Summary:
November 5, 2014: A SHIELD extraction team goes to retrieve Jessica Drew from a remote Russian mining town after her cover is compromised.
Norilisk, Russia
Characters
NPCs
- Hydra agents and Russian mobsters
Mood Music:
[*<http://insert.video.or.music.link.here>]
Norilisk, Russia
One of the most populated cities in the Arctic circle, and also one of the filthiest places on earth- literally. Built by Gulag prison labor through the 30s and 40s, Norilisk is a mining city known for rich deposits of nickle, copper and other, more precious metals. Decades of mining and smelting have made it the 7th most polluted city on earth.
Tonight, as it grows ever-closer to it's sunless December days, it's dull, dreary, and freezing cold. The air smells acrid, sulphurous, and metallic. As if one can taste the poison in the air. Agent Drew has been here for a day and a half. She's gotten used to it.
Five months undercover. Five months, blown when the stupid arms dealer and inventor she'd been playing arm-candy-right-hand-woman to started dealing behind her back with Hydra. Why is it always Hydra that comes back to sink its fangs into her? A million real snakes in the world, and she could probably survive any last one of their bites, except that damn metaphorical serpent in the grass waiting to strike at her.
Still, she has the intel she'd gone in for, and then some- his contacts, blueprints his whole damn hard drive copied. And she has her suit now, at least, picked up from one of her European caches during her run- leaving her message for the SHIELD extraction team in its place. It's been a game of cat and mouse with her and both his and Hydra's goons across Eastern Europe since she left. Or perhaps cats and spider?
The mining sites are creepy at night. But they're also deserted. No civilians to get in the crosshairs. At least, not any civilians who aren't up to anything that isn't terribly shifty and probably worth looking in to anyway. So that's where she's watching for the four men who were following her two hours ago in the city, and setting off the GPS locator in her suit for the extraction team.
Currently en route: said extration team. Also currently en route- those four men, all belonging to an Eastern European crime syndicate- and three Hydra foot soldiers with some shiny new experimental weaponry from the man Agent Drew has been spying on for the last several months.
Luckily, the plans for those weapons were in the data pack Jess left with her message in the cache- guns that use a combination of concentrated sonic and electric pulses to trigger short hallucinogenic episodes (and possibly seizures, migraines and other side-effects) in their targets. Luckily, they have yet to be perfected and only have a range of about 10 yards, and emit a low whining sound for about two and a half seconds before discharging their blast. But boy do those guns look scary. Oh- and those hallucinations they cause? Tend to make every moving thing around the target seem like an immediate, primal threat to one's very survival (and possibly sanity, for those with weak stomachs or phobias).
-
Melinda May was in the Ops Center when the extraction call came in. Russia. How convenient. She called dibs on the mission and promptly notified Natasha and then everyone else that likely would be useful. Oh, and she earmarked the Bus for the ride over. Because she can do that kind of thing.
Trip, mission. Bus. Now.
Wilson, could use medic support. Wings also useful. Will send a car.
May is on her way to get to the airstrip when she happens across Hunter. It is honestly an effort to not roll her eyes, but she knows that he's going to see the go bag over her shoulder and try to latch on. Though maybe that's not entirely a bad thing this time.
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Hunter was just coming in from an stakeout, as May happened across him, and he absolutely latches on. Hunter is his usual urban charming self, even on route to extract someone. Even as he grabs his own go bag, prepares weapons, checks equipment, he briefs May on the results of the morning's work. "So then Mack arrives, and we're sharing a drink, as you do. She is grilling me about who I work for and I'm telling her it is the Inland Revenue, when they bug out, and I've got to follow. So I kissed her, and get her to slap me, right across the phiz." He shifts the bag, following May, "I've got their location though." His hand lifts, rubbing his cheek, a rueful but truly not at all repentent look on his face.
