Chapter 79
En Route to Safe House, Washington, D.C.
September 2011
Sam made Romanoff go before him. She was still bleeding pretty bad. Hopefully Barnes had the forethought to pack medical supplies in this thing. He leaned back and tried to look casual. It was D.C. People had probably seen weirder than a construction worker riding the bucket of a bulldozer.
When he decided he’d given Romanoff enough time to get out of the way– thirty seconds at the most– he shuffled over to the secret door and poked his head through.
Brilliant.
Someone had very cleverly left a gap in the belly of the machine that an athletic person could possibly climb through, with random metal protuberances at irregular intervals that were wrapped in insulating rubber, probably so they didn’t get too hot to touch. The noise and heat were oppressive. Sam wanted earplugs.
He scrambled through, steadied his feet, and shoved the secret door closed. It clicked into place in the bucket. Sam looked down at the pavement visible in patches beneath his feet and started climbing.
It wasn’t far. He saw Natasha ahead of him, almost at what had to be the base of the cabin. The dozer’s shell blocked most of the light, but enough got in around the edges of the bucket and the grille up front that he could make out Steve’s legs, vanishing up into the cabin.
Sam started climbing.
Halfway up, his hand hit something wet. He paused and examined his palm.
The handhold he’d grabbed was covered in blood.
Worried, Sam started climbing faster.
At the base of the cabin, there was a flat hidden compartment, large enough for two men to lie side-by-side on their backs, with hatches in the bottom and top. Sam climbed right past it and up into the passenger compartment of the bulldozer.
A brown-haired woman was driving. The passenger compartment was set down and to her left, and kind of cramped, but Sam guessed it could’ve been worse.
Barnes stepped around him to shut the hatches. The top one fit seamlessly into the floor.
“Where’d you find this thing?” Steve asked Barnes.
The soldier pointed up at the woman driving. “Hill found me trying to get to you guys, told me she slipped out of the Tower to come help and to tail the transport while she dredged this out of storage. She caught up and we pulled a rescue.”
“SHIELD used to modify construction equipment to transport contraband people and materials,” Natasha said. Her face was pale and bloodless.
“Hill?” Sam said.
The driver didn’t answer.
He realized she must not be able to hear him over the engine and climbed the steps to the driver’s booth with her. The ground was at least twelve feet below. The heat and noise of the bulldozer rose around them like a cloud.
The woman squinted at Sam, and he realized he recognized her from TV coverage of the Avengers. “First aid,” he shouted, and pointed down at Romanoff.
Hill glanced down once. Her expression didn’t change, but he saw the awareness of Romanoff’s condition hit her, and she leaned closer. “Under the seat,” she shouted.
Sam nodded, crouched, and spotted the white box caked with grime and stuffed under the driver’s seat. He dragged it out and hopped back down with Barnes and Steve.
“Hope the inside of this thing looks better than the outside,” he said.
Natasha said something.
Sam knelt in front of her. “What was that?”
“Disguised,” she said, pointing at the box.
“Got it.” Sam popped the latches and lifted the lid. His eyebrows rose. The inside was pristine and sterilized. The seal must’ve been perfect on that box.
Barnes stepped forward and started digging in the box. His movements were quick and deft, but Sam noticed a quick tremor in the soldier’s mouth, and moved aside.
The pain in his side suddenly came back. Sam gasped and leaned back against the wall of the passenger compartment, teeth gritted.
Steve was at his side in an instant. “Is it bleeding?”
“Little bit,” Sam said, looking down at his hand. Most of the blood was from the climb. His wound was clotting already.
Steve worked in silence, helping Sam do a field dressing and seal both ends of the bullet hole with clotting powder and glue. It wasn’t as good as a hospital, but their options were limited.
When they were done, Sam dragged himself back up to the driver’s cabin. “Where are we going?” he shouted at Hill. From up here, he saw they’d driven out of downtown D.C. and into a heavily industrialized area.
“Ditch this,” Hill shouted back, “then a safe house.”
Sam nodded and slid back down.
The engine was too loud for conversation, so they just separated to sit around the edges of the passenger compartment. Steve pulled his knees up to his chest and stared at his hands. Barnes sat next to Romanoff, close but not quite touching, something about the tilt of his head suggesting that he was paying very close attention to her. Sam tucked himself into a corner and wondered how he’d fallen in with a group of heroes and legends.