Sisters ch.11 – Secrets and lies
"This is creepy as Hell, Colonel."
"Agreed, Captain Hill. Someone had a Hell of a party here... months ago."
The SHIELD agents were still moving cautiously through the huge underground complex. They had come in ready for violence and armed resistance, and they had found nothing alive larger than a rat. The place had been abandoned for months.
But it had not been abandoned peacefully. All the walls were riddled with bullet holes and fire marks, most of the equipment and furniture was shattered as if by explosions, and the place was littered with human skeletons. Dozens of people had been killed here.
"Colonel, may I say what I think?"
"I'm pretty sure it's what I think too, Captain, but please go ahead."
"There are at least three dozen dead people here, and they all seem to have died at the same time. So what we have is three dozen adults who must have vanished at once. Now I may be mistaken, but I am pretty sure I haven't heard of any such mass disappearance."
"I agree. We'll have to ask the local lawmen, but I don't think their deaths or disappearance was ever recorded."
"Bad enough that HYDRA had an operation this size right on American territory. That already makes it worse than anything we suspected... we knew they were around, but this is a bloody foothold situation that has been going on for God knows how long, with personnel that was never known to the American authorities at all, because nobody noticed they had died. But the fact that someone came up and just wipes them out, and we still hear nothing..."
Jack O'Neill nodded grimly. The whole picture was disastrous. "These guys were just wiped out. The force that destroyed them must have been large and caught them completely by surprise."
"So who are they?"
"AIM?" asked a sergeant.
"I doubt it. With AIM, you would get high-tech weapons and weird stuff. This all looks done the old-fashioned way, with bullets and knives. Wait a minute – let's see what this man has to tell us." For one man from the advanced unit was running back towards them, his steps echoing in the cavernous underground space.
"Sir! Ma'am! You've got to come and see this!"
"Calm down, agent. What have you got there?" Asked Maria Hill as she swiftly followed the excited young man to the next chamber."
"People, Ma'am!" said the man breathlessly. "Frozen, but we think they're still alive!"
Buffy Summers was finding out the hard way that running away was harder than it sounded. She had nowhere to go except home, and of course that would be the first place where they would look for her. And survival on the streets was itough/i. Never having stolen anything in her life, she was hopeless at it, and her attempt to get some undies without paying for them had only failed to end in disaster because she could run faster than the security man who had spotted her. Attempts to procure food had met with similar results, and now she was hungry. She had bent back towards her parents' home, only to find that two of the clinic's big security men watching it from a parked car in the street.
She was getting hungry and dirty, and closer and closer to a decision she would far rather not make.
…...
This chamber was not as cavernous as the previous two. A few skeletons were still lying on the ground, or draped over the machinery. But the machinery hummed, and there were ten... what would one call them... glass coffins? They were lit from within, and eight of them held human bodies, apparently frozen. A female SHIELD operative gasped at the sight.
"Yes, agent Carter?" asked Maria Hill, reacting to her gasp. "Do you know any of these people?"
"These... these are... that's Gabe Jones. And that's Dum Dum Dugan. And the woman.. She's the Countess. You couldn't mistake them, ma'am!"
"And the last man to the right is the Winter Soldier," added another.
Total silence fell over the room, as the machinery kept humming. Jack O'Neill was the only person there with years of SHIELD experience.
"All right, I've heard of the Winter Soldier, but who are all the others? SHIELD agents?"
"Three at least, Colonel," answered Maria Hill. "I never met him, but that big guy with the moustache is supposed to be Dum Dum Dugan, a founding member of SHIELD along with Colonel Fury, who vanished in action more than twenty years ago. And these two – Gabe Jones and Countess Valentina – were supposed to have died in action, ambushed by the Winter Soldier."
"They are, ma'am," said the agent whom Maria Hill had called Carter. "I knew them all as a kid, when they came to visit Aunt Peggy." So the pretty little blonde Carter was the niece of the legendary Peggy Carter, World War Two agent and founding member of SHIELD. "Countess Valentina was the Colonel's girlfriend. He'll go crazy if she's alive."
"Now wait a minute," O'Neill broke in. "Stop before you do something incredibly dangerous.
"That's the Winter Soldier, right? The legend of legends among hitmen and black-ops men. And at least two of the guys keepin' him company are people who he was supposed to have killed. So he didn't kill'em, not then at least. He captured them.
"And there's another thing about the Winter Soldier. He's been in the business longer than I have, and he still looks 25 or so. Even if he started as a kid, the dates still don't add up. And what do these freezeboxes suggest to you?"
A murmur of horror went throught the assembled agents. "You can't mean..." said Maria Hill, her brown eyes huge with horror.
"I can and I do. Suppose you have an operator whom you have made as much like a killing machine as you can. You want to keep control on him all the time. You don't want him to have a private life. So you freeze him and only thaw him when he is required. And if he capture valuable enemy subjects, you brainwash them till you can use them yourself, and keep them frozen so they have the least possible opportunity to think for themselves and perhaps to wake up."
"Dear God..." said another agent.
"You've got to remember this is HYDRA we're talking about," said Captain Lawton grimly.
"Well, whatever the case, it would be just prudent to defrost them one at a time, and check if they are still alive," said Maria Hill. "Otherwise, worst case scenario, we might have eight brainwashed killers waking up at once."
