Clint touched the jet down at a tiny airport typically used by New Jersey law enforcement. Traffic control had known that they had an incoming craft but Maria had decided to let them assume it would be a helicopter and not a jet making a vertical landing. Clint was pretty sure it was because she and JARVIS saved video files of the most interesting reactions to lighten up the inevitable Avengers debrief. Maria had also let the wide group of law enforcement officers believe they were attending a voluntary briefing about Avengers response times in the updated quinjet and how to prioritize landing space. She still had drawn a crowd of over twenty people including a few police officers and EMTs.
Tony deplaned first with a loud sigh of relief. Just as they had imagined, the clusters of people milling around on the tarmac went from cautiously interested to unashamed staring. Clint was just glad that Maria was directly behind him. Tony was dressed in one of his many over-priced cloth suits with Bruce looking after the briefcase Iron Man suit. Maria quickly started to shake hands with a few supervisors and organize distribution of her printouts. Tony was already signing autographs and posing in several selfies. Clint was pretty sure Tony was posing for four selfies simultaneously and that three of those would actually look pretty good.
Bruce glanced down the ramp before settling more comfortably into his seat. “Call me if you need a little extra muscle,” he said as he drew a Sudoku book and a pen out of his messenger bag.
Clint might never understand why a man who devoted time to keeping himself otherwise under control would do both Sudoku and crossword puzzles in ink. “We appreciate it, doc,” he said. He set the flight headset aside and double-checked his communicator.
“Communicator check,” Natasha said quietly. Clint, Steve, and Sam flashed a thumbs-up. Bruce waved his pen in acknowledgment. Tony sent two clicks through the comm. Matt nodded. “Bugout signal is the usual handsign or ‘bug out’ for Matt. He’ll hear us.” Matt flashed the signal for ‘acknowledged.’ After a brief talk, Matt had only bothered to learn the signals for ‘acknowledged’ and ‘repeat.’ Anything else he would ferry through his communicator.
Steve nodded. “Weapons check.”
Clint opened his weapons case and checked over his rifle and handguns. He’d elected to shoot with the SHEILD standard M4A1 and Glock 19. He pretended to ignore Cap’s surprised look, but he was only human, and Steve in full Captain America face was something else. Hunting Hydra jerks really seemed to bring Steve back to the old days. Clint was also pretending he wasn’t thinking all about Cap’s World War II days since Bucky actual Barnes would be the second sniper on their mission.
“I live to be unpredictable,” Clint said after Cap’s polite refusal to ask grew too much. “If I did all my missions without relying on guns, the guys start to pretend I forgot how to use them.”
Cap looked like he wanted to be suspicious, but if he was suspicious it might be rude to question a fellow Avenger’s choices, so he was refraining. It was a very complicated look but Cap was a very complicated person. Clint could appreciate that.
“Ready to move?” Cap asked.
The group started shrugging into their flight jackets. Nat tucked her hair up into a grey knit beanie. The entire look wouldn’t pass muster if the crowd was paying full attention, but Tony was over by the crowd. He was very good at drawing attention.
“On your mark, Tony,” Cap said.
“Right,” Tony said. He had been talking with the group the full time, but there were several advantages to letting JARVIS loop your communication system. JARVIS had brilliant timing. “So, if you’d like to see something pretty new, Stark Industries is nearly ready to start going public with this.”
Cap led their group down the ramp. They all started walking toward their chosen alleyway. Clint wasn’t shocked that Matt was a master at the ‘nothing to see here’ walk. There was an art to it, really, sometime about walking with just the right amount of a casual amble that no one would break their attention to see what was going on. It worked even when in the group of five people they had three Avengers and two possible recruits.
Tony’s two clicks sounded again just as they made it through the alley between two hangars. “Clear,” Natasha said. “Drop site is right here.”
They dumped their flight jackets in a dumpster. Clint felt it was hardly fair to his poor jacket but wasn’t about to wear it into a fight. He consoled himself with checking the pockets only to freeze. He had been sure that he’d put Katie-Kate’s glasses in his pocket to better destroy them while raiding a Hydra base, and both pockets were empty. Maybe losing them in a dumpster would be worth a smile.
