Chapter 5
March 12 , 2013
The Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan
The road was rough, and the wheel of the jeep jerked in Stevie's hands with every bump. A thick cloud of dust stuck to the windshield, stirred up by caravan's wheels and the ever-present wind. A particularly large rock hit the undercarriage with a bang, and she cursed.
"A bike would've been better," she muttered, squinting through the streaky glass. She had to run the windshield wipers constantly just to see.
"Thinking of taking Valentino out for a spin?" Natasha lounged in the passenger seat, feet up on the dash. The ex-spy looked supremely nonchalant, catlike in her incongruous relaxation.
"He's been feeling neglected lately," Stevie answered. She'd barely had any time on her '42 Indian since she'd finally finished refurbishing it. "My free time took a big hit lately. Can't imagine why."
Natasha smiled. "Terrain's too rough for a bike, anyway," she said. "A horse - now that would be best."
"A horse? Is this the Wild West?"
"It's the only way to get around out here," Natasha continued. "The Mujahideen fought the Soviets on horseback. Then, when things turned around, U.S. Special Forces used horses to fight the Taliban."
"And where were you when all this was going on?" Stevie asked. Natasha smiled enigmatically in response. "Hm. Thought everyone would move on to the next new thing. Flying cars and jetpacks."
"We can't all be Tony Stark."
Tony himself had flown ahead in his suit. They couldn't even take the quinjet too far into the mountains, agile as it was. This was the Hindu Kush, the Roof of the World. The valley itself was over 10,000 feet high, the peaks could be twice that. Up there, the air was treacherous. Natasha had set the jet down on a flat-ish patch of ground and now the team - Stevie, Natasha, and eight STRIKE agents - were bouncing around the worst road in the world on the way to what they suspected was the base of operations for the Ten Rings.
Back in December – after he and Pepper had recovered – Tony had told them all the "truth" about what happened. His Malibu mansion had been bombed, not by the Mandarin, shadowy leader of the Ten Rings, but by Stark's fellow inventor Aldrich Killian, who'd used an out-of-work actor to cover up the lethal failure of his experiments. Mystery solved.
But the Ten Rings was real and, after a month, the actor had disappeared from prison without a trace. SHIELD investigations turned up some surprising info on the Ten Rings. Quietly, over decades, they had edged out other groups to become a major power in the shadow economy of Central Asia, trafficking in drugs and weapons all over the world. The amount of power the Ten Rings wielded was alarming, considering how little attention they'd received from the media before Killian's little stunt. So Tony, Natasha, and Stevie - in her first mission out of the country since Maggie was born - were going to investigate.
The windshield wipers squeaked across the grimy glass. Outside the window, the peaks rose abruptly from the valley floor, snow-peaked and sharp as the teeth of a saw. The skyscrapers of Manhattan were impressive, but these mountains, ancient and colossal, put them to shame. Spring had barely touched this place, a green fuzz of tough grass edging a lake rippled by wind. It could snow here, even in summer.
"It's amazing," Stevie said softly. "But so...bleak."
"There are people here who've never seen a tree," Natasha responded. She'd been here weeks ahead of the rest of the team, scouting and gathering information from the Kyrgyz tribes who lived in this harsh place. Seeking the latest bolthole of the Ten Rings. The nomadic herdsmen had told her what she needed to know - there had been a lot of activity around one particular mountain, outsiders with guns. They shot at anyone who got too close.
"How'd you get them to talk to you, anyway?" Stevie asked. "The ones I met didn't seem very forthcoming."
"Cell phones."
"Cell phones?" Stevie asked, looking away from the road in disbelief. "Who do they call?"
"Nobody." Natasha smiled. "They take pictures and play music."
For a while, they looked out the window again. This time, Natasha broke the silence. "We should come back in the summer. Go camping. Visit Ishkashim - the market is great. You never know what you'll find."
"I'll take the market," Stevie said. "But not the camping. I've slept on enough rocks for one lifetime, thank you."
They drove on a little more. Stevie started drumming on the steering wheel.
"She's alright," Natasha said, reading her nervousness.
"I know that," Stevie replied.
"She's as safe as she can be."
"I know that."
Maggie was in a secret hideaway where Clint stashed his family - a cute farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. When Stevie had told him she was planning to go on a mission for the first time since Maggie was born, he'd offered it to her.
"Laura'd love to meet her," he'd said, showing no reaction to Stevie's obvious surprise. "And the kids."
That was where Maggie was now, with the family, including Clint, who'd said he was due for some vacation. He'd sent her a text last night: Having a blast. The kids love M. They'll be asking for a little sister soon.
Stevie couldn't tell which was worse - the idea that Maggie was missing her, or the idea that she wasn't. Natasha's voice cut through her thoughts.
"You know, you could have worked up to it. Started with a mommy's night out before you went to Afghanistan."
"It's like jumping into a cold pool," Stevie replied. "You've got to do it all at once. Ah, here we are."
She turned on the radio to the truck behind her. "Looks like the road's run out, Rumlow. Time to find a parking space and get hiking."
"Thank God," his familiar, Brooklyn-accented voice came over he speaker. "I was losing feeling in my ass. No offense, Boss."
"None taken," Stevie said with a smile. "But a few hours at these elevations and you might change your tune."
They parked the jeeps where the road ran out, shouldered their packs, and started on the track that would take them up the mountain. Tony Stark, still flying recon ahead, had assured Stevie that this path was clear, and out of sight of any lookouts.
"You're sure they didn't see you?" She asked, teasingly. "You're not exactly low profile."
"Give me some credit. I designed a stealth mode for exactly this situation," his voice came back over her headset. "Having a nice walk?"
She disconnected him.
