Leave Interrupted

“I am never, ever doing that again,” Peggy promised herself as she took cover behind a stack of wooden crates.  With Daniel creating a distraction back on land – she prayed he didn’t get himself shot – she had been able to make her way aboard the ship via one of the smaller boats used to ferry people and supplies around the harbor.  Her clothes were soaked through, and she’d lost her shoes in the murky water.  Impatiently, she brushed wet strands of hair away from her face, ringing them out with a grimace.  After this, maybe she’d take a day off. Go visit that spa that Rose was always trying to drag her to.

Sighing, she took a moment to gather her thoughts.  First, she’d need some dry clothes.  Which required either a room with a closet, or a person wearing one.  She supposed it was just as well that she was already barefoot, as she’d need to move quickly and silently.  Once she was fairly certain that nobody had noticed her arrival, she stood and slipped down the nearest corridor.  She had entered the ship around where the living quarters should be, which meant that she’d have to go down and back to locate the shipping containers and whatever they contained.

She heard the boots well before she saw them, and she ducked into the shadows, watching as a group of men jogged right past her hiding spot, moving in formation.  There were a handful of women there, as well.  It reminded her of basic training, and she grimaced.  Hydra Boot Camp.  Fantastic.

Still, she had never been one to waste an opportunity, and so she settled in to wait, wringing out her clothes as best she could and trying not to shiver.  Her radio sat next to her, drying out.  It was Stark tech, so it should work over a considerable distance, but she couldn’t risk being overheard just yet.  Once she had a uniform, it would be easier to send a transmission, as she wouldn’t look so out of place.

Within fifteen minutes, she heard the tromp of boots coming up the other way.  Biding her time, she watched again as a group ran past her hiding spot, a different group than before.  Nobody led them, and nobody trailed after them.  Hydra was very confident that their people would do as they were told, and didn’t bother to keep an eye on them.  Peggy could use that to her advantage.

As that group disappeared, Peggy moved again, keeping to the shadows, but switching to the other side of the hallway, waiting for the next group.  If she lucky, there would be a woman about her size in the group.  She could probably get away will ill-fitting clothes at first glance, but anything more than that would reveal her as a fraud.

Luck was with her, as the next group to pass by had two women that would suit her purposes.  The whole group was focused on their task, all of their attention focused forward; it was easy enough for Peggy to slip in behind one and wrap a hand around her mouth, dragging her back into the hallway.  The other woman fought, but it was obvious that she was knew at this, and it only took Peggy a few seconds to slam her head into the wall, dropping her with a loud crash.  She froze, listening carefully, but nobody came running.

With a quite grunt, she grabbed the unconscious woman under her arms and dragged her out of the way before stripping her, changing, and propping her up against the wall.  She’d undoubtedly be discovered before too long, but hopefully by the time the alarm sounded, Peggy would have found what she was looking for.

Tucking her radio into her waistband and running the wire up her shirt, she put the earpiece in her ear.  “Carter?” came the familiar English voice, tinged with panic.  “Are you all right?  Chief Sousa is with us.  Please respond.”  There was a brief pause, and Peggy fumbled for the switch that would allow her to reply.  “Are you safe, Miss Carter?” Jarvis spoke again.  “Are you all right? Chief Sousa is with us.  Please respond if you are able.”

“I’m fine, Jarvis,” Peggy replied hurriedly, and Jarvis cut of abruptly.

“Oh, thank god,” he replied at last, the relief clearly legible in his tone.  “Miss Carter, I would appreciate it if you would not do that again.  My heart can’t take it.”

Peggy could hear frantic male voices in the background, but Jarvis ignored them.  “Sorry, Jarvis,” she apologized, listening for the steady rhythm of running feet.  “I can’t really talk right now.  I’m going to keep the radio on two-way, but I won’t be able to talk.  Tell Daniel and Howard that I’m fine.  I’ll let you know if I find something.”

The second group came back through again, and Peggy fell into line.  The woman next to her didn’t even glance her way, much less say anything.  Peggy kept her eyes straight ahead like the rest of the group, but she tracked personnel and hallways in her peripheral vision, listening for anybody talking about something that might be relevant to the case.

Peggy found herself grateful for her time in the army as they were headed for the front of the ship rather than the back.  It would be a long run back to the other end.  She wasn’t even sure that what she was looking for would be up here.  It might be down below the waterline.

“Peg? I know you can’t talk right now, but I’ve got some information for you.”  Howard’s voice was completely serious, and Peggy listened, unable to reply without risking drawing unwanted attention to herself.  “I’m guessing you’re on that ship that’s leaving the port,” Howard continued.  “The containers up top won’t carry anything important.  No weapons, or anything else.  Food, maybe some household goods, nothing that would raise eyebrows if they were to be inspected.  You want to head below deck.  As far down as you can go without seeing pipes.   That’s probably where they’ll be keeping the bodies.  See if you can find a refrigeration unit.”

