox and crashing through the storefront window of Tallman’s Liquor.

Marshall screamed, “Wooooooooo! Molehill, baby! That’s right, pigs! Don’t mess with the Mob! Wooo-hoo-hoo-hooooooooooooo!”

Donny ran through three red lights, slamming into the side of a convertible, which spun out while the van kept moving and turned a tight corner, hardly losing any speed despite the extra weight from its armor. While he steered, Donny hollered back, “How’s he doin’?”

“He’d be doin’ better if you’d drive a little straighter!” Kyle shouted. He was currently hovering over Tate, who’d been too close to the charges on the bank vault when they went off. He had initially been knocked unconscious, but he’d finally woken up once they dragged him out into the van and put him on the floor. He was just now starting to moan in agony from the multiple pieces of shrapnel in his face, chest, and arms.

“Hang on! We’re almost to the tunnel!” Donny called back.

“More cops!” Marshall shouted. Two squad cars were coming down Kettle Industrial Boulevard. They tried to get alongside their van and fire. They aimed for the tires, of course, but the armor was too strong, and the run-flat tires made them practically unstoppable. Marshall slapped a new feeder into the AA-12 before sticking it out the window and letting loose with another salvo.

The ammunition from the combat shotgun tore the two squad cars to pieces, they simply weren’t equipped to deal with that sort of firepower. Once both cars had spun out of control and slammed into one another, Marshall reeled the AA-12 back in and kissed its barrel. “Thank you, God, for Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson!”

Just then, they entered the MacFarlane Tunnel. The tunnel dipped underground, and split into three separate directions. They took the left path, onto Route 27, heading towards Harvey Dent Highway. They sped around late-night drivers for two minutes before they came to the drop-off point. Their backup car was a station wagon waiting over in the HOV lane, its emergency blinkers were on and Hoyt stood there in a suit and tie, pretending to be waiting for road assistance.

Donny pulled the van over, and they all hopped out, moving quickly as rehearsed. Hoyt had already removed the pressure washer from the trunk of his car, and was spraying the paint off the sides and rear of the armored van. Within thirty seconds, the paint was all gone, revealing what was underneath—the van had just gone from a van for the First Bank of Gotham to a vehicle for Trenton Security.

Marshall and Kyle pulled the injured Tate off the floor of the van and shoved him into the back seat of Hoyt’s station wagon. While Hoyt sprayed the van clean of its own markings, Donny pulled the bags of money out of the van and lugged them over to Hoyt’s car. He also collected all of their long guns, the AA-12s and the MP-5s, and tossed them into the back seat.

“Move it, move it, move it!” Donny screamed. “C’mon, guys! Hustle!”

Within sixty seconds, they had transferred all valuables into the station wagon. Donny hopped back into the armored van and pulled ahead of them. Hoyt threw the pressure washer back into the station wagon’s trunk and jumped into the driver’s seat. They took off through the tunnel, the van leading the station wagon. When they emerged from the other side of the tunnel, neither vehicle looked like the vehicle that police would be looking for.

The armored van had done its job. Robbing the First Bank of Gotham had brought down about as many cops as they had anticipated, but the pigs hadn’t been able to penetrate the advanced armor. The weapons that Nate’s people had supplied them had trashed all pursuers. As long as they got away clean, they could use the van in another month or two on a different job, perhaps the heist that Donny had dreamt up for the bearer bonds that got dropped off once a month at Archie Goodwin International Airport.

All that dreaming can wait, he thought. First thing’s first, we gotta get clean from this job.

The two vehicles now drove at a reasonable speed. They even passed a pair of squad cars heading down Harvey Dent Highway on their way to the MacFarlane Tunnel, their sirens screaming. The squad cars didn’t even slow down when they saw that the armored van, and that its driver had stopped quite calmly at a stoplight. Besides a few dents from bullets, the van looked new, the Trenton Security logo was flawless.

