He drove his knee into the man’s back, pushing him to the ground. Even though the man wore a Kevlar vest, he felt the floating ribs fold in under the blow.
His mind flashed back, dragging his memory to the last time he’d experienced cracked ribs. Sharp pain, like an ice pick shoved up into his lungs from underneath, diaphragm spasming but not drawing air.
Unable to breathe.
Unable to stand.
Unable to fight.
He spun on his heel, dismissing the downed man as no longer a threat. Unlike the second man who now stood in front of him.
Same dark uniform as the downed man—military-style fatigues and Kevlar, bristling with weaponry. Same skull mask covering his entire face.
An AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in the Skull’s hand.
Pointed at him.
“Back off, man!” the Skull said. The voice through the mask was muffled, hard to make out. His own voice, however, was electronically amplified and distorted for maximum effect.
“Drop the gun and get out of my way.”
“I could…”
The shaft had sunk four inches into his opponent’s shoulder before he even saw it drawn and fired. The pressure of impact caused four spring-loaded prongs to pop out and sink their barbed points into his skin. A touch of a button on the bow, and the Taser arrow lit the Skull’s nervous system with 50,000 volts of electricity.
The Skull fell back, rifle clattering to the asphalt, falling from a useless arm.
Green Arrow stepped over him, moving into the lit, noisy warehouse that was now unguarded in the back.
* * *
He settled high in the rafters, looking down on a scene in the large open space. People in matching skull masks moved in a chain, hustling multiple stacks of duffel bags into the trunks and interiors of five cars that formed a line behind an empty car carrier—an eighteen-wheeler that rocked gently to the rumble of its idling engine. The cars were different makes and models and parked close to one another, bumper-to-bumper, scant inches between them. The Skulls moved with efficiency, like a ballet of dark uniforms and bone-colored masks.
“Move faster, but don’t get sloppy!” The woman barking orders wore the same uniform as the ones loading the duffels, standing out because her skull mask was electric blue, just a hairsbreadth shy of being neon. The visage on it was stylized to look more menacing than the plain, nearly anatomical, masks worn by her confederates. “I want these cars packed tight. Not one bag left behind.”
There were a few others wearing blue skulls, and even a scattering of other colors, all separated from the rank and file. Each held a rifle.
The muscle and the ones in charge.
The last time he’d tangled with skull-masked thugs, they’d been bank robbers and easily dealt with. Felicity had dubbed them the “Spooky Crew.”
Felicity…
He pushed the image of her from his mind. He had work to do.
This gang had nothing to do with the Spooky Crew. They were a new thing, grown up like mushrooms after the rain. Heavy with numbers and mostly focusing on the drug trade in Star City. They had moved in during the time he had been occupied with the machinations of Adrian Chase.
Each duffel bag being moved was packed with drugs, all kinds—uppers and downers and all-arounders, heavy on opioids, heavy on junk made in trailers where nobody lived, on the outskirts of the city where the police presence ran thin. Even legitimate prescription drugs used to treat diseases, and steroids for athletes.
These Skulls were covering all the bases.
Moving them in cars loaded on a car carrier was smart. No police officer would look twice, and they’d think very little of it when the truck stopped to drop off a car from its back—a car loaded with drugs, delivered to a community where they would be dispersed to a network of dealers, put on the streets to poison people and destroy their lives.
Not on his watch.
He reached to his ear without thinking, stopping before activating the comm system in his hood.
His hand dropped back down.
Tonight he was working alone, and it was time to get started.
He slid back into the shadows.
* * *
The car didn’t bounce when the trunk slammed shut, even though the Skull slamming it did so with enthusiasm. It was too full of merchandise, dozens of duffel bags’ worth, their weight causing the vehicle to sit low on its shocks.
“Drivers! Load ’em up,” the Blue Skull cried out. “Take your time getting them on the back of the truck. I don’t want them falling off halfway there.” The people with the red skull masks moved to the cars. Before any of them could get into their vehicles, however, the warehouse plunged into inky blackness.
Three red dots streaked through the dark, embers flicked as if from the hand of God. They cut down from above, their swift trajectory ending in three dull metallic thunks as the arrows pierced the hoods of three automobiles—the first, middle, and last. The impacts were followed by a trio of low whining sounds that rose quickly in pitch.
At the ten-second mark, they became a shrill scream.
