Black Mask was a lunatic, there was no question about that. But he wasn't stupid. After his dramatic entrance, after making sure every camera and cop got a good look at his convoy rolling in, he immediately switched gears. The convoy split into three separate columns.
Marco watched it happen from behind the concrete pedestal, water dripping from his hair into his eyes. The main force held position in the center, laying down suppressing fire to keep Gordon's line pinned. But a secondary column, at least a dozen trucks and vans, broke east along Highway 9. They were hauling ass, clearly planning to hit the GCPD's defensive perimeter from the flank.
"Darnell! Fall back! Fall back now!" He keyed his radio, watching the E350 slam into reverse. The tires spun on the wet pavement before catching, and the vehicle shot backward from its forward position.
He shouldered the PTRD again, ignoring the throbbing ache in his shoulder from the last shot. Through the scope, through the drifting smoke and sheets of rain, he tracked the lead vehicle in the eastern column.
The crosshairs settled on the massive engine bay of the Lincoln Navigator.
He squeezed the trigger.
BOOM.
The 14.5mm armor-piercing round left the barrel with a muzzle velocity. It crossed the hundred-and-fifty-meter gap in less than a second and punched into the Navigator's engine block.
The entire front end of the SUV exploded. The engine disintegrated under the kinetic impact, shrapnel from cylinder blocks and crankshafts blasting outward in a cone. The hood peeled back, flipping end over end through the air. Thick black smoke and orange flames erupted from the wreckage instantly, turning the luxury SUV into a funeral pyre on wheels.
The Navigator veered hard left, momentum carrying it into a decorative planter, and stopped dead. The thugs inside kicked the doors open in a panic. Three of them stumbled out, clothes on fire, screaming as they rolled on the pavement trying to put themselves out.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The vehicles behind the Navigator had zero time to react. The convoy was moving fast, too close together for urban speeds. The second truck, a Ford F-250 with a mounted machine gun in the bed, slammed into the burning wreck at forty miles per hour. The impact crumpled the Ford's grille and sent the gunner in the back flying forward into the cab's rear window. Then the third vehicle hit the second, and the fourth hit the third, and suddenly Highway 9 was a junkyard, completely blocking the road.
Anna leaned out the E350's passenger window, rain soaking her hair, AR-15 braced hard against her shoulder. She fired in controlled three-round bursts at a thug who'd just popped up from behind one of the wrecked vehicles. Her first burst missed, sparking off metal. Her second caught him in the upper chest and throat. Blood sprayed, and he dropped to the ground, a red flower blooming where his Adam's apple used to be.
"Got one! Did you see that?" She turned toward Darnell in the driver's seat.
"Get back inside!"
Anna felt the E350 lurch violently to the right. Almost simultaneously, a string of bullets hammered the windshield and driver's side windows, leaving spiderweb cracks and deep pockmarks in the glass. If it had been regular windows, they'd all be dead. The E350 skidded to a stop next to Marco's position, rear door already swinging open. Otis fell out, scrambling through the rain on his hands and knees before collapsing behind the concrete pedestal next to Marco. He was shaking so badly his teeth chattered.
"Catch your breath," Marco said, crouching next to him. "Slow down. What happened?"
"Below..." Otis gasped, pointing at the ground. "A squad got in through the underground passage."
"What? When?"
"Five minutes ago. Maybe more. My rats tried to stop them but... Bastien... I can't feel him anymore..."
Marco wanted to tell him the rat was fine, that maybe it had just gotten scared and was hiding somewhere. But Bastien was probably dead. And if Black Mask's crew was inside the tower with explosives... He grabbed the radio, keying the transmit button. "Gordon! Gordon, we've got infiltrators inside! Underground access!"
The response came back fragmented, nearly drowned out by gunfire: "... can't... think of... way... they're flanking... west side—"
Marco swore and switched channels, trying to raise anyone inside Wayne Tower's security detail. Nothing but static.
---
The western front was turning into a meat grinder.
Another convoy from Black Mask's forces had pushed north along Romeo Avenue, trying to encircle Wayne Tower from the west. That put them directly in the defensive zone controlled by Falcone's people, two dozen of the Roman's best men, all of them ex-military or ex-cops. At first, Falcone's crew played it smart. They kept their heads down, fired sporadically just to show they were there, avoiding getting dragged into a full-blown firefight too early. Why take casualties when the GCPD could bleed for them?
