Matt drove hard with both legs, leaping wildly between the containers like a dark red bat.
At the top of the crane.
Frank's sights were locked on his target. The crosshairs lined up with the fuse on the crate of high-explosive grenades.
His index finger tightened.
Whoosh!
An intensely sharp whistle suddenly cut through the air from his right!
The tactical instincts Frank had honed through years on the edge of death screamed a warning. He didn't look back. He jerked his head to the left.
Clang!
A dark red alloy baton slammed into the barrel of the M24 sniper rifle with terrifying momentum.
Sparks flew.
The barrel lurched violently aside. Bang! The thunderous gunshot tore through the sea fog, and the large-caliber bullet skimmed past the containers below, blowing out a forklift's tire.
The gangsters unloading cargo below erupted into chaos.
"We're under attack! Take cover!" the bald leader roared, and dozens of automatic rifles snapped up.
Up on the crane.
Frank shoved the ruined sniper rifle aside and spun around. In the faint moonlight, he made out a man in a dark red mask crouching on the steel beam.
"Daredevil." Frank's voice was hoarse, thick with the grit of gun smoke. He reached back, drew a modified M1911 pistol from the tactical holster on his outer thigh, and aimed it straight at Matt.
"You crossed the line, Frank." Matt rose, catching the rebounding alloy baton in his right hand. "There are high explosives down there. That shot would've blown half the docks sky-high. The civilians nearby would've died too."
"Civilians? All I see is a bunch of scumbags who deserve to die." Frank sneered and thumbed off the safety. "I'm not interested in your little game of sending people to prison, then watching them buy their way out on bail. Get out of my way."
"As long as I'm here, you aren't killing anyone." Matt tightened his grip on the baton and lowered his center of gravity.
"Then I'll kill you too."
Frank wasted no more words. He raised his pistol and fired three shots.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The three bullets traced a triangular pattern, cutting off every avenue of escape.
But the instant Frank's muscles tensed, Matt's heightened senses had already predicted their trajectories. He twisted like a phantom, his alloy baton leaving a series of afterimages in the air.
Clang, clang, clang!
All three bullets were precisely deflected, skimming past Matt's shoulder into the thick fog.
Frank frowned slightly, but his movements never faltered. He knew that against an opponent this agile, putting distance between them was a death sentence.
He lunged forward, carrying the momentum of his charge into a right-legged kick that swept toward Matt's ribs like a battle-axe. A lethal Krav Maga strike.
Matt didn't take it head-on. He could hear the terrifying power packed into that kick. He leaned backward, planted one hand on the beam, and flicked his right foot up toward Frank's chin.
Frank drove his left arm down, blocking the kick through sheer force. The tremendous impact pushed them both half a step back.
A hundred meters in the air, on a narrow steel beam. One mistake would leave them smashed to pieces.
Neither paused. They collided again.
Frank fought with a soldier's ruthless lethality, every strike aimed at the throat, joints, or eyes.
He didn't need flashy techniques. He only needed to disable his enemy as quickly as possible.
Matt fought with an almost artistic precision. Wing Chun's sticking strikes, Filipino stick fighting's combinations.
With his eyes closed, he tracked every one of Frank's attacks perfectly through sound and shifting air alone.
Thud!
Frank's fist slammed into Matt's chest. Matt grunted and whipped his baton back into Frank's shoulder.
They slipped past each other.
"You can't save those scumbags." Frank wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his eyes growing wilder. "The cancer in this city has to be burned away in the flames of sin!"
"This isn't justice! You're just taking out your personal rage!" Matt panted, his fingers white around the baton.
"Justice?" Frank laughed, the sound steeped in boundless grief and cold brutality. "Where was your justice when my family was gunned down?!"
Before the words had faded, Frank tore a high-explosive grenade from his waist and pulled the pin with his teeth.
Without a moment's hesitation, he hurled it down toward the container packed with weapons.
"You lunatic!"
Matt's eyes widened in horror. Without hesitation, he leaped from the hundred-meter crane, plunging straight toward the falling grenade like a moth into a flame.
Frank stood on the beam and watched coldly, drawing another magazine and slamming it into his pistol.
Click.
The faint snap of the mechanical fuse engaging sounded like thunder in Matt's ears.
Thirty meters above the water. Twenty. Fifteen.
Matt tightened his core and forced his body to twist in midair. The muscles in his right arm bulged as he released the alloy baton that had accompanied him through countless blood-soaked nights.
Its piercing whistle tore through the sea fog.
Clang!
A metal-on-metal impact of extraordinary precision. Just ten meters above the water, the alloy baton slammed into the tail end of the high-explosive grenade.
Boom!
A violent orange-red fireball erupted in midair. The terrifying shock wave swept up tons of seawater, sending it pouring down in a torrential deluge.
The blast knocked the gangsters unloading cargo below to the ground like bowling pins, while the containers groaned with the teeth-grating shriek of twisting metal.
The civilian district was untouched. The fuse had been cut short.
At the top of the crane.
Frank stared coldly at the flames below. His lips curled into a sneer of utter contempt.
"Bleeding heart." He spat and immediately clamped his tactical gloves around the steel cable.
He pushed off with both legs and hurtled down the cable like a giant black bat. The harsh rasp of friction stretched through the night.
He landed and flowed into a textbook tactical forward roll, shedding the force of the impact. Frank drew the M1911 pistol from his outer thigh and held it level, advancing on the central warehouse, number 47, deep within the docks like an emotionless killing machine.
His objective was clear: reduce the heavy weapons leaked from Stark Industries, the high-purity drugs, and the scumbags guarding them to ashes.
Matt dropped lightly from the top of a container and caught his rebounding baton. He followed close behind. He had to find Kingpin's smuggling ledger before Frank turned this place into a slaughterhouse.
One after the other, they kicked open the ajar sheet-metal doors and rushed into the dim warehouse 47.
The warehouse was enormous, packed with wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. The air reeked of machine oil, moisture absorbent, and cheap tobacco.
Silence.
Too much silence.
Matt stopped abruptly, his dark red mask turning slightly.
His ears twitched almost imperceptibly. His superhuman hearing instantly pierced the tangled ambient noise, filtering out the wind, the waves, and the distant wail of police sirens.
He picked up heartbeats.
Dozens of them. Hidden high up behind the containers.
But it wasn't their numbers that made every hair on Matt's body stand on end. It was the heartbeat directly ahead, behind a pile of weapons crates.
Extremely slow. Cold. Without a trace of panic at the sudden intrusion. Instead, it exuded a pure lust for slaughter, so thick it was sickening.
Like a venomous snake flicking its tongue.
"Frank, fall back!" Matt shouted sharply, every muscle in his body tensing to its limit. "It's a trap!"
Too late.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The piercing crackle of overloaded electrical current exploded overhead in the cavernous warehouse.
Dozens of high-powered industrial searchlights blazed to life at once without warning!
This wasn't ordinary lighting. It was tactical illumination powerful enough to blind!
"Aah!"
Matt let out a strangled scream. The glare couldn't hurt his already blind eyes, but the piercing, high-frequency electrical hum generated by dozens of powerful searchlights switching on instantly overwhelmed his superhuman hearing!
It felt as though tens of thousands of red-hot steel needles had stabbed into his brain at once. His three-dimensional radar image collapsed into chaotic static. Matt dropped to his knees in agony, clamping both hands over his ears, his nails nearly digging into his scalp.
Sensory overload. His deadliest weakness.