He usually had at least a week of peace in between missions. Longer, in fact; SHIELD wasn't exactly well-run these days. Sometimes two weeks or three weeks could pass before a new mission was assigned to him. But he was called in only a few days after his last mission, the mission where Agent Lewinski had died. He was called in two days after he and Ari had gone on her house calls, first thing in the morning. She'd been extremely busy at the clinic and her other places of volunteer or work; Ari was involved with a lot of personal projects. But she showed up at 24 Pryde the same day and time that he did, so he knew that she was being called in for this mission as well.
Fury wasn't there—of course he wasn't. Instead, Agent Bauer briefed them on their mission. Agent Bauer was one of the oldest remaining loyal SHIELD agents. She was around sixty and had been grievously injured fifteen years ago, rendering her incapable of going out into the field—but she was still a good leader. She'd never wanted the director's position but she'd loyally served Fury when he'd been the director and she was a trusted ally with all the best, oldest, and most legendary agents. Bauer was a name well-known at SHIELD. Bucky liked her because she'd never given him shit for his past; in fact, she'd been completely indifferent towards him, as if his past were not even relevant but didn't even exist. He was just Agent—or Sergeant—Barnes to her.
"We've got a small HYDRA problem that needs to be contained," she stated crisply, as soon as everyone who been called was assembled in the office where Fury had also met with them. Ari was there, Agent Kaplan, Agent Chang, and another agent whose name Bucky didn't know. "We were alerted of it an hour ago. Texas, a small ranch out in the middle of goddamn nowhere." She rolled her eyes. Now that SHIELD no longer had a fleet of expensive quinjets at their service, getting places was more difficult and costly. "We've gotten word that a man named Brett McGuire is hiding out there. Lower ranking HYDRA agent but he still had contact with Pierce, Hoffman, Rusky—the big names in the country. Therefore, he needs to be brought in for information extraction." And by "information extraction" she meant torture. She paused and then said, "Though even if he were the lowest-ranking HYDRA agent who only ever cleaned their bathrooms, I'd still want him gone. I'd like to stamp each and every one of these nasty weasels out."
This was the kind of sass that had made Agent Bauer a living legend. She was definitely a colorful character.
"I'm sending you five in," she continued. "It's overkill, I know that, but we don't know who else is out there with him so better to storm in with the cavalry than slink in woefully unprepared. Sergeant Barnes, you're running point on this. Try to keep Madden out of the line of fire, she's one of the only medics we've got left and I'm too damn tired to find another one who won't turn out to be stinkin' traitorous rat."
"Yes, ma'am," Bucky murmured, hiding his smile by staring past Agent Bauer's head to the wall behind her.
"And Chang, you try to stay out of the line of fire as well," barked Agent Bauer. "You're a damn good hacker, I don't need you blown to bits."
Agent Eli Chang, a man with glossy black hair and an elfin, wicked smile grinned widely and said, "Yes, ma'am."
"We have a small private jet that'll be flying you to a chosen point in Oklahoma—I won't disclose the point right now—and you'll be driven by an agent in Oklahoma the rest of the way to McGuire's cabin or ranch or whatever the hell he's hiding in. Coordinates will be provided once you touch down. Now…you'll be taken to the jet; wheels up in thirty minutes."
Bucky noticed Agent Kaplan, a short man with short bristly dark hair, frowning and then said, "We're going to arrive during daylight hours…if we're driving up to his ranch, then he's going to s—"
"Yes, Kaplan, McGuire is going to see you coming from miles away," Agent Bauer said impatiently. "So be on your guard. What do you want me to say? You're SHIELD agents, you know how to handle yourselves. Go in easy or storm in hard, I don't care—just try not to kill yourselves and make sure to bring McGuire back with you. Alive. The man's no use to anyone dead, though believe me, I'd like him dead."
Agent Kaplan looked angry and embarrassed at being called out but he folded his hands behind his back and respectfully, grudgingly, said, "Yes, ma'am."
"Good," she barked. "Now get out. Fetch will take you to the jet, she's waiting outside."
