We Were Soldiers
31. Sherlock Barnes and Doctor Wells
The hospital tent was pretty quiet when they arrived. A few soldiers were being treated for minor ailments, but there were no emergencies going on. One of the nurses—a pretty dame with red curls pinned beneath her white hat—strolled up with a clipboard tucked beneath her arm.
"Sergeant Wells, Sergeant Barnes," she smiled, her voice a pleasantly low southern drawl, "what can ah do for you today?"
How does she know who we are? he wondered. Then he recalled how the 107th's notoriety had been spread by the other regiments who'd actively seen some of their bullshit.
A smile immediately sprang to Wells' lips. "We've come to volunteer for blood donation."
The nurses descended with the sudden ferocity of a plague of starving locusts. Bucky and Wells were practically carried onto beds, and the prodding started even before Bucky was comfortably settled. A thermometer was stuck beneath his tongue, whilst one of the women pulled up his shirt and began jabbing her fingers into what he suspected might be his spleen.
"We're not sick!" he objected around the thermometer. On the bed next to him, Wells was having a small beam of white light flashed into his eyes.
"You must be sick," a very stern-looking nurse countered as she ran her professional gaze over him. She reminded him of his mother, and he felt naked beneath her gaze despite being fully clothed. "You're offering to donate blood. You're either sick, or trying to get out of something."
"We're just being generous!" Wells said. The nurse gave a loud, un-ladylike snort. "And, um, we heard there might be cookies, after?"
At last the nurses seemed satisfied that neither of them was truly sick, and they were finally instructed to remove their shirts and lie back on the beds. Thick needles were produced, along with other instruments of blood-letting torture. This time, when the needle was stuck in Bucky's vein, it didn't pinch quite as much. He settled down into a more comfortable position and hoped there would be some angelic junior nurse to rehydrate him after.
"I've been losing weight," Wells was saying to the nurse who was sticking the needle in his arm. Apparently, the prospect of female sympathy was more important than the reason they'd come here in the first place.
She ran her eyes over him. "You look fine to me."
"That's nice of you to say! But I'm not fine. I've had to tighten my belt by a whole notch. I think I may have thyroid problems."
"Have you been feeling tired?"
"Yes! Sometimes I struggle to wake up."
Bucky shook his head. Wells had always been a heavy sleeper, even before the forced marches.
"Do you get weakness in your limbs, or a trembling feeling in your muscles?"
"Um… no?"
"Do you struggle to carry a full load?"
"Well… not exactly."
"Does walking a short distance exhaust you?"
A grin tugged at Bucky's lips as he saw his friend's chance of being diagnosed with something serious slip away.
"Not yet, but if I keep being starved as I am, it soon will," scowled Wells.
"Come back when it does, then."
When the nurses left them alone, Bucky closed his eyes and tried to relax. To not think about the giant needle sticking out of his arm. Really, it wasn't that bad. It didn't hurt, and it wasn't as if he was doing anything physically challenging. Plus, from his bed, he had a nice view.
He watched the nurses as they went about their business. They worked more quietly than men, without the griping and the casual name-calling. It seemed a little slice of civilisation in the midst of military chaos, and it brought another small pang of something to Bucky's chest.
Homesickness, he decided. I miss the normalcy. I miss the company of dames. But maybe he didn't have to. Maybe he could find a nice, pretty nurse to spend time with. After all, Gusty had done alright for himself, and he seemed much happier with a dame to cuddle.
The nurses of the day shift ranged from tall and scrawny to short and plump, with everything in between on offer. He immediately discounted the stern, matronly nurse; she was much too old. Another of the nurses, a slim woman with a mischievous face, he similarly discounted; the flecks of grey at her temples suggested she was older than she first appeared.
Of those remaining, Nurse Klein was clearly out of the question, and one of the others wore a wedding ring. Steve had often accused of him being girl-crazy, and of chasing after anything in a skirt, but despite his—as far as he was concerned—undeserved reputation, he had personal rules and standards. He never chased a dame who'd made it obvious his attention was unwelcome. His dad had told him, during one particularly awkward talk he'd had with Bucky and Steve aged thirteen, that there was a difference between pursuing a girl playing hard to get, and being a pest. As well, Bucky never looked twice at another guy's girl. As soon as he knew a dame was taken, that was it; she was off the table.
The southern nurse was real pretty, and her uniform hugged her body in all the right places. Or perhaps the slim nurse with the green eyes was more his type; she had a smile that dimpled her cheeks.
Neither of those nurses came to take the needle out of his arm. In fact, it was Nurse Klein who did the honours, and managed a gentle touch which didn't hurt when she pulled the needle out. When he smiled his gratitude at her, she blushed.
