Disclaimer: I do not own Of Monsters and Men. I also do not own Iron Man. He belongs to Marvel. I just get to throw them in the cage and let them fight it out. I probably should have hired a referee.
Chapter 3: Definition
Of Monsters and Men- Wolves Without Teeth
"I am truly sorry about this," Col. Rhodes apologized for the second time since their take off time had come and gone.
Angela waved him off. "It's not a problem, Colonel. I've been working for Mr. Stark for over a decade." The unspoken expectation of her boss's lateness hung in the air.
She'd shown up at 4:30 in the morning to make the flight that was supposed to depart at 5:30. Even with a private jet, airport security took some time to get through. After greeting the Colonel, and making her way through her fourth cup of coffee for the day, she felt marginally more awake.
It was going to be a long flight. A nineteen hour plane ride, if they ever got off the ground. Of course, it was now after seven and there was still no sign of Tony Stark. Thank God she'd packed her laptop and charged her phone. She'd already called Pepper to wish her a happy birthday and watched two episodes of Storm Chasers.
Speaking of Pepper, the Colonel was getting ready to call her again. The military man was one Pepper counted as a friend, so Angela waved to get his attention. "It's Pepper's birthday," she mentioned. Col. Rhodes smiled and nodded. The call connected. She could hear him wishing the red head well before asking the woman about their boss and his estimated arrival time.
That time turned out to be over an hour later when a pearl Audi screamed into the parking lot. It was followed shortly by Pepper's husband Happy in his black car. Angela pulled her phone out and shot a quick text to Pepper, tattling on her husband's race car driving. She was busy snickering at Pepper's pithy text back so missed the majority of Col. Rhodes scolding of her boss.
"Well hello." A smooth voice greeted her from just inside the doorway to the plane.
Angela managed to keep from rolling her eyes. "Hello, Mr. Stark. Glad you could join us."
The man seated himself across from her and grinned. "How did I get so lucky as to have your company on this field trip?"
"Higher powers than I deemed it necessary I take in some desert air." After a moment of deliberation she asked, "It wasn't you, was it?"
He chuckled lowly. "Not my idea," he informed her. "I thought our date was set for Tuesday."
"Meeting, Mr. Stark," she corrected. If it wasn't Stark who ordered her out then Stane must have deemed her presence necessary.
She turned her attention to Col. Rhodes joining them in the conference seating. He strapped in and Angela tried to patiently wait for take off to be over. Once they had leveled out, she could pull out her laptop and get down to the business of informing Mr. Stark about his missing weapons. Of course, by the time take off was over Stark's attention was otherwise engaged.
"What you reading, platypus?" The man could stress a saint, Angela thought unkindly.
"Nothing," Col. Rhodes flipped his paper over.
Angela took the moment to un-strap and go for her carry on. She dodged a blond stewardess who was setting up the table for a meal. Behind her she heard Stark continue on, "Come on sour patch. Don't be mad. Panda's not mad."
The storage lid banged against the ceiling when she flipped it up with more force than necessary. She hated that nickname. It came from the first year she'd been working at Stark Industries. She was twenty four years old and trying like hell to make something of herself. Angela could also admit, that at the time, she had been unnerved by a man like Stark flirting with her.
"I told you. I'm not mad. I'm indifferent. Okay," Col. Rhodes replied blandly.
Angela tugged out her bag and lugged it back over to the table they were at.
"I said I was sorry," the billionaire complained.
Slipping between two stewardesses she sat back down. "Good morning, Mr. Stark," one greeted.
Rhodes dropped his paper down and turned to Stark. "You don't need to apologize to me. I'm your man," he commented.
"Hi," Stark replied to the stewardess. "I told him I was sorry but he…"
Rhodes cut him off. "I'm just indifferent right now."
Trying to ignore the banter Angela pulled out her laptop and double checked she had her thumb drive. The trip was about to go downhill. She plugged it in and started organizing the documentation she had.
