The first shot of Penguin's ambush on Batman rang out with particular clarity in the night sky above Gotham's docks. It sounded less like a call to battle than a starting pistol at a race.
The Maroni Family assault team lying in wait outside the western chain-link fence was like a pack of hyenas that had caught the scent of blood. Three armored pickups suddenly roared to life, their exhaust spewing black smoke that hung like a filthy cloud beneath the streetlights.
The burly bald man in the lead yanked away his cigarette and stood up on the pickup's running board. His grip made his radio creak, veins bulged in his neck, and his hoarse roar drowned out the engines.
"Ram through! Take the warehouse before Falcone's cowards have their pants back up!"
The pickups hit the chain-link fence like three steel boars running wild.
The screech of twisting, snapping metal was piercing, the severed ends of the wire gleaming cold white in the headlights.
Gunmen vaulted out of the truck beds, their boots striking the concrete in a rapid series of dull thuds.
The burly bald man planted one hand on the hood and vaulted to the ground, his other hand already raising a submachine gun. With every word he roared, the vicious scar on his jaw, left from being slashed down years earlier, flushed red with excitement.
"Move! Hurry up! If you can't take that entrance, you can look forward to hanging from a streetlight in the sea breeze!"
Before his words had faded, a second-floor warehouse window was shoved open from inside.
The barrels of two automatic rifles poked out, their muzzles reflecting a cold metallic gleam in the moonlight.
A second later, orange-red flames erupted, and bullets swept down from above, striking showers of sparks from the pickups.
The two gunmen at the front fell into the muddy water without a chance to cry out. The rest scrambled behind cover-rusty oil drums, stacked wooden crates, pickup doors. In Gotham, that reflex was etched into every gang member's bones.
The warehouse district went from deathly silence to a seething powder keg in an instant.
Falcone's remaining forces were no hastily assembled recruits, either. Sandbags formed firing platforms behind the windows, the ground-floor entrances were welded shut with iron plates, and reinforcing steel spikes had been driven into the doorposts. Between magazine changes, a young gunman shouted to his companions at the top of his lungs.
"The fighting's already started over by Penguin! Those bastards are busy dealing with Batman. This is our time!"
In the wind off the docks, white smoke from burning gunpowder mingled with the salty tang of seawater.
Gun smoke swirled with rust and diesel exhaust. A scorched stench that seared the airways filled the air, like a mouthful of thick phlegm mixed with iron filings lodged in the throat.
Maroni's assault team was pinned down in the narrow passage between shipping containers, unable to raise their heads. If anyone exposed so much as a sliver of scalp, fire swept down from the second floor with the precision of a scythe cutting wheat, bullets hammering the sheet metal like torrential rain and sending sparks flying.
One gunman crouched behind an oil drum. He had barely exposed half an eye when a bullet struck the drum's edge, the ricochet grazing his ear and burning a bloody line across it.
He pressed the back of his head hard against the cold metal, curling up like a frightened hedgehog.
With his back pressed against a huge rusty oil drum, the burly bald man could clearly feel the tremor transmitted through its iron wall each time a bullet struck his cover. The scar on his face had turned livid. He snatched up his radio, his voice as rough as sandpaper scraping concrete.
"Fuck! Is that iron gate still not open? All our boys are trapped out here!"
An extremely brief reply came over the radio, with an almost crazed edge, delivered as casually as a decision about tonight's late-night snack. "Ram it with a truck."
The burly bald man froze for less than a second. He slammed his shoulder hard into the pickup's fender, leaving a shallow dent in the metal panel. "Hear that, driver? Time to squeeze one last bit of use out of this heap! Charge through the gunfire!"
Meanwhile, in the shadows around the docks, several pairs of eyes stared through mask holes at the chaotic battlefield. Black Mask's False Face Society had been watching from the perimeter like a flock of vultures for some time.
Their leader wore a grinning mask as white as a skull. Moonlight cut across it from the left, dividing its frozen smile into an eerie pattern of half light and half shadow. He half crouched beside the mast of an abandoned fishing boat, observing with patience that seemed almost like slow motion.
Then he raised a hand and made a crisp downward chopping gesture. "Go take those two outlying positions. Be quick, and don't get bogged down fighting them. We're here to get rich, not risk our lives... Oh, wait. What's this? The bat's here too?"
Black Mask hesitated for a second, then chose revenge over profit.