-
If there's a list somewhere of missions Sam Wilson is suitable for — and given that he has periodically freelanced for SHIELD, there almost certainly is — covert extractions are likely near the top of it. He practically jumped at the chance when Agent May called him in. He's standing at the top of the Bus's drop ramp, arms folded across his chest, wearing an eager expression. "Alright, let's do this!" he says with a grin. "I'll be scouting ahead of the Bus, and if you're this slow when we get there, I'm gonna have your agent gift-wrapped and delivered before you even land."
-
It may be worth noting that Triplett was on the Bus so fast it was like he lives there. What? It's an awesome plane, okay? Either way, he's not saying much of anything as people arrive and all that. He's got his gear and he's checking through it all to make sure nothing's going to jam on him or mess up. When you're going in for an extraction, everything has to work like it is supposed to work. Or people don't get extracted. That's something he's not going to allow to happen. He occasionally looks up from what he's doing and around to the others gathered, smirks and gets back to weapon and equipment checkification. Laying next to him is his Arctic Weather Gear. SHIELD issue. Which means it probably has all kinds of awesome built in techno stuff.
-
Sweet Mother Russia, birth place of the Black Widow, how very happy she would be to welcome her wayward daughter home. To that point Natasha's bold red curls are no where to be seen, instead she has long straight blonde hair pulled into a ponytale and falling down the back of her black fur coat. She has one of those unique Russian fur hats on with the traditional red star to the center. Mirror shades cover her eyes and she has checked ahead to make certain the way is clear. She will ride in the cockpit for the trip, coat off that long as all the information available on the town, from intelligence to wikipedidea is played on loop through and ear bud. Travel papers and indentification papers that are quite confirmable for the Russian Department of Health.
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Melinda May makes sure everyone is prepped with cold weather gear and is ready to go before going to handle piloting duties. Though not before giving Trip a look that includes a very brief glance toward Hunter. Babysitting duty, with permission to show the mercenary the fast way off of the plane if he's asking for it.
As they're getting underway, she nods to Natasha, then tilts her head toward the pilot's berth, essentially granting the Widow permission to make that room hers for the duration of the mission. She'll bunk upstairs in the mission commander's quarters, where Coulson usually resides.
"We're hitting Russian airspace in ten hours," May's voice announces over the Bus's intercom. "Briefing in nine."
-
Hunter returns Tripp's smirk with one of his own, catching that look from May, and returning a grin that shouldn't settle her concerns in the least. "Anyone would think she didn't trust me." Rueful, amused, as he glances through his own equipment, checking over winter wear, his own, with his own built in items.
-
Nine and a half hours later, Sam rockets out of the upper airlock into the freezing Russian sky. One of these days, he's going to exit the Bus by the ramp — but it is not this day. Now that he's actually approaching Norilisk, jetting along to scout the drop zone ahead of the Bus, Sam is starting to wonder if he should have been quite so eager to take this mission. There's only so much cold weather gear can do for a man with his altitude and airspeed.
"This place stinks, and it's freezing, and it stinks," he grouses, his headset relaying the commentary to the rest of the team aboard the Bus. "SHIELD better appreciate whoever we're picking up. If y'all tried to station me here, I would quit on the spot. Just fly away and never look back."
He banks and sheds altitude, adding an infrared scan of the drop zone to his goggles' HUD. Between watching his wings for icing and monitoring for RADAR pings, the lenses are starting to get a little crowded. "LZ looks clear. Go ahead and move in," he says. "I'm going to widen my search, see if I can locate our target."
-
Triplett is all decked out in his Arctic Gear and he looks like he's ready to kick some ass. Or follow orders. Whichever one comes first. He's learned to read and understand May's silence on a regular basis and therefore the only silent response is a nod that clearly states: 'Understood. But That's Two You Owe Me Now.' He's been trying to figure out how to communicate with May more and more. This works. As far as Hunter goes, he just kind of gives the guy a nod and a smile. "Word?" He doesn't even know why he says it. But there's an eye roll that follows it and then he's moving on to grabbing a weapon to accompany him when they touch down.
