Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
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Part 128 here.
Part 129***********************
On the Outside Looking In***********************
Asabi knew as soon as he tested the front door of the Daily Planet to find it locked that the undignified woman was correct. The security guard said that Miss Lane and Mr. Luthor had left an hour earlier. The Lex-Clone had been trained to think on its feet and to solve any problems that could arise, unless it countered with a direct order from Mr. Luthor. Mr. Luthor had told the clone it was to take Miss Lane to the opera, remain in Mr. Luthor’s private box during the intermission, talking to as few people as possible, and escort Miss Lane to her apartment. If it succeeded at doing that, the Lex-Clone was allowed to kiss Miss Lane on the cheek as its reward before returning to the ark. At all times, the clone was to be respectful of Miss Lane and her wishes.
That one directive had been the clone’s downfall, concluded Asabi. From his research and observations of Miss Lane during the previous summer and occasionally until the end of February, when Mr. Luthor had moved him into the ark, Asabi had noted that the reporter never did well with set plans. She always had to forge her own route, with a machete if need be. Asabi reminded himself that it was not his position to judge his employer, no matter how much he disagreed with him.
He pulled the limousine into a nearby parking garage of a building owned by LexCorp. He used Mr. Luthor’s universal card to gain access and to park in his boss’s reserved spot. He then removed the formal part of his uniform, locked the car, and walked back to the Daily Planet building. Miss Grant had said that she had gained access to the building through its parking garage. He found the entrance, slipped easily inside past the barriers, and headed for the elevators. It was at that point he saw the “Night Cleaning” van parked suspiciously next to said lifts. Using techniques he learned while in the DMI (India’s Military Intelligence), Asabi was able to stealthily approach a vantage point to see the side mirror of the van and use it to see inside the van. There was a man sitting behind the wheel. He was listening to music, eating a sandwich, and reading a magazine. Asabi shook his head.
Professional office cleaners would never leave someone in the van.
Making sure he wasn’t seen in the same mirrors he had used to spy on the driver, Asabi made it to the door marked ‘stairs’ and slipped inside. He had never accompanied Mr. Luthor on any of his visits to Lois Lane at her offices, but he had tailed her on numerous occasions. Due to this, he already knew how many flights up he needed to traverse.
He paused at the doorway Miss Grant said that she had used when she saw the Lex-Clone shot. Without a sound, he peered through the small opening at the base of the window blind. There was a woman he didn’t recognize sitting at one of the desks typing with frustration on a laptop computer. The floor and the surrounding area of the desk were wet, although he couldn’t see any reason for it. His view from the opening at the bottom of the blind was a small one, allowing him to see very little of the room. Another man came into view, pacing behind the woman and talking into a walkie-talkie.
Asabi tried shifting his position to be able to observe the floor by the door, to see if he saw any blood, but it wasn’t possible from this angle. Suddenly, he heard Mr. Luthor… the Lex-Clone scream in agony. The pacing man stopped, smirked at the woman, and nodded towards one of the offices outside of Asabi’s view.
Everything Miss Grant had told him appeared to be true.
Asabi considered his options. Contacting the real Mr. Luthor was out of the question. Asabi was paid handsomely to do his own thinking and not to bother Mr. Luthor with the details. Mr. St. John was in the ark dealing with a pest problem down there. Anyway, Mr. St. John’s mobile phone wouldn’t work five hundred meters down, therefore, Asabi would have to return to the penthouse to telephone him directly.
Mrs. Cox? No, that woman was more bother than she was worth. Additionally, she hadn’t been on Mr. Luthor’s personal invite list for the ark, and she might take it badly, learning of its existence. Dr. Gretchen Kelly was Mr. Luthor’s personal physician, but she hadn’t been privy to the creation of the clone. No, Mr. Luthor wouldn’t want Asabi to include anyone outside of the members of the current Lex-Clone team. Of course, there was always Dr. Leek. Despite having the genius to create the clone, the man didn’t handle pressure well and would be more of a liability than an asset.