"I just wanted to say how sorry I am for Agent Carter hitting you," she said, as she moved over to Wells' bed.
"Don't worry about it; it wasn't your fault," Wells told her.
Bucky glanced back over to the rest of the nurses. Was it his imagination, or was that southern nurse watching him from beneath her lashes?
"Maybe you can help us settle a matter, though," Wells continued. No, it wasn't his imagination; she was definitely watching him, and a small smile graced her lips when she realised he was watching her watching him. "Sergeant Barnes and I were talking about our favourite subjects in high school, and we couldn't decide on whether we'd heard a particular term in biology, or chemistry. Maybe you can help shed some light on the matter?"
Nurse Klein blushed again, but Bucky barely noticed; the pretty southern nurse was whispering to two of the others. About him?
"Oh, I'm sure Mr. Stark would be better placed to advise you about scientific matters," Nurse Klein said.
"He's also a very busy man," said Wells, in a feigned tone of mock severity. "Anyway, the term I remember is 'hydra.' I thought I remembered it from biology, because I guess it has something to do with hydration, and water, whereas Barnes thinks it's a chemistry term. What do you think, Nurse Klein?"
"Hydra are tiny, waterborne organisms," she said.
"Are they dangerous?" Bucky asked, his concentration returning partially to the matter at hand. Maybe he'd ask the pretty southern nurse what her name was, after he'd been rehydrated. Or maybe… No, he couldn't ask Nurse Klein, she'd only go back and gossip about it. Women did that all the time. They were terrible gossips.
"Only if you're a microscopic aquatic invertebrate. You don't need to worry, the halozone tablets kill most microorganisms in water, and hydra are large enough to be filtered out."
"What do they look like?" Wells asked. "Do they have tentacles?"
"I'm afraid I don't know," Nurse Klein smiled apologetically. "My focus has always been more on human biology, and since hydra aren't a threat to human health, my education hasn't really covered them. I do know, however, that they belong to the 'hydrozoa' class of animals, which also includes jellyfish. So, I suppose you could say they're related to animals with tentacles. But like I said, Mr. Stark would be a better person to ask. He's very smart, you know."
"I know," Wells said drily. "He reminds us of that fact often enough."
"Well, I'm happy I was able to help a little. Just lie still now, and I'll go fetch you something to eat and drink. How does coffee and a Graham Cracker sound?"
"Delicious, thanks. But can I have two crackers? I've lost a lot of weight recently."
"I'll see what I can do."
Nurse Klein returned to the other nurses, and they whispered quietly before disappearing together out of the hospital tent. Why did women always go around in groups like that? Surely it didn't take four of them to do coffee and biscuits, did it?
"I think we should talk to Stark," said Wells.
"Hmm?" Bucky finally turned his attention back to his friend. "Oh. Sure. We can do that."
"Jeez, Barnes, can't you focus on something other than dames for more than a minute? You're practically drooling."
"Me? But— You—"
"Focus, pal," said Wells, reaching over to grip his shoulder. "First we unearth whatever conspiracy is going on around here, and then we can get you a dame. By the way, you ever notice how the word 'conspiracy' has the word 'piracy' in it? I'm sure that's a conspiracy in itself."
The nurses returned with coffee and biscuits. The pretty southern nurse smiled at him, and Bucky let himself be distracted by her beauty, while Wells glowered daggers at him. Bucky couldn't bring himself to care about his friend's glowering, though. Besides, Wells was crazy. There was no conspiracy; just a regular ol' mystery. Eventually, Wells would have to admit that he'd been wrong about that, at least.
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Howard Stark's tent was today wedged between the motor pool and the quartermaster's stores, and he seemed none too happy about it. As soon as he saw Bucky and Wells approach, the first words out of his mouth were, "How's a guy supposed to get any work done with that racket going on?!"
'That racket' turned out to be the grinding, metallic, tinkering sound of a couple of mechanics working on a jeep. Their upper bodies were buried under in the jeep's hood, whilst myriad parts were strewn on the ground around them.
"They appear to be rebuilding an engine," said Bucky. "I don't think that's something you can do quietly."
"I could," Stark glared. "And who asked you, anyway?"
"You did."
"It was a rhetorical question." Stark lowered a pair of goggles, which were perched atop his head, over his eyes and turned his focus back to some contraption on his workbench. What it was supposed to be, Bucky could not guess; it was a mess of wires and leads, tangled like a plate of noodles. When Stark picked up a soldering iron and began soldering wires together, wisps of white smoke started curling into the air.
Bucky glanced at Wells, and received an encouraging nod.
"Err, Mr. Stark," said Bucky, desperately groping for some subtle conversation opener, "have you any idea how far the next communication bunker is?"
