This wasn't right.
SHIELD intel had forseen it, and Maria Hill had seen it coming too. Prisoner #081949 had, once again, escaped; not the first time, and probably not the last time either. She bit her lip out of nervousness and peered into her binoculars. Through the lenses, her gaze fell once again on the door of the police station, then upwards to the right side of the roof, across to the left side, and back down again to the door, long enough to catch passing glances at the windows. The sidewalks, which not 5 minutes ago were teeming with life, had all but died down. She had spent 2 weeks casing the place out, monitoring for any movements, watching the habits of the employees clocking in and out, and generally paying attention to the times that the streets seemed the most quiet.
She switched the binoculars over to IR and peered through the walls. There was someone at the desk, another standing guard in front of what appeared to be a door, judging by the heat leaking through the edges. He was most likely to have a gun, so he was going to have to die first. Then the man at the desk would need to be taken out, how to do that without alerting the rest of the station, that was going to be a problem. She supposed that the simplest way to-
"Anything interesting?" Steve's voice shattered her concentration. A warm hand met her shoulder and she swung her head around at him.
"Dammit, Steve. Have we not been over this before? If I'm thinking, you do not talk unless absolutely necessary."
"Well, I thought-"
"You don't think. You shoot. I'm at the head of this op, therefore, I do the thinking."
Steve said nothing, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the verbal sting. Damn his chivalry. One day, she was going to flush that out of him. This was the 21st century, and he needed to realize that courtesy was a thing of the past. All it was doing is making him look unintelligent, and he was certainly not that. She sighed and stared out the window again.
"I'm sorry Steve. I'm just… stressed. You know how much I hate what we're about to do. I didn't mean to insult you, and you know I really do value your input." "You don't need to apologize ma'am. I understand." "Yes. I do. I snapped at you, and I shouldn't have. Now take the damn apology." "Yes ma'am" "And stop calling me ma'am. You're older than I am." "Yes…sir." "Was that a joke?"
"Yes sir."
Maria allowed a smile to play across her lips, glad that the banter had brought some relief to the grim air that surrounded them. And just like that, the mood changed back to business. "Looks like the shift change is over, same as it has been for a week. I still can't get past that door though, we're blind after that."
"So the usual low-intel op then? Fantastic."
Maria watched as Steve's eyes looked down, then went out of focus, deep in thought. She decided it was only fair to break his own concentration in return. "Some things never change. Anyways, let's go get a room, We've been cramped in here for a week, and you need a shower."
Steve blinked, brought back to reality, and took a long, slow look around the room, if you could call it that. The building looked like it hadn't seen human beings in 20 years. Definitely not 5-star by any means. "Yeah, I probably do."
Seriously, this man needed to learn what a joke was.
They climbed down a couple flights of stairs, and into an old loading bay, where a black SUV was waiting on them. Steve casually walked behind the vehicle and manually lifted the door leading to the back alley. He then trotted over to the drivers side, opened the door, and got in. Maria grudgingly got in the passenger's seat. She liked her control, but it would be a detrimental blow to Steve's pride if he allowed her to drive. Maria reclined her seat and let her eyelids close. "Find us a hotel, something nice, but not too nice. There's no need to draw any unnecessary attention. Wake me up when we get there." The SUV pulled out of the decrepit structure and into the back alleys of Hanoi, Vietnam. — 10 days ago, SHIELD agent Maria Hill and former Captain America, Steve Rogers, were called to Fury's office.
"Intel has confirmed that recently escaped prisoner #081949 has been hiding out in Vietnam. As of 0900 this morning, he has been captured and detained by the local police force."
Maria, in spite of her controlled appearance, couldn't hold back a small start.
"At 1000 hours, we contacted said police force and informed them of the danger that they are in by holding such a man in one place for too long. I don't have to tell you how Vietnamese government operates.
"Your job is to raid the station, capture the prisoner, and bring him back here. This is a covert op. Anyone in that building is a threat, no exceptions. You are to neutralize anyone who gets a good look at either of you. Word cannot get out that SHIELD was behind this. You are dismissed."
As they both turned to leave, Fury exhaled, "Maria, wait."
She turned. The tension in her face was evident.
"Maria, I just want you to know that it's nothing personal against you. I know that this is probably the last op you ever want to do. It's just that we need your level head and performance under fire in addition to Steve's ability to strategize in order to pull this off with the best possible results."
Maria huffed, more to help relieve tension than anything else, then replied "I know that, and I appreciate it. I don't want to do this, but I need to. It needs to be me." She turned and left the office without being dismissed. —
"We're here."
Maria opened her eyes and sat up. From the outside, the hotel looked…actually rather nice. Granted, it wasn't the nicest looking place she had stayed in, but for Hanoi, it would do.