First, on Asabi’s agenda, would be rescuing the Lex-Clone, preferably before it died of its wounds. Asabi would probably have to save the other hostages as well, which would be an extra burden. He doubted that Mr. Luthor would allow him to live if Miss Lane died under Asabi’s watch. Next, he would need to find a plausible way to get the clone back to the ark without anyone being the wiser of its existence. Mr. Luthor wasn’t expected back to the penthouse until early the next morning. The hostages already knew of the clone’s gunshot wound, so Asabi would have to prepare for the fallout of that revelation becoming public, such as a ‘recovery’ room set up at the penthouse for Mr. Luthor. Mrs. Cox would have to be notified about the change in Mr. Luthor’s schedule. Mr. Luthor would not be pleased about needing to play this part, but Asabi refused to flee in the face of danger. That wasn’t who he was, or why Mr. Luthor trusted him.
Asabi backed away from the stairwell door and headed back downstairs. He was only half-way down the flight of stairs before the building starting to shake. At first, he thought it might be an earthquake, but having survived several of those back in India, he soon decided it wasn’t. He heard some kind of rumbling sound. He followed it until he found the source. A floor below the newsroom was another set of offices. He crept through the door on that level and over to where the rumbling noise originated, and saw drills. Why would these people be drilling into the floor? It made no sense to him.
Clearly, whoever these men were, they weren’t professional terrorists. They were being too careless. They were all doing something in that office: drilling, using a blowtorch, and shoveling away debris. Nobody was standing guard. Amateurs. Asabi could go in there and capture the three men in a matter of seconds. He shrugged. Maybe a minute, since he was rusty.
The radio in the office crackled. “I told you to wait for my instructions. I’m still studying the plans,” a voice said over the walkie-talkie.
Asabi nodded. The man upstairs with the woman must be the leader.
One of the men picked up the walkie-talkie. “We don’t see it, Fuentes. It’s not here,” he said, sitting against the desk they had shoved to the side and lighting a cigarette.
Two shots rang out from above, and Asabi took the same number of steps back.
“Think Remy shot a hostage or two?” one of men asked with a chuckle.
“Nah,” the first man replied. “That was Fuentes losing his cool, blowing off steam. There’s a reason I didn’t tell him our news face-to-face.”
Asabi could take a chance and hope that Fuentes called his men off and cut their losses, but he wasn’t one to pin things on hope. He edged back towards the open doorway of the office, glancing inside. The men had dumped their guns on the desk, against which the first man was leaning. Asabi would have to wait until…
The man with the cigarette walked across the room to take a glance out the window. “Did you hear something?” he asked the others.
They set down their equipment and joined him at the window.
***
Cat dug through her bag after Asabi drove off. Where was Inspector Henderson’s card? He seemed a decent enough guy. Clark seemed to trust him for some reason. Then, she remembered that she had tucked it into the side pocket of her wallet. She fished it out and dialed, hoping, despite his marital status, that he had a lack of a social life.
She was about to hang up after four rings when his familiar voice drawled onto the line. “Henderson.”
“Inspector! It’s Cat Grant from the Daily Planet,” she said with relief.
“Catherine, here I thought we were on first name basis,” he teased. “Did you finally decide to come clean about the watch?”
“Watch? What watch?” she sputtered. How had he learned about her watch investigation? She pushed that thought out of her mind. “No, that’s not it. Look, there are four guys and a gal with guns here at the Daily Planet, and they’ve taken Luthor, Lois, Clark, Perry, and the Jimmys hostage.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” Bill asked with annoyance. “Because that doesn’t sound like something you newspaper types would tell me about until after the fact. And I was just about to head home and remind myself why I work on Saturday nights.”
“Okay, fine. Why don’t you insult my intelligence and assume that I’m joking, too?” Cat snapped, damn tired of being treated less than human for one evening just because she happened to be a gorgeous woman with a sense of style. “It’s only your job, and the lives of your family, when Luthor’s second-in-command learns you ignored a witness telling you she saw his boss get shot and subsequently die because of you.”
“Hold on. You’re serious?”