"Huh?"
"Well, that's what we're doing, isn't it? Capturing them, so we can figure out what the Nazis are up to?"
"And leaving behind someone to run the things and allay any suspicions," Wells added. "I bet those German fellas that Phillips puts in the bunkers are able to feed all sorts of misinformation back."
"How should I know?" Stark asked. "I'm just a scientific genius; I don't get involved in planning and military strategy."
"You must hear things all the time, though," said Wells. "And I bet you know all about hydra, right?"
Stark shot a sharp look at Wells. The goggles made his eyes look huge and boggly.
"What did you say?"
"I said I bet you know all about hydra," said Wells, and Bucky suppressed a quiet groan. Blurting out the damn word had raised Stark's suspicions. It wasn't the 'subtle' tack Bucky had hoped for. "Nurse Klein said we should ask you."
Stark shifted his weight from foot to foot for a moment, looking for all the world like a kid who'd just been put up in front of the class to read a book report he hadn't prepared. Gone was his air of show-off-my-genius superiority. Now, he exuded guilt.
"Hydra? That's an imaginary creature from Greek mythology. Hardly my area of expertise."
"But why—"
"Look, Sergeant… Sergeant," said Stark, brandishing his soldering iron like a knife, "maybe you've got free time to spend chit-chatting about nonsense, but I'm working to a very tight schedule here. So, unless you're actually some sort of electrical engineering genius, I don't have the time to talk to you right now."
"C'mon," said Bucky, pulling at Wells' sleeve. Whatever Stark knew, they'd blown their chance at getting anything from him. Wells finally relented, and let himself be led out and away from the area. "What the hell were you thinking, just blurting stuff out like that?!"
"I was thinking we had to take a chance. Shake the tree and see what fell loose, so to speak," Wells replied. "You can't interrogate someone without applying a little pressure."
"Investigate, Wells. Not interrogate. We'll never get anything out of Stark, now."
"We got what we need. You heard how shifty he got, when I mentioned hydra. It really does mean something." Wells stopped abruptly as a bunch of servicemen from the 69th passed by on their way to the mess tent. When they'd gone, Wells took him aside, to a less conspicuous area. He also lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and Bucky quickly glanced around to make sure they weren't being watched. There was nothing more suspicious than a conspiratorial whisper. "We're on the right tracks; we just need to go higher."
Second thoughts assaulted Bucky's mind. Third and fourth thoughts joined in the attack.
"You ever consider maybe we're being kept in the dark for a reason?" he asked. Whatever was going on here, Wells was rushing into it head-first. Bucky had always considered himself a pretty straight-flier. Sure, he and Steve had gotten into trouble, but mostly it had been because of youthful high spirits. They'd toed the line with the rules from time to time, but they'd never done anything truly wrong, and they'd never broken the law. Just boyhood mischief.
Technically, what Wells was doing wasn't wrong… it just made Bucky feel uneasy. He'd always respected the concept of 'chain of command,' and always believed that if people in high places kept secrets, it was usually for a just cause. Investigating senior commissioned officers, and doing it in secret, just seemed… well, it seemed like the very conspiracy that Wells claimed he was trying to unearth. What if, during their investigation, they violated protocol, or messed up some carefully laid plans? And even if they did unearth some conspiracy, what the hell could they do about it? It wasn't as if they had someone above Phillips to go to, and the man had shown more than once that he was willing to make 'problems' disappear. Bucky didn't want to be a problem. He didn't want to disappear.
"The reason is, Phillips thinks we're dumb patsies who will follow his orders without question," said Wells.
"Well, uh, yeah. That's what we're supposed to do. It's how the army works. You know rule number one: don't ask stupid questions."
"But our questions aren't stupid. We're being told to kill people before they surrender. Phillips even implied we should kill anyone who does. What if that gets back to the brass? Who do you think is gonna take the blame for that? All Phillips has to do is claim he never gave any order of the sort. It's not like we have witnesses who heard him say that. He gets off scot free, while we take the rap for breaking the law under orders. Don't you think that if we're being asked to do that, we have a right to know why?"
Bucky squirmed as Wells' arguments launched a counter-attack against his second, third and fourth thoughts. Wells was right. These circumstances weren't usual. They were very unusual. Executing men who'd surrendered wasn't duty; it was above and beyond. It was murder.
"Alright," he agreed. A smiled pulled up the corners of his lips. Wells might be crazy, but his tenacity reminded Bucky very much of Steve. If it weren't for a string of ailments as long as his arm, Steve would have been there with Bucky; and probably encouraging him to get to the truth. He had a sense of justice that was unshakable. "But we've gotta play it smarter. We can't just go blabbing stuff about hydra, not without knowing more about what it is."