The wind gusted around them as they climbed, stinging their faces with gritty dust. Everyone wore gray desert camouflage over their body armor, even her. Underneath, she wore her "stealth suit" - navy blue, a small silver star on her chest bracketed by a design that looked like wings.
"Whooo!" Rumlow said behind her. He was tall, rangy, dark eyes set deep in his strong-boned face, a lopsided grin surrounded by perpetual five-o-clock shadow. "It's colder than a witch's tit up here. How're you doing, boss?"
"The cold doesn't bother me much anymore" she answered, truthfully. Rumlow was irreverent, blunt, and occasionally vulgar - he reminded her of the men she'd served with. It was refreshing to get some honesty out of the cloak-and-dagger world that SHIELD could be.
"I guess being a human popsicle for a few decades takes all the sting out a windy day, huh?" He laughed and pulled up his facemask to shield his mouth and nose, gesturing to the agents behind him to catch up.
Clouds were building around the mountaintops.
"Hope it doesn't snow," Stevie muttered, and Natasha grunted in response.
The sun set quickly, shadows filling the valley like a bowl of ink. They made camp in a small, circular valley, with a tiny, clear lake in the center. Tony was waiting for them, trying unsuccessfully to skip rocks.
"Hey, slowpokes," he said. "What took you so long? I've watched, like, five episodes of Downton Abbey. Sir Anthony left Edith at the altar."
One of the STRIKE agents groaned.
"Sorry" Tony said. "Spoiler alert!"
The tents were much more advanced than Stevie was used to - little domes of nylon that auto-inflated, color-matched to the terrain.
"They also mask body heat and deflect radar to foil detection from the air," Natasha added.
"The tents of the future," Stevie said.
"Oh, you'll love this," Natasha continued, pointing at the edge of the tarn, where STRIKE agents were driving what looked like matte black tent spikes into the ground. "Secure perimeter. Detects movement and sets off a silent alarm."
"Hm. And here I was planning to keep watch the old-fashioned way."
"We thought of that, too." Natasha handed her a hooded parka. "Wear this. It has the same properties as the tent."
"You know, you're cute when you're smug" Stevie said, slipping the parka over her fatigues.
"Hogwash," she replied, unzipping her tent and slipping inside. "I'm always cute. Nighty night."
The clouds that had threatened all afternoon were swept from the sky, leaving stars brighter than Stevie had seen since Belgium. The Milky Way stretched above like a silver cloud. The Mesopotamians believed it was Tiamat's tail, the Greeks thought it was the milk of Hera. Stevie felt a sudden stab of loneliness. Bucky should be here with her, to see these mountains in the starlight.
She head something behind her and turned. It was Tony, catching his toe on the bottom of his tent flap as he tried to come out.
"Gah! Dammit!" He whispered, hopping a little to keep from falling.
"You shouldn't be out here," Stevie whispered back."Your heat signature."
"What heat signature? I'm getting hypothermia as we speak," he responded. "I just need a minute, I couldn't sleep." He looked up for a moment. "That is a hell of a view. Can't get that in New York."
"Hmm."
For half a minute, they stood in silence. Tony tucked his hands into his armpits, hunching against the cold.
"I have bad memories," he said at last. "Of terrorists and caves. I don't know if I told you how I got this." He pointed at his chest, where the arc reactor's glow was barely visible through his clothes.
"I read your Wikipedia page."
"Really?" He turned to her in surprise. "You know that's not accurate, right? Like, anyone can edit that."
She shrugged. He continued.
"There it was, 2010. I was living it up, selling a sweet new project to the military - not far from here, I might add - when I got hit by a bomb that literally had my name on it. How many people get to say that, huh?" He smiled, but Stevie could hear the tremor under the words. "I woke up in a cave with a car battery attached to my chest cavity."
"God," Stevie said. "How horrible."
"It saved my life," he said. "The man who...put it in...was called Ho Yinsen. A genius, to pull that off with the materials he had."
Tony paused. This high in the mountains, there was still snow on the ground, hard and gritty. Tony kicked at a patch with the toe of his boot.
"The Ten Rings had him for, God, I don't know how many months. They killed his family. They threatened to burn out his tongue once, when I didn't work fast enough." Tony shuddered slightly at the memory, and tried to cover it by rubbing his arms. "The suit wasn't ready in time for us to escape. The first suit. He went out to buy time."
He looked at Stevie, and she could see the stars reflected in his dark eyes. "He shot into the air. Everything they'd done, and he shot into the air, so he wouldn't hit them."
Stevie grasped his shoulder. "He was a hero," she said. "And he'd be proud of what you've done."
"You believe in…" Tony gestured vaguely toward the sky.
"I have to believe it," Stevie replied. "Or nothing makes any Goddamn sense."
Stark nodded, cleared his throat, visibly gathering himself, putting his mask of bravado back on.
"Good talk," he said. "See you mañana. I take my coffee black."
"And you'll get it yourself, Stark," she said to his departing back.
She looked up in the silence. The last time she'd been camping the night had been punctuated by the sound of bombs falling. Now, all Stevie could here was something howling in the distance. The wind, or a wolf? Wolves did live in these mountains. Leopards, too, despite how barren everything looked.
Did she believe in heaven? If people like Dr. Erskine, Ho Yinsen, Bucky...if people like that could just be snuffed out like candles, leaving nothing, then there was no point to anything. Justice was a lie.
There has to be something. She thought. I will see them again. I will.
The only answer was the wind, howling.
Here we start a multi-chapter arc-let that ended up a little - odd. I do plan to bring back elements from this in the future. You will see what I meanin coming chapters. Sorry to be so mysterious! Anyway - the Wakhan Corridor is a real and fascinating place. What Natasha says about people using cell phones for pictures and music is true. For more info on this extremely remote environment, I recommend reading "Stranded on the Roof of the World" written by Michael Finkel for National Geographic.