Red America, Western Front:
Chapter Eight: Pistol-Whipped
Clint Barton knelt down in a dusty alleyway and touched his fingertips to a small patch of dirt on the sidewalk, raising them to his nose and taking a short inward breath as he closed his eyes to reduce the number of distractions around him. His cybernetically-enhanced senses immediately started processing the dirt's contents to try and isolate any key scents that he could use to track his quarry – it was a long shot, he knew, but trial and error were always key factors in finding a target that had gone to ground. In this case, machine oil seemed like as good a place as any to start, considering that Tony Stark was apparently piloting a robot of some kind. Clint wondered whether the fact that the regular Red Army couldn't find a man in a giant robot suit was a compliment to Tony Stark, or a damning indictment of the Russian Army's training methods. He decided to take it as the former, since he'd been trained by the best the Russian Army had to offer, and he knew that their training methods were hardly lacklustre in any way, shape or form. Suddenly his eyes flared open as his senses hit upon an unusual scent, a metallic, viscous odour that coated his olfactory membranes like tar, and he grinned broadly as he realised that he had taken the first step towards catching his prey. Turning his head from left to right, he tried to catch any indication of which way the scent trail led, thanking his good luck there was very little wind in the city tonight. Had there been any strong gusts, then his chances of tracking Stark and whoever else was with him would have been virtually non-existent. As it was, though, he could tell that the trail snaked off to his right, surrounded by that of several other humans. One of the scents was sporadic at best, which puzzled him a little since the rest of the trails were so relatively strong, but he simply raised his eyebrows and decided to try solving that riddle later.
Pushing himself to his feet, he shouldered his rifle and began padding down the alleyway like a ghost, threading his way through piles of garbage and the sprawled, stinking bodies of the few homeless people that had taken refuge in the shadows. Making a mental note to ask for a detachment of humanitarian aid-workers to make a visit here, Clint gathered strength in his legs and sprang up towards a rusting fire-escape that was bolted to the side of one of the buildings, catching the edge of the structure with both hands and then swung himself up and around so that he landed on the stairwell, crouching low automatically so as to absorb the impact, however small. Training died hard, he realised with a small degree of amusement. Standing, he jogged steadily up towards the roof of the building, keeping his heart-rate just above its usual twenty-five beats a minute, and then found his way over to the edge of the rooftop. Without a pause, he launched himself off the brickwork and somersaulted over to the next roof. From up here, he could move towards his targets without any fear of obstruction from civilians. He detested the idea of putting them in harm's way, since he knew that most of them were just trying to get by from day to day, and didn't exactly deserve to be thrown into the middle of a conflict. The way he saw things, soldiers were soldiers for a reason, and they were the ones who should be targeted. In his first month as a soldier, he'd seen the bodies of children left in the wreckage of battle left by his fellow Red Army troops, and it had made him violently sick. He'd promised himself at that point that he would go out of his way to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. It was a vain hope, he knew, but he also knew he had to try. He was a killer, but that didn't mean he had to be a murderer too.
His feet pounding on the concrete of the roof, Clint leapt again, grabbing hold of an exposed pipe and using it to propel himself across another gap, impacting lithely against a wall and almost bouncing straight off it, the ricocheting movement giving him an extra few metres of distance. Despite himself, despite the inevitable outcome of this mission, Clint couldn't help but smile at the freedom he was experiencing here – it was always the same when he was let loose like this. The power he'd been given by his superiors was something he knew nobody else had ever had, and that gave him an indescribable, electric thrill. He somersaulted up to a higher surface, a water tower, and grabbed hold of one of the metal struts supporting it. Clinging to it for a moment or two, he looked out over the city's darkening skyline and knew that his targets would never know what had hit them.
Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock stood in her office with her hands clasped behind her back, looking out of the window as the deep-orange light of the setting sun refracted through the glass, spilling a mournful, dying glow across the desk and bookshelves that filled the room. For a moment, Elisabeth found herself wishing that she could be out there alongside the Crimson Commando, tracking down that idiotic group of rebels so that they could be sent to the local gulag, and then turned and looked at the mound of paperwork waiting for her. Since General von Doom's death at her hands, there had been at least a dozen new responsibilities laid on her shoulders – as the ranking officer and Commissar, it was her job to take command now that the General and the treacherous Lieutenant Cortez had been cut out of the Red Army's flesh. She cursed under her breath again, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day; this was exactly the sort of thing she had hoped to avoid when she'd been transferred here from New York, and it was driving her to distraction. She pulled her pistol from its holster and contemplated going down to the firing range in the belly of the building just to let off some steam, but she knew that the forms and umpteen other matters awaiting her attention would still be there on her desk when she got back, and that would defeat the purpose of going to the firing range in the first place. Better, she decided, to deal with them now and get them out of the way. Then, perhaps, she could loose off a few rounds or practice her swordsmanship. Her lips creased at one corner, pleased with that idea, and so she sat down at her desk, picked up her pen, and began signing her name to the first of the forms, the nib of the pen scritch-scratching softly against the unusually expensive paper. She had been signing forms for about half an hour, barely scanning what was written on the documents themselves, before she picked up a single page that was covered in Cyrillic script – this kind of brevity was unusual for military documents, she knew, so it stood out immediately. Looking over it with an intrigued eye, she dropped her pen in shock when she read the last few lines.
