In their panic the guerrillas confused Iron Man’s words with those of Wong-chu. Without leadership and scattered, they would be captured by the South Vietnamese. But the battle with Wong-chu was not over.
Tony Stark was not yet totally confident in his employment of the iron suit. Wong-chu momentarily trapped him with a filing cabinet full of heavy weights. The freshly powered suit was almost out of power. Its batteries had not been fully charged and the drain on them was fantastic. Iron Man was growing weaker.
Wong-chu started running . . . toward the prisoners’ cage. Iron Man realized Wong-chu intended to slay them all. There were to be no witnesses to Wong-chu’s defeat, no one for the victorious Iron Man to rescue.
Iron Man did not stop to think. He swiftly unfastened a portion of his lubricating apparatus and squirted a thin stream of oil past the running guerrilla leader into the ammunition shed. Then a searing flame from Iron Man’s built-in flare gun set the oil to burning. The flame raced along the oil streak . . . faster than a man could run.
The explosion pulverized the shed, and anyone near it.
Wong-chu had been racing along right next to it.
Hours later Iron Man stood over the grave of Professor Yinsen. “It’s all over,” he said softly. “Rest easy. You, who sacrificed your life to save mine, have been avenged.”
Iron Man turned away. His new iron suit having been recharged, Stark found he could move about with only the chest plate in place. The armor he carried in a small suitcases, Tony Stark started back through the jungle, toward the South Vietnamese lines.
Iron Man. Anthony Stark would never again be just Anthony Stark, industrialist. Nor just playboy Tony Stark, hedonist and debonair jet-setter.
There would always be Iron Man. I cannot escape him, Tony Stark thought. Nor do I want to. Iron Man stands for something. Just what, I’m not certain, he thought. But as long as the metal lay next to his heart he would have to be Iron Man . . .
. . . The pain in the heart . . .
. . .“Mister Stark!”
. . . Distant voices, calling to him . . .
. . . “Mister Stark, sir, come out of it!”
Tony Stark opened his eyes. Happy Hogan leaned over him. They were in a small anteroom to the auditorium. Tony Stark was no longer in the golden armor of Iron Man, except for the ever-vital breastplate. He lay on a couch, with a blanket hiding the metal plate.
“Oh, thank God, sir,” Happy said as he saw Stark open his eyes. The ex-prizefighter looked around. “I brought ya in here, sir. Ya wuz knocked out, but everything wuz so confused, I don’t think anyone noticed.” He leaned closer. “Everything all right, sir?”
“Yes, Happy,” Stark replied. He took a deep breath. “I took that grenade in the chest.”
“I saw ya, sir. Ya held it tight, to contain the blast; yes, sir, I saw that. Ya saved everyone in there, but to hear them yelling ya’d think they were more concerned about the hole in the roof than in the fact ya saved all them lives.” Happy shook his head sadly.
Stark started to rise but Happy stopped him. “Ya okay, sir? I mean, one o’ them AIM grenades is a powerful thing, y’know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stark said. He sat up, then stood up. Happy helped him into his clothes, which he had discarded when he assumed his Iron Man identity.
The newly designed armor was vastly more powerful—and almost infinitely more complex—than the simple prison-built suit he had originally constructed. That had been years before. Since then there had been one heart operation, then a heart transplant. Things had been good for a time. Tony Stark could go without his life-support system for a time—not a long time, however—and he had come to be one of the more prominent members of that strange and controversial group called The Avengers. Tony Stark had learned to keep his secret identity just that—secret. But the attack upon Anthony Stark by the AIM commandos—was that an attack on Iron Man, or an attack on Stark the inventor?
“Let’s go home,” Tony said. Happy took care of the police, took care of the press, and got the weak-acting Stark into his limousine and away.
As Stark settled back, every defense device in his long, black car set, his thoughts drifted again to the curious life he had come to have. He’d always been intelligent. He’d breezed through school, and was popular despite his obvious brains. He was curious about everything, but mostly about engineering. Things that worked—or didn’t work—intrigued him. He had a natural aptitude for invention, just as some have a natural tendency to be musicians or cooks or artists or accountants.
