Guest sept. 23- Muito Obrigada!

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Chapter 5- Infiltration

Romanov slid out of bed and rolled onto the floor. To help herself wake up, and to get rid of the nightmares, she began doing push-ups. She didn't count how many she did, but when her muscles began to complain she got up and did her routine sweep of the premises before getting in the shower and suiting up. Today she wore her uniform underneath a pair of jeans and some winter gear so that she looked normal. Most people thought the weather was cold here, and although it didn't bother Natasha, it gave her an excuse to cover up her uniform.

Today she would slip into the conference to evaluate her target and his personal security. He was Russian, which didn't surprise her, people were often eliminated to keep secrets or to gain power. What surprised her was the make of the gun she was supposed to use. It was american instead of the usual mercenary or terrorist weapons she used for framing. Most often they didn't give her any specific weapons and expected that there would be no evidence of her crime. If she was using an american gun, there was something bigger going on than a power grab.

After walking for a while she ate some breakfast and pretended to read a newspaper while watching the official's apartment. He kept an early morning schedule and didn't go anywhere without his entourage of guards. Due to this, she only caught a few glimpses of his face as he was ushered into his vehicle. He was staying fairly close to the conference because it would last for three days, but he would still go to the embassy for business until then.

If she were Hawkeye, and only wanted to kill him, it would be simple. Unfortunately, her mission required some drama for the death, and she wanted to find out what made this man so important to SHIELD and Russia. She thought back to Clint's offer and his note. However heartfelt Clint's offer may have been, SHIELD may not honor it. She would have to bring leverage if she really wanted to leave without being killed. Maybe getting dirt on her target would be enough. Regardless of leverage, Romanov needed to keep Barton out of this op. His performance last night demonstrated just how little subtlety he had. While he was a great assassin, and wasn't seen if he wanted to, he didn't know how to be unnoticeable, how to get information without tipping your hand. She waited until after her stake-out to find his camp because she wanted to be sure he was gone before she raided it. She would like to see him mess up her op then. She checked her watch: almost 08:00. He should be gone by now.

...

Barton groaned as the sun hit his eyes. His body still throbbed from Natasha's stinger and sleeping on a concrete floor with just a sleeping bag hadn't helped it feel any better. Blocking out the sunlight with one hand, Clint looked at his watch: 08:00. He groaned again. The ambassadors' security details would be examining the building today, and if he wanted to infiltrate it he had 30 minutes to get in position.

Ignoring the chill in the air, he hopped out of his sleeping bag and quickly threw a suit over his uniform with a big coat. Although he could deal with the cold for long periods of time to get the perfect shot, the coat would help him blend in and conceal his bow (which he didn't intend to use) and a few arrows (which were just in case). His falsified documents allowed him to carry a pistol for his cover. Satisfied that he had everything he needed, Hawkeye scarfed down a granola bar before discretely exiting the building through the back stairway.

As soon as Widow saw him jogging across the street she flung a knife attached to a rope over the ledge of the roof and toward the window of the building. She would have used a magnet, but the window frames were made of wood and she didn't want to spend more time on this than necessary. Hearing a satisfying thunk, Natasha pulled up on the rope to open the window. When it wouldn't open any higher Romanov fluidly slipped down from the roof and through the window. She had assumed his camp would be here because of its direct line of sight to the conference building and its height (hawkeye loved high places) . It had also been cleared out and guarded in preparation for the conference so there were fewer chances of someone going in and discovering his set up.

Natasha shook her head at his predictability. The sleeping bag, laptop, tripod with scope, and bag of assorted weapons and disguises confirmed his residency. Tsking at the sight of so much evidence, she began her sabotage.

First she went through the weapons and emptied all of their bullets into a throwaway bag. She did the same with the arrow-heads (leaving the shafts) and then moved on to the electronics. His laptop had a password on it, but it was no match for her hacking skills. Her organization never gave her enough information for her missions so she learned how to get it herself. They found out eventually and praised her for it, but she wondered why they hadn't just given her access in the first place. This was how she got the file on Hawkeye. Although SHIELD's security was slightly better, it took her almost no time to adapt her strategies and break in.

When she was past the first layer of defense she pulled out a hard-drive and downloaded all the encrypted files she could fit before uploading a virus she had crafted just for him. While the virus was downloading she noticed the recent messages between Hawkeye and Director Fury. The latest messages were from yesterday morning, so there was nothing about her presence except for:

Today will search for enemy agents; especially Widow.

She knew little about Nick Fury except that he was head of SHIELD and was missing an eye, so she decided to send him a message:

Widow isn't here. Proceed with mission?

She cloned the system that communicated with Fury onto her hard-drive so she could monitor their communications and especially Fury's response. With that completed she set the virus to activate when he tried to open the files on her or the mission. Smirking, she opened a bottle of black ink from her bag and poured the liquid night onto his scope. When it had dried she took out a bright red stick of lipstick and drew her symbol over the inky lense. Satisfied with her sabotage, she applied the lipstick to her lips and kissed a slip of paper that she left on top of the straightened-out sleeping bag.

With a final look at the raided camp Natasha returned her face to its usual stern expression and climbed back onto the roof. She didn't realize that her eyes were still laughing as she left to stake out the American Ambassador's security detail.

...

As the group of american security officers were admitted into the building, Clint fell into step behind them. As he passed the guards he nodded, noticing the bandages placed on the majority of the guards. Saving his questions for later, he followed the security detail around the building. When any American officer saw him he would flash his CIA badge and then ignore them. A few of the men attempted to start up conversations but he shut them down as inconspicuously as possible. While they went around evaluating the premises, he evaluated the men. He had already evaluated the building from the outside, and while the inside provided some new information it wasn't as relevant as the security detail.

