"Whispered On The Winds," Highlander/Marvel, part 4/5
Part 4 is on the AO3 here. If you want to catch up on Dreamwidth: part 1, part 2, part 3.
Rated: R most likely. Some spoilers for several of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, particularly Iron Man. The Highlander elements come in via Killa and Lapilus' amazing Alternate Universe vid, "Opportunities." Written for an art prompt from Pentapus' Reverse Bigbang, and for Crossover100 prompt #79 -- desert.
Whispered On The Winds
2008, Afghanistan
Tony Stark had finally been found -- after blowing his own way out to freedom.
What kind of fools let one of the greatest weapons designers of the last century loose with his own toys and expected any other results? If Ten Rings really was that stupid, however, how had they captured him alive?
The military medics were taking care of Stark. SHIELD was taking care of data-gathering and any necessary cleanup.
They'd used his trail in the desert to point them back to his armor; the wind on the dunes hadn't completely obliterated the trail from his impact, which pointed them back to a section of the mountains boiling over with people looking for Stark. The larger part of this Ten Rings cell appeared to be out hunting for Stark, never mind how many of them he'd already killed.
Since most of them were out, Natasha and Clint ghosted in.
Ten Rings had taken over an old smugglers' tunnel system in the mountain, part man-made and more of it natural cave system. The sections so far were dimly lit by bare bulbs strung along the walls or ceilings off the electrical cords. Lights had broken here and there, either at Stark's hands or at the guns of his captors.
The location was almost custom-made to field test SHIELD's newest tac-suit design. The fabric had been formulated to blend into shadows and reduce heat output. Hot as hell in the summer, in the desert night the stuff was both comfortable and useful. It also played havoc with both light-gathering devices and thermal imaging. A dark, form-fitting suit of the materiel couldn't hide her completely, but it made a good try at it, and had Kevlar woven in as well.
Between the lighting, the new suits, and his own skill, Natasha was having a hard time seeing Clint when he was only ten feet away. He could still see her, which was almost annoying, except for the part where he was on her side.
It also let him pause immediately when she flashed him a stop signal. There was a guard ahead but upright or not, in position or not, none of her instincts thought he was a threat.
When she got up to the guard, throwing knife ready in her hand the last fifteen meters, she found her instincts had, as usual, been right: he was dead. Someone had snapped his neck, then moved his head back into alignment. Natasha wasn't sure whoever it was hadn't opened the guard's eyes again, too.
So they had another player in the tunnels. That almost certainly wasn't good.
Black Widow waved Hawkeye further into the shadows before she made sure the guard's body was back in its original position. That done, she reached up and unscrewed the light bulb. Darkness fell around their section of the tunnel and she signaled Hawkeye to keep as far back as he could. She was just that bit quieter, so she moved ahead to make shadows for him to shoot out of.
It was a good plan that fell apart when the explosion announced itself with a thump of detonation, a huff of displaced air, the rattling thuds of falling rock, and finally the hiss of sand sliding down.
Widow tapped her comm off and on twice to warn SHIELD that the plan had just run into major obstacle of some kind. She knew Hawkeye would be right behind her, still in position and as alert as she was. That let her pay enough attention to everything else that she could hear someone moving ahead of them.
She signaled a five count to Hawkeye. On one, she shot out the next light and dropped into a crouch, moving forward while she looked for a heat source. She could barely hear Clint ghosting along the other side of the tunnel. Their suits would stop punctures and high-caliber bullets, but not bruises from rock edges; they'd still rather have the rock bruises than the impact bruises from a bullet.
Someone else took out the next light with a fast-moving rock. It hadn't come from behind her or above and beside her, so, not Clint.
From ahead of her, someone said, "Drop your weapons if you want to live." It was a cold, clear voice, male, using Pashto with a faint Pakistani accent. He repeated it in Dari and then again in Arabic.
By the third language, Natasha began to relax but she didn't signal Hawkeye off watch. Instead, she asked in English, "Collecting on those debts, Adam?"
He paused, then answered in English. "Possibly. Move into the light and bring your partner with you."
Natasha stood up and moved into the light. "My partner stays there for now."
Adam stepped out of a side tunnel his voice hadn't come from and studied her. "That's a useful suit."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "And yours isn't?" It was a different material, but it was a tactical suit of some type -- British army special ops, she thought; not surplus, although probably off the back of some numberless truck -- and he wore it and the assortment of weapons as casually as she and Hawkeye did. His sword and knives went right along with Hawkeye's bow, come to that.
"It does the job." He met her eyes long enough for her to see that she was still dealing with his friendlier side. "What are you doing here?"
Natasha shrugged with a tilt of her head and a quirk of her mouth. "We have a few things we're looking for. Did you seal us in?"
"No." Adam kept watching her and she'd noticed the perfectly modern pistol on his thigh. "I sealed the idiots out."
Natasha raised an eyebrow at his brevity. "You need to get whatever you came for. We need what we came for. We all need to get out of these tunnels. Are you here to clean up after Stark?"
He half-smiled with that annoying arrogance; trying to intimidate Clint, perhaps, or simply masking his thoughts. "I'm just here for some stolen books."
Natasha nodded and left it at that, since that was quite possible from what she knew of him. "We're here to collect anything Stark's invented that needs to be kept out of these idiots' hands. Are we working together or just quartering the place with you?" Even through her comm, she could barely hear Hawkeye's profanity.