Wells nodded. "Alright. We'll talk to Agent Carter. Maybe we can try a different angle. Ask her about that flag. Maybe see if we can shake something loose that way."
"Maybe let me do the talking, though. She's already suspicious of you after that bullshit you told her outside the women's tent. And because you're… well, you."
"I told you, she just needs to warm up to me. I'm actually a nice guy."
He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "And self-praise is no recommendation. C'mon, let's go get some dinner, then we can figure out how we're gonna get Agent Carter alone."
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Getting some time alone with a dame had never been a problem for Bucky, but Agent Carter wasn't any normal dame, and he struggled to think of a way to get her alone without further raising her suspicions or causing her to punch him. She was, he decided, entirely too suspicious and mistrustful. What he couldn't figure out, was why. Sure, she got a lot of attention from the soldiers in the camp, but most of them weren't stupid enough to push their luck, and only Hodge and a few of the less polite guys kept up the cat-calls. But Agent Carter seemed to take any attention, or show of affection, as a personal insult. If Bucky were a dame, and he looked like Carter, he would have been flattered to get the attention of so many men.
They spent a few hours of the night, when most of the regiment were soundly asleep, discussing possible excuses to get Agent Carter alone, and how exactly they could get some information from her. Wells used the time to add to his neatly written notes, including both definitions of 'hydra' that they'd heard so far, as well as expanding on some of his conspiracy theories. Bucky was pleased to see him cross out the 'alien' line of reasoning. That was crazy, even for Wells.
As luck would have it, they encountered an opportunity to speak to Agent Carter after breakfast the next day. She was sitting at a table in the mess with a few of the soldiers from the 9th Infantry, who were all eating in a rather sheepish silence. Bucky nudged Wells, who was sitting opposite him, and nodded to the woman. When she left the mess tent alone, they abandoned what was left of their breakfasts and followed her.
They caught up with her not far from the motor pool, but just as they were about to call out for her, they ran into somebody rather large. Literally. Sergeant Dum Dum Dugan stepped out in front of them, his face a whole new set of scowls.
"There you two are," he said.
"Hey, you found your hat!" Wells grinned. "Where was it?"
"Hmph! It was under my bed."
"Your apology is accepted," Bucky said. He peered around Dugan's large shoulders; Agent Carter was almost out of sight amongst the tents.
"I didn't stop you to apologise," Dugan said. "I wanted to talk to you about a poker championship some of my guys want to set up. Thought maybe you could put—"
"Yeah, yeah," said Wells, slowly edging around Dugan. "We can discuss it later. We have… um… things. To do. Things to do."
Bucky nodded agreement, and slipped around the other side of Dugan. "Things."
They left Dugan looking puzzled, and Bucky immediately put him out of mind. There would be time for poker later. Right now, they had answers to find, and the source of their answers was rapidly disappearing from view.
As they hurried around one of the larger barracks tents, they ran straight into Agent Carter. Hands on her hips, scowl on her face, she gave them a glare that nearly froze them on the spot. Bucky quickly backed up by a pace, out of punching range, and his friend was only a heartbeat behind him.
"Sergeant Barnes. Sergeant Wells. I see you two have mended your bridges," she said.
"Yes, we took your advice and talked it out," said Wells. "And now it's all water under the bridge. The very mended bridge."
"So why are you following me now?"
"We just wanted to talk to you," Bucky said. He rushed on before she could tell him he was number twenty. "About the missions we've been on recently."
"What about them?"
"Well…" Planning what to say, and actually saying it whilst attempting to sound genuinely in the dark, were two completely different things. Bucky aimed for his best innocent expression, and hoped it didn't look guilty. "We thought there were some… odd… things about them. For example, what's the deal with those flags pinned to the walls? Swastika I can understand, but what the hell were those octopus things?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant." She pursed her lips. "Had you been able to bring back a prisoner, perhaps we could have interrogated him over the matter. Maybe next time, you and your men should be a little less gung-ho."
"Next time?" Wells prompted.
Agent Carter gave a quiet, vexed hiss. "I was speaking hypothetically, of course. I believe it would behove you all to be less trigger-happy in the future."
"So," Bucky picked up, "you don't know what that strange flag means?"
"I just said that, didn't I? Why do you want to know, anyway?"
"We heard that Nazi paraphernalia may be worth something back home," Wells inserted smoothly. "You know, spoils of war and all that. Do you think the colonel would mind if we took one or two of them home with us?"
"You'd have to take that up with the colonel."
"Maybe," Bucky said, as a new avenue of attack presented itself, "we could ask those Germans who the colonel is keeping under wraps, about the flags. Perhaps it's got some sort of root in Germanic mythology."
