Enemies & Allies (17 page)

A
WEEK AFTER GENERAL CERIDOV RETURNED TO SIBERIA, ALL
of Luthor’s systems were in place, all components assembled to his exacting personal specifications. The array of energy-beam transmitters stood ready, their dishes and antennae pointed toward the Caribbean sky, startlingly modern next to the abandoned Spanish fort.

Lex Luthor was about to change the world.

Inside the computer-filled control room, large screens displayed images of important cities,
calm
cities, soon to be filled with terrified citizens wailing for rescue. Soviet nuclear missiles would shortly be on their way to Metropolis, and Luthor alone would save the human race. He had everything firmly in hand.

Wearing hooded cleansuits, his technicians stood around the humming computer banks, while others used compasses and grease pencils to plot trajectories on glass maps. The radar screens remained blank for now, but that would all change as soon as General Ceridov initiated the launch from silos in the USSR.

Though Luthor had little need for a bodyguard on his own island, Bertram stood at his side nevertheless. “We will push both superpowers to the brink, Bertram. The world’s greatest leaders will hide under their beds. They’ll pray, they’ll whimper, and when they see that only
I
can possibly save them, I’ll have them in the palm of my hand.”

Bertram rarely made comments and never asked questions. Luthor had no evidence that the man was particularly intelligent, yet he earned his master’s respect simply because he didn’t talk all the time or make stupid rejoinders. If only more men could be so wise….

At his command desk, Luthor picked up a red phone, listened to clicks and static as he was connected by a secure transatlantic cable (which LuthorCorp had privately laid). His call passed through the Soviet network, bypassed the usual monitoring substations and listening devices, and after an interminable wait, was finally connected with Ceridov.

“We are prepared and waiting, General. Have you taken care of all the details on your end?”

The other man’s voice was scratchy from the distance, but his words were clear enough even through the popping static. “I am ready, comrade Luthor. Generals Dubrov and Endovik are like rabid dogs anxious to be loosed. They have already been to see the premier twice, demanding permission to launch a preemptive strike. I have a way to send a counterfeit message to them, and they will believe they have the necessary permission. I am confident they will not hesitate, nor will they doubt what they are doing.”

“And your name is completely absent from all records?”

“I am a black-star KGB general! My name never appears on any records.”

Soon, though, Ceridov would control the entire Soviet military. In their preliminary discussions, he and Luthor had proposed dividing the world in half, each with his own to control, but the KGB general probably dreamed of expanding his sphere of influence deeper into Southeast Asia, China, and more of Europe. Luthor was certain his counterpart would never be completely satisfied with half the world.

And neither would he. In fact, he was already making plans to deal with that very problem. First, though, the next step. “Your missiles are reliable?”

The general’s voice exuded a gruff pride. “Our R-7 rocket successfully placed Sputnik into orbit, which is more than your American space program could manage! We have loaded three R-7s with nuclear warheads. They will devastate Metropolis—unless your weapons stop them. You are positive you can stop these missiles? Much as I hate you capitalists, I do not truly intend to destroy America. Too many parts of it will be useful.”

Luthor didn’t have to consider his answer. “I designed the entire system personally, and I supervised the installation of the Wayne Enterprises components. There will be
no
errors.”

He hung up the red phone and turned to face the screens again, silently waiting.

LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, SEVERAL OF HIS TYPICALLY
quiet technicians gasped when sweeping arcs on the radar scopes revealed a trio of bogeys: the missiles launched from the Soviet Union. Without warning, the Russian R-7 rockets cruised toward America on a polar trajectory that would bring them down over the Distant Early Warning line along the edge of the Arctic Circle.

Luthor smiled, knowing that red phones would be jangling on the desks of the world’s leaders. The U.S. military must have been scrambling to launch a counterattack with fighter jets and bombers, which could do nothing against these intercontinental missiles.

To prevent a full-scale war, the Soviet premier would insist, quite stridently, that the launch was “accidental.” People might even believe his claims, because right now the premier himself was giving an important speech at the United Nations in Metropolis: ground zero for all three nuclear missiles. No one could evacuate in time.

With each sweep of the radar, the traces showed the inbound warheads getting closer….

S
INCE HE COULD NOT REVEAL WHAT HE HAD DISCOVERED
inside Area 51, Clark’s trip had not yielded much of a story. After he and Jimmy returned to Metropolis, Clark had tried to cobble together a background piece using the old rancher’s tale, as well as anecdotes of previous UFO sightings and Project Blue Book, but Perry filed Clark’s draft article directly in the wastebasket, saying, “If there’s no little green men, there’s no story, Kent.”