Peggy looked for a hatchway that would lead to the lower decks as they ran.  She very nearly missed it, hidden among a number of similarly colored containers.  She branched off from the group, and made it all of six feet before klaxxon’s started going off all over the ship.  “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”  blared over the speakers.  Definitely not a normal ship, then.

“Peggy?!” The worried voice of Daniel in her ear let her breathe, finally.  He really was all right.  She hadn’t been sure when she’d left him behind to create a distraction on the dock, no backup anywhere close by.

“I’m a little busy,” he replied, tearing open the hatch and diving down the ladder, heedless of the metal that scraped up her hands.  She dropped the floor and took off running, searching for a door or hatchway that would get her out of the path of pursuit.

“So I heard,” Daniel replied wryly.  “But since your cover is blown, there’s no reason you can’t talk to us, right?”  There was something going on in the background, and then Daniel shouted something.  The tone was muffled, most likely by him putting his hand over his own radio.  He was back after a moment.  “We’re coming for you, so just stay safe until we get there, okay?”

Peggy frowned.  “You do realize that I’m on a ship surrounded by Hydra agents, right?” she hissed, wrenching open a heavy metal door and slipping into a dark room, closing the door behind her.  Men’s shouts echoed down the corridor as her pursuers ran towards – and then past – the room where she was hiding.  Peggy pressed ear up against the door as a second group of men ran past, then waited.  Further down the hall, she could hear them giving orders to split up.

“Look, Peg.  You find a safe room that you can lock yourself into, and you stay there, you hear?” Daniel ordered.

Peggy grinned.  “Did you actually expect that to work?” she asked, amused.

She could just imagine Daniel’s sigh of resignation.  “Not really,” he admitted, “but I figured it was worth a shot.”

“Nice try,” Peggy agreed, opening the door carefully so as to avoid making a lot of noise.  “I’m heading down, but do let me know when you get here, won’t you?”

She didn’t wait for Daniel’s agreement before slipping out into the hallway, looking both ways before moving further down the hall.  The alarm was still sounding up on the deck, and red lights were flashing down here, giving her a guide to follow.  Not very well thought out on their part, but Peggy took advantage of the added visibility to make her way down the unfamiliar hallways, her eyes peeled for another hatchway.

Fortunately for her, exits and stairwells were clearly marked, ad she steadily made her way downwards, listening for the sounds o f men talking before each new ladder or hallway.  Caution had served her well in the past, she saw no reason to change that now.

The drone of voices and the shuffling of feet, mingled with the click of guns told her she was getting closer.  The cool draft of air was another indication.  Slowing down, she peered around a corner, then pulled back quickly before the two men standing guard in front of a door at the end of the hall caught sight of her.  “Okay.  Okay,” she murmured to herself, checking her own weapons.  Most of them had been ruined by her dive into the waters of the port, but she had at least one or two that relied on something other than gunpowder.  Still, she’d need to move quickly once she started, because she couldn’t count on the initial confusion to last terribly long.

Pulling out two small round metal balls, she pressed a panel on their tops and rolled them down the corridor.  She covered her ears and closed her eyes.  Bright light strafed across her closed eyelids, even from the end of the hall, and she waited until another second before spinning around the corner and tearing down the hallway.  She hit the men before they managed get their sight back, taking them down quickly.  Their bodies made a dull thump when they hit the ground, and Peggy was up and past them before the men inside realized what was happening. 

Tossing more of the light and sound grenades to either side as soon as she hit the door, Peggy found her grateful for the combat boots she was now wearing as she ran, covering her ears and squinting.  The flash of light was painful, but not unmanageable – if one knew to expect it.  The concussive wave of sound rolled over her, deafening the men around here, even as gunshots went off. 

She grunted as a bullet clipped her, but she didn’t fall, and she didn’t have time to check on it.  Adrenaline kept her moving, and the pain was just a dull ache – just a graze wound, then.  She headed for  a cluster of men, their weapons already coming up, pointed straight at her.  With a grimace, she pulled out the slim metal triangle she’d grabbed from the warehouse and activated it, gratified when it slid open to form a shield.  It might not be Captain America’s vibranium shield, but it was one of Stark’s prototypes, and it did the job, taking a hail of bullets without more than a few dents.  The ricochets pinged harmlessly against the floor and walls, and she slammed the shield into the face of the first soldier she came to.  In her other hand, she held a baton.  She was surprised when she hit one of the men with it and they dropped, screaming.  She felt a jolt the whole way up her arm, like a shot of electricity.