“Per several internal Hydra channels, they continue to think that Mr. Murdock’s only ally is an unknown lawyer who ‘knows kung fu,’” JARVIS reported wryly. “Video footage is not fully available but they continue to speak of Jack Murdock in the present tense.”
Clint hated rescue missions a little. They were so much tense preparation and nerve-wracking recon that could all turn tragic in an instant. Still, he had a job to do.
Bucky Barnes had passed on his second choice for a sniper nest. After Barnes had laid claim to the bell tower with the best view, Clint was left to scramble up on a rooftop. Several roof-mounted air conditioning units would give him decent cover and let him make sure there were no sentries posted outside to alert the base of his team’s approach.
He ignored Steve’s sensible offer of a boost. The lowest rung of the ladder set into the side of the building was six feet up. Clint had to show off occasionally, though, or the rest of his team would think they were cooler because they were Russian or Captain America or could fly. He leapt up, grabbed the lower rung, and pulled himself up with a little help from a fast run up the wall. He dangled off the ladder for a minute to appreciate Natasha’s eye roll and Cap’s nod before taking a more careful approach the rest of the way. The ladder looked sturdy but he had no interest in taking a thirty-foot fall off the last couple rungs.
The view from the top was better. As always, Clint felt a little more in control of the mission and himself when he had a view of the full field. He even could see a patch of darker shadow in the bell tower. Just as Barnes had said, Clint had an unimpeded view of the large one-story warehouse hiding several underground levels. “Hawkeye in position.”
“Matt, are you in range?” Natasha asked.
“There might be more, but… yes. Two on the ground. They’re separate and walking around slowly,” Matt said. “I can’t make out how many more people are down below from here.”
“Neither of the ground level sentries is visible from here,” Clint reported.
“Maria’s doing her briefing, I’m on the jet,” Tony said. “Bruce? I don’t like your job.”
“My job is being the backup plan and not disrupting those in an active mission,” Bruce replied in a tone so kind it wasn’t a rebuke. “Hack their servers, destroy their Farmville… you have JARVIS and a suit. Close the ramp and no one will get ideas.”
“You are my favorite, jelly-bean,” Tony said gleefully. “Okay, if I find anything useful for mission-goers, I’ll let you know.”
“Save the playlist,” Cap warned. “Matt needs to be able to hear.”
“Fine, fine,” Tony grumbled. “Hydra doesn’t deserve the good music anyway. I’m just going to just sit here and—ooh, hello there, somebody has a publicly accessible file with shortcuts to a few numbered accounts… yeah okay. I’ll save the playlist for the afterparty.”
Clint held back a laugh. That at least should keep Tony busy. “Sentry just passed through the ground level doorway,” he reported quietly. “Looks like the ground level is actually a giant clichéd warehouse like the blueprints said.”
Clint waited. It was the most boring part of a job but typically meant that things were going well. Natasha and Matt’s check-ins were quiet and soon joined by Cap and Falcon. When all four of them had cleared the main level and were working their way down a stairwell, Clint turned his scope only toward the belltower. Barnes’ metal arm was just as shiny as it had been in the Washington D.C. footage, and he was making a signal for ‘moving position.’ Clint returned with the sign for ‘affirmative’ before making his way back toward the ladder.
“Two on the ground. Seven heartbeats in the lower levels but none of those is Jack’s. I can’t hear him,” Matt said.
“White room?” Natasha suggested. A moment later, she spoke again. “Avengers, we suspect Jack is in the white room. Third sublevel on the east side.”
Clint and Barnes had decided on the same side entrance. The rest of their team had taken a more direct route and was nearing the third sublevel. Unlike most raids on a Hydra base, they couldn’t ambush with a show of superior force or move room-to-room. Even taking out the ground floor sentries was a large risk when Hydra had a hostage in reserve.
“They’re fighting,” Matt reported when Clint and Barnes had passed the ground floor sentries. “One of the men says that keeping Jack hostage is foolish and could expose Hydra. Zimbardo is telling him that if they recapture me their place in Hydra will be secure.”
Clint had caught up with the team in the stairwell. Natasha jerked her hands irritably toward the door they hadn’t passed yet. There was glass in the window and two of the guards near a large bay of computer monitors were looking their direction. There were four more guards in the room in the ubiquitous Hydra black uniform and one man in a dingy lab coat.
“Patching you through,” Tony interjected quietly.