“No, I’m Lois Lane,” she retorted. “Of course, I’m serious. Don’t you think I have better things to do on a Saturday night than ruin yours?”
“Well, we did meet at the docks…”
“Bill,” Cat pleaded, having run out of steam. “It’s the lives of my boss, my best friend, and my coworkers. Please.”
“Lane has a best friend? Really?” Bill scoffed. “Hmmmm. Who knew? I believe you. It’s just I never pictured Ms. Lane being chummy with women; with Kent, yeah, but another woman, not in a thousand years.”
Join the club, Cat thought and not correcting him on his erroneous assumption of her relationship with Lois.
“I’ll be right down,” the inspector continued.
“Don’t take this personally, Bill, but we’re going to need more than just you. They’re heavily armed with automatic weapons. Lex was shot trying to escape,” she told him.
“If he’s really been shot, why didn’t you dial 9-1-1?” he asked.
“Because their man on the inside is the security guard named Willie,” Cat explained. “He’s an old man, like white hair and shuffles old, and he likes to listen to the police scanners. If you can keep it quiet, and off the official channels, so they don’t know you’re coming, then maybe they’d be less likely to shoot more hostages.”
Bill thought about that for about twenty seconds. “Makes sense. Mind telling me how you made it out alive, if they shot Luthor dead?”
“He’s not dead. Well, not yet. Tick Tock, Billy Boy. We can chitchat later. I’m going to sneak back in and see if learn anything or make contact with the…” Cat said, about to end her call.
“Wait! No! Cat, don’t,” Bill interrupted. “Get yourself someplace safe and leave this to the professionals, Catherine. I don’t need to deal with freeing a sixth hostage.”
“Seventh. They already have six. Lex, Lois, Clark, Perry, Jimmy, and Jimbo,” she corrected.
“I thought you said… never mind. Hold tight, and stay
out of the building, please,” he insisted, hanging up.
During the first few minutes of the very long ten minutes she waited for Bill Henderson and MPD’s finest to show up, Cat watched as a squad car with lights and sirens blaring roared down the street.
Well, so much for stealth mode there, Bill.The police car zipped past and continued down the boulevard, and Cat’s esteem of Bill returned. She glanced up towards the conference room and wondered if Clark had heard the sirens. Of course, he had, but Clark couldn’t run out on some flimsy excuse to be Superman at the moment. She hoped whatever that cop was rushing off to was something he could handle without super assistance.
She returned to her Moped and changed back into her black leggings and turtleneck. Without George hanging off her arm, she was suddenly quite cold in the cool night air. It wasn’t as if she were going into shock, she told herself, because she wasn’t. Her whole body was merely shivering.
Cat saw Bill walk up to the corner across the street from the Daily Planet and look up and down the block, presumably searching for her.
“Hi,” she said, moving up beside him.
Bill did a double take. “I didn’t recognize you in those duds.”
“Good. Then they’re doing their job. Do you want me to sneak you in, and show you what I saw?” she said with a nod towards the Daily Planet.
“Sounds good as long as you follow me over a block to my car and let me fit you with a vest,” he replied.
“It’ll ruin my outfit,” Cat informed him, running her hands down her body.
“It’ll save your life,” Bill retorted.
She shrugged. “If they don’t shoot me in the head.”
“Are you trying to make me have second thoughts about bringing you with me?” Bill asked, raising an eyebrow. He started walking back down the block.
“Fine. Do you have any in basic black without the letters M-P-D or S-W-A-T sprawled across the front or back? I think it would give us away,” Cat said, following.
Bill’s eyes trailed down her body and back up again. “You might have room under that turtleneck to hide it from view.”
She rolled her eyes. “At least, I’m in disguise and nobody would recognize me as the chunky woman in black.”
“I doubt anyone would ever think you’re chunky, Catherine,” he said. “Even in flak jacket.”
Cat took hold of his arm and leaned against his shoulder. “You’re really too sweet to be a policeman, you know.”
He paused his step. “Let’s keep that our little secret. I’d hate for Lane to find out. She’d lose all respect for me.”