Adam watched her thoughtfully. "Not letting me out of your sight, hmm? There hasn't been much news of the Black Widow for the last few years. I was half-afraid you'd been overwhelmed."
"I changed who I work for, not who's in charge," she said lightly. "Why are you looking for books?"
"Because they were mine, and I understand they're here," Adam said flatly. "Stark's inventions? He's not dead then?"
"I have the shot," Hawkeye murmured in her ear.
Natasha shook her head, the motion for both of them. "He turned back up alive."
That got her an inquiring look and a few seconds' contemplation before that cold determination washed back over him. "I'll work with you and your partner, then, but we'll be blowing this place to hell and gone behind us."
"We can't get back out the front door." Natasha shrugged and salvaged what she could of the mission. "At the minimum, we need pictures of anything Stark invented. Better if we can carry some of it out with us. Why do you want to blow the tunnels?"
He shook his head, already scanning the area around them. "You have a perfectly good brain, Widow. Do you really think these idiots successfully planned an attack that looked like a hit and still left their target alive to play mad scientist for them?"
Since Clint had had similar comments coming in, only with more insults to Ten Rings' housekeeping and weapons maintenance, Natasha could honestly say, "That discrepancy had crossed our minds, yes. Our best guesses so far are a mole or bad luck."
He looked at her. "You think they'd be lucky enough to have Stark and my books? That is the wrong kind of luck." He paused, frowning. "You do have cameras with you, yes?"
"You think you've been set up?" Two sets of enemy in one set of caves? Natasha waved Clint forward. "Hawkeye, this is Adam. Adam, we need photos of anything that looks competently done, in its setting: how it was done, what was near it, everything. What we can carry out, we do. And then we need a way out."
Adam paid his half of the information exchange promptly. "I know three ways out of this complex that don't involve the front door. I'm looking for four bound books, each about thirty-three by fifty centimeters, about thirteen centimeters thick. Dark brown leather bindings, heavy as fuck for their size."
Clint took in their new working partner with his usual on the job calm. "You get to explain this later," was all he said to Natasha. "Four books, one foot by one and a half by five inches. Got it."
"American?" Adam said, sounding surprised finally. "I'd thought British. Right, let's go. They'll dig out the entrance eventually."
"What's the chance we'll run out of air?" Clint asked bluntly, focused on Adam so that Natasha could listen for people moving in a panic. So far, she hadn't heard anyone.
"Air isn't a problem; it would take a year to get stuffy in here, short of a massive fire," Adam replied. "Radio signal, however, is going to be a problem."
Natasha started tracking Stark's path by the char on the walls and the blood on the floor. "This way."
Adam shrugged and followed her, pistol in one hand and knife in the other. "I killed the guards I found. That might not be all of them."
Clint raised an eyebrow at that, but Natasha shook her head. Adam glanced at him anyway. "I gave them a cleaner death than their leader would have."
"No argument," Clint said, shrugging. "They weren't likely to live much longer anyway, after letting Stark escape."
Natasha waved Clint to her left, Adam to her right. "You two watch for guards. I'll listen for them and watch for tech and books. Cover me."
The stone tunnels didn't leave much chance of hidden objects. The walls were rough carved and mostly solid, the floors a thin layer of sand and small gravel that could hide an occasional coin or the wires run along the edges, but not much more than that. Adam had no comments about the room with the waterboarding tub other than, "Waste of water, but I suppose that impressed his men."
Clint looked the room over, his eyes taking in an empty ammo crate with the Stark Industries logo by the tub. He raised an eyebrow at Natasha who shook her head in return. Most people who could get Stark tech used it. They might even have taken it off the ambushed Army Humvees. She took pictures of the inventory numbers anyway.
She collected the same data for the video camera on a tripod. It had been shorted out by something, possibly Stark's escape, and someone had taken the data card.
From there, they went down a hall, through two doors that were never going to lock again, and over fly-covered, blood-stained sand. At the end of the blood trail, they found a security camera pointed at what used to be a door. The scorched, dented doorway led into a large cavern that had been organized into a combination sleeping area, workshop, and chemical shop.
Adam glanced at Clint and asked, "Do you live up to the name?"
"I didn't get it by accident." Clint was scanning the room, taking in the patterns. He pulled out a camera and started systematically taking photos the intel analysts would stitch into a panorama later. "Stay back until I'm done with this."
Natasha turned to keep watch on the hallway. Beside her, Adam smiled sourly. "I don't see my books, no. Let me know when you need things moved for detail shots."
"Speeding this up so you can get to your books, or just wanting her favorably inclined later?" Clint asked. Natasha laughed soundlessly to herself. Leave it Clint to deliberately phrase it so badly.
"She already owes me favors, thanks," Adam said, momentarily cold. Then he laughed softly, genuinely amused. "Oh, very nice. That's an excellent 'dumb grunt' routine, there."
Clint chuckled. "That you just admitted to seeing through. Okay, you can come in now. Yeah, turn that long tube... thanks. Catch." Metal thunked against flesh then clanged softly against the metal work table. "Intel bitches if we don't give them a scale."
"Well, of course they do," Adam said. "That's intel for you. A mind like hers and you're the one looking the scene over? Do your bosses trust the Black Widow that little or are you that much more than a grunt?"
Natasha called softly, "No secrets, Adam. And less chatter. You're the one who didn't secure the tunnels."
"This better not be like Ciénaga," Clint muttered. "Yeah, okay, whatever he left under the small soldering iron. Okay, turn it to the right now."
Natasha tilted her head, listening to them while she watched the corridor. "It won't be."