"Where are we?"
"West Hanoi. 10 miles from the station."
"10 miles? Through Hanoi traffic? Just how long have you been driving?"
"About 2 hours."
Maria pursed her lips. Two hours? She had been napping for two hours? She cursed her sense of time. Her constant adrenaline rush for the entire duration of the op was slowing her down. Damn this stress, it was going to kill her sooner than she wanted.
Steve pulled the SUV into the loft, found a slot, and killed the vehicle. Maria allowed a few more seconds to wake up, then stepped out. They grabbed their bags and walked through the lobby doors. Steve was the first to walk up to the desk.
"Two rooms. One for me and one for the la-"
Maria cut him off. "One room. Two beds."
Seriously, this chivalry thing had to stop.
The clerk handed her the key, and gestured. The duo silently strode down the hall to the elevator, and then stepped in.
Steve remained silent, shifting from one foot to the other. Maria could tell she had seriously damaged his pride. This time, however, she wasn't going to apologize. He needed to adjust to modern life, with its own code of conduct and rules of etiquette.
"Steve, the reason I interrupted is because if two people walk into a hotel and get two different rooms, people ask questions. And when a police station suddenly gets attacked, they start demanding answers. Then people are knocking down our door and the UN is jumping all over SHIELD's ass. Then we're out of a job. Understand?"
"Yes ma'am."
Maria let the comment go. In all likeliness, it was just a slip up on Steve's part. The elevator doors opened and they walked towards the end of the hall. Then she stopped in front of her door, labeled #305, unlocked it, and stepped in.
The room wasn't large, but it wasn't overtly small either. On the left side, two beds were pushed up against the wall with a small nightstand in between. On the other, a small television stood atop a mini bar. A door towards the rear led to a bathroom with a shower. She stepped in, Steve following behind, and dropped her bags on the bed closest to the door. Steve did likewise with the opposing bed.
"You shower first. I need to relax."
Steve said nothing, still nursing his wounded pride, and pulled a spare change of clothes and an iPod with a mini speaker. It was rather anachronistic, but it was one of the first things that he first picked up on. When Tony introduced the concept to him, Steve was rather keen on having a radio that let him choose what he wanted to hear.
Steve took the items, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him. Maria collapsed onto the bed and heaved a massive lungful. Her moment of respite was interrupted by the sounds of water splashing the bottom of the shower, and Creedence Clearwater Revival playing from the mini speakers.
Steve was obsessed with them. Or rather, Steve was obsessed with anything even remotely related to the Vietnam War, the war that America lost. He had spent countless hours shut up in his room poring over maps, texts, movies, and anything else concerning the engagement. He had come up with hundreds of different ways that America could have handled the war, different approaches of assault, more comprehensive training for the soldiers, noting the serious lack of artillery, and all manner of redesigning the weapons to better handle the harsh jungle environment. Maria understood though. The reason he was so enthralled by it was due to the fact that he constantly beat himself up about it. He had spent years stuck in the ice, and he had missed it. He had constantly told himself that if he were there, America would have pulled it off without a hitch. Maria didn't doubt that.
He was one of the most brilliant thinkers that the world had seen, but that didn't change the fact that he was obsessed. There was a standing rule at SHIELD headquarters: Do not ask Steve about Vietnam. You had to be either just as obsessed, or in serious need of attention to do so, and even more obsessed in order to stand the onslaught of verbiage that Steve had prepared, just for the occasion that someone might ask him about it. Coulson didn't seem to mind it so much. That fanboy could listen to anything Steve had to say.
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More, more, more.
Maria didn't kid herself. She knew who the song was written about. It was ironic though, They had both spent years working as soldiers. Day after day, kill after kill, thankless job after thankless job. But, she consoled herself, somebody has to do it. It might as well be some of the two best soldiers on the planet. No, she wasn't superhuman, but she had worked her way up to her current skill level, and that made her more effective in combat than the Captain America or Black Widow could hope to attain. Sure, they were better at dispatching villains, but this was covert: Maria's specialty. Plus, there was an underlying reason to Maria's appointment on this op, one that she didn't want to think about.
Steve hit the pause button on the iPod and walked out of the bathroom. "It's all yours," he said as he dropped the filthy clothes casually on his own bed. Maria thanked him, grabbed her own outfit, and walked into the bathroom.
She was met with a wall of hot, steamy air as she entered. She glanced at the mirror, expecting to see her own reflection. She was disappointed upon finding that the mirror had fogged over.
She quickly undressed, pausing when she noticed that she had left her necklace on. She fingered at the clasp, found it, and then undid it, dropping it in her left hand as she did so. She stopped and stared at the piece of jewelry. A faceted emerald set in a teardrop of onyx, bound by a gold chain. She stared into the depths of the green jewel, watching as the light inside constantly shifted. It was a gift on her birthday, five years ago, and she still wore it every day. Before she even began thinking about it, she stepped into the shower, and opened the tap, letting the water ease the tension in her muscles.