“What’s happening?” Blue Skull’s voice rose over the din. The words were just out of her mouth when the arrow’s screams ended in three simultaneous explosions. Metal sheared from the cars in blasts of noise and light and smoke, flinging a ring of concussive force from each that dropped a dozen skull-masked thugs to the floor.
Men and women, hardened criminals to a one, screamed as if the end of the world had come. Emergency lights came on, and then he was among them.
The hooded man moved with the brutal efficiency of a woodsman, chopping with his aluminum and carbon-fiber bow as if it were an ax, felling Skulls like saplings. A flash of movement caught his eye and he dropped, spinning on his toes and, in one graceful motion, drew, pulled, and fired a green-fletched arrow that sank into a Skull who had recovered enough to raise his gun. It hit with enough force to whirl the man around and sling him to his knees, the gun lost and clattering away into the shadows.
Without pausing he drove himself forward and swung elbow-to-jaw on one Skull, the blow twisting the mask completely around, blinding the woman who wore it. He let his momentum carry him forward into a flip that snapped his boot into the throat of another, this one with a telescoping baton that fell away from fingertips gone weak and watery.
He kept moving, kept grinding, kept dealing out the punishment for a life of crime. Skull after Skull fell in the dark to his blows, to his rage. He was more than a man in a hood, more than an archer, more than a vigilante.
He was Green Arrow.
Standing over the last Skull he looked around at the fallen criminals. Every one of them had on the bone-colored masks or the red ones.
Where are the Blue Skulls?
The answer came via the sound of the car carrier shifting into gear, and the stitch of automatic gunfire. He dove to the ground as the bullets pinged on the scorched and smoldering drug cars. Looking up, he watched as the Blue Skulls rode away, hanging from the back of the empty car carrier.
Pushing off, he climbed to his feet, pulled and fired an arrow. It arced across the warehouse and struck its mark, the rear tire of the car carrier, but the distance was too far, the rubber too thick, and it bounced off, as ineffective as if he had missed completely.
Racing after the departing vehicle, he stopped in the bay door of the warehouse and cursed as the vehicle pulled out of sight. He had the drugs—they weren’t hitting the streets—but the thought that the perpetrators had gotten away boiled his blood.
From behind him came the shrill whine of high-performance machinery. It echoed through the warehouse, giving the whine an erratic, almost hollow cadence. Drawing closer.
He pulled another arrow, waiting for what came.
A motorcycle streaked from the night, sliding to a stop beside him. The rider was a woman in dirty white leathers, blond hair tangled from the whipping of the wind. She cracked a reckless smile up at him. Her voice was a smoky growl.
“You want to keep staring,” she said, “or do you want to go catch some bad guys?”
Though questions whirled through his mind, he slung his bow on his back without uttering a word, climbed onto the motorcycle, and put his arms around Sara Lance, the White Canary.
* * *
The highway glistened, slick from an earlier rain, as it whipped by under them. He leaned with Sara, using his body in tandem to hers as she took the curves at high speed. Soon they were closing fast on the car carrier. Traffic was light with the late hour, and they were heading toward the edge of the city. The handful of Blue Skulls hung onto the metal frame of the speeding eighteen-wheeler.
White Canary leaned back, her voice tearing past his ears with the wind.
“Hold on.”
He pressed closer to her back. Bullets tore chunks from the road underneath them, pieces of it peppering their legs. White Canary twisted the throttle hard, making the bike leap forward. She veered left to avoid another spray from the Skulls’ firearms as the gap narrowed between them and the truck. The bike screamed up to the rear of the carrier, until it was just inches away.
Canary leaned lower over the handlebars.
She’s not—
He didn’t finish the thought before she pulled up sharply. The bike lifted, front tire leaving the ground and striking the loading ramp of the car carrier. Sparks showered as metal struck metal with a clang and a bang and the bike squealed as Sara screamed and forced the thing up and onto the back of the trailer.
The bike slewed sideways and he threw himself off, hands reaching out to grab onto the frame and stop himself from tumbling onto the speeding asphalt below. He latched on and used the momentum to swing up and onto the upper level of the car carrier. The force of the wind stream smashed into him like a bulldozer, almost knocking him back off.
Through the ramps meant to hold the top row of cars he saw that White Canary had also come off the bike, which had tumbled into the space between her and the Skulls. Somehow it hung upside down, engine still chugging. Two of the five Blue Skulls pointed their guns at her. He pulled his bow off his shoulder and had an arrow notched in the blink of an eye.
He was too slow.