-
Natasha is ready to disembark after settiing The Bus to receive and transmit local official chatter to her ear peice. She squint a little and flexes her nose as she gets a scent of the place, then she waits to start to travel towards the becon, using the beacon scanner in her glasses to direct the way. Most other agents might take the lead, she is going for the steady approach.
-
The Target pings on Falcon's HUD and Tasha's glasses. She's on a mining site on the outskirts of the city (sorry to those wanting to sightsee in beautiful industrial Arctic Russia). Her body temp registers a little above normal, and a few things read a little hinky, like the fact that she's… climbing up a very, very high crane that… has no visible supports for doing so. Spider-like. And giving off a faint static charge. The strangely-armed men scattered throughout the site do not seem to have spotted her as of yet. Probably because no one has thought to look up at the freaking /crane/.
-
Melinda May has opted to say with the Bus to act as Overwatch and to keep the bird ready for takeoff in case they end up having to leave in a hurry. She's monitoring the signals from both Falcon's HUD and Natasha's glasses so that she can offer information as needed. As she monitors local radio chatter, she has a spare moment to think about the individual they've come all this way to retrieve. Agent Drew. She knows the agent's name, she's heard of her reputation. It'll be interesting to put a face with the rumors, finally. "Keep me up to date, people."
-
Hunter's lip twitch and he rises to his feet, arming up as they touch down, his amusement still firmly in place. A quieter figure steps out of the plane, becoming more business and less casual flirt. "No Calvary… " The joke is made out of reach from May, but within her hearing if she wanted to hear it. He pauses for a moment, observing the scene in front of him, his gaze going up, and up, and "Bloody hell." The mutter is distinctly audible, and he moves, heading along the building's edge, using cover to head towards the crane, intercepting the men. "Moving northwest, three - no, four men on site, armed with some weird dohicky shit."
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"I have visual," Sam announces, sending geostamped photos to the rest of the team. Disdaining Hunter's colorful description, he gives his own report: "She's drawing some heat: seven hostiles, exotic weapons. They don't see her, but she's exposed. The second any of them looks upward…" This complicates the prospect of rescuing her with the snares located in his gauntlets — the sound of one launching will draw their attention skyward immediately. "We'll get them in a pincer," he decides after a moment's thought. "I'm going to flank them on the ground. Once I've got their attention, the rest of you hit them from the other side. Maybe if this agent is feeling generous, she can drop in and give us a hand."
Without waiting for confirmation, he identifies the Hydra agent farthest from the rest of the team, gets into position directly above him, and cuts his hover engine. He plummets feet-first, using the angle of his wings to direct his fall. At the very last second, he spreads them wide, braking just enough that he won't break his legs.
The goon whose shoulders he lands on isn't so lucky. He's not only crushed, but battered straight through the pier into the freezing water below. Sam nearly follows suit, but activates his engines just in time to keep himself dry. He comes back up through the improvised trapdoor with both of his customized Uzis drawn and firing.
-
Triplett is sticking close to Hunter, since it is his job to babysit, but not too close. He's got to give the dude some room to work. And he's also got to get some room himself. He's got his weapon strapped across him as he moves in counter sync and timing to everyone else. There's no sense in them all being caught or noticed. "May? Make that Three." While others listening in may think this has something to do with the op, Trip is more than sure May knows he's talking about some one-sided debt he's pretending like he's actually going to collect on. Almost everything out of Hunter's mouth makes Trip roll his eyes… and up the debt.
Triplett hits something solid he can tuck himself behind and he plants his back to it. Listening to Falcon's words and then spotting the awesome work, he can't help but to smile just a bit more genuinely. Now this is definitely going to be at least a little bit fun. His weapon gets cocked something serious and when the Falcon makes his move, so does Trip. He goes for whatever HYDRA fool is within visual shooting range and aims for legs. No kill shots from this agent. Not yet, anyway. And no witty banter. Not until they've done what they came to do.