"That's what you said then, too." Clint added dryly, "Adam, I can tell you know where to place explosives, but tell me you actually know how not to set them off."
"Of course I do. I'm fond of my hands. You want a picture of that layout there, too, by the way. Stark didn't use a standard chemical arrangement." Adam prowled past behind Natasha but stayed out of her way. "Do cause and effect behave differently for you two, by the way?"
Clint's grin was only in his voice, but he did like people who could throw cracks right back. "Nah, she said Ciénaga wouldn't be like one of our jobs from a year or so before. Widow's good, but she can't mess with time. Quite. So you can do things besides look intimidating with a sword, huh?"
"Says the man with a bow and quiver? Are you aiming for a little M*A*S*H and a lot of Cooper?" Adam asked in return. "And I'm calling in one of those favors, by the way, Widow."
Natasha glanced over; he looked as grim as he'd sounded. She turned back to their lone exit tunnel. "What do you want?"
"Until we're well out of here -- and until we blow the place apart -- treat me like team, and not the ranking member." He sounded coldly precise as he went on, "I think my books may be here because someone needs to know what I look like."
Clint finally said, "Last picture. Right. Pass me those circuits -- yeah, and that. Got room in your pack for any of these? And if we're gonna treat you like team, you'd better give us some warning before you stop acting like it."
"It's hardly your debt," Adam said, but Natasha could hear him thunk his pack down to the gravel and the soft rustling of leather and fabric as he made space for whatever Clint wanted to take with them.
"If I don't go along with it, she can't pay. What I want in exchange for helping is fair warning before you quit acting on our side. Otherwise, no deal." Natasha hadn't expected Clint to help pay her debt. She wasn't sure she liked it; she already owed him too much.
Adam nodded. "It is, and yes, I can take those chemical notes and that... whatever it is. Right, my pack's full. I'll watch the hallway, Widow." He added in a different tone, "Yes. Fair warning, with as much leeway as I can give you. Feel free to ask your partner if you're still worried."
Natasha waved Adam into position by the tunnel, then met Clint's eye and nodded, holding his gaze until he eased that little bit he'd allow in the field. "He'll do his best for us, Hawkeye." She came to get her share of the odd bits and pieces of assembled tech, one eyebrow going up about a set of quickly rolled papers that looked like nothing useful.
Hawkeye superimposed them briefly; once he did, she could see the composite robot schematic.
She nodded and tucked those away into a hidden compartment in the pack's strap. She also said very softly, "Yes, I owe him. No, he won't hand us over when it's advantageous. He didn't give me to the Chinese years ago."
Clint nodded once and murmured, "And his books?"
She chuckled soundlessly. "I have no idea. But he was going to look anyway. This way--"
"We get what we came for instead of him taking something that looked interesting. Got it." Clint nodded, zipped his own pack, and checked the explosives Adam had set. "Nice work, Adam."
"Thank you," was the dry reply. "Shall we?"
Natasha moved forward, quick, quiet, and worrying at the question of why they could almost feel the minutes counting down to trouble. "Adam. When you blew the entrance, you didn't take out the power, did you?"
"No, but I cut every data line I saw," he said grimly. "You think my identity has already gone out?"
She shook her head. "I killed the data cables from the outside. What worries me is a satellite broadcast. The video camera might have been taping a ransom demand, but it could just as easily have been set up for video conferencing."
Clint shrugged. "Nothing we can do if it the intel has already gone out. If you're worried about a regularly scheduled data burst, I can blow the power from here, Adam. But we don't have spare NVDs and you're the one who knows the way out."
Adam said grimly, "If an image has gone out, then it's gone. I'll deal with that if I get to it." He exhaled, annoyed. "Damn it. I wanted those books back.... I can work in the dark if you two make a little noise. If we have to run quiet, tap my left shoulder and I won't drop you."
"Oh, thanks," Clint muttered. More loudly he said, "We have lights. We'll just be doing a fast scan and grab of rooms now. If you see your books, say something."
"If not, better that they're destroyed," Adam said flatly. "Let's get through this and out. Put me in the middle, I'll give directions as we go."
Natasha said dryly, "If we have to run quiet, I'll tap you, and you'll follow Hawkeye out. Hold on to his belt."
"And if it comes to a fight, well, it won't be quiet." Adam nodded.
"Oh, great, I get to play tug boat," Clint complained. He glanced at Natasha, received her nod, and triggered his own explosives.
# # #
They emerged into a rugby field-sized cavern almost three hours later, dusty, sweaty, and thirsty. Adam had been in the lead for much of that time, once he'd finally found his tomes. They'd blown the rest of the Ten Rings sections of the cave system shortly after that.
Natasha would have been less trusting if she hadn't had one of his books in her pack; Clint was carrying a second, and Adam had made room in his pack for the other two.
Adam had only hesitated twice leading them through the tunnels; both times he'd turned around to check the view of the back trail and then headed to the correct turn or crevice. Now he guided them into and through the large cavern, hand out and down in a warning of 'slow' and 'quiet.'
On the far side, he somehow swung a rock twice his height and at least ten times his mass out of the way. Clint shook his head in admiration or disbelief, but as soon as they were through the entry, Adam closed it again, leaving them in a small room with airflow from above and the pungent smell of guano from below.
"Two choices from here," Adam said softly. "One route is shorter but has more of a chance of the local smugglers noticing us. The other route is safer, but it will take another ten hours to get out and away, and you'll be on the far side of this ridge from where you went in. I should be able to find us a little water on our way through, safe but definitely rock-flavored. What I don't know is how badly your backup is worrying by now."
