The mission was supposed to be a simple, straightforward kill order. Much like most of STRIKE Team Delta's missions, it hit a snag almost immediately. Coulson's voice had come over the radio while they were still crossing the Atlantic informing them of a change in the mission.
"Delta, do you copy?" their handler said. Clint rolled his eyes in the pilots seat and made a sharp 'and there it is' gesture towards the radio.
"This is Delta." Clint responded.
"Change of plans." Coulson said, "The target got spooked by something. Our agent made preliminary contact and Platch Liev and his men started packing up within the hour."
"Shit." Clint said, and then keyed the mic, "Copy that, sir."
"We know his home base is somewhere in the Balkan Mountains, but we don't know exactly where." their handler said, "Fortunately, our agent had backup in place who managed to tag one of his men with a tracker. Reroute to Belgrade for now and I'll update you when when have a location."
"How big of a problem is that?" Alex asked from the co-pilots seat where he had been getting a how-not-to-crash course in flying the Quinjet from the archer.
"Minor inconvenience at best." Clint told him, "Give me back the stick so I can plot our new course."
After they had taken off Clint had insisted on starting to teach Alex how to fly a Quinjet, just in case he needed to someday. After he got them over open water he turned the controls over to let him get used to handling the aircraft. It was Clint's belief that the best way to learn something was by doing it, so he briefly explained how everything worked and had Alex watch him for a while before letting him try it. Part of the reason STRIKE Team Delta was so self-contained with only two agents was because Clint and Natasha were one of the best flight teams SHIELD had, as well as being two of their most dangerous ground assets. They were just as capable of acting as air support as they were their usual infiltration and assassination missions. Clint was a damn good pilot and Natasha was an equally good co-pilot/gunner. They could switch roles if they had to, but they preferred that arrangement. With Alex being added to the mix Clint wanted to be sure he could step into one of those roles if necessary.
"Get out of my seat, rookie." Natasha suddenly said from behind him, making him jump a little. He was starting to regret telling her she could mask her emotions from him. He relied on his empathy more than he'd like to admit to keep track of the people around him, and since she learned she could conceal her feelings from him it was damn near impossible to tell where she was if she was out of sight. He hauled himself out of the seat to make room for her and sat at the navigator's station that was never used on this particular aircraft.
"So Coulson said he got spooked?" she asked her partner, "We have any idea why?"
"Not a clue." Clint replied, "Said there was a preliminary meeting with our agent and they were packing up to leave in less than an hour. No idea how he sniffed it out. How FUBAR do you think this is going to go?"
Natasha tilted her head and considered the question for a moment.
"Worse than Abidjan, not as bad as Budapest." she decided.
"That's a pretty wide range." Clint noted.
Natasha shrugged nonchalantly, "I like to hedge my bets."
They landed at an old, unused airfield around twenty miles outside the city and stashed the Quinjet in a hangar that was a couple years at most away from collapsing. While Alex was helping Clint gather their gear, Natasha disappeared and came back fifteen minutes later with a freshly stolen car that had seen better days.
"Classy." Clint snorted when he saw the sad excuse for a vehicle.
"You're welcome to walk." Natasha shot back with an arched eyebrow, "We're lucky I found anything at all out here. Quit your bitching."
"Yes, ma'am." the archer snarked back, throwing his arm up into a half-assed salute.
"I'm surrounded by idiots." the spy said with an eyeroll before shaking her head and walking towards the car she'd stolen.
The drive to their safehouse was quiet and uneventful. Or at least it would have been if the car hadn't broken down five miles from their destination. When it sputtered and died in the middle of a turn Natasha let her head drop onto the steering wheel before turning to glare at Clint in the passenger seat.
"Not. One. Word." she bit out in a clipped tone.
Clint held up his hands placatingly with his lips pressed into a tight line to repress a smile. The amusement radiating from him was strong, but he clearly knew when it was wise to keep his mouth shut.
"Does this happen to you guys a lot?" Alex chimed in from the back seat.