They exited the office, shutting the door behind them, to meet a young woman waiting with her hands also folded behind her back. She wore all black, was as petite as Ari, and had short cropped blonde hair and a very young, innocent-looking face. Ari was twenty-four but this girl couldn't have been over the age of nineteen. "Team Beta?" she asked.
"Is that the name we have this time?" Bucky asked.
She smiled apologetically. "It appears so. I'm here to drive you to the jet. Follow me." She strode off and they all followed. They were used to this; it happened every time they had a mission that required them to take a jet. But they had never been escorted by someone as young as…
"Fetch?" Ari asked, hurrying to catch up to the blonde girl. "Not to be rude or anything—I'm just curious—is that your name?"
The girl rolled her eyes slightly but kept smiling. "That's what Agent Bauer calls me. I'm not a real SHIELD agent. I guess you could say I'm clearance Level .5, if anything. I run a lot of errands, do a lot of the driving around, a lot of the managerial and secretarial and grunt work. She said she didn't want to bother learning my name anyway so she started calling me Fetch—like a dog, you know?—and the nickname stuck."
"And you're okay with that?" Ari asked. "Do you want us to call you something else? Like your real name?" Ari was big on respecting peoples' names and what they wanted to be called; a holdover from her days as a full time nurse. She'd once told Bucky that some patients absolutely refused to see a nurse if they weren't addressed properly, even if their demands were somewhat ridiculous or confusing.
"Nah, it's fine, call me Fetch," Fetch said. "She doesn't mean any harm." She paused. "I think." They had entered the garage now and she ushered them all into a black Jeep, saying, "Weapons and suits will be on the jet." Being the one in charge of the mission—which was still a strange feeling to Bucky, sometimes, giving the orders instead of blindly receiving and following the orders—he sat in the passenger seat in case Fetch (he was going to have a really hard time calling her this) needed to tell him anything.
But she didn't. She drove in composed, professional silence, a pleasant smile on her face, the whole thirty minutes it took to arrive at an open field with a jet waiting for them. It was a small, gray jet that had clearly seen better days…but it was still better than driving all the way to the mission (which, indeed, was something they'd had to do once and Bucky preferred not to remember that fiasco). A man was leaning against the outside of the jet, smoking a cigarette and staring off into the distance. H straightened up when the Jeep pulled to a stop and quickly stomped out his cigarette, standing to attention. Team Beta (honestly, why was it named Team Beta? Bucky wondered. It seemed almost as if Agent Bauer had done it on purpose to humiliate them) piled out of the Jeep quickly and Fetch turned the Jeep around on the field and drove off without another word. She really was very efficient. She'd gotten them here in minimal time, somehow bypassing all other traffic.
Bucky strode over to the man and curtly said, "Sergeant Barnes. This is Team Beta." He tried not to grimace on the word "beta." He wasn't used to being second best in anything. "And you are…?"
"Captain Lee," he replied with a noticeable twang. "Not an agent of SHIELD but I've worked with them for a long time. I'll be the one flying y'all out to Old Okie today."
"Are you from Texas?" Agent Chang asked, a wicked glint in his shiny dark eyes.
"Yes, I am," said Captain Lee. "How'd you know?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Agent Chang, his voice suddenly mysteriously adopting a bit of a Southwestern accent, "Y'all just sound so—"
"Enough," barked Bucky. "Everyone, in the plane. Are we prepped to go?" he asked Captain Lee, ignoring Agent Chang's biting look. Captain Lee nodded and Bucky said, "Alright, then we take off as soon as possible. Everyone get in and suit up. Now." Why are you being such a jerk? the withering, nasty voice in his head that he heard so often asked him. This isn't the way to convince anyone you're a new man.
I don't care. He stiffly climbed up into the jet, ignoring the prickles of his conscious berating him for being so harsh on Agent Chang. He felt angry but he couldn't tell if he felt angry at the others for not seeming to take this mission seriously—or if he was angry at himself because of his inability to take a joke, his uptight behavior and harsh words. Had he handled that poorly? A part of him didn't really care either way. His job was to complete the mission, not mollycoddle his team members. But at the same time…he wasn't the Winter Soldier anymore. He couldn't treat the humans around him like disposable objects.
