Justice League_Wings of War Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  A Batman-Hawkgirl team-up the kind of assignment thats makes writers salivate. But it would never have materialized without the achievements of Vincent Sullivan, Bob Kane, and Bill Finger, who first unleashed Batman on the unsuspecting denizens of Gotham; Denny O’Neil, who as a writer and editor returned Batman to his Gothic roots; Sheldon Mayer, Dennis Neville, Sheldon Moldoff, and Gardner Fox, who gave wings to the first Hawkgirl (and her partner, Hawkman); Julie Schwartz and Joe Kubert, who helped Fox reimagine Hawkgirl (and yes, Hawkman) for the modern audience; Justice League producer Rich Fogel, who laid the foundation on which this novel was built; Bruce Timm and his cohorts at Warner Bros. Animation, who continue to breathe new life into the Justice League; and my editor Charlie Kochman, who like Batman prefers to remain an enigma, his existence the stuff of fog and whispers. —MJF

  The man called Bane eyed the image on the television screen in his hotel room the way a hungry jaguar might eye a plump and unsuspecting rabbit.

  But it wasn’t his prey pictured on the screen—at least, not yet. At the moment, it was just a female television news reporter in a tailored gray suit. Her necklace alone probably cost more money than Bane’s father would have made in a year.

  Fortunately, Bane wasn’t a poor hacienda worker like his father. Bane was a top-notch international mercenary who commanded hundreds of thousands of American dollars for every job he did.

  His current assignment was even more profitable than most. But then, the stakes were as high as they came. The fate of two entire Central European nations depended on how well Bane succeeded at his job.

  And he would succeed. He always did.

  The reporter was standing in front of an imposing steel and glass building in downtown Metropolis. Bane recognized the building. It housed the World Assembly, an international congress dedicated to preserving peace among the nations of Earth.

  Peace.

  Bane laughed deep in his throat. Only a fool believed in the possibility of tranquility when there was so much wealth to be amassed in the creation of strife.

  “For the last forty years,” said the female reporter, “the nations of Luristan and Kaznia have been embroiled in a fierce and sometimes bloody dispute over which of them owns the fertile Chemeltekov Valley. Finally, the World Assembly has convinced representatives of both countries to come to Assembly headquarters here in Metropolis, where they will attempt to resolve their differences face to face.”

  Both the reporter and the World Assembly building vanished from the screen. They were replaced by the image of a balding man with small, deep-set eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a thick, gray mustache.

  “Boris Gorinski,” the reporter’s voice continued, “has been President of Luristan for the last eighteen years. He has made the trip to Metropolis to personally protect his country’s interests in the negotiations.”

  Abruptly, the picture changed. It showed a fairhaired military officer with bright blue eyes, a strong chin, and the athletic bearing of an American sports hero.

  The only element that seemed out of place was the pipe in the man’s hand. However, Bane had seldom seen the fellow without it.

  “General Leonid Sikander is Gorinski’s closest advisor. American television audiences will remember Sikander from his gold-medal speed-skating performance in the 1984 Winter Olympics.”

  Then the image on the screen changed again. This time, the face that appeared was that of a lean, wiry man with close-cropped white hair and a hard, withering gaze.

  “Gorinski’s longtime adversary,” said the reporter, “is Alexi Melnikov, the premier of Kaznia. Once it was announced that Gorinski was coming here to speak for Luristan, Melnikov made it his business to appear here as well.”

  Bane wasn’t surprised. Melnikov seldom trusted others to act on his behalf.

  “The mayor’s office and the Metropolis police are on high alert, and are working closely with the federal government,” the reporter continued. “The last thing they want is for something to happen to either Gorinski or Melnikov while they’re guests in our town.”

  Understandable, Bane thought. If anything did happen to the visiting leaders, Metropolis and the United States would be blamed for the incident.

  And wouldn’t that be a shame.

  “Of course,” the reporter added, “the mayor and the police aren’t the only ones standing guard over the proceedings. As usual, someone else is keeping a watchful eye on our fair city.”

  With that, she pointed to the sky. As the camera followed her gesture, it fixed on a familiar blue figure hovering high above the city’s skyscrapers, his bright red cape snapping in the wind.

  “Superman,” said the reporter, as if there were anyone in the world who couldn’t have identified the powerful Man of Steel.

  Bane’s lip curled with disdain. Metropolis’s superpowered defender didn’t scare him. Even with his great strength, Superman could be beaten like anyone else.

  “And because of the importance of these talks,” the reporter said, “he appears to have brought some friends in to help him.”

  Again, she pointed to the sky. And again, the camera found a figure in a cape floating beneath the clouds. But this time, the cape was a blue one and the figure was a pale shade of green.

  Martian Manhunter, Bane thought.

  His appearance on Earth had coincided with an alien invasion and the formation of the Justice League, but his role in those events was still unclear. What was clear was that the Martian had some interesting abilities, including the power to shape-shift or make himself immaterial at a moment’s notice.

  As Bane watched, two other figures converged on the Martian. They were females, each one capable of flying under her own power.

