Marvel Novel Series 06 - Iron Man - And Call My Killer ... Modok!

by William Rotsler

  Then Modok stopped with a short curse. Iron Man stood! Not in frozen immobility, not in pale death, but alive and moving!

  Greiner came to his feet with a growl, looming over Stark as he reached for the armor on the workbench. A blow staggered Stark but he ducked under the next punch and seized a single, metallic glove. Even as he pulled it on, Stark aimed the glove at the charging Greiner. The repulsor ray struck the giant in the chest and sent him crashing back, overturning a workbench. There was a loud crash, glass broke, and bent metal shrieked.

  Stark reached again for the armor and again Modok struck out with a mind blast even more powerful than before. It staggered Iron Man but did not stop him. In several swift, practiced moves Tony Stark donned the red-and-gold armor.

  Iron Man was ready to fight!

  “No use, Modok,” Iron Man said. “I figured out the wave lengths of your mind blast and installed scrambler circuits in my helmet. Give up, Modok!”

  “Never!” the monstrous head snarled. His power chair sent blasts of fire and a hail of lead against Iron Man, but the Avenger stood up under it, even if the lab didn’t. In the middle of the barrage, Iron Man felt something in his head!

  Modok was overloading the jury-rigged scrambler circuits by blasting everything he had at Iron Man! The Avenger knew he had to get out at once, before the hateful head found some chink, some technological flaw. He fired a repulsor blast at the armor plans, which caught fire and burned even as he made his move.

  Iron Man fired his boot-jets, and sailed right through the wall, tumbling startled AIM technicians and wrecking yet another laboratory. Iron Man flew along the corridor, braked and shot through the closed door of an elevator shaft. Three floors up he went through the floor and ceiling of the elevator car and through the roof of the secret lab itself, out into the tropical night . . . heading in the wrong direction.

  “Greiner!” Modok shouted, his huge voice booming through the wrecked lab as the giant staggered to his feet. “Get into the armor!”

  The muscle man shook his head to clear it after the blast from Iron Man’s repulsor rays. AIM technicians hurried in at Modok’s order and began putting the special armor Stark had constructed on to the bulky frame of the recovering Greiner.

  “Hurry, you dolts!” Modok snarled. “Iron Man must be stopped before he can get a message out! This laboratory must not be found! It is our only base in Costa Verde!”

  “Yes, master,” Greiner muttered as the last of the armor was latched into position. He stood there, a foot taller than Tony Stark, a heroic statue in muscular flesh, encased in a gleaming, black version of the famed Iron Man armor.

  “I’ve ordered radio interference on all the frequencies,” Modok said. “He’ll not be able to send any messages until he’s out almost a hundred miles! Your boot-jets are more powerful than his—you can catch him!”

  “Yes, master,” Greiner said. Stark had fitted him with parts of the suit as the armor had been constructed, but he had never had it all on at once. It fitted him like a second skin, and he quickly practiced his moves—smashing a workbench with a casual blow, bending a steel bar like a wet noodle, rising off the floor with his flaring boot-jets and turning this way and that.

  “Get on with it, Greiner,” Modok snapped. “With every second, Iron Man is getting further away!”

  The huge Greiner did not reply, but jetted through the lab wall and out the same punched-out hole that Iron Man had made. Up into space—it was a dizzying experience and for a moment the enormous security man was excited by the actuality of flying through the air.

  “Radar has a fix on him,” Greiner muttered. Telemetry was sending a repeater pulse to his own black suit. Greiner started to turn, automatically, toward the three-hundred-mile-distant capital city of San Felipe, then stopped in midair. He stared at the tiny repeating radar image in his wrist control—Iron Man was heading away from San Felipe! With a fierce grin, Greiner turned back and started for Iron Man.

  Eighteen

  In his anxiety to get away from Modok’s probing mental fingers, Iron Man had simply run—away, anywhere, somewhere beyond those insistent mental blows. His jury-rigged scramblers might not hold—Stark had no way of knowing. He had made a creative guess as to the frequency of Modok’s mind blast—somewhere in the region of the alpha waves—but he could not be certain Modok could not switch. He had to get out of range; only he didn’t really know what the range might be. But the square-root law applied to all broadcast frequencies—the further away the weaker the power, to simplify it—so the further away he got, the better.

