Justice League_Wings of War

by Michael Jan Friedman

  There were few such locations west of Metropolis. The closest one was Finger’s Crossing, a town made up mostly of farms, vineyards, and the estates of wealthy families. In fact, billionaire socialite Bruce Wayne had once dated a girl from Finger’s Crossing.

  It didn’t take long for him to get there. Un fortunately, Batman had no way of knowing which farm, vineyard, or estate might have served as Bane’s landing field. All he could do was fly over the alternately wooded and open areas until something caught his eye.

  At least, that was what he thought—until he heard a feminine voice in his ear. “I’m getting close to the place where Bane landed his helicopter.”

  Batman’s brow furrowed. “Hawkgirl?”

  “Yes,” she said over their comm link. “Is that you, Batman?”

  “It is,” he confirmed. “Where are you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Hawkgirl answered. “Somewhere west of Metropolis. Lots of trees and green hills —and a very suspicious-looking little plane that I’ve been keeping an eye on for the last couple of minutes.”

  “Is it black?” Batman asked. “With an unusuallooking set of wings?”

  “Wait a second,” said Hawkgirl. There was a sound of swiftly beating wings in the background. “Don’t tell me that’s you.”

  Batman grunted. “It’s me.” The detective was curious as to how his teammate knew where Bane had landed. “How did you wind up here?”

  There was silence on the comm link for a second. Then Hawkgirl said, with only the slightest trace of irony in her voice, “A little bird told me.”

  Batman was about to ask for a more satisfying explanation when the winged woman spoke up again. “There,” she said. “That big red barn on the right.”

  The detective peered out the passenger side window of his plane. He could see the barn Hawkgirl was talking about, next to what must have been a farmhouse before time and neglect brought it down. And as he wheeled to keep from overshooting it, he could see Hawkgirl herself.

  She was an undeniably graceful figure, as comfortable in the sky as any bird. But then, her wings were real, as much a part of her as her arms and legs— though she had never revealed to her teammates if she had been born that way or if she had acquired the appendages later.

  In fact, there was a lot Batman didn’t know about Hawkgirl. And as far as he could tell, she wanted to keep it that way.

  The detective scanned the terrain in the vicinity of the farmhouse for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a long open field two hundred yards northeast of our target.”

  “I see it,” said Hawkgirl.

  “Meet me there,” he told her. Then he banked the Batwing and headed for the field.

  Hawkgirl felt an unexpected thrill of camaraderie as she and Batman approached the red barn through the dense woods that surrounded the place.

  But then, it had been a long time since she had worked in tandem with another top-notch detective. The last time had been back on Thanagar, where she had been a member of her planet’s airborne security force.

  Of course, Hawkgirl’s homeworld was a long way from Finger’s Crossing, and at that moment she didn’t need any reminiscences to distract her. Not when so much was riding on the possibility of recovering Boris Gorinski.

  There wasn’t any chance that he was in the farmhouse beside the barn. It had been hollowed out by fire at some point. There was barely any of it still standing.

  But the barn . . .

  Hawkgirl listened carefully. Yes, the barn was a different story.

  “Looks deserted,” Batman observed of the surviving structure.

  “It’s not,” Hawkgirl noted.

  He looked at her skeptically. “That little bird again?”

  She smiled. “Something like that.”

  Batman frowned and studied the barn again. “Bane’s helicopter could be in there. Gorinski too. Let’s check it out.”

  “Let’s,” Hawkgirl agreed.

  The detective kept to the trees as long as possible. Then he darted across the open space between the woods and the barn, and plastered himself against the wall next to the barn door.

  Hawkgirl chose a different route. With a few beats of her wings, she cleared the tree line and shot into the sky. Then she lowered herself onto the barn.

  “Now?” she suggested through her comm link. “Now,” Batman confirmed.

  Then he reached for the handle of the barn door and swung it open. With perfect timing, Hawkgirl flew through the opening and got a look at what was inside.