It was no use, though. Nothing would get rid of the rising knot in her throat, the aching in her shoulders, the butterflies in her stomach. Not until tomorrow. She needed to end it. It needed to be her.
Maria had stood in the shower for 10 minutes before she had remembered that she had gotten in there to clean up. She quickly scrubbed down, killed the tap, and stepped out. She dressed into some sleepwear and put the necklace back on. When she walked out of the bathroom, Steve had various maps and blueprints spread out all over her bed.
"I thought it would be appropriate to give you what I've learned over the course of this week."He gestured towards a blueprint. "This is the police station. Unfortunately for the both of us, there's only one way in or out, and that's the front door." He rotated the map so that the front door was at the bottom, closest to Maria. "You mentioned that all you could see through the front wall was two people: a clerk and a guard." He pointed at two penciled X's, one next to what appeared to be a drawing of a desk, and another standing directly in front of a door. "It's safe to assume that these are the locations of the two individuals. As you can see," He pointed to a long corridor behind the guarded door, "This is a hallway leading into the main office space of the building, with two doors on the right. However, at the end of the hall, to the left," He moved his finger to a small room at the front right corner of the building, "is the security room, judging by the amount of wiring coming through the walls. This is our first target after the lobby, I'll take him alone before he can raise the alarm, then wipe the video feeds.
"You, on the other hand, are going to take the other door out of the lobby." He gestured at a small door behind the desk, and through another small corridor, leading to a double door. Then out to another small hallway going upwards towards the rear of the building. He pointed to a large room at the top left of the map. "Looking at this room, in addition to the lack of wiring and being one of the few rooms with plumbing, I'd say this is either a holding cell, or the restroom. Personally, though, I doubt that it's the restroom because it's the farthest from the general office space. This is where you're headed. Knowing what I do about how most former communist police forces operate, there will be two guards standing outside of the doors into this room, so you'll have to take them out. Then we capture the prisoner and get the hell out of Dodge before anyone can see us. Minimum body count stands at 5, and there are 25 people that work here. I'd say those are pretty good odds."
Maria said nothing, admiring the man's comprehensiveness at the situation. She was surprised that he wasn't already running SHIELD. She praised Steve for his work, then sank into a chair next to the mini bar. Steve, being Steve, asked for permission to retire, waited for her approval, and then stretched out on his own bed. Maria opened the bar and grabbed a bourbon and a glass. Switching off the lights, she poured the glass, and sat, alone in her thoughts, occasionally taking a sip. She absentmindedly fooled with the necklace she was wearing, unable to relax at all.
For two hours, she sat. thinking about tomorrow, how she was going to perform, and convincing herself that she wasn't going to choke. She couldn't. There was no room for error. She tried to console her thoughts by telling herself that she had never choked up on an op before, but that nagging thought that there was a first time for everything kept creeping its way back into her thoughts.
She eventually gave up and decided to retire for the night. She looked over to her bed. Dammit. Steve had apparently forgotten to clean up all the paperwork that was now covering her bed. She was not cleaning up, not tonight. Maria looked over to him. He had long since fallen asleep, taking long, slow, heavy breaths that a man of only his size could take in. She got up, strode over to the bed, and reclined next to him. Steve, apparently woken up now, hesitated for a moment, then comfortingly put an arm around her. Wordlessly, they both drifted off to sleep.
When Maria woke up in the morning, Steve was gone. She looked over at 'her' bed and discovered that he had cleaned up the mess of papers that he had left last night. Smart bastard, he had probably left those there on purpose. But who knows, maybe it really was a mistake. She got up, paced around the room a few times to wake herself up, and withdrew her outfit for the day.
Nothing too fanciful, as a matter of fact, it was the opposite. This was the most basic of outfits for a black ops mission. Black fatigue pants and a simple short sleeved shirt. Not much to look at, but that was what she needed. She had just finished getting dressed when the door opened and Steve walked back in with two coffees and a pastry bag.
"Brought you something."
He set the cups and the bag down on the table, then proceeded to extract and clean various weaponry from his own bag. Two small handguns that fired flechettes propelled by small canisters of compressed air. As silent was you could want in a handgun. They could kill just as easily as her own gun could. Which reminded her, she needed to clean her own guns. Not because the guns themselves needed cleaning, just that she didn't want them to jam, and she needed something to do. She didn't want to think about the op until it actually happened. As she extracted her own guns, she admired them for a moment. A pair of SIG Sauer P226s, modified by SHIELD's lab techs to be silent in every way, shape, and form. At first, she disapproved; a by-product of the silencing of the guns had reduced the power of the guns themselves. "Don't need no damn lady's gun," She had told the lab boys. But, after a while, she had begun to like it. The only sound it made was the tik of the hammer striking the pin. You could hear yourself breathe while firing this thing. And she had spent countless hours at the range perfecting her shot.