  One was the statuesque brunette known as Wonder Woman, who was said to have been raised as a warrior-princess on the sun-drenched isle of Themyscira. However, after trying unsuccessfully to find evidence of this island, Bane had come to doubt the accuracy of the story.

  But Wonder Woman did possess a warrior’s skills, coupled with unexpected, Superman-level strength. And such reflexes! News coverage of her exploits with the Justice League had shown her deflecting a barrage of bullets with the silver bracelets she wore on her wrists.

  The mercenary’s mouth curled into a cruel smile as he admired the Amazon’s beauty. Yes, he thought, a wondrous woman indeed.

  She flew off almost instantly, leaving the Martian to confer with the other female in the Justice League. And this one, with her hawklike cowl and large, gray wings, was even more mysterious than the warriorwoman.

  The name she went by was Hawkgirl. Given her appearance, it seemed like the obvious choice.

  But nothing else about her made much sense. Her weapon of choice was an ancient-looking mace, yet when it connected with its target, it released a potent burst of energy—enough to topple even the strongest enemy.

  Hawkgirl was also a vicious hand-to-hand combatant. But Bane had studied the martial arts methods of a hundred different cultures, and her style was different from any of them.

  And her great gray wings . . . they had to be mechanical in nature. But they moved so naturally, they seemed to be a part of her.

  Strange, he thought. In a way that was hard for Bane to express, Hawkgirl felt as alien to him as the Martian Manhunter—perhaps eve
n more so.

  The camera returned to the reporter. “No visiting dignitary,” she said, “has ever enjoyed so high a level of security as these two—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, someone appeared beside her as if by magic. He wore a red costume with a matching mask and a yellow lightning bolt drawn brazenly across his chest.

  Bane grunted. The Flash.

  He was known as the Fastest Man Alive for good reason. Even Superman, with all his blinding quickness, was hard-pressed to keep up with the Flash.

  “Like the lady says,” the grinning speedster told the television audience, “Metropolis is zipped up tighter than a big, old, economy-sized, titanium sandwich bag. Let ze bad guys of ze world beware—the Justice League is everywhere!”

  As if to underscore the truth of the Flash’s statement, a streak of green light zagged across the sky behind him and was gone just as suddenly. But Bane didn’t have to see the face of the man responsible for the streak to know his name—or what he could do.

  He was called Green Lantern—and though he looked human enough, he was reportedly a member of an alien-inspired, intergalactic peacekeeping force. The emerald ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand enabled him to project laserlike energy beams or impenetrable force fields at will.

  But it wasn’t just his ring that made Green Lantern a formidable adversary. It was his mental toughness, which Bane had noted time and again in the news coverage he had so carefully scrutinized.

  “As the Flash says,” the woman continued, “the Justice League is everywhere—and we’re grateful that they are. This is Candy Culhane for Metro News.”

  A moment later, the reporter’s image gave way to that of two news anchors seated at a desk. They made a little joke about the Justice League’s presence in Metropolis and then went on to another news item.

  Bane scowled. He detested American television. Far too many jokes and far too little in the way of truth.

  For instance, Candy Culhane and her camera crew had shown only six members of the famous Justice League. But they had failed to remark on the one member who was nowhere to be seen—the one with whom Bane had clashed on more than one occasion.

  The one called Batman.

  Bane’s lips pulled back in a wolflike grin. He hoped he did meet the Dark Knight of Gotham here. Then he could finish what he had started.

  That was one job he would do for free.

  Hawkgirl’s wings beat in an easy, graceful rhythm as she scanned the broad, car-packed thoroughfares below her. “So far so good,” she said.

  Martian Manhunter, who was hovering beside her a hundred feet higher than Metropolis’s highest skyscraper, didn’t answer right away. Instead, his overhanging brow creased down the middle.

  “Do you see something?” Hawkgirl asked, bracing herself for the possibility of battle.

  J’onn J’onzz shook his hairless green head, putting his teammate’s concerns to rest for the moment. “I thought I heard something on our comm link, but I was mistaken. It was probably feedback from all the communications activity in this area.”

  “Probably,” Hawkgirl allowed.

  As one of the biggest cities in the United States, Metropolis was a hotbed of all kinds of activity—human as well as technological. Even she knew that, and she hadn’t been on Earth much longer than J’onn had.

  “So,” she said, “where do you think he is?” The Martian looked at her. “He?”

  “You know,” said Hawkgirl. “The guy with the scowl and the pointy ears.”

  “Ah,” said J’onn. “You mean Batman.” Martian Manhunter eyed the cityscape below them. “He could be anywhere.”

  “I can see,” she said, “why the newspapers call him ‘the mysterious Batman.’ He’s always hanging back in the shadows, just out of sight.”

  “And yet,” J’onn added, “he seems to appear whenever he’s needed.”

  “But why is he so secretive?” she asked. “No one else in the League acts the way he does.”

  The Martian shrugged. “It would not be right for me to comment. I am, after all, a telepath.”