Clint thought about it for a few seconds before nodding, "Yeah, it's pretty typical actually. We start getting suspicious when things go smoothly."
Natasha tried to start the car again a few times, only to give up on it fairly quickly.
"So I guess we're walking the rest of the way." Clint said casually while giving Natasha a pointed look and climbing out of the car.
"I said not one word." she replied.
"I didn't say one word." the archer retorted, "I said ten."
Natasha reached over and flicked him in the ear. Hard.
"Ow!" Clint exclaimed, holding his ear with an indignant look, "Way to set an example for the newbie, Nat!"
Alex was inordinately amused by what he had learned about his new teammates over the last couple hours. For being the most successful partnership SHIELD had ever seen, they bickered a lot.
Clint stepped around to the trunk and pulled out the equipment they had deemed not crucial to have on them for the drive, including his bow and quiver.
"Make sure you got everything, Myers." Clint instructed, "We're not coming back this way. And here, your comms."
The last two words were accompanied by Clint's hand being held out towards him with a small object nestled in it. It was deceptively small and colored to roughly match Alex's skin tone, so he figured it would be close to invisible when it was in his ear. He settled it into place and was surprised to note that it fit well enough that after the first few seconds he couldn't even tell it was there.
Alex took a minute to make sure the pair of knives he'd requisitioned were secure in their sheaths before flashing his teammates a thumbs up. He had specifically requested double edged knives that could be secured with the hilt facing downward and was provided with two Ka-Bar Ek Model 4s.
"I gotta ask. What are the knives for?" Natasha asked curiously, "Never seen you use one before."
In lieu of answering Alex drew one of them and glanced around to make sure no one was watching before launching it at a tree he spotted some fifty feet away, and then pulling it back to his hand just as fast.
"The spikes are expendable, and I won't always be able to get them back." he explained while they walked, "This way I have something to defend myself with if I run out. And they're more useful in close quarters than a spike would be."
"Do you have any training in knife fighting?" Natasha asked him with an arched brow.
"Some." he answered, "I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I know what I'm doing. I've got the best sparring partner in the world for knife training. The Professor got annoyed with the blood we kept getting all over the gym, so he made us start training in the garage where we could just spray it down the drain."
"You're not supposed to actually stab your sparring partners, Myers." Clint said.
Alex just shrugged nonchalantly, "He doesn't mind."
"He doesn't mind?!" Clint exclaimed incredulously, "Who the hell doesn't mind getting stabbed repeatedly?"
"Logan." Alex replied, shaking his head wryly, "He's...he's something else. He helps the kids with destructive powers work on controlling them by giving them a moving target that isn't as predictable as a simulator would be. Anything you do to him he heals back almost instantly. One kid fried most of his face off with some sort of plasma he generates, five minutes later you couldn't even tell it happened. I've stabbed him probably a few thousand times now. He told me to. Said he can tell if I did it right by where the blade hits. He probably has more combat experience than several SEAL teams combined and he's a hell of a teacher."
The two assassins just looked at each other with their eyebrows up in disbelief before shaking their heads at the same time.
"You have some weird friends, Myers." Natasha said.
Alex chuckled at that, "You have no idea."
They made it to the safehouse and settled in to wait for Coulson's update. While they waited Clint scrounged around in the kitchen to find them something to eat. They had enough MREs in their bags to last them a few days if they had to, but no one liked eating them if there was a better alternative available. He managed to find a box of pasta and some sauce to make spaghetti with, and had just finished making it when Coulson's voice came back onto the comms.
"We have a likely location, Delta." he told them, "You're not going to like it. There's a compound about fifteen miles into the mountains. There's one road that passes by it approximately three miles out, and access to it is limited to a single path. We kept an eye on the group via satellite as best we could and Platch Liev is with them to the best of our knowledge, but we can't be certain without visual."
"Any idea on numbers?" Clint asked with a thoughtful look.
"The group he returned with consisted of fifteen men." came the answer, "Numbers inside the compound are unknown."