His undertones and body language didn't worry Natasha. The lack of intel, however, did. "Why does someone want to know what you look like?"
Adam paused, then asked softly, "Does it matter?"
She tilted her head, scoffing without a spoken word, one corner of her mouth curving up both because he knew she knew he wasn't a fool and because she also knew Clint would back her up, whether he knew the problem or not.
Adam sighed. "Widow. Those books are old journals of mine. Word that they're here came from... a counterweight to someone I'd rather not work for, or against." His mouth moved in something that wasn't a smile. "Although I will if I have to."
"For or against?" Clint asked.
"If he gains enough leverage, for. Now I have to sort out if I'm being maneuvered or if the General really is foolish enough to risk a preemptive strike."
"You're not fool enough to make one," Natasha said, but she was frowning a little too. "The General. Is he like you?" Clint straightened a little, but Natasha said, "Not my secret, Hawkeye, and not one we can let out."
Clint frowned. "'Like you.' What are you?"
Adam smiled at him, eyes noticeably colder. Natasha signaled Clint back but there wasn't much room for him to move. "I said I'd give you as much warning as I could, Hawkeye. If you goad me into changing sides, well, that might be your warning."
Clint nodded, steady and unflinching despite the rising danger levels Natasha knew he recognized. "I saw the way you were hitting your targets, Adam. You need me to drop it?"
"For both our sakes, yes." His expression thawed and Natasha relaxed with it. "He's an opponent I would have to take seriously."
Natasha frowned at Adam, needing more information for threat assessment. "You think he read something in your journals that might set him after you?"
"He might think I'd make a good second-in-command. I used to specialize in that." Adam's face was blank again, almost bleak. "But as I said, they're my journals. I know what I look like, so why write it? The journals don't have my current name, either."
Clint nodded. "And no photos tucked in? Smart move. So this general lets word get out that he has the books, and where they are, and watches to see who shows up. Because it's either going to be you," he frowned now, "or someone you trust. Who's going to come after us?" It was a question; it wasn't a request.
"No one. You're in SHIELD armor. Not even I would be mad enough to work with SHIELD." Adam shrugged. "And I came in from a very long way away through the mountains. It'll look like I either avoided the gambit or just didn't make it here soon enough. "
"We can't claim that we took them or he'll come after us," Natasha agreed. "That won't keep us out of his business. We can report several hand-bound volumes, some with chemistry and alchemy, and let it sound like we think the ones we couldn't translate in that time were more along those lines, or that Stark used some for fuel."
"He'll wonder if you kept copies," Adam said, considering it. "But the books shouldn't do you any more good than they would him. You'd think they were ravings at worst. Don't mention Stark being anywhere near them. Leave him out of this."
"Okay. So? Which way out?" Clint asked. "Seriously, the fumes in here are never going to come out of this suit."
"Baking soda," Adam said absently. "Suit, a layer of soda, another of charcoal, give it two days; repeat if necessary. All right. Yes. My enemies might have watchers out there."
Natasha raised an eyebrow at Clint; he cocked his head, considering, then waggled his free hand, finally angling it up just a bit. She let him see her surprise for a bare moment, then nodded. "We'll take the long way out, Adam. We're just exploring for SHIELD while we're in here and watching for Ten Rings caches."
"And how do you know we're SHIELD anyway?" Clint asked as Adam opened another doorway Natasha had only just found.
"Oh, please," Adam muttered. "You both have that screaming eagle at your throats, high quality comm equipment, and some kind of suit fabric that I would love to get my hands on if I didn't think SHIELD would come retrieve it."
Clint was snickering softly well before he finished. Natasha slid out to the left once they were in the new tunnel, still making mental notes on the cave and tunnel complex for what she could tell was going to be a very long debriefing.
She didn't tell Adam that he was going to have a minimal, verbal only, appearance in those reports. She still owed him a second favor, after all, but Natasha didn't think she could afford one as expensive as getting him back out of SHIELD's hands.
}{ }{ }{ }{
Comments, Commentary, & Miscellanea:
Ten Rings is the group that kidnapped Tony Stark in Iron Man; the name comes, actually, from the ten rings the Mandarin wears. No, I have no idea if/how that will play out in Iron Man 3.
Why does someone want to know what Methos looks like? Because among the multitude of changes that come from Darius not having taken a Light Quickening in this universe, one of those changes is that Methos isn't the oldest immortal. Emrys, the monk of Paris, is older by two thousand years.
For the curious, Emrys was also the source of Darius' prophetic dreams in the regular Highlander universe. Emrys sent Methos to retrieve his journals because of a dream. Ten Rings stole the journals from the Watchers, who stole them from Darius. The Watchers don't know why Ten Rings attacked them, and suspect Darius of setting them up. (The Watchers are right.) Ten Rings didn't know what to make of the journals; Darius had some very good ideas and cursed the Watchers heartily for not having a good sketch of Methos.
And no. I don't know if Darius wants Methos' quickening... or a second in command who's less interested in taking over than Grayson is. I hope I don't find out.
The M*A*S*H reference is, of course, Benjamin Franklinn "Hawkeye" Pierce (who got his nickname from Cooper), a wisecracking doctor. Cooper is James Fennimore Cooper, best known these days for Last of the Mohicans, whose main character is known as Hawkeye because he's a sharpshooter.
NVDs -- Night Vision Devices.