  The first thing she saw was the black shape of Bane’s helicopter. The second was the blue flash of gunfire.

  Hawkgirl left her energy mace on her hip and launched herself into the gunmen’s midst—the safest place, since they couldn’t fire for fear of hitting one another. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Batman join the fray.

  She had to admit that he was a master at hand-to-hand combat. He flowed like a shadow, knocking out one adversary after another.

  But there were at least a dozen of Bane’s henchmen in the barn, and it wasn’t possible for the heroes to engage them all. As a result, a few of them turned tail and went running out of the barn.

  Both Hawkgirl and Batman were too busy to offer pursuit. Fortunately, the Thanagarian had another option—one that involved her winged allies.

  It didn’t take long to make use of it. Then she began weaving her way through the gunmen again, getting in blow after punishing blow. Finally, there wasn’t anyone left to fight.

  Batman came to that conclusion at about the same time Hawkgirl did, and went pelting out of the barn. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who had seen a few of the gunmen slip away.

  But she knew they hadn’t gotten very far. And in a moment, Batman would know it too.

  Sure enough, as Hawkgirl emerged from the barn, she saw three would-be escapees cowering with their backs together and their guns lying on the ground around them, held at bay by a flock of swooping, squawking birds.

  Batman turned to look at her. “Your doing?” he asked.

  Hawkgirl shrugged. “I couldn’t just let them get away, could I?”

  It wasn’t as if she could have commanded the birds to do anything she wanted of them. But the right suggestion, planted at the right moment, was enough to get them to detain Bane’s henchmen.

  Indeed, Hawkgirl had been tempted to enlist the birds’ help in the dark confines of the barn. However, she had feared that a stray bullet might kill one of them.

  With the birds keeping the three gunmen busy, Batman went back into the barn. Hawkgirl flew after him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Looking for Gorinski,” he said.

  “Here in the barn?” Hawkgirl wondered, alighting on the straw-covered dirt floor.

  “No,” Batman told her as they moved into the shadows behind the black helicopter. “Underneath it.”

  Then he knelt, reached through the straw, and grasped something. Before the Thanagarian knew it, the Dark Knight had swung open a square wooden door with a crude handle attached to it—and gotten a hissing blast of something in his face!

  Whatever it was, it didn’t have any color. But Hawkgirl could tell by the scent of ether that it was an anesthetic, meant to knock unconscious whoever was incautious enough to open the door.

  Too late, Batman shot to his feet and staggered backward, but the hissing kept on unabated. Left to his own devices, the detective seemed certain to succumb to the invisible gas.

  Fortunately, he had some help. With a burst of speed, Hawkgirl swept Batman up in her arms and flew him back out of the barn.

  Out in the open air, he took a few deep breaths and was able to stand without his teammate’s help. “I’m all right,” he said, though he failed to make it sound convincing.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  Batman nodded. “Fine.” The only thing that seemed to have been hurt was his pride.

  Booby traps, Hawkgirl thought.

  They
were a common tactic back on Thanagar. When criminals wanted to put the police off their track, they booby-trapped something and eliminated pursuit.

  But if the disgust on Batman’s face was any indication, that sort of thing didn’t happen very often on Earth. Or maybe it did, and it just hadn’t happened to him.

  Hawkgirl had to give her teammate credit for noticing the trapdoor in the course of their struggle with the gunmen. Usually she was the observant one.

  But for a guy who was supposed to be the World’s Greatest Detective, Batman hadn’t demonstrated a lot of common sense.

  The Dark Knight turned to the three gunmen whom the birds were keeping at bay. Hawkgirl had a feeling she knew what her teammate was thinking.

  “You think they know?” she asked.

  Batman scowled. “Only one way to find out.”

  He walked up to the nearest of Bane’s henchmen, a fellow with a receding hairline and a dark, drooping mustache. The gunman’s brow furrowed as he took note of the crime fighter’s approach.