"Assets in the area?" Natasha asked, "If we could feint a frontal assault as a distraction it could give us an opening to infiltrate."
"No one close enough to be helpful." their handler answered her, "Bravo Team is a few hours away, but they're in the middle of an op and can't be diverted. If that changes I'll let you know. For the meantime, assume it's just going to be the three of you."
"Prime, can you give me satellite images of the area around the compound?" Natasha asked while pulling out a laptop.
"Incoming."
The three of them gathered around the laptop to look at the images Coulson sent. The compound was a series of low wooden buildings situated on a natural rock shelf below a ridge that extended for several miles in either direction. It looked like it was built on the ruins of a much older structure. Behind it and partially surrounding it was a sheer cliff face that dropped down from the ridge. A tall palisade fence surrounded the sides of the compound not protected by the cliff, with a heavy gate that was the only way in or out. The front approach was a series of switchbacks that ascended from the road they knew was a few miles away. On the top of the cliff they could see several guard shacks strategically placed to give them a good view of the surrounding area as well as the back side of the ridge.
"Are those...anti-aircraft guns on top of the cliff?" Alex asked.
"Yep." Clint confirmed, "Probably to discourage helicopters, which would be the easiest way to approach. They wouldn't help much against an airstrike, but not much does, really. We'll probably have to land a few miles away and hike the rest of the way in along the ridge. Assuming I can find a spot to put down anywhere nearby."
"Suggestions?" Natasha inquired.
"What do you think, Alex?" Clint asked him.
The mission had gotten more complicated when their target got spooked and went back home, but his teammates were clearly still treating it like a training mission. Alex looked at the satellite photos for a couple minutes trying to figure out what the best approach would be. Finally, he pointed at the guard shack that was situated a little farther out to the right side of the image.
"It looks like we can come in from this side." he said, "There's decent cover on the back side of this guard shack. If we can take out the guards there quietly we can work our way around and neutralize the other guard posts and the AA guns. Getting down to the compound will be tricky. But like you taught me, people don't look up nearly as often as they should. It's doubtful the people inside the compound will be paying much attention to the cliff, so if we can get down fast enough we should be able to get in undetected."
"That's...a solid plan." Natasha admitted grudgingly, "How are we getting down the cliff? Rappelling will take too long. Too much chance of someone spotting us, even at night."
"I've got an idea." Alex told her, "But you're not gonna like it. Do you trust me?"
"No." she replied without hesitation, "What do you have in mind?"
"Well, you know I can levitate myself, and you know I can lift other things." he explained, "If I just drop off the cliff and let myself fall I can levitate before I hit the ground. I've done it before so I know I can do it. If you followed me, do you trust that I won't let you smash into the rocks?"
"You want me to jump off a hundred foot cliff and trust you to catch me?" Natasha asked dubiously,
"Pretty much."
"I'll get back to you on that. The plan is otherwise workable, I think."
"Best place for me is probably the cliff top." Clint put in, "I can get down in a hurry if I need to, and I can give you cover fire from up there. You sure about this, Myers? You weren't really supposed to be this involved on your first mission."
"First mission for SHIELD." Alex corrected with a slight smirk, "I have more experience than I let on."
"So your incompetence in training was just an act?" Natasha said suspiciously, "Good act. I never caught on."
"No, I really was bad at that stuff." he told her, "Never used a gun before, and my level of skill in hand to hand was real. But I've used my powers in similar situations more than I said I have."
"Xavier's people?" Clint asked with a shrewd look.
"Yeah." Alex replied, "It started when I was in Louisiana visiting Remy. Some religious nuts kidnapped a mutant kid. They were planning on doing a fucking sacrifice on an altar. Thought they were doing 'God's work' in ridding the world of an abomination. The Professor asked Remy to handle it since he was close, and I went with him. After that I tagged along on a few things here and there. Mostly rescue missions involving mutant kids. I was along so I could use my empathy to calm them down from being understandably freaked out, but sometimes I had to fight."
