The Dark Knight Rises (35 page)

“You’ll have to imagine the fire,” he said as he snapped the action shut and leveled the weapon at Batman’s face. “We both know…I have to kill you
now.”

Batman stared down the barrels of a gun, just as his parents had done decades ago. Bane’s finger tightened on the trigger. An ear-splitting
boom
shook the building—

And Bane was blasted across the room. His smoking body slammed into a wall before sliding lifelessly to the floor. His wheezing breaths fell silent. . . forever.

Batman rose to his feet and turned toward Catwoman, who sat astride the Bat-Pod in the entrance to the lobby. Smoke rose from the bike’s cannons.

“That whole ‘no guns’ thing?” she said. “I don’t feel as strongly about it as you do.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Uniformed cops guarded Gotham Bridge—as they had for months now. Armed sentries manned a barricade on the Gotham side, preventing any refugees from fleeing the city. Signs warned that anyone crossing the line would be shot.

Blake pulled the school bus up to the foot of the bridge anyway. Not wanting to provoke the troops, he parked it safely back from the barricade, and hurriedly unloaded the boys. He led them up the bridge toward the barricade, with Father Reilly bringing up the rear.

Barbed wire and roadblocks barred their way. A rifle-toting trooper, standing on the other side of the barbed wire, raised a bullhorn to his lips.

“Stay there!”
the trooper shouted. “What are you doing?”

Blake held up his badge.

“Blake, MCU. I’m getting these kids to safety.”

“Safety?” The trooper stared at Blake as if the young detective had lost his mind. “You’re going to get us all
killed
. Anyone crosses this bridge, they blow up the city!”

“It’s going to blow anyway,” Blake insisted. “We need this bridge open right now.”

“No one leaves the island,” the trooper repeated. “Orders.”

Blake fought to control his temper. He knew the trooper was just doing his job, but he didn’t have time to explain about the decaying core. Hell, he barely understood the concept himself. All he knew for sure was that time was running out, and these kids were in his care.

“Whose orders?” he demanded. “Bane’s?”

The trooper didn’t budge.

“Police department’s,” he said stubbornly.

“Haven’t you heard the shooting?” Blake replied. “The Batman’s battling it out with Bane—’’

“The Batman’s dead,” the trooper said. “Look, officer—’’

“It’s detective.”

“Well,
detective
, you take one more step, we have to shoot you. Two more steps, we have to blow the bridge.”

At that moment all Blake wanted to do was throttle the man. He heard the boys whimpering in fear behind
him. Some of them were crying already. They didn’t need to hear this.

He turned toward them.

“Wait for me back at the bus.” The terror in their faces tore at his heart. They’d suffered enough in their short lives. They didn’t deserve to have their futures cut short by a mushroom cloud.

If only he could get this stupid trooper to listen!

The tumblers caught up with the convoy on Fifth Street.

Talia let out a sigh of relief as they surrounded the truck that was carrying the bomb. Time was on her side. As long as the core remained undisturbed, no power on Earth could stop it from detonating in just a matter of minutes.

Gotham’s time was almost up.

With that thought, she made a decision. She gestured to the driver, who pulled her tumbler up alongside the cab of the truck, matching its speed. The roof-access canopy retracted and she climbed out on to the angled hood of the tumbler. A biting wind blew against her face, threatening to dislodge her, but she had braved fiercer storms in her time.

She would ride with the bomb until Gotham met its doom.

Talia rose cautiously to her feet atop the hood and gestured. The truck’s passenger-side door swung open. Only a narrow gap separated the vehicles. The jump wasn’t without risk, but it was nothing compared to that final leap from the pit, so many years ago. This was child’s play by comparison.

Without hesitation, she jumped.

Batman and Catwoman had City Hall to themselves. Bane’s smoldering corpse lay crumpled in a corner, but Batman knew that the greatest threats still remained. The bomb…and Talia.

“I need you on the ground, me in the air,” he said. “We have to force that convoy east to the entrance to the reactor.”

She nodded. There was no time for banter now, only action. She spun the Bat-Pod around and went racing down the front steps of City Hall.

Batman hurried after her.

Gordon squeezed through the hatch and into the trailer. He wasn’t sure if the tumblers in the convoy had spotted him yet, but the sooner he got out of the open, the better. He held on tightly to the blinking jammer.

I’m not getting off this truck,
he thought.
Not while I still have a job to do.

A harsh white glow lit the interior of the trailer. The sudden heat came as a shock after the frigid cold outside. Gordon swallowed hard as he spotted
the source of both the light and heat. The core. He recognized the large metal sphere from TV footage of Bane’s grisly invasion at the football stadium, but he didn’t remember it glowing this brightly before. Whatever chain reaction was going on inside the device, it was obviously ramping up in a big way.

Perspiration drenched his face. The glow was bright enough to hurt his eyes.

Guess this is the right truck after all
, he thought. A digital timer was attached to the bomb.

Nine minutes.

“Your orders are out of date!” Blake argued. “The situation’s changed.”

“Listen, I’m a cop like you,” he continued. “And I’m walking out there. Please don’t shoot me.” He stepped toward the barricade.

Shots rang out at his feet, sending chips of pavement flying. Blake flinched at the gunfire, but did not turn away. No way was he taking those boys back to Gotham to die.

