Chapter 96
[Classified Location], Hydra Base
October 2011
Steve’s boots hit the roof.
He ran a few steps, slowing down, until his chute collapsed with a soft whump behind him. He unbuckled the strap across his chest that held the whole harness together and ducked out of the rig in a single movement, leaving it behind him. They were unmarked, not that it mattered. Theirs was not an inconspicuous team.
Natasha, Bucky, and Maria fanned out, covering the corners of the roof, but Sam and Tony had done their work well. The compound was clear and quiet, occupied only by Avengers and corpses.
Bucky found the roof door. They hadn’t been able to tell, on the satellite imagery, if there even was one; they’d come prepared to blast their way in if they had to. But judging by the debris on the ground, Hydra guys liked to come up here for a smoke. Steve curled his lip at the evidence of their nasty habit and dragged the door open.
The stairwell lit up as soon as Natasha put a foot on the step.
She glanced back, shrugged, and kept walking.
“Motion sensor?” Maria asked.
“Must be.” Steve followed Natasha, and the rest of his team filed in behind him.
“Stark, Falcon, status?” Bucky asked the comms.
There was a crackle, and then, Tony said, “Ready when you are.”
“Same here,” Sam added.
Steve looked down the stairwell. There was a landing and a switchback every ten steps, so it was hard to tell how far down they’d have to go. “Stand by.”
Natasha rounded the next landing and stopped.
“What is it?” Steve hissed.
“Door.” She slowly unholstered a gun, held it in a right-handed ready grip aimed at the ceiling, and eased down the last few steps. Steve raised his shield and Bucky leveled an automatic rifle over its top edge as Natasha reached the door and rested a hand on the handle.
She glanced back at them and mouthed, Three, two, one, go!
She turned the knob, shoved the door open, and pressed herself flat against the wall.
No one was on the other side.
Steve waited a count of thirty before he stood and crept down the stairs, Bucky and Maria on his heels.
Maria raised a hand, pulled something long and rectangular off her belt, bent down, and slid it soundlessly into the hall. In her other hand was a palm-sized tablet. Steve saw infrared images drawn on it in blue and green.
Nothing, Maria said in Army hand-signs.
Steve hefted his shield and led the way into the hall while Maria tucked her miniature periscope away.
Bucky and Natasha fanned out around him.
They seemed to have found an administrative area. Offices. They paused long enough for Maria to slip into one of them and stick a flash drive into the computer there. The network here was totally isolated, but Tony had said that once they got a virus he’d written into the system, it would be “JARVIS’ playground.”
“Got the link,” Tony said. “JARVIS?”
“I have begun the data transfer,” JARVIS said. “Storage drives on the Quinjet should be adequate for…”
Steve tuned them out. Focused on the assault.
At the end of the administrative hall, they found an elevator.
Bucky inserted the fingers of his new prosthetic arm into the gap between the doors. Natasha raised an eyebrow when he easily dented the metal in the shape of fingers when he dragged them aside. “Points to Tony for that bit of engineering,” she said softly.
Bucky’s eyes were all Steve could see of his face, but something about them suggested his old friend was smiling. “It’s working well.”
“Yes, we all know I’m a genius,” Tony said, because of course he could hear them all on the comms. “Can we get this circus into the main ring already?”
“Circus metaphors?” Steve said, clambering into the shaft and locking a tension clamp onto the cables. “Really?”
“Part of my charm.”
Steve shook his head and opened the clamp, dropping himself into the darkness.
The cable vibrated as he fell with the weight of himself and Bucky, Maria, and Natasha behind him. Steve angled his shield to deflect any projectiles from below.
A flashlight beam lanced down from above him.
For a second, then two, it showed nothing.
The top of the elevator came into view.
Steve instantly tightened his grip on the clamp. His descent slowed quickly; his arm muscles burned with the strain of holding his entire body’s weight as he slowed. By the time his boots touched the ground, he was almost stopped. Steve disengaged the clamp with one hand and rolled aside a heartbeat before Bucky landed next to him.
In the span of five seconds, all four of them were positioned in the corners of the shaft.
Bucky reached down and broke the lock off the ceiling hatch, then pulled it open. The car below was dark and empty. They dropped through one at a time and hauled the doors open.
Steve flipped the HUD inside his helmet down and blinked while the night vision kicked in. Bucky, Maria, and Natasha all pulled night vision goggles on.
“We’re on the lab level,” Steve said softly.
“Power’s going out in ten seconds,” Sam said.
Steve raised his shield and cocked a gun in his right hand.
“Seven. Six.”
Bucky got a grip on the elevator doors and stood to the side, ready to rip them open.
“Four.”
Maria and Natasha were ready on Steve’s flanks, goggles on and guns out.
“Two. One.”
A distant explosion rocked the elevator. Silence descended on the compound as the background hum of servers, climate control units, and pipes all fell silent.
“Go,” Steve said.
Bucky tore the doors open.
Steve dove through.
Fire hit his shield almost instantly. These Hydra guards were well-trained; they’d scrambled on the elevator the second the lights went out. But they didn’t have goggles.
Steve took down four of them with his pistol before he closed the distance.
Sounds from behind: his team, engaging.
On the surface, Sam and Tony would be running containment. No one would get off this property aboveground.
He tore his way through the last of the guards, ignored two bleary-eyed and terrified scientists, and closed on the back of the room.
An explosion from his left sent Steve flying. He tried to twist, to land on his feet or at least not his head, but searing pain exploded in his side and then his head hit something and the world went dark.