"Ever kill anyone?" Natasha asked with a serious expression, "Because you're going to have to here."
"Just once." he answered, to both the assassins' surprise, "We usually didn't use lethal force on rescue missions. I tended to throw people into walls or the ground a lot to knock them out. It was dark and I didn't see the piece of rebar sticking out of a wall. Slammed a guy's back right onto it."
"How'd you feel about it?" Clint asked.
"I'm not thrilled by it." Alex admitted, "But the alternative was letting him shoot Kitty in the head, so I don't regret it."
"Will you be able to on purpose?" Natasha asked next.
"I'd prefer to avoid it when possible." he answered, "But I will if it's necessary. I spent a lot of time thinking about that before I called you and talked to Logan about it a bit."
"It's never easy." Clint told him, "If it starts to become easy to do, you should probably step back and take a long, hard look at yourself."
Natasha was suspiciously quiet and had an unreadable expression on her face. Alex checked and wasn't surprised to find her emotions completely blanked out to his perception. He didn't voice it, but he suspected that she didn't like what Clint's words said about her.
"I'll do it." she said, "The cliff jump, I mean. I'll do it."
After saying that she walked upstairs to the bedroom she'd picked out, obviously done with the conversation.
"She do that a lot?" Alex asked her partner.
"Sometimes." he replied, "It bothers her a little how much the killing doesn't bother her. Nat's been doing this for a long time. She's just as experienced as me, and I've been doing this for over a decade. But she's only twenty years old. Her childhood wasn't exactly normal."
"Will she be mad about you telling me that?" Alex wondered.
"Nah." Clint waved his concerns away, "We talked about it and she told me how much she's okay with me telling you."
"Why does she trust you so much?"
"Reasons." came the flat response. Clint clearly had no intention of answering that particular question.
"Okay." Alex replied. He wasn't going to press his luck with questions they didn't want to answer.
"You should get some rest." Clint told him, "We're going in after nightfall."
They spent the rest of the afternoon going through every contingency they could think of, after which Clint made more spaghetti. None of them were all that hungry, but they knew their bodies would need the fuel. After they were finished eating Natasha went out to steal another car to get them back to the Quinjet.
"Hopefully she finds one that runs better this time." Alex commented.
"She will." Clint told him, "That embarrassed her a little, and she hates being embarrassed. She won't let it happen again."
The spy returned with a car a little while later. It was in good shape, but old enough to not have a factory GPS tracker.
"Alright, gear up." Clint said.
Alex took his time getting into his combat gear. He wanted to make sure he didn't forget anything important by being in too much of a hurry. He had opted for dark gray fatigue pants and black combat boots, with a Kevlar vest over a black t-shirt. Next was the harness Xavier had gotten him a while back when it became obvious he would be tagging along on the occasional mission. It consisted of a belt that the sheaths for his throwing spikes extended down from and strapped around his thighs. It also had what looked like suspenders that went up over his shoulders with a web between them on the back side and a clip to secure it across his chest. He attached the sheaths of his knives upside down on the shoulder straps and tied his hair back to keep it out of his face.
When he left his temporary bedroom and walked back downstairs he saw that his teammates had gotten ready before him. Which made sense, they had far more experience than he did. Clint was wearing similar pants to his own and didn't bother with a t-shirt at all, he just wore a vest that left his arms exposed. When he turned around Alex saw his bow folded up and resting at the small of his back. He also had a sidearm on his left thigh and at least three knives that he could see. Natasha was wearing...a form fitting black catsuit that accentuated her curves. He flicked his gaze down and back up quickly, making sure his eyes didn't linger on any one spot for too long. She had two pistols that were visible holstered on either thigh, and at least six knives. She wore her Widow's Bites and was checking them when Alex walked down. She noticed his scrutiny and turned to look at him with one hand on her hip and an eyebrow arched.
"Go ahead." she said drily, "Get your ogling out of the way and then quit staring."