He suddenly felt someone's hand on his arm and he spun around to see Ari. She raised an eyebrow at his jerky movements but quietly said, "Soldier. Take it easy."
"He was—" Confusion and rage made Bucky unable to even speak for a moment and he raised his eyes skywards to try and figure out where his annoyance was coming from. "I didn't mean—"
"I know you didn't mean to bite his head off," said Ari, "but you did. In an emergency, I'd understand but that wasn't an emergency. He was just trying to lighten the mood."
"I know," Bucky said tightly.
"I'm saying this for you too, you know," she added, squeezing his arm. "You shouldn't be so on edge, it'll put you—and the rest of us—in jeopardy. Remember what Steve told you: stay on your guard but relaxed. As the Winter Soldier, you didn't have to deal with emotions. Now you do and they can trip you up unless you try to control your temper." He felt the familiar calming sensation that her presence seemed to bring. How could one person always say the right thing, always make someone feel so much better? It wasn't normal. He'd have to take Ari for a checkup at the doctor sometime (if he ever got over his fear of doctors, that is) to get her checked up. Yes, Doctor, I think there's something wrong my friend here; she's always calm and rational and she never gets angry at me, yet she somehow manages to calmly reprimand me in the nicest way possible. Is this normal?
"Ready to go?" called Captain Lee from the cockpit. Bucky himself knew how to pilot a jet—he knew how to do most anything in connection to combat and warfare—but ever since his first episode experiencing a day terror during a mission he hadn't been allowed to pilot any piece of aircraft. He strongly suspected Fury was purposely keeping him away from piloting a jet in the fear that he would have a day terror right in the middle of flying and kill everyone—but, for once, Bucky agreed with Fury. He couldn't control when his day terrors came on (though they were rare) and he didn't want to be responsible for the deaths of a whole team.
"Let's go," Bucky called. The jet engines rumbled and then flared to life and everyone strapped themselves to a seat on either side of the jet wall. This wasn't a normal airplane with seats in rows for normal passengers; the seats pressed against the walls so that the agents sat across from each other when buckled in. Agent Chang, Agent Kaplan, and the third agent (whose name was Agent Tate, Bucky had figured out) sat on one side and Ari and Bucky sat across from them. Bucky tried to ignore Agent Chang's pointed gaze as the jet raced across the well-worn field, picking up speed and then sharply angling as it took off into the air. Bucky took a moment to make the same prayer he always did when they took a jet anywhere: that the government didn't shoot them down. The government still tolerated SHIELD but just barely and Bucky knew it wouldn't take much for them to "accidentally" shoot down a largely-unofficial SHIELD jet under the guise that it was an unregistered aircraft in U.S. airspace. That was one threat that even Bucky couldn't defend himself—or the rest of the team—against and so it made him a little frightened.
Not that he would ever admit that to anyone except perhaps Ari. And probably even not her. He still tried to save face in front Ari when he could. Perhaps Steve…
Once the jet was safely in air, the team unbuckled themselves and began suiting up in the combat gear and weapons that had already been left in the jet, presumably by some efficient SHIELD lackey like Fetch. Or perhaps it had been Fetch herself who had left them here. Whoever it was, they had everyone's perfect sizes and preferred weapons and tools of choice, so Bucky had to admire the planning that had gone into this, considering that the mission had just come up. Despite being sorely underfunded and understaffed now, SHIELD still retained some vestige of professionalism.
Even while the rest of the world seemingly went to hell.
When Bucky looked at Ari, she looked a bit green and sick in the face as she twirled a dagger in her hand absentmindedly. "What's wrong?" he asked her in a low voice, keeping an eye on the dagger. It would be just like Ari to cut herself accidentally (though she'd be able to mend her own wound). It seemed a little too big for her and he remembered that he'd left the dagger he meant to give her back at home. "Airsick?" He'd never known her to be airsick before but there was always a first for everything…
"Just preparing myself," she muttered, taking a deep breath and looking a bit like she needed a paper back to breathe into. "Violence, killing, all that good stuff we do."