"Panda, I told him I was sorry," Stark half whined.
She continued going through the documents without looking up. Sometimes it was better not to react, but sometimes she couldn't help herself. "Didn't tell me you were sorry," she muttered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Stark open his mouth.
Rhodes saved her though. "You don't respect yourself so I know you don't respect me."
"Hot towel?" A stewardess asked.
"I respect you," Stark defended.
"I'm just your babysitter," Rhodes continued over him. "So when you need your diaper changed," the Colonel paused to thank a stewardess for a hot towel.
Angela waved the woman off with a half smile and a polite, "No, thank you."
"Let me know and I'll get you a bottle. Okay?" Rhodes finished.
Stark turned to the stewardesses. "Hey! Heat up the sake will you?" He turned back to the Colonel. "Thanks for reminding me."
Angela sucked on her bottom lip. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Next came the fun part, breaking it to Mr. Stark that very bad things were happening with his company. Maybe she should let him get a little drunk first?
"Hey," Rhodes protested. "No. I'm not talking, we're not drinking. We're working right now."
"Mr. Stark," Angela injected. On second thought drunk was probably not a good state to be in when told bad news. He would need to function in an official capacity. Not that being drunk had ever stopped him in the past.
"You can't have sashimi without sake," he declared, glancing over at her and raising an eyebrow. "I told you, Panda. It's Tony."
Rhodes shook his head. "You are constitutionally incapable of being responsible," he complained.
"It would be irresponsible not to drink," Stark protested.
Angela spun her laptop ninety degrees to face her boss.
He continued. "I'm just talking about a nightcap." He leaned forward a little and glanced at the computer. "What's this?"
"Hot sake?" A stewardess asked. Angela suppressed an eye roll at the constant interruptions.
Stark relaxed back. "Yes. Three please."
"No," the colonel denied. "I'm not drinking. I don't want any."
"I do," Angela admitted. She ignored the betrayed look from Col. Rhodes. It was going to be a bad enough day. One couldn't hurt.
"That's what I'm talking about," Stark half cheered. "Panda knows."
"Would you stop with the ridiculous nickname. Please." She knew it came out sounding exasperated and begging. She couldn't help it.
The stewardess poured them sake while Stark and Rhodes continued bickering.
Angela sipped her drink and let out an audible sigh. Best to be blunt so as to grab his attention. "Mr. Stark, someone is stealing your weapons," she announced baldly. She sat back and waited.
Stark continued talking for half a comment before he trailed off. He coughed out a, "What?" The question was echoed by Colonel Rhodes.
Angela leaned around the laptop, pulling up several saved files of shipping receipts. She put on her most professional self and began her explanation. "I ran across the first irregularity two months ago and followed up with the Director of Inventory. Earlier this week, I found three new instances with the same pattern." She pointed to the screen. "The shipping address and company name do not match."
Stark was frowning and Rhodes had left his seat to crouch down on Stark's side of the table.
Angela took another sip of sake. This time purely to wet her drying mouth. "When I looked up the original erroneous manifest, the address had been changed." She didn't feel the need to explain his own system's redundancies for filing originals of mistakes for reference. "I had saved a screenshot of the original discrepancy on my computer. When I searched for it for reference, the file was gone. I saved a screenshot of these three," she gestured to the images showing on her laptop, "On an external jump drive."
"Did you follow up with Henz for these as well?" Stark was back in business mode for the moment.
Angela bit her bottom lip. "I admit, not that day. I decided to see if the documents would be changed again," she explained.
When he looked up at her quizzically, she shrugged. "Paranoia after the Hammer Industries mole last year."
"So these weapons went to the wrong address?" Rhodes asked.
"These weapons went to a deliberately changed address that was then changed back to a legitimate business address. A business that, by the way, did not order a shipment to begin with. I checked." And to cover her bases she had.
