Chapter 85
Above the Triskelion, Washington, D.C.
September 2011
Sam banked hard. The Falcon suit shuddered. It was nearing its limits, and honestly, so was Sam. It had been too long since he did this. He was vastly outnumbered, more nimble than his opponents but smaller and slower, and he was saving the big guns for a last-minute escape. He’d need them to burn a hole out of the swarm of escorts.
Enough loyal SHIELD pilots were in the air to give him a reprieve, but not much of one. A trail of jets hung off his toes. He barrel rolled, watched a stream of machine gun fire tear into an escort’s wing, swooped below three jets in formation, raked a few into the first helicarrier’s belly.
“Wilson!” Barnes shouted into the comms.
Sam dove, pulled up, turned, picked out the chopper in the middle of the swarm of escort jets. Barnes was limping through the air. Not far from the last helicarrier, but it wasn’t looking likely that he’d make it.
“Coming,” Sam ground out, and triggered the nitro.
It wasn’t actually nitro, not in cars, but it was the nickname given to this ability of the Falcon suit by all its pilots: a fixed-wing one-direction blast. Whatever way you were pointing when you hit the button, that’s the way you went. Hopefully not into the ground. It worked once per flight and usually resulted in burns on the legs. Sam still had scars from Iraq. But it’d been worth it then, and it would be worth it here.
He screamed forward through the sky. Jets and helicarriers and water and land and sky blurred around him. The vibration shook conscious thoughts away. He gritted his teeth. Forced himself to stay focused. Used his weight to lumberingly swing around a few jets in his way.
The escorts were caught off guard by his sudden burst of speed and floundered, their patterns and coordination momentarily thrown off. Sam and Barnes both took advantage of the disorder. There was a wall of escorts between Barnes and the helicarrier. Sam watched him use his chopper’s guns to carve a small hole, then aim for it with a last burst of speed.
The hole started to shrink.
“Sam, I can’t reach the deck,” Steve panted. “Might have to dive for it.”
“Steve–” Sam broke off. Barnes was almost to the helicarrier. Almost through the gap. But Sam knew flying and he knew air battles and he knew the Winter Soldier wasn’t going to make it without help.
But if he went for Barnes, Steve would go down with his helicarrier.
He could only help one person at a time.
Sam took a breath. Made his choice. “Gotta get Barnes to the last carrier,” he said harshly, and closed the gap.
“Go,” he heard Steve say distantly, and then he was back in the thick of the fight, letting loose with all the firepower he had left in his suit’s reserves.
He had to get Barnes to that carrier, and then he could save Steve Rogers.
Triskelion, Washington, D.C.
September 2011
Natasha tensed.
“Director,” she said slowly.
Nick Fury froze, taking in the bodies on the floor, Pierce at gunpoint, and Prescott, Black, and Saliba off to the side. “Natasha,” he said. “I thought you’d gone to ground.”
“I did,” she said quietly. “Then it came to my attention that I never went straight at all.”
She had a bad feeling about this. No surprise was on Fury’s face.
“You need two Alpha Level clearance members and a password to dump the files online,” he said.
“The password’s new,” Natasha said. She glanced out the window. The helicarriers had to be almost to three thousand feet by now. If they got to minimum altitude and the boys hadn’t replaced all the chips, she had no doubt she would die.
Fury shrugged. “We thought it’d be a good idea to add an extra layer of security.”
“Plan on telling me what it is?” Natasha asked. This was the test. She didn’t have time to torture it out of Pierce.
Fury examined her for a long second. “P17AH4C720.”
Natasha stepped around Pierce, keeping her gun trained on Fury, and found the password prompt box in the bottom corner of the screen. She typed it in one-handed.
A second later, the screen blinked green.
Slowly, she transferred her gun sights to Pierce.
Nick’s eyes flicked over to his old friend.
Something still felt off.
The doors hissed open again, and Maria walked in. She blinked at the bodies and shot Pierce a cool glance that reduced him to no more than pocket lint before her eyes settled on Fury.
“He gave me the password,” Natasha said quietly.
“You died,” Pierce said, his composure cracking briefly. “I saw the autopsy–”
“Death didn’t suit me,” Maria said. “But I’m betting you haven’t bothered to remove my executive clearance from the system. Seeing as I’m dead and gone.” She walked over to the retinal scanner. The blue beam came to life.
“Identity confirmed,” the computer said. “Hill, Maria. Initiate decryption?”
“Yes,” Maria said firmly.
A progress bar appeared. SHIELD’s supercomputers were fast. Terabytes of data began pouring into the internet.
A choked scream came from behind Natasha. She spun around to see Black collapsing to the floor and Fury with Pierce’s phone in his hand.
Natasha’s fingers twitched toward her own pin.
“Turning your back on a potential hostile, Agent Romanoff?” Fury said. “I could’ve sworn you knew better than that.”