made a suggestion: “You fly the gunship. Take the queen of the universe and four other people with you. Everyone else can go on the Bell.”
“You mean you’re staying behind?” Nolan asked him.
Batman nodded. “It’s no big deal. Just drop everyone off, get some gas and come back. I’ll stay in the area and I’ll have my GPS locator on full power and my sat-phone, too.”
Nolan started to protest. Leaving someone behind did seem to be the only solution. But that didn’t mean Batman had to be the one.
“Why are you assuming I shouldn’t be the one to stay behind?” Nolan asked him. “Because I only have one eye?”
Batman held up his left hand. It was a metal claw prosthesis; he’d lost his real hand in the team’s action against a band of Indonesian pirates. “And I shouldn’t be, because I’m a one-armed paperhanger?” he replied.
The impasse lasted just a few seconds.
“You’re the leader of the pack, man,” Batman told him. “You need to be there to deliver that piece of ass back to her handlers, so we can collect immediately. I’ll be okay; I need a nap anyway.”
It was a bullshit explanation, but they had no time to waste. If anyone could survive out here without getting into trouble, it was Batman.
So Nolan tapped him twice on the shoulder and said, “It will take about an hour to get to that yacht and then an hour to get back here. Add in twenty minutes to tank up, and that means we’re looking at some time just before sunup. So, go hide somewhere and we’ll be back ASAP. Capeesh?”
Batman gave him a mock salute.
“Capeesh,” he said.
* * *
BATMAN WATCHED THE copters go over the horizon, disappearing among the stars to the east.
He studied his GPS locator and hoped he knew how to work the thing manually. It took him a few moments to override the commands previously programmed into the device. Finally, it began to behave.
He cleared the memory and then reactivated it. He zeroed in on his own position, then hit the enter button. A faint green light began blinking on the command screen. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Next, he checked his sat-phone. The charge was at three-quarters, which was plenty for the next few hours.
Now, all he had to do was wait someplace safe.
He walked back to the burning pirate camp, knowing it was best if he stayed deep in the bush. He checked his watch and rechecked the time line. It was close to 0300 hours. If Nolan was right, it would be just before dawn when they came back to retrieve him.
Making his way around the bodies of the pirates, he could see no suitable war souvenirs worth taking from the dead.
“Mooks,” Batman murmured, strolling around the smoldering camp. “Small time clip artists…”
He reached into his ammo pocket. Among some 50-caliber shells he found what he was looking for: a partially smoked marijuana cigarette.
He lit it off a piece of burning wood and drew in deeply.
“Breakfast of Champions,” he said.
A moment later, four bullets hit him in the back.…
* * *
NOLAN WAS ABOUT thirty minutes into the flight when he realized he’d made a huge mistake.
True, he could fly the attack copter. He’d done it many times since the team had come together. But he was also at a disadvantage because he didn’t have use of his left eye. This led to depth perception problems, especially at night, issues that were somewhat rectified by a specially built night-vision scope attached to his battle helmet and placed in front of his good eye.
But he still couldn’t relax, not even for one moment. During this dark flight over water, navigating by both the stars and dead reckoning, constantly looking for the mega-yacht and listening for the radio signal it was supposed to be sending out, all while checking his dwindling fuel supply, he caught himself thinking maybe he was the one who should have been left behind. In this case, two eyes were definitely better than one.
His very famous passenger was not helping the situation. In fact, she was making it worse just by her presence.
Emma Simms was sitting right next to him, strapped into the copilot’s seat. She hadn’t stopped fidgeting since they’d taken off, which was distracting him. Even worse, like a little kid, she kept asking Nolan, over and over: “Are we there yet?”
When she wasn’t bugging him on their ETA, she’d spent the time contemplating her reflection in the copter’s side window, fussing