68 Merry Christmas To All Part Two

Bokuboy

The backup uniform was two sizes too big for me, which meant I didn't have to take off my workout clothes and it solved my undressing problem, except I was now bulked out. Someone chuckled when they saw me, because I looked fat instead of lean and clean cut like them in their suits. When I added the ballistics vest, someone barked a laugh, because it bulked me out on the chest area even more.

I put on an equipment belt and strapped on a double shoulder holster. I took two Glock pistols from the locker, checked them, loaded the ammunition, and added spare clips full of bullets to the holsters. I slipped two batons up my sleeves and secured them with a bit of duct tape to hold my sleeves tightly. I tested drawing them and nodded.

I strapped a combat knife to the inside of my calf and put on a boot to test it. I nodded at the feel, because my workout clothes had given me an extra layer of protection for my skin. I added pepper spray, zip ties, handcuffs, a back-up weapon to the belt, and looked through everything for what else I could use.

There were no gas masks, no tripwires, no grenades (not that I was allowed to use them anyway), no brass knuckles, no throwing knives, no tool kits, no lock picks, and no water bottles or emergency rations. I closed the locker and did my best to hide my irritation at the situation and at Natasha and Clint.

Whoever planned this mission is severely lacking in preparedness. I thought and walked back across the entire compartment. I made sure I wobbled like a drunk sailor and pretended that the clothes weighed me down, then sighed exaggeratedly when I sat down and saw the amusement on the faces of the other agents. I pretended to struggle as I strapped back in and ignored the muffled laughter.

I sat there and didn't say anything to the others as they had their own private whispered conversations. I could easily hear them, thanks to my enhanced senses, and I didn't react as they made fun of me. I had acted that way on purpose, just so I would be underestimated by the two Hydra agents. It was going to be a very long flight, in more ways than one.

I needed to use the bathroom.

*

Clint almost laughed out loud as he watched Ben waddle down the ramp after patting his shoulder and placed the GPS tracker on him. The bulky clothing he wore really made him look fat, especially the protective vest. The look on Natasha's face was hilarious as she watched him as well.

“I'll send the go signal as soon as I can.” Ben said and saluted to Clint, then he trudged away from the landing area and into the jungle forest.

“Good lord, is he even trying to stay quiet?” Grant Ward asked and the others laughed.

Natasha let out the sigh she was holding in. “Clint, you stay here and...”

“You need to give him a bit of a head start, especially if that was his best speed carrying all that equipment and clothing.” Clint advised in an attempt to delay her.

Natasha gave him a pointed look. “I told you that if he screwed anything up, I would deal with it.”

Clint gave her a pointed look back. “He hasn't yet.”

Natasha motioned to the four other agents. “His teammates are laughing at him.”

Clint tried to not make a sarcastic comment. “Maybe he's trying to be the comic relief, since he doesn't have a partner.”

Natasha opened her mouth to respond, paused, and spoke. “How could they assign an odd number of people to the mission and still want them sorted into two man teams?”

Clint didn't really have a response for that, considering the two teams there were man-woman pairings, as was his with Natasha.

“I'm going to shadow him to the compound.” Natasha whispered and Clint grabbed her arm.

“You need to rethink your decision.” Clint whispered back.

Natasha didn't let any emotions show on her face. “Like Fury said, he knows a lot more than he should. If I don't deal with him now, he could ruin everything I've worked so hard for.”

Clint sighed and let her arm go. “You're making a mistake, Nat.”

“The only mistake I made was not dealing with him immediately.” Natasha responded. “I wouldn't have slept with him or compromised myself, and I wouldn't have even more blood on my hands.”

Clint didn't point out that the blood would still have been there if she had killed him first. The difference was that she was going to feel guilty about having to do it now.

*

“..more blood on my hands.” Natasha's voice said in my ear.

I chuckled as I ran through the jungle as fast as a panther. I guess that means she made her decision about what to do with me. I thought as I leapt on a fallen tree and avoided a deadly snake as I flipped over and used my parkour skills to bounce off of another tree trunk. I jumped and swung with one hand from a tree branch to speed up my jump and kept running when my feet hit the ground.

My entrance to the forest minutes ago had been deliberately noisy and attention getting, so I could make them think I was always going to act that way. I had pretended to be a complete newbie at this and I couldn't disappoint their expectations, could I?

That thought made me chuckle again and I regretted that I didn't bring my web shooters. The forest would have been a great place to practice different moves and techniques that I could easily adapt for an urban environment. Of course, having my dark clothing would not have helped me at all when surrounded by bright jungle colors and giving myself away without wearing a costume would be immensely stupid on my part.

