CHAPTER 31

Four blocks from Ming’s Crossing, Gordon was halted by a police barricade, but a flash of his credentials and a reminder of who he was had three officers make way for him to drive on in. “I’m on my way inside to assess some of the damage for a formal report to the mayor later today,” he told them. “I won’t be going in very far.” Somewhat reluctantly, they let him go.

Harlem Street still had a great deal of debris and two burnt cars leftover from the night’s activities. The remnants of one flash mob were still running around and throwing objects through windows with total abandon.

Gordon pulled his car slowly down the street. At the far end of Harlem Street, Little Chinatown began. Little Chinatown was barely bigger than two blocks, but it was usually teeming with Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese, who started up Laundromats, restaurants, and other family-owned businesses. Gordon hadn’t been to this end of town in a long time.

As he drove, Gordon had to swerve out of the way of looters twice, one of them lifting a small plastic trash can and throwing it at his window. There were no other cars. Everyone else is smart enough to stay away, he thought.

Gordon looked up through his windshield, the glinting light off of a police helicopter winking down at him. A news chopper was not too far behind it, and rioters were leaping atop cars and giving the finger to the aerial viewers, and the viewers of the world, obviously. The image that the rest of the world was now seeing of Gotham City was one of mayhem, and one that said the city’s officials were completely out to lunch. The damage was already approaching catastrophic, and after all was said and done, tourism would take a heavy hit, as it always did in cities where such negative media attention was drawn to it.

On the radio, Mayor Walden was speaking at a town hall meeting. “There can be no doubt, none whatsoever, that everything that can be done is being done,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that these problems have been compounded! Over the last two years, increasing neglect of our police and firefighting forces has brought us to a weakened state, where otherwise solvable problems have created monumental disorder and anarchy in our streets! I have already made my thoughts clear on this subject in comments I made earlier this week as to who’s to blame, but we will not be retreading that ground right now. Commissioner Gordon is slated to make his first appearance before a committee this afternoon, and that will settle itself. In the meantime, we need to get past this political roadblocks, and support our law enforcement—”

Gordon turned the volume down and swerved around a car that had been abandoned in the middle of the street, the windows shattered but at least it was unburned. He remembered his words to the bat again. It’s all coming apart.

Ming’s Crossing, once a reputable Chinese restaurant and a staple of good food and good business on this side of town, was utterly gutted. The front windows were shattered and tables, chairs, curtains, plates and silverware had been pulled out into the street for no discernible reason. However, one row of stacked chairs and arranged silverware indicated someone had had a plan to take some of it home, but had abandoned it, probably right at the moment that a wave of riot police had come through.

Gordon pulled the car up to the sidewalk, where four parking meters had been smashed, their coins spills across the street. He rolled down his window and looked around the area. There was no sound coming from this street, but he could just hear the sounds of anarchy a block or two away. A woman appeared from around the side of Ming’s Crossing with a baby in her arms. Gordon was struck by how calmly she walked, as if she were on her way to work, nothing abnormal about her demeanor at all.

God, don’t let his be our new normal.

A black van pulled up behind him. Gordon looked in his rearview mirror, and his hand went to the pistol at his waist. Another van, this one gray, pulled around the side of Ming’s Crossing, going around the woman with her small baby and parked just beside Gordon, boxing him in. A woman leaned out the window, her face painted pale white like a geisha, her lips painted with at dark-red, glossy finish, and she wore black eye shadow. The left side of her face was obviously injured, and he wondered if Sarah had done that when they ambushed her.

A man opened the sliding side door of the van, and stepped out. His was a familiar face. One of the Penguin’s nightclub bouncers, he recalled. He had met him face-to-face, and seen his name written in the FBI’s growing profile on the Iceberg Lounge. His name’s Maurice.

“You got a pistol, right, Commish?” said the injured woman, sitting in the driver’s seat. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Throw it out the window.”

Gordon moved slowly, and showed his short-barreled Taurus .357 Magnum. He tossed it out the window, where it clattered against the ground.

“Your phone, too.”

He did as he was told, and tossed his cell out the window. “I did as you asked,” he said. “I came alone. Now where’s Agent Essen?”

“I’m sure Mr. Jay told you that I’d be around to pick you up,” the woman said, smiling at him. The bandages on the side of her face were insufficient to cover up the whole wound, which looked grievous. “Hop in, we’ll go for a spin of the city. You should see it, Commissioner! It’s like a revolution! A real one! The people hath spoken!” she shouted in a forced baritone, and threw her arms up in the air, fists punching upwards victoriously.

“I want to talk to Agent Essen herself before I get out of this car,” he said. “I think that’s a reasonable request.”

“Mr. Jay thought you’d say that,” she said, and pulled out a cell phone. After she hit a single button, she tossed it to Gordon, who listened to it auto dial.

“This is the new home offices of Ming’s Crossing,” the Joker said upon answering. “While we are currently undergoing renovations, we are still happy to serve our customers with takeout and delivery. However, you will have to come to us, after you make a selection from our fine menu, that is.”

“Where’s Sarah?” You insufferable maniac, he thought to add.

“Oh, so you want Sarah Essen? A fine, fine choice, sir! We were just about to serve her to the dogs, but if you’re willing to take her off our hands, I’d be most happy if you would get in the van with my associates and they will be more than happy to bring you to her.”

“I wanna talk to her.”

“Oh, of course, sir! Absolutely. Just a moment.”

A few seconds of fumbling before he heard Sarah’s voice. “Jim? Don’t you listen to these people—!”

“There, you’ve talked!” the Joker snarled, coming back on the line. “If you want to continue your conversation, Commish, then get in the damn van and let my little Harley Quin bring you to your Sarah. I understand you two have a history together? Ssshhh,” he whispered, “I know how to keep a secret, and Mrs. Commissioner will never hear it from these lips.”