Ciénaga - nope, I have no idea what happened there. Let me know if you do.
On to part five.
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Rated: R most likely. Some spoilers for several of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, particularly Iron Man. The Highlander elements come in via Killa and Lapilus' amazing Alternate Universe vid, "Opportunities." Written for an art prompt from Pentapus' Reverse Bigbang, and for Crossover100 prompt #79 -- desert.
Whispered On The Winds
2008, Afghanistan
Tony Stark had finally been found -- after blowing his own way out to freedom.
What kind of fools let one of the greatest weapons designers of the last century loose with his own toys and expected any other results? If Ten Rings really was that stupid, however, how had they captured him alive?
The military medics were taking care of Stark. SHIELD was taking care of data-gathering and any necessary cleanup.
They'd used his trail in the desert to point them back to his armor; the wind on the dunes hadn't completely obliterated the trail from his impact, which pointed them back to a section of the mountains boiling over with people looking for Stark. The larger part of this Ten Rings cell appeared to be out hunting for Stark, never mind how many of them he'd already killed.
Since most of them were out, Natasha and Clint ghosted in.
Ten Rings had taken over an old smugglers' tunnel system in the mountain, part man-made and more of it natural cave system. The sections so far were dimly lit by bare bulbs strung along the walls or ceilings off the electrical cords. Lights had broken here and there, either at Stark's hands or at the guns of his captors.
The location was almost custom-made to field test SHIELD's newest tac-suit design. The fabric had been formulated to blend into shadows and reduce heat output. Hot as hell in the summer, in the desert night the stuff was both comfortable and useful. It also played havoc with both light-gathering devices and thermal imaging. A dark, form-fitting suit of the materiel couldn't hide her completely, but it made a good try at it, and had Kevlar woven in as well.
Between the lighting, the new suits, and his own skill, Natasha was having a hard time seeing Clint when he was only ten feet away. He could still see her, which was almost annoying, except for the part where he was on her side.
It also let him pause immediately when she flashed him a stop signal. There was a guard ahead but upright or not, in position or not, none of her instincts thought he was a threat.
When she got up to the guard, throwing knife ready in her hand the last fifteen meters, she found her instincts had, as usual, been right: he was dead. Someone had snapped his neck, then moved his head back into alignment. Natasha wasn't sure whoever it was hadn't opened the guard's eyes again, too.
So they had another player in the tunnels. That almost certainly wasn't good.
Black Widow waved Hawkeye further into the shadows before she made sure the guard's body was back in its original position. That done, she reached up and unscrewed the light bulb. Darkness fell around their section of the tunnel and she signaled Hawkeye to keep as far back as he could. She was just that bit quieter, so she moved ahead to make shadows for him to shoot out of.
It was a good plan that fell apart when the explosion announced itself with a thump of detonation, a huff of displaced air, the rattling thuds of falling rock, and finally the hiss of sand sliding down.
Widow tapped her comm off and on twice to warn SHIELD that the plan had just run into major obstacle of some kind. She knew Hawkeye would be right behind her, still in position and as alert as she was. That let her pay enough attention to everything else that she could hear someone moving ahead of them.
She signaled a five count to Hawkeye. On one, she shot out the next light and dropped into a crouch, moving forward while she looked for a heat source. She could barely hear Clint ghosting along the other side of the tunnel. Their suits would stop punctures and high-caliber bullets, but not bruises from rock edges; they'd still rather have the rock bruises than the impact bruises from a bullet.
Someone else took out the next light with a fast-moving rock. It hadn't come from behind her or above and beside her, so, not Clint.
From ahead of her, someone said, "Drop your weapons if you want to live." It was a cold, clear voice, male, using Pashto with a faint Pakistani accent. He repeated it in Dari and then again in Arabic.
By the third language, Natasha began to relax but she didn't signal Hawkeye off watch. Instead, she asked in English, "Collecting on those debts, Adam?"
He paused, then answered in English. "Possibly. Move into the light and bring your partner with you."
Natasha stood up and moved into the light. "My partner stays there for now."
Adam stepped out of a side tunnel his voice hadn't come from and studied her. "That's a useful suit."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "And yours isn't?" It was a different material, but it was a tactical suit of some type -- British army special ops, she thought; not surplus, although probably off the back of some numberless truck -- and he wore it and the assortment of weapons as casually as she and Hawkeye did. His sword and knives went right along with Hawkeye's bow, come to that.
"It does the job." He met her eyes long enough for her to see that she was still dealing with his friendlier side. "What are you doing here?"
Natasha shrugged with a tilt of her head and a quirk of her mouth. "We have a few things we're looking for. Did you seal us in?"
"No." Adam kept watching her and she'd noticed the perfectly modern pistol on his thigh. "I sealed the idiots out."
Natasha raised an eyebrow at his brevity. "You need to get whatever you came for. We need what we came for. We all need to get out of these tunnels. Are you here to clean up after Stark?"
He half-smiled with that annoying arrogance; trying to intimidate Clint, perhaps, or simply masking his thoughts. "I'm just here for some stolen books."
Natasha nodded and left it at that, since that was quite possible from what she knew of him. "We're here to collect anything Stark's invented that needs to be kept out of these idiots' hands. Are we working together or just quartering the place with you?" Even through her comm, she could barely hear Hawkeye's profanity.
Adam watched her thoughtfully. "Not letting me out of your sight, hmm? There hasn't been much news of the Black Widow for the last few years. I was half-afraid you'd been overwhelmed."