"Colonel Phillips actually ordered us not to take any prisoners, you know," Wells threw in.
"I'm sure you misunderstood him," Agent Carter replied, her tone increasingly terse.
"Then why'd he shoot that prisoner we took on our first mission?"
"The man tried to escape. Colonel Phillips shot him to preserve our secrecy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm on my way to an important briefing. If you want to take 'spoils of war,' I suggest you take it up with the colonel."
"We will," Bucky agreed. Inside his head, all sorts of alarm bells were ringing. He watched Agent Carter stride away, her whole posture tense. "What do you think?" he asked.
"I think Agent Carter is a better liar than Stark," said Wells, as he eyed her departing back. "But, kinda like that priest back in Aureille, her first reaction should have been shock or surprise when we told her that Phillips had ordered us to take no prisoners. Whatever's going on, she's in on it."
"How much further can we go?" he asked. "Stark's suspicious, Agent Carter is hardly Miss Communication Skills 1943, and short of finding out where those Germans are housed and sneaking our way in… You wanna sneak in, don't you?" He could tell by the secretive gleam in Wells' blue eyes.
"What other option do we have? Question Colonel Phillips? That's gonna get us nowhere fast." Wells must have read some of his misgivings on his face, because he reached out to lay a reassuring hand on Bucky's shoulder. "We've come this far, pal. We can't turn back now. We gotta see it through. The reactions of Stark, and Agent Carter, should tell you that something big is going on."
He sighed, and hoped whatever was going on wouldn't result in his court-martial. "What do you suggest we do? We don't know where those Germans are being kept. Apart from when Phillips brings one to take up residence in a bunker, we never even see them."
"Then we find them. It's a big camp, but not big enough that a group of people can just disappear. We split up—because people seem to get suspicious when they see us together—and look for where those Germans are being kept. If we automatically discount the regimental tents, that narrows our options down considerably."
"Even if we find them, we can't just waltz in there in broad daylight," he pointed out. "Somebody will see."
"Then we go at midnight, when most of the camp's asleep."
"You realise this is mad, don't you?"
Wells gave a quick nod. "Because I am actually sane, I do realise how mad this is. But it's also mad that we're in France, being told to shoot enemy soldiers who've surrendered. Something is afoot here, and we have to find out exactly what it is." Wells glanced around, as if afraid of someone watching him. Just how deep did his paranoia run? "I'll meet you back at the regiment's tent after dinner, okay?"
Without waiting for a response, Wells slunk off, and not for the first time that day, Bucky wished Steve were there. Steve had always been the voice of reason, at least where anything other than enlisting in the Army was concerned, and a little reason might go a long way right now.
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If Bucky had ever considered that the life of a spy might be for him, the next few hours swiftly dashed that notion. He wandered the camp in search of the strange Germans and tried to act as if it was just another ordinary day. But whenever the eyes of other soldiers fell on him, he felt as though they could see right through him. That they knew he had some hidden agenda. With each step he took, he grew more and more certain that, soon, somebody would stop him and ask why he was acting so shifty. And what could he say? He didn't have Wells' ability to make up bullshit on the spot, largely because he parents had driven into him at a very early age the knowledge that lying was wrong. As far as making things up was concerned, he was sorely out of practise.
As the afternoon wore on, he began jumping at small sounds. As he was passing by the 69th's tent, he could have sworn that he was being followed. To try and shake whoever was following, he did three circuits of the tent, much to the bemusement of the members of the 69th who were relaxing nearby. After his third circuit, he either managed to lose whoever was tailing him, or he'd managed to allay the fears of his own imagination.
Two or three times, he tried to work up the courage to explore a little more around the command tent. Two or three times, he lost his nerve and quickly walked back the other way. On his fourth attempt, he'd just managed to talk himself into it, when he saw Sergeant Hawkswell step out of the command tent and look around with his sharp eyes. Bucky dodged to one side as his heart raced ahead of him in his chest. He hurried away, letting his feet pick his direction whilst his brain was occupied with trying to make a clean escape. He only realised he'd arrived at the church tent when a familiar, cheerful voice called out, "Sergeant Barnes!"
Lieutenant Olliver stepped towards him, a smile on his face. Shit, Bucky thought. He'd already lied to the guy once, and lying to priests made Bucky feel real uncomfortable. When he'd been young, his mom had told him that priests were a direct link to God. That when you spoke to a priest, it was like you were speaking to the Lord. To the mischievous six year old Bucky, it had been enough to stop him from misbehaving in church, but now his mom's words came back to haunt him. He did not think God liked being lied to.
"If you've come for services, I'm afraid you're a little early," the lieutenant continued. "But I don't mind giving a private sermon, if you like!"