-
Born to this land, a patient hike has her at the upper edge of the mining pit in a brief ammount of time and hardly winded. Natasha takes in all the information being shared around. She reports nothing back for now, feeling comfortable with the reports. she studies the crane for a second in calm contemplation.
Then as she is about to start her steady descent into the area, Falcon dives and smashes into one of the enemy agents and launches him into the water. Check in time. She starts to build in even ever increasing steps towards the sight. She draws up several tazer disc and points towards Falcon. "Tasha to May: The operation just went hot inside Russian soveriegn territory. Scrabble all local and long range communication." Then she just runs straight towards the fray.
-
Static. Pop. Crackle. Agent Drew's comm unit finds the SHIELD frequency automatically. "Agent Drew. You really don't wanna be hit with those dohickies- luckily they're still in beta testing- please tell me you guys got the reports I dropped off in the cache?" her voice comes in, tinny and wind-whipped from her position, now perched atop the crane, whispering. "If you're lucky, it'll hit you with about 30 seconds of Lovecraftian nightmares- not so lucky, lots of twitching, loss of bodily functions-" she starts to describe, just before Falcon comes out of the sky and knocks one of them into the water. "Woah- /nice/." She takes a swan dive off that crane now, electrical blasts from her hands to take down the nearest armed goon before she spreads her arms to allow the webbing built into her costume to catch the air and help her glide to a metal indusrial structure about 100 feet away. While her movements are very… arachnid in nature, they have a little more in common with the Widow's than that guy in New York's, despite the static cling trick. Maybe it's that whole trained-from-childhood thing. Or the old adage about the female of the species. "Is it worth mentioning not all of these guys are Hydra? I mean, their boss just started drinking the venom kool-aid, and they're pretty deeply involved with everything from conterfit passports to human trafficking, so. Don't feel too bad about the epic ice bucket challenge there if he wasn't a snake."
-
"Fine, Trip. Three." The moment Natasha tells May the mission has gone hot, she activates the scrambling that she'd already had prepared ahead of time thankfully. "Scrambling active, Widow." And then Drew's signal syncs with theirs. "Copy, Drew. Team, we have confirmation that the experimental weapons are on the ground. I repeat, the prototypes are live. If you can get one, bring it with you." The eggheads in R&D would likely LOVE to get their hands on one of those gadgets, and having a prototype will likely go a long way toward figuring out how to counteract or completely defeat the effects.
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Who needs babysitting? Hunter runs forward, picking his cover with care, settling to take careful aim, his eyes narrowing, the light banter put aside for the time being. He gets paid for this shit, he can be serious when he needs to. "Engaging if cleared, May. Lethal or non-lethal options?" A moment later, the others are shooting and he shrugs, glancing up at the crane. Then a shot aimed higher at the shoulder is performed swiftly, the second thudding into the leg of the man, "Non-lethal it is."
His next movements take him towards the fallen man, scooping up the doohickey to shove it in his bag, "Sounds wicked." The mumble isn't meant to carry over comms, nor is the thud of sound as he uses the butt of his gun to shut up the goon. "Got one." The command by May is met with a reply that is akin to a confession by the contractor.
-
"Sounds like you're a very popular lady," Sam answers as Agent Drew joins the extraction team's frequency. "S'there anybody left in Russia who isn't trying to kill you?" Triplett and Hunter may get more serious under fire, but Falcon will make time for banter.
He lays down another burst of cover fire, then crouches and raises a wing, metallic 'feathers' fully extended; another advantage to the Exo flight suit is that it provides its own mobile cover. He stows his machine pistols, reasoning that lethal weapons aren't such a great idea with friendlies entering the line of fire. Then he leaps back into the air, out of the range of the brain-frying weapons. "Well, it's not Hoth, but close enough…" he mutters to himself, aiming one of his gauntlet-mounted 'talon' snares at one of the arms dealer's goons on the ground. With a burst of compressed air, he's towing the gangster through the sky at the end of a tow cable.
