“Not until the fire started. Someone or something got through the circuits.”
“I’ll be right there. I’ll . . . I’ll tell Iron Man, too.”
“Right, chief. We can use him. We got every fire engine in Flushing on the way here.”
Stark hung up and thought for a second, then walked quickly back to his table. “There’s a fire in the high-security area of my plant. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
Sharman spread her hands expressively; her many silver rings glittered in the candlelight. “It’s lonely at the top.”
He gave her a quick smile and put some money on the table. “I’ll have Happy see you get home.”
“How will you get out there?”
“I . . . I’ll get a cab. Happy’s downstairs. He’s the glum-looking one.”
She smiled and waved him away. “Go, before there’s nothing left.”
Stark flashed a smile and took the elevator to the ground floor. He found Happy Hogan talking to the other chauffeurs. As he retrieved his attaché case he told Happy about Sharman. The ex-fighter wanted to go to the plant, but Stark insisted he get her to her hotel all right.
“Then come out. But I’m taking the fast route.”
“Alley’s over there, boss.” Stark nodded and took off at a trot.
As he stripped off his expensive Tony Stark clothing he thought, I ruin more clothes this way. Last time I left them behind they got stolen. That never happens to the other superheroes. Or else they’re too embarrassed to mention it.
Then . . .
Snap. Click. The Iron Man costume unfolded, snapped into place, joined with his ever present breastplate. He activated his boot-jets, flamed up out of the narrow alley, and headed toward Flushing. He hoped he’d be there in time to help out.
But who had gotten into his private, special files?
He knew why—there was a billion-dollar treasure of scientific information there. It had a duplicate in the special private computer, but still . . . if both sides had a certain piece of information, that information might be turned against one of them, or rendered useless by the exposure. It was important to Tony Stark, to Stark International and to Iron Man that that file room stay inviolate. Only a handful of trusted people had access. It couldn’t be one of them, he thought.
Or could it?
Iron Man flew in an arc toward Flushing, whistling through the murky night air of downtown Manhattan.
Carlton Bond flattened himself against the wall as the guards thumped down the main corridor. When they were past he trotted quickly toward the fire exit. It would be all right. I was working late, he’d say. I heard all the commotion and just took off. Better safe than sorry.
Bond smiled thinly, almost smug in his triumph. He’d done it! He’d penetrated the great Tony Stark’s innermost sanctum and gotten out with the prize of prizes! Iron Man’s armor plans!
Incredible! He was the Raffles of his time, the super secret agent, better than his namesake, that fictional 007. He’d done it!
The fire door crashed open, setting off another alarm, but Bond was already running across the neatly trimmed grass toward the very special transportation that he was certain would be just beyond the double wire fence.
It had to be there. Everything else the mysterious “sapphires and shamrocks” voice had told him had come true. The black box worked, the plans had been there.
The flyer had to be there.
Seven
Iron Man saw the flames clearly while he was still in the air. The northeast wing of the Administration Building was on fire. He could see fire engines screaming through the deserted streets. When he got closer, he saw that SI’s own fire department was hard at work. He came to a landing near the smoke-marked security captain.
“Oh! Iron Man! My god, I never get used to your coming down out of the sky like that!”
“Fill me in. Stark asked me to come ahead.”
“Right. Well, the fire got started inside them secret files of his. Inside, mind you, and no sign of forced entry, the boys said. But the fire got a good start because the water was turned off.”
“Turned off?”
The captain nodded. “Some foul-up, I guess. Maybe some check and they forgot to turn it back on, I dunno. It’d be caught on the next fire marshal’s checkup, but . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Doesn’t sound like coincidence to me,” Iron Man said, looking at the rippling flames.
A fireman ran out of the billowing smoke, up to the fire chief nearby. “Chief! There’s two people, maybe three, up on the fourth floor!”
The chief cursed. “What in blue blazes were they doing up there, working late?”
