Holy crap. So I've been on deployment for approx ~forever now and am currently posting this (short, ish) chapter from South Korea. South Korea! Who ever thought I would be here in a hotel room on a port call posting fanfiction? Definitely not me. Anyways, it hasn't been proof read and I am back out to sea in a few days so it'll be a while before I can update again. Hopefully this one is good enough to hold you guys over while I'm out there getting sea sick and sleeping 3 hours a night. Much love to you all!
The port authority building, which Finch informed them had been vacant since the late 1950's, was a two story brick warehouse right on the water with large pane windows that housed more plywood than glass. It had been owned by the family of one of Decima's lead security guards for generations, through several name changes, effectively allowing the company to use it as a shell for their undoubtedly more shady ministrations without leaving a paper trail for the Machine to trace. The team might have been able to find it without tracing Root's implant, but it would have taken weeks to narrow it down to this particular location from the literal hundreds that it could have been.
Shaw would have surely destroyed everything in her path if it had come to that.
(She still might.)
John pulled their borrowed Mercedes to a stop a little more than a block away, where he and Shaw popped the trunk and prepared to further arm themselves for their assault.
Reese, being more so practical than he was brash, simply chose to add an additional pistol to the one he had taken from the subway and the grenades on his belt. After he finished securing his small personal arsenal he looked up at Shaw, who was trying to figure out how to carry an AT4 anti-tank weapon in addition to her nano, her stolen M9, and the AR-15 she had already slung over her shoulder by the strap. John reached a hand out and took the rocket launcher from her, placing it back in the trunk and shutting it before she could grab it again. She huffed at him, blowing errant strands of her usually secured ponytail off of her face, and it reminded Reese of Bear when one of his toys were taken away from him.
"What the hell, Reese?"
He looked her up and down before extending an extra clip for the M9 to her; Shaw accepted it but avoided his gaze to instead turn her attention to loading the rifle magazine after storing his gifted clip on her belt with all the others. She snapped the magazine into the AR-15 and caught his weary gaze with an eyebrow raised.
"Well?", she asked when he still didn't answer.
"I think we've got enough firepower, Shaw. But if it makes you feel better, you can take some of this leftover C4 from when you decided to blow up that house in suburbia."
"There's no such thing as too much fire power", she said without hesitation, mirroring what Root had said to her when she walked out of the subway with six guns yesterday morning, then added after a beat, "but I'm taking that C4."
They slowly ascended a hill 100 feet or so away, just to the west of the port authority building, and laid prone amidst several bushes at the peak. Shaw pulled out a set of binoculars and started to asses the scene - there were two black unmarked SUVs parked outside the building, surely Decima's, and several armed men guarding the outside. Two stood by the main door at the south side of the building, with one at the smaller back door and two others roving the perimeter. It would be difficult, and require a fair amount of timing, but if they could set it up the right way they could - in theory - slip in after one roving guard passed the back door and before the second rounded the corner, incapacitate the guard standing there, then get inside. Of course, when the second rover turned the corner he would notice that the door was now unguarded, which would lead him to alert every agent both outside and inside the building, as well as however many may be in the immediate area, that something was wrong. Thus tipping them all off, and effectively ruining the point of attempting to sneak inside. As well as effectively ruining any chance they had if making it out of the warehouse alive, and with Root.
She handed the binoculars to Reese, who accepted them and spent a minute or so watching the routine of the guards, just as Shaw had done.
"There's no way to get in undetected", he said out loud, even though he knew that Shaw had come to the same conclusion.
"I noticed", she confirmed, "but it's okay. Because I had a plan."
"A plan?", Reese asked cautiously as he watched her rise slowly, getting into a crouching position and pulling the AR-15 from her back. "Am I going to like this plan?"
She checked the magazine of her rifle one last time and flicked the safety off before raising the scope to her eye to look down it and towards the building.
"No."
Shaw licked a finger, mostly for show (regardless of the fact that Reese was markedly unamused by her antics), and held it up to try to asses the wind. It wasn't blowing much at all considering that they were so close to the water, and though it had been a long time since she had tried to line up a shot like this without a sniper rifle and a spotter, or at least Cole on the other side of the line to give her a little guidance, she had no doubt that she would be able to hit her mark; she had excellent motivation, after all.
The AR-15 has a maximum effective range of 600 yards, she repeated in her head like a prayer, and suddenly recalled every little aspect of the weapon she had learned inside and out during her days as a Marine. The scope read the distance from her to her target as just under 100 yards.
This shot was the beginning of the end, the show that would initiate their assault - the first shot of many that would bring them all closer to Root.
This shot had to be perfect.
"Should I maybe prepare to charge the building?"