  “Where’s Gorinski?” Batman demanded.

  “I’m not talking,” the gunman said defiantly.

  Hawkgirl saw the muscles work in Batman’s jaw. “We’ll see about that,” he said evenly.

  Maybe he would have gotten the information he sought . . . eventually. But the winged woman believed she had a quicker and more certain way.

  “Let me handle this,” she said. And she approached one of the other men, a guy with curly, dirty-blond hair.

  “I’m not talking either,” he said, anticipating her question.

  Hawkgirl smiled. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I mean, what could possibly frighten you enough to make you betray a guy like Bane? Nothing I can think of.”

  Her eyes narrowed in the slits of her hawk mask as if she were looking right through him.

  “Unless . . .” And she let her voice trail off suggestively.

  Without realizing it, the blond man shot a terrified look at the birds that were still diving at him repeatedly and then withdrawing. And with that one glance, Hawkgirl’s suspicion was confirmed.

  She was younger than most of her comrades back on Thanagar, but she had been around long enough to know when someone had a fear of birds.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “Birds are such fragile creatures. But when you put so many of them together, with all those hard, sharp little beaks—”

  The blond man’s eyes opened wide and his face lost its color. “You wouldn’t,” he muttered, his voice thin with fear.

  “Who, me?” Hawkgirl asked.

  The birds began to squawk more loudly as they dove. They sounded hungry. Famished, in fact.

  “You can’t do this to me,” Bane’s henchman groaned, holding his hands up in front of his face.

  “I’m just standing here watching the show,” Hawkgirl told him. “Of course, I might be convinced to put in a good word for you. That is, if you tell us where Bane has taken President Gorinski.”

  “I don’t know!” the man cried.

  Judging by the tone of his voice, he was telling the truth. Hawkgirl changed her approach.

  “Then tell me who hired you,” she said.

  The gunman struggled with his terror—but only until the birds started coming a little closer. Then the answer spilled out of him.

  “Murtaugh,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Hawkgirl didn’t know the name. But Batman seemed familiar with it.

  “Donnie Murtaugh?” he asked.

  The gunman nodded frantically, his eyes riveted on the storm of birds. “Yeah, yeah, that’s him. Now call them off before they peck my eyes out!”

  Hawkgirl glanced at Batman. He nodded once, signaling that they had the information they needed.

  “I’ll call Superman,” she volunteered, “and let him know what’s happening.”

  Batman didn’t object. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all, leading Hawkgirl to wonder if the gas hadn’t affected him more than he was letting on.

  Or maybe, she thought sadly, the man in the cowl just wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.

  Hovering over Metropolis, Superman looked out onto the wreck that had been the Fleischer Bridge. It would take some work to restore it to its old self.

  But the Justice League had gotten everyone off it safely. That was the important thing. Bridges could always be replaced, no matter how much nostalgia they evoked. People were a different story.

  “Superman?” came a voice in his ear.

  He recognized it as Hawkgirl’s. “Yes?” he responded, eager to hear if her pursuit of Bane’s helicopter had paid off.

  “I’m here with Batman,” she said. “We met some of Bane’s friends, but we weren’t able to recover Gorinski. At least not yet.”

  “You have a lead?” Superman asked.

  “Batman says we do.”

  That was good enough for the Man of Steel. “Then pursue it. And keep me posted. We’ll keep watch here in Metropolis until you get back.”

  “Will do,” said Hawkgirl.

  Superman scanned the urban expanse of Metropolis and knew the League had a job ahead of them—not just keeping the city’s people calm after what had happened on the bridge, but also anticipating whatever trouble would come next.

  And there would be trouble. His reporter’s instincts told him so.

  Hawkgirl looked at Batman in the gathering darkness of evening. “So we pursue our lead. Together, I guess.”

  Her teammate eyed her through the slits in his mask. “I usually prefer to work alone.”

  “So do I,” she said. “Usually. But I don’t think either one of us is going to be of much use back in Metropolis.”