Instead he dispatched Clark and Jimmy to cover that week’s UN General Assembly meeting. “The Soviet premier is scheduled to give another one of his blowhard speeches, and there’s some funeral for the king of a country I’ve never heard of. Squeeze something interesting out of it. Nothing much else going on in the world today.”

“It’s the
United Nations,
Mr. White. It’s got to be interesting.” For Clark, the UN was a symbol of hope that all nations could find common ground and cooperate, much as he imagined the lands and peoples of Krypton had done.

When he found himself staring up at the tall UN building, Clark realized that in his relatively short time in Metropolis, he had never actually gone inside. He and Jimmy flashed their press passes and hurried to the hushed observation gallery. Clark took out his notebook, sure that he was about to see a compelling example of diplomacy in action.

Instead, he found that the routine activities of diplomats were neither particularly exciting nor newsworthy. The ambassadors were mostly sedate old men barely interested in their own goings-on. The speakers droned on in a babel of languages while interpreters translated in real time; the spectacle played largely to an audience of empty chairs.

The opening session consisted of a forty-five-minute parade of diplomats expressing their condolences that the king of Timacu had died (at the age of eighty-seven, and after fourteen wives). Each member nation expressed its official sorrow before the next ambassador expressed an even more extravagant amount of grief, and so on, until it seemed that the whole world considered the king of Timacu to have been a statesman of such profound influence that civilization itself was unlikely to continue without him. Clark decided to search the
Daily Planet
’s archives to find out what the king of Timacu had actually done during his reign.

Jimmy took several uninspired photographs of the sparsely populated rows of seated men. Clark leaned over and whispered in his ear. “This is slower than the town hall meetings in Smallville.”

Presently the General Assembly came to life when the bombastic Soviet premier took the podium and began his speech by shouting. The blustery head of the Communist Party attempted to change the opinions of his rival diplomats through sheer vehemence rather than refined oratorical skills and convincing rhetoric. To emphasize a point, the premier actually removed a shoe and began hammering the podium before him, vowing to bury any other nation that did not agree with his ideology.

Frowning, Clark took notes. “He’s not winning any friends, that’s for sure.”

Back in Kansas, he and his father had often listened to radio news broadcasts together. Though Jonathan Kent hadn’t taken a lot of interest in world politics, he certainly hadn’t trusted the Communists. “Son, I hope I’ve raised you to admire our core values. America’s not perfect, far from it, but even with our faults, this is the best darned country in the world. Don’t ever stop believing in truth, justice, and the American way.”

“I won’t, Pa,” Clark had promised.

And he never had.

The Soviet premier had just reached the crescendo of his speech when blaring air-raid sirens drowned out his sound and fury. Uniformed UN security guards rushed in, calling for an immediate evacuation of the building.

INSIDE PERRY WHITE’S OFFICE, LOIS LANE LOCKED HER ARMS
across her chest. “I can catch the next flight to Havana, hire a boat, and go find that island of Luthor’s. Clark and Jimmy’s trip was a bust. Now give
me
a chance.”

He shook his head, holding the cigar in his right hand. “Don’t remind me how much money I just spent on a wild goose chase after flying saucers.”

“You have to go where the story takes you,” Lois insisted. “You taught me that yourself.”

“Go find a big story right here in Metropolis, preferably one that doesn’t require an expense account. Something might just fall in your lap.”

Scowling, she was about to make a flippant comment when Perry’s radio blasted the piercing emergency broadcast signal. Out in the bullpen, the other reporters flocked toward the shortwave.

“—emergency bulletin. The Soviets have just launched three nuclear missiles toward the United States of America. Soviet officials at first insisted this was an accidental launch, but now they are silent. The missiles are on their way. Likely targets are Metropolis and Washington, D.C. Proceed immediately to your nearest civil defense shelter. This is not a drill.”

“There’s a fallout shelter in the basement—” someone began, and in shock, people began to run for the door, leaving their personal items behind.

“Great Caesar’s ghost!” Perry said. “Lois, there’s your story—if anybody survives to read it.”

JIMMY WAS SO ASTONISHED THAT HE NEARLY DROPPED HIS
camera. “What do we do now, Mr. Kent?”

The UN security guards urgently ushered the diplomats out of the General Assembly hall down to the civil defense shelter. The corridors of the UN were sheer pandemonium, overlain with a tapestry of languages.

“Get to the shelter, Jimmy—quick.” Already Clark’s mind was racing ahead to how he could slip away. Ambassadors of free countries and dictatorships alike elbowed each other aside, crowding into stairwells, rushing downward alongside custodians, secretaries, and cafeteria workers. Clark urged Jimmy into the throng, then managed to lose his friend in the jostling, frantic crowd.