"Oh. I, um, was actually on my way to the hospital tent," he lied, knowing he would regret it later.
"Oh." Lieutenant Olliver's face dropped. The disheartened expression was immediately replaced by genuine concern. "Nothing too serious, I hope?"
"No. Just an… err, earache." Inspiration came from his memory. He'd had an ear infection when he'd been a kid, and it had kept him off school for a week. The boredom had almost killed him, because his ear infection had struck during a week when Steve was healthy and at school, which meant Bucky had spent his time largely alone. "Just want to make sure it's nothing serious."
The chaplain nodded sagely. "Yes, of course. I must admit, when I saw you approach, I did think you looked a little peaky. And tired, too. Have you been sleeping well?"
"Pretty well," he said.
"And… um… Sergeant Wells? Is he recovered from his vampire phobia?"
"Oh, yes. The holy water definitely helped. He sleeps with the canteen under his pillow, in case he's attacked by vampires in the night."
"Good, good. Well, I won't keep you from your checkup. We need our soldiers fit and healthy!"
Bucky slunk into the medical tent and told one of the nurses about his imaginary earache. She settled him onto a bed, and stuck a thermometer in his mouth. He used the tip of his tongue to toy with the thin glass tube for a moment, and when he saw the pretty southern nurse at the other side of the tent, he willed the thermometer to give him a high temperature. If he was sick, he could stay here and talk to her, and he wouldn't have to go on some completely insane sneaky undercover midnight mission with Wells. It wasn't that he didn't want to get to the truth… it was just that the truth was currently slightly less important than the pretty nurse who kept shooting smiles at him.
His heart skipped a few beats when she made her way over to his bed. Be hot, be hot, be hot, he mentally chanted at the thermometer.
"How are ya feelin', Sergeant?" she asked, as her eyes danced over him from head to toe.
"Oh, you know, I'm doing okay, I guess, apart from this earache," he said, opting for stoic bravery. He gave her a small smile. "I'm sure it's nothing."
"This is the second time you've been in here in as many days. If you're not careful, someone's gonna think you're making excuses to be here." A tiny smiled curled up the corners of her lips.
"Then it's a good job I have you here to tell them otherwise, Nurse..?"
"Green." She winked at him, and reached out to place the back of her hand against his forehead, feeling for a none-existent temperature. "But you can call me Marielle, sugar."
He grinned, and the thermometer very nearly fell from his mouth. She had wonderfully warm hands, and skin that felt soft against his forehead.
"Pleased to officially meet you, Marielle," he said, extending his hand. "I'm B—"
Instinct made him stop and look up as two people entered the medical tent. They were MPs; members of the 9th Infantry who kept order in the camp. They were both armed, and as soon their eyes fell on Bucky, his heart sank. They could have been there for any reason, but he knew, as soon as he saw them, that they were there for him. Sure enough, they made their way over to his bed and flanked him.
"Sergeant Barnes? You're to come with us."
"But… I might have an ear infection," he offered lamely.
"Nurse, is this man sick?" one of them asked Marielle.
She plucked the thermometer from his mouth and glanced at it before offering him an apologetic smile. "Fit as a fiddle. Sorry, hun."
Bucky didn't bother asking the MPs what this was about. Even if they knew, they wouldn't tell him; military police were picked for their obedience and discretion. Besides, he didn't particularly want Nurse Green to hear about all the trouble Wells continually got him into.
It was inevitable that their march through the camp would draw stares. It wasn't every day that someone was escorted by MPs, and as they flanked him and directed him towards the command tent, Bucky wished that he was smaller. Small enough to disappear beyond the stares. Smaller than Steve-sized.
The command tent loomed. Another pair of MPs waited ominously outside it, their expressions blank as Bucky approached. He tried to tell himself that didn't mean anything. None of this meant anything. Whatever he'd been brought here for, it was a mistake. The colonel didn't know anything. He couldn't know anything. There was nothing to know. All Bucky had done was ask questions, and maybe snoop a little. He hadn't broken any rules.
Maybe this wasn't even about the questions. Maybe this was about something else. The 'redistribution' involved in getting Gusty a birthday cake, perhaps. Yes, that had to be it. Things had gone missing, temporarily. Everything had eventually been returned, even Stark's doohickey, but obviously the thefts had been noticed. That's what this was about.
He was ushered into the tent, where three people were waiting. Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter were two of them. The other was Wells. Bucky's fellow sergeant was standing to attention, staring past Phillips to the back of the tent. He didn't even blink as Bucky was led in, and judging by the firm press of his lips, he either hadn't said anything, or hadn't been given the opportunity.
