Once again I apologize for the long wait..
enjoy and review..=))
Three men wearing tactical suits and night vision goggles entered the safe house. Clint was about to shoot when he heard one of them barking orders.
"Phil?"
"Barton?" Coulson turned at the sound of his name. Clint got up from behind the bed. "We thought you were captured."
"Nah, our comms got fried out. I was just looking for the backup ones when I heard you guys approaching."
"Where's Romanoff?"
"She's babysitting the prisoners, about 3 km northeast from here. We didn't want to compromise the safe house by bringing them here."
"Good call. Let's get to her then. Agents Pal and La Rose can finish the job here." Coulson called in to Fury. "Sir, we got Barton. There comms went out and couldn't call in. We're on our way to pick up Romanoff and the prisoners."
"Copy that, call in when you get in the air."
"When did you lose communication?" Coulson asked when they were walking to Natasha's location.
"About an hour ago. I had to fire 2 Splodie's and it messed up the comms."
"An hour? We haven't heard form you for 4 hours."
"We were in a freaking tunnel!"
"What tunnel? Barton what are you talking about?"
"The building you sent us to infiltrate is a red herring. There's a secret tunnel underneath it that leads to the real base. About 30 kilometers long. It took us almost 3 hours to get to the other side."
"Imagine that."
"Yeah, and that's not even the whole story. The leader of the misfit band, Juri Kozak, Ivanov is his boyfriend."
"We know."
"What do you mean you know?"
"Agent Vlah found out. She was trying to inform you before you started the op. We went to Fury then who ordered the extraction team to get to here and find you."
"Damn, that Vlah is really good. Can we keep her on our team?"
"I'll see what I can do. How did you found out?"
"We saw them kissing. It was really romantic. I almost wanted to let them go."
"From now on, you are not allowed near anything that has the Russians in it."
They got to the place where Clint left the car and found it gone.
"You sure it was here?" Coulson asked.
"Yeah, positive."
"Agent Coulson come in." They all heard agent Vlah's voice in the comms.
"Go ahead Vlah."
"It's Sitwell. The local police just sent out a city wide alert for all foreign operatives. Apparently, Barton and Romanoff blew up an old historical villa. Fury ordered everyone to get back to New York right now."
"We haven't found Romanoff jet." Coulson informed him.
"You need to get out now." Sitwell repeated.
"I'm not leaving her here. You go and I'll keep looking." Clint replied.
"Agent Barton, this is a direct order. Either you get on that bird on your own or your coworkers will do it for you." Sitwell cut the line.
"Agent Pal, start the 728 and call in to our pilot and the rest of the team back at our quinjet to take off immediately." Coulson ordered.
"Phil, I can't leave her here alone with the whole city looking for her."
"Clint, she spent a year hiding and evading every agency in the world. She can last a day in Budapest." Coulson reassured him, but Clint was still reluctant to go.
"Just for the record, I'm doing this under protest."
"Noted."
After an hour of driving around town and making absolutely sure she isn't being followed, Natasha returned to the rendezvous place. She figured Clint would find the disks and wait for her nearby. To her surprise, both of the disks were still at the same spot. She looked around and called out Clint's name but no response. Worried that something happened to him, she locked the car and ran to the safe house, only to find it empty and the quinjet gone.
"What the...?" Something must be wrong, Clint would have never leave her otherwise. Kozak and Ivanov will probably start waking up soon so she got back to the car and drove off to one of her safe house. She hid the car in the garage and left the two operatives in the trunk. It was a small house, only one floor but enough for Natasha to rest and figure out what is going on. She turned on the power, changed out of her suit and found an old laptop. The internet access was slow but it's all she can get for now. She knew she couldn't crack into SHIELD cams in the safe house so she scanned the traffic cams. After a few minutes of searching she saw a familiar face in a black SUV. She hacked the air traffic control to see if any quinjets have passed by. They don't show up as blips on the radar but Clint told her that they leave a special reading which most operators discard as noise. Lucky, Natasha's brain remembers everything, including how that reading looks like. Scanning the files, she found two such readings in the spawn of 20 minutes. They occurred less than half an hour ago. Natasha leaned back in surprise.
"They left me here." She saw the alert the Budapest police put out and figured out that it must have been to hot for them to stay here, but she couldn't believe that they would leave without Kozak and Ivanov. More importantly, she couldn't believe that Clint would leave without her.