Without looking down at him she smirked, squeezing the trigger just slightly to relieve some of the tension as she lined up a shot with the knee of the guard at the back door.
"Yes", she said just before she pulled the trigger.
Time moved quickly then, with Reese and Shaw taking off to run down the hill with their pistols drawn before the shot had hit its mark - which it did, perfectly, much to Shaw's chagrin. The guard hit the ground, yelling and clutching at his shattered knee, and attracted the attention of the two roving guards. They ran towards the yelling and were so busy attending to him that they noticed the two agents too late, and earned each of themselves a shot to the knee of their own. Reese motioned for Shaw to go towards the front doors following one side of the building while he took the other, using only hand signals they had both thought were long forgotten, and they rounded their respective corners at the same time - the guards here were ready for them, however, and Shaw earned a shot to the middle of her vest before Reese could take them both out. The wind was knocked out of her, and she knew she would have a blooming bruise in the middle of her sternum later, but thanks to the vest she was mostly uninjured. Reese ran up to her after kicking the guards' pistols out of their reach, but she simply shook her head at him and accepted the hand he offered to help her up.
"Way to get shot before we even get inside, Shaw."
"Shut up. I was distracting them", she rasped out a little roughly, still out of breath and rubbing absently at the back of her head where it had smacked the pavement, "so that you could take them out."
He smirked and made a noncommittal noise before moving towards the door. Shaw pouted but followed him. She stopped him just outside the door however, grabbing the sleeve of his suit jacket a little tougher than she had meant to. He spun around, confused, and caught her nervous eyes on him - it was not a look he saw on Shaw's face very often, if ever, and it was not something that looked good on her.
"John, if something happens in there...", she trailed off, looking away suddenly.
What was she supposed to say here? She was smart enough to know that this moment was important, to know that in the movies she would say something powerful and moving that would dissolve all the female viewers to tears, that it would be the crescendo of a song or the climax of some great story, but she still had no words on her tongue to explain exactly what it was she was feeling.
She was always better with actions than words, always a show don't tell kind of person, but in a situation where Root might only have her words to remember her by what was she supposed to say?
She gulped.
"You tell her everything, okay? You tell her that I fucking fought tooth and nail to get her and she had better not waste it."
John looked at her skeptically, knowing that whatever it was that Shaw wanted to say to Root surely had more to it than that. But he knew that Shaw was trying - it was evident in the pink flush of her cheeks, not from the cold or their short fire fight outside like she would argue if he asked her, but surely from her embarrassment.
"But it won't come to that", Reese replied a beat later, nodding.
"You promise me you'll get her out of here if-"
"We'll all get here out of here, Shaw", he interrupted with a hand extended as if he meant to grab her shoulder - he thought better of it in the end, letting it awkwardly drop back down to his side. "No one gets left behind."
"Reese, don't make me say it alright? Just make up something heroic or some shit, maybe romant-"
Shaw stopped herself and shook her head, feeling foolish before trying again.
"Can we just not do this right now? Just nod your big head and promise me that no matter what, you'll get her out of here. If you have to leave me behind, then leave me behind, I just want- I need you to leave me."
"I need you to get her out of here", she added after a beat, and if her voice wavered slightly neither her or John acknowledged it. "I need you to make sure she gets to live her life after this, and that she's safe, and I can not believe that I am saying this right now but that she's fucking happy for once. Okay?"
She stormed past him to the front doors of the building without allowing him to respond, knowing that John would argue the fact with her until the end if he had the chance to. So she didn't give him the chance, taking his stunned silence as a reverent vow, as an agreement and a promise.
She felt she owed Root so much, and if the worst happened to occur in this old building, then she wanted to make sure she at least got this. Got these words. And she prayed Root would understand what wasn't said, but filled the spaces between each and every syllable.
"Are we gonna do this or what?", Shaw threw over her shoulder with feigned annoyance as she raised her nano with one hand and reached for the heavy door with the other.
He nodded dumbly even though he couldn't see his partner, not sure what to add, and mirrored her with his own pistol drawn.
The inside of the building was much like the outside; old and unkempt, it was musty smelling from years of sitting by the sea, and parts of the concrete floor where mottled with holes. It seemed they took out all of the guards before they had a chance to alert whoever was inside, as there was no welcoming party in the office-type receiving area they entered. Beyond that, through another set of heavy doors, was the warehouse portion - surely, Shaw thought and knew Reese was thinking the same, that was where they would encounter the fire fight she was itching so badly for.
Shaw holstered her pistol and swung the rifle around off of her back. She checked the magazine that was inserted and her extras as John did the same for his drawn pistol. They nodded resolutely at each other before opening the doors and heading inside.