From the tinkering of engineering Stark had become interested in even more basic things—basic scientific research. From this came the basis of Stark’s vast fortune, of his multipurpose, many-faceted Stark International. That multinational corporation grew with startling speed, becoming a major influence in the world’s technological spheres. The man in the street might not know of Stark International, but it was certain that the big domes in the labs at General Electric, GM, the big oil companies, IBM, and many others knew exactly who and what Stark International was. The brains at NASA, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on the President’s Scientific Advisory Board knew who Anthony Stark was. Some deplored his expensive playboy image—others envied him. Some were jealous of his growing fortune—others wanted some of it. But only a handful of people knew that Anthony Stark, industrialist . . . and Tony Stark, charming playboy seen with some of the world’s great beauties . . . were one and the same with Iron Man.
On paper, Iron Man was Tony Stark’s bodyguard on a kind of free-lance basis. SI had often aided the Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and SHIELD in their scientific needs. The bodyguard idea and close working arrangement with the superheroes gave good cover for any sudden appearance of Iron Man in the vicinity of Tony Stark.
Since becoming Iron Man, Tony Stark found that violence and action followed him everywhere. Before the wounding of his heart, he had led a relatively quiet life. The popping of a champagne cork or the roar of a Lear jet were the loudest sounds in his life. Since then, it sometimes seemed that life was one long battle.
But Tony Stark also found that he liked it. He had spent a very long time being tied to a workbench—or the most expensive table at the most expensive nightclub. The action excited him. He was serving a useful purpose, one that no one else could serve. His very special iron “suit” was fantastically expensive—only a multimillionaire could afford it, and then only if his life depended upon it. It was customized to a degree that was fantastic—Stark had to watch his weight, to be certain of an exact fit at all times.
Miniaturization, molecular bonding, solid-state electronics, highly expensive metal tempering, and a hundred other specialties had gone into Stark’s latest suit. But it was all still based on one thing: keeping Stark’s heart working.
The suit was crimson and gold now, a much more dramatic and functional suit than the clumsy original. Except for the chest plate it all fit into an attaché case, collapsing neatly. The famous armor had evolved over the years, but was still recognizable to millions as the fighting armor of Iron Man, a name that had come to mean a great deal in every part of the globe.
It was a good life. Living on the edge of death gave a zest to the whole affair. While he maintained the playboy image to help hide his secret identity, he sometimes found the trivial and shallow jet-set life relaxing. At that moment, in the black limousine speeding through the streets toward the sprawling main plant of Stark International, Tony Stark thought about a little image building, a short spell of playing.
Beautiful women. Candlelight and wine. Good food, laughter, and not one supervillain trying to crush, rend, dismember or break his body.
Yes, that would be nice. A rest. Let the world get along without ol’ Shellhead for a while. It had for eons; it could for another few days.
He began to think of just where he would rest.
And with whom.
Three
The AIM sergeant who had tossed the concussion grenade st
ood in the dark underground headquarters of Advanced Idea Mechanics. It wasn’t dark where he was; a bright spotlight played on him from out of the darkness. It made the sweat on his forehead glitter like diamonds. He stank of fear and knew he smelled and hated his body for betraying him.
He knew what sat in the darkness and it scared him. Not much scared this mercenary, but his ultimate leader did. The head of AIM had a voice like a snarl come to life, a booming quality that seemed to fill the large room without effort.
“You are bumbling fools!” the voice thundered. “Why am I always served by idiots, by cretins best strangled in their cribs?”
The sergeant knew better than to try to answer. It wasn’t his fault. He’d done his best; he’d done just as he was ordered. It wasn’t their fault, or his fault, that Iron Man appeared. He thought he had done well to escape with the remnants of his attack force, to thwart Iron Man, perhaps even to hurt him.
