In the end, to no one’s surprise, it was Creed who broke the silence.
“So, we’re gonna kill the girl, right?” Sabretooth snarled suddenly.
Silver Fox jumped a bit, startled by his voice. Amazingly, Creed did not call her on it. He must have felt it, too, Logan thought. The storm brewing, there among them. A small window separated Maverick from the back of the truck, and it was open so that they could speak to one another.
But North didn’t respond.
In the back with the others, Logan frowned. “The Widow?”
“Who else would I mean?” Creed grunted. “This op has gotten pretty sloppy. Mission specs would seem to indicate that you oughtta let me rip her throat out. Never mind the simple fact that she’s a commie spy.
“Come to think of it, I’ll say it again. We come across him, we ought to kill the Irishman, too. I doubt if the Agency is going to want the choirboys in Interpol to have any information about us in particular, or the Agency in general. We’ll have to shut him down, and it won’t break my heart any if we have to do it messy.”
Wolverine didn’t answer. Hard as it was to admit, there was logic in what Sabretooth said, particularly regarding the Black Widow.
Through the window that looked in on the cab, he saw a sprawling farm. A pair of horses drew a wagon across the property and a man walked beside them. A burst of bitter envy swept through him, but Logan pushed it away. His life had never been that simple, and he strongly doubted that it ever would be.
It had turned out to be a beautiful, green and blue day. But not here. Not in the sterile darkness in the back of the truck, where murder was discussed without any more gravity than farming. It was part of the job, sometimes.
“You’re not going to agree widi him, are you?” Fox said.
Logan only looked at her.
“I can see the Widow,” Fox elaborated. “I’ve no objection to taking her down. She’s KGB, and wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to us. But Cassidy’s on our side. He’s one of the white hats.”
Creed bellowed deep, thunderous laughter.
“You got brain damage, squaw,” he said cruelly. “What makes you think we’re the white hats?”
Silence again. It was a question that Silver Fox definitely did not have an answer for.
But after a moment, she did. “Fine. You want to take out everyone who knows too much? What about Mystique? Long before you consider murdering an agent of Interpol, you should think about the shapeshifter. She’s an assassin and a liar. And I think we can all agree that she is most definitely not with us on this.”
Creed nodded. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll kill Mystique myself.”
“Of course you will,” Fox replied grimly. “You’ll kill anyone if you get the opportunity.”
“Darlin’,” Creed replied, “I’ll make the opportunity.”
“That’s enough,” Logan said.
The subject was hard enought to dissect without having to listen to the team bicker.
“We do the job,” he said simply. “The Widow makes it hard on us, we’ll make it hard on her. Anyone, and that means anyone, gets in our way, tries to keep us from completin’ this op, we take them down. If that means they don’t get back up again, then that’s the way it’s gonna be. Any questions?”
Creed smiled.
Fox glanced away.
Only North spoke up. “Yeah, I have a question,” he said through the open window between cab and truck. “Do you really think that’s warranted? Under any circumstances at all, I mean? You’re willing to kill an Interpol agent just to fulfill this mission?”
“If we don’t get that disk—” Wolverine began.
“The hell with the disk!” Maverick snapped, glancing over his shoulder. “If Interpol gets it, what’s the great loss? The West is safe for another few weeks, until some other moron with a big mouth and even bigger weapons comes along. Okay, you want to keep it out of Mossad hands, but are we prepared to cut Mystique down in cold blood to do it?”
He’d grown even angrier now, and kept glancing back to emphasize his points.
“Why can’t we just grab the disk up, use only what force is necessary, and get it home before anyone knows we were even here?” he demanded.
“You knew what kind of game you were getting yourself into, junior,” Wolverine said.
“You’re right,” North admitted. “I did. And if I’m put into a position where I have to kill to save myself or one of you, or to secure my mission objective when there is no other alternative, I’ll do exactly that. But if killing isn’t absolutely necessary, that’s another story. How far do we go before it stops being soldiering and starts being just plain murder?”
“Little late for a conscience now, Maverick,” Logan said. “I know you started out as a freedom fighter, but what we do ain’t that black-and-white. They don’t call it black ops for nothin’, North. You knew that when you signed on.”
“So we just follow orders, do what we’re told, kill anyone who gets in the way, and then we’re supposed to sleep at night?” Maverick asked, turning so sharply to glare through the small window that he jerked the steering wheel and the old truck bounced onto the soft, crumbling shoulder of the road.
“I sleep like a baby,” Creed said happily, obviously enjoying the conflict.
“A bloodthirsty baby,” Fox added, and Sabretooth glared at her.
Maverick had righted the truck, brought it back onto the road, and now he sat, brooding darkly, eyes forward. He stared out the windshield in silence, until Logan gave his response.
“Op parameters are established for the purpose of secrecy, security, and the safety of the team,” Logan explained. “You know all this. We follow our orders.”
“But sometimes we improvise, don’t we, Logan?” North said softly. “You do it all the time. Now Creed wants to use his own interpretation of those op parameters you seem so proud of. Well, I choose to interpret them differently. I think we need to improvise.”
His hands carefully holding the wheel steady, Maverick turned to meet Wolverine’s gaze, staring through the tiny window with a look of cold iron.
“Can you honestly tell me,” he began calmly, “do you truly expect me to believe you’re nothing more than a shorter version of Creed? Stone-cold psycho? Is that it?”
Maverick looked back at the road. Wolverine couldn’t see his mouth move, or his eyes, and his words had a kind of bodiless, ghostly quality as they floated to the back of the truck.
“I know you’ve got that beast inside you,” Maverick said. “That there are times in a battle when pain drives you over the edge and you have that berserker zone you go into. I’ve seen it.”
“That’s the only thing the runt’s got goin’ for him,” Creed snarled.
Maverick turned to look at Wolverine again, continuing as though Sabretooth had never spoken.
“I’ve never seen you kill without reason. I can’t believe you’d just murder somebody who isn’t a target … someone who’s on the side of the