Chapter 263 Battle for the Cowl (5)

A few minutes ago…

As the shutter door slowly descended, Feng Bujue rose from behind the counter. By this time, he had already set up the call transfer. When Clapton calls the phone at the bank counter again, it would be transferred to the phone in his hand. Of course, the phone had been set to vibrate and he had confirmed that it was on silent.

As the clock could be seen in the lobby of the bank, Feng Bujue glanced at it and muttered: “It will take them at least seven or eight minutes to get the general information from the hostages…” He took the key and key card (which he had obtained from the manager) and went through the door behind the counter to the control room and closed all the monitors.

A few moments before the police call and after the heads of the hostages had been put on, Feng Bujue took the opportunity to walk around the bank and get a rough idea of the structure of the building. He knew that there were only three ways out. First, the main door; Second, the ventilation duct; And the third was through the windows facing the street which were being watched by four to five officers.

Feng Bujue was unaware of the police’s presence outside and could only speculate.

First of all, there must be someone outside the front door, even if the impact of the cash cannon remained, he could not go out quietly.

Next, the windows facing the street must be, in all probability, were monitored by the police. Even if the police were not as numerous as at the ones on the front door, he would have to break the guardrail outside the window with his pipe wrench to get out, which was both time-consuming and made it difficult to stay hidden.

Only the ventilation duct was left.

Impervious to any luck factor, Feng Bujue firmly believes that according to his luck and the intelligence of the Gotham police, there must be people watching the exit of the ventilation duct. After he climbs out, the result would either be: First, getting caught by the surrounding ambush; Second, getting within the scopes of the snipers in the distance.

“Upon inquiry, Clapton would know that I am alone in the bank and that there are no other hostages. He would either storm without warning or he’ll just call me and tell me to go out and surrender. It would have been easier to storm,” he thought. “If only I could use death poker and the body-spiritual concentration technique, I could have escaped through the windows of the police officers who had entered by a slight maneuver with them.

But… Facing only one person, he is obviously more likely to choose to deal with me. There is no reason for him to let his men take unnecessary risks, creating more losses. If after communicating and I continue to resist as a last-ditch effort, then it’s reasonable for them to attack directly. At that time, he could use the call to pacify me and give his men time to make conditions.”

“So as long as I’m on the phone, the first officers who come in are going to pay their attention to what’s behind the counter.” Feng Bujue thought, “This makes it easy for me to trap them…”

He returned to the lobby and took off the mask from the submachine gun bandit. Then he jumped behind the counter, put the relatively intact mask on the head of the money bandit whose face was broken and dragged the body of the money bandit all the way back to the monitoring room.

The monitoring room had two facilities necessary for Feng Bujue’s escape. The first one was the ventilation duct as it’s in almost every room except the vault. Then the second, which could only be found at the counter and the control room was the switch to the bank door’s metal shutter.

Feng Bujue put the body on an office chair in the control room and began to fabricate the trap…

He pushed the chair into a corner and backed it against the door. A second grenade was then taken from the [Endless Grenade Box] and a wire (found in the warehouse) was attached to the ring of the grenade which was stuffed into the breaking face of the corpse…

He could have set it somewhere else, but… He just wanted the wire to come out of the hole in the mask’s eye. It might have been some kind of unique sense of humor.

So the wire attached to the grenade’s pin started from the face of the corpse, then went all the way down to the torso, between the legs and then finally getting attached to the pivot under the chair.

It was a good office chair, its back was quite tall and it was also adjustable. The rotary shaft below the seat plate ran normally, which enabled it to turn without much force. The wheels on the chassis also don’t have the tendency to jam.

Feng Bujue was sure that as long as someone from the back rotates or pulls on the chair, four seconds later, there would be new bodies littered in this ten square meter area.

After he finished with his trap, he went to the wall, threw his hands up and jumped on top of a locker where the ventilation duct was opened. He took down the lid then looked in and saw that it was relatively spacious. He could squat in it quite freely with his build.

At this time, the telephone on the counter rang. After two seconds, the cellphone in Feng Bujue’s pocket rang. He smiled: “Just at the right moment…” He jumped back to the ground, reached for the Bluetooth and pressed the answer button. As he spoke, he carefully lowered the phone into the body’s coat pocket.

He walked over to the console and spoke to Clapton as he opened the bank’s door.

“Raise your hands and come out from behind the counter,” Clapton shouted from the other side of the line.