Cat grinned. “Deal.”
***
“Did you see that woman in front of the Metro Diner?” said one of the henchmen with a chuckle. “She changed her clothes right there on the street.”
“Only in Metropolis, man. Only in Metropolis,” replied one of the others. “This is the greatest city in the world.”
“I really thought for a moment that cop was going to pull up here,” said the third before Asabi’s heel connected to his jaw, knocking him out.
“Hey!” said the second man, receiving a blow to his solar plexus, winding him.
The first man, and definitely the leader of the three, reached for the guns they had left on the desk, only to find Asabi’s other heel pushing them off the other side of the desk and onto the floor.
While the first guy was distracted by trying to grab for Asabi’s ankle, Asabi took hold of his arm and threw him into the second man. They fell into a pile on the floor, and on top of the third guy. The first man scrambled to his feet first. As he did this, Asabi pulled the jackhammer out of his reach.
“Schumack, get the torch!” the second man recommended as he dove for Asabi with an American football type tackle.
Asabi merely stepped out of his way and directed a blow between the man’s shoulder blades. Then Asabi grabbed hold of the second man’s jumpsuit and swung him towards his cohort as the man turned on the blowtorch, catching his partner on fire. With an extra shove, Asabi pushed the burning man into Schumack, causing him to drop the torch. Luckily, the blowtorch was one of those equipped with a safety mechanism, which turned off if a certain button wasn’t held down. The two men landed in a pile of concrete debris on the floor. Between Schumack landing on his partner’s back and the concrete dust from their hack job they had done to the floor, the fire was extinguished.
A few minutes later, Asabi had frisked the three men and removed all their extra weapons from their persons. Asabi started with Schumack, their leader. He hogtied the man’s hands and ankles together, using computer cables, and gagged him with his own handkerchief stuffed into his mouth. He did the same to the other two men. Leaving them on the floor, he shut the door to the office, so their condition wouldn’t be obvious to the casual observer. He had taken their walkie-talkie with him as he returned to the stairwell, heading down to take care of the man in the van.
***
Walking up the stairs in her black sneakers was a lot more comfortable for Cat than it had been in her high-heels. Despite that, Bill’s bulletproof vest hugged her like a corset, making it difficult for her to take a deep breath, and chafed under her armpits.
She paused at a door and whispered to him, “I saw three gunmen go into one of the offices earlier. It sounded like they were moving furniture, but I didn’t want to get any closer to see for sure.”
Bill nodded. “Wise move. Where are we?”
“Advertising Department. The newsroom is one floor up. That’s where everyone else is,” she said, waving him on.
When they reached the exit door, leading to the snack area of the newsroom, Cat knelt down and peered through the one-inch space at the bottom of the window blind. No one was at her desk now, but it looked like someone had done a number on a small laptop, which was still slightly smoking.
“Where is everybody?” Bill whispered, squatting next to her.
Cat shrugged. “The man who shot Lex was sitting at my desk looking at some big pieces of bright blue papers when the fire sprinklers went off on him for no reason.”
“Blueprints maybe?” Henderson suggested, still looking through the window.
“Yeah. That’s possible.”
“Why would they be looking at blueprints?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Beats me.”
“Where are the hostages?”
“In the conference room, just off to the right there,” Cat said, pointing. “That’s where Lois and Clark dragged Lex after he was shot.” It was a tight angle, but she could almost see past the window and into the room. “If only Clark would come to the window…” she grumbled. “Maybe we could communi…”
Suddenly, Clark was at the door scowling at her. He shooed her away.
She waved her fingers with a grin, pretending that she hadn’t understood that he wanted her to leave. “Bill Henderson’s here with me,” she whispered.
“He can’t hear you,” Bill reminded her.
“Clark doesn’t have to hear me, Bill,” she replied, pointing to her mouth. “He reads lips.”
Clark nodded.
“Do you?” Bill asked her.
“A little bit, but nowhere near as good as Clark. You’ll have to help me translate his hand signals,” Cat said.
“How many hostages?” Bill asked.