It was a good thing the squad cars kept driving, too, for their own sakes. If the cops had drawn down on the van, then Hoyt, Kyle, and Marshall were in the station wagon just behind it with heavy weapons that the cops’ body armor couldn’t hope to stop.

The two vehicles drove six more miles before they came to Britton Ferry Road, which would take them on an un-scenic drive to the outskirts of the Bowery, to one of the abandoned apartment buildings.

Inside the station wagon, Tate was still writhing in pain.

When they got to the condemned building, Donny parked the armored van behind a row of trees and covered it with a tarp. He then hopped into the station wagon with the others, and they drove off. “Using the tunnels was freakin’ genius, Donny!” Kyle said as Hoyt backed the car up. “We lost any police choppers, an’ the cops won’t know which branch o’ the tunnel we took! The message is out guys: don’t mess with the Mob!”

They all started laughing. Only Donny, their leader for this run, didn’t crack a smile. He glanced in the back, where Tate was laying across the others’ laps. “How is he?”

“Just a concussion, prob’ly,” Marshall said.

“What’re you, a doctor? He’s bleeding! Badly!”

“He was screamin’ a minute ago, but now he’s not.”

“That’s usually not a good sign, moron!” Donny said, shaking his head. He was more concerned with having to deal with a dead body and explain it to Joel and the others than anything else.

“I can put him outta his misery if you want,” Marshall offered, like the idiot that he was.

“No, Marshall! Just let it…” He trailed off, looking out the window. Something had caught Donny’s attention along Britton Ferry Road as they left the same way they had come in. “What the hell is that?” he asked. “What’s doing that?”

Hoyt, in the driver’s seat, looked all around. “Doing what?”

“The trees, you idiot! Look at them!”

Hoyt did, and it seemed to dawn on him slowly. Donny hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it before. There were old plane trees on each side of the road that stood like sentries. He had driven down this road many times before, but never had he seen them behaving quite like this. They were bending away from the road, swaying like crazy. And with each passing second, they only swayed more, like a bad wind had suddenly come in out of nowhere.

“What the hell?” Hoyt whispered in wonderment.

Everyone in the car had gone quiet.

“Maybe there’s a storm comin’,” Marshall offered.

“There wasn’t any wind a few minutes ago,” Donny said.

Suddenly, Kyle gasped. “Holy—!” He turned his heard around, searching for something. “Did you see that?”

“What? What was it?”

In the back, Kyle craned his neck and twisted around in his seat to try and get a better look out the windows. “I saw something, man. It was there, just behind us and up in the air, but it’s gone now. I don’t know what it—”

Donny pulled up his MP-5 and looked at Hoyt. “Drive! Fast! And turn off the headlights!”

“Why? What is it?”

“There aren’t any sirens around,” Donny said. “But it’s a chopper. Gotta be.”

“What is it?” Hoyt repeated.

“It’s him.”

The trees suddenly lurched all around them as they came to the end of Britton Ferry Road. All the streetlamps were out here, marking the unofficial entry to the Bowery. The whole street was dark, as was every window around them. The trees and wild grass started swaying even more, caught in a sourceless wind. The phantom chopper that Donny knew was up there was nowhere to be seen. The station wagon turned left, then right, down even darker streets, if that was possible.

“Park the car over there,” Donny instructed Hoyt. He pointed to a little-used bridge that went underneath Langford Park Drive, one with an overgrown and mostly forgotten culvert. Hoyt took them off the paved road and along the short dirt path, and into the patch of briars and brambles beneath the bridge. He put the car in park, and then turned to him. “Now just shut up,” Donny whispered.

“What did you mean by ‘him’?” Hoyt asked.

“I said shut up.”

“Answer me. Who is it?”

Donny hated working with stupid people. “Who do you think, nimrod?”

Hoyt looked at him for a second, then looked in the back seat at the others, all of whom had the most uncertain looks on their faces. Hoyt looked out the driver’s side window, then out the windshield, then back out the driver’s side again. “Naw,” he said, in the tone of a person who doesn’t want to believe. “Naw, can’t be.”

