Chapter 82
Above the Triskelion, Washington, D.C.
September 2011
Bucky ran for the helicopter.
Wilson and Steve were gone, Steve carried slung beneath Wilson’s psychotic wingsuit like luggage. They had to get to the helicarriers before Hydra could launch them. Their best option was to disable the bay doors and take out all three aircraft at once.
Bucky examined the controls. These were newer, sleeker designs, more foreign and complicated than the helicopter he’d stolen from the bunker in Russia, or anything else he’d ever flown. But really all he needed was the ignition, the joystick, and the throttle. Everything else was useful but unnecessary.
He turned the ignition chip Maslih had offered from the compartment below his console and felt the engine rumble to life. Powerful. Modern. Hundreds of years of killing expertise and technological advancement had culminated in this airborne murder machine. He smiled, angled the rotors, and opened the throttle up all the way.
With a roar, the helicopter surged off the ground. Sea, land, and sky spun around the windows. Bucky swore under his breath and fought the joystick, which was touchier than he’d thought, and stabilized the heli in midair.
“Got that, Barnes?” Wilson said over their comms.
“I’m fine,” he growled back, and thrust the joystick forward, throwing the heli into a pivot towards the helicarrier bay doors.
“Oh shit, they’re launching!” Steve shouted.
Bucky pushed the throttle farther.
“There’s a firefight down there,” Wilson said. “Steve-”
“Keep going,” Steve said. “Looks like not everyone down there’s Hydra.”
Optimism. Bucky swung around the Triskelion and he took the situation in at a glance. It wouldn’t be enough. Those helicarriers were already well off the ground.
“I’m in position,” Maria said tensely. “I have five minutes before I need to go after Pierce. If those helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they’re live.”
“Five minutes to reprogram billions of dollars of mass-murdering enemy aircraft?” Wilson said. “Fucking fantastic.”
“Drop me on the first one,” Steve ordered.
“I’ve got the east one,” Bucky said. His hand brushed his pocket. There was the chip, remotely programmed by Stark and JARVIS, that would allow Maria control of the helicarriers. Each of them carried four duplicates of the program, as a safeguard in case one of them went down, or some of the chips were damaged.
“Question,” Wilson grunted. Bucky glanced over. The Falcon suit was powering hard to climb at the same rate as the east-most helicarrier. “If they’re all wearing SHIELD gear, how do we know who’s a bad guy?”
“If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad,” Steve said grimly.
“Great,” Wilson muttered.
Bucky tuned them out and banked the helicarrier.
The dorsal gun of the helicarrier he’d chosen popped up and swiveled. Bucky held his breath. If Maslih had betrayed them, if the proper credentials hadn’t been broadcast for his heli…
But the gun didn’t fire.
He tilted the nose farther and accelerated.
Two escorts buzzed past him in formation. Bucky’s hands tensed on the controls, but he didn’t flinch.
They ignored him.
Breathing out, he kept going.
The landing pad on the top of the helicarrier loomed large before him.
At the last second, he threw the heli into a screaming dive. It raced along, rotors less than ten feet from the surface of the helicarrier, swooping beneath the bulging belly of its huge, lumbering cousin.
Bucky used a precious fraction of his attention to figure out how to turn on the radar screen. It popped up in green–that, at least, was familiar–and he could see the escorts converging on him. He’d definitely set off some alarms.
But they were too late. Up ahead, he could see the massive glass bay. It seemed the height of pride to have made a huge section of the hull of a killing airship out of glass, even of the bulletproof variety, but he wasn’t complaining.
Now to hide his invasion.
He eased back imperceptibly on the throttle. The heli slowed a bit, then a bit more. And then the escorts came shrieking around the edge of the hull and opened fire.
Bucky jinked left, right, and down slightly, but he couldn’t go very far south. As expected, they were firing slightly below him to avoid hitting the hull. He shot along feet from the glass. But helicopters were slower than jets, and the escorts were closing in.
Bucky unbuckled his crash harness with one hand, pulling the straps over his tac vest and masked head, and kept steering with the other.
Behind him, one of the escorts fired a missile.
Bucky gritted his teeth, dipped for momentum, and yanked the heli up.
The rotors screamed when they bit into the glass. Fire and shrapnel spun around Bucky but he’d estimated right; the impact shattered the glass like crepe paper and the helicopter’s dying corpse crashed up into the hull.
Machine gun fire tore into the heli’s tail, then engine.
Bucky dove out the pilot’s door and rolled across the windows. Fire and glass shards and bits of superheated metal flew past him at high velocity. He felt something tear through the pads on his thigh. Another piece of shrapnel lodged in his shoulder. Others speckled his hair, arms. Not serious.
His only chance would be if they got so distracted by the helicopter that they didn’t notice the figure of a man escaping into the hull.