I soon approached the outer patrol area and slowed down as my spider-sense tingled. I quickly climbed up into a tree to scout out the next part of my route and I hung there on the underside of a large branch. I used my hands and feet to stick to it, upside down, and I wasn't surprised that my blood did not rush to my head like it did in a normal person.

My body really was adjusting in much different ways than I had expected and I wasn't going to complain about it. The better it was at adapting, the more versatile and useful it was going to be.

I clamped my mouth shut as a dark skinned man walked by underneath me and his large hat completely blocked him from seeing me.

They always refuse to look up for threats. I thought as I let go of the branch and dropped down, pulled the knife from my boot, and tackled the man to the ground. I had a hand over his mouth and the knife a quarter of an inch into his throat before he managed to pull something out of his pocket and showed it to me.

It was a SHIELD identification card.

“Fuck.” I whispered and looked at the man's neck. “I hope you've got a bandage or something, because they didn't let me prep properly for this fake mission.”

The man's hands scrambled through several pockets before he pulled out a plastic resealable baggie with gauze, antiseptic, and tape. He opened it and put some of the cleaning fluid on a piece of gauze and held it out to me.

I withdrew the knife and quickly applied the gauze to the inch wide cut. I taped it in place. “Keep pressure on it.” I said and he slapped his hand on the spot and his fingers strained as he held on tightly. I searched him and took a handheld radio out of his pocket and the machine gun from over his shoulder. “Do you have a special code to call in for assistance?”

The man shook his head.

I looked at the radio and it was set to a specific frequency. I really regretted not bringing my own equipment, because I could have tracked it and spoofed it to not reveal where I was if I used it. I gave the guy a pointed look and took his ID and radio, then I knelt and wrapped my arm around his neck.

I choked him into unconsciousness after a couple of minutes and wrapped the tape around his neck to keep pressure on the gauze. “The mission might be fake; but, I'm going to finish it anyway.”

I dragged him around a tree and covered him with some fronds and a bit of the debris from the jungle ground. With him relatively safe, I checked the machine gun. It felt off for some reason, so I popped out the magazine of bullets and took one out.

“Blanks.” I whispered and used my thumb to pop each of the bullets out. I was tempted to add in the spare bullets from my shoulder holster and chuckled. I did that and put the magazine back into the machine gun and hung it over my back like a backpack.

With my surprise prepared, I plucked the GPS tracker from my shoulder and put it on the guy before I climbed the tree to the branch I had used before and then leapt to the next tree, then the next and the next. I really let myself go as I jumped to nearly the fullest extent of my current abilities.

I had to admit that I was getting some really nice air as each leap let me cross thirty to forty feet spaces easily, which would have made me a spectacular ninja in the old days. The thing was, I knew I should be able to jump farther. I just had to keep my weight training on an accelerated schedule to get my body to where it should be. Superhuman.

I made it to the compound a short while later and I worked my way around it, in a similar fashion to Maria when she had rotated the image in the display. When I approached the spot for entry, I was not surprised to see double the guards on patrol and two cameras were focused on the area. I chuckled mentally, since I knew it was a test, and I didn't have to worry as I worked around to the other side.

The electric fence was fifteen feet high and any normal person would have had to carefully cut their way through it while trying to not be electrocuted. I followed my spider-sense to a camera's blind spot near a back building and waited for the sparse patrol to pass by the inside of the fence and I leapt up and over the fence to gently land on the side of the building.

I quickly crawled around the building and stayed below the roof, because of the scout towers at the corners of the compound. Any roof movement would give me away, so I went inside the first window I found and smiled, because there were four men playing poker and spoke in an odd language.

That meant I couldn't have asked for help for the other agent, even if I had spoofed the radio, because it would have given me away immediately and alerted the base I was here. That is, assuming he really was an agent.

I crawled up onto the ceiling, glad that it was mostly dark inside. The light bulb wasn't very bright and only lit up the poker table like a spotlight, which gave me a shiver as I remembered my nightmare. My happy mood about passing the mission was suddenly gone and I crushed the bulb.

While the men complained about the suddenly darker room, I dropped down to land on the flimsy table and crushed it, then I grabbed each man and punched them in the diaphragm to knock the wind out of them. Learning how to do that was one of the worst lessons I had, because your own body was denying you the ability to breathe.