Clark raised both hands, giving the sign for six. From his right wrist dangled a set of handcuffs.
“Houdini, huh?” Bill murmured. “Where are the gunmen?”
Clark pointed his thumb towards Perry’s office.
“Gotcha. How many?” Bill asked.
Clark held up one hand, five fingers. Then he waved his hand and held up six fingers again.
“Five or six are in Perry’s office?” Cat guessed.
Clark shook his head and held up two fingers.
“Oh, only two. He must mean there are five or six gunmen total,” she corrected.
Clark nodded his approval at this translation.
“How are the hostages?” Bill asked.
Clark held up five fingers with one hand and a thumbs-up signal, and then he looked over his shoulder into the room. He disappeared from view for minute. When he returned, he held up five fingers and a thumbs-up signal again. Then he held up one finger and a side-ways thumb.
“What does that mean?” Cat asked Bill.
“Five are well; one isn’t so well, but still alive,” Bill translated.
Clark gave a quick thumbs-up signal, and then turned away from the window to stretch his arms over his head.
“Someone caught him doing something,” Bill said. “Let’s hope it wasn’t the gunmen.”
From behind his back, Clark stuck his thumb down, and then walked away from the door.
Bill looked at Cat with genuine surprise. “How in the hell did he read my lips that time?”
Cat shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t responding to your question,” she suggested.
The policeman stared at her a good ten seconds, but she didn’t give anything away.
The door to Perry’s office opened, and the female gunman left, still holding her automatic weapon. Cat grabbed hold of Bill’s arm and lowered her head out of view.
“It’s okay. She’s gone to the elevators,” he whispered.
Cat nodded, but her heart was racing too fast for her to speak. She could still hear the echo of the shot that hit Lex and smell the burning powder.
When Clark returned, Lois was handcuffed to his chest. Both of them had their arms crossed in front of her. Lois’s back rested against his chest, her right wrist was cuffed to his right, and her left wrist was attached to his left. There was no way to separate them from one another without tying the other into a knot or unfastening the two sets of handcuffs, because their hands were crisscrossed. Cat could see Lois grumbling about this new position’s lack of freedom.
“It looks like we got Clark in trouble,” she murmured to Bill.
Clark shook his head, made an obvious attempt to look at Lois, and then rolled his eyes.
Cat chuckled. “Oh,
Lois got herself in trouble with the bad guys. Big surprise there.”
“I wonder what the gunmen want,” Bill said to Cat.
Clark whispered into Lois’s ear, and she replied something.
“Did you catch that?” Cat asked Bill, but he shook his head.
Clark made an ‘S’ with one of his fingers, and then cross-sected it with a vertical line.
“Superman?” Cat guessed.
Lois tossed a wadded up ball of paper away from the doorway.
Clark’s finger shook back and forth.
“Money?” Bill guessed. “Well, I guess, holding Lex Luthor hostage is one way to get money.”
“Shooting him isn’t,” Cat replied. “It also doesn’t explain what those guys were doing down in Advertising.”
“We should go check them out, and then report back to S.W.A.T. what we know,” Bill said. “They should be at the staging area by now.”
Cat nodded and went to wave bye to Clark, but he was shaking his head violently enough that it even caught Lois’s attention. Cat’s brow furrowed in confusion. “There’s something else, Bill.”
Bill turned back to the door.
Clark opened and closed his hands multiple times.
Bill looked at Cat. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Me, either,” Cat replied.
Clark took a deep breath. Slowly, he opened and closed his mouth.
“What’s he doing?” Cat asked.
“I need to call my cousin,” Bill replied, giving Clark a thumbs-up. “They’ve got a bomb.”
The elevators dinged and the female terrorist ran through their line of sight, heading straight into Perry’s office. She called something out, presumably to the other terrorist, but Cat didn’t catch what it was. It didn’t help that Cat could hear her own heart beating in her ears from Clark’s news item about the bomb.
“Now, what’s Clark doing?” Cat said, staring at Clark’s fingers making strange patterns on the window of the conference room door.