“I guess. I heard ’em yellin’ and o’ course, the moment the fire alarm started the elevators went to the ground floor and locked. And the stairway on this end is full o’ smoke.”
“Why don’t they use the other one?”
The fireman pointed. “Fire. It’s broken through to the fourth. They’re cut off. That sprinkler system not workin’ really gave it one blast of a start.”
“Well, Iron Man,” the security captain said, turning. But Iron Man wasn’t there.
The fire chief pointed suddenly. “Look! He’s going right into the fire!”
Using his flying boot-jets, Iron Man flew straight into the billowing smoke. Special lenses flipped into place and he could see a little better, but still not clearly. He heard the screams above the crackling of the fire. He went right through one wall, into the stairwell, and jetted up to the fourth floor.
He found two secretaries and a security guard. One secretary was conscious, and she was on her knees, coughing. Whirling, Iron Man punched a wide hole in the outer wall. Then he scooped up the two unconscious people, one under each arm. “Put your arms around my neck!” he shouted.
Coughing, the young woman did. Stark stood and jetted out the hole he had made. But with a feeling of horror he felt the hands around his neck loosen their grip and the woman on his back fall free, just as they were going out through the wrecked wall.
With both hands full, Iron Man could do nothing. He looked over his shoulder as he sped down toward a safe area. The young secretary was caught on a projecting length of broken concrete-reinforcing rod, severed when Iron Man had created the makeshift escape hatch. She hung limply, caught by her dress—and the dress was ripping.
The fire, almost directly below, was breaking through another area. Flames were licking up toward the unconscious woman.
Iron Man deposited the two limp bodies on the grass near the parking lot and spun around at full jet, racing back like an arrow. He knew it was going to be close. He had to calculate it with pinpoint accuracy. There would be no time to brake, pick her off, and turn around.
As Iron Man shot through the opening, he plucked the limp body from the iron bar, ripping her dress half off, but flying right back into the smoke trapped in the interior. Behind him, there was a roar as the flame puffed up in a great fireball, searing and half-melting the steel rod from which the woman had just been removed.
Iron Man flipped over, protecting the unconscious female as well as he could, and used his boot-jets to curve around toward the stairs. One blast of his repulsor rays, aimed by his outstretched hand, showed the way through the smoke. Iron Man raced for the stairs as the fourth floor fire caught behind him.
But the stairwell was also now filled with flames. Iron Man knew that without his burden he could have simply flown through the flames. Now he was trapped. There was only one way to go: up.
Iron Man crashed through the ceiling, using his back and holding the dead weight of the young woman away from harm. The fifth floor was relatively free of flames, though it was murky with smoke. Iron Man had tipped over a desk when he crashed through.
The Armored Avenger strode across to the windows and threw a chair through them. Carefully cradling the unconscious woman, he flew out to deposit her on the grass.
But as Iron Man left the building he saw a
strange sight. From just beyond the buildings across the street, outside the western edge of SI, a strange machine was lifting.
An AIM flyer!
Iron Man put the woman down next to the paramedics who were already working on the other smoke inhalation victims. Then he powered his boot-jets and shot into the air.
The AIM flyer was already a dwindling dot. If Iron Man hadn’t been able to drop infrared filters over his eyes and locate the black flyer by its heat emissions he could have easily lost it.
Iron Man started the chase.
In AIM headquarters, the leader watched the action funneled to him by a video camera mounted on the flyer. He made a nasty, grumbling noise. Then he made a decision. His finger poised over a red button.
Iron Man caught up to the flyer somewhere over Briarwood. He could see the frightened face of the pilot and the terrified face of its passenger. The passenger looked familiar. Where had Iron Man—or Tony Stark—seen him before?
But events were moving too fast. Iron Man came in at top speed, his gloved hands out. Just as he grabbed the rear cockpit of the AIM flyer he remembered who the passenger was: one of Quint’s people.
Then the finger in the AIM headquarters pressed the red button.