Clint did look sympathetic as he did it to me a dozen times to let me see and feel what the move did. I did not have sympathy for the four men as they wheezed and rolled around on the floor and they tried to get their breath back.

I searched them and each had a SHIELD card and their guns were full of blanks. I shook my head at the stupidity and used the zip ties on their arms and legs before I applied a strip of duct tape to their mouths. Two of them had a smoke grenade in their pocket, so I took them.

I started to strip one of them of their costume, then realized they were all dark skinned... and I wasn't. Not even close. Infiltrating like that was not going to work. One of the radios came to life and I listened as that same weird language came over it and then went silent.

I wasn't daunted by that and thought about what to do with them, shrugged, and choked them out. I dragged them over to the wall and deposited them there and out of sight. I walked over to the door to leave and my spider-sense tingled. I stepped behind the door as it opened and two men came in. They spoke in that same language, so I shut the door and they both whirled around to face me.

Perfect. I thought as I knelt. They both received the breath-stealing punches to their guts at the same time and collapsed to the floor. I let them suffer for a bit before I gave them the same treatment as the others and put them at the side of the room.

I was tempted to stay there and lure them in one or two at a time, except I couldn't waste time like that. I needed to get to that monitoring room to disable the security system. So, I relied on my spider-sense to guide me and I left the building through the window and hopped from building to building, stayed out of sight of the cameras and the occasional guard, and sighed when I reached the middle of the compound.

It was definitely a trap, because there were guards at the four corners of the building, their radios were on, and their guns were poised to attack. I held in my sigh at them intentionally giving away that they knew someone was coming, even though they were supposed to pretend they didn't.

I hung there under the eave of the building and thought about what I could do. Sneaking in wasn't an option, neither was looking for a sewer grate or an air duct. I had to get in there to the controls to complete the mission... and then I realized something. I didn't have to get into the building at all.

I carefully made my way around the compound until I found what I wanted. I followed it back to where it led and smiled at the small shack near the back of the property that had the power generator inside. It's loud rattling and chugging meant that it was an old diesel engine, probably from an old tractor or something, and I entered.

After a quick examination, I put a kink into the fuel line from the metal tank to the engine. I was tempted to pour the fuel onto the hot engine and let it explode, then shook my head. Just cutting the power would be good enough. The security system and alarms, including the electric fence that they didn't tell us about, would become completely useless.

I retreated to a safe distance and watched as the engine ran out the fuel it still had inside and in part of the fuel line. It ran for several minutes before it spit and sputtered, made several clacking sounds, then it stopped dead.

Everything seemed to lose power almost immediately and I waited for someone to come and check on the engine. A dark-skinned man strode nearby as he cursed about the stupid thing not working again. I grabbed him by the collar and clamped a hand over his mouth as I pulled him close, then I choked him out.

I tucked him into the shack behind the engine, broke the handle of the door after I left, and retreated to my safe spot as I tapped my earpiece three times. “The eagle has taken the nest and the eggs are broken. I repeat, the eggs are broken.”

There was a sudden surge of extra activity as the base seemed to become swarmed with dark-skinned men and women. They were all dressed similarly and they ran all over the place as they checked everywhere for something. Probably me.

I laughed mentally at the evidence that they were listening to our communications and I was glad that I had a safe place to hide as they searched all over.

“I want that power back on.” A man's voice said as he and another man approached the shack.

The man with him spoke in the other language.

“Operational security? Someone is already inside the base and none of you can find them! I want that fence powered up and the motion sensors back online before the assault!” The man exclaimed.

I waited for them to get to the shack before I hopped down from my hidden perch and snuck over to behind them, then I grabbed their arms and turned them around. The shocked looks on their dark faces was priceless, so I dropped to my knees and punched them... right in the balls. They groaned and dropped to the ground as they cupped themselves.

“Consider yourselves dead.” I whispered and covered their mouths with duct tape. I zip tied their arms and legs as well and dragged them around the shack. “Now it's time to have some fun shooting up the place.”

“Hmm mhmm mhh!” The man supposedly in charge mumbled.

“Unlike your guns, mine are loaded with real bullets.” I said and took the machine gun from around my shoulders and took aim at one of the guard towers.

“HMMM!” The man yelled.

I chuckled and let my spider-sense guide my aim, then I shot the binoculars out of the scout's hands. The man yelled and ducked to hide, because he didn't have anything to shoot back with. I looked down at the men at my feet and saw the realization on their faces.

“Can you guess who is going to complete the mission?” I asked them and knelt to choke them out.

They didn't need to see what was going to happen next.