Bucky shifted awkward. He was always more okay with fighting and death than she was and it sometimes made him feel uncomfortable. It made him feel more callous, more cold, more robotic. Was Ari just exceptionally human? Or was he too emotionless? She brought out the best in him but sometimes he privately thought she also brought out the most Winter Soldier in him as well, as a contrast to her humanity. Steve tended to have the same effect on him as well. "Well…it is for good," he reminded her. "Or our intentions are anyway," he muttered, suddenly remember that, for decades, SHIELD had thought it was doing good when it had really been infiltrated by a poisonous organization. Even HYDRA had thought it was doing good while doing evil…
What if they were being manipulated in the same way, even now? The thought made Bucky want to shut down. He had had enough of lies, enough of fighting for people who didn't tell him the truth.
But right now there was a mission to finish. When Bucky received a mission, he had a one-track mind for it. Nothing else mattered except hunting down, and finishing, the mission. He'd deal with these existential and philosophical musings later, during his sleepless and tormented nights.
It normally took about two and a half hours, give or take, for flights to get from Washington D.C. to Oklahoma City—but not only was this SHIELD jet not going to any official Oklahoma City terminal, but it was also probably breaking some air traffic laws as it went. Bucky could tell that they were breaking the "speed limit" (so to speak) as they went but he didn't care either way. Whatever got them to Oklahoma and out of the air fastest. Being in the air was when he was most vulnerable and his fight with Steve on the helicarrier in D.C. hadn't helped make him any less nervous when flying now. In fact, he could even distantly remember that even as the Winter Soldier he'd been more tense when flying anywhere on a HYDRA jet, though those moments had been rare (he'd usually worked alone).
It took them exactly two hours to reach their landing site and they were a very silent and awkward two hours. SHIELD missions weren't exactly social parties but Bucky knew that his presence was dampening the mood slightly. It always did, on every mission he'd gone on in the past year. Either people were afraid of him, intimidated by him, resentful of him—or they just didn't know what to say around him. He wanted to let people know that they could talk about normal things, be normal, around him—he wasn't going to bite—but that wasn't exactly true, was it? He'd almost just bitten Chang's head off for no reason.
They encountered no problems and touched down in an empty field, no humans or buildings in sight for as far as the eye could see. The only thing that they could see, in fact, was a Jeep parked a few feet away. Captain Lee waved goodbye to them once they were all off and ready and then he slowly turned the jet around and took off, picking up speed racing through the fields and then suddenly sharply taking off. In a few moments the jet was a mere speck in the sky, racing back to Washington D.C. Bucky had noticed a faded and peeling "Stark Industries" painted onto the jet in red letters before it had left, barely distinguishable.
The team stood there for a moment, looking around them. There was really nothing to see—only ankle and calf-high golden-green grass faded and scorched by the summer sun and blue skies. It was peaceful, beautiful, and utterly—
"Boring," said Ari.
Bucky glanced at Ari and saw that her face screwed up with distaste. "You don't like it?" he asked. He didn't see what was not to like; true, it wasn't the most picturesque of scenery but it wasn't some trash-filled slum.
"I hate prairies," Ari grumbled. "Really not a field kind of girl. I like mountains, forests, stuff like that. Prairies feel so…exposed, don't they?"
Now that she worded it like that, Bucky suddenly did feel extremely exposed. Someone could see them coming from a mile away (though they'd see them as well). Someone flying overhead would easily be able to spot them—and drop something on them if they wanted. There was absolutely nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, not even one tree.
"Let's go," he called to the team, shrugging off his discomfort and walking towards the Jeep. Bauer had let them know that there would be an agent waiting to take them to McGuire's hideout—but as the team neared the Jeep, it became obvious that there was no one in the Jeep. Bucky saw Chang and Tate exchange nervous glances out of the corner of his eye and he was reminded of the fact that aside from Kaplan, he was surrounded by largely low-level agents who didn't exactly have nerves of steel. They'd be good in a fight but they were no Romanoff, no May, not even Rumlow, though he was HYDRA. Bucky was also hypersensitive of the fact that Chang and Ari were even more important to save—Ari as the medic, Chang as an expert hacker. He didn't even know why Bauer sent a hacker on the mission; perhaps there would be files to extract as well. Ari was also his friend but Bucky knew that as the leader of the team, he couldn't play favorites just because Ari was his friend in his personal life. If it came down to saving Ari and someone else…he'd have to make the tough choice and decide who was more valuable, more needed, more useful to him in the fight.