“And why can’t it?” Donny asked. Nobody in the car replied. After a few minutes, he said to the others, “Everybody loaded up?” The sound of new clips snapping into place answered him. Another two minutes passed. Donny looked at his watch and said, “All right…all right, all right, we must’ve lost him. Get us outta here. Get us to Joel’s place.”

Hoyt nodded, and complied readily. The station wagon backed out slowly, as though the driver suspected landmines behind him. When they got fully out of cover, everyone was looking out their window and searching the night skies. “I didn’t know he had a chopper,” Kyle said from the back. In his lap, Tate’s head bobbed once as the man jerked in pain.

“There’s no telling what he’s got,” Donny warned. To Hoyt, he said, “Get us outta here quick.”

They drove back the way they came, and Hoyt drove with a bit more intensity that he had during even their initial flight from the tunnel, wanting to attract no more attention. The car was a lot less cheery now. No one spoke, they all just kept their eyes to the skies, no longer concerned about problems from ground-based vehicles.

It was a long, silent drive across town to Joel’s place.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

* * *

MOST OF THE tension in the car was alleviated by the time the station wagon pulled into Joel Ackerman’s chop shop. Only Carlo, Joel’s right-hand man, was working tonight. He was waiting for them as soon as they pulled up, moving wordlessly to help Kyle with the bags of money.

The shop was filled with several rows of shelves and boxes, each box containing transmissions, engine blocks, drive shafts, wheels, tires, screws, bolts, spark plugs, etc. Pneumatic tools lay strewn about the floor, and all along the walls were engine hoists.

Donny got out of the wagon and ran over to hit the switch that closed the garage door. With the MP-5 still in his hand, he knelt on the left side of the door and watched the skies until the door had completely dropped, then he ran over to help Hoyt and Jake get Tate out of the back seat. Despite Jake’s previous hopeful diagnosis, it didn’t look like Tate was going to make it. I’ll have to dump him in a chemical bath in a tub later, melt him down, and wash him down the drain. Donny hated complications. Still, it was Tate’s own fault, he’d rigged the charges himself and was supposed to be an expert who had trained this stuff in the Army, so he should’ve known how far away to keep.

“What’ll we do with his share?” Hoyt was already asking.

Donny sighed, and ignored him. He had other things to think about at the moment. He went over to Carlo and said, “Where’s Joel?”

“Upstairs.”

“Has he got our passports? Is he living up to his end of the deal?”

“He’s waiting right now, homes.”

Donny nodded, and nervously checked his MP-5 again to make sure it was fully loaded. He looked at Hoyt and said, “Get all the money loaded into the car. Joel said he would give us the works, valid license plates, and changing the VINs on the cars—everything—so we should be free and clear. Go and check to make sure everything’s solid. I’m not paying him only to find out later that it’s all traceable stolen vehicle parts.”

“You got it,” Hoyt said. “But what about Tate’s share—?”

“Man, damn the share right now, Hoyt! I gave you an order now just go do it and stop hassling me with that! Got it?”

Before Hoyt left to do Donny’s bidding, he said, “You really think it was him back there?”

Donny sighed and pointed. “Go.” After Hoyt finally left, Donny turned back to Carlo, shaking his head at the people he sometimes had to put up with in the Mob. They hadn’t come far since their days on Molehill Street, but if he had to drag the whole Mob kicking and screaming into the future to ascend to the level of the Falcone syndicate, he would. The Molehill Mob couldn’t last forever in its current, anarchistic structure. “Take me to Joel,” he said.

Carlo waved him to follow, and jogged up a short flight of stairs to the main offices. By day this was Ackerman’s Auto, a normal repair shop, but at night everything was repurposed to make it one of the leading chop shops in all of Gotham. The Mob had helped make that happen, being one of the few groups willing to give Joel so much business by boosting cars for him, but recently Dreaded Sun had started making use of him too, which Donny didn’t like but, hey, sometimes snakes of a different breed shared beds.