She ate while she cleaned, glad to have her mind off of what the rest of the day held for her. In one of those aspects, Steve was lucky, he didn't have to clean. His mind was with the op. She knew he was mentally going over every possible scenario that could happen. She envied him. He wasn't emotionally involved in the situation. She reassembled her guns and spoke to Steve.
"Time to go"
The two packed up and left the hotel. Maria, mindful of Steve, took the passenger's seat of the SUV and they headed off back to the old office building. When they arrived, neither bothered to even leave the vehicle, choosing to stay in the relative comfort that it offered. There they waited, steeling themselves for what came next.
It was 3:00 in the afternoon when Steve stirred from the meditative state he had been in, He looked over to Maria, sound asleep. All this stress was going to kill her. He reached over the console and lightly touched her shoulder. She started, then, upon realizing where she was, relaxed.
"We going to do this?"
"It's now or never. After 4, the fresh shift comes in, it'll be twice as hard then."
"Alright."
They left the vehicle and walked to the front of the building. Stopping at the front door, the pair quickly scanned the street for people and cameras. Finding only two cameras attached to the building, and no one in the streets, they both crossed, side by side, and wound up on both sides of the double doors of the police station. Maria withdrew her binoculars, set them to IR, and peered through the wall. The guard and clerk were both at the same places they had been the day before. She nodded to Steve, and they simultaneously opened bot doors.
Upon entering, they drew their weapons and aimed it at their respective targets. Before the guard could react, Maria had him in her sights, and pulled the trigger twice. The tick tick was barely noticeable over her own heavy breathing. She saw the guard's body slump, and then hit the floor with a thud, and immediately she turned to aim at the clerk.
He was already dead, Steve had placed one round in his chest and another round in his head. She could see the fins of the flechettes protruding from each. The Maria ran over to the clerk just as Steve did the same to the guard. She did a quick once-over to confirm the kill and raced towards the door behind the clerk's desk. She didn't look at Steve. She didn't need to. At this point, time was of the essence, and he would do his job just as well, or better than she. Throwing the door open, she sped to her right and to another set of double doors. Maria grabbed the handle of the door and flung it open. Aiming down the left side of the door, she fired her Sig while drawing the other. The two guards at the end never saw it coming.
Guards. Good. Steve was right. Maria raced down the hall to confirm the kills, and pulled a card key off one of the guards. Bringing it up to the door's lock, her comm buzzed with Steve's voice.
"Maria, we've got-"
Maria Hill's vision blurred and she heard nothing. The next thing she felt was a thud, a sharp pain, and then numbness. —-
Steve Rogers threw the door open to the hallway on the right, as Maria did the same to the door behind the desk. He had no guards in his hall, so he raced to the end, stopping at the door to his left, and pausing a moment to do a mental run down of what to do upon entering. With his gun aimed at the estimated position of the guard monitoring the cameras, and the other hand on the door handle, he calmly stepped inside.
The guard was facing the televisions on the opposite wall. Leaning forwards. Asleep. Steve put a flechette into the back of his skull and walked over to the monitors. He quickly scanned the desk, searching for the rack that stored the collective footage. As he did so, his eyes fell upon the feed for the office area. Something was wrong, there should be movement. People were working. That's when he noticed a body lying on the floor next to the entrance to a cubicle.
"Maria, We've got a problem."
But halfway through his sentence, his voice was matched by a loud burst, heavy breathing, and then static. Damn. This was going to hell quick. He found the drive array that held the station's camera feed, ripped it out, then ran down the hall, As he turned out the door, he was met with a blunt smack to the forehead, and his vision went black. —
Seconds after the initial shock of the blast threw her against the back wall, Maria Hill's vision and hearing returned, but not her feeling. She put her hand to the back of her head, and withdrew it. It was red, alright. She she struggled to get up, but there was no more strength in her arms and legs. She collapsed to the floor. Through her hazy vision, she could see a black pair of boots stride over to her. An arm masked by a green sleeve stretched down to pick up the gun she had dropped. She strained to turn her head upwards and was met with the barrel of her recently repossessed gun. Her focus shifted from the gun now only inches from her face and into the emerald green eyes of prisoner #081949. Those eyes she had for so long drawn comfort and warmth. Those deep pools that reminded her that, even though the world might be coming down around her, she would always have a home, she would always be safe in those eyes.
"My what a lovely necklace, my Aroon."
There was a tick, and Maria's vision went black.