"Further, the screenshots of these that I saved to my computer were likewise removed the next day." Both men frowned. "I strongly suspect they were removed by Hoeft from IT. One of my team members saw him in my office that morning."
"That's bad," Rhodes murmured.
"Yes," Angela agreed. "My access to the shipping network was also revoked. I decided to switch my focus to the component database. If weapons were going missing," she trailed off.
Stark finished for her, "Components would be easier."
She made an agreeing noise and reached across to bring forward several more documents. "Here. An unusual number of out of speck casings with no record of follow through with Disposal. A large group of control actuator systems destroyed in an accident without documented follow up through Safety." She moved forward another document with a long list of products. "Electronic components completely wiped from Inventory without explanation. Pressure vessels and rocket motor casings lost or damaged during shipment without appropriate forms being filled out."
"You found all this?" The Colonel asked with an odd touch to his voice.
Angela chanced a glance at her boss and noticed his glare could melt her laptop screen. His temper could be formidable.
She finished the last of her sake and wanted another. "Yes. Once I went looking it was obvious whoever is responsible only made a token effort to cover their tracks."
"No," Stark drawled. His voice took on that supercilious tone he used when someone had really screwed up. "This is spread through disparate sections of my company; Inventory, Safety, IT, even Acquisition."
With a bit of a hush in her voice, Angela entreated, "Look at the warhead list." That was something she had found later in her search. It chilled her. She pulled up the file list she had made and a cascade of saved images opened behind it. The missing munitions were highlighted in each instance.
"Jesus," Rhodes breathed in horror.
Angela knew her face was grim, but Mr. Stark's was a rictus of fury. "I'm dealing with this now," he growled.
Angela sucked in a breath. "Could you keep my name out of it?" She knew her voice wavered and sucked her lips in. "It's…" She gestured to the screen, struggling to put her request into words. "Someone already took the time to hack my computer and erase the initial screen shots, twice. They know who accessed that information. The second time I didn't bother with a memo, just kept it to myself until I could schedule a meeting with you. The earliest of which would have been Tuesday if my plans hadn't changed to include this trip."
Stark gave a short jerk of a nod and paced to the other end of the plane. She saw him pull his phone in front of his face and caught enough of the conversation to know he was talking with Mr. Stane.
Her eyes slid back to the Colonel who was still reading over the documents in front of them. His gaze flicked up to hers and held it. "Why did you dig so much?"
Angela blinked and furrowed her brow in confusion. "I design these weapons, Colonel. I know what they're capable of." And, Angela thought to herself, it galled her that someone would steal what she considered her intellectual property. That they then tried to make a fool of her, even peripherally, was not to be borne.
"Yes," Rhodes nodded. "But you could have passed this on, or not gone full detective. That's not your job, right?" He got up from his crouch and moved back to his seat.
"No," Angela agreed turning towards him again. It wasn't her job. It was something she'd taken on voluntarily. Admittedly, until she realized how serious the situation was it'd mostly been a point of pride for her. She'd policed her department on some level since she'd started working at SI.
"But like I said I design these weapons. Having even components of them out there in unregistered hands is a catastrophe. You can't tell me that everything that's gone missing hasn't ended up on the black market somewhere. That's my tech in the hands of potential terrorists." She felt a shudder run down her spine and felt sick to her stomach again. Angela swallowed back bile and acknowledged a grim hurtful truth. "People are going to die because of that."
She reached over for the bottle of sake and refilled her cup. Rhodes held his own up and she obligingly filled it as well.
"Frankly?" Ahe turned to look questioningly at Rhodes and he gave a nod to go on. She allowed herself to lose her professional mien. "It pisses me off. And whoever did this is not smarter than I am," she declared.
Rhodes sipped his sake and looked her over appraisingly. "You found the mole from Hammer Tech you mentioned, didn't you?" It was more of a statement than a question.