The explosion disintegrated the flyer. Light blossomed over Briarwood. Shards of flaming wreckage showered down on the sleeping community.
Iron Man was thrown back, as if by a giant hand. He was dazed, but not seriously hurt. His armor had protected him, but he was badly shaken. He came out of his fall and watched as the bits and pieces fell over a mile-wide area. He saw the local fire station’s lights go on.
Then he started back toward Stark International. There was still a great deal to find out about all this.
Jasper Sitwell was frowning in disapproval at the billowing smoke. The television people were here, and he had approved their entry, but assigned a security man to watch each one.
“Nothing good will come of this,” he said in annoyance. “The fire insurance is sky high now, with all that’s happened around here. God only knows what this will do to us.”
The security captain nodded in reassurance. In some ways it was better to stay in the good graces of Sitwell than Stark himself. Stark was not always around, and when he was, he was often closeted away in one of his labs or shops, tinkering like mad. But Sitwell never missed a thing. He always appreciated efficiency and to him the “book” was everything. The security captain knew which side of the bread had butter on it. He may have been a bit confused about the kind of bread, but he knew margarine when he saw it.
“Yessir,” he said to Sitwell, nodding in unison.
“Who’s that?” Sitwell said, pointing.
“Sir?”
“That person over there, that woman, what’s she doing there?”
“I dunno, sir; maybe she’s one of those that Iron Man rescued.”
“No, no, they’re off to the hospital. That’s . . . that’s Gafford, isn’t it? The woman in Research?”
“Yes, sir, I think it is.”
“Hey!” Sitwell called out. The woman ignored him, walking quickly toward the east, toward the dome of the R and D center. “Hey, you, Gafford! Wait a minute!”
She kept walking, yet Sitwell was certain she had heard him. It wasn’t that noisy. He started after her. She looked over her shoulder and suddenly began to run. She pulled away from Sitwell almost at once, jumping the spaghettilike fire hoses and racing off into the dark. Jasper, frowning, followed.
What the blazes was going on here tonight? Gafford had been with the company for years and years, going back almost to the beginning. Good, steady worker. No problems before. Now why was she acting like a sneak thief?
Sitwell stopped in the darkness, straining his ears for a sound. He heard a brief tap-tap-tap of shoes somewhere toward the special storage sheds to the north of the Research and Development Labs. A lot of one-of-a-kind things were stored there, some obsolete, some abandoned prototypes, some immensely valuable. Sitwell started running.
Iron Man came down next to the security captain, who jumped. “Holy—! Oh, hi, Iron Man. I . . . uh . . . hey, you did a great job there, but you sure didn’t do Administration any good.”
“People are more important than buildings, Baker. Where’s Mister Sitwell?”
The security chief pointed. “He went that way. Saw some chick from Research he wanted to talk to.”
“Oh.” Sitwell’s private life was none of his business, Iron Man thought. But what was someone from Research doing here at this time of night? Iron Man turned to look toward the R and D complex.
Jasper Sitwell shouted out, “Hey! You’re not allowed in there!” The woman, Gafford, was shoving open the door to Bay Twelve. That was where the Hornet was berthed, a ground-fire vehicle Stark had developed back when he was industriously developing weapons for the Viet Nam war. It had been equipped with a great variety of experimental destructive weapons. It was a flying fortress with enormous firepower. The door was supposed to be both locked and electronically sealed. Something—or someone—very special had gotten through. The doors were sliding back. The woman was running in. Sitwell sprinted ahead, his fists pounding the air on either side of his torso.
He rounded the bay’s doors and hurtled himself into the shed. But he was too late. The running lights were on. The jets were thundering, sending dust and grit flying, lifting the camouflaged war craft into the air. As the machine moved out, Jasper attempted to get aboard the craft but Gafford swerved it close to the doorjamb and Sitwell was knocked off.
Jasper fell to the concrete, gasping with pain, and saw the craft continue on through, make a neat turn on its bottom jets, then rise above the building, and fly out of sight.