Click.

Gordon looked at the phone, then out the window at the harlequin, or whatever she was supposed to be. Was that meant to be another pun, something like what the Riddler might do? Then, after he stepped out of the car and handed the phone back over to the woman, Gordon realized he knew her from someplace. But where? “Pat him down,” she ordered. A thug had hopped out of the other van to do just that. When the woman spoke, her voice resonated with some half remembered scene on television.

No…no, can’t be. Beneath all that makeup and that hideous injury, there was an ember there of another woman’s fire. It was the eyes that gave her away. He had met her once or twice before in person, but had seen her a great deal in interviews in between sessions of the Joker trial.

Gordon had heard the rumors that the doctor had gone missing, and that some believed she was complicit in the Joker’s escape, or may have even been the woman in the garbage truck, but with all that had been going on he hadn’t really stopped to consider it until now. “Dr. Quinzel?” he said.

“Who’s that?” she said, and tittered. “Leave the keys in your car, Commish.” She called out to Maurice. “Take his car somewhere, maybe down that alley, an’ hide it. That’s what Mr. Jay said to do.”

Maurice gave the young woman a look that said he didn’t like this new chain-of-command, but the big man moved to obey.

“Dr. Quinzel…I don’t understand, what the hell is going on? Are you a part of this?” he asked, hoping to keep her and her partners’ minds on other things so that they didn’t think about the possibility of anyone being in the trunk.

“We’re all a part of this, Commish,” she said jovially. “We’re all in this thing together. I thought you’d’ve figured that out by now. You seem like a smart guy, after all.” Her smile could’ve been that of a young girl looking lovingly up at her grandfather. This is all a game to her. “Get in,” she said, after the thug had finished patting him down. They hadn’t checked his left shoe, and he was thankful for that small grace.

As Maurice drove off with his car, Gordon thought about going back for his wife. She has a gun and is ready and willing to use it, he told himself. Part of him cursed himself for bringing her along, but another part of him remembered something else he’d said: Desperate times call for desperate measures. He hopped into the van. A few minutes later Maurice joined them.

“Where didja park it?” asked Dr. Quinzel—“My little Harley Quin” as the Joker had dubbed her.

“A block up,” he said. “Behind Chang’s Laundromat.”

They sat him in the back seat, sandwiching him between Maurice and Judd, another of Cobblepot’s bodyguards. The van that had initially pulled up behind his car drove off, and the crazy woman in the front seat U-turned in the middle of the damaged street to follow. “Buckle up, Commish,” she hollered. “It’s a mad house out here today! A maaaaaaaaad house!” She laughed all the way through Little Chinatown, using a series of back roads, side streets, and narrow alleys that Gordon scarcely knew were all connected. She used these streets to get them out of the area while circumventing roadblocks.

They passed by a flash mob that ran at their van, throwing bottles, rocks, cans, a toilet seat, and anything else they could pick up. Harley drove poorly, as though she had just learned how, and didn’t seem to care at all when she clipped one of the rioters.

“Where are we going?” Gordon asked.

“Harley Quin” gave a little snigger as she looked at him through the rearview mirror, wagging her index finger at him. “Uh-uh-uh, Mr. Commish, that would be telling.”

Gordon thought back to his wife in the trunk of his car. I must’ve been out of my mind to let her convince me to let her come along. It had been an emotional debate, and Barbara was stubborn and knew how to press him. But it doesn’t matter now. She’s safe. She’s not going to be anywhere near this.

* * *

THE AV-8B V/STOL Harrier II was piloted by Major Karen Manzanita, call sign “Rook”. Her jet rocketed towards the last known position of the unidentified aircraft. The UFO wasn’t appearing on her screens, which worried her, because not only was it field grade weather out, total CAVU, but her jet had recently seen the upgrade of the latest sensors. If the Harrier’s advanced systems couldn’t detect it, then they might very well be dealing with a serious enemy combatant, not just a lost tour-giving chopper like she and her squadron had surmised before liftoff.

The rumors had trickled through that it was the Batman, but she didn’t believe that. There was no way an outlaw vigilante could be this technically proficient.

“Bravo-Echo-Echo-two-four-seven,” came the voice of command over her radio.

Manzanita replied. “This is Bravo-Echo-Echo-two-four-seven. I read you, Command, five by five. Go ahead.”

“Rook, we have a bead window! Repeat, bead window! Chattermark and go active, acknowledge.”

That was serious. A “bead window” was NATO brevity code, meaning that their last transmission may have been picked up by enemy forces, and it may have disclosed unauthorized information. “Chattermark” was also brevity code, telling Major Manzanita and her two wing men that from now on they should be prepared to switch to brevity code whenever necessary, since the interception of their last transmission meant that their target was probably capable of jamming them. Brevity code made it easier to get out complicated commands and responses, since long sentences broken up by static lost all their meaning.

“Base, this is Rook. Copy chattermark. Going active,” she said, indicating that she was switching to UHF radio frequency hopping mode. “We’re heading in on a two-two-six. Pig says he saw a black dot moving fast across the sky and dipping behind the larger buildings. That could be our bogey. Permission to investigate?”

“Permission granted. Proceed on your two-two-six.”

“Cyclops!” someone shouted over the comm. That was Shaun Kehoe, call sign “Pig”. He was calling out an unmanned aerial device (or UAV). “I’ve got a cyclops scanning directly ahead!”

Manzanita looked at her sensors, and then aimed the camera on the belly of her jet in that direction. Sure enough, a small, black orb of some kind had come hovering around the side of Wayne Enterprises HQ. It was scanning small, say no larger than a basketball, and about the same dimensions. “Confirm cyclops. I see it.”

“Another cyclops on the left,” said Andre “Guts” Gavioli. “Two of them! Closing! I’m getting readings that I’m being scanned! Rook, I’m being targeted! Commit?”