The men scrambled around her, grabbing at her once they realized that their guns wouldn’t work in such close range, and she used their proximity against them, twisting around so she only had one man to fight at a time.  A jolt to the shield sent her reeling backwards, and a large fist grabbed at her shoulder, tightening painfully over the bullet wound.

Dropping the baton – it wouldn’t do her any good if they managed to break her arm, after all – she groped for the last of the grenades, pressing the top before it was even fully out of her pocket.  Twisting around, she pressed forward into the man who had grabbed her, throwing the shield over her back to protect her from the concussive blast, and using the man’s wide chest to cover her eyes.  The men around her fell away, leaving her staggering for a moment, dizzy with the sudden lack of combatants.

Keeping hold of the shield, she crouched down and scooped up the baton – Howard would kill her if she lost a piece of his tech to Hydra – then made her way towards a curtained off area.  Pushing her way inside, she looked around for more soldiers, or maybe scientists, but there was nobody.  She supposed Hydra hadn’t seen the need to have anybody guard dead bodies. 

Luck was with her, and there was a cabinet filled with files nearby.  Flipping through them quickly, aware that she was low on time, Peggy used Stark’s camera pen – he still complained about her calling it that – to take as many pictures of the files as she could, and a few of the bodies.  From what she saw as she looked through, they were the result of a scrapped experiment.  A lot of the notes were in code, and would undoubtedly require a cipher, but she could figure out enough to determine which papers were important.

Grabbing a handful of papers that seemed to follow a similar pattern, she straightened everything back up.  She looked regretfully at the bodies laid on cold metal tables, but they were beyond her help now.  The best thing she could do for them now was to get the files back to the SSR and let them take it from there.

Tucking the files into her clothes and folding the shield back into a more manageable triangle, Peggy moved back out into the main room, grabbing a uniform hat from one man and a gun from another.  She made it to the door while the men milled around in confusion shouting orders and regrouping.  Someone finally had the brains to send men into the room with the corpses, but Peggy was already past there.

A hand on her shoulder stopped her, and she turned to look at the soldier who had grabbed her.  “Did you see that woman leave her?” he demanded of her.

Straightening her back, and grateful for the dark shirt, she answered, “No, sir.  I didn’t see anything.  Or hear anything,” she added.  Actually, her ears really were ringing a bit, and she blinked a few times, as if blinking away blurry vision.

“Keep looking,” the man ordered, before turning around to shout at some of the men, organizing them for a room to room search.  Another man was on the radio, alerting the other levels to be on the lookout for a woman with dark hair and a shield on her back.

Peggy slipped out with the group of men, following them in their door-to-door search until she was able to break free, heading upwards.  Once she was sure she was somewhat alone, at least for the moment, she risked communicating.  “I’ve got what I came for,” she said out loud.  “ETA?”

“We were just waiting on you, Peggy!” a familiar voice called over the radio, and Peggy grinned.

“And what are you doing here, Dum Dum?” she asked, amused.  She could hear the hum of a plane overhead.  Boots were running, and she realized that now was her chance.  They were no longer focused on her.  Instead, they were focused on the air raid that was about to happen.

“Flying a plane, of course!” the other man crowed, absolutely delighted.  Peggy laughed, making her way up the hatch, waiting until a handful of men ran passed her before climbing onto the deck and making her way to the edge.

She peered over the side with a heavy sigh.  “Do send somebody to pick me up, won’t you?” she asked.

“We’ve already got a man on board,” Howard said.  “Can you give him a signal or something?”

Peggy rolled her eyes.  “I’m on the starboard side, by the lifeboats,” she told him.  Then she promptly climbed right into the lifeboat, curling up under the tarp.  “Don’t you dare blow me up,” she hissed once she was concealed from anybody passing by.  If somebody tried to use the lifeboat to escape and discovered her, she’d just tell them that she was told to get into a lifeboat and wait for others to join her before abandoning ship.

“Understood,” Howard acknowledged.  There was a moment of static as he switched frequencies.  Less than three minutes later, a dark-skinned, gruff man was standing over her, dressed all in black. On his uniform was a symbol, an eagle.

“Agent Carter?” he asked, extending his hand.

Peggy sat up, allowing him to pull her out of the boat.  “Yes,” she acknowledged.  “And who might you be?”

The man smiled.  “The name’s Agent Fury.  You got what you came for?”  Peggy nodded.  “Then let’s quit wasting time. I don’t like being shot at.”

Peggy gestured.  “Then by all means, lead the way,” she offered.  She was more than ready to get off this ship.

As she followed Agent Fury to their extraction point, she considered the symbol on his chest.  An eagle, huh?  Somehow, that seemed suitable.

She'd be sure to tell Howard so.  Just as soon as she got off of this damn boat.