Chapter 71
[Classified Address], Washington, D.C.
September 2011
Sam whistled tunelessly and fumbled with his keys.
It had been a good day. Several well-delivered talks and serious progress made with the lobbyists. He’d be going home tomorrow, and he had to clean up Terry’s house before he left.
The front door finally (grudgingly) yielded. Sam made a note to tell Terry to lube up that lock and dropped the keys on the little table just inside.
The house was nice. Spare, but nice. Very much a bachelor home. Sam wished Terry could’ve been here–he missed his old friend–but a family wedding had called him off to the West Coast this month.
Sam flexed his shoulders to work out some tension, decided to go to the gym later, and headed straight for the kitchen.
The doorbell rang.
He heaved a sigh and almost didn’t go answer it. Damn solicitors. They never bothered him in New York. He couldn’t wait to get home.
But it’d be rude to leave even a solicitor out on the doorstep indefinitely, so he headed back to the entry, slid back the deadbolt, and opened the door.
And froze.
Three people stood on the doorstep. Two of them he recognized: Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff.
There was a beat of silence.
“Aren’t you on the run?” he asked. “I know I said you should drop by, but this kinda seems like a weird time.”
Steve’s face was grim. “I’m sorry to do this, but… we need a place to lay low.”
“Everyone else is trying to kill us,” Romanoff added. Sam almost laughed.
He glanced at the third member of their party, standing with shoulders hunched and a hood pulled up over his head, hands in his pockets, as if any of those things could hide the fact that he moved and stood like a soldier, and a deadly one. Plus he was almost as tall as Steve, and just as broad-shouldered.
Sam glanced up and down the street. No one seemed to have noticed his suspicious visitors.
Wordlessly, he stepped aside and allowed them into the house.
Turned out, the hooded man was the Winter Soldier.
“I thought you’d be older,” Sam said. “Been hearing rumors about you for years.”
The Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes, hunched at the table. His eyes were on the mug of tea in his hands. One metal, one skin. “I’m older than I look.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “I know.” He looked at Steve and Romanoff. “So SHIELD’s been compromised. No one knows about this but you. The rest of your team are stuck in that tower because if they go MIA, it’ll raise some red flags. And you need to figure out what exactly was on that drive so you can take down the same enemy you two–” pointing at Steve and Barnes– “took down in the forties.”
“Pretty much,” Romanoff said. She tilted the mug Sam slid her way. “Why do I smell citrus?”
“Orange spice black tea,” he said. “Do you know where to start?”
Steve tapped the table thoughtfully. “Zola showed us Pierce was involved in this project. So was Fury. We don’t know how much either of them was involved in Hydra, but… we have to assume the worst.”
“They’re both sitting on top of the most secure building in the world,” Romanoff countered. “There’s no way we take either of them without getting ourselves killed.”
“But it can’t just be the guys at the top,” Sam said.
They both looked his way.
He refused to be intimidated by the fact that he had three living legends sitting in his kitchen, drinking tea and discussing a kidnapping. Sam had his own skill set, and he found himself thinking that this was a valid fight. “They’ve got to have underlings, people to do the dirty work. Fury and/or Pierce can’t have done this on their own, even under fake SHIELD authority. Some of the guys down below have to be part of this.”
“Zola’s algorithm was on the Lemurian Star,” Steve said. “Pierce gave me a name. Jasper Sitwell.”
“I know him,” Natasha said. “He’s based here.”
“Well, that’s convenient,” Steve said. “Do you know where he lives?”
Romanoff smiled and held up a tablet. “I know someone who can find out.”
“Tony,” Steve said. “Do it.”
Romanoff used the tablet to open up a chat room of some kind. “It’s secure?” Sam asked.
Barnes lifted his head for the first time. “Stark set it up. It’s as secure as it’s going to get.”
Sam tightened his grip on his mug. Something about this guy rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn’t going to pick a fight. Not without his gear, anyway.
He emptied Terry’s dishwasher and worked on replacing everything he’d moved in the kitchen in the last two weeks. Romanoff tapped away at the tablet behind him and Steve and Barnes sipped their tea.
Sam’s mind whirled as he worked. He could let them go. Probably should, to be honest. Help out with some food and cash and send them on their way. That’s what a sensible man would probably do.
But he couldn’t deny that he missed… making a difference. And he’d never been particularly sensible. No sensible person would’ve signed up for what Sam did in the army.
He found his file in the bag on the counter.
“Got it,” Romanoff said.
Sam turned around.
“Address and workplace. He bounces between the Triskelion and another government building downtown. Tony’s got his schedule for the next two days coming.”
“So how to the three most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD agent in broad daylight?” Barnes asked.
“You don’t.” Sam dropped his file on the table.
Steve picked it up. “What’s this?”
Sam grinned and sat down at the fourth chair. “Call it a resume.”
“Is this Bakhmala?” Romanoff asked, examining a page of pictures. “The Khalid Khandli mission. That was you.” She gave him an assessing look. “I didn’t know you were pararescue.”
“Who’s that?” Steve asked, pointing at one of the pictures.
Sam’s smile faded. “Riley. My wingman.”
Steve nodded, understanding written all over his face.
“You lost him?” Barnes asked quietly.
“Fly in the night mission,” Sam said plainly. “Standard rescue op, nothing we hadn’t done a thousand times before, till an RPG knocked Riley’s dumb ass out of the sky. Nothing I could do. It’s like I was up there just to watch.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said simply.
Sam shrugged off the grief. It never went away, but in four years, he’d learned to manage it, work around it.
“I heard they couldn’t bring in the choppers because of the RPGs,” Romanoff said, tapping the picture from the Khalid Khandli op. “What did you use, a stealth chute?”
“Nope,” Sam said. “These.” He flipped over a few pages to the back of the file and tapped the top page.
Steve’s head snapped up. “I thought you said you were a pilot.”
Sam grinned. “I never said a pilot.”
“I can’t ask you to do this,” Steve said. “You got out for a good reason.”
Sam paused, sorted through his reasons. Was it really because he wanted to get back in, or was he just trying to impress Captain America?
“Dude, if a bunch of legends like you are having trouble, what kind of guy would I be to kick you out on your own?” he said.
Barnes was still inscrutable. So was Romanoff, technically, but she at least didn’t look like she was considering snapping his neck.
“So where do we get one of these?” Natasha asked, tapping the page with Sam’s old gear.
“The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall,” he said, and knew they’d hear the bitterness in his voice. Why the Army had locked up the wingsuits and quit training people in their use Sam would never understand. “Can we do it?”
Steve looked to Barnes, who shrugged.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Romanoff said.
Sam grinned. “Then let’s get going.”
And he realized he was looking forward to being back in the fight.