“Negative! Don’t commit. Repeat, do not commit,” she said. “Guts, we are feet dry! Do not commit or engage! It’s a surveillance drone, or maybe a duck!” A “duck” in brevity code was a tactical air-launched decoy (TALD). “It’s just watching us. Gaff off. Continue!” They went on with their present maneuver, which at this point was merely to approach in a group, but not to get so close to one another that they presented an easy, all-in-one target.

They slowed their speed as they approached the large, towering skyscraper. “Give me flash!” Manzanita ordered. Her two squad mates flipped on their emergency IFF transponders, more powerful than their standard IFFs, so that they could identify friend from foe if they did engage something.

“Rook,” said Pig, “I’ve got visual on a large, fast-moving object near the bottom of the tower. Looks like a helicopter. Confirm.”

From up so high, Manzanita couldn’t just look out her window at the bottom of the skyscraper. Manzanita now tilted her jet so that she could look down. She saw the fast-moving object, and recognized it at once as a helicopter, although one swifter than she was used to seeing. “Confirmed! Guts, heads up! We’ve got a bogey. Base, how do you hear? Are you reading me, over?”

“Five by five, Rook. Go ahead.”

“Base, please advise! Do we give chase or maintain superior monitoring positions?”

A moment of silence, while no doubt men conferred quickly with one another back at base.

“Rook, Base. You are hereby ordered to hunt that bogey down and come within hailing range to demand that it identify itself. You will then command it to land. If it does not comply, you are to drive it to an area where losses will be minimal and shoot it down. Confirm.”

“Roger, Base. Moving to engage. Target is low. Guts, Pig, we’re dropping our pants,” Manzanita said, and all together they slowed their speed dramatically. Manzanita pulled the lever on her right side, recoiling the sonic flaps and the supercritical airfoil that had delayed the onset of wave drag in the transonic speed. All at once, 23,000 pounds of thrust slowed the Harrier. In seconds, she had gone to a halt, hovering in the air just a few stories off the ground.

The black helicopter had moved underneath an overpass, and was passing over lanes of traffic as it dipped behind other skyscrapers, none of them as tall as WE’s home offices. Manzanita maneuvered her jet around the side of the skyscraper to get a better view. However, at this time of day, the sun was now facing this side of WE’s skyscraper, and from so high up the reflection off the glass was blinding—or would’ve been if not for her tinted visor.

“Bogey on my tail!” shouted Guts suddenly, and their whole group split apart from one another to turn around and face this new threat. But all Manzanita saw was one of the small black orbs flying around on little propellers, zipping here and there. The reading coming off of it now was enormous, much larger than before.

“Yep, it’s a duck!” she said. “The signal’s enhanced to draw the attentions of our sensors! Look for the other two to start emitting stronger scrambling to make themselves appear bigger on radar! He’s trying to distract us!” As if waiting for her cue, her enemy-alert board did indeed signal her to two large bogeys directly overhead. “Anyone still have a visual on the chopper?”

“No, ma’am, that’s a no joy.”

“Negative. No joy!”

“How about on gonks?” she asked, referring to any and all equipment.

“That’s a negative, nothing on my gonks, either,” said Pig.

That meant their bogey was committed to his hiding game between buildings and along the streets of Gotham City. All right, big boy, she thought. You wanna dance? Let’s dance. Manzanita put power to the forward thrusters, and shot over the rooftops. This target had so far presented an unusual challenge. “Pig, Guts, on me!” she said, and they went on a hunt.

“Roger, Rook,” said Pig. “You are in the lead.”

* * *

BARBARA GORDON HAD been afraid to move once she heard all the talking start. She had also feared hearing the gunshot that might signal her husband’s death. But she kept her promise, and remained quiet. When the car cranked up again, she felt a little hopeful that it might be Jim, and that they might have actually handed Sarah over and let them both go. But then she heard an unfamiliar voice humming to himself. Even from the trunk, she knew it wasn’t Jim driving.

The car came to a halt again a couple minutes later, and whoever was driving got out and didn’t come back.

Barbara waited for about ten minutes before she dared to reach up and push the button that opened the trunk. It popped up, and she nudged it with the tip of her Beretta, already drawn and the safety switched off. She was in an alley behind a row of business, back where trucks usually backed up to unload the freight. Barbara pulled out her cell phone and searched for the signal from Jim’s phone, which should still be turned on inside his left shoe with the keypad locked.

It only took a second to find it moving fast along Atlanta-Groeve Park Drive. She ran to the driver’s seat of the car…and was crestfallen when she saw that someone had taken the keys. “Oh…God. Oh no, oh God no!” she said, her voice starting to tremble. She ran from the alley and into the street, which was devoid of people but filled with busted mailboxes, two charred cars, and gutted businesses. Barbara tucked the Beretta in her waistline, then jogged up the street, which was eerily quiet.

Overhead, there was the whup-whup-whup of a helicopter. Barbara looked up at the sky and saw a white news chopper zipping by a thousand feet in the air. From their perspective, she figured she probably looked like the last human survivor in an end-of-the-world movie, the last person to tell the tale of the holocaust.

Somewhere not too far away, Barbara heard a whistle blow. It was three short tweets, and then there was a sudden cheer, or a roar.

Atlanta-Groeve Park Drive was southeast of her, so she ran in that direction, down Camp Street, and then turned left on Milton, jogging due south. There were three more tweets from a whistle, closer this time, and more shouting. Barbara had a bad feeling about the sounds.

She got to the end of Milton Street, and paused dead in her tracks when three young toughs came running around the corner, baseball bats in hand and smashing the last remaining window in a clothing store. Barbara reached for the Beretta, but froze when five more toughs came around the corner, shirtless and carrying the all-too-familiar logo of Dreaded Sun on their chests. Then, six more came around the corner, running like they were being chased by tigers. Then a dozen more, then twenty, and pretty soon their collective roar filled the streets. It was a stampede of rebellion, with no real purpose but nevertheless headed hell-bent right at her.