It was a death warrant. Her death warrant.
Apparently, Doom had had a contingency plan in effect – he had clearly known what an onerous task signing forms was for an officer of her temperament, and had obviously hoped that even if he had been found out, she still would have been eliminated because she had been too busy signing forms to realise that she had condemned herself… which meant that it was very likely that there were still some of Doom's sympathisers infesting this command. Elisabeth narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth as a burning rage welled up inside her. The old fool still won't lie down and die, even when he's cold in his grave, she thought, her emotions like acid splashing against her mind. Whoever issued this is going to tell me everything they know, and then I am going to gut them. Angrily, she crumpled the death warrant and tore it into tiny pieces with a few well-placed movements of her hands, throwing the creased, ragged remains into her paper shredder so that even the fragments were unreadable. She touched two fingers to her temple and said Lieutenant Wagner. I need you in my office right now. It took a couple of seconds, but Lieutenant Wagner appeared right next to her, the customary stench of brimstone hanging in the air for a moment or two after his booted feet had touched the floor. He saluted, standing crisply to attention as he did so, his tail's flickering from side to side halted for a moment or two. Elisabeth told him to stand easy, and his posture returned to the slightly hunched, curving stance that he apparently favoured.
"You called, sir?" he asked, his yellow eyes looking curiously at his senior officer. Elisabeth nodded, gesturing to the humming shredder.
"Yes. It appears that we still have a problem with a traitor," she said sourly. "I almost ended up signing my own death warrant just now. I'd say that qualifies as a problem, wouldn't you say?" She watched Lieutenant Wagner's eyes widen in shock.
"A… death warrant? How?" he asked. "I thought all our official documents were strictly monitored?"
"So did I, Lieutenant, but apparently we were both wrong," Elisabeth said, sitting back down into the thickly-padded oak chair behind her desk. It was a remnant of Doom's decorations, and she considered it far too ostentatious and showy for her purposes. However, she supposed it would do for now, until she could find a decent, slightly more spartan replacement. "I want you to assemble a detail of psychics to scan the entire division – perhaps with a group of telepaths pooling their talents we can root out this worm more quickly. I don't want to be constantly looking over my shoulder because somebody in this region thinks that I would be a good addition to their trophy case." She pushed the mound of paperwork on the desk to one side, slid open a drawer, and withdrew her favourite Russian Army pistol. She had been issued with it a decade beforehand, and it had served her well since then, travelling with her to several war-zones and saving her life on more than one occasion. The grip was weathered and faded, the metal a little tarnished and scratched in places, but it had been far more reliable than any other gun she had used in a long time. Turning the weapon over in her hands, she remembered fighting a group of Mexican rebels five years previously, defeating them only by shooting out the kneecap of their leader and driving the rest of them into a headlong rout, from which they were picked off virtually individually by her troops. The same kind of ruthlessness would be needed here, she decided – there was nothing worse than having to wonder which of your supposedly-loyal comrades was going to drive a knife into your back, after all. Slipping the pistol back into the drawer, she closed it with a soft movement of wood on wood. Then, looking up, she saw Lieutenant Wagner still standing expectantly in front of her, apparently waiting for her to say something else. "You have your orders, Lieutenant," she told him in a short tone. "Carry them out, please."
The thick stench of brimstone that filled her office a second later gave Elisabeth hope that she would soon see the end of this ridiculous insurrection.
Kitty glanced up at the darkening sky and cursed. "Anybody got any idea where we can crash tonight?" she asked hopelessly. "We can't exactly check into a Motel 6 with Metal Mickey in tow, after all." She reached into her pocket and drew out her cigarettes, igniting one with the small, waning flame from her lighter and exhaling a long plume of bluish-grey smoke. Relief flooded through her bones as the smoke dissolved into wind-blown wisps above her head, even if the underlying reason for her agitation hadn't vanished within the time it had taken to light up. "Well?" she said, scratching her brow and taking another long drag. "Anybody got a plan? I hope so, because I'm fresh out of ideas here." Madrox walked over to the corner of the building that they were taking shelter behind for a moment or two, and scanned the street with a single glance.
