Chapter Nine

Clint let the punching bag fall aside as he stepped off the mat, ruffling through his jacket on its peg for his phone. The ringing got increasingly louder until he found it.

"Sir." Steve had stopped hitting his bag as well to give him some quiet, and looked busy reapplying tape to his knuckles.

"There's a jet waiting to take you to Nevada, you'll be picked up in five minutes. Bring your bow," Phil said. Behind him Clint could hear a street, cars and people talking to hide Phil's voice in the crowd.

"On my way." Phil hung up and Clint pocketed his phone, wishing he had time to shower before he was sent out.

"Going somewhere?" asked Steve from across the gym.

"Nevada." Clint made do with a splash of bottled water and a towel.

"That's where Tony said Hornet was," the Captain said slowly. "They're bringing her in after all." A slight scowl crossed Steve's face. "Nice of them to ask." Clint hadn't asked. It wasn't his place when he was given an order. It made sense, with Natasha and Juliette after Greyhound, before they had been side tracked by Ross, to send him after Hornet.

"You can still refuse."

"We both know I can't." Steve turned back to the punching bag. "You explained about Champion status, that's the only way I could keep you guys together and actually lead this team. Fury can send whoever he, or the council wants to us and I'll have no choice at all." Clint sighed, Steve was right, no matter what pleasantries Fury came up with, Steve had no real power.

"It's all voluntary anyway," he ventured. "You, Bruce, Tony, I guess Thor as well. Natasha and I are the only ones ordered here. You guys can walk away." Steve gave him a sad look before shaking his head.

"The army declared I was dead. Fury has some documents, reassigning me to SHIELD. It means I have to take his orders." That seemed grossly unfair to Clint. Captain America shouldn't have to follow SHIELD orders.

"Did he say who you answered to? That's important, if it's him you'll be okay, if it's the council then you're screwed."

"He didn't. Just said it was paperwork to stop the army snooping around and declaring me a fake. I'm a soldier, Clint; someone's got to tell me what to do." Clint didn't agree with that. Steve wasn't a soldier, he was THE soldier, and years of Phil's mentoring had ingrained all that in deep.

"You know, if they're going to push Hornet onto you anyway, you might as well go check her out for yourself first. Natasha was sent, about a year ago, to Nevada. Wasp surveillance, she called it. Sounds like Hornet to me. Elko Nevada, I flew the plane that picked her up for some reason. Tell Tony, maybe you guys can figure something out." Clint checked his watch, his five minutes were up. "I've gotta go." He grabbed his bow from his room and was in the lift within thirty seconds.

"Stark," he said to the ceiling, knowing Tony could most probably hear. "It was your hacking that found out; I never breathed a word of it to anyone."

"Silent as the grave, Feathers," Tony replied. "Race you there."

Clint stood on the hot tarmac, watching the second jet fly in. It had barely stopped moving before the door opened and its three occupants came out. Clint had been expecting Phil only, Natasha and Juliette were a surprise.

"Where's Banner?" he asked as they came up to him.

"Hill's taking him back to New York. We're here to terminate Hornet." Phil didn't stop walking as he spoke, his three agents falling into step behind him. "Barton, I want you watching the exits, fire as a last resort, there are civilians around and we do not need the cops involved if someone sees something. Mede and Tasha will go in. Make it clean, and make it quick. We need to get back onto Davies." It was pointless, they were professionals, yet Clint found it reassuring. They weren't the snarky, doubting words of a new handler who had no experience with them. Even when he was teaching them to suck eggs, it was Phil's voice Clint wanted to be the annoying buzz in his ear, no one else's.

The house was a bungalow, Clint had found his perch in a tree, hardly ideal or inventive but the lack of high rise buildings gave him no other option. He had the back door covered, and the front. Juliette went in the front; Natasha broke the back door's lock. They kept radio silence, Clint couldn't even hear them breathing over the open comm.

Clint wondered what Hornet's enhancements were. Tony hadn't found anything on her, except the name. It had been a mistake; he realised, to tell Tony and Steve where to go. Hornet was a threat, they were there to kill her, and he had just sent his two teammates to her without forewarning or back up. The silence stretched out for too long. There wouldn't be a shot, Juliette's weapon of choice was a knife and Tasha knew better than to sound the alarm by shooting. A car drove past, making him tense up until it had passed by. Still there was silence.

"She's not here," Natasha's voice came at last over the comm. "It's empty. Hornet's not here." Clint heard what he thought might have been a curse. If she wasn't there, he wondered, had she followed Tony back to New York?

"There's a note," said Juliette and Clint heard her telling Tasha again, the two of them murmuring quietly. "We'll decide our own team, thanks. Love, Stark."

"Stark?" Phil definitely did swear that time. "Get out of there, you two. How the hell did Stark find out where Hornet was?" Clint kept silent. "Get back to the hangar." The girls came out of the house and Clint met them on the pavement.

"Fury's going to kill IT over this," Tasha murmured. Clint refused to meet their gazes, walking along in front of them with his backpack. Hornet was a threat; he just wished that he knew why. Maybe then he could warn Tony, and Steve before the Captain got himself into trouble by trying to have some control over his team.

"Once he's done with Stark." There was a dreary conviction in Juliette's clipped voice that chilled Clint. Fury could come down hard on people, and his situation was already precarious enough with the council. Clint had messed it up again, without needing an alien with mind control powers to ruin things.

"Why's Hornet a threat?" he dared ask them.

"Because we can't control her," Phil answered, apparently they had left the comm open. "Captain America has a sense of duty and decency, Stark's got a good heart and he's needy enough to have to stay in one place, Banner's too afraid of his power to let it rule him, Thor's gone and has Asgardian honour which helps. You three are under orders and easy to terminate. Even Greyhound is predictably cautious, Hemlock can be enticed in and Jupiter hasn't been a threat to us in forty years, despite her power. Hornet has nothing we can control her with. Imagine any of the others without what makes them the good guys, and tell me what you'd do, Clint." He didn't need to think for long. A Bruce who used Hulk instead of suppressing him, that was the Creature Ross created in Harlem. The same went for Steve and Tony, and Clint knew only too well what Thor's people were capable of.

"I'd put an arrow through their eyes, sir."