CHAPTER 8
THE EAGLE SCREAMS
When he awoke again, Captain America felt lightheaded. Cramping pains shot up and down his legs, his mouth was dry, his throat parched. He felt feverish, arid—that, he knew, was wrong. He was a man who was never sick.
He shook his head. It was the wrong thing to do. A wave of nausea attacked his stomach, while sharp hammers beat upon his skull. His ears still sang.
How long had he been unconscious this time?
Gritting his teeth, he willed his body to quiescence, and the pains began to subside. It was time now to make use of his own special abilities. If he couldn’t bring them into play soon, there would be no more chance at all.
He slowed his breathing until it was somnambulant, and brought his pulse down to forty. His conscious mind began to dim, but his subconscious knew exactly what must be done.
When he reemerged from his dreamlike state he had only vague memories of what he had done. But he could feel the difference. His ears were no longer ringing, his head felt clear, and his body was fit. The aches and pains were gone; he tingled with liveliness.
There was a price, of course. He felt hungry. And well he might, for he had lost seven pounds in the last few minutes, the weight having been converted into caloric energy to rebuild and revitalize his muscular tissues, and to clear the toxins from his body.
His hearing was restored, but he heard nothing—nothing save a slow dripping sound somewhere not too far away. The glimmer of a distant light bulb was still there when he turned his head, but it gave him no useful illumination. He was still trapped, still buried to his chest in the heavy earth.
Quietly, with determination, he began using his hand to dig himself out.
The heavy gauntlets helped; he blessed them many times over. Without them his fingers would be raw and bleeding by now. But even with them, the going was painfully slow. For every handful of dirt he pushed aside, a new handful would collapse upon him. It was a slow and tedious business.
At last he was free to his thighs. Pushing his hands against the firmer ground, he arched his body and yanked.
He catapulted out, bootless.
He thought about that for a moment, grinned to himself in the darkness, and then reached through the looser rubble, down through the twin tunnels in the packed dirt where his legs had been, and freed his boots. He hadn’t relished going out barefoot.
Only one bulb was burning near the elevator; the others had shattered. He’d been thrown halfway down the side tunnel before it had collapsed on him. The main tunnel, even in this weak light, was a sight for sore eyes.
But not for long.
First he found the guard. He was unconscious, blood oozing in a thin trickle from the corner of his mouth. When Rogers turned him over, he saw blood in his nose and ears. The effects of the concussive power of the explosion, obviously. He applied first aid, doing the best he could. The rest was up to the emergency ward teams, as soon as he could get them down here.
He wondered where the rescue teams were. He had been down here, conscious and unconscious, for what seemed like hours. Where was everyone?
Then he remembered the room he’d been in; the thug and the other guard. He hadn’t had time to warn them. They must be dead. It was only a freak accident that had prevented his own death.
Or had he had time?
It was so difficult to remember. Everything was so packed into those last split seconds. Could he have grabbed the other two and thrown them out, ahead of him?
His head was starting to throb again. This was no time to rehash the past. He had to assess the rest of the damage.
He didn’t have to blunder far up the tunnel to find the reason for the temporary absence of any rescuers; the old timbers, temporary supports in the first place, had collapsed. The tunnel was totally blocked.
That left the elevator. No one had had time to check it out; he had to hope it would still run, still get him up to the surface. If it was undamaged it should; it had to be the route by which the gold had been taken.
He carried the still unconscious bank guard into the bed of the elevator, and then pushed the heavy switch. Immediately a motor, somewhere up above, began to hum. Cables snapped taut, and the elevator made its slow assent.
Captain America gave a heartfelt sigh of relief.
Starling stared around in surprise as Raven led him down the stairs to his basement apartment beneath the tin-sided garage. It was not at all what he had expected.
In his own mind he had cast Raven as a cloddish oaf when he had first met him. He imagined Raven living in some squalid little flat somewhere not far from the waterfront, sitting in front of his TV set in the evenings, a can of beer in his hand. He had not added it to his mental picture, but flies buzzing about Raven’s dirty undershirt would have been totally in keeping. Raven was a mechanic, that was about all he knew of the man. Both of them, Starling and Raven, were only lieutenants, along with one other, Sparrow, and undoubtedly others of whom Starling hadn’t heard, for the boss, Eagle. He had never met Eagle, and doubted privately that he ever would. The boss kept himself removed from the scene of his nefarious schemes, manipulating his lieutenants instead as a man might puppets on a string. This much Starling knew; his contacts with Eagle had been entirely over the phone.
