Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

they were pursuing him and wanted to hurt him, and he wanted to hurt them back. The rage, which had been subsiding, roared fully to the fore once again, and when one of the planes came a little too close, the Hulk didn’t hesitate.

Timing the jump perfectly, he leaped toward the plane and landed atop it. The plane swooped just below the bridge, the Hulk clinging to it, and his back scraped the bottom of the bridge, creasing it, as they passed under.

Then, suddenly, the plane went vertical and flew straight up.

The strategy, developed on the fly, in every sense of the word, by Thunderbolt Ross, was devastatingly simple: Take the Hulk on a ride to the top of the world, and see what some thin air did for him.

The Hulk clung to the plane as it rose up through the clouds. Frost began to cover him, hanging from his hair, his eyebrows. The world started to fade around him. Close to losing consciousness, he stared into the eyes of the pilot through the cockpit’s windshield. The pilot flinched, concerned that the Hulk would abruptly recover and try to tear the wings off his plane. But he needn’t have worried, for the Hulk closed his eyes completely, and as the plane tilted back—having gone as high as it could safely go—the monster slid off.

He tumbled end over end, and images once again began to cascade through his mind, and Banner was in front of a mirror shaving, and he was watching himself and listening to the slow scraping of the razor, and seeing other eyes looking back at him from inside the mirror, different eyes, just as he had been the other day, except that time had just been an almost intellectual exercise, except this time the eyes watched him, narrowed, and they were green and filled with hatred, and Banner stopped and leaned closer into the mirror, studying, when suddenly the glass flew apart and the Hulk’s hand reached out and took him by the neck, smashing his face back into the mirror and Banner, bloodied but unbowed, stared back into the Hulk’s furious face now, the two of them nose-to-nose, and they regarded each other like two old friends and two old enemies, all interconnected, and slowly Banner raised his hand, gently untwined the Hulk’s fingers from around his neck, and the Hulk was calm, so calm, and peace beckoned to him, but just as he seemed to calm, his fingers formed a fist, and with a quick blow to the face he snapped Banner’s neck back, broken it. He had triumphed, he had disposed of Banner, for he was the strongest one there was . . .

The Hulk crashed into the bay, sending up a geyser of water that could be seen for miles. He swiftly dropped to the floor of the bay and was lodged in the muddy bottom, half-conscious.

“Bring it round again!” Ross shouted as the Black Hawk flew down over the bay. He studied the huge perturbations in the water where the Hulk had gone down, and then he waited. He had to be sure that the Hulk was gone, that the strategy had worked. Although, even if it had, Ross felt no real sense of triumph. More and more, he was beginning to see Bruce Banner as the victim in all this. He had asked for none of it. He was no ruthless terrorist who had plotted and planned. If he did die, he was simply a casualty of war. God knew there had been enough of them over the course of military conflict, but one didn’t rejoice in their fate. One simply accepted it as part of man’s conflict against man. . . .

At which point the Angry Man broke the water.

“I don’t believe it,” Ross said yet again.

The Black Hawk was armed with two M60D machine guns, and the gunners used them now to open fire. Considering all the monster had survived, Ross had a feeling that it was a hollow gesture, but he had to do something. Bullets splattered in the water, and Ross was sure that a number of them had to have hit the Angry Man.

But all the Angry Man did was glance up disdainfully at the helicopter, and then he took a deep breath and went under again.

Ross remembered the Hulk’s ability to survive on a single breath from the encounter with the gas. The situation wasn’t promising, and Ross was beginning to realize that this wasn’t simply a case of man against man. This was man against a force of nature . . . and unfortunately, in such conflicts, man always came up on the losing end.

It also meant that Ross might have some hard decisions to make. There was always the possibility that Banner was going to head away from the city. On the other hand, he might make a beeline right toward it.

And if, in his rage, he did choose a direct assault, he might not just stampede around in open view. Ross knew there were underwater drains that emptied into the bay not far from the city’s edge; the Angry Man, if he spotted them, might make his way in through one of those. If that was the case, he could cause a kind of structural havoc not seen since the World Series earthquake back in 1989.

Ross leaned into his radio unit, and when he spoke, it wasn’t without effort. “Legends Dash one, two, three, four, prepare to go weapons hot. Subject Banner may be heading toward city. You are authorized to engage. I will give you vectors shortly.”

“Uh, roger, T-bolt,” said the pilot designated Legend Dash two. His voice was somewhat cautious, as if he knew Ross was aware of what was about to be said, but felt he needed to say it anyway. “Be advised we are hanging serious weapons here. This stuff is gonna cause a lot of damage if we start shooting into downtown San Francisco.”

“You are