"I changed who I work for, not who's in charge," she said lightly. "Why are you looking for books?"
"Because they were mine, and I understand they're here," Adam said flatly. "Stark's inventions? He's not dead then?"
"I have the shot," Hawkeye murmured in her ear.
Natasha shook her head, the motion for both of them. "He turned back up alive."
That got her an inquiring look and a few seconds' contemplation before that cold determination washed back over him. "I'll work with you and your partner, then, but we'll be blowing this place to hell and gone behind us."
"We can't get back out the front door." Natasha shrugged and salvaged what she could of the mission. "At the minimum, we need pictures of anything Stark invented. Better if we can carry some of it out with us. Why do you want to blow the tunnels?"
He shook his head, already scanning the area around them. "You have a perfectly good brain, Widow. Do you really think these idiots successfully planned an attack that looked like a hit and still left their target alive to play mad scientist for them?"
Since Clint had had similar comments coming in, only with more insults to Ten Rings' housekeeping and weapons maintenance, Natasha could honestly say, "That discrepancy had crossed our minds, yes. Our best guesses so far are a mole or bad luck."
He looked at her. "You think they'd be lucky enough to have Stark and my books? That is the wrong kind of luck." He paused, frowning. "You do have cameras with you, yes?"
"You think you've been set up?" Two sets of enemy in one set of caves? Natasha waved Clint forward. "Hawkeye, this is Adam. Adam, we need photos of anything that looks competently done, in its setting: how it was done, what was near it, everything. What we can carry out, we do. And then we need a way out."
Adam paid his half of the information exchange promptly. "I know three ways out of this complex that don't involve the front door. I'm looking for four bound books, each about thirty-three by fifty centimeters, about thirteen centimeters thick. Dark brown leather bindings, heavy as fuck for their size."
Clint took in their new working partner with his usual on the job calm. "You get to explain this later," was all he said to Natasha. "Four books, one foot by one and a half by five inches. Got it."
"American?" Adam said, sounding surprised finally. "I'd thought British. Right, let's go. They'll dig out the entrance eventually."
"What's the chance we'll run out of air?" Clint asked bluntly, focused on Adam so that Natasha could listen for people moving in a panic. So far, she hadn't heard anyone.
"Air isn't a problem; it would take a year to get stuffy in here, short of a massive fire," Adam replied. "Radio signal, however, is going to be a problem."
Natasha started tracking Stark's path by the char on the walls and the blood on the floor. "This way."
Adam shrugged and followed her, pistol in one hand and knife in the other. "I killed the guards I found. That might not be all of them."
Clint raised an eyebrow at that, but Natasha shook her head. Adam glanced at him anyway. "I gave them a cleaner death than their leader would have."
"No argument," Clint said, shrugging. "They weren't likely to live much longer anyway, after letting Stark escape."
Natasha waved Clint to her left, Adam to her right. "You two watch for guards. I'll listen for them and watch for tech and books. Cover me."
The stone tunnels didn't leave much chance of hidden objects. The walls were rough carved and mostly solid, the floors a thin layer of sand and small gravel that could hide an occasional coin or the wires run along the edges, but not much more than that. Adam had no comments about the room with the waterboarding tub other than, "Waste of water, but I suppose that impressed his men."
Clint looked the room over, his eyes taking in an empty ammo crate with the Stark Industries logo by the tub. He raised an eyebrow at Natasha who shook her head in return. Most people who could get Stark tech used it. They might even have taken it off the ambushed Army Humvees. She took pictures of the inventory numbers anyway.
She collected the same data for the video camera on a tripod. It had been shorted out by something, possibly Stark's escape, and someone had taken the data card.
From there, they went down a hall, through two doors that were never going to lock again, and over fly-covered, blood-stained sand. At the end of the blood trail, they found a security camera pointed at what used to be a door. The scorched, dented doorway led into a large cavern that had been organized into a combination sleeping area, workshop, and chemical shop.
Adam glanced at Clint and asked, "Do you live up to the name?"
"I didn't get it by accident." Clint was scanning the room, taking in the patterns. He pulled out a camera and started systematically taking photos the intel analysts would stitch into a panorama later. "Stay back until I'm done with this."
Natasha turned to keep watch on the hallway. Beside her, Adam smiled sourly. "I don't see my books, no. Let me know when you need things moved for detail shots."
"Speeding this up so you can get to your books, or just wanting her favorably inclined later?" Clint asked. Natasha laughed soundlessly to herself. Leave it Clint to deliberately phrase it so badly.
"She already owes me favors, thanks," Adam said, momentarily cold. Then he laughed softly, genuinely amused. "Oh, very nice. That's an excellent 'dumb grunt' routine, there."
Clint chuckled. "That you just admitted to seeing through. Okay, you can come in now. Yeah, turn that long tube... thanks. Catch." Metal thunked against flesh then clanged softly against the metal work table. "Intel bitches if we don't give them a scale."
"Well, of course they do," Adam said. "That's intel for you. A mind like hers and you're the one looking the scene over? Do your bosses trust the Black Widow that little or are you that much more than a grunt?"
Natasha called softly, "No secrets, Adam. And less chatter. You're the one who didn't secure the tunnels."
"This better not be like Ciénaga," Clint muttered. "Yeah, okay, whatever he left under the small soldering iron. Okay, turn it to the right now."
Natasha tilted her head, listening to them while she watched the corridor. "It won't be."