-
Triplett plays his part. There are agents here that are better at dealing with such things… and the cold. So he lays down cover fire for them. This isn't about being the hero or collecting cool electronic gadgets to take back to interesting biochemists at the Trisk just to have a reason to talk to her. Nope. It's not about any of that. It's about getting Agent Drew out of a sticky situation and getting back in one piece.
Trip's silence speaks volumes about his focus. He's picking shots and making sure that his fellow agents are not blindsided or caught too off guard. When he has a moment, he switches positions and picks his shots again. There's a Specialist Science that goes along with this. Not to mention he's keeping himself behind various states of cover to protect himself from getting shot by any of these crazy prototypes. Because that would probably suck. Royally.
-
"For the record, I'm all for lethal," Drew chirps in. "But, you know, not without clearance. You'll pardon me if I'm not directly engaging, I'm probably going to need a medic after debriefing. You'll have to make do with long-range support on my end." Yeah, it turns out if you soak a sadistic sociopath in love-me-trust-me pheromones for five months, then get made, they won't kill you. In fact, they'll only send people armed with nonlethal (if terrifying) weapons because they are, at that point, on some level chemically addicted to you because sociopaths don't generally feel those things, and the things they'll do to convince you to stay and keep feeling those things when they have access to experimental tech are pretty… not pretty. Nothing Jess couldn't handle because Hydra literally prepared her for worse (nothing says Fun Childhood like Hydra!), but she's in rough shape nonetheless. "Apparently, I leave an impression. Which I guess works against me in this line of work."
One more gets clipped by the cover fire- either Hunter or Trip's, leaving the one dangling by Sam's cable, and two more, stalking amongst the industrial equipment in the snow. Who can find who first?
As the man hanging by the cable charges his weapon, it begins to emit a low whine. Falcon's got about 2.5 seconds to figure out how not to get shot into the Nightmare Realm.
-
May listens to the chatter while getting the Bus into the air to move closer to the action. "Get clear and get back. Scrambler has five minutes left before someone figures us out." And if there's one thing May hates more than smart-mouthed, snarky and handsy men, it's having the bad guys realize that SHIELD is in the area.
-
Widow closes straight down right into the area, she announces over the close range, "Flash." And chucks a flash bang into as best a grouping she can get. Eyes closed and then the bright light and bag go off to hopefully take down at at least one, maybe both mobile agents.. Briefly. After that she will just wait out the results. Not lethal is her prefered means, for now. Still, it is a pistol she draws out next as she holds in cover.
-
"I have no issues with lethal, luv." The words are an amused reply to Drew, and Hunter takes cover, observing, considering, before he crouches and takes aim at one of the goons, taking out a kneecap. He covers his eyes as the flash goes off, grinning as he turns to look at the results, "Nice one." A mumbled comment and he uses the cover to move towards his fallen goon, aiming to take the other prototype, perhaps this time for his own use.
-
Sam is looking for a nice distant place to drop his cargo off when a sudden blast of noise leaves him corkscrewing through an instinctive evasive maneuver. He cuts thrust and spins to get a look behind him: that 'cargo' is blasting at him with the experimental weaponry.
"Hey, genius, I'm the one keeping us IN THE AIR," he bellows. The hired muscle barks something back in Russian — he clearly has no idea what Falcon just said. Groaning, Sam cuts through a tight curve to whip his attacker around wildly. Unfortunately, if being snagged and yanked into the sky at freeway speeds didn't make the criminal drop his gun, a little turbulence isn't going to do the trick, either.
"Fine. This ain't Delta Airlines, anyway." He hits the release trigger, deactivating the magnetic clamp and releasing the Russian. "Happy landings." He swerves and speeds back to the engagement zone. "Anyone under too much fire to withdraw? I can get one or two out fast."