"Captain ma'am?" said another agent, looking up from a piece of machinery. "If that's the case, we should start at once. There's just a few hours of fuel left in these tanks. The generators will be shutting down before the day is over. We might have got here just in time to save these guys' lives."
"And that," said Maria Hill grimly, "is not suspicious at all."
…...
"What I don't understand, , is your interest in this young lady."
"I can see why it should seem strange, . The girl is a perfectly ordinary Californian teen, is she not?"
The question hung between them like a baited hook. Schwinkle chose to disregard it.
"We have no indication of any connection with England."
"That, perhaps, has not yet happened. It may never happen."
"And yet you have a strong enough interest in her to travel over a continent and an ocean to inquire about her health."
"Oh, there always are reasons to visit California. She was one, certainly. But is it not nice to visit your beautiful state when one can?"
There was a grin on ' face that absolutely scared . It had something manic about it. He could easily imagine the man grinning like that as he was stabbing someone in the abdomen.
"Of course it is. We who live here are often conscious of how lucky we are. But it still is a considerable effort from someone in your position."
"I do travel a lot in my work."
"All the same, it means that the young lady is of some importance to you."
"Or to someone who might have known I was going to California and asked me to look into the matter."
"I see. Is the Queen concerned with Buffy Carter Summers' health?" This was meant for irony, perhaps sarcasm. Giles' answer, however, stunned him.
"Not directly. But perhaps someone she likes might be."
Was the man a charlatan? Charles had warned he should be taken seriously. But now he was involving the British government itself in the fate of one ditzy little Californian blonde, which, superpowers or not, seemed insanely unlikely.
But then, perhaps, that was just why he should take it seriously, as Charles said. Charles had taken the trouble to warn him in advance, which did not happen often. And if this man had been trying a snow job on him, wouldn't he have come up with a better story?
…...
Nine months before, in Washington DC.
"We lost the whole Winter Soldiers operation in North America, sir."
"I take it that there is no doubt how this happened?"
"Yes. The enemy must have managed to regain complete control and assaulted the security forces. We are not sure what he did, and a number of soldiers are missing, but he certainly killed at least eight.
"The most curious thing, sir, is that he did not call in the feds, then or later. FBI, SHIELD, none of them know anything. "
"And what do you deduce from this?"
The minion quivered. The man before him had been known to shoot people who gave wrong or stupid answers.
"I think, sir, that he did not trust the feds. And perhaps he was still bewildered, and unsure of... how do I put this... the world at large."
After a terrifying silence, the Secretary spoke.
"That is probably the best explanation. And that means that he remembers enough not to trust anyone. Which is wise, but not wise enough.
"My orders: keep your eyes open for him, but do not actively search for him. If you find him, don't tackle him, but inform me. We must not attract any attention. If we take him back, he must vanish as if he had never lived."
"Yes sir."
…...
Certainly, the fiasco at the Winter Soldier operation had been expensive. Dozens of soldiers and billions of dollars of machinery were gone, and SHIELD now knew that their worst enemies had operated an outright military base on American soil for years, and ran an international espionage and assassination operation from it. They still knew nothing about how it had gone down, but they would be trying to find out. Well, good luck to them, Dell Rusk grinned
His subordinates were another problem. They had lost friends and colleagues in the fall of the underground fortress; and now they knew that they had a very terrible enemy who might be going for them. He knew that many of them were impatient; they wanted the enemy killed, and worried that their boss' thirst for long vengeance was getting dangerous. Leaving such a man alive, even in a country he would neither know nor understand, was courting trouble.
Dell Rusk's handsome features curled into a cruel smile. He knew what his subordinates were thinking. He might have to give them a few morale-boosting successes; but on the other hand, if they decided to assert themselves (not that that was likely), he might be forced to thin the herd a bit. Meanwhile, his situation had actually improved. Arnim Zola had fled the USA after the destruction of his base, and Zemo and Strucker, who both needed his potions in order to survive, had followed him, leaving the continent to him. And his plans were coming closer to fruition. Now, thanks to the "discovery" of the Winter Soldier base, he had eight agents in various stages of brainwashing right in SHIELD headquarters... in addition to his various other assets. Things were going... pleasantly.
…...…...
Early afternoon in Los Angeles.
The restaurant had been really excellent, thought Don Schwinkle. That was one thing he could be grateful to for. He had never tried Brazilian cuisine before, and this had been one Heck of an introduction. He would certainly be going back again.
All the same, he would be glad (he thought as he greeted various doctors, staff members and patients on his way to his office) never to see the man again. There was something about him that was downright frightening. If he wanted that manic grin to strike fear in him, well, thought sourly, he had succeeded. And that was not the only thing; there just was a general air of ruthlessness about the man. His civilized front felt like a layer of ice over a deep and terrible ocean.
Suddenly Gwynneth Price was by his side. "Sir," she asked with an agitation that was wholly unlike her composed normal self, "is it true that you have met Lord Rupert Giles for lunch?"
"It is. And by the way you're looking, you're thinking it's bad news."
"Probably. The man is dangerous. His friends call him 'Ripper.'"
"Hunh. And if that's what his ifriends/i call him..."
"Exactly. He is involved in some kind of private spy network that does things the government does not or cannot do. They call it the Council."
"Uh. Well, I'm glad I'm not in his way then."
Later in the afternoon came the news that Buffy Carter Summers had come back of her own volition.