Angela felt slightly warm after finishing off her second cup of sake and responded to the Colonel by cocking a dark arrogant brow. "Not smarter than me," she boasted with a dangerous edge.
Rhodes chuckled lightly.
"You have to understand, Colonel." He interrupted her to ask her to call him Jim. In the background she could hear Stark clearly reaming someone out over the phone. She nodded and continued. "I work in a field dominated by men."
The countless times she'd been dismissed or talked down to flashed through her mind. "I am always underestimated," she bitterly admitted. "Often I have to work twice as hard just to be considered not slacking. It lends me towards situations like this, where I catch something no one else has simply because I always look harder at everything."
Angela privately conceded she was nosy and always looking for an angle to exploit as well. She had also learned the hard way that if everyone hesitated to act then no one acted, and innocent people died in things like plane crashes.
Jim nodded, but then a shadow crossed his face. He refilled both their sake glasses. "You should be careful. Whoever did this is not going to be happy it was found out. Even if you're name isn't brought into it further, you mentioned they're already aware the information was accessed by you."
Angela blew a breath out and rubbed some hair out of her face. "I know. I took some precautions but," she trailed off with a wave of her hand. Her throat ached in remembrance. "I know what happens to whistleblowers."
Stark chose that moment to plop back down in his seat with them. "You got started without me. Platypus and Panda bear." He ran a hand over his face tiredly. "Well Panda you already uncovered a shady arms conspiracy today. Staging a mutiny now?"
Rhodes shook his head in long suffering, but Angela felt her mouth run away with her again. She held up her cup and smirked. "This is only my fourth glass."
A wan grin broke across Stark's face. "Right." He reached over and poured himself a drink. "Ladies," he called out. "Let's get this party started."
…...
After her fifth cup of sake, Angela cut herself off and switched to water. The three of them were seated on the sofa built into the plane facing the stripper pole. She tilted her head to the side and watched the blond stewardess she side stepped earlier swing herself around said pole. Angela gave it a two out of five. It was a basic spin. She also recognized that even cut off, she was drunk.
Next to her Jim was going on about how the military had his back and how Tony was a better person than he thought he was. She could agree with that. Her boss was a good man deep down. What it would take to bring that to the surface regularly however, was beyond her.
Tony, drunk as he was, leaned forward around Jim. "This isn't bothering you is it?" He asked her, gesturing out to the dancing stewardesses.
"Would it stop if I said yes?" She wondered.
He shook his head. "No."
Angela blew a breath out her nose. She didn't think so.
"Well maybe." He reconsidered with a blink. "You could sue me," he admitted. "Uncomfortable work environment or something."
"It's fine," Angela rolled her eyes tiredly. She'd known the man long enough to recognize that, though a womanizer, Tony Stark did not wish harm.
"Really?" Jim had turned his attention to her as well now.
"I told you, Jim. I work in a field dominated by men. It was the same during college. Who do you think I hung out with?" She answered her own question. "It was engineering nerds. This is not my first strip show," she admitted.
"Really?" Jim asked again. Angela glanced at him. He was really drunk.
"Really," she answered. Then she gestured vaguely toward the blonde. "She has a two out of five for the spin she did a second ago. I've seen better pole work," she admitted wryly.
Stark started laughing. "I like you when you're drunk, Panda." He gave her a salacious grin. "You want to demonstrate?"
Angela threw a long glare at her boss. Just because she knew he didn't mean it, didn't mean it didn't occasionally annoy her. "No." It came out kind of childish.
Her boss laughed harder.
"Why's he call you Panda?" Jim was slurring his words badly.
Angela sipped her water and held her silence, however Stark warmed to the subject. "The first time I toured weapons development after she was hired I found this little brunette with a cute…" He broke off when Angela ratcheted her glare up to nuclear levels. With a guffaw, he continued. "Anyway, I leaned in to see what she was working on."
Angela chose to cut him off verbally. "You got into my personal space and reached around my side from behind me. I thought it was Sterns," she grumbled.