He ducked into an empty office, glad for the confusion. If Soviet missiles were inbound, he didn’t have much time. But if anyone could stop them,
he
could.

A
S HE WATCHED THE MISSILE TRACES ON THE RADAR SCREEN
come over the North Pole, Luthor’s smile broadened. Closer…closer…

It wouldn’t do to take care of them
too
quickly,
too
easily. He had to let the rockets cross into American airspace, at least. Unless the world’s leaders were absolutely convinced they were about to die, they wouldn’t show enough gratitude. First, they had to bite their nails, fall to their knees sobbing, make promises to God or confessions to loved ones (which they would regret later). Luthor was glad to be far away on his little island, where he didn’t have to hear all that sniveling.

On the large polar-projection map mounted to the control center wall, a cluster of blinking dots marked the three missiles as they crossed the DEW line, headed down over northern Canada and the mid-Canada warning line, then crossed the Pinetree Line at the fiftieth parallel. The graceful arcs looked so beautiful as the R-7 rockets pushed relentlessly toward the United States, toward Metropolis.

For years, U.S. rocketry scientists led by Wernher von Braun had been developing and perfecting such weapons, but they had never managed to test a long-range warhead-carrying missile. The American Atlas-A rocket was not yet ready for launch, but Luthor was both surprised and unsettled to see how well Soviet technology functioned.

First Sputnik, now this. The United States had certainly fallen behind in the space race.

But here was Luthor’s perfect window of opportunity. His death-ray transmitters were aligned and powered up. The wall screens displayed shaded zones of “guaranteed kill” for the beams, and the first missile had almost come into range. His targeting computers whirred and clicked, lights blinked, and magnetic tape wheels spun.

Not trusting such an important step to mere minions, he personally aligned the targeting vectors, then counted down the seconds to when he would avert a nuclear holocaust.

His energy-beam dishes, pointed to the sky, would project lightning bolts superior to any Zeus had ever thrown. Luthor activated the systems, and the control bank’s indicator lights glowed green. Now to save the world, just in the nick of time.

He turned the operation key and, with a thin smile, hit the large firing button.

Nothing happened.

His smile faltered. He reset the system and punched the firing button again. The beam generators failed to shoot out powerful blasts of energy. The newly installed components simply froze. The Wayne Enterprises technology refused to work!

The missiles kept coming.

Once the detonations occurred in Metropolis, the United States would mount a nuclear launch of its own, using squadrons of long-range bombers on desperate missions carrying hydrogen bombs. By then, it would all be much too late, completely out of control. The whole planet would be swallowed up in a nuclear holocaust.

At his side, the normally silent Bertram said simply, “Do you have a backup plan, sir?”

Luthor hammered his fist impotently on the firing button. “No, I don’t have a backup plan! When the first plan is perfect, who needs a backup?”

Bertram did not state the obvious flaw in that reasoning.

Suddenly the radar screen showed another blip, a small object racing at supersonic speed on a direct intercept path with the missiles.

FASTER THAN A BULLET, HIGHER THAN A JET, KAL-EL FLEW
for his life—for everyone’s lives. Even the rarefied air created enough drag to slow him, and the heat of his passage surrounded him with a faint, warm glow.

With hyperacute hearing, he could detect the constant rumble of rocket engines. The missiles with their deadly payloads reached apogee and now plunged like high-tech javelins toward their programmed target.

But Kal-El was America’s own super-weapon.

He slowed enough so that he could intercept the first missile without annihilating its nose on impact, which would have scattered the radioactive payload across the sky. Exerting himself against the R-7 rocket’s momentum, he pushed the nose cone, tilting the missile upward, altering its trajectory. Kal-El pushed against gravity, against the very air, and finally the missile flew toward space. The Soviet R-7 had neither the power nor the fuel to reach escape velocity, so Kal-El gave it an extra shove.

The missile climbed higher and higher, beyond even Sputnik’s orbit. Eventually it would explode in empty space, where it would cause no damage.

With no time to rest or celebrate this triumph, Kal-El streaked back down toward the remaining two missiles.

Now that he knew how to divert them, he easily damaged the rocket engines with his heat vision, sent the missiles sputtering, and then intercepted their long cylindrical bodies one at a time.

As he bore the second R-7 out of Earth’s atmosphere on his shoulders like Atlas and heaved it into space, Kal-El was reminded of how he had carried the sinking
Star City Queen
to safety in Metropolis Bay. This time, though, he was saving all of Metropolis, perhaps the whole world.

After he hurled the third and last nuclear missile away to where it could cause no damage, he let himself drift in the sky, looking down at the beautiful world below—the coastlines, the clouds, the geometric patterns of the cities, roads, and croplands.

His world…safe.