Barbara turned away from the approaching mob and ran back up the street. She drew the Beretta. The pistol in one hand, and her cell phone in the other, she bolted, searching for an alternate route to Atlanta-Groeve.

* * *

BATMAN PULLED THE Bat Hawk underneath a tall overpass and then slipped into a thoroughfare, sliding down a heavily-occupied street before dipping around the Landon-Horatio Shipping Company’s headquarters, which was as 100-storey skyscraper. He came just thirty feet off the ground, eighteen-wheelers honking beneath him, fearful of him descending any farther.

At the other end of the street, Batman flared the chopper, pitching the nose forward with aft cyclic. This would normally cause the chopper to gain altitude, or balloon, but in this case he reduced the collective to prevent a climb. The power decrease required him to press the right pedal. He was thankful there was a head wind, even if it was only four knots.

Before he lost ETL (effective translational lift), Batman pitched the nose of the Bat Hawk back down into an approach attitude using forward cyclic. He picked a spot on the second floor of the Landon-Horatio building around the north corner offices, where an eccentric architect had designed an overhang that jutted far, far out from the building. He aligned that spot with a ten-degree approach angle, flying over on a normal approach to take cover. The shadow of the overhang enveloped him, but it wasn’t nearly dark enough on a sunny day like this.

When Batman put the Bat Hawk into a hover, he could look over at the people inside the Landon-Horatio building, running away from the windows, terrified of a collision as the chopper remained perfectly suspended.

Minutes went by as he followed the three Harriers on his radar and sonar, and waited for them to start circling around the building. He commanded his three drones, which he’d fired from the launcher he’d repurposed to fire the UAVs instead of missiles, to stay near the Harriers to continue jamming and confusing them.

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Batman finally pulled out of cover, flying around to the building north-to-west while his hunters went south-to-east. All four aircraft faced the Landon-Horatio building, Batman trying to keep out of sight of the Harriers, which circled around and around the building, looking for him. He flew counter to them for another minute, before finally he heard the group’s leader, a woman, say over the comm, “Anybody see anything? Visual?” He had successfully tapped into their communications, and heard everything they were saying.

“Negative, no joy!”

“That’s a no joy, Rook! And I’m still getting interference from those drones! They’re making me antsy. Can we shoot them down?”

“Negative, Guts. We are weapons tight. Repeat, weapons tight!” That meant that they could fire only at targets positively identified as hostile and in accordance with ROE. “But I’ll tell you what we are gonna do. Pig, you move around to the south. Guts, to the north. I’m going straight up.” Then, she added, “If you’re listening to us, Batman, you are hereby ordered to land your aircraft and surrender to the United States military. Failure to comply will be seen as an act of aggression against the United States of America, and will be met with force! All right, let’s move!”

All at once, the three blips on his radar and sonar screens split apart smoothly. Batman didn’t like pitting himself against the military, it wasn’t why he became what he became, and for a moment it brought into question once again that he might be bringing on more problems to Gotham City than he was solving.

The doubt crossed his mind for a split second, and immediately evaporated. He followed through with his plan, which was to ascend rapidly. One thing the Bat Hawk could do well was that, and fast! Harriers could hover for a time, and could take off vertically, but they could only gain their incredible speed by having a clear path to climb along. The business district of Gotham was dense, filled with numerous skyscrapers, and they would have to come above that skyline to get back up to their incredible speed, or else they’d crash into something. The Bat Hawk, however, could ascend vertically, quickly, and get a good head start horizontally before dropping down again and disappearing back into the streets.

The Bat Hawk took him up to the top of Landon-Horatio’s building fast, long before “Rook’s” Harrier had surmounted it, and Batman used the cyclic to bank hard and pushed the chopper to high speed, pressing him back into his seat and taking him quickly over to the next set of buildings, which was unofficially called the “computer district”, a conglomerate of software company skyscrapers, communications towers and even camera towers for most of the news organizations headquartered in Gotham.

The Bat Hawk slipped between the buildings just as his radar told him that Rook had come up over the Landon-Horatio building.

“I see him!” Rook said.

The pilot named “Pig” said, “You sure? You have tally?”

“Confirm. That’s a tally! And he’s making a run for it at low,” Rook said. In brevity code, Batman knew, “low” meant the target was below an altitude of 10,000 feet AGL (above ground level). “He’s dipping into that collection of smaller skyscrapers. He’s a fast one, too! Moving to pursue!” Rook’s dot on the radar screen got much closer much faster than he’d anticipated. She was far ahead of her squad mates, who were trying to gain the right altitude to follow after her; if they moved forward now with any kind of speed, they’d collide with the lower floors of various other skyscrapers, or even with overpasses. The Bat Hawk had more maneuverability than all that.

An upscale high-rise, occupied mostly by the workers in the computer district, was Batman’s hiding place now; at forty feet in the air, he faced the building, flying around it at an angle he hoped kept the high-rise between himself and Rook. However, there was no doubt Rook would be on him eventually. She’d probably hover overhead, thrusting forward in bursts at speeds the Bat Hawk couldn’t dream of until she got a visual, or a “tally” on him.

Batman was watching his radar screen closely, watching the approaching blip right up until the moment it vanished. She dropped below radar. That means she’s very, very low, maybe even hovering as low as I am.

Batman now had to depend solely on his eyes and ears. He went around the high-rise so slowly that he was able to spot numerous people going about their daily lives with their curtains parted, one man getting dressed and pausing to stare out the window at the black war bird passing just outside. The relative quiet of the Bat Hawk might be more haunting to the man than its sudden appearance.