  Hawkgirl understood what J’onn meant by that. When he communicated with her mind-to-mind, she received flashes of insight into the workings of his intellect.

  No doubt it worked the other way too—which meant J’onn had caught glimpses of what went on in his teammates’ minds as well. And whatever he had seen in Batman’s mind needed to be kept private, between J’onn and the Dark Knight and no one else.

  Hawkgirl wouldn’t have had it any other way. After all, there were a few secrets she preferred to keep private as well.

  Batman had been sitting on the roof of the Gardner-Fox Building, monitoring the radio band used by the Metropolis police, for several hours before the call for help came from the Armory.

  As luck would have it, Batman was closer to the problem than any patrol car. All he had to do was swing across a couple of narrow streets and sprint across a few rooftops. Moments later, he found himself overlooking the Armory.

  It was a stately redbrick building, one of the oldest public structures still in use in Metropolis. Normally, its tall, gracefully arched windows were its most attractive architectural feature. But someone had punched a hole in one of them, marring the effect.

  There was also a grappling hook stuck in the low, inwardly curving wall that lined the perimeter of the Armory’s roof, and a slender rope hung from the hook down to the smashed window. It didn’t take a detective of Batman’s caliber to figure out what had happened here.

  Or why.

  The Metropolis police kept confiscated weapons in the Armory—guns and explosives that had been captured over the course of hundreds of arrests and investigations and placed here until they could be used as evidence.

  As far as Batman knew, no one had ever tried to break into the place. It was usually easier to obtain guns and explosives elsewhere than to invade a building guarded by the police twenty-four hours a day.

  But with the Luristanian and Kaznian delegations in town, it was probably difficult to get weapons in or out of Metropolis. So, unless Batman missed his guess—and that didn’t happen very often—someone had decided to tap an unexpected source of firepower.

  And by pulling the job at night, that someone had hoped to escape the scrutiny of Superman, Martian Manhunter, and the rest of the Justice League’s high flyers. So far, that was exactly what had happened.

  But there was another member of the League who operated much closer to the ground, and he was about to bust up the break-in artist’s party.

  In fact, under normal circumstances, Batman would already have gotten that ball rolling. He would have swung across the street and gained entry to the Armory.

  But in addition to being a member of the Justice League, Batman was the self-assigned protector of Gotham City—and in that role, he had been battling an organized crime war for the last week or so.

  In fact, it was less than twenty-four hours earlier that he had apprehended Maxie Zeus, a wildly deluded mastermind trying to muscle in on Gotham’s already established mobsters.

  Zeus was now behind bars, and some of his rivals had accompanied him. However, their conflict had required Batman to remain on patrol around the clock, going on little or no sleep to keep the crime war from claiming any innocent victims.

  That effort was finally taking its toll on him. He felt tired, edgy . . . unable to bring his mind into the perfect focus he required of it.

  If Superman hadn’t summoned him to Metropolis for the World Assembly meeting, Batman would probably have been catching some sleep in his Batmobile. It was only the fact that world peace was at stake that had spurred him to remain awake.

  But now, as Batman eyed the broken window that would give him access to the Armory, he found he had to force himself to concentrate on a maneuver that should have been second nature to him.

  Come on, he told himself. Get going.

  First he moved backward about a dozen steps. Then
he removed a Batarang from his Utility Belt, pelted across the roof, and launched himself into the air.

  For a moment, Batman sailed through darkness like his namesake, his silken cape fluttering behind him. At just the right moment, he flipped his Batarang at the inward-curving wall on the Armory’s roof.

  The Batarang landed just beyond the wall, a length of lightweight but nearly unbreakable nylon rope trailing in its wake—the other end of which was clutched firmly in Batman’s gloved hands.

  Had he thrown the Batarang at the outset, the line would have been too long and he would have hit the building a story too low. By leaping first, he made sure that the line would be the right length to carry him through the opening in the broken window.

  With the cool night air whipping past him, Batman felt himself start to drop toward the street below. For a moment, he got the inevitable feeling that he would be crushed against the asphalt surface.

  Then he felt the line go taut, signifying that the Batarang had hooked onto the inward-curving wall. Like a circus acrobat, the detective used the force of his descent to swing feetfirst into the Armory.

  Even before he landed on the hard, black-and-white tile floor, the Dark Knight had sized up the situation. Dim lighting. A large space filled here and there with wooden packing crates. And two men armed with machine guns, one close and one at the far end of the room.

  Capitalizing on their surprise, Batman charged the closer man and dropped him with a flying kick. But by that time, the other man had begun firing at him.

  Guns, Batman thought as he propelled himself past the first swarm of bullets. He hated guns.

  Given that hatred, he might have been expected to take up an occupation that didn’t put him in the line of fire quite so often. But it was because he hated guns that he routinely placed himself in front of them.

  That way, no one else would have to do it.

  As the fire of the automatic weapons traced a blazing trail behind Batman, following him like an electric-blue predator, he darted across the floor and rolled. And just before the bullets caught up to him, he took shelter behind one of the crates.