“Bring him here, then,” a man demanded stridently. “Both of you. Get Murdock and bring him here. There is no chance of 19-64 waiting for the deadline. He knows I don’t like waiting.”
“And out,” Tony said. “I could give you video from the webcam I hacked, but it’s boring. That was Felix Zimbardo speaking. The guards are using the elevator because they are lazy slobs.”
“Time to change up the plan,” Sam agreed. He had a hand resting on Matt’s shoulder, Clint noticed, and it seemed to be helping.
“Cap?” Clint suggested. He had no idea where Barnes had gone. They had been descending the staircase together before Barnes stepped back and found some detour. “Any move from here is risky but Cap and Hydra monologues go together.”
“Might be the best shot we have,” Cap agreed. “Matt, stay out of eyeline if you can. If that fails, you look like a SHIELD guard, stay with Sam. If they recognize you, they will know that threatening Jack is their first move. We’ll make this look Avengers and unrelated. If they think he’s a random civilian they might be a little more inclined to brag about who he is. If you have a chance to take out Zimbardo and get Murdock to safety, do it.”
Matt nodded. “Agreed.”
They waited. Unfortunately for hopes of an easy entry, the two guards tasked with fetching Murdock brought him straight to Zimbardo. Jack Murdock was bruised but walking without help. He also had his hands cuffed behind his back. Clint could hear Natasha’s whisper-quiet narration for Matt but pretended he couldn’t. Tony patched through audio again as Zimbardo pretended to be a solicitous host and insisted that his men unbind Jack’s hands. Before they had finished, Zimbardo drew a Glock 17 from a holster at the small of his back and leveled it right at Jack’s torso.
“Good evening, Mr. Murdock. I know we talked about a schedule but I’m ever so impatient. I’m sure that our guest of honor will arrive any moment now,” Zimbardo said.
“I won’t get a better opening,” Cap said. “Ready?”
“Of course,” Clint replied with a sweep of his arm.
“Always gotta show off, I know,” Sam agreed.
“Ready,” Matt said quietly.
Natasha nodded and stood back away from the doors. Clint and Sam quickly followed her example. Cap left the shield on his back as he pushed the door open. He made a visible double-take with a half-step back when he had his first unobstructed view of the grouping. Zimbardo had stepped forward and moved his gun to Jack’s head. Flanking the pair, six Hydra guards stood with their guns drawn and pointed down toward the floor.
Fill: Situation Excellent 10a/12
Tony deplaned first with a loud sigh of relief. Just as they had imagined, the clusters of people milling around on the tarmac went from cautiously interested to unashamed staring. Clint was just glad that Maria was directly behind him. Tony was dressed in one of his many over-priced cloth suits with Bruce looking after the briefcase Iron Man suit. Maria quickly started to shake hands with a few supervisors and organize distribution of her printouts. Tony was already signing autographs and posing in several selfies. Clint was pretty sure Tony was posing for four selfies simultaneously and that three of those would actually look pretty good.
Bruce glanced down the ramp before settling more comfortably into his seat. “Call me if you need a little extra muscle,” he said as he drew a Sudoku book and a pen out of his messenger bag.
Clint might never understand why a man who devoted time to keeping himself otherwise under control would do both Sudoku and crossword puzzles in ink. “We appreciate it, doc,” he said. He set the flight headset aside and double-checked his communicator.
“Communicator check,” Natasha said quietly. Clint, Steve, and Sam flashed a thumbs-up. Bruce waved his pen in acknowledgment. Tony sent two clicks through the comm. Matt nodded. “Bugout signal is the usual handsign or ‘bug out’ for Matt. He’ll hear us.” Matt flashed the signal for ‘acknowledged.’ After a brief talk, Matt had only bothered to learn the signals for ‘acknowledged’ and ‘repeat.’ Anything else he would ferry through his communicator.
Steve nodded. “Weapons check.”
Clint opened his weapons case and checked over his rifle and handguns. He’d elected to shoot with the SHEILD standard M4A1 and Glock 19. He pretended to ignore Cap’s surprised look, but he was only human, and Steve in full Captain America face was something else. Hunting Hydra jerks really seemed to bring Steve back to the old days. Clint was also pretending he wasn’t thinking all about Cap’s World War II days since Bucky actual Barnes would be the second sniper on their mission.
“I live to be unpredictable,” Clint said after Cap’s polite refusal to ask grew too much. “If I did all my missions without relying on guns, the guys start to pretend I forgot how to use them.”
Cap looked like he wanted to be suspicious, but if he was suspicious it might be rude to question a fellow Avenger’s choices, so he was refraining. It was a very complicated look but Cap was a very complicated person. Clint could appreciate that.
“Ready to move?” Cap asked.
The group started shrugging into their flight jackets. Nat tucked her hair up into a grey knit beanie. The entire look wouldn’t pass muster if the crowd was paying full attention, but Tony was over by the crowd. He was very good at drawing attention.
“On your mark, Tony,” Cap said.
“Right,” Tony said. He had been talking with the group the full time, but there were several advantages to letting JARVIS loop your communication system. JARVIS had brilliant timing. “So, if you’d like to see something pretty new, Stark Industries is nearly ready to start going public with this.”
Cap led their group down the ramp. They all started walking toward their chosen alleyway. Clint wasn’t shocked that Matt was a master at the ‘nothing to see here’ walk. There was an art to it, really, sometime about walking with just the right amount of a casual amble that no one would break their attention to see what was going on. It worked even when in the group of five people they had three Avengers and two possible recruits.
Tony’s two clicks sounded again just as they made it through the alley between two hangars. “Clear,” Natasha said. “Drop site is right here.”
They dumped their flight jackets in a dumpster. Clint felt it was hardly fair to his poor jacket but wasn’t about to wear it into a fight. He consoled himself with checking the pockets only to freeze. He had been sure that he’d put Katie-Kate’s glasses in his pocket to better destroy them while raiding a Hydra base, and both pockets were empty. Maybe losing them in a dumpster would be worth a smile.
“Per several internal Hydra channels, they continue to think that Mr. Murdock’s only ally is an unknown lawyer who ‘knows kung fu,’” JARVIS reported wryly. “Video footage is not fully available but they continue to speak of Jack Murdock in the present tense.”
Clint hated rescue missions a little. They were so much tense preparation and nerve-wracking recon that could all turn tragic in an instant. Still, he had a job to do.
Bucky Barnes had passed on his second choice for a sniper nest. After Barnes had laid claim to the bell tower with the best view, Clint was left to scramble up on a rooftop. Several roof-mounted air conditioning units would give him decent cover and let him make sure there were no sentries posted outside to alert the base of his team’s approach.
He ignored Steve’s sensible offer of a boost. The lowest rung of the ladder set into the side of the building was six feet up. Clint had to show off occasionally, though, or the rest of his team would think they were cooler because they were Russian or Captain America or could fly. He leapt up, grabbed the lower rung, and pulled himself up with a little help from a fast run up the wall. He dangled off the ladder for a minute to appreciate Natasha’s eye roll and Cap’s nod before taking a more careful approach the rest of the way. The ladder looked sturdy but he had no interest in taking a thirty-foot fall off the last couple rungs.
The view from the top was better. As always, Clint felt a little more in control of the mission and himself when he had a view of the full field. He even could see a patch of darker shadow in the bell tower. Just as Barnes had said, Clint had an unimpeded view of the large one-story warehouse hiding several underground levels. “Hawkeye in position.”
“Matt, are you in range?” Natasha asked.
“There might be more, but… yes. Two on the ground. They’re separate and walking around slowly,” Matt said. “I can’t make out how many more people are down below from here.”
“Neither of the ground level sentries is visible from here,” Clint reported.
“Maria’s doing her briefing, I’m on the jet,” Tony said. “Bruce? I don’t like your job.”
“My job is being the backup plan and not disrupting those in an active mission,” Bruce replied in a tone so kind it wasn’t a rebuke. “Hack their servers, destroy their Farmville… you have JARVIS and a suit. Close the ramp and no one will get ideas.”
“You are my favorite, jelly-bean,” Tony said gleefully. “Okay, if I find anything useful for mission-goers, I’ll let you know.”
“Save the playlist,” Cap warned. “Matt needs to be able to hear.”
“Fine, fine,” Tony grumbled. “Hydra doesn’t deserve the good music anyway. I’m just going to just sit here and—ooh, hello there, somebody has a publicly accessible file with shortcuts to a few numbered accounts… yeah okay. I’ll save the playlist for the afterparty.”
Clint held back a laugh. That at least should keep Tony busy. “Sentry just passed through the ground level doorway,” he reported quietly. “Looks like the ground level is actually a giant clichéd warehouse like the blueprints said.”
Clint waited. It was the most boring part of a job but typically meant that things were going well. Natasha and Matt’s check-ins were quiet and soon joined by Cap and Falcon. When all four of them had cleared the main level and were working their way down a stairwell, Clint turned his scope only toward the belltower. Barnes’ metal arm was just as shiny as it had been in the Washington D.C. footage, and he was making a signal for ‘moving position.’ Clint returned with the sign for ‘affirmative’ before making his way back toward the ladder.
“Two on the ground. Seven heartbeats in the lower levels but none of those is Jack’s. I can’t hear him,” Matt said.
“White room?” Natasha suggested. A moment later, she spoke again. “Avengers, we suspect Jack is in the white room. Third sublevel on the east side.”
Clint and Barnes had decided on the same side entrance. The rest of their team had taken a more direct route and was nearing the third sublevel. Unlike most raids on a Hydra base, they couldn’t ambush with a show of superior force or move room-to-room. Even taking out the ground floor sentries was a large risk when Hydra had a hostage in reserve.
“They’re fighting,” Matt reported when Clint and Barnes had passed the ground floor sentries. “One of the men says that keeping Jack hostage is foolish and could expose Hydra. Zimbardo is telling him that if they recapture me their place in Hydra will be secure.”
Clint had caught up with the team in the stairwell. Natasha jerked her hands irritably toward the door they hadn’t passed yet. There was glass in the window and two of the guards near a large bay of computer monitors were looking their direction. There were four more guards in the room in the ubiquitous Hydra black uniform and one man in a dingy lab coat.
“Patching you through,” Tony interjected quietly.
“Bring him here, then,” a man demanded stridently. “Both of you. Get Murdock and bring him here. There is no chance of 19-64 waiting for the deadline. He knows I don’t like waiting.”
“And out,” Tony said. “I could give you video from the webcam I hacked, but it’s boring. That was Felix Zimbardo speaking. The guards are using the elevator because they are lazy slobs.”
“Time to change up the plan,” Sam agreed. He had a hand resting on Matt’s shoulder, Clint noticed, and it seemed to be helping.
“Cap?” Clint suggested. He had no idea where Barnes had gone. They had been descending the staircase together before Barnes stepped back and found some detour. “Any move from here is risky but Cap and Hydra monologues go together.”
“Might be the best shot we have,” Cap agreed. “Matt, stay out of eyeline if you can. If that fails, you look like a SHIELD guard, stay with Sam. If they recognize you, they will know that threatening Jack is their first move. We’ll make this look Avengers and unrelated. If they think he’s a random civilian they might be a little more inclined to brag about who he is. If you have a chance to take out Zimbardo and get Murdock to safety, do it.”
Matt nodded. “Agreed.”
They waited. Unfortunately for hopes of an easy entry, the two guards tasked with fetching Murdock brought him straight to Zimbardo. Jack Murdock was bruised but walking without help. He also had his hands cuffed behind his back. Clint could hear Natasha’s whisper-quiet narration for Matt but pretended he couldn’t. Tony patched through audio again as Zimbardo pretended to be a solicitous host and insisted that his men unbind Jack’s hands. Before they had finished, Zimbardo drew a Glock 17 from a holster at the small of his back and leveled it right at Jack’s torso.
“Good evening, Mr. Murdock. I know we talked about a schedule but I’m ever so impatient. I’m sure that our guest of honor will arrive any moment now,” Zimbardo said.
“I won’t get a better opening,” Cap said. “Ready?”
“Of course,” Clint replied with a sweep of his arm.
“Always gotta show off, I know,” Sam agreed.
“Ready,” Matt said quietly.
Natasha nodded and stood back away from the doors. Clint and Sam quickly followed her example. Cap left the shield on his back as he pushed the door open. He made a visible double-take with a half-step back when he had his first unobstructed view of the grouping. Zimbardo had stepped forward and moved his gun to Jack’s head. Flanking the pair, six Hydra guards stood with their guns drawn and pointed down toward the floor.