"Not what I was looking at." Alex told her honestly while maintaining eye contact, "I was counting weapons. How many knives can't I see? And whose idea was it to put you in that?"
"Enough, and mine." she replied, and then continued with a small amount of visible surprise, "You're really not objectifying me."
"No." he replied, "Any idiot can see at a glance that you're gorgeous, so staring really isn't necessary. I'm uniquely qualified to know how women generally feel about that kind of thing, and I try to avoid making people feel icky because then I have to feel it too. Besides, I've had your thighs wrapped around my head enough times that I don't need to imagine it."
Clint snorted in amusement while Natasha continued to look at him with an unreadable expression on her face.
"Thank you." she said quietly after a moment.
"What for?"
"For seeing me as a person instead of a sex object or a weapon." she told him, "It's uncommon enough I felt like a thank you was in order."
Alex glanced over at Clint, who just shrugged.
"She gets stared at a lot when we work with the other STRIKE teams." he explained, "Not many women on those teams, and none that look like her. It's merit based, and the women who made the cut tend to be pretty butch for the most part. Think Vasquez from Aliens. You set?"
"Yep, let's do this."
They piled into their stolen car with Natasha driving and made their way back to the abandoned airfield they'd stashed the Quinjet at. Alex sat sideways across the back seat with his back against the door during the drive so he could keep an eye out behind them without being too obvious about it. Clint noticed what he was doing and gave him a quick nod of approval.
They pulled into the dilapidated hangar a half hour later and the relief was palpable when it became apparent that their Quinjet hadn't been disturbed since they'd left it. Natasha left to go dump the car somewhere while Clint started the pre-flight routine. The sun would be going down soon and they wanted to be airborne as soon as it did.
While they waited for Natasha to return Clint called Coulson to update him on what they'd decided.
"We're going in tonight, Prime." he said over the radio, "Coming in from the back side, Delta Two and Three will be dropping in while I stay up top to cover them."
"Are you sure Delta Three is ready for this?" Coulson inquired.
"Yeah." Clint answered, shooting Alex a wry glance as he did, "He wasn't exactly forthcoming about his level of experience before. He's ready."
"Copy that." their handler replied, "Let me know when you're in position."
"Copy." Clint responded, "Delta One out."
Natasha returned just before sundown and they departed, staying low to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Clint had informed him the Quinjet had a stealth mode that made them invisible to radar, but it could still be a problem if anyone got visual on them. They made an extra wide circle around the compound's location and Clint found a spot to land about two and a half miles out along the ridgeline.
"I'm not thrilled about a night hike in this terrain." Clint told his teammates, "Keep your eyes sharp. Don't want anyone breaking a leg or falling off."
He got two silent nods in response.
They set out with Clint taking point. His eyesight was far better than Alex or Natasha's, so he would see any problems first. It took them a little over two hours to reach their destination, partly because they slowed down and focused on stealth a mile and a half out. When they reached the first guard post they saw there were three guards stationed at it. One inside the shack, barely visible through the open door, and two outside. The two men outside were on either side of the shack, one on the back side closest to them, and the other standing right near the edge of the cliff.
Alex glanced over at his teammates and realized with a start that Natasha had vanished into the darkness at some point in the last couple minutes. Clint tapped his shoulder and waited until Alex looked at him.
"I'll take the one inside." he said under his breath so his voice wouldn't carry, "Nat has the one on the back. The one by the cliff edge is yours, make sure he doesn't fall off."
"Give me a second." Alex replied, under his breath as well. He took a moment to dive into his own emotions and dampen the ones that would be problematic for him right then. He knew he was going to crash hard when everything was over and he felt everything he was setting aside now, but he couldn't afford to hesitate, "Okay. I'm good."
"On my mark." Clint breathed, "Three, two, one, mark."
On the signal Alex reached out with his mind and snapped the neck of the guard near the cliff, grabbing his corpse at the same time and pulling it away from the edge. He knew he definitely would have had a problem with that normally, and wasn't looking forward to paying that emotional toll later. He heard the 'swish-thunk' of Clint's arrow taking out the man inside and heard...nothing at all from Natasha's side. She melted out of the shadows around the side of the shack in a casual stroll and looked at the man Alex killed with an uneasy expression, but said nothing.