But Black Mask's people didn't care whose territory they were in. They opened up with everything they had. Bullets chewed through cover indiscriminately. Three of Falcone's men went down in the first ten seconds, bodies torn apart by sustained automatic fire.
"Fuck this! Kill these motherfuckers!" someone shouted.
And just like that, the mob's restraint evaporated.
The Falcone unit's firepower jumped up three notches instantly.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! BANG-BANG-BANG!
Seven of Black Mask's thugs went down in the first exchange, caught in the open or hiding behind inadequate cover. One mob enforcer pulled an AT4 rocket launcher straight out of an SUV's trunk. He shouldered it, aimed at a pickup truck charging their position, and fired.
The rocket shrieked across the plaza, and hit the pickup. The explosion lifted the entire vehicle three meters into the air, flipping it end over end. When the wreckage came down, it was unrecognizable.
"That's right, you pieces of shit!" the enforcer shouted, tossing the spent launcher aside. "This is where Gotham's weapons come from! You're playing in our sandbox!"
The counterattack staggered Black Mask's western column, bringing their advance to a sudden halt. But Falcone's people paid for it. Their muzzle flashes gave away their positions, and Black Mask's crew focused fire on those spots. Two more mob enforcers went down, one taking a burst to the chest that tore through his vest, the other catching a ricochet in the throat. Blood poured out onto the pavement, mixing with the rain until it ran in dark red rivers toward the storm drains.
Both sides were seeing red now. The GCPD, caught in the middle with inferior firepower, could barely hold their defensive line together.
---
Marco ejected the spent cartridge from the PTRD, and loaded a fresh round. His shoulder was one massive bruise at this point, tomorrow he'd be lucky if he could lift his arm. He scanned for targets through the scope, looking for Black Mask, but every thug he saw was wearing the same skull mask or balaclava. Impossible to tell who was who.
"Fuck it," he muttered, setting the rifle down and grabbing the semi-auto shotgun instead. "I'm going inside. Maybe I can catch him in there."
He jumped down from the E350, boots splashing in a puddle, and everything went black.
For one second, he thought he'd gone blind. Some kind of nerve agent, maybe? Poison gas? He dropped into a crouch instinctively, scanning for threats, and that's when he realized what had happened.
Wayne Tower had gone dark.
Every light on the exterior facade had shut off simultaneously. It was like someone had reached up and flipped a switch on Gotham's most iconic landmark. The plaza, which moments ago had been lit up like a stadium, plunged into vast, disorienting darkness. The only light came from burning vehicle wrecks and the brief muzzle flashes when someone fired.
"What the hell? Power outage?"
"Is that Black Mask?"
"Stay away from light sources!"
"I can't see shit!"
Shouts and curses erupted from both sides. For the GCPD and Falcone's crew, the sudden darkness was a blessing. They could reposition, find better cover, and the casualty rate immediately dropped as Black Mask's people lost their targets.
Marco stared up at Wayne Tower. Had Black Mask's infiltration team succeeded? Had they cut the power?
Gordon's voice crackled over the radio: "All units, report status! What's the situation inside? Anyone from Tower Security, respond!"
No clear answers came back. Just static and fragmented transmissions.
The fighting didn't stop, but its intensity dropped as everyone struggled to adapt to the darkness. Then, from somewhere high up in the tower came a new sound.
Gunshots.
Then screams.
Then... CRASH!!!
Glass exploded outward from one of the upper floors. A window the size of a garage door shattered into a million fragments, and a dark figure came flying out.
It was a man, fully kitted out in tactical gear, assault rifle still strapped to his chest. He tumbled through the air, arms and legs flailing wildly, mouth open in a scream that dopplered as he fell. For a moment, everyone on the plaza stopped what they were doing and watched, transfixed, as the man plummeted toward certain death.
The guy would hit the pavement at terminal velocity, and there wouldn't be enough left to identify with dental records.
But then, the mercenary's body jerked violently to a stop, suspended in midair about ten meters above the ground. A thin black line was wrapped around his left ankle, pulling taut with a sound like a guitar string snapping. The other end was anchored somewhere inside the tower, probably to a support beam or ventilation shaft. The mercenary hung there, upside down, swaying like a pendulum in the wind and rain.
He was still screaming.