* * *

AFTER LAYING TATE on a cot wrapped in plastic (which might become his final resting place should he not make it), Jake moved quickly to check the two cars they’d been granted by Joel. He revved them both up, and looked to make sure they were both full on gas, as agreed upon.

After a few more minutes of checking the tires and the trunk space, Jake ran over to check on Tate one last time before helping Hoyt and Kyle divvy up the cash. The black steel cases that Carlo had handed to them were made of a specific size and weight, so that they could easily slide into the hidden compartments that had been built into their new cars. Joel Ackerman’s chop shop was incredibly handy to the Molehill Mob, helping them hide everything from guns to cash to drugs, all in ordinary-looking vehicles. The style of the compartments he and his people built were unique and ingenious, which made Joel an indispensible fixture on the underworld landscape.

“Looks like you guys got this covered,” Jake said. “I’m gonna go get the chemical bath ready.”

“For what?” asked Kyle.

“Whattaya think, man?” he said, and glanced over in the direction of Tate, who was now mumbling while unconscious.

No one else commented on the necessity of handling the dying man, and no one else volunteered to help. They all had the ability to cap a cop, but none of them liked the filthy responsibility of melting down a human being with chemicals, or with getting anywhere near the powerful acids that were needed to do the job.

Jake stood up and went to the back door. Before he stepped outside, he picked up his AA-12, just in case. The chemicals were out back, beside a few old engine blocks and near the small shed that housed the special tub that Joel kept just for such emergencies. Jake checked the skies, and listened. A siren trilled someplace far off, but it soon died away in the far distance. After a few more seconds, he stepped outside and jogged over to the shed.

* * *

“BIG” JOEL ACKERMAN was standing in his cluttered office and pacing in front of a television when Donny walked in. He had a half-eaten burger in his hand and aimed it right at Donny when he walked in, then threw it at him. “You’re all over the damn news!” he said, fuming and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Donny wiped hamburger off the front of his jacket, and then looked at the TV. He saw aerial TV news footage taken by choppers over the First Bank of Gotham. He shrugged. “We told you what we needed the van for,” he said. “It’s the First Bank of Gotham, and we had to blow the vault sky high and then ram the van straight through the lobby and into what was left of the wall beside the vault. We always knew things were gonna get his messy.” He stepped up to the fat slob. “Where are the passports?”

Big Joel sneered. “You really thinkin’ o’ leavin’ Gotham for good?”

“Damn straight. The Molehill Mob is branching out. Passports, fat boy. Where?”

Joel’s sneer worsened. “You young gangbangers,” he said, disgusted, and turned around to open the top drawer of his cluttered desk. Donny gripped his MP-5 tight, not knowing what would be coming out of the drawer. Carlo watched Donny closely, as his loyalty was in the fat chop shop owner, not the Molehill Mob.

Joel turned around and tossed a small envelope over to him. Donny caught it with his left hand, his right hand still on the grip of his weapon. “Your share’s waiting on you downstairs,” Donny told him.

“You’re not leavin’ until I come down an’ count it.”

Donny smirked. “I’m a thief, but I’m not cheat.”

“I’ll be the judge o’ that.”

* * *

“WHERE’S JAKE AT?” Donny asked, noticing the hot-head’s absence when he came down.

Hoyt looked around for a moment, then shrugged and put the last of the cash inside the hidden compartment of the driver’s side door. “He said he was gonna go get the chemicals to, uh, take care of Tate.”

Donny nodded, and turned to Kyle, who had a satchel full of Joel’s share. “Give it to him,” he said. Kyle did as ordered, and the big man snatched it out of the younger man’s hand. Big Joel was known as a stickler for details, and as a penny pincher. He would want to know that every single cent of his share was accounted for. He took the blocks of hundred-dollar bills and started counting. Carlo brought down a money counter, and started feeding the money into the machine. Donny sighed. “Is this really necessary, Joel?”

“It is if you wanna drive outta here in my cars,” he said.