Bucky immediately halted beside Wells and saluted, then stood to attention. He decided the gaze-past-the-colonel stare Wells had adopted was probably best, and he mimicked it as Phillips stepped forward, his face particularly thunderous.
"Sergeants, do you have any idea why you're here?"
"No sir," Bucky said, and Wells echoed him. There was no point incriminating himself, especially if this was about the cake incident.
"Is that, 'No sir, I'm going to play dumb,' or 'No sir, it could be any number of things and I just don't know which one would get me into most trouble,'?" Phillips asked.
"The former, sir." He was pretty sure 'admit nothing' was the most sensible option in these circumstances. The colonel had nothing to pin on them.
Phillips walked over to the table and picked up a pile of papers. "Care to explain this?"
Bucky looked at the papers, and his heart sank. They were the notes and doodles Wells had made about their investigation. Everything they had been looking into, written down for the world to see.
"Sir," Wells said, a tone of defiance creeping into his voice, "regulations state that a search of any soldier's personal belongings has to be undertaken in the presence of—"
"Don't quote regulations to me, Sergeant!" Phillips barked. "And if you try to sell me some bull story about those papers being planted in your footlocker, so help me son, I'll come down on you so hard you'll think someone dropped a house on your head."
"We weren't doing anything wrong, sir," Bucky offered.
"You've been asking questions, Sergeant Barnes." Phillips slammed the papers down on the table, and the loud thud made both Bucky and Wells jump. "Dangerous questions." He glanced down, at one of the notes with a line through it. "And what's this nonsense about aliens?" Bucky kept his mouth shut. There was no way he could explain that.
"What do you know about HYDRA?" Agent Carter chipped in. Her porcelain face was cold, calculating. He should'a known she'd be suspicious of their questions about that damn flag.
"Nothing," Wells said quickly. "At least, nothing solid. We've heard a couple of different variations. Greek sea monster, tiny aquatic vertebrates… we hadn't picked our favourite yet."
"The name," Carter pressed. "Where did you hear it?"
The urgency in her voice made Bucky's hair stand on end. He and Wells had been treating this investigation as a game. Or rather, Bucky had been treating it like a game; Wells had just been obsessed with the mystery. Now, he realised this was more than a game. More than a mystery. The armed MPs had not just been for show; for some reason, the very idea that two soldiers might know more than they should about whatever this situation was, had Colonel Phillips on the edge of his nerves. It was, Bucky decided, time to start being honest.
"On our last mission, one of the Germans said it, right before he died," Bucky explained. "He said, 'Hail Hydra.' We figured it was something out of the ordinary, kinda like that flag."
"And yet you failed to mention this piece of information in your mission report, Sergeant Wells," Phillips accused.
"Yessir," Wells agreed. "I wanted to find out more."
"So you thought the matter was important enough to investigate on your own, but not to report to me?"
"No, sir." Wells finally transferred his gaze from the back of the tent to Phillips' face. "You ordered us not to take prisoners, sir. You implied we should kill anyone who surrendered. When my CO orders me to break regulations, I tend to lose faith in his motives."
"You ordered us to murder people, sir," Bucky added, throwing weight to his friend's defence. "You shot an unarmed prisoner. We didn't know whether we could trust you."
Phillips glanced across to Carter, and something unreadable passed between them. The colonel gave a small sigh, and made a dismissive hand gesture. Agent Carter walked to the tent flap and dismissed the MPs.
"Sergeants, I'm going to give you a choice," Phillips said. "And for godssake, at ease. You're making me tense just looking at you." Bucky relaxed by a hair, and beside him, Wells did the same. Choices were good. He liked choices. He liked them better than he liked MPs, anyway. Liked them better than he liked Phillips dropping a house on his head.
"You want answers, I'll give you answers," the colonel continued. "But if you're in for a dime, you're in for a dollar. Once you have your answers, you and any men on missions with you answer directly to me. If I give you an order that seems strange, you follow it without question. If I give you an order that runs contrary to an order Colonel Hawkswell gives you, mine is the one you obey. You do everything I say, to the letter. And you speak of it to no-one, not even your men. Captured men can't spill secrets that they don't know.
"If you can't handle that, then I won't give you answers. You and the rest of the 107th will spend the rest of this mission on camp maintenance, and I'll send the 370th on all combat ops in your place. Those boys are just itching to prove themselves. You now have twenty seconds to make your choice."
Bucky quickly looked to his friend. They'd gotten into this mess together, and now they had to get out of it together. Or, further into it together. Whatever the choice, he didn't want to make it alone. Looking at the expression on Wells' face, he saw the feeling was mutual. He received a tiny, encouraging nod. Part of him wished Wells had declined.