“He’s spelling something,” Bill murmured.
They stared at Clark for a minute, but it wasn’t until he started spelling it slower did they pick it up.
“Cat,” Bill gasped. “They’ve got a nuclear bomb.”
“We need Superman,” Cat breathed more than spoke.
Clark shook his head, and then inadvertently rubbed Lois’s stomach when he shrugged, earning him an elbow to his gut from his partner.
“Let’s hope he’ll be free to help us,” Bill replied, but he sounded doubtful.
Cat took once last glance at her best friend, and whispered, “Good luck.”
As they made their way downstairs to the Advertising Department, Bill pulled out his revolver once more. He signaled for Cat to wait in the stairwell, which was fine by her, as he slowly approached and opened the door.
It was quiet, eerily quiet.
Bill glanced over his shoulder back at Cat and held up his hand, once more, to remind her to stay put. She held up both of her hands to let him know that she had no desire to meet up with those three men with the automatic weapons.
He inched forward, scanned the room with his gun following his gaze, and then inched forward again. He pressed himself up against the wall next to the Advertising Department’s conference room before taking a quick glance through the window into the room. He leaned against the wall again, and then took another, longer, look. He returned to the wall and took a deep breath.
Glancing back at Cat, still in the stairwell, Bill shook his head quickly. He hadn’t seen anything in that room, which probably meant he was heading for the Advertising Director’s office. It was the one directly below Perry’s office. Quickly, he crossed in front of the conference room and stopped at the wall between it and the Advertising Director’s office. He took another breath before stealing a glance into the office. He fell back against the wall, shook his head, as if trying to remove the stunned disbelief from his expression, and then took another look into the office. He nodded to himself and returned to the stairwell, closing the door behind him.
“What happened?” Cat asked.
“I don’t know, but I think Superman’s been here,” Bill mumbled, sounding as though he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth.
She blinked her eyes. Clark hadn’t been down here. He was locked upstairs with five other hostages, who surely would have noticed him disappear. “What gives you that idea?” she finally inquired.
“The three gunmen are all tied up and gagged in the office there,” he said, starting down the stairs.
“Are you sure it was the gunmen and not…”
“I’m sure,” he replied.
“Bill…”
He placed a finger to his lips to remind her that they weren’t out of the woods yet. She nodded, and pocketed her questions for once they were out of the building.
Soon, they were back to the door for the ground level of the parking garage, and Bill once more held up his hand for her to wait. He seemed more on guard than before, as if something had spooked him. Something certainly had spooked her. If Clark hadn’t tied up the gunmen, who had?
Gradually edging along the wall, Bill approached the “Night Cleaning” van, jumping out and pointing his revolver through the driver’s side window. Cat heard him identify himself, but she couldn’t see the driver at all. She hadn’t even realized that there was a driver in the van. How stupid was that? If he had seen her enter the building earlier… Cat’s eyes widened as thoughts raced through her mind at what could have happened. She closed the garage door, and pressed herself into a little ball in the shadow of the stairwell, hoping that Bill would return soon and take her to safety.
Her wish was granted a moment later. Bill opened the stairwell door and glanced around until he saw her. “Catherine?”
“Bill!” she gasped softly, staring at him with relief.
He moved closer to her. “Come on. Let’s go. I’m sorry that I allowed you to come along,” he said, taking her arm and guiding her towards the exit. “I should never have exposed you to that.” They entered the parking garage and quickly glided through it to the street.
“Exposed me to what?” Cat finally asked, leaning against the outside wall of the building and taking the most glorious breath of air in her life.
“The body. Didn’t you see it?” Bill replied.
“What body?” she gasped, her heart racing again.
“The driver of the van. Whoever tied up those men in Advertising wasn’t Superman,” he explained, taking her arm once more and leading her away from the Daily Planet and towards his unmarked patrol car. “Superman doesn’t carry a knife, or slice open men’s throats. Either one of those terrorists has gone rogue on his team, or we have a renegade vigilante on our hands.”
***End of Part 129*** Part 130 Comments