“You should all be destroyed as an example to the others,” snarled the AIM leader, his voice coming from the darkness. The sergeant’s knees trembled. Where his underlings were concerned the leader always kept his word.
There was an echoing snort, then: “But we have other problems.” There was a noise like badly meshing gears. It was a growl of frustration from the leader hidden in the darkness. “Financial problems, of all things.” Another growl. “Money! I, the greatest mind of our time, the premier inventive genius of the ages, beset by problems of . . . money!” The voice sneered at the last word. “Did Einstein think about money? No! And whose fault is it?”
The sergeant twitched despite his attitude of rigid attention. Was the question rhetorical, or did his master really want an answer? The answer was obvious: Captain America, that costumed retread from World War II, and the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and others of the Avengers, the Defenders, those leagues of superheroes, it was their fault. Time and time again they had destroyed carefully made plans, ruined millions of dollars worth of equipment, fortresses and secret sites, laboratories and inventions. Stop their destructive actions and the secret sources of money that Advanced Idea Mechanics could draw upon would soon build the organization into one greater than it had ever been.
But stopping them was hardly easy, as many of his cohorts had found out. The sergeant was a mercenary—in it for the buck. He was not politically motivated, stupidly idealistic, or fighting for any noble cause. It was simple: with the forces that fought against what Iron Man and the others represented he had a chance. Good money, loot, a life of ease some day . . . if he lived—if his leader let him live.
“They’re everywhere, those costumed fools,” the voice thundered, as if reading the sergeant’s thoughts. “They have the most fantastic luck! They fall into a dry streambed and come up with pockets filled with leads to our secret laboratories!” Again, the rumbling growl of anger and frustration.
“I’m going to let you live, you and the rest of your fumble-footed fools,” the voice said and the sergeant started breathing again. “You can’t even defeat a bunch of college students and an old pug, much less capture a playboy inventor.”
The sergeant frowned. That wasn’t fair! Iron Man had—
“No, you’ll sweat, in case I change my mind . . . and I might. Meantime, we have to solve our money problems.” The voice changed, became less angry, quieter and more thoughtful. “Those mongrels, in their colorful Halloween costumes, have been closing down a lot of our fellow activists as well. That has been cutting off a very good money source because we now have fewer and fewer organizations to sell our advanced weaponry to. Only yesterday, one of the kingpin’s front organizations had to cancel an order for a hundred of our sleep guns.”
The voice was silent a moment and the sergeant listened intently. When you worked for AIM you learned to keep your ears and eyes open. Next to AIM the Mafia was a bunch of cub scouts. AIM didn’t just shoot you, stick you in a car trunk, and dispatch you to a wrecking yard to be compressed into a two-ton metal brick. No, AIM was more likely to send you to one of their genetic research labs and make you into a monster . . . or take your brain and put it into a—
“We need something special,” the voice said. “When those bantam generals come from their banana republics, or those beribboned Presidents-for-life come around looking for something to keep their populations under control, we need something very fancy, very special to make a big hit. Same for the revolutionaries, the malcontents, the would-be world conquerors. Something very, very special, something that will restore their faith in AIM. Don’t you agree?”
The sergeant jumped. “Y-yessir!”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
The sergeant’s mouth worked but it didn’t seem to be connected to his brain. The leader made a nasty noise. “Must I do all the thinking?”
Then he laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh. It was more of a sneer done vocally. “Of course, I must do all the thinking! If I left it up to you morons AIM would be selling used cars!”
The sergeant’s mouth worked. He tried to agree, but his mouth was too dry.
“What we need, Sergeant Kalin, is obvious. Obvious! Something that is fantastic, spectacular, with a proven war record! Something we could manufacture in the thousands—the millions! Each unit would be fantastically expensive, but once they were on the market none could refuse to buy! To not buy would be admitting defeat even before the war began!” The darkly sinister voice crackled ominously, with a kind of ghoulish humor.
“What we need, my bumbling warrior, is the armor that Iron Man wears! The armor that Tony Stark designed for that cursed Golden Avenger!”
