Batman by Alex Irvine Read Free Book Online

Batman intended to find out… now.
    Keeping three of the armed goons in view, he sidestepped out from behind the reception desk and threw three Batarangs in quick succession, aiming one at each. The first and third found their targets. One thug dropped without a sound as the Batarang hit him at the base of his skull, while the other cried out and staggered from the impact between his shoulder blades.
    The second projectile whisked past its target’s face and struck fragments from the concrete rubble at the far end of the vault.
    While the Batarangs were still in the air, Batman charged into the vault. He zeroed in on the staggered thug, putting him down with a single punch. That left his back momentarily exposed to the one he’d missed, but that was an acceptable risk. When fighting multiple opponents, it was better to finish one off than hit two without taking either of them down.
    The priority was always to even the odds.
    His cape flared out behind him, masking the outline of his body and making it hard for any other thugs to target him. A burst of gunfire tore through the cloth, the bullets passing between Batman’s left arm and ribcage. He pivoted and the cape struck his opponent with a
snap
, slapping the second thug’s gun out of his hands.
    The turn also revealed that he wasn’t facing four men. He was facing six. In the corner near the wall of safe-deposit boxes, a trio of gunmen swung up their weapons.
    Damn
, he thought.
“Don’t get boxed in!”
    The comm in his cowl chimed, but Batman ignored it. Before the thugs could draw a bead on him, he threw down a smoke pellet, swept his cape out to the right, and dodged to his left. The triple burst of gunfire shredded the edge of the cape—and also shredded the gunman Batman had missed with his Batarang. He felt a pang of guilt, but there was nothing he could have done. People in their line of business assumed the risk of collateral damage.
    The smoke swirled up, obscuring the view from the corner where the three remaining gunmen continued to fire wildly. Knowing that out-of-control shooting tended to go high, rather than low, Batman dropped into a crouch and lunged through the cloud. He hit one of them low and heard the snap of a bone breaking in the man’s leg. Before his target even started to scream, Batman was already spinning to drive his right elbow into the midsection of the goon to his left, doubling him over. Continuing the spin, he caught the barrel jacket of the last thug’s gun, ripped it from his hands, and smashed him across the head with the stock.
    Fifteen seconds. Three unconscious, one dead, one vomiting on the floor, one down with a broken leg. A haze hung in the air from both the pellet and the gunfire. Near the hole in the collapsed wall, a draft drew the smoke away. He took note of this—it meant the tunnel definitely connected to the larger complex of passages below Gotham City.
    In addition to the man-made tunnels, there was a natural cave system that had never been fully charted, and which ultimately connected to the Batcave. He had sealed the cave’s entrance to it, to the best of his ability, but there could be miles of other passages and chambers used by anyone who happened to discover them.
    As the smoke cleared, the thug with the broken leg continued to scream. Batman took three long steps to reach him and delivered a sharp jab to the chin.
    The screaming stopped.
    Then he studied the room. The walls, built from reinforced concrete as a security precaution, were relatively intact except for the immediate area where the explosion had taken place. One wall was blank, another supported the door and locking mechanisms, and the third was lined with safe-deposit boxes. That was where the thug crouched on his hands and knees, still stunned by the gut punch he had received.
    Batman squatted next to him.
    “Who sent you here?”
    “We was just covering,” the thug moaned. “Guarding. Nobody said you’d be here.”
    “Guarding for