-
"Is that the /bus/? Seriously?" Jess sounds a little astonished at the sounds of the engines. What? It's a Very Distinctive Sound. "I'm good. Get it low enough and I can probably just cling to to the fuselage until landing," Drew responds. And kind of smirks to herself at the memory of that Shatner episode of the Twilight Zone. There's something on the wing! At least she's cuter than a Gremlin. At least, normally- she's not had much chance to check herself out in a mirror of late.
She starts gliding in the direction of the most likely landing site- a vast, open, depressing flat frozen landscape of dreary winter nothingness. A lovely postcard view to end this trip to Eastern Europe on.
"Thanks for the pickup." She's at the landing site before the rest of the team, except maybe Sam. She's sporting a few healing bruises, and there are a couple spots on her suit that have some dried blood hinting at injuries to her torso, but she's standing under her own power. The only thing that might really bother her? The faint roots starting to show in her jet-black dye job. "Tell me there's something to drink on the plane that isn't vodka."
-
Melinda May sets the Bus down in that nice flat open area, then walks down the loading ramp as it opens to let everyone inside. Move quick, people, the scrambler's on a time limit, and the heat inside the Bus is all bleeding out. At Drew's comment about vodka, she comments in her usual dry tone, "There's bourbon, but if you put a serious dent in it, I will completely honest when Coulson asks who chugged the stuff like a cheap whiskey."
-
Hunter is extracting himself, heading towards the landing site, both weapons achieved. "We've got beer, luv." His reply isn't breathless, even as he runs, finally making it to the pick up location, strolling now. "At least, I've got beer and I'm willing to share." He winks, heading up the loading ramp, the very picture of cocky confidence, his lopsided grin matching the gleam in his eyes. "If Coulson won't share nicely…" The glance over Jess is brief, and he ends it with a wink, leaning against the wall of the loading bay.
-
Sam hits the icy ground just a bit behind Agent Drew, his wings retracting into his backpack with a metallic whisper. He gives her a once-over as well, although for different reasons than Hunter's. "We need to get you inside so I can take a look at those bruises," he tells the newly extracted SHIELD agent. He's about to bustle up the ramp when he pauses, smiles, and introduces himself. "Sam Wilson, or Falcon, in the field. I'll be your inflight medic, if you'll pardon the pun."
-
"5 months of back pay with hazard bonus," Drew says. "I can afford to replace it. Not like I'm smoking Fury's cigars or something. Because… ew." She scrunches her face up at the thought. She pokes at one of the spots on her suit where the blood has soaked through, testing to see if the wound's healed over. It has. "Well, it won't be pouring out of me. But I can't get drunk anyway, so I might as well go for the beer."
She nods appreciatively to Sam. "Jessica Drew. Spider-Woman in the Field- no, nothing to do with the guy in New York. More as in… Kiss of The," she says. Then, to May, "Agent May, do you want the debrief right away? Figure I may as well pull off the bandaid before I decompress. It's been a rough five months. Office is up there, right?" In other words, it's been five months of deep cover, probably a number on her head, scoop it out of her brain now so that it's /over/.
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Melinda May nods to Drew and gestures toward the main part of the Bus while waiting for everyone else to finish boarding. "Can you wait until we're underway, Drew? I'd rather not stay on the ground any longer than absolutely necessary." With that, she turns to take up the pilot's duties again, getting them in the air and on their way back to New York quickly enough.
-
Hunter, having performed his function, strolls to a fridge on the bus, seeking a beer and opening it. The gesture he makes offers his fellow extraction team members one, before he drops into a chair nearby, opening his, settling in for the flight home. Complete with prototypes.
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Sam produces a topical disinfectant and some gauze from the pockets in his flight harness. "Band-aids are going on, not off, Jessica," he chides her, leading the way into the lab area just across from the loading ramp. "We can get you checked out while May handles the takeoff."
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