“Ha-ha… Nope, I refuse.” Feng Bujue was wearing Bluetooth thus his movement was not impeded at all so he jumped onto the locker and entered the ventilation ducts.

“Haven’t you play enough? I don’t want to see another death today.” Clapton added. At the same time, several police officers rushed into the bank and as expected, surrounded the counter in the lobby.

Slowly, Feng Bujue picked up the fender from the top of the locker, put it in its place, and began to move back, talking to Clapton about the call transfer deliberately.

Clapton thought for a dozen seconds, then suddenly turned his head and ran to the hostages. He yelled to a bald man seriously, “Hey! Where can I control those metal doors?”

The bank manager was stunned for a moment and answered: “Be- Behind the counter in the lobby.”

“Where else has a switch?” Clapton asked.

“Er… In the- In the control room.” The bank manager replied, “behind the counter, there’s a staff area which can lead you to the toilet and… ”

Before he finished, Clapton picked up the intercom on his shoulder and shouted, “Got it?”

“Yes, Sir, we’re going in.” One of the officers replied and exchanged glances with three of his colleagues who had rushed in with him, moving closer to the door.

When he realized that the door lock required a key and a key card to be opened, his companion shot the lock decisively and kicked the door. They were also cautious, leaving one man to remain in the lobby while the other three pushed in under each other’s cover.

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s over.” Clapton picked up the phone again. “I know you’re in the control room. My advice is you should lay down your arms, put your hands on your head and find somewhere to prepare your surrender so that my men will not shoot you.”

“Ha-ha… It’s your business if you think so. But I can tell you one thing for sure, I’m not in that building anymore.” Feng Bujue laughed, “If your reasoning was right, then you’d realize that I went out the vent during the last closing and opening.”

“Hum… Isn’t it? You sly liar… Then explain how you got out of a roof that didn’t even have fire escape? And also, how’d you get out of the vent that was under my sniper’s eyes? ?” Clapton sneered.

After Feng Bujue heard his words he smiled in his heart and replied: “Of course I have my own way. You can ask the hostage how I killed the robber with a submachine gun. Then you’d understand.” He then added, “Well, please end this nonsense talk, sergeant. I know someone might be recording our conversation, so take note of this — six supercriminals from another world are about to give Gotham a few gifts and that multi-million-dollar shower is just the beginning.” Feng Bujue ended the call and smashed the Bluetooth into pieces with his pipe wrench.

The distance needed between the Bluetooth and the mobile phone should be within 10 meters and if there is a barrier, it may be less than 10 meters. Therefore, Feng Bujue hadn’t climbed very far. At this distance, the explosion should be insignificant.

It took the three officers a little while to get to the control room because there were several other rooms along the way, they had to quickly check behind the doors before moving on.

The door to the monitoring room was unlocked and as the officers pushed in, they all looked in the same direction.

In the farthest corner of the wall from the door was a high office chair with its back turned to them, on it, sat a man whose head was above the back of the chair,  who seemed to be wearing a black mask over his head. His hands were placed neatly on the arms of the chair, remaining motionless.

The three men shouted, “Don’t move! We are Gotham police, hands up!” “Hands up! Turn around! Now!” “Turn round quickly! Show me your hands!”

There was no response.

After brief eye contact, one of the three experienced officers stood at the door, continuing to aim his gun at the chair, while the other two moved forward, left and right.

The monitoring room was not that big and the office chair was in the corner, so they had to turn or pull the chair to see the face of the person sitting on it, so…

……

A minute after the blast, Clapton himself and eight police officers stormed the bank, leaving the rest on the streets to maintain order and hold their positions.

He stationed two people at the bank’s entrance, two people standing on two corridors connected to the lobby of the bank and the remaining four and himself rushed into the staff area behind the counter.

When he reached the control room, Clapton saw the fourth officer who had been left behind at the counter. He was the first person to rush in after hearing the explosion. When they found him, he was kneeling on the ground with a dying companion in his arms as he roared, “God! Lester… No… ”

Lester, the wounded man with one breath left, was the policeman closest to the door at the time of the explosion, his face was covered in blood and was moaning in pain.

As for the other two, they both fell down in the control room and were instantly killed.

“Call the doctor! Quick!” Clapton shouted at one of his men, “Quick! Go down the street and have them bring the stretcher in…”

He shouted hurriedly, but he knew Lester would not make it, not even to the ambulance. The situation on the streets was too chaotic and the ambulance wouldn’t be able to get in at all.