  Now, in the night sky, he realised that the small, distant blur of light behind him was his destination. Across leagues of jungle, across swamp and mountain, this was the only place he could think of that might have a radio powerful enough, or far enough away, to punch through Modok’s interference. Iron Man banked around and headed back, almost straight past the hidden lab and camouflaged airstrip.

  Greiner smiled. The radar screen showed Iron Man turning, coming back almost in his direction. He felt the powerful thrust in his boots as his mind formed the order: full speed! It was exhilarating, flying like a rocket through the sky, cleaving the warm tropical air like a missile, heading toward The Enemy.

  Greiner was confident of victory. He was bigger, stronger, more vicious than Anthony Stark, even in a suit of armor. And his own black version of that armor was even bigger and more powerful, due to the insistence of his master, the great Modok. Greiner was all muscle, but he was not stupid. He knew the value of his mission and the gratitude of Modok when he succeeded. He would, of course, succeed. No man or woman had ever bested him. Greiner had spent years studying all the martial arts. He had spent endless hours building his body to absolute perfection, constructing it as a sculptor might, bringing each muscle to its peak of size, performance and appearance. Everything in proportion, functioning fully and cooperatively. He was not “muscle-bound” as unthinking—and jealous—fools suggested. He was, he thought, the most perfect human specimen alive. Modok had even suggested the feasibility of cloning armies from his cells! Armies of Greiners!

  The thought pleased him greatly. He would see that they ate properly, received the correct training, and became exact duplicates of himself. An army of perfect humans . . . in fantastically powerful armor! The thought was heady. He saw himself replacing the grotesque Modok—a genetically horrible specimen—and then, at the head of a perfect army of muscular Greiners.

  The thought was too rich. The vistas it uncovered were too vast. He had best concentrate on the moment. That was the way you built perfection—one muscle at a time, keeping the whole picture in focus, but concentrating on one action. And his one action now was: destroy Iron Man.

  The boot-jets flared in the purple night as he sped toward the rendezvous with Iron Man.

  Beep!

  Beep! Beep!

  Greiner heard the radar blips coming at faster and faster intervals. He was closing in. They were coming together almost head-on and at top speed.

  Beep, beep, beep!

  Greiner searched the night sky ahead. There! The twin jets of Iron Man’s boots!

  Beepbeepbeepbeep!

  Greiner spread his armored hands, ready to rend and tear as he crashed into the unsuspecting Iron Man.

  Iron Man had his eyes on the distant, faint dome of light from San Felipe, but he had not forgotten that Modok was an unusually powerful and resourceful enemy. If he were Modok, what would he do? Stop Iron Man, of course. The radio blackout was only temporary. Even Modok would know that Iron Man would fly out of any radius of static eventually. The start in the wrong direction, in his flight of fear, had been unfortunate, but it was only a modest setback in time.

  What else would Modok try? Missiles? He had seen no evidence of any missile sites. The Costa Verde laboratory was keeping a low profile. Undoubtedly, bribes had been paid to workers to keep silent about the big, concrete bunker. Corrupt Costa Verde politicians had certainly been “gotten to.”
They looked the other way and fattened their Swiss bank accounts. But the secret base had been kept small. Somewhere Modok had a factory, or factories, ready to begin production on the suits of armor. However, they were no threat. Without plans and prototypes, the factories were useless. He had destroyed the plans and there was only one proto—

  Greiner!

  The huge black armor! Of course, Modok would—

  Iron Man had only a second to respond. A tiny flicker of light, twin jets of fire coming at him—Greiner!

  He rolled and the black giant shot past, scraping against his own crimson-and-gold protection. Greiner’s metallic glove scraped across Iron Man’s thigh, grasped the other and sent him into a spin.

  Iron Man was on his guard. Greiner was bigger and stronger, in a suit of armor that was even more powerful, due to its larger size—but there was a more important mission to perform than to see who was the better man. He had to get out of the zone of radio interference and alert the Costa Verde forces as to the location of the hidden revolutionary lab.