The stairs had led down from a partitioned-off area in the back of the garage. He had expected a low-ceilinged basement area, dank, not so different from the dirt-floored tunnels he had himself dug, rusting beams and pillars supporting the concrete floor overhead.
Instead, he found himself standing on a lush-piled carpet, indirect lighting softly illuminating somber paneling on the walls and boxed stanchions that did, indeed, support the floor above. The furniture was polished wood, deceptively plain; he knew it was expensive. Portions of the walls were draped with richly textured fabric, softening the fact that there were no windows.
There was a TV screen, but it was custom-fitted into a wall of bookcases. On either side, also recessed, were large AR3 speakers and, below the books, cabinets, one door of which was partially open, revealing neat rows of record albums. It was a complete stereo system.
“Sit,” Raven said. “Surprised, eh?”
Starling mumbled something indistinct.
“Everyone has their secrets,” Raven said. “This is mine.”
“You keep the gold down here, too?”
Raven guffawed. “Sent that out on the boat last night. You think I’m gonna carry that stuff down all these stairs?”
“Oh.” Starling felt deflated and somehow defeated, as though by the simple act of having this secret apartment, Raven had gained the upper hand.
“Okay, now let’s hear it. How’d you blow it?”
“Me? Why, you stupid…!” Reflexively, Starling’s hand reached inside his topcoat for his gun.
“Ease off, fella. Touchy, eh?” Raven smiled, showing a mouthful of brown stubs for teeth. “What I mean is…”
“Touchy?” Starling cut him off “Touchy? The biggest operation of its kind in the world, and it’s shot, and you’re surprised I’m touchy!”
“Aww, come on now. You didn’t expect it to go on forever? You think we’d have milked the whole bank? They’d have caught on, sooner or later; had to. A little skimmed off the top they mightn’t miss, but more’n that? So we don’t set up in competition with Fort Knox, we still cleared a tidy sum.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t expect us to succeed?”
“I guess the boss ain’t told you everything, huh?”
That was galling. The knowledge that this oaf might be more in the Eagle’s confidence than he, Starling, was too much. “Shut your mouth!” He turned away from the other man, then whirled back on him. Raven was still grinning. “What hasn’t he told me?”
“Ohhh,” Raven rolled his eyes in mockery. “My lips are sealed.”
“Well, for your information, there was a leak. I don’t know how it happened. One of the men, a guy named Monk, he slipped out. At the time we thought he was just trying to sell information. I told the boss; he had the man taken care of. Then, after our boys left the scene, we found a bar of gold—one of the first ones we’d taken after we’d broken through—with the seal cut off it. Monk must’ve had it. It must’ve been found on him. That’s what blew it.”
“Monk, huh? An undercover cop?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He made a beeline for the Stark mansion.”
Raven whistled, tonelessly. “The Avengers, huh?”
“Captain America. The others are away. He came down to the bank this morning. I got the warning, but all the men were out except for Bruno. He was no use. I had to use the dynamite.”
“Well, that takes care of one of those costumed nuts.”
“Let’s hope so. But it also takes care of two months’ planning and hard work. It’s not a fair trade.”
“That’s from your point of view. Maybe…”
The quiet buzz of a phone cut Raven off. He ambled across the room. “It’s an unlisted number; the safe wire. Must be the…” He picked up the phone. “Yeah. Hullo, Boss.”
Raven listened for several moments. “Yeah, he’s here. Yeah.” He held out the phone to Starling. “He wants to talk to you.”
Starling took the handset. “Yes?”
“You failed.”
“What?”
“You failed. Captain America is still alive.”
“But, but—he can’t be! I mean, the dynamite! I felt the explosion myself! It must’ve sealed off the whole underground!”
“It did. But nonetheless, he got free. He is free. I have a new assignment for you.”
Starling felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.
“I want you to capture Captain America. I want you to get him, and bring him to me!”
When the freight elevator had reached street level, Captain America found and worked the controls that opened the door.
A man in a business suit was staring at him in consternation when he stepped out onto the chill gray sidewalk. “You! What are you doing in my store?”
“I beg your pardon.” Captain America smiled. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call an ambulance. I have a badly injured man here.”
“But, but,” the man sputtered. “That’s my freight elevator, my warehouse! It hasn’t been opened in years! What do you think you…?”
“What’s going on here?” a new voice inquired. It was a uniformed policeman, the cop on the beat. “Oh, hello there, sir.” He nodded at Captain America.