Canary did a nimble twist at her hips and her arm extended as a blur. In the dark and at the speed it was done, he didn’t see the shuriken she threw until the spinning blades were embedded in the arms of both Blue Skulls. Their guns dropped, bouncing off the metal of the trailer and falling to the street to be swept away as if they’d fallen into a river. From a thigh holster she pulled a pair of nunchaku, the two hardwood handles connected by a length of chain.
“Stop this thing from moving!” she yelled up at him as she began working the weapon, spinning it and whipping it around to build momentum. “I’ve got these guys.”
Part of him wanted to stay and watch her work, but instead he pushed off, leaned into the wind, and began moving toward the cab of the big rig.
* * *
She could feel the smile that spread across her face.
Legs braced against the motion of the speeding truck, she worked her weapon, looked at her enemies, and felt that thrill—the joy of oncoming battle—swell inside her chest. This was what she’d been trained for, had been remade for, had been reborn for. All the things she had endured on Nanda Parbat, the times and fights since, had brought her to this moment, crafted her to become this thing built for the simplicity of battle. Strength against strength, skill against skill, weapon against weapon.
The nunchaku whistled around her, cutting the air, whipping in a pattern of centrifugal force with her as the anchor point. Her mind expanded, becoming an open field of perception that took in everything—the sway of the vehicle under her feet, the whirl of her weapon, the beat of her heart. The rhythms of her body, her blood in its blind circuit, the very air as it passed her by full of the scent of the night, of the truck on which she rode. Of the city itself.
The copper and latex scent of the criminals that were her prey.
The leader pushed two of the Skulls, pointing them up, yelling for them to climb and intercept the Green Arrow above. They swung their guns to their sides, anchoring the straps, and scrambled to climb up.
She didn’t try to stop them. Oliver could take care of himself.
The two she’d stuck with the shuriken began moving toward her. Despite a wave of sooty black smoke from the diesel engine of the truck, she could smell the blood running under their sleeves. She could read the conflict in their body language, as well. She’d hurt them, but in their eyes she was just a small woman and it made them angry.
One pulled a knife from his belt. It was as long as her forearm.
Looks like they want to teach me a lesson.
Her smile widened.
The two came toward her, moving with heavy steps, remaining upright by holding onto the metal beams that comprised the sides. They passed her motorcycle, its engine now silent, its wheels still. When they stepped past it, she moved.
Using the motion of the truck under her, she leapt at the one with the knife, closing the distance as fast as a striking snake. He slashed at her, the blade shining in the low light. She dropped to a crouch, swinging the nunchaku down, the hardwood cracking against his shin, making him shunt forward. Twisting, she moved with the new direction of her weapon, and it struck the Skull’s knife-hand. The blade spun in a circle, flying up as its former wielder fell down, crashing into the metal platform of the car carrier.
Time seized up, and White Canary watched the knife spin in the air as if it were in stop motion, everything about it liquid and slow—an eternity between heartbeats, the heightened perception of a warrior’s mind. As the knife began to fall, she swung the nunchaku in a backhand, striking the handle. The blade went from a spinning thing into a streak of sharpened steel that had been fired and flew straight and true, embedding itself in the calf of the Skull who once held it. It passed between muscle and bone and wedged into the space between the metal tracks of the trailer, pinning him to the floor.
Sara twisted as the other Skull lunged toward her. He was too close and the nunchaku bounced off his shoulder, not doing any real damage. Hands closed on her jacket, bunching the leather, and he yanked her toward him. This Skull was a bear of a man, long arms thick with muscle, shoulders of rock, and a chest as wide as the grille of a sports car. He lifted her off her feet, swinging her like a toy he intended to smash against the wall.
She could hear his teeth grinding through his mask.
Her left hand clamped on his arm, fingers sliding until they found the soft spot, the place her shuriken had gone in. It had long since fallen away.
Pushing deep into the cut, she dug with her nails, not the least bit squeamish at the feel of his muscle separating. He howled, the sound vibrating the latex mask like a loose drum-skin. Then he jerked, trying to pull his arm away from the blinding pain she was causing him, the motion dropping her back down.
As her feet hit metal she rammed the handle of the nunchaku into his throat, driving with her shoulder and the force of her body weight. Instantly the Skull went limp, his knees banging into the ground before he slewed sideways and crashed, unconscious, on top of his fallen partner.
White Canary stepped over him, looking for the last Skull, the leader of them all, when the air filled with bullets.