She quickly put her emotions aside and tried to figure out an escape plan. She had a contingency for her and Clint but didn't know how it would work with two unconscious KGB spies in the play.
"Rise and shine." Natasha opened the trunk and woke up Kozak and Ivanov.
"What do you want, traitor?" Kozak responded.
"Traitor, really? This coming from a guy who abandoned his country as soon as it got rough." She shot back. "I figured you might be in the need of the bathroom or some water, but if you're not…" She started closing the trunk.
"No, no wait." Ivanov yelled.
"Thought so. Get out, but let me be clear, try anything and I will make you regret it."
After they satisfied their primary needs Natasha lead them back to the car.
"Here, drink this." She gave them two glasses.
"What's in it?" Ivanov asked.
"Sleeping pills. Enough to knock you out for the whole flight."
"Why would we drink that?"
"Well, I can find a needle and inject it into your blood stream." She said with a smirk. They both took a glass and drank the liquid.
"Good boys." She duck taped their mouths along with their wrists and then taped both their hands to their body on two places so that they can't move them. Same for the legs. After she was finished she pushed them in and shut the trunk. Just as she finished switching the plates for the ones she had in the garage, she heard a message sound on her laptop and went upstairs.
"Fabulous." She cleaned the laptop and the house, then took her suit and equipment and left.
New York SHIELD base – 8 hours later
Clint was in the control room, scanning the Budapest traffic cams trying to find Natasha, along with agent Vlah.
"This is the only one that caught a glimpse of the car and it was 20 minutes after you said you split up."
"Avoiding detection is second nature to her."
"Yeah, she probably isn't even thinking about it." Agent Vlah agreed.
"How far could have she gone?"
"In 8 hours. She could be in any of the surrounding states. Once you're in the European Union you can pretty easily travel trough it, if you don't raise any flags. She could even be a few hours away from the Russian border."
"She would never go in that direction. Besides she has two guys in the truck and has to avoid border control. She's staying in the EU. Could she have gotten to Berlin?"
"If she's driving the speed limit, than she still has an hour or so. You think she's going back to where you first met?"
"It's what I would do but the thing is she doesn't really think like me. You and I pretty much think outside of the box, right? That's why we're good ant our jobs." Vlah chuckled. "Well, with Natasha there isn't a box. She just imagines a scenario and makes it happen. Tracking her is impossible. I should have never left her."
"You didn't really have a choice. I'm sure she'll understand." Vlah reassured him.
"Yeah, hopefully. Hey, I wanted to ask if you would like to be our permanent tech operator. Both Nat and I really like you and, don't tell the other ones, but you're kinda the best one here."
"Wow. Yes, of course. Thank you." Vlah exclaimed happily.
"Great, Coulson will handle the bureaucratic stuff. Glad to have you on the team, now if we could just find the other part of it."
"Agent Barton, the Director wants you in conference room 2 in 10 minutes." A level 4 agent informed Clint.
"This should be good. Keep looking for Nat."
"Sure thing."
The conference room was filled with the agents from the extraction team and a couple of higher raking tech operators along with Sitwell, Coulson, Fury an secretary Pierce. The usual 'You messed up' committee, minus agent Hill who was still at the Cube.
"You called, Sir?"
"Yes, I did. We went trough your report and have a few questions."
"Whose idea was it to split up?" Pierce asked.
"Well, once we realized we need new comms and can't bring those two into the safe house…"
"Short answers, please." Sitwell interrupted.
"It was Nat's idea." Clint answered annoyed.
"So, agent Romanoff suggested that she stays with the two KGB spies on her own?"
"What, you can't be thinking…" He realized in which direction they were going with this.
"Yes or no?"
"Yes." Clint answered angrily.
"And when you and agent Coulson came back, she was gone?"
"Yes."
"Basically, what you are saying is that the Black Widow, a known Russian spy, took off with 2 former KGB operatives?" Secretary Pierce asked Clint.
"No, I'm saying that my partner, who's a former Russian spy, left our rendezvous point for unknown reasons with two ex KGB operatives."
"I heard stories about her manipulation but to see it at close range is something else."
"I'm not being manipulated. I just know she didn't run."
"Know how?"
"Call it a gut feeling."