He flew around the west side of the building, near three tall buildings that were sister companies, all of them connected by three enclosed, windowed bridges—one at the tenth level, the second at the twentieth, and the third at the thirtieth—that allowed workers to walk between them without having to go to ground level and walk across the street.

These buildings were nicknamed the Triumverate, and they each contained offices rented out by some of the most powerful corporations in Gotham, including some offices for researchers for Wayne Enterprises. And it was between Building One and Building Two of the Triumverate that he saw Rook hovering, her nose aimed right at him from three hundred yards away. The Harrier was moving into a better position for firing.

“Pig, Guts, this is Rook! Tally! Tally!”

* * *

BARBARA GORDON HAD gone through a lot in the last two weeks of her life. She had received e-mails from an insane killer who chose to use her and her family as a conduit for dropping subtle hints and threats at the people of Gotham City, and at Batman. She had felt her children’s lives at stake—again! She had argued with her husband more heatedly than ever before, and had felt forced to leave him behind for the sake of their children.

Now, she saw old neighborhoods she’d grown up around torn to pieces, the people acting like animals, and the people who were in charge of law, order, and decency, were nowhere to be found.

The flash mob that had come running down the street behind her had dispersed in many different directions after someone had blown on a loud whistle again. It seemed to be the call to retreat. Several in the mob had their cell phones out, Barbara had noticed, and they seemed to be constantly checking their messages, probably to get the latest news from other flash mobs. Barbara had heard on the news that all the mobs were in close communication through their cell phones, thus chaotic mobs that would’ve been otherwise easy to disperse within a twenty-four-hour period had become relatively organized. The police couldn’t stay ahead of them.

Jim and Sarah were right. We do need the National Guard in here. From the safety of her house, watching the footage on TV, it had appeared bad, but not this bad. Down here at street level, walking among the detritus left by old mobs and watching the occasional homeless person rifling through the debris, and watching as a group of three or more mobsters ran freely from one alley to another and screaming “Don’t mess with the Mob!”, instantly changed Barbara’s view on what was really going.

Barbara was nearly out of breath when she finally stopped running, pausing at an intersection. A lone car pulled up to the stoplight, and actually stopped when it turned red, the driver daring to obey traffic laws even in this bleak time. The car was a green, four-door Pontiac Grand Am, and the driver was a man with long, shaggy red hair and a beard. He was a fat fellow, barely fitting in his own front seat.

They probably looked strange, Barbara and the bearded man, the two of them just looking at one another, him in his lone operational and undestroyed car, her panting like she’d just finished running from a stampede of buffalo.

Without knowing what she was doing, Barbara started walking across the street, her Beretta still tucked in her waistline behind her back. It wasn’t until she was at the driver’s side that the guy called out to her. “Hey, lady, you okay?”

“Can you drive me somewhere? Just a short drive?”

“You shouldn’t be out here, miss,” he said helpfully.

“Yeah, I know. Can you give me a lift?”

“Where to?”

Barbara looked at her cell phone, and saw that the blip that represented her husband’s position had suddenly turned north. “Montoya Street. You know it?”

“Yeah, sure, get in.”

* * *

MAJOR MANZANITA COULDN’T wait for her other two squad mates, she had to move fast if she wanted to keep eyes-on. The bogey dropped swiftly to street level, about twenty feet in the air, enough to clear the tallest trailer of an eighteen-wheeler, and the bird even picked a lane to follow, moving at about fifty miles an hour with traffic.

“This is Rook, going pure now! Repeat, pure!” she said, indicating that she was going into pursuit. Her squad mates would just have to catch up when they could. “Targeting now,” she added, a second before the long, constant beep in her ear indicated that she had the bogey fully targeted. “I’ve got tone. Repeat, I’ve got tone.” On her small screen, Manzanita could see the black chopper lined up in a green crosshair that suddenly turned red. “Base, I’ve got tone! Please advise—”

Then, all at once, she didn’t have tone. The black bird spun on a dime and rocketed suddenly to the south, moving farther away from the high-rise traveling under an overpass. In its wake was a cloud of what appeared to be dust.

“Damn it! Target’s moved! He’s moving fast behind cover, no joy, no joy! Target is using chaff. I repeat, chaff!”

“Rook, this is Base. Are you certain? Do you see a chaff cloud?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “It’s slight but I can see it!” The cloud of aluminum bloomed in front of her, and on her screens she suddenly saw a bundle of targets that weren’t actually there as her crosshairs tried to lock onto phantoms. The chaff had successfully swamped her radar, and the chopper had vanished briefly underneath another overpass. It must’ve hovered there because it didn’t come out the other side. Manzanita could no longer target by sight.

“If that thing’s using chaff then it is a military vehicle, no question!” came the authoritative voice of base command. “You are advised to consider yourself in threat level red! When next you get close enough and are in a relatively unoccupied area, take it out!”

“Copy that, Base.” Rook had already blasted off, trying to cut the chopper off before it could get to the other side of the overpass. When she got within fifty yards of the high-rise beside the overpass, Rook pulled back on the power and resumed a hover. She pitched sideways, her jet emerging around the east side of the residential building just as the black chopper popped back out from the cover of the overpass.

“Base, target is extremely low! Say only about twenty feet off the ground and holding that altitude! I’m going to have to get closer if I want to ensure against hitting vital backstop!” The backstop meant anything behind her target—if she fired her 30mm depleted uranium ammunition at the chopper, a lot of it would undoubtedly miss (considering the chopper’s speed), and the bullets that did hit would almost certainly go through and hit something else before stopping.

“Rook, Base, do what you have to do. Just bring that chopper down!”

“Copy , Base. Rook moving in. Pig, Guts, follow my transponder and catch up when you have the chance!” Manzanita dropped power to thrusters to lower herself to about forty feet in the air and then thrust forward.