The leader’s voice dropped to a growl. “Golden Avenger! What egotism! What foolish vanity! When we obtain the secret of his armor we shall create them in black, to strike terror into the hearts of the little morons who dare resist!” The voice rose to a shrill cry of triumph. “AIM will be victorious!”
The sergeant gulped. He couldn’t ask the questions that came to his mouth. Why hadn’t the tame scientists of AIM created their own armor? Why hadn’t his leader himself discovered the secrets of Shellhead’s suit? He was a great inventor in his own right, creating devices, gadgets, electronic magic. The sergeant was far too fearful to ask why his master had not produced something as good, if not better. The sergeant was no fool.
“And there will be no expense spared,” the leader said. “We will even activate the Sleepers!”
The sergeant blinked. He had heard of the Sleepers, the secret agents planted in Stark International years before, as soon as SI rose to technological prominence. He didn’t know who they were—he was not privy to that kind of information. He was in the action arm. He was a door smasher, a shooter, a destroyer, not a thinker.
But he couldn’t help thinking. AIM had resources he knew nothing about. It made him proud to be associated with such a giant organization. It was a little like being an executive in Standard Oil or General Motors. Except executives in outfits like that didn’t use concussion grenades—or fear for their lives if they screwed up. They didn’t have to worry about being turned into some kind of protoplasmic slime in a secret underground laboratory—plus the fact that there was no retirement plan. Nevertheless in AIM you made your pile as you went along. It evened out.
The leader was talking again, but not to the sergeant. The frightened noncom could see television screens going on high above him, in a semicircle around the leader. Quickly, the sergeant averted his gaze. He caught a glimpse of his leader. He didn’t like looking at the boss. It made him squeamish.
The leader was snapping orders. The new plan was being activated.
“Tony!”
It was Pepper’s voice coming from the kitchen. She ran out and threw her arms around him. “Boss! You’re all right!” She pulled back and looked at him. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” Tony Starked grinned. Pepper Potts Hogan, Happy’s wife, was a physically plain woman, but her personality shone through like a bright light. Everyone who knew h
er more than five minutes thought she was pretty attractive, really. After about twenty minutes you never thought of her as being plain. Some people are like that.
“I heard about it on the early news,” Pepper said, gesturing toward the television set.
“Yeah,” grumbled Happy as he came into their house behind Tony. “Usual misinformation and exaggeration.”
“Those college students,” Pepper said, still holding Tony’s arms. “Everyone they interviewed had a different story. Most never saw Iron Man, a few thought he started it, and—”
“Never mind,” Tony said, patting her arm and going over to a chair and plopping down. “I’ll send them a check to repair the roof of that auditorium, and maybe enough more for a new classroom or two.” He looked at Happy Hogan, who was his usual glum self, then back to Pepper. “What’s the itinerary for the rest of today and tomorrow?”
She squinted at the ceiling and brought her excellent memory into play. As Tony Stark’s secretary she was more of an executive than the standard, outer-office typist. “Tomorrow . . . dignitaries.”
“You make it sound like a rock group,” Tony said with a smile. “El Supremo and the Dignitaries. George Washington and the Revolutionaries.”
She went on as though he hadn’t said a word. “There’s Jim Downey from General Electronix. They’re after that molecular bonding patent, of course. Bentley Weinstock wants to manufacture that electronic printing gizmo.”
“Gizmo?” Happy said.
“That spin-off of Tony’s magnetic research, the thing that lets a writer or printer set type automatically, miles away.”
“We don’t need to see either one,” Tony said. “Have Weinstock see the lawyers, it’s okay by me. But no way is General Electronix getting that molecular bonding patent. SI is keeping that one.” He glanced at Happy. Both knew that the patent was one of the special secrets of the Iron Man’s armor. “What else?” he asked his secretary.
“The grand tour.”
Marvel Novel Series 06 - Iron Man - And Call My Killer ... Modok! Page 4