They handled the other two guard shacks and both anti-aircraft guns in the same manner. Alex wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that he had gone from killing one person by accident to killing six on purpose in the span of less than fifteen minutes.
Once all the guards up top had been neutralized the three of them gathered near the spot they had chosen to drop in. Clint kept his eyes on the compound below while Alex picked out the best place to jump from.
"You're clear." Clint whispered.
Alex took a deep breath and leaped off the edge of the cliff. For the sake of speed he let himself plummet until the last second and abruptly slowed his descent, landing with no sound. He extended his empathic ability around him and was relieved to find that there wasn't anyone close enough to him to have noticed. He looked up and realized that he couldn't see Natasha at all. It wasn't a big problem, but since she'd put herself on lockdown he couldn't pinpoint her location by where her emotions were emanating from.
"Widow, let up on your emotional control." he whispered into the comms.
"Why?"
"Because I can't see you." he replied, "I need something to tell me where you are so I can catch you."
She didn't answer, but Alex started to feel a low level anxiety coming from near the spot he'd jumped from. He focused in and got a bead on her exact location before keying the comms again.
"Okay, I got you." he said, "Whenever you're ready."
"Clear." Clint said quietly.
Natasha took a couple running steps and jumped off the cliff. Alex caught a stab of fear from her when she started to drop that got stronger the farther she fell. When she got within thirty feet of the ground he slowed her fall the same way he'd done for himself and lowered her to the ground just as quietly. She stood absolutely motionless for a few seconds when he set her down, breathing a little heavier than normal with her eyes wide.
"You good?" he asked in a whisper.
He got a quick nod in response and he could feel her reeling her fear back in, completely under her control once more. Alex got the distinct feeling that she had been more worried about trusting him than about leaping blindly off a cliff in the dark, because she hadn't hesitated to do that part.
Now they just had to find the right guy and kill him. It was easier said than done because none of the intel they had been given included a picture of him, so none of them knew what he looked like. Platch Liev led a smuggling operation that normally dealt with weapons and drugs, but lately he'd been branching out into human trafficking. It was that venture that had landed him in SHIELD's crosshairs. Their primary objective was to terminate Platch Liev, but a secondary objective of dismantling his operation had been added. And since they were miles away from any civilians, collateral damage was not a concern on this mission. They had decided back at the safehouse that once Liev was eliminated they would just blow the entire compound, and each had four bricks of C4 on them.
They'd concluded that the largest building towards the center of the compound was the most likely place to find the leadership of this operation. Getting to it undetected would be challenging, but not impossible. Natasha slipped into the shadows cast by a building near the cliff wall and Alex lost sight of her almost immediately. He was supposed to watch her back, but wasn't sure how he was going to do that if he couldn't tell where she was. The only indication he had of her progress was the occasional quiet sound that he was rapidly coming to associate with murder. Natasha herself was completely silent, but he could occasionally detect a gasp that was quickly cut off. The most disconcerting thing was the feelings of pure surprise and fear he kept detecting that disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
That continued for another several minutes. Alex would catch a faint flicker of motion every so often, which he suspected Natasha was letting him see on purpose so he could track her movements. If he'd had any doubts before about how lethal she was, he didn't anymore. They were approaching the center of the compound and there were more people to get past the closer they got. It was only a matter of time before one of the bodies was discovered, so they were working against an unknown deadline.
"I'm in." he heard Natasha whisper over the comms. They'd only seen the one entrance to the building, and Alex had no idea how she'd managed to get through it without being spotted. He planted his four bricks of C4 on nearby buildings and settled into a shadow to wait, and back Natasha up if she called for it. The two of them had impressed on him that he should avoid engaging as much as possible, so that's what he was going to do.
Four minutes later all hell broke loose.