The warehouse was mostly barren, with all of its contents set up rather strategically in the back across from them. Reese saw the red dot on Shaw before she noticed it, and kicked her feet out from under her before hitting the deck as well. Before she could even protest they were met with gunfire from behind the crates. Quickly, each of them scrambled to a heavy concrete support beam for cover.
"Stop trying to get shot!", Reese yelled to Shaw from his pillar, no closer than 20 feet away.
Chips of concrete sprayed around her as she sent him one of her better glares in lieu of a verbal response. Knowing this game well, she waited patiently as she counted bullets as best she could, knowing a pause indicating a reload would come soon. The second it did, Shaw liberally sprayed the wooden crates hiding a shooter with bullets, and John followed suit with a grenade lobbed in the same direction. She and Reese waited for the explosion, which set off to the left of the boxes and sent pieces of wood and Decima agent flying towards the back wall. Shaw waiting for the finality of it all sliding towards the floor and guns clattering to the ground - which they did, loudly - before charging forward.
They made quick work of the three remaining guards, one of which was already injured rather badly by one of Shaw's bullets. John took precise shots to the knees of the last two, hiding rather ineffectively behind another wooden crate that was easily cut through by his pistol.
After dragging all of the men out of sight Reese proceeded towards the only other door in the room, a small rusty door with a seemingly brand new cipher lock installed, leading further back, while Shaw stopped at the body of one of the guards. Though it appeared as if he would bleed out rather soon from the grouping of bullets in his lower abdomen and legs, she didn't hesitate to swiftly put a bullet between his eyes when his hand twitched in vain towards his weapon.
"I'll be taking that", she said for deaf ears as she removed the red dot sight from his AR-15 and attached it to her own. "How do these clowns get all the good toys?"
John shrugged noncommittally at her with a small smile - even in a situation like this, Shaw could be nothing but true to herself.
"Didn't you think there would be more of them?", Reese asked as Shaw flanked the other side of the door. He looked over at her with confusion on his face. "I thought they would put up more of a fight."
"It's entirely possible that they really didn't think we would find them. Knowing Martine's ego, it's not like that's a stretch."
Shaw looked back at him with a hint of doubt in her eyes, reconsidering her words.
"Finch?", she asked as she tapped her earpiece to open up a line. He answered instantaneously, as he always does, his voice a little tinny and if at all a little worried. "Can you pull up those blue prints for the port authority building again?"
Reese raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt as they both heard frantic tapping through the line.
"Nothing appears out of the ordinary, Ms. Shaw. Short of what appears to be some major erosion in the main room that was reported a few years ago, nothing has changed in that building since the late 70's."
"Erosion?", Reese questioned. He shook his head, and suddenly a thought came to him. "Finch, can you cross reference the location of that supposed erosion with the sewer layout for the city? I've got a feeling it may be less 'natural decay' and more 'effective entrance for illegal activities'."
"Just a moment, Mr. Reese." More typing filled both his and Shaw's ears as Harold browsed and hacked his way to the answer, followed rather shortly afterwards with a triumphant 'aha'. "Mr. Reese, that hole lays directly on top of a relatively new sewer tunnel that runs directly from Manhattan. It was built several years ago, but never officially put into used due to what is listed as 'permit issues'."
Shaw groaned, knowing that all that really meant for them was that they had no way of realistically knowing what was on the other side of that door; they had no way of knowing how many agents were there or had access to the space, they had no way of know what kind of defenses were waiting for them, and they now had no way to guarantee that if they stormed in, Martine and her lackeys wouldn't just scoop Root up and take her throw the tunnels to some other terrible location.
"Whatever!", Shaw said out loud, pulling Reese from his conversation with Finch. "I don't care, I really don't fucking care. We made it this far. I'm going in."
Shaw then took a step back and squared herself in front of the door, carefully aiming her rifle at the cipher lock with her sights set on attempting to blow the thing off in a fit of pure frustration. She had gotten this far, had gotten this close to saving Root, and she was not about to let something as ridiculous as a tunnel full of a possibly unlimited number of well-armed, highly-trained Decima agents stand in her way.
Nothing could stop her now.
Luckily (for both her and Reese's sake), John stepped in and lowered her gun before she could risk killing either of them with a ricochet bullet.
"You know, Shaw, I did give you a much more effective gift earlier."
She raised her eyebrow at him in confusion, trying to figure out how her borrowed vest was going to blow this fucking door open. Just then, Reese pointed down at her belt where most of her arsenal was hanging; she followed his hand to the gift he was referring to, and couldn't stop the almost evil grin that spread.
He was pointing to the C4 secured to her waist.