“What is your designation?”
“Winter Man, dammit!”
A brief pause. “I’m sorry. I have no such designation. If—”
“Search under inactive,” Bane broke in.
A longer pause. “I have you, Winter Man.”
“Then stow the bullshit and listen to me. The Center’s been hit.”
“Level?”
“Three. All dead.”
“Survivors?”
Bane figured rapidly and the bile bubbled against his stomach linings. “Five. Imminent return expected. You’ve got to act fast, and I want an immediate patch-through to Arthur Jorgenson, director of Clandestine Operations, designation — Hercules.” He could trust Jorgenson, his former boss at DCO. Jorgenson would understand.
“Negative, Winter Man. Time limit on this line has elapsed. Surface again in thirty minutes and call Relays. Patch-through will be effected then. Jorgenson will be waiting. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Signing off.”
Bane hung up the receiver, scanned the area more routinely. If Scalia had left someone to take him out, the attempt would have come during the phone call while he was reasonably distracted. Feeling safer, he started to move from the phone, swung swiftly back. Harry the Bat! COBRA was filling in the holes: Davey, the Center. They would know about Harry too. He’d be next on the list! Bane dialed the Bat’s number and felt his heart thunder more with each ring. Five passed and still no Harry.
Come on! … Come on!
“You’ve got the Bat. I’m all ears.”
“Thank God …”
“Josh? That you? What the hell’s going on? What did the King want?”
“The boy’s gone, Harry.”
“Shit! They didn’t … ice him?”
“No, just made him disappear.”
“Well, at least—”
“Harry, they hit the Center.”
“They what? Janie?”
Bane’s silence answered for him.
“Lord fuck a duck, Josh,” Harry moaned, “we got us some scores to settle on this one.”
“I’ve got a call into Jorgenson. He’ll bring us in. We can’t—”
“Hold it, Josh,” Harry whispered. “There’s someone outside the door.”
“Stay away from it, Harry. Scalia might still be lurking about.”
“Scalia? No shit! Hold it, they’re working on the knob now. Just hang on there, Winter Man.”
Bane heard the receiver meet the wood of the Bat’s coffee table.
“Harry? … Harry! … Harry!”
The blast was muffled by the phone line, still clear enough for Bane to figure it came from a twelve-gauge shotgun. Then silence.
“Harry! … Harry!”
No response. Bane felt frustration and helplessness claw at his spine. They had shot Harry. The poor guy was lying dead or close to it and all Bane could do was listen. He let the receiver drop from his fingers and bolted toward the street. Half a minute passed before a taxi answered his whistle, and he gave the driver the Bat’s address along with a crisp twenty and instructions to make it fast.
The driver made it in eight minutes and Bane was upstairs on Harry’s floor in just over one more. He snapped the Browning from its holster and pressed his back tight against the wall, sidestepping quickly toward Harry’s apartment.
Then he saw the door, what was left of it anyway. The shotgun had torn an irregular splotch big enough for a basketball to squeeze through from the wood. The still strong smell of sulphur and cordite burned his nostrils. Double-aught buck for sure. Trench maybe. Or Scalia.
He poked his head in through the hole and saw Harry’s wheelchair lying on its side with the top wheel still spinning. Somewhere nearby, he reasoned, the Bat lay blown to pieces. Only there was no blood Bane could see, a fact that had just struck him as strange when the distinctive click of a pistol hammer froze him stiff.
“One move and I’ll — Jesus Christ! It’s you, Josh! Lord fuck a duck …”
Bane turned to the right and saw Harry propped up against the wall, magnum in hand and bleeding rather badly from the forehead.
“Sorry I can’t get the door for you,” Harry said.
Bane pushed his way in. “How bad, Harry?”
The Bat dabbed at his forehead and scalp with a handkerchief. “This? Nothing. Damn splinters got me more than anything else, ’cept maybe the fall.”
“Splinters?”
“I got lucky, Josh. The killer must’ve fired when he caught my shadow under the door. Only he fired at where my head should’ve been instead of where it was. Lord fuck a duck, there are times when having your head only four feet off the floor is a plus.”
“Apparently.”
“He must’ve looked in just long enough to see me sprawled against the wall and figured I’d bought it. He wouldn’t have wanted to stick around too long under the circumstances.”
“You see him?”
“Nah. I was out cold. Must have a hundred wood chips stuck in my head. I crawled over here soon as I came to. Knew you’d be coming. Figured if it was somebody else I’d be able to take them by surprise.”
“You certainly did that,” Bane said and helped the Bat back into his wheelchair. He wheeled him into the living room and swabbed his forehead and scalp with alcohol pulled from the medicine cabinet.
“Ouch! Be a lot easier if I just drank that stuff.”
“Get me a tweezers and I’ll get to work on the splinters.”
“Fat chance, Josh. I’d rather chance the buckshot again.” The Bat bit his lip. “Sorry about Janie. I spoke to her just a couple hours ago. She called to tell me that COBRA’s Professor Metzencroy died of a heart attack last night … Why her, Josh, why?”
“She knew … too much. I dragged her in.”
The Bat’s fingers clenched into fists. “You really figure it was Scalia who hit the Center and King’s?”
“Along with Trench maybe,” Bane nodded.
“Lord fuck a duck, if those two are working together, the worst is on its way.”
“The worst ended at your door fifteen minutes ago, Harry. It’s time to let the big boys bring us in.”
“Jorgenson,” the Bat muttered. “You trust him?”
“I don’t have a choice. But he’s always played clean with me and this whole mess is right up DCO’s alley.”
“Yeah, except you haven’t seen the man in five years,” the Bat moaned.
“Relax, Harry, I’ll have Jorgenson order up a couple medals for us as soon as I reach him.”
“To pin on our chests, Winter Man, or our coffins?”
Chapter Twenty-one
Five minutes later Bane called central dispatch from the Bat’s apartment and was channeled immediately to Arthur Jorgenson.
“Josh,” the DCO chief’s voice began, sounding strangely familiar after all the years, “I’m on my way to the White House right now. I’ve got a pretty clear picture of what happened but not why.”
“You send a removal team to the Center?”
“Just got their initial report. Three dead, just as you told central. We rerouted the rest of the personnel when they returned from lunch. Whoever was behind this had things timed perfectly. They knew the workings of the Center inside and out.”
Right up Chilgers’ alley, Bane thought. “Anything else?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not. It looks clean, Josh, strictly professional all the way. I’m just having trouble figuring why someone would hit a bureaucratic branch of the government.”
“Bring me in and we can discuss it over dinner tonight.”
“You read my mind, Josh, but it might turn into a late supper. Picking you up is going to take a while to set up and I don’t want to take any chances. We’ve got to hit every angle. Choose a spot.”