Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

Mountainous bales of old clothes and musty newspapers stood in line, waiting for the crane to hook their rope-lashed pallets. Removing a small cylinder from his belt, Batman shone a finger of light across one of the bales. He recognized the logo of a respected international relief organization, and a series of destinations, in several languages and scripts, starting in the Bangladesh port of Dacca and continuing on to Kabul in Afghanistan. Feeling suddenly lucky, he returned the cylinder to his belt.

There must be six million worthy souls in that misbegotten corner of the world willing to put to good use those things Americans had used once and thrown away. There were also a half dozen different insurrections operating there, and Batman could practically smell the armaments packed—unbeknownst to the relief organization—in the middle of each bale. Although the Connection didn’t transship through American ports, he’d certainly want to know if someone else was. When Batman spotted the silhouette of a solitary man leaving the pier area at a brisk pace, he gave chase.

Batman caught up with the walker in the concrete fields beneath the waterfront highway. Not wanting to stage the confrontation in the open, he circled wide and waited until his quarry was striding down a deserted warehouse block. Batman didn’t say anything. The mask, the cape, and his thou-shalt-not-pass stance spoke louder than any words.

He got a good look at the man he’d been following. Dark-haired and powerfully built. About thirty, give or take a handful of years. The stevedore’s age was hard to guess; his face was puckered with a series of long, thin scars. Because of where he’d been earlier in the evening, Batman’s first thought was that the man had been mauled by a big cat, but he rejected that thought. The scars weren’t quite parallel, and there were at least six of them. Somebody’d worked this fellow over with a steel whip.