Hulk Peter David (best motivational novels txt) 📖

to remove some air from the vicinity. Break, break. Fifty-two, proceed with the drop. I’m moving back.”

And that was when he saw the Angry Man, the target he and the others had been pursuing so fruitlessly for what seemed like forever. The green behemoth didn’t even deign to notice him. He just continued his leaps, higher and higher, farther and farther, bouncing over Ross’s Black Hawk without so much as slowing down.

“What’s his course? No, don’t tell me. I know,” Ross said, his voice cold and controlled and not showing his frustration. Ross was a veteran combat man. He didn’t like to lose under any circumstance, and with the stakes as high as these were, he simply couldn’t afford to. But even he had to acknowledge the devastating truth: “He’s headed straight for San Francisco.”

The mood was somber at the base at Joint Tactical Force West. Somber, that is, for everyone who wasn’t the father of a monster. David Banner, on the other hand, seemed in a rather jovial mood, all things considered.

MPs were leading him into the base as Betty stood at the main entrance, watching him being taken away. He stopped for a moment and turned, ignoring his escorts who were tugging at him, urging him to move. He held up his manacled hands as if he were a boxer raising his arms in triumph. Apparently it was supposed to be a gesture of farewell, but she couldn’t help but think that there was an element of disdain in it.

As he was led away, Betty’s cell phone went off. She pulled it out and said, “Yes?”

“Betty,” came her father’s voice, and she instantly knew something was wrong. Not only that, somehow she knew what it was even before her father voiced it. “He . . . it . . . got out.”

The world seemed to sway around her. Her father’s use of the pronoun “it” spoke volumes. This wasn’t a case of Bruce Banner having cannily mounted an escape. Something had caused him to transform into the Hulk. She could take a guess: Talbot. When I get my hands on him, he’s a dead man, she thought grimly, oblivious to the irony.

“He’s making his way, probably, to you,” Ross informed her. “Get to base—”

“I’m already there. And his father—he’s turned himself in,” said Betty.

“His father! Jesus!” The news seemed to catch Ross off guard but he adapted quickly to the situation. “Just . . . I’ll order up a security detail. Just stay there.” He broke the connection without further niceties.

And Betty looked at the sky over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was cloudless, peaceful. She had the sick feeling things weren’t going to stay that way.

his anger unbound

As Thunderbolt Ross tracked the Hulk’s progress, the hunted moved quickly over the Sierra Nevada, uncaring of the three hunters—specifically three Raptor F-22 jets—that were hard on his tail. The planes were having a hell of a time trying to target him. They were used to aiming at much larger things, such as other planes. A single moving individual, even one who was twelve feet tall, wasn’t exactly in their comfort zone.

“Dash two rolling in hot lock and Fox Three. Breaking off left,” said the F-22 pilot.

“Check fire, check fire,” said Ross. “The area’s too populated now. At this point we’ve got to try to get him out to sea, and terminate him there, over.”

Moments later, he was on the line with the mayor of San Francisco. Ross could hear emergency vehicles being deployed in the background, and the distinctive “Hut! Hut! Hut!” of SWAT teams barreling toward transport trucks. The mayor’s voice was calm, but in that forced way that indicated his equanimity wasn’t being maintained without effort. “General, I’m bringing out the welcome committee for whatever it is you’re sending me,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’m hoping our stay will be a brief one,” said Ross.

“We’re a tolerant city, General, but I have to say I’m hoping your stay will be even shorter than brief. But if you need us, we’re here for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Ross.

. . . Betty . . . planes . . . stupid planes . . .

The Hulk was getting tired. The constant pursuit was starting to wear him down, not physically, but mentally. The longer Bruce Banner was incarnated as the rampaging green monster, the more his primitive brain was required to dwell on the situation to try to make sense of it. He felt as if he should be moving toward something, but didn’t know what that might be aside from Betty on the most primitive level. He knew he had to keep moving away from something, as well, that something being those who would hurt him, destroy him. He wanted to stop, to tear them apart, to punish them for harassing him and hurting him and not leaving him alone. But all of it involved far too much thinking. Above all else, the Hulk was a creature of rage, and rage was a very difficult emotion to sustain, even for him.

And worst of all, he could sense Banner lurking in there. Banner, that damned hypocrite, who wanted the Hulk to just go far, far away, but at the same time secretly reveled in his power. But the secret wasn’t safe from the Hulk; he knew it, oh yes he did. He didn’t completely comprehend it, but he knew it.

The Hulk landed on the Marin headlands, cast a look over his shoulder, and the damned jets buzzed him. He raised his arms over his head, howled defiance, and leaped again. The jump carried him all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, where he landed atop one of the arches.

The air vehicles were coming in at him like mosquitoes or gnats. Four airplanes, and a helicopter. The Hulk didn’t see them for what they were, wasn’t capable of thinking, “Oh, look, F-22s and a Black Hawk.” All he knew was that