“You’re just the man I wanted to see,” Captain America said. “I’ve got a man here” —he gestured into the gloom of the elevator—“and he needs medical attention. Will you get an ambulance?”
“I’ll phone in right now, sir,” the policeman nodded.
“But, but, my warehouse,” the man was still protesting. “What’s been going on in my warehouse?”
Captain America was already striding off down the street. The cop nudged the other man with his billy club. “Better pipe down, fellow. Looks like there’s trouble here.”
“Who was that man, in that wild get up?”
“You don’t know who that is? That’s Captain America, that’s all,” the cop said. He shook his head, as if in total disbelief of such ignorance.
When he got to the bank, Captain America made directly for Gaughan’s office. A startled secretary stepped back as he pushed open the door without knocking. Except for her, the room was empty.
“Where’s Gaughan?”
“Oh, you startled me! Why, you must be Captain America!”
He smiled, patiently. The tantalizing smell of coffee lingered in the room, reminding him of his hunger. “I’m looking for Mr. Gaughan,” he said.
“Oh, he’s in the director’s office,” the girl said. “He’s in conference,” she added in confusion.
“Will he be long?”
“I—I have no idea.”
The door opened.
“Ah,” Captain America said. “Just the man I was looking for.” John B. Gaughan stopped in the doorway.
“Captain America! You’re alive!”
“Yes, just barely.”
“We’d had reports—half the tunnels are totally caved in. We’ve got men down there now, digging.” He shook his head distractedly. “How did you get out? Did you bring any of the others with you?”
Rogers held up his hand. “One at a time. I—do you have, could you send for some coffee?”
The girl nodded. “I’ll get you some. Can I get anything else? Coffee cake?”
“Yes, fine.” He returned his attention to Gaughan. “I managed to dig my way out of a cave-in.” He shrugged down at his dirt-smeared uniform. “I brought out one of your men. He’s suffering from the effects of the explosion. The others? I don’t know about one of them—he went up a ladder to the building above. But the one with me, I’m afraid he’s…”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you do anything?”
“Mr. Gaughan, I may wear a fancy uniform, but I cannot see through walls, stop bullets with my skin, or do any of those other comic-book things. My strength, my powers of recuperation, my reflexes—they’re all superior, but they’re not superhuman.”
“So a man died.”
“Two men died. We’d caught one of the gold robbers. The explosion went off before I could get anything from him?”
“Two men died then, and you escaped.” Twin patches of angry color dotted Gaughan’s cheeks. “I sent those men down with you. What am I going to tell their wives? I…”
The phone on his desk rang.
“Yes?” He turned in his chair to stare directly at Captain America. “Yes, I see. Yes, thank you. Thank you, sir.” He hung up.
“That was the local precinct. After you showed up with one of my boys in bad shape, they sent a couple of men through the nearby buildings. They found another of our men, Thomas. He was in the hall of a building. The front hall. Dead. He’d been shot.”
“The one who went upstairs…” Rogers mused. “Shot, you say?”
“Three times.”
“Then whoever triggered that explosion must’ve been in the same building. He must’ve surprised the man.”
“Thompson has been with us five years. He was a trusted employee. He had a wife and three children. The youngest can’t be a year old yet.” Gaughan struck his desk with his fist, a surprising gesture, coming from him. “We don’t hire these men to risk their lives. They wear guns, but that’s largely a precautionary measure. Two of them dead, the other in the hospital.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to consider you responsible, sir.”
In a midtown hotel room, two men rested on twin beds, their shoes off, watching a TV set across the room. They had the bland look of corporation men. Each looked younger than his age; one was dark-haired, the other blond. Their luggage was stacked in the clothes closet. The bottom suitcase held a neatly stowed-away laser-gun unit.
The phone rang, and the blond-haired man reached for it. “Yeah?” He listened quietly for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, sure. We’ll meet you in the bar. Ten minutes. Sure.”
He hung up.
“Our money?” the other asked.
Blondy shook his head. “More work.” He swung around and sat up. He nudged his partner. “Come on, let’s go. We gotta see the Sparrow downstairs, in ten minutes.”
“So, ten minutes. How long can it take in the elevator?”
The blond-haired man grinned and laughed. “Move it. It’ll take you half that time to get your shoes on.” He tied his own, and slung on his shoulder holster. He tested the action, slipping his 38 magnum revolver in and out several times. The spring clip worked fine.
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