“Lester! Lester!” The policeman who was holding him shouted twice, bursting into tears. “For God’s sake… Why is this happening!!!… ”

“Goddamn it!” Clapton gave the wall a hard kick. “That son of a bitch!” He rushed into the control room and ran towards the point of explosion. His eyes raging, “What’s all this??”

The officers’ speakers were operational all the time, so Clapton could hear them as they moved. He knew that the three had seen the target and were in control of the situation a few seconds before the explosion. But he had no idea what happened next…

“Did this bastard detonated the bomb on himself…” Clapton squatted down and looked at the blackened body. “No… The clothes on the body are not right!” He stood up, frowning. “He made explosive traps for other people’s bodies? Where did he go then?”

In fact, during Clapton’s first talk with the hostage, some people said something about a so-called “strange golden light” and Feng Bujue being able to take things out of thin air, but Clapton focused on other information and did not pay much attention to such nonsense.

Before the explosion, he asked the details about the submachine gun bandits killed under the instruction of Feng Bujue again and found that things weren’t as simple as they seem to be.

“Is this ‘Anonymous guy’ the latest supercriminal that popped up?” Clapton clutched his thinning hair in his hands and gritted his teeth. “Did he really escape?” With that in mind, he picked up the intercom and asked the sniper who was watching the roof of the building, “Newman, are you sure no one came out of the vent?”

“Er… Yes, Sir.”

“I mean, are you 100 percent sure you never looked away from that vent?”

The other person thought for a few seconds. “Well… Sir, I can’t keep my eyes in the same place every second. There may be a few ten-second intervals where I aim at the street and the gate.”

“Dammit!” Clapton roared then gasped as he adjusted his tone. “come down now, Newman,” He adjusted the frequency, “team two, team three, leave three of you on the back street. As for everybody else, go to the bank’s door to help.”

Clapton, after all, was the supreme commander on the scene. Even though he was miserable and frustrated more than anyone else, he still had to do his duty. So he dispatched his men to pick up the pieces: “Tell our boss to send a logistics team to the scene to collect evidence. The others will search every nook and cranny in this place with me for any other bandits or hostages.” As he spoke into the intercom, he walked back into the hallway.

At this point, Clapton bet that he had met the “supercriminal.”

A series of things that Feng Bujue did previously, coupled with his apparent ease, showed that this “Anonymous” was not ordinary. His behavior is both erratic and unpredictable. He killed the robbers, took hostages, fooled the police, shot millions of dollars on the streets, released all hostages, and killed three policemen…

Hero? Outlaw? Robin Hood? Terrorist? Humanitarian? Killer?

He’s like a metronome, swinging back and forth between good and evil. Exuding the breath of madness but also thinking carefully and has outstanding actionability. Clapton would have thought that he was some lunatic from Arkham if he had not heard the hostages describing him.

“Maybe he’s still hiding in the vent, Sir?” a young policeman said in the corridor.

“That’s right. You’ll be responsible for checking it.” Clapton replied with a wry smile, it seemed to him that Feng Bujue had already escaped. He had no idea that Feng Bujue was just actually a few meters away from him.

“Er… Am I alone? Where should I begin?” The young officer asked.

“Ah… Listen, newbie, when you’ve been in Gotham long enough, you’ll understand that there are criminals out there that you just can’t deal with normally.” Clapton said with a teaching tone after a few moments of silence, “They can slip through a sniper’s sight and disappear forever. Some of these guys can climb walls, some can release nerve gas from their bodies, and some can even bite you in the middle. Do you think Joker’s gonna hide in the ventilator? Two-faced, Riddler, would he hide in the ventilator duct?” Clapton shook his head. “I’ve seen too many things like this… If you want to check it, go ahead. Everyone else, follow me.”

Clapton’s thinking mirrored what most Gotham’s policemen thought. Even Gordon couldn’t deny that there was only one person who could save the city from those supercriminals. Batman. The police’s job was just to clean up the battlefield for him.

The young officer adjusted his hat and replied earnestly, “Yes, Sir.” He looked around a few times, his eyes stopping at the vent in the control room.

The entrance to the ventilation duct was at the highest point of the wall, close to the ceiling and although the explosion deformed the locker, it did not prevent the officer from climbing up.

He supported himself and heaved his upper body on the top of the cabinet then lifting his legs, and reached the opening of the vent…