The others shook their heads. Kyle and Marshall walked over to Tate. Marshall patted the doomed man on his head, and whispered an empty comfort. The others in the room were very quiet. No one ever wanted to end up melted down in Big Joel’s chop shop, but those were the breaks.

Donny knelt to the side doors of each vehicle, checking the integrity of the hidden compartments. He had to admit, Joel and his people did good work. He stood up, dusting off his knees. “How long’s Jake been gone?”

“I dunno. Five, ten minutes?” Marshall said. Kyle nodded his agreement.

Donny didn’t like that. The shed that kept the chemicals and the tub weren’t that far away, and if Jake wanted to eliminate Tate’s body, then he should’ve been back for the body by now. He checked the MP-5 once more by habit, flipping off the safety. He went to the back door and opened it, peeking out. He looked up at the skies, and saw nothing. He didn’t hear anything besides a dog barking a block or two away.

Donny started to close the door, satisfied that he was just being paranoid. The next thing he knew, glass shattered behind him. Then, there was the sound of canisters clinking on the ground, and a second later there was an explosion. Someone shouted, “Flash-bangs!” A bright, blinding flash consumed the whole chop shop, and if Donny hadn’t been at the back door with his back to it all, and if he hadn’t covered his ears in time, he might’ve been blinded and deafened just like all the others were.

“Cops!” Marshall shouted, staggering around groping for a weapon. “It’s the cops!”

“Where’s my gun?!” Kyle screamed. He tripped over Tate, who was suddenly stirring and screaming in utter terror.

Big Joel and Carlo had raked aside the money they had been counting, and they both drew pistols. They started firing, the maniacs! They fired in every direction, one of them hitting Kyle in the chest. None of them saw what happened; only Donny did.

The bat had come through a window, the glass shattering as he dived and performed a perfect roll, springing to his feet an instant later. He moved all around them, slamming a fist and an elbow into Marshall as he blindly aimed his own AA-12 around at no one that he could see. Batman head-butted Carlo next, snatched his wrist, and twisted it to get the gun free of his hand. The bat used the gun to slam into the side of Big Joel’s head, knocking him out instantly.

Donny reared up his MP-5, and let loose with the latest armor-piercing bullets that had been specially designed for the submachine gun. The bat took one in his right shoulder, and Donny saw another one clip his thigh before he made it to cover behind one of Big Joel’s special vehicles. Donny continued pressing the trigger and spraying the shop until the clip was empty and the car was full of holes. He popped one clip loose, and before it had clattered on the floor he had slapped another one home and opened fire again. He now fired in short, controlled bursts at the car while he backed up towards the other one.

“I knew it was you, bat!” Donny shouted, getting into the driver’s seat and still firing out the passenger’s side window. “I knew it! I’ve known it all night!”

The keys were thankfully in the ignition. Donny cranked it up and pressed the gas, but just as he did something landed in the passenger seat beside him. Before he could smash through the garage doors, the smoke bomb exploded. When he hit the garage door, the airbag went off in his face. Donny still had his MP-5, and while hacking and coughing out the smoke, he fired wildly in the direction of the rear windshield. The sound was deafening inside the car, but he kept firing until the clip was empty. Then, all of a sudden he slammed into something hard, and the car stopped dead in its tracks. His head hit the airbag again, and he dropped the gun to try and fumble his way out of the car.

Donny exited, still coughing and waving smoke from his face, his eyes stinging and tearing up. He got maybe five steps from the car before someone grabbed him up by the collar. “I knew it was…*cough*…you. You’re…*cough*…you’re nothing! Nate’s got your number, bat! Everybody knows it! He’s got—” He took a knee in the stomach, and bowled over. An elbow to the side of his head put him into blissful darkness.

* * *

BATMAN HAD TO act quickly to treat his gunshot wounds. The advanced shear-thickening liquid in his armor was terrific against standard bullets, but whatever the last thief had been shooting hadn’t been standard MP-5 rounds.