"That's what you said then, too." Clint added dryly, "Adam, I can tell you know where to place explosives, but tell me you actually know how not to set them off."
"Of course I do. I'm fond of my hands. You want a picture of that layout there, too, by the way. Stark didn't use a standard chemical arrangement." Adam prowled past behind Natasha but stayed out of her way. "Do cause and effect behave differently for you two, by the way?"
Clint's grin was only in his voice, but he did like people who could throw cracks right back. "Nah, she said Ciénaga wouldn't be like one of our jobs from a year or so before. Widow's good, but she can't mess with time. Quite. So you can do things besides look intimidating with a sword, huh?"
"Says the man with a bow and quiver? Are you aiming for a little M*A*S*H and a lot of Cooper?" Adam asked in return. "And I'm calling in one of those favors, by the way, Widow."
Natasha glanced over; he looked as grim as he'd sounded. She turned back to their lone exit tunnel. "What do you want?"
"Until we're well out of here -- and until we blow the place apart -- treat me like team, and not the ranking member." He sounded coldly precise as he went on, "I think my books may be here because someone needs to know what I look like."
Clint finally said, "Last picture. Right. Pass me those circuits -- yeah, and that. Got room in your pack for any of these? And if we're gonna treat you like team, you'd better give us some warning before you stop acting like it."
"It's hardly your debt," Adam said, but Natasha could hear him thunk his pack down to the gravel and the soft rustling of leather and fabric as he made space for whatever Clint wanted to take with them.
"If I don't go along with it, she can't pay. What I want in exchange for helping is fair warning before you quit acting on our side. Otherwise, no deal." Natasha hadn't expected Clint to help pay her debt. She wasn't sure she liked it; she already owed him too much.
Adam nodded. "It is, and yes, I can take those chemical notes and that... whatever it is. Right, my pack's full. I'll watch the hallway, Widow." He added in a different tone, "Yes. Fair warning, with as much leeway as I can give you. Feel free to ask your partner if you're still worried."
Natasha waved Adam into position by the tunnel, then met Clint's eye and nodded, holding his gaze until he eased that little bit he'd allow in the field. "He'll do his best for us, Hawkeye." She came to get her share of the odd bits and pieces of assembled tech, one eyebrow going up about a set of quickly rolled papers that looked like nothing useful.
Hawkeye superimposed them briefly; once he did, she could see the composite robot schematic.
She nodded and tucked those away into a hidden compartment in the pack's strap. She also said very softly, "Yes, I owe him. No, he won't hand us over when it's advantageous. He didn't give me to the Chinese years ago."
Clint nodded once and murmured, "And his books?"
She chuckled soundlessly. "I have no idea. But he was going to look anyway. This way--"
"We get what we came for instead of him taking something that looked interesting. Got it." Clint nodded, zipped his own pack, and checked the explosives Adam had set. "Nice work, Adam."
"Thank you," was the dry reply. "Shall we?"
Natasha moved forward, quick, quiet, and worrying at the question of why they could almost feel the minutes counting down to trouble. "Adam. When you blew the entrance, you didn't take out the power, did you?"
"No, but I cut every data line I saw," he said grimly. "You think my identity has already gone out?"
She shook her head. "I killed the data cables from the outside. What worries me is a satellite broadcast. The video camera might have been taping a ransom demand, but it could just as easily have been set up for video conferencing."
Clint shrugged. "Nothing we can do if it the intel has already gone out. If you're worried about a regularly scheduled data burst, I can blow the power from here, Adam. But we don't have spare NVDs and you're the one who knows the way out."
Adam said grimly, "If an image has gone out, then it's gone. I'll deal with that if I get to it." He exhaled, annoyed. "Damn it. I wanted those books back.... I can work in the dark if you two make a little noise. If we have to run quiet, tap my left shoulder and I won't drop you."
"Oh, thanks," Clint muttered. More loudly he said, "We have lights. We'll just be doing a fast scan and grab of rooms now. If you see your books, say something."
"If not, better that they're destroyed," Adam said flatly. "Let's get through this and out. Put me in the middle, I'll give directions as we go."
Natasha said dryly, "If we have to run quiet, I'll tap you, and you'll follow Hawkeye out. Hold on to his belt."
"And if it comes to a fight, well, it won't be quiet." Adam nodded.
"Oh, great, I get to play tug boat," Clint complained. He glanced at Natasha, received her nod, and triggered his own explosives.
# # #
They emerged into a rugby field-sized cavern almost three hours later, dusty, sweaty, and thirsty. Adam had been in the lead for much of that time, once he'd finally found his tomes. They'd blown the rest of the Ten Rings sections of the cave system shortly after that.
Natasha would have been less trusting if she hadn't had one of his books in her pack; Clint was carrying a second, and Adam had made room in his pack for the other two.
Adam had only hesitated twice leading them through the tunnels; both times he'd turned around to check the view of the back trail and then headed to the correct turn or crevice. Now he guided them into and through the large cavern, hand out and down in a warning of 'slow' and 'quiet.'
On the far side, he somehow swung a rock twice his height and at least ten times his mass out of the way. Clint shook his head in admiration or disbelief, but as soon as they were through the entry, Adam closed it again, leaving them in a small room with airflow from above and the pungent smell of guano from below.
"Two choices from here," Adam said softly. "One route is shorter but has more of a chance of the local smugglers noticing us. The other route is safer, but it will take another ten hours to get out and away, and you'll be on the far side of this ridge from where you went in. I should be able to find us a little water on our way through, safe but definitely rock-flavored. What I don't know is how badly your backup is worrying by now."