He kept walking.

The convoy rolled through downtown with its deadly cargo. The Bat caught up with it first, swooping down from the wintry grey sky. They reached an intersection and the Bat swung in low, trying to force the truck
and its escorts east toward the river. The truck turned quickly to avoid the menacing aircraft, which darted back and forth above it, careful to avoid the tumblers’ cannons. Seated in the cockpit, Batman worked the controls. His side still burned where “Miranda” had stabbed him, even as his heart stung at her betrayal. But he could deal with that later. If there
was
a later.

Another intersection was coming up fast. The Bat dived to force the convoy further east. The rear tumbler accelerated to protect the truck, only to be blasted from behind.

Catwoman and her Bat-Pod joined the rolling battle at high speed as she veered past the damaged vehicle, which crashed into the sidewalk, taking out a line of parked cars. Metal crumpled and tore. Burning fuel polluted the air.

Her arrival didn’t go unnoticed. Gun turrets swung in her direction, unleashing heavy fire. She swerved to dodge the blasts. The Bat-Pod lacked armored plating, but it was faster and more maneuverable. Catwoman worked that advantage for all it was worth. Weaving, she closed in on the truck, even as Batman harried it from above. The convoy couldn’t shake either of them.

They made a good team, he mused, but would that be enough?

Blake walked closer to the barricade. Gunfire tore apart the pavement in front of him, but he still hadn’t
been hit. He hoped that was a good sign—for the boys’ sake.

“Son of a bitch!” the uniformed guard exclaimed. Panic could be heard in his voice. “Blow it! Before he reaches the line—” His partner armed a detonator. “Get down!” the first cop shouted. “We’re blowing the bridge!”

No!
Blake shouted inwardly.
Don’t do it!

The ground lurched, and he gaped in disbelief as the bridge blew apart in front of him. A tremendous fireball erupted beyond the barricade, and a roaring drowned out all other sound. He dived for cover as tons of steel and concrete crashed down into the river. Smoke billowed into the sky.

Oh my God,
he thought.
They really did it. They blew up the bridge.

Now there was no way out.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Lucius fired up the reactor. Alone in the hidden plant beneath the river, he activated the controls and checked to make certain everything was functioning properly, despite Dr. Pavel’s tampering.

Without the core, the reactor was useless, of course —all of its sophisticated safeguards and dampening mechanisms had nothing to regulate. But he had to make it ready to receive the core, should Batman recover it in time. With that thought he glanced anxiously at his watch. Every moment counted. They couldn’t afford any last-minute glitches or delays.

He hastily scanned the monitors and readouts. At first everything appeared in order, but then something unexpected caught his eye. He stared in shock at the flashing display, not quite believing what he was seeing.

No
, he thought with dismay.
Not that.

* * *

The remaining tumblers stuck close to the truck. Their missile launchers and machine guns fired relentlessly, trying to keep the Bat and the Bat-Pod at bay. Batman frowned at their persistence. Did Talia’s men know they were fighting for their own fiery deaths?

Probably,
he guessed. Most likely she had surrounded herself with a cadre of true believers— just as her father had done before her. The League of Shadows demanded absolute loyalty.

The Bat unleashed its own armaments. Diving toward the street, it blasted away the pavement directly in front of the convoy. A smoking crater opened up in front of the lead tumbler. The speeding vehicle tried to swerve away from the gaping hole, but it was going too fast. The tumbler toppled over and came to rest with its rear in the air. Its wheels spun uselessly in the smoke.

That’s another one down,
Batman thought. He briefly entertained the hope that the truck itself would be trapped by the pit, but its driver successfully dodged the obstacle. The truck sped on, leaving its capsized escort behind. Another tumbler moved to take the lead vehicle’s place, but Catwoman was on it. Weaving past the scattered debris, she came up behind the tumbler and took it out with her own cannons. The tumbler lived up to its name, rolling sideways across the street until it crashed to a halt. Flames erupted from its undercarriage. Shaken mercenaries crawled out of the wreckage.

Nice work
, Batman thought. But there was still one left—and precious little time. A digital chronometer in the Bat’s cockpit counted down to Gotham’s destruction.

Six minutes.

Staggering to his feet, his ears still ringing from the explosion, Blake gazed in shock through the clearing smoke. The once-mighty Gotham Bridge was shattered. Heaps of rubble piled in the river below. An impassable gap stretched between the island and the mainland. You’d need wings to make it across now— and Gotham was running low on angels.

“You idiots!” he bellowed. “You sons of bitches! You’re killing us!”

The trailer swerved sharply, throwing Gordon against the wall. He struggled to keep his balance as the speeding truck buffeted him back and forth. He heard crashes and explosions outside.

What the hell’s going on out there?

The temperature inside the trailer was rising by the moment even as the core glowed brighter and brighter. Did fusion reactors produce harmful radiation? Gordon didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. At the moment, radiation was the least of his worries. He’d settle for not being incinerated.

Tugging on his collar, his face bathed in sweat, he
averted his eyes from the glowing core and felt like he was trapped inside a microwave oven. But he couldn’t let himself think about trying to get away. The jammer was still blinking. For all he knew, it was the only thing stopping Bane from triggering the bomb.

He had to buy Batman time.