  Iron Man twisted in the air and streaked for the city, squirming from the grasp of the black-armored giant. It was not cowardice, but a sense of duty, that sent the Golden Avenger flying away.

  Greiner interpreted Iron Man’s quick departure as fear and retreat. He smiled with a grim satisfaction as he angled his jet thrust and took off after the Avenger.

  There was the faint, first light of dawn in the east but the stars were still overhead. Iron Man tried again and again to get through the heavy static, but to no avail—and Greiner was gaining on him.

  Iron Man looked back just as the black-garbed Greiner caught up to him. The powerful, black fist struck at Iron Man’s back, sending him tumbling through the air. For a dizzy moment, he had difficulty regaining his balance and in that moment Greiner was upon him.

  They met, two armored men in the air, boot-jets flaring, hand to hand. The selsyn motors in their complicated armor whirred as their meta-electronic muscles strained against each other. With a sense of horror, Iron Man felt the more powerful gloved hands of the bigger man crush his own hands.

  Squeezed until the pain was almost unbearable, Iron Man felt his repulsor units fracture. He kicked himself free and tried to fire a repulsor blast from his right, then his left glove. Neither worked.

  But Greiner’s did. The first blast sent Iron Man back like a cannonball strike and the second sent him spinning through the air. Greiner, feeling more and more confident in his new armor, closed in fast, grappling with Iron Man. The Golden Avenger sent Greiner staggering back with a smashing blow to his face mask, but Modok’s black-suited henchman recovered. Iron Man again tried to race toward the distant San Felipe. Every foot gained was a foot toward triumph.

  However, the grimly fighting Greiner was not so easily left behind. He shot after Iron Man and once again his more powerful jets brought him abreast. The two armored men exchanged blows that would have crunched a truck and dented a tank, but the flesh within the superb armor held out.

  Iron Man grappled with Greiner and tried to twist him so that their combined jets sent them toward San Felipe even faster. The giant punched free and almost took Iron Man’s head off in a roundhouse swing that spun them both apart.

  They closed like tigers. In the jungle below, in a lonely hut, a native awoke to the ringing sounds of metal on metal. He quavered in his rope bunk, beneath what he thought was a battle of the gods.

  Smashing fists into metal again and again, the two antagonists fell lower and lower until they were threshing about in the upper branches of a giant banyan. Greiner ripped loose a thick branch and swung the wooden club against Iron Man’s body. Iron Man jetted away, sweeping through the branches with a crash, Greiner in pursuit.

  Greiner’s gloved hand seized Iron Man’s ankle and he was dragged down into the jungle. Shreds of greenery fountained skyward into the growing dawn as the two men rolled in furious combat on the jungle floor. Iron Man broke free and jumped back.

  “What’s the matter, big fella?” Iron Man jeered. “I’d say pick on someone your own size but the dinosaurs have all died off.” His tone infuriated Greiner, who charged. Iron Man jetted straight up in a simple but deft maneuver. He was counting on Modok’s hireling to be less agile in the powerful suit than he was in his familiar guise.

  Greiner thundered through more jungle before he stopped; then he charged again. This time he was ready for Iron Man’s evasive tactics and caught him in a bear hug. The powerful metal arms closed around Iron Man’s torso and the great muscles, their natural power amplified by the armored suit, strained away at crushing the Avenger. The combatants jetted high into the sky accompanied by a scream of sundered air.

  The crimson-and-gold Avenger struck at what he knew to be the suit’s few weak points. It was not a smashing blow, but a small, deft maneuver. He twisted in the giant’s grasp, just far enough to expose the circular disk on his metal chest. With quick, deft fingers he took out the charging wire from the seemingly decorative ring and before Modok’s man could react, Iron Man had shorted out the suit’s electrical system.

  With a gasp of disbelief, Greiner fell away. No boot-jet flared, no repulsor ray jetted. The black-armored figure fell toward the jungle. With every second counting, Iron Man spun in space and headed toward San Felipe, broadcasting on every emergency frequency he had.

