5. Chapter 5

"This was a terrible idea, Coulson," Hawkeye grumbled into his comm.

"Trust me."

"Right," Hawkeye grumbled again, but without heat, and clearly without intention to argue. Phil was beginning to wonder where the infamous reputation for insubordination had come from, because so far Clint had pretty much done what Phil had told him to do, down to the letter. It was just a little terrifying, because in all honestly Phil had no fucking clue as to what he was doing other than flying by the seat of his pants.

They waited for the second go-round by the external security guards, then Phil tried to make like a ghost and sneak in through the door. He knew Hawkeye was up high, eyes on everything. They had split up over ten minutes earlier, as planned. Or at least, as Phil had sort-of planned.

Back in the garage Phil drafted out what he thought was a fairly ludicrous and almost certainly suicidal infiltration plan that cut a swath through Sitwell's original operation, including Sitwell's fail-safes and backups. Phil's plan was as close to a "stick'em up" heist as he had ever seen in any movie, and if even one part of it went south they would probably end up dead. Hawkeye -- because he had stopped being "Clint" as soon as they left their stolen car behind in order to slip through alleys, garages and basements -- had simply nodded, made a couple of suggestions, and agreed to everything. It was unsettling, but Phil had nodded back with every ounce of "upper management aplomb" he could dredge up.

They detoured to stop by an armament drop, something that Phil had no idea existed. He watched in fascination as Hawkeye yanked a grate up from the sewer and pulled out a waterproof bag full of guns, flashlights, a collapsible bow and a quiver of arrows.

"How many of these do you have around the city?"

Clint didn't look up, pocketing weapons and strapping on the quiver. "Three."

Phil thought back. "Oh, Mexico City."

Clint frowned at him. "What?"

"You must have not been able to go back for all of your stashes. It was a compromised mission, if I remember, and Sally was in tears trying to figure out how a five person team lost 27 guns."

Hawkeye stared at him. "That was five years ago."

"I told you, no one else is willing to sign off on the audits for Strike Team Delta."

"Doesn't mean anyone would memorize every mission."

"Numbers stick with me. Twenty-seven guns, eight grenades, eighteen knives, two bows and quivers, three tasers and two garrotes. Mexico City." Phil was pleased with how easily he could remember that one. Admittedly, it stuck out, because Sally was a battle-ax a few years shy of retirement and watching her cry had been emotionally disturbing for his entire staff. He'd had to schedule everyone for psych checkups, and that was a bad week. "The damn bows were the most expensive loss, you realize R&D makes them to spec? $7,000 each."

Hawkeye stared at him, blank faced, for a long moment before throwing the nearly empty bag back into the sewer and replacing the grate. They headed towards the building they needed to get inside and Hawkeye peeled off to go up high on a building ledge next door. He would follow when Phil gave the signal, not that it would help much if Phil ran into serious trouble.

The chances were low that the security had changed in the meantime, since everyone from SHIELD was supposed to be dead or captured (and Phil was really hoping for the "captured" option for the missing members of his team) so at least for the moment Phil felt sure that he was not walking into a trap. The passcodes worked to get in through the security doors, which actually surprised him, but he wasn't going to question his good luck. As long as it wasn't a set up.

The office Phil needed was on the fourth floor, and since Hawkeye had nixed using the elevators, Phil had huffed up the stairwells. By the time he got to the top his calf muscles and his lungs were burning -- he was not out of shape, really, but he was pushing himself for speed and that was making things a lot harder. He was glad everything seemed to be going to plan.

Until he walked in on the night crew.

The three guys sitting around a computer hub, each plugged in with headphones and staring intently at their screens, turned as one to look at him. He was still fitted out in his tac uniform, but his black standard-issue winter jacket hid his shoulder holster and stream-lined backpack. The guys stared at him and he stared at them, taking in the fact that they were all pretty young and wearing rumpled, casual clothes. There was no way they were very high up the food chain.

"Achtung!" Phil barked. He had not a word of Hungarian to fall back on, but German was at least a common enough minority language in the country, and he knew he could pull off being a German security consultant if he blustered and barked. His German, at least, was passable.

"What the hell?" Hawkeye snapped in his earpiece, keeping his voice down.

"The door wasn't locked! This is a high security facility, what are you doing? Keeping the place open for pizza delivery?" Phil hoped pizza delivery was universal.

Apparently it was, as one of the guys panicked and started blabbering rapidly in Hungarian. Phil shook his head and pointed at himself, repeating "German!" over and over, while Hawkeye kept repeating "Shit, shit, shit!" and the poor IT guys talked over each other trying to explain themselves out of fear of getting fired on the spot.