He wondered how the hell a woman, not involved in the development of this craft, knew how to fly the Hornet like that?
Eight
Iron Man saw the craft rise above the storage sheds. What in blazes was happening tonight?
His thoughts didn’t stop his immediate response. The Hornet prototype was supposed to be mothballed. It wasn’t. Something was wrong. Nothing wrong with your powers of deduction, Iron Man, he thought. Better late than never.
For the second time that night Iron Man was in pursuit of a fast flyer. Only this one was one of his and infinitely more destructive than any AIM aircraft. The Hornet was a war machine, born and bred to destroy. Iron Man snapped in his infrared filter and soared after the fleeing craft.
Suddenly there was a stream of red dots coming at him. Tracers! But they didn’t bother Iron Man—he was, however, wondering who had armed the vessel. If the regulation fifty-caliber machine guns were loaded, was the other far more deadly armament also active? That made Iron Man nervous. He had designed all the experimental weapons and he had never been known to shirk when it came to making an efficient weapon.
The machine guns, guided by heat-seeking radar, pinged off Iron Man’s armor. He knew he couldn’t be seriously hurt, but there was always the freak accident. Besides, it was annoying. So he started evasion tactics. Swooping and rising, he effectively kept ahead of the deadly tracers. There were only so many slugs the guns had aboard. Eventually they would run dry. Iron Man hoped he’d be aboard before the pilot started using some of the other weaponry on him.
He wasn’t.
A repulsor beam hit him a glancing blow, sending him spinning off to the side. That one hurt. But it kept him from being nailed by a second blast. Iron Man aimed his own repulsors at the craft but he was still too far away to be effective. The Hornet’s repulsors were powered by the war craft’s great engines.
Blam! Iron Man was hit, and went tumbling through the air. He had enough presence to cut off his boot-jets, to keep him from twirling around erratically. He shook his head to clear it, then started again after the fleeing Hornet. It had a good lead on him now. Who was flying it?
ZZZat!
The ion gun fried the air next to Iron Man’s head. Had it connected, it would have disconnected a
ll the synapses of his brain. Effectively, he would either have been killed, or have lost every memory, and all instincts. He’d have become an imbecile—instantly.
What the blazes was that doing aboard? It hadn’t even been part of the original Hornet armament. Someone had stolen it from the dead-storage area, to which it had been assigned, it being too horrible a weapon and illegal in war, according to the Geneva Convention.
ZZZat!
Another close call—too close. Iron Man made an even more erratic move, but that only put him farther behind.
The machine guns had fallen silent. The ion gun flashed from time to time, but never as close as before. They settled into a grim chase.
They were over New Jersey now, heading southwest. Stark was less worried about parts of the Hornet falling on sleeping people here. It was mostly industrial wasteland below. He activated his emergency-speed jets and flashed ahead.
He almost caught the pilot asleep. But the ion gun sizzled the air at very close range, making Iron Man dizzy. For a moment, he wondered what he was doing there in the night sky, racing along . . . Then he remembered and continued his sprint straight at the Hornet.
Blam!
A repulsor ray caught him at close range.
Blackness.
Iron Man came back to consciousness, falling through the air. He turned his head and looked down. There was a factory right under him. Right under him.
Iron Man’s head was spinning. A combination of the ion-gun effects and the immense blast of the repulsor ray had addled his head for a moment. He tried to think in order to trigger the sensitive brain-wave pickups and activate the boot-jets.
Only nothing happened.
Falling, Iron Man twisted a foot and looked up at his boot. Nothing wrong. It had to be in the circuitry. He tried again.
Nothing.
And he was still falling. Already he was below the level of an immense smokestack. Then he thought, really thought, “Activate!”
The boot-jets flamed on and Iron Man twisted to level off his flight—and went right through the hundred-foot brick smokestack at the twenty-foot level.
Marvel Novel Series 06 - Iron Man - And Call My Killer ... Modok! Page 8