  There was a jungle stream below Greiner. It was deep, but it was swift. The black-armored form fell into it like a rock. It shook the huge man, sending paroxysms of pain through his body. He lay motionless, the suit’s protective systems shorted out. The water began to fill the suit, flowing in through the eye slits right before his horrified eyes.

  Nineteen

  The Costa Verde Army landed with hobnailed boots on the laboratory. Military helicopters dropped out of the sky and fast-firing .50-caliber machine guns stitched holes across the landing strip and the running AIM troopers. One chopper exploded and fell in a flaming blob; another made an abrupt crash landing almost atop the camouflaged buildings—both were victims of nerve tanglers.

  Iron Man came in behind the first wave of attacking troop carriers, catching up to the strike force. He had one objective: get Modok. He hung in the air above the swarming helicopters, watching for Modok, but saw nothing. The four business-suited conspirators he saw herded from a doorway under the guns of the Costa Verde forces—but no Modok.

  The jungle around them was thick and almost impenetrable. Modok could have slipped out some way. Knowing him, he always has a back door, Iron Man thought.

  As he waited and watched, Iron Man tried to make repairs on his damaged repulsor-ray gloves. He managed to get one glove fixed and had the other off and in his hands, peeled back to expose the electronic mechanism, when he caught a flicker of light from the corner of his eye.

  Dawn was breaking across the lush jungle but there were parts, in lower areas, still in relative darkness. It was in one of these pockets of darkness that Iron Man saw the flare.

  Modok!

  Iron Man arrowed toward the flame, his mind concentrating on only one thing: get Modok. But the sudden acceleration caught the glove in his hand like a wind sock and ripped it from his inattentive hand. The glove fell through space toward the jungle and Iron Man knew he did not have time to dive down after it. Hunting for it in the thick undergrowth, in the uncertain green light of early morning, would take more time than he had. He had to go after Modok with one hand exposed and one glove with a faulty and sporadically operating repulsor.

  Once he had pinpointed the fleeing power chair of the head of AIM, Iron Man put on full speed. The thought crossed his mind that he was no longer up to full power—the fight and the flight had seriously depleted his power supply. During the night fight, there had been no sun to replenish the power drain via the solar cells. Now, although the sun was rising, it would be some time before it could replenish his depleted store of energy.

  Go with what you have, he thought. There is only one chance, and this is i
t. Win, lose, or draw, this is the final battle with Modok. The chess game was down to the end game—king to king. The pawns were gone, the powerful knights and bishops destroyed, the castle-rook under the control of the Costa Verde Army.

  It was checkmate . . . or death.

  Modok knew almost at once that something was in pursuit. His readout screens showed an approaching object. It was too slow to be a missile and, in any case, the Costa Verde Army did not have such devices. It was either Greiner, coming for his reward, or . . . Iron Man!

  The radio interference was still in operation—Modok could not contact Greiner, if it was Greiner. But he could take no chances. If it were Greiner and he destroyed him, what had he lost? An excellent subordinate, true, but there were always others eager to hold on to his coattails in his rise to power. He would lose a suit, but that would be only a momentary loss. Duplicate plans, on microfilm, were in a side compartment of his power chair. He would simply escape to some other AIM factory, build a small army of armored henchmen, and come back—more powerful than ever.

  Being the ruler of a sovereign country had its advantages. Doctor Doom knew that; even the paltry Mafia had tried it. There were so many legal aspects to it. The Russians knew it and operated extensive spy networks out of their embassies and consulates. Yes, he’d come back—to rule Costa Verde, then the other target countries. Step one in the Master Plan.

  But first—remove any pursuit; erase any connection with the Costa Verde debacle. Modok programmed one of the power chair’s two mini-missiles.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Targeted. Get within range, dolt.

  Beep, beep, beep!

  Modok’s thumb pressed the red button and from the missile bay in the bowels of the chair, just above the thundering jet, a slender, pointed shape, about the length of a man’s arm, shot forth.

  Modok smiled. Good-bye, whoever you are.