* * *

BATMAN HAD ONLY ever undergone this sort of chase in simulations, and even then it hadn’t been against Harriers. The jets could hover off the ground like a helicopter, yet blast forward at great bursts of speed. They did not have the quick-turn capabilities of a combat helicopter, though, much less the Bat Hawk, which was what he was counting on when he made for a row of office buildings and turned sharply onto Kissinger Avenue, Gotham’s biggest shopping district.

Behind him, the Harrier would have to cut forward speed greatly before making such a tight turn, while the Bat Hawk dropped a small percentage of its speed in order to make it. Still, the Harrier’s speed allowed it to burst forward, directly on the Batman’s tail just a second before he made another swift turn onto Avery Avenue.

Inside his batsuit, Batman was sweating. He wasn’t at all confident in his ability to defeat a highly-trained U.S. Air Force pilot, at least, not on their terms. He had to change the game, and use his knowledge of Gotham City to lose the tail. He figured “Rook” would keep the Harrier higher than him, and he was right. The pilot was taking the jet upwards, around forty or fifty feet up, while he remained just high enough to clear the tallest vehicle.

He came to a clearing, where the tall buildings petered off and left him exposed. To the west was the Covington Overpass, which wouldn’t quite give him enough room at the altitude he was keeping, so Batman dropped to about ten feet off the ground and turned toward the overpass. He stayed in the middle lane between a frightened motorcyclist who pulled off to the side of the road and a van carrying a ladder on top and belonging to Triton Air Conditioning Service.

Once out the other side of the wide overpass, Batman turned quickly at the off-ramp from the highway he was above. A mixed, deciduous forest on either side of the off-ramp would grant him a bit of cover for the moment. He took an immediate right and made for Vanderlin Boulevard, which had buildings almost as tall as the computer and business districts.

The Harrier wasn’t too far behind. Batman spotted it when he did a quick turn west again onto Norton Avenue and saw it approaching fast out his left window. He pushed the Bat Hawk to seventy-two knots, reaching the end of Norton before the Harrier could clear the street for a better view, and then he turned sharply left onto Truman Street, dropping down to sixty knots before making another immediate left onto Pullman Street. He had maybe fifteen seconds before he estimated the Harrier would have a clear visual of him again. Batman reached out and pushed three buttons, priming the final surveillance/countersurveillance drone in his launcher. He gave it a destination priority from the chopper’s GPS station, and fired it.

A hum, almost inaudible, went through the Bat Hawk. In front of him, the small, basketball-sized hovercraft shot out before arching upwards and then turning sharply to go behind him, in the opposite direction. Already, it was sending out its false-targeting and sensor-jamming signals.

Batman climbed to clear a power line, then dropped back to twenty feet and took a turn northward on Fenton Street (where Patrick Tralley and his family had once lived, incidentally), and then turned sharply west onto Ponce de Leon Avenue. He wasn’t too far now from Dixon Dock. If he could make it there, and then on to Gotham River, it didn’t matter how many commuters spotted him, none of them would think the Bat Hawk was anything more than another police helicopter. But, he had to get there first, and hope that the commuters driving ten feet below him didn’t dial 911 before he got clear of the city.

He also had to hope that “Rook” fell for his ruse.

* * *

CLEARLY SHE HAD lost him, and this time she hadn’t a clue where he’d gone. Then, a clear signal burst onto her screen, somewhere east of her, which was directly behind her at the moment.

All of Manzanita’s alarms suddenly came alive, and were screaming in her ear. “I’ve been locked! I’ve been locked!” She pulled up, shot all power to vertical thrusters, and then aimed for the skies. There was a missile right on her tail. She couldn’t see it, but it was clearly right on her. She cleared a ten-storey building before she could hit the speeds she wanted. Just before she did, though, Pig was screaming in her ear.

“Rook, you’re in the clear! It’s not a bogey! It’s a duck! Repeat, it’s another duck!”

Damn it, another decoy and I fell for it!

By the time Manzanita was turning back towards the part of the city where she had lost visual on the chopper, there was absolutely no sign of it. She climbed and climbed, expecting it to finally emerge from street level—after all, it had to come up some time—but there was no sign on it.

“I’ve lost visual! No joy, no joy! Anybody have a bead on this guy?”

“Negative,” said Pig.

“Negative,” echoed Guts.

Damn it! She sighed. Another ten minutes of searching turned up nil. “Base, Rook. No joy. We’ve lost visual. Repeat, no joy, we have lost all contact with the chopper. It’s totally vanished. Last known direction southwest of the city.”

“Copy that, Rook. We’re sending in another squadron. We’re not finished with this guy, yet.”

More bogeys appeared on her screen, three of them, no doubt the first drones that had alerted her squad mates, now following them around and nagging at them. The targets were incredibly small, but if they focused down on them, Manzanita and her boys could probably remove them all. “Sir, permission to shoot these drones out of the sky? They’re following us around like the flu and mucking us all up.”

“Negative, Rook. Leave one of your people to take out those drones, the other two of you will continue sweeping that part of the city for any sign of the threat.”

“Copy that, Base. Guts, you’re staying here. Take out those drones over areas where there will be zero collateral damage. Pig, you’re coming with me.”

“Copy,” Guts said.

“Copy that, Rook,” came Pig’s reply.

* * *

GORDON WAS SURPRISED that so far they hadn’t blindfolded him or put any sort of bag over his head. On each side of him, Maurice and Judd quietly looked out their respective windows, hardly paying attention to their prisoner or anything he did. I’m a prisoner. I’m the police commissioner of Gotham City, and I surrendered to a bunch of thugs.

Still, he was alert and fixed in survival mode. He’d been watching the street signs and marking every turn they made. Gordon knew most of this city like the back of his hand, but some of the side streets and little-used roads they were driving down were entirely new to him.