"There," he said, pointing to a large, dilapidated apartment building that – despite its ramshackle exterior – seemed to be relatively intact. "That looks big enough and deserted enough for all of us." He turned and grinned hopefully at his squad-mates. "Lucky for us the Ivans have trashed so much of the city, huh?"
Hank rolled his eyes. "Jamie, will you ever stop trying to be funny? Shouldn't your drastically low success rate have tipped you off yet?"
"Nope," Jamie replied with a grin. "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Isn't that right, big man?"
"Sure, Jamie. You go right on thinking that," Cecilia cut in, shouldering her rifle and running her hands through her hair. Then she pointed to Jubilation. "I say we take this place. The kid needs rest."
"I'm fine," Jubilation snapped indignantly, narrowing her eyes to slits. Her exhausted demeanour and shaking hands seemed to belie that assessment, but she still made an effort to stand as straight and tall as she could, in order to try to prove it wrong. "And I'm not a kid."
"Yes, you are," Kitty told her, taking her to one side and grasping one of her shoulders firmly. "And yes, you do. We all do."
Jubilation scowled, but then nodded sullenly. "Okay," she said in a low voice, looking at the sidewalk in an attempt not to meet Kitty's gaze. Kitty squeezed her shoulder encouragingly and then directed Danny and Tony to provide covering fire while the rest of the squad moved over the street to their new roost. As she moved, she kept her gaze scanning either end of the horizon, hoping that a squad – or worse, a whole division – of Red Army soldiers would not come marching past the edge of the furthest building. She'd had enough of the Ivans for one day, and she really didn't want to have to start fighting her way out of a trap when all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. When all of her squad were safely across the street, Kitty started directing defensive measures, assigning herself first watch as usual and making sure that her squad proceeded quickly towards sandbagging the place as much as they could, placing old doors up against the entranceway as a makeshift barricade and establishing easily defensible firing positions. Kitty knew that a good offence was always based on a good defence, and this was no exception. When the defences were all in place, she let the rest of the squad relax. She watched Tony Stark climb out of his massive armoured suit and hop down lightly to the dusty floor. He rolled up his jacket and laid it on the ground as a makeshift pillow, but Kitty stopped him before he could drift off to sleep like her squad-mates had done a few moments beforehand.
"Tony," she began. "Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Yeah, as long as it doesn't mean I get a lot less sleep than the rest of your guys," Stark said, raising an eyebrow and running his hands over his goatee beard. "What can I do for you?"
"I need you to leave your Iron Man suit behind," Kitty said bluntly. "I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I –"
"No," Stark snapped, suddenly furious. "That thing is too precious to leave it just anywhere. What if the Ivans got their hands on it?"
"We'll have to leave it behind if we want to get out of here alive, Tony," Kitty said, trying her level best to remain calm. "We can't keep out of the Russkies' way forever. And trying to keep this thing hidden is getting too difficult. You have to get to New York – you're more important than that robot. You can build another one there –"
"No!" Rage was building steadily in Stark's voice. Kitty hoped to God that he wouldn't lose it – that was the last thing she needed right now, after all. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the pieces for my Iron Man suit together? Fifteen years! Do you know how many Russkie bases Jubilation and I had to break into to steal all those pieces? Dozens! I'm not going to just leave that hard work behind, you hear me? You'll have to kill me first."
Kitty raised her eyebrows, and then reached into the bandolier strung across her chest, withdrawing a thin, slender stiletto dagger and spinning it around in her hands, making sure to let Stark see the cold, ruthless glint in her eye as she did so. Then she stepped closer to him and jabbed the point of the blade into his chin, hard enough to draw a thin trickle of blood. It oozed down the blade and caught the low light like a diamond. She smiled thinly as Stark's anger visibly evaporated, his eyes gone wide as dinner plates as he felt the blade pushing harder into his chin. Pulling the knife back and drawing her face close to Stark, she hissed "Don't tempt me, asshole. I'm just here because our mutual friend Logan asked me to be here – I could just as easily slit your fucking throat and leave your body for the Russkies; makes no difference to me, after all. Now I'll make myself perfectly clear: I'm not asking you to leave behind your little toy, I'm telling you. If you're worried about having all your hard work stolen by the Ivans, then we have enough demo charges to shred it beyond recognition. And I can guarantee you that there are enough Ivan bases in Long Island alone that you'll have everything you need to build another suit in a month and a half." She jerked her blade away from Stark's neck, causing him to gasp reflexively, and then nodded down at the floor. "Now get some rest. We'll need to be out of here early tomorrow." She watched him lie down on the hard ground, and then set to taking first watch, keeping a hand poised on the trigger of her rifle as she did so. Glancing up at the moon, its thin crescent shape not shedding much light on the ground, she rolled her eyes. More and more, she longed for the days when she was the one following orders rather than the one giving them. It seemed like there were fewer opportunities to be seen as an asshole, after all.