His undertones and body language didn't worry Natasha. The lack of intel, however, did. "Why does someone want to know what you look like?"
Adam paused, then asked softly, "Does it matter?"
She tilted her head, scoffing without a spoken word, one corner of her mouth curving up both because he knew she knew he wasn't a fool and because she also knew Clint would back her up, whether he knew the problem or not.
Adam sighed. "Widow. Those books are old journals of mine. Word that they're here came from... a counterweight to someone I'd rather not work for, or against." His mouth moved in something that wasn't a smile. "Although I will if I have to."
"For or against?" Clint asked.
"If he gains enough leverage, for. Now I have to sort out if I'm being maneuvered or if the General really is foolish enough to risk a preemptive strike."
"You're not fool enough to make one," Natasha said, but she was frowning a little too. "The General. Is he like you?" Clint straightened a little, but Natasha said, "Not my secret, Hawkeye, and not one we can let out."
Clint frowned. "'Like you.' What are you?"
Adam smiled at him, eyes noticeably colder. Natasha signaled Clint back but there wasn't much room for him to move. "I said I'd give you as much warning as I could, Hawkeye. If you goad me into changing sides, well, that might be your warning."
Clint nodded, steady and unflinching despite the rising danger levels Natasha knew he recognized. "I saw the way you were hitting your targets, Adam. You need me to drop it?"
"For both our sakes, yes." His expression thawed and Natasha relaxed with it. "He's an opponent I would have to take seriously."
Natasha frowned at Adam, needing more information for threat assessment. "You think he read something in your journals that might set him after you?"
"He might think I'd make a good second-in-command. I used to specialize in that." Adam's face was blank again, almost bleak. "But as I said, they're my journals. I know what I look like, so why write it? The journals don't have my current name, either."
Clint nodded. "And no photos tucked in? Smart move. So this general lets word get out that he has the books, and where they are, and watches to see who shows up. Because it's either going to be you," he frowned now, "or someone you trust. Who's going to come after us?" It was a question; it wasn't a request.
"No one. You're in SHIELD armor. Not even I would be mad enough to work with SHIELD." Adam shrugged. "And I came in from a very long way away through the mountains. It'll look like I either avoided the gambit or just didn't make it here soon enough. "
"We can't claim that we took them or he'll come after us," Natasha agreed. "That won't keep us out of his business. We can report several hand-bound volumes, some with chemistry and alchemy, and let it sound like we think the ones we couldn't translate in that time were more along those lines, or that Stark used some for fuel."
"He'll wonder if you kept copies," Adam said, considering it. "But the books shouldn't do you any more good than they would him. You'd think they were ravings at worst. Don't mention Stark being anywhere near them. Leave him out of this."
"Okay. So? Which way out?" Clint asked. "Seriously, the fumes in here are never going to come out of this suit."
"Baking soda," Adam said absently. "Suit, a layer of soda, another of charcoal, give it two days; repeat if necessary. All right. Yes. My enemies might have watchers out there."
Natasha raised an eyebrow at Clint; he cocked his head, considering, then waggled his free hand, finally angling it up just a bit. She let him see her surprise for a bare moment, then nodded. "We'll take the long way out, Adam. We're just exploring for SHIELD while we're in here and watching for Ten Rings caches."
"And how do you know we're SHIELD anyway?" Clint asked as Adam opened another doorway Natasha had only just found.
"Oh, please," Adam muttered. "You both have that screaming eagle at your throats, high quality comm equipment, and some kind of suit fabric that I would love to get my hands on if I didn't think SHIELD would come retrieve it."
Clint was snickering softly well before he finished. Natasha slid out to the left once they were in the new tunnel, still making mental notes on the cave and tunnel complex for what she could tell was going to be a very long debriefing.
She didn't tell Adam that he was going to have a minimal, verbal only, appearance in those reports. She still owed him a second favor, after all, but Natasha didn't think she could afford one as expensive as getting him back out of SHIELD's hands.
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Comments, Commentary, & Miscellanea:
Ten Rings is the group that kidnapped Tony Stark in Iron Man; the name comes, actually, from the ten rings the Mandarin wears. No, I have no idea if/how that will play out in Iron Man 3.
Why does someone want to know what Methos looks like? Because among the multitude of changes that come from Darius not having taken a Light Quickening in this universe, one of those changes is that Methos isn't the oldest immortal. Emrys, the monk of Paris, is older by two thousand years.
For the curious, Emrys was also the source of Darius' prophetic dreams in the regular Highlander universe. Emrys sent Methos to retrieve his journals because of a dream. Ten Rings stole the journals from the Watchers, who stole them from Darius. The Watchers don't know why Ten Rings attacked them, and suspect Darius of setting them up. (The Watchers are right.) Ten Rings didn't know what to make of the journals; Darius had some very good ideas and cursed the Watchers heartily for not having a good sketch of Methos.
And no. I don't know if Darius wants Methos' quickening... or a second in command who's less interested in taking over than Grayson is. I hope I don't find out.
The M*A*S*H reference is, of course, Benjamin Franklinn "Hawkeye" Pierce (who got his nickname from Cooper), a wisecracking doctor. Cooper is James Fennimore Cooper, best known these days for Last of the Mohicans, whose main character is known as Hawkeye because he's a sharpshooter.
NVDs -- Night Vision Devices.
Ciénaga - nope, I have no idea what happened there. Let me know if you do.
On to part five.
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