"Okay, sir," Bucky said for the both of them. "We agree to your terms." God, he hoped he was making the right decision. Hoped that he wouldn't go home after the war and regret the day he'd said 'yes.'
"Very good. Agent Carter, educate the sergeants."
"HYDRA," Agent Carter said, stepping forward with a patient, lecturing tone in her voice, "is the name of a Nazi deep science division run by a man named Johann Schmidt." The name tickled at something in Bucky's memory. He'd heard it before… but where? "We have reason to believe that HYDRA is operating outside the bounds of the normal chain of command. If they have gone rogue, then they represent a threat equal to—or greater than—that posed by Hitler. Much of what HYDRA do is experimental and exceedingly dangerous. Intelligence gathered about them suggests that their leader, Schmidt, is not content with merely advancing an agenda of Aryan superiority; world domination is his goal, and he'll stop at nothing to achieve it."
"Huh." It was not what he had been expecting. He hadn't known what to expect, but worse-than-regular-Nazi Nazis was not it.
"The communication bunkers you've been attacking are part of a secret network of facilities that HYDRA has been using to send information and orders beyond the Führer's back. Each bunker we take provides valuable insights into HYDRA's operations."
"Call me crazy," Wells said, and Bucky bit his tongue because he'd already told Wells on multiple occasions that he was genuinely crazy, "but if this is such a big thing, wouldn't it make more sense to take prisoners, instead of… you know… executing these HYDRA people? I mean, you shot the first prisoner we took, sir."
Phillips shook his head. "It wasn't my shots that killed him. HYDRA personnel have a nasty habit of, when captured, popping cyanide pills implanted into their teeth. Stops them from being interrogated. As soon as I mentioned the name 'HYDRA' to your prisoner, the moment he realised I knew he was more than some simple Wehrmacht grunt, he snapped his capsule."
"Then why the deception, sir?" Bucky asked. "Why shoot him at all?"
"Because it's not standard procedure for Nazi troops to use suicide pills. You, your men and the medical staff retrieving Lieutenant Danzig's body, would have been more suspicious of a German using a cyanide pill to take his own life than you were of me shooting one. By the time I shot him, he was already dead. That's why I didn't want you to waste time and risk lives by trying to take prisoners. HYDRA soldiers fight to the death, and they can't be interrogated because they swallow their medicine before they can be stopped. When you face HYDRA troops, either they die, or you do."
Giddy relief flooded Bucky's mind, and a huge weight was lifted from his shoulders. He wasn't a killer! Or, he was, but the men he'd killed would only have taken their own lives if captured. It was a twisted thought, that he should be glad that the men he'd killed would have killed themselves if taken prisoner… but it relieved all of his guilt. It let him off the hook.
"What about those guys in the German uniforms?" Wells asked. "Are they really Germans, or are they our guys posing as Germans?"
"That is beyond what you need to know," Phillips said. "Now, you have your answers. In the future, I expect full co-operation. No more sneaking around asking questions, no more second-guessing my commands, and no more wild speculation about our purpose here. Do you understand?"
"Yessir," they both intoned.
"Good. You're dismissed, Sergeants."
Outside the tent, Bucky heaved a deep sigh of relief. There was no sign of the MPs anywhere. He set off back to the regiment's tent before Phillips could change his mind, call them back, and have Agent Carter shoot them on the spot.
"Do you believe all that?" Wells asked quietly, once they were far enough away from the command tend that they wouldn't be overheard.
"Uh… yeah, actually. Don't you?"
"Well, yes. But it wasn't the whole truth, was it?"
Oh god. He was gonna bring up the aliens again. Bucky could just feel it.
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it," his friend whispered, eyeing a couple of passing servicemen and waiting until they were out of earshot before continuing. "Carter said HYDRA were possibly more dangerous than Hitler. We're talking about a guy who has the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine and the whole of the Wehrmacht, plus the SS, the Gestapo, a bunch of crazy scientists and who knows how much mustard gas? If they think this 'Schmidt' guy is more dangerous than that, he must be doing some damn shady stuff… and even before we got here, they must have known about some of it."
"Wells, I swear, if you say aliens—"
"Not aliens. But something bad. Something really bad. And yet, the SSR is the only part of Allied Command doing anything about them. Why isn't the whole damn army hunting down Schmidt, if he's such a big threat?"
"They're probably occupied with this whole 'Nazi' situation," Bucky told him, trying to douse the fires of paranoia. "Plus, doing things quiet means we can sneak around behind the Krauts' backs, right? They can't defend against what they can't see coming."
"I guess. But mark my words, Barnes, there's more going on here than meets the eye."
What could he say to that? Wells was crazy. In fact, the whole situation was crazy. Just how long would it be before 'crazy' became 'normal'?