She sat silently for three hours, scanning the empty streets, and then roused Madrox to take over from her. Settling down to sleep, she dropped off almost instantly… and what seemed like only a few moments later was woken by Madrox's alarmed voice. Blearily, she opened her eyes and sat up. Immediately, she saw that Tabitha, the squad-member who had been assigned last watch, was unconscious on the floor, congealed blood coating a wound on her temple and streaking her face with coppery-scented trails. Of Tony and his Iron Man suit, though… there was no sign. Kitty screamed. "Fuck!" she howled. "I don't fucking believe this! That arrogant bastard's going to get the whole bunch of us killed, I swear…"
"What'd you say to him, Kitty?" Madrox asked, curious. Kitty shook her head and put two fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to massage away the annoyance that was building there.
"I told him I needed him to leave behind his metal toy," she said, sighing. "I told him we needed to leave it behind to get him past the city limits. Obviously he didn't take too kindly to that, did he?" She turned to where Jubilation was standing, looking utterly confused and alone, and said "You know Tony better than any of us, sweetie – where would he be going at a time like this?"
"I don't know," Jubilation whimpered, scared tears beading at the corners of her eyes. "I don't know. He's never left me alone like this before."
"Okay," Kitty said, trying to sound as sympathetic as she could through her frustration. "Okay, sweetheart, don't worry – we'll find him again, I'm sure." She moved in close and gave the younger girl a hug. "Everything's going to be fine, I promise." While she was hugging Jubilation, she looked over at Cecilia and Hank, as if asking them to try their best to keep Jubilation together. Hank nodded, and when Jubilation had reluctantly let Kitty stop hugging her, he and Cecilia took her to one side and began trying to keep her spirits up as best they could. It seemed like a losing battle, but Kitty thought they should at least give it a try, anyway. If nothing else, it might help Jubilation feel like less of an outsider, and with Stark nowhere to be seen, that was more important than anything else right now. She cleared her throat and nodded towards the door. "You guys stay here. I'm going to go do some scouting ahead. If you don't hear from me in twenty minutes, get the hell out of here, and don't look back."
Madrox nodded, and Kitty turned on one heel and walked out of the building's front door, crouching into an alleyway and then creeping through the shadows in an easterly direction, hoping to thread a path through any approaching Red Army units. She could hear a few isolated squads off in the distance, but they didn't seem like anything to worry about. And then she saw a knot of Red Army troops crowding around a glowing brass brazier that was sending puffs of grey smoke up into the atmosphere, warming their gloved hands and misting the air with their breath. The Russian conversation that she could hear meant little to her, as she'd only really ever learned the Russian phrases that would help her seduce somebody or to beg for mercy. Snatches of it made sense, but nothing else. She did a mental count and saw that there were at least fifteen soldiers in front of her, all of them armed and combat-ready, and she decided that to even try to engage them was a bad idea, even if she could phase around their bullets. She was just about to turn and make her way back to where she and the others were bivouacked when one of the soldiers spotted her spying on them, and yelled a warning to the rest of his comrades. Kitty was just about to phase into the ground and escape when a lithe, blond-haired man landed between her and the Russian soldiers. A combat knife appeared in both hands, and the man proceeded to dance among the Red Army troops, slicing through veins and arteries and throats with casual ease. Bullets seemed to pass through him as he moved, every shot fired seeming to have no effect whatsoever, until he was surrounded by a heap of dead and dying Red Army soldiers. Kitty couldn't help but feel her jaw hanging open as he turned and walked back towards her, wiping his knives on a scrap of uniform cloth. The man's disarming grin was totally at odds with the carnage that he had just created, and he winked at Kitty, before throwing away the rag and sheathing his knives.
"Saw you could do with the help," he said simply. "Hope you don't mind me stepping in and taking away your dance partners?"
"No," Kitty said, breathlessly. "No."
There followed an awkward silence, broken only by the man glancing up at his eyebrows and saying "You know, when I meet a girl, I usually like to know their name."
"Hmm?" Kitty said, before jerking awake with a start. "Oh! Kitty. My name's Kitty."
"Good to meet you, Kitty," the man replied, taking her hand and kissing its knuckles. "My name's Clint…"