"Sterns?" Stark titled his head. "He was Head of Weapons back then, right? The one we kept finding asleep on the job? He harassed you?" He seemed ruffled by the idea.
Angela waved a hand lazily. "Once. I elbowed him in the solar plexus." She was still proud of that, even if it had turned the lab she was working in into a cold war at the time. Of course, that wasn't the only thing she was proud of when it came to Sterns. HR hadn't been the greatest at dealing with sexual harassment back then. She'd had to get creative. There was a reason they kept finding Sterns when he took his naps.
Stark winced. "Vicious bear," he mumbled. "That's not supposed to happen."
"Says the man who was just commenting on my cute something," she pointed out.
"Yeah," Stark shook his head, "But I wouldn't touch you."
For some reason this tripped Angela's sense of humor and she snickered.
"I think that came out wrong," Stark admitted.
"Sounded fine to me," Angela snarked.
Stark cleared his throat. "Anyway," he drew out peevishly. "She slapped my hand away and growled at me. Me, Rhodey." He acted deeply wounded.
Jim chuckled loudly.
Stark continued. "She had these big dark sad eyes."
Angela broke in. "He said I was like a bear, but a cute one with eye bags."
"That's not what I said." He pointed a finger on the hand holding his drink at her.
"Close enough," Angela sipped her water again. She was going to call it soon and go curl up in one of the chairs for awhile.
"So, Panda," Stark finished with a gesture towards her.
"I hate that name," Angela informed him.
It was quiet for a second. She realized her unfocused gaze had drifted back to looking at the strippers. Still not very good, she thought. After awhile of only hearing the music she turned back toward Jim to see him passed out. Angela felt her eyebrows raise. "He's asleep," she commented.
"Light weight." Stark poured another glass of alcohol for himself.
Angela hummed, then stood and stretched. "He's got the right idea."
"Where you going?" Her boss blinked at her.
"Chair." Angela pointed to the side of the room.
"Sleep on the couch. Hell, take the bed. You earned it today." Stark opined. "Course, I could always join you," he offered playfully.
Angela snorted inelegantly. "That's not supposed to happen," she snidely repeated his words.
He gave her a mock sad face. "I just want to cuddle," he teased.
She rolled her eyes at him. "The chair will be fine." While letting out a jaw cracking yawn, she took a few steps forward.
With more concentration than usual, she drew her cloak of professionalism around her and tapped the arm of a brunette stewardess dancing across the floor. "Excuse me." When the stewardess turned to her Angela made sure her voice was very clear. "If I'm not already awake, could you please wake me up about an hour before we land?"
"Of course," the brunette answered agreeably.
"Thank you." Angela slunk across the floor, folded herself into a chair and closed her eyes. The reveal had gone about as well as she thought it would. At least she'd finally managed to hand off the entire ordeal.
…...
When Angela got off the plane at Bagram Air Force base, she greeted the General and assorted officers politely.
When Stark gave his spiel about the Jericho missile and demonstrated it, she was secretly awed something she had made had such destructive power. The feeling of a job well done swept through her as Angela answered a few technical questions.
When it was over and Stark insisted she ride with him in the 'fun'vee,' she almost declined.
"Come on, Panda," Stark cajoled. "You don't want to ride by yourself."
Angela glanced at the humvee directly in front of the one Stark was riding in. Their escort had allotted space there for her. If she rode with her boss it would be tight. Five people in a four person vehicle was not ideal.
Jim had already gone ahead to join his transport and her military detail was getting restless with their delay. Angela sucked on her bottom lip, somewhat reluctant to be in a strange country on her own.
"I promise to behave myself," Stark added.
"You never behave yourself," Angela quipped back.
"So you should ride with me to keep an eye on me," he wheedled.
She weighed the pros and cons. In the end, boss or not, she would be more comfortable traveling with someone she knew. "Fine," she capitulated.