After nearly forty minutes of driving, they finally pulled onto Cape Carmine. Gordon had a sinking suspicion of where they were going. After passing through Zapruder Boulevard, there was little question. “Are we going to the Iceberg Lounge?”

“Psshhhh,” said “Harley”. “I hate it when they guess the surprise! Like when kids sneak around the house to find Christmas presents. The least ya could do is pretend to be surprised, Commish!”

Another five minutes of driving and there it was, the big, blue-and-white exterior of the chic nightclub. It was closed this early in the day, of course, but Harley pulled the van around to the back, into a garage, where a door opened upon their approach. It was a loading area for all the food and goods the Lounge stocked.

The van trundled on in, but Harley was unable to apply the brakes in time, and they slammed into a few wooden crates stacked on the far wall while the garage door shut behind them, and both Judd and Maurice shouted at her to stop. Harley giggled as she fumbled to put the van into park.

“Get me outta this van,” he heard Judd mutter as he opened the sliding door. Judd stood there like a bodyguard awaiting his client.

Gordon stepped out tentatively, looking around the open loading area. A couple of thugs in business suits were waiting for him. It was cold in here, though that shouldn’t have surprised him being at the Iceberg Lounge, and freight was stacked high all around him. There was a giant freezer with a transparent door behind him. It was packed with ice, and had fish inside that looked so fresh they might’ve been plucked out of the sea an hour ago.

He looked around for the other van, but it hadn’t come into the loading area with them.

Somebody shoved his shoulder. It was Maurice. “That way,” he said.

Gordon followed. They went up a flight of stairs, Harley and Judd in the lead, Maurice brought up the rear, along with three other thugs Gordon knew the faces of from Sarah’s surveillance photos but couldn’t recall their names. One had a scar across his brow and was as wide in chest as a refrigerator, while the one behind him had long, slick hair pulled back into a ponytail.

They went up a short flight of stairs, then passed through the Lounge’s kitchen, where ten chefs were already hard at work, no doubt preparing the meals for later that night. They passed through a set of double doors, and walked down a long hallway before emerging into the club proper. The Lounge was, of course, empty this time of day. It was strange to see, since the last time Gordon had been here the nightclub had been bursting with activity. The only people in here now were a couple of cellists tuning their instruments and chatting while going over some music. Gordon thought he recognized them as members of The Hurlihees. The two musicians stopped what they were doing to look at Gordon and his entourage as they walked in.

Harley, Maurice, Judd, and the others led Gordon up the same tight spiral staircase he had ascended to meet with Cobblepot his first time here. As cold as it had been in the loading area, it was at least twice as cold up here in the VIP level. The emperor penguins were being attended by a woman in a heated wetsuit on one island, while a male trainer seemed to be trying to teach the seals some new tricks on the other island. Again, the trainers stopped what they were doing long enough to acknowledge the newcomers.

“Bumpity-bump-bump, bumpity-bump-bump, look at that Frosty go!” Harley sang to herself, marching in a cartoonish manner, her arms and legs moving like a Nazi at the Nuremberg rallies.

They walked past the booth where Gordon and Cobblepot had had their first little chat, and they moved down a short hallway into a vestibule, like a waiting room into an office. Here, one large birdcage housed a falcon and a tree as tall as Gordon. The falcon was perched on a limb, and never made a sound, just slowly turned its head to watch the transients come and go through its room.

Now they passed through another door and went down yet another hallway. They walked to the far end and took a left, into a wide, expansive office that Gordon knew at once was the aviary/office that Batman had described to him. Wide, floor-to-ceiling windows stood open, and just as Gordon stepped into the enormous room, an owl came swooping in through one of those large windows and alighted on an artificial tree branch, a small mouse clutched in its talons. Four swans floated lazily in a fountain bubbling just beside the kidney-shaped oak desk.

Cobblepot stood in his office in a tux, but with his jacket pulled off and his sleeves rolled up, counting money along with another of his thugs, this one tall and with a square haircut, making the big oaf look like Frankenstein. Cobblepot had his quellazaire clenched between his teeth and was puffing on it when he looked up from what he was doing. He plucked the quellazaire out from his teeth when he spotted Gordon, and gave out an exhausted sigh. “I abhor lazy threats and unnecessary shows of force, Commissioner,” the Penguin said, waddling over to him. “But in this case, you left me no other choice.”

“Where’s Sarah?” Gordon asked.

“Where’s Mr. Jay?” Harley demanded immediately. She was looking around furtively, a pistol in her hand like she meant to use it. On either side of him, Gordon saw Cobblepot’s thugs go for their own weapons surreptitiously, fearful of what the woman might do.

The scene was absurdly comical. What the hell has happened to all of us? he thought. Dr. Quinzel, myself, Sarah, the Joker…how did it come to this? Have we all lost our minds?

“Your man said for you to call this number,” Cobblepot said, reaching into his pants pocket to get a slip of paper. “He said there are other instructions for you. He’s already been paid, but I’m sure he’s willing to share—”

“Of course he’ll share!” Harley snapped, snatching the paper from him and leaving the room. “Mr. Jay’s always lookin’ out for me.”

Gordon thought, You just met him. How do you know what his real motives are? Then, he realized something. Dr. Quinzel hadn’t been bought, or duped, or drugged, or manipulated in any way at all to bring her to this state. She’s insane. It hadn’t become clear until just now. There was no drug that could make a person that consistently loyal to do what she’d done so far, at least, not that Gordon knew of. And there was no amount of money that could turn a professional such as she had been into a faithful lackey. She’s doing it because she really, truly wants to. A part of him had hoped that she was somehow working against the Joker and Cobblepot, that maybe, just maybe she was still sane and working in some undercover fashion, maybe with the feds or DHS, but as he watched her leave, sauntering and waving the piece of paper with the number on it in the air, Gordon knew unequivocally that he was alone.