He wasn't sure if he'd make the right choice.
He wrenched open the driver's door of the Jeep in a vain attempt to perhaps see if the agent was, for some reason, crouching on the floor of the Jeep—but he knew deep down that there was no one here. In fact, it didn't look as if someone had been in a very long time.
"Where's the agent?" Tate demanded. "Someone was supposed to meet us here."
"Did something go wrong?" Kaplan asked, eyeing the Jeep uneasily.
"I think there was a struggle," Ari called. She had been slowly walking around the Jeep in a circle and now she knelt near the passenger side door and frowned at a few rusty brown droplets that had long dried by now. The entire team knelt around her to squint at the tiny spots—how the hell had she spotted those? Bucky knew the entire team was wondering—and she tapped a drop. It was flaky, loose—something that had been spilled on the Jeep, not an underside of the Jeep. "Blood," she pronounced somewhat ominously. Perhaps for theatrical effect.
"McGuire got to our agent," Tate said in a panic. "He somehow found out—"
"Don't be silly," Ari said, though her words were gentle; Bucky could see she was trying to calm down Tate, who looked like she might have a panic attack now. Bucky, for his part, was trying his very best not to roll his eyes. If a few droplets of old dried blood undid the man, then what would he do if he saw real blood? His own blood, if he was wounded? "This blood is really old," she explained. "Probably weeks old. There's no way McGuire could have known we were coming weeks ago—Agent Bauer just got tipped off about him today. I have no idea why the Jeep would have been driven out here weeks ago…" She frowned, thinking. "But obviously something happened to our agent."
"So what now?" Tate demanded.
"We keep going," Bucky announced, standing up and dusting his knees off. "We don't need an agent to take us to McGuire; Bauer said she'd supply coordinates in the car. I can get us there. We'll figure out what happened to the agent later; this blood is weeks old, we can't worry about someone who may have been dead for ages."
Kaplan winced a bit at Bucky's harsh words but carefully said, "Shouldn't we at least call it in?"
"Later," Bucky commanded. "We're losing valuable time right now. Like I said: McGuire's the main mission. Let's go." He climbed into the driver's seat. The keys were still in the ignition—another sign that something had gone horribly wrong; no one ever willingly left keys in the ignition—and turned the Jeep on. Thankfully it rumbled to life, not out of gas. Kaplan got into the passenger seat, being the second best shot—Bucky would need his skills if someone shot at them from the front—and the rest of the team clambered into the back. Once the Jeep was on, a small screen set into the front also blinked to life and a map appeared, like a simpler version of a GPS with a grid of coordinates set into the background rather than side streets and businesses and homes. Bucky found a slip of paper with coordinates written on it tucked into the dashboard and he entered it into the system. A red dot pinged to life and then the screen zoomed out to show a green dot many miles away with their coordinates written above it. The red dot was them, the green dot was McGuire.
Bucky set off, driving across the fields, and the team was silent, jostling up and down over the uneven ground. There was a sense of unease about them all, an air of foreboding. The missing agent was weighing heavily on everyone's minds, even though Bucky had ordered them to focus on the mission at hand. Even Bucky found himself wondering about the agent, wondering about the blood, wondering what had the hell had happened. Ari leaned forward and quietly said, "I don't know about you, but I've got a bad feeling about this trip. I don't know what it is—I can't explain it—but something feels off."
Yes, it does, Bucky thought to himself heavily. Yes, it definitely does…
A/N: Aaargh, sorry for the late update. Busy, busy, busy… New update of The Original Three coming up soon as well! Thanks for sticking with me, lovelies.