  Batman frowned. “And?”

  “And if I were Gorinski,” Hawkgirl told him, “I’d want us both on the case. It’s like they say . . . two heads are better than one.”

  Still, her teammate seemed hesitant. She wondered if there was something she had missed.

  Finally, Batman nodded. “All right. We’ll work together.”

  “Good,” said Hawkgirl, glad they had gotten that out of the way. “What’s our next stop?”

  A moment later they were off, her powerful wings carrying the additional burden of the Dark Knight.

  Batman had made a promise to himself once—that he wouldn’t let anyone die at the hands of a criminal if it was in his power to prevent it.

  That was after his parents had been gunned down in a place called Crime Alley, on their way home from a night at the movies. Batman, who was then an eight-year-old called Bruce Wayne, had seen it happen. The tragedy had unfolded all around him like a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

  He could still remember kneeling over his parents’ bodies as the thief who had killed them ran away. He could still hear the hiss of rain on the pavement and the clatter of the man’s frantically retreating footsteps.

  It was then that Bruce had made the promise to protect others from harm. And from the day he had taken on the likeness of a bat, he had been true to his vow.

  Until about an hour ago.

  When Hawkgirl had suggested that they work together to find Gorinski, he should have agreed immediately. It was clear she brought something to the table that he couldn’t—some sort of instinct he couldn’t figure out.

  Not to mention her ability to fly. Or her talents as a fighter. Or her energy mace.

  Or her amazing rapport with birds, which Batman hadn’t even known about until he saw her make use of it back at the barn.

  But he hadn’t agreed to work with her right away. He had hesitated. And to his shame, he knew why.

  It was because Hawkgirl had shown him up in the barn. First, she had pulled him out of harm’s way when his encroaching fatigue and lack of caution had kept him from realizing he was walking into a trap. Then she had managed to scare up the information they needed when it had looked like he couldn’t.

  He was known as the World’s Greatest Detective. But Hawkgirl, at least for now, had sh
own herself to be a greater one.

  So Batman had let his ego get in the way of his work. But he wouldn’t let that happen again. He would set his personal feelings aside for the good of their mission.

  They would find Gorinski—by working together. And that was a promise.

  Just as Batman thought that, he saw the nightdark Metropolis waterfront loom below him, with its neon signs advertising saloons, souvenir shops, and tattoo parlors. Hob’s Bay was the roughest part of the city, frequented by all sorts of shady types.

  “Down there,” he said, pointing with his free hand.

  “Gotcha,” Hawkgirl replied. Then she set him down in the alley he had indicated and alighted beside him.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Batman said. “I know guys like Murtaugh. I’ve been dealing with them for years.”

  He could see the skepticism in his partner’s eyes. But then, he hadn’t exactly been impressive back in Finger’s Crossing. She was wondering if she could trust his judgment in this matter.

  “I can handle it,” the detective assured her.

  “All right,” Hawkgirl said. “But I’ll be watching, just in case you need a hand.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  As Batman watched his partner ascend into the night, the beating of her wings creating a wind in the alley, he reviewed what he knew of Donnie Murtaugh.

  Batman had first heard the name years earlier, when he was investigating Gotham’s organized crime syndicates. Murtaugh ran a bar called the Anchor here in Metropolis, but its main function was to launder money for the Pulaski family.

  If memory served, Murtaugh ran his place himself, never trusting anyone to do it for him. So more than likely, he would be there now—or for the next three minutes, anyway, since a Metropolis ordinance forced saloons to close at midnight on weekdays.

  The Anchor was situated to one side of the alley and there was a dead end in the other direction, so Murtaugh would have to pass the alleyway on his way home. Anyway, that was the theory.

  Edging up to the mouth of the alley, the Dark Knight waited. He could feel his fatigue threatening to overwhelm him like a great, dark wave, but he resisted it. He didn’t have the luxury of taking a break—not while Bane had President Gorinski.