"Change of plan! Go surround Batman!"
Three black motorcycles cut their engines in the darkness and coasted silently onto the edge of the docks.
With their engines completely off, only the faint rustle of chains and tires crossing gravel could be heard. The riders touched their leather boots to the ground to help slow down, like three night bats gliding close to the earth.
When the group slipped into the first position, they discovered that every last one of Falcone's guards had been pulled away. The warehouse door stood ajar. They pushed it open to find wooden crates piled inside.
The masked man in the lead drew a long blade and pried the lid off a crate. Inside was Falcone's most profitable smuggled tobacco.
Virginia tobacco leaves had been pressed into neat blocks, giving off a rich fermented aroma. The Falcone Family crest was branded into the lid. He reached out to touch the leaves, the corners of his mouth twitching involuntarily beneath his mask. Turning, he gave the riders behind him a brief order.
Several riders pushed folding flatbed carts out of the shadows and began stacking the sealed wooden crates on them.
Atop the shipping containers.
Batman's gaze passed over the False Face Society riders moving the cargo and settled on the flames still spouting from the warehouse district's second floor.
The distance between the two battlefields, the wind direction, the distribution of cover-he calculated all the data in moments.
Rather than jump straight down, he glided silently along the ridges of the container roofs toward the warehouse district.
If not half, then at least a good majority of those present had a grudge against him. Rushing to make himself a target was hardly wise.
Maroni's pickup reversed and accelerated, its tires tearing acrid blue smoke from the gravel.
The entire frame shuddered as the engine hit its limit. A second later, the bumper smashed through the iron gate, only for the truck to become lodged on part of a shelving unit. Its body tilted, rear wheels spinning in the air with a deafening roar.
Falcone's gunfire immediately converged on the stairwell, bullets pouring down like torrential rain.
The shelving at the loading entrance shattered under the hail of bullets, wood splinters and iron fragments bursting into a gray-white cloud beneath the searchlights. Maroni's vanguard had barely stepped inside before the barrage drove them back, while the False Face Society riders were lifting crates onto the rear seats of their motorcycles.
Batman slid down from the top of a container and moved along the cold iron wall, timing every step between gunshots. As he passed the corner where the False Face Society had parked their motorcycles, he reached out and pressed down on the back of a rider's neck as the man tied down a crate. The rider crumpled without even a chance to make a sound.
He gently lowered the wooden crate that slipped from the man's hands to the ground. Another rider nearby looked up and saw him. The man had only just opened his mouth when Batman closed in, driving a short, precise elbow into the side of his jaw, then catching his falling body and laying him flat beside the crate.
Over in the warehouse district, Maroni organized another charge. Spent casings had already laid a brass-colored carpet across the concrete in front of the loading entrance. They made faint metallic scraping sounds underfoot, every step slipping.
The burly bald man flicked the empty magazine out of his weapon's grip, whipped a fresh one from his tactical vest, slapped it in, worked the bolt, and raised his gun, firing repeated bursts at the second-floor window. He was not trying to hit anyone, but to suppress the gaps between their shots.
Batman had already climbed onto the warehouse's opposite exterior wall. His fingers gripped recesses in the mortar between the bricks, his boots finding purchase on pipe brackets protruding from the wall as he ascended silently under cover of gunfire. He checked the ventilation windows one after another in a smooth, continuous motion, then vaulted through one and landed in the electrical room.
The False Face Society riders twisted their throttles, about to leave.
As the first rider sped around the passage's corner, his front wheel had barely rolled over the spent casings when his headlight illuminated a dark figure directly ahead.
The Grapnel Gun's steel cable swept diagonally across and tangled around the front wheel. Motorcycle and rider flipped through the air once before crashing to the ground, the wheel rim throwing sparks, then finally slammed into the base of a shipping container and stalled.
The remaining riders braked hard, abandoned their motorcycles, and scattered, only for Batarangs flying from the corner to pin their collars or trouser legs, bringing them down one by one.
On the warehouse's second floor, the automatic rifle at the last firing position suddenly jammed. The shooter bent to pick up a spare weapon. As he straightened, a hand wearing a Kevlar glove reached out from behind the electrical room door, seized his wrist, and twisted it outward. The gun fell to the floor.
Batman's figure appeared in the second-floor window.
His cape snapped in the night wind off the docks, and beneath those white goggles, no trace of pain was visible. He looked down, slowly scanning every face present.