As the men concluded their tour Hawkeye couldn't help but be disappointed. None of them showed signs of defecting or sabotaging the conference. His leads were dead. He knew that the Russians would kill someone, and that they would use the death to try to start another war. He didn't know who their target was, why they were being targeted, or how the USA would be blamed.

He would have to sneak in with the Russian detail to scan their team or information. Barton was disappointed. His russian was fair at best and his attitude was difficult to blend with their culture. As they exited the building Hawkeye remembered the injuries the guards had. Pausing just outside the gate, he struck up a conversation (in hungarian) with one of the injured guards. Eventually asking about his injury Hawkeye frowned when the guard said it was from a broken bottle. He and his fellows had gotten drunk and fought each other, and although no one was seriously injured, they all had a mark with the same kind of bandaging. Although it was possible they had all been bandaged by the same person after the fact, Hawkeye had a suspicion that Black Widow wanted more from them than just information. She was definitely responsible for the injuries, but why bandage them? What did she cover up with the bandages. Unfortunately he couldn't check without blowing his cover so instead he thanked the guard and walked around the block (out of sight) before discreetly returning to his camp. He needed to speak with Nick Fury.

...

After observing the american ambassador's escort for the rest of the day, Natasha stowed the throw-away bag with Clint's amo in it underneath a dumpster outside her apartment before climbing up to her own rooms.

She let the hot water of the shower wash away the sweat and dirt from the day of hard work and meditated, bringing her body back to center and to the present. Tomorrow was her last day as a russian spy, and she would give them no reason or way to follow her. Suitably refreshed, she checked the clone of Barton's computer for any new messages from Fury (Clint wouldn't be able to send any. ha.). She saw one reply:

She's there. Shoot straight. This is bigger than we thought. Don't play your hand until we know what we're dealing with, they know we sent someone.

A triumphant smirk slid onto Natasha's face, Fury was smarter than Clint, but not smart enough. He didn't know she'd hijacked him or what the mission was, but it was clear to Natasha that SHIELD was the intended scapegoat for this murder, more specifically Hawkeye. That posed a problem. If she wanted to complete her mission she would have to blame it on SHIELD, but if she wanted to defect, she couldn't kill Hawkeye or get him arrested.

The stingers in the guards would render them unconscious for the better part of an hour, plenty of time to kill her target and pin it on hawkeye sending him on the run with the russians calling for SHIELD's blood. SHIELD would have no evidence against the russians except that they sent an agent, which would easily be rationalised as defense. "We were suspicious that SHIELD would attempt something at the meeting, so we sent an agent to prevent any trouble. We were right, but underestimated SHIELD's brutality as they tortured our agent to keep them from interfering. We have not had contact since the death of our beloved ambassador and can only assume that they were killed by SHIELD's own agent: Hawkeye." The argument was ridiculously predictable, but would be effective regardless. She was the only one with enough information to see it coming. Hawkeye wouldn't stand a chance. She let out a small sigh. Natasha had a lot of planning to do before the peace conference tomorrow.

...

As his camp came into view Clint immediately noticed that things were amiss. His sleeping bag was neatly made, his scope had a pool of dried black ink underneath it, and his laptop had been moved. First he ran to the sleeping bag on top of which was placed a note. He didn't even need to see the kiss on it to know who it was from. Without bothering to open the note he continued to almost frantically check his belongings. His scope was probably ruined, the Black Widow symbol on it permanently stained the lense. His ammo bag had been emptied, with all but shafts of arrows and empty clips left to taunt him. Full of dread he opened his computer and held his breath. Strangely it seemed fine. He did a virus scan and brought up nothing. He checked his communication line to Fury and paled. She had sent a message to Fury. It was nothing too bad, and Fury hadn't responded yet so it might not be too late to fix things and make sure she stayed out of his communication lines. Communication! He suddenly remembered the note in his hands and opened it. It was in morse code. No need to make it easy for me Widow, he thought sarcastically. Thankfully he did remember all of his morse code and quickly translated the note in his head:

Bug out of my op birdboy before you get hurt.

You shouldn't play with fire, you only get burned.

On the surface Widow was gloating over her destruction of his camp as revenge for him messing up her operation the night before. But something about the last line felt weirdly familiar. Leave it to Natasha to speak in code within another code. The phrasing didn't feel like she was talking about him in that second line, more like she was talking about someone else, maybe even herself. Anxious to discover if there were any mentions of 'fire' in Black Widow's file, he opened it on his laptop. What he did not expect to happen was an hawk trapped in a spider's web as blood filled the screen.

"Nononononononono!" He frantically chanted at the computer. He frantically tried to click anywhere and held the power-button down as hard as he could.

"Crap! Damnit Widow!" The blood graphic faded to reveal a dead hawk and then quickly shut-off. He pounded his fist against the wooden table in frustration. How?! Why?! He had been certain that she would want to leave Russia and join SHIELD, that she was trying to throw the russians off before she defected. But they wouldn't know about this. This was personal. She found out where he would be hiding and told him to back-off. He was completely confused and ashamed. How could he have been so predictable! How come he hadn't set up better defenses. He had truste his instincts, and while it usually worked, this time she burned him.

He shook his head of any emotion. Widow was his enemy, and she had exploited the trust he had given her. She may still decide to join him, but until then, he would not cut her anymore slack.

Redetermined to complete his mission in spite of Romanov, he laid out what he had brought with him that day, the only ammunition he had left, and any other materials he found to take inventory. He was good with improvisation. Widow hadn't beaten him yet.

...

Thanks for reading! Sorry this took so long, I'm trying to find a good way to build to the climax, I don't want you guys to see it coming. ;)

Please review! I only get better when I have feedback to learn from. It is also very motivational and makes me jump up and down like a 5-year-old. Thanks again!