He quickly put the rest of the gangsters to sleep using the auto-injector to give them the fast-acting sleep agent, just to make sure they didn’t all wake up at once and finish him off. One of the thieves had been shot by another, and one looked like he had been injured in the explosion that had opened the vault of the First Bank of Gotham. He quickly messaged Alfred, and told him to use the communications array in the cave to make an anonymous call to 911 and ask for an ambulance to get out here ASAP.

With that message sent away, Batman retreated over the fence surrounding Ackerman’s Auto, and breathed deeply and calmly as he made his way through the two alleys he’d taken to get here. He clutched his right shoulder, so as not to leave an obvious blood trail. He found the ladder to the roof of the furniture shop where he’d landed the Bat Hawk ten minutes earlier, and started climbing. His shoulder howled in pain, his leg not so much, though they had both been shot.

On the roof, he hobbled over to the Bat Hawk, still clutching his side. He flung the door open on the chopper, and pulled himself into the seat with great discomfort. In the back of the chopper there was a medical kit, one decked out in all the items he needed for tactical/combat medicine.

Layer by layer, he stripped himself of his get-up, starting with cape and cowl, then the armor and gloves themselves. He used the tactical knife from his right boot to cut at the body glove, so that he could see his right shoulder, which was bleeding but not as badly as it could have been. The STL system of his suit had caused the armor-piercing round to mushroom, yet the impactor had still hit with enough force to bust skin and flesh, and had made it a quarter of the way into his shoulder.

Bruce had volunteered as a medical assistant on his worldly travels as a young man, and had performed surgery on patients without anesthesia. He’d learned a great deal from those experiences. He took deep, deep breaths, and let them out slowly so that he could more easily enter the meditative state that Cassandra had taught him a lifetime ago.

Cassandra had been so committed to the healing arts that she had dressed herself as a boy so as to pass herself off as a Faqir and learn their secrets, and had been cast out of her community for it. She had him sleep on a bed of needles for months on end so that he could control his pain, and the knowledge had come in handy more times than he could now count.

With supreme calm, Bruce washed his wound, wiped it a bit with a cloth, and then stopped the bleeding with QuikClot. The tweezers were in a hermetically-sealed package, and were pre-sterilized. Over the next few minutes, he winced only once as he gently removed the bullet. He applied pressure with gauze before he picked up the quick-cauterizer and finished the job for now; the wound would need stitches as soon as he got to the cave.

Next was his right thigh. The bullet there had gone through the armor, into the side of his leg, and out the back. It was a relatively clean wound, and it had avoided any major arteries or bone, which was a godsend. More QuikClot, gauze, and cauterizing were needed.

He sat there a moment, meditating.

Bruce Wayne sat mostly naked in the back of the Bat Hawk. Faintly, he heard sirens approaching from someplace, both the cop kind and the ambulance sort. He checked his bandages, saw that they were getting soaked, and added new bandages to top, remembering that it was important not to remove the old ones.

Finally, Bruce went to the controls, and started up the chopper. He sent Alfred another message, informing him to get the cave ready for possibly more surgery (fragments of the bullets might still be in him), and focused himself for the flight home. If all went well, he should be there in under twenty minutes, taking a Rohypnol and allowing Alfred to do the stitching while he slept.

On the flight back, Bruce glanced at the armor in the back, and the bloody body glove he had stripped away. The gangsters had actually hit him in two places where the STL system should have been very strong, and yet both bullets had gone through. They had probably been hollow-point, or at least had something special at their core. He’d been hearing about the criminals in Gotham City getting more advanced weaponry in recent months, had heard about cops getting hit with special rounds, but so far he hadn’t run into any of them himself.

He made a mental note to contact Lucius. Time for another upgrade.

The Bat Hawk hummed quietly across the city sky. Off in the distance, Bruce saw a building burning in the Bowery. It was probably no coincidence. The whole city’s on fire, he thought. A twinge of pain put his focus back on flying, and he continued the exercises Cassandra had taught him the whole way back to Wayne Manor.