Once she was gone, Cobblepot turned back to him. “Commissioner,” he said. “Thank you for coming, and for not trying anything sly. My people tell me you obeyed to the very letter of our request for you to come alone. Because you knew how to listen, and because you valiantly came alone, you’ve saved the life of your friend, Ms. Essen.”

“Where’s Sarah?” Gordon asked again.

“She’s fine. She’s safe.”

“Where?”

“Why don’t you sit down? Hank, pull up a chair for the commissioner.” Frankenstein moved to obey, and a nudge from Maurice behind him indicated that Gordon should accept the invitation. He walked over and sat in the rolling chair Hank had pulled up for him, while Cobblepot sat on the edge of the table looking down at Gordon—probably the only time the little Penguin ever got to look down on anybody. He took a toke from his quellazaire. “You need anything? Drink? Food? Anything?”

“No,” Gordon said. “Just Sarah.”

“Right to business then, just like before. I like that about you, Commissioner.” As he talked, the smoke continuously billowed out of him like a smokestack. “I didn’t want things to go this way. Truly, I didn’t. It was never my intention to abscond with any person affiliated with you, or to do you or your family any harm whatsoever. But, I’m made to understand that you’ve been spying on us, Commissioner. My people regularly sweep this club here, and we found that numerous surveillance bugs had been planted.”

Gordon nodded. “We got all the proper warrants,” he said.

“No doubt, you did. We didn’t, but we were still able to listen to everything you’ve said over the last week or so.” Cobblepot must’ve seen something on Gordon’s face, the look of surprise, because something tickled the fat man’s funny bone. He chortled, “Oh, don’t be so surprised. To be honest, there hasn’t been much going on in your house. You’ve been alone for the most part, and we only had time to bug the living room—nevertheless, we overheard your conversation with Special Agent Essen, we know how serious you’ve gotten over our little organization.”

Gordon looked around at the others in the room. “It looks to me like there’s nothing ‘little’ about it. You’ve got Walden in your pocket. You’re working with the Riddler and the Joker now, and you’ve somehow recruited the help of a well-respected psychologist.”

Cobblepot scoffed. “The clown’s appearance on the scene is an anomaly—a timely one, I’ll grant you, but an anomaly nonetheless—and the psycho woman is his, I’d rather not have her in on this, but he insists she needs to remain involved to have his proxy whenever he cannot be around.” He shrugged, and took a toke of his cigarette. “In life, we must all learn how to adapt, right? Improvise?”

Overhead, a raven cawed as it flitted across the room and alighted on a tree branch at the other side, near an open window where sunlight poured through and the curtains flapped lightly in a gentle breeze.

“Whether your work with the clown is improvisation or not,” Gordon said, “we’ve already got a lot on you, and regardless of whether or not you do something to me or to Sarah Essen, you’re going to fall.”

“Oh?” Cobblepot said, looking supremely intrigued. “And how is that, pray tell? How is that, when you’re likely to lose your job later today at a committee hearing?”

“There are still people under Sarah who know about you, about her investigations into you,” Gordon said. Then, he managed a smirk. “And there’s the bat.”

“Ah, yes, the bat! Tell me, Commissioner, what is it that the bat knows that could possibly be my undoing? Thrill me with your tale.”

He sighed. “Well, it’s pretty clear you’re shuffling information around for hacker groups, for the Juarezes, the Calabrias, the Falcones, and for all intents and purposes it looks like you created the figure of Mulcoyisy Stewart-Paulson to keep Gothamites and the GCPD hunting for a nonexistent mastermind.”

“Oh, he’s a mastermind, all right! And he’s very, very real,” Cobblepot promised. “In fact, you’ve crossed paths with him once or twice. He’s actually here, tonight, in this very building, and he’s decided he wants to meet with you. I’ve advised him against it, but he was adamant. He wants to give you the same, ah, courtesy we paid to Mayor Walden, by allowing you to know exactly who, and what, you’re dealing with here.” The Penguin shrugged. “It’s his life, so if he wants to risk throwing it away by revealing himself, that’s his business.”

Gordon started to say something, but Cobblepot suddenly looked up, as though someone had just knocked at the door. Gordon heard footsteps behind him. He turned to look, but Maurice, Judd, Hank, and the other two thugs with the scar and the ponytail were standing behind him, having moved there to prevent his escape, no doubt. Now, Maurice and Judd stood to one side, both of the stone-faced, confident men suddenly appearing diffident as a tall, skinny man stepped between them. He was wearing a dark-green business suit, and walked with a cane in his right hand. Gordon recognized him immediately as the man who played double bass for The Hurlihees—Gordon had spotted him the first time he ever came to the Iceberg Lounge, and saw him again playing at the Policeman’s Ball. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, he’d been one of the men tuning his instrument downstairs.

But the man looked familiar from somewhere else, too, now that Gordon thought about it. He had dark hair with a receding hairline that made him look exactly like the police sketch they had worked up from the descriptions a handful of guests had given at the Ball.

“Commissioner,” the man said in a slightly accented voice, switching the cane over to his left hand and offering his right. He had a casual air, and there was a natural way about him that one could immediately tell had gotten him past the close scrutiny of others before—a real con man, if Gordon was any judge, and he’d seen enough of them in his lifetime to know them when he saw them.

Gordon reached out slowly and perfunctorily, shaking the man’s hand without really being aware that he was doing it. “You’re…him?” he asked.

“Yes, Commissioner, I am the everyone and the no one you’ve been looking for,” he said in a voice and a smile that were both amiable. “I am the Riddler, the Riddle Killer, Edward Nygma, and Mulcoyisy ‘Nate’ Stewart-Paulson. It is my unique and genuine pleasure to finally meet you. This, as it were, is your intervention.”