"Shut up!" Phil yelled, and at least one of them knew German because he made the others quiet down.

"Fucking Christ, Coulson, what the hell are you doing?" Hawkeye hissed in his ear, breathless from running.

"I am here to do a security analysis." He pulled out his tiny moleskin and flipped it open. "This room was not scheduled to be in use." He glared at all of them, each in turn, with his most burning expression of displeasure then glanced down at his notebook, pretending it said something other than "milk, eggs, multivitamins, broccoli".

The German speaker raised his hand as if in class. "We are making up, um, increasing hours? Due to holiday?" He faltered over the words.

Phil tapped his book. "This was not noted. Hm." He closed the moleskin slowly and tucked it back into his jacket pocket. The three boys -- because Phil had to call it like he saw it, and those kids were under 20 if they were day -- glanced at each other nervously. "Not your fault. I will not make note of unlocked door, but!" He raised a finger and they all stared at it, wide eyed. "I was never here."

The German speaker explained quickly in Hungarian to the others, and they all nodded so hard Phil thought their heads might fall off. He gave them one curt nod in return, and headed for the door that was his original destination. He fiddled with the keypad security as if he was breaking in to test the security, then used his stolen codes to simply open it. The boys were absolutely refusing to look at him or acknowledge his presence, each of them leaning towards their monitors, wearing matching expressions of mild terror. Phil took some petty pleasure in the satisfaction of knowing he still had it in him to terrify baby geeks, even if they weren't his baby geeks.

He closed the door behind him and moved forward. "All clear, I'm in hallway H, headed for target."

"Did you just fucking bluff your way through a room full of employees?" Hawkeye whispered. Phil couldn't tell if he was pissed off or laughing.

"It was only three kids, scared of losing their jobs."

"Quick thinking."

"I have to bluff my way through three budgetary analysis departmental meetings a month. This, I can do." Phil smiled, a little helplessly pleased at the thought that he had impressed the legendary Hawkeye.

There was a huff of noise that might have been a short laugh. "Crazy fucker. Okay, I'm headed for the exits. How long you going to be?"

"I can tell you in a second." Phil opened the door to the office he had been aiming for, and booted up the computer. So far, his codes were all holding true, and he hoped that they would continue to work. If he was locked out, the whole thing was a bust because for all his computer skills, hacking security was not one of them.

"I'm in place. You remember where the fire escape is?" Hawkeye checked in after a couple of minutes.

"Yes yes, shhhhh." Phil squinted at the screen as it crunched his passcode. Finally it opened for him. "Okay, I'm in. No security alarms blaring."

"Don't let that fool you. Chances are good they have the files you're looking at booby trapped. Get the data and go."

"I need twenty minutes, at least," Phil said, frowning at the documents he was opening. He was saving them to a flash drive as he went, but that was dicey if they had a "self-destruct if copied" macro imbedded (and all of his own records did, so he assumed these were no different).

"You have 15 and then I'm pulling the fire alarm."

"Damn it!"

"Time's running out, Coulson." Hawkeye's tone turned grim, the light-hearted teasing left in the dust. Phil took it for the bad sign it was and started flying through files, plugging in his own macros to run his algorithms. They would take at least two minutes each, so while they attacked the spreadsheets he went folding diving, looking for anything interesting in a language he might understand.

When he opened the email folder, he found it.

"Hawkeye."

"Done?"

"No."

"Well get done and get out. You have six minutes left."

"I think I got the information I need from the files. Copied what I could, downloading the results of my queries. But that's not the problem."

"There's a problem?"

"Our team is being trussed up to be sold on the black market."

There was a long silence before Hawkeye replied. "I'm sorry, I thought you just said that Strike Team Delta was being sold. Like, as in slaves."

"Exactly like. Apparently some 'collector' in Indonesia is willing to pay a lot for the Black Widow. I guess he's getting a package deal. They have rather optimistically identified Sitwell as a high-ranking deputy in SHIELD command structure, as well as, I quote, 'fiercely masculine with strongly muscled legs.' Dear lord."

There was another long moment of silence, Hawkeye's breathing labored. After very quiet curse, he spoke up again. "Four minutes. Start logging out."

"But the team!"

"That's what backup is for, Coulson. Secure the information, we'll pass it on."

"The hell you say. An extraction team, if they even know we need extraction, is hours out. We can get to the warehouse where the Widow and everyone are being held within 30 minutes."

"You listen to me," Hawkeye hissed. "You have four minutes left to get out. If I have to come in there and rescue you, I'll just tranq your ass and carry you out."

"Fuck you, fuck you!" Phil hissed back, but pulled his flash drive free and closed everything down. Security would, eventually, figure out that someone had logged into the computer illicitly, but it would take a while for them to reconstruct exactly what he had done. He closed the door slowly behind him, walked confidently back out through the room with the baby computer geeks still busy looking worried, and as soon as he was clear ran like a mad man for the fire escape stairwell at the back of the building.

At the ground floor he met up with Hawkeye, who had the "NOT AN EXIT" door propped open and an arrow nocked in his bow. "Pull the fire alarm." He motioned towards the wall with his chin. Fire alarm systems were as universal as pizza delivery, Phil discovered, and yanked down the emergency handle. The whole building lit up with bright lighting and loud siren wails.

"Is this our stealth exit?" Phil yelled as they ran out into the delivery alley, where an old sedan sat listlessly shoved to one side. Hawkeye jimmied the lock open and hotwired it without comment as Phil climbed into the passenger seat.

"They would have figured out we were here in another five minutes, anyway. Might as well leave a little chaos in our wake!" Hawkeye yelled back. Phil was absolutely not going to ask how Hawkeye knew that, but he trusted him, so he shut up and let the specialist drive. Once they were merged in late-night traffic on a highway that was mostly just an extra-wide boulevard, Phil turned to Hawkeye.

"The extraction point is no good, we talked about this."

"You think we only have one? There are three. The third one is a need-to-know only location, which no one command-side is told about until three hours after a late or missing check in, and even then only the pilot of the plane on call in Vienna. It's as safe as it can get."

"I'm beginning to see why your missions have such high expense reports."

Hawkeye grinned.

"But we're not going there. The warehouse is south-west of the city, at an industrial warehouse park." Phil folded his hands in his lap. He had found over the years that the best way to get someone to do what he wanted was to simply expect them to do it. It was when you started trying to justify your decisions that everything invariably went downhill.

"No, no, and nope. Extraction point."

"Warehouse. Here, the M7." Phil pointed at the real highway they were coming up on, and Hawkeye obediently turned up the entry ramp.

"No, we're not doing this. You're not a field agent, this is going to go to hell in a hand basket." Hawkeye's teeth were audibly grinding.

"You can't even guarantee that the backup team isn't compromised, and where are they coming from, Zurich? Venice? SHIELD doesn't have any bases out in this area, not permanent ones. The republics of the former USSR are fickle allies."

"Jeezus, believe me I fucking know that, my partner won't let me forget it," Hawkeye grumbled, his eyes still focused on the road.

"The warehouse is in an industrial section of Budaörs, which is a suburb--"

"No!"

"I've got the address here, and I memorized the map." He pulled out his moleskin.

"You what?"

"The reason I'm good with numbers is that I have a very visual memory. Not quite eidetic, unfortunately, but I think I have the basics."

"No." Hawkeye repeated the word, but without a lot of heat. "You're one stubborn bastard. If I turn off this highway are you just going to bail out and walk there?"

"Why yes, that was my plan." Phil paused, surprised that Hawkeye had figured it out.

"Oh hell, I was joking. You're serious."

"Yes."

"I could tranq you. Knock you out, keep you out of my hair."

"You seem to enjoy the idea, you mention it a lot. But that would be an operational liability. Also did you know standard issue tranq shots cost $443 dollars each? That's not including the delivery system."

"I hate you so much."

"I'm used to it. Here's the address." He showed what he had written down to Hawkeye, who glanced at it and nodded.

"You really memorized the directions?"

"I memorized the map, not quite the same thing. But I'm sure I can get us there."

"Man, I think I just might love you." Hawkeye grinned, bright and mischievous, and Phil's whole body flushed. Hawkeye, true to his name sake, caught it even in the sporadic illumination of the highway's lights into the cab of the car. "Hey, I told you, I'm not that asshole. I'm not making fun of you."

"Can we just not talk about this?" Phil crossed his arms over his chest.

"You are pretty fucking cool, that's all. Not the stick-up-his ass desk jockey I was expecting."

"Thank you," Phil snapped, his throat tight.

"And one hell of a kisser."

"I will pay you to shut up."

Hawkeye laughed, his whole body reacting and shaking with mirth. "If Nat weren't in mortal danger and if Fury wouldn't castrate me I would totally pull over and bang you right now." He jerked his thumb indicating the backseat.

Phil stared at him, his jaw locked in shock.

Hawkeye sighed and tapped the steering wheel. "But no, we have to go in and save Sitwell and his 'strong, muscular legs.' He owes me for this." He pushed down the accelerator and the car lurched with speed, saving Phil from swallowing his tongue.