Cruel Vengeance

Avengers Tower, New York, United States

May 2011

Clint wasn’t sure when they’d picked up his tail, but he knew he had to lose them soon.

There were at least five of Fury’s lackeys following him. Two in the car behind him, another one on the street, and there were two other vehicles rotating in and out of the lineup in an effort to keep him from noticing. He’d noticed. If he hadn’t been so concerned with losing SHIELD before he led Fury straight to Tasha, Clint would’ve been insulted.

He sighed and put on his right turn signal at the last second. The car screeched around the corner and Clint floored it. He’d lose at least the one on foot this way, unless one of his buddies stopped to pick him up.

The other car, an ugly little Honda thing, accelerated with a burst of nasty brackish smoke. Clint rolled his eyes and dodged the other vehicles in his path, aiming for the subway station.

There. He spun the wheel and spun haphazardly into a parking space. He threw the car in park and took off without bothering to lock the doors.

Behind him, brakes squealed and doors slammed. Clint didn’t look back. He dove into the rush-hour crowds around the entrance to the subway station and ducked down, making himself shorter and more jagged-strided. His whole posture, gait, and air changed in an instant. Clint yanked off his black baseball cap, exchanged it for a sky-blue beanie, and deposited the cap in a trash can on his way. The next thing to go was his jacket; he yanked it off, turned it inside out, and pulled it back on, all in the space of a few seconds. It had taken a lot of practice to be able to do that motion so quickly, and with a backpack on. The jacket’s inside was beige.

Colors reversed, Clint changed posture again, just a little bit, and ducked into the thick of the crowd.

He kept his eyes down but his ears and peripheral vision were on high alert, scanning around him.

There. Up ahead—the man from the tail car. Clint caught a glimpse in profile and changed course slightly to put a bit more distance between them.

By the time he got to the train, there were no more agents within sight. Clint didn’t let himself relax. These were SHIELD agents, and Fury would’ve put some really well-trained people out to tail Clint. Maybe not the best, though. He shouldn’t have been expecting Clint to run. Probably he was just hoping Tasha would turn up to see Clint.

At least Fury had something right. Clint and Tasha would find their way back to each other. But this time, Clint was done waiting for Tasha to swallow her pride and admit that she needed help. She was taking off on her own into the heart of a country where the name of the Black Widow was whispered in ghost stories among the most covert circles, where her enemies were as common as tuberculosis in overcrowded Russian prisons.

There were two subways up ahead, as Clint knew there would be: one that connected to a train bound for New York and eventually the border; the other would meet a train heading south for Atlanta. He could’ve made it on either, really. That didn’t matter.

Clint started toward the New York train.

Unease twisted his stomach.

He slowed down slightly and ramped up his situational awareness. Nothing, nothing—at least, nothing he could see. But his instincts were never wrong, and right now they were screaming that there was someone watching him. That he was in danger.

“No help for it,” Clint muttered, and walked a little faster.

The feeling faded a bit once he was on board, but Clint still didn’t lower his guard. This was the dangerous part for too many operatives. Getting complacent, easing up too soon—those were the things that tanked many an operation.

He stuffed the jacket and beanie away inside his backpack. Underneath, he was wearing only a T-shirt in a neutral shade of green.

Clint moved slowly through the subway car, cautious but pretending to be absorbed in his cell phone. The other passengers ignored him entirely. There was a woman reading the newspaper, another in a burka scrolling through her phone, a group of young people between sixteen and twenty in an assortment of torn jeans and flat-billed trucker caps, and a hassled man with a baby in a stroller. The rest of the car was taken up by men and women in professional clothing, most on laptops or phones. Clint smirked at the guy using a Bluetooth earpiece who looked like he was talking to thin air.

Oh, what the hell.

Clint reached into a side pocket of his backpack and curled his fingers around a jammer.

Seconds later, he saw the reactions as every person who’d been on a phone or tablet suddenly came alert. Annoyed looks crossed their faces and fingers stabbed angrily at screens.

Clint grinned. Causing a little havoc was always fun.

Most of the commuters poured out of the subway car at the next stop, which was near downtown. Clint was left with the newspaper woman, the father and his baby, and the teenagers.

Three more people poured onto the subway car just as the doors began to close.

Clint maintained his relaxed posture and made sure he appeared to be entirely lost in his phone.  He looked nothing like the highly trained assassin/spy/special operative that he was. Then again, the three people who’d just boarded didn’t look very suspicious, either, and Clint’s instincts were twitching. They were perfectly innocuous: two men in simple professional clothes and a woman in workout clothes. But inside, the little voice in Clint’s head screamed Get out get out get out right now.

The subway started to move.

They rumbled out of the station and into the tunnel, and that was when the woman moved.

She swung the hefty GPS running watch up and pressed the button.

Clint dodged and the Taser’s prongs shot past him and found a mark in one of the teenagers. The girl went thrashing to a chorus of screams from her friends.

The two men in business suits pulled guns from beneath their suit jackets.

Clint threw himself into a roll, got inside the range of the Taser woman, and socked her in the stomach. She choked and fell back but her training was solid and she kept her feet.

Shit.

Amidst the screaming and panic of the newspaper lady and the teenagers and the young father, Clint and his assailants stood frozen. Taser was trying to get her wind back and Suits 1 and 2 had no clear shot at Clint.

“I don’t want to do this,” Clint said. “I have no quarrel with SHIELD.”

“Evidently our Director has a quarrel with you,” sneered Suit 2, and fired.

The bullet—rubber by the sound of the shot—went wide. Clint threw himself forward into Taser, ignored the blows that landed on his ribs and near his groin, and detonated a smoke grenade halfway through the fall.

Green-gray smoke hissed out, rebounded off the walls of the subway car, and engulfed its occupants. The frantic civvies panicked more. Someone rebounded off Clint like a bowling pin. He was blind as the rest but he had training. He found a pressure point on Taser’s neck. She was out in seconds. He rolled aside as a rubber bullet bounced through the space he’d occupied a heartbeat before and dropped belly-down. The smoke would rise—it was ever-so-slightly less dense than typical air, and usually left a few inches of space less obscured near the floor.

Sure enough, Clint could see through the haze well enough to pick out two pairs of shiny shoes. They moved in a practiced tactical pattern toward Taser’s body.

They’d never get there.

Silently, he crept along the floor until he was within two feet of Suit 1.

Clint popped a slender needle out of the metal plate on the braided leather wristband he always wore. It was a gift from Tasha for Christmas four years ago.

He lashed out and pricked Suit 1’s ankle.

“What the-”

The words cut off as Suit 1 swayed.

The subway roared around a corner.

Suit 1 collapsed.

“Jenson,” hissed Suit 2. “Jenson, come in.”

Clint rose off the ground and got a bowstring around Suit 2’s neck from behind.

“Tell Fury not to start any more shit,” Clint gasped into Suit 2’s ear, “so I don’t have to finish it.”

Suit 2 struggled, but Clint was stronger and the bowstring was too thin for the man’s fingers to grasp. He thrashed around a bit and then went limp.

Clint dropped his body and felt through the smoke for the man’s neck. It was inflamed to the touch, but he was still breathing. They all were. Good. He was done with SHIELD, but that didn’t mean he wanted to cost Fury any more blood pressure meds than he had to.

With one last check of his gear, Clint tugged his jacket back on, navigated the minefield of still-terrified civvies who were now talking loudly about how their phones weren’t working, dropped the jammer on the floor so their phones would continue to not work, kicked out the back door of the subway car, and waited.

Smoke poured from the gap in the subway, sucked out by the pressure drop created by the speed. Clint had seconds before he’d be visible again to the other occupants.

Light flared along the wall of the tunnel.

He hurled himself into the black.

Instead of splattering on the wall, Clint landed and rolled in a maintenance access platform.

The train roared by and was gone.

With a groan, Clint flipped over and climbed to his feet. He’d taken harder hits, but that hadn’t exactly been a picnic.

He glanced around. The access landing was only twenty feet wide.

Shaking his head, Clint grabbed a fire extinguisher, broke the lock off the door, and slid into the maintenance tunnels.

He’d forgotten how much he hated Russia.

Clint scowled at everything: the people, the streets, the buildings, the snow crusted in alleys even though it was May, goddammit. No one had ever taught Russia the meaning of “spring.” It went straight from winter to summer and somehow both seasons managed to be unpleasant. Although winter was definitely worse. Good job choosing May instead of January to go haring off after your soldier lover, Tasha.

Clint thought briefly of Maria, as he had so often on the four flights and three train rides it had taken to get here. She’d be pissed. And possibly jealous. Clint would have to explain things to her when he got back. He’d only realized as he was settling in on the train to Quebec City that Maria would probably take this as Clint being romantically attached to Tasha. As if—Tasha was twice his age and terrifying on a good day. But he owed her. He couldn’t just let her waltz off to Russia without backup. That was no way to be a friend or a teammate.

What about the rest of the Avengers? Your other teammates? whispered a nasty little voice in his head. Clint shoved it away. They could take care of each other in his absence.

“Three nights, please,” Clint said in flawless Russian.

The woman behind the hotel counter frowned at him. “Passport?”

“I have this,” Clint said, and pulled out a (fake) standard-issue Russian driver’s license. The woman barely glanced at it, took the stack of rubles he shoved her way, and handed him a key. “Room thirty-eight. Second floor.”

“Thank you,” Clint said, and took the stairs.

The hotel room was basic but perfect for his needs. This shitty little hotel on the outskirts of Chita would be his base of operations for the next few days, until he tracked down Tasha’s trail. Then he’d be gone like smoke in a blue sky.

This is what you get for training me so well, Fury, Clint thought with grim delight. He pulled out his laptop and other supplies and began setting up the workstation that he’d used dozens of times before. It provided everything he needed but the essentials could be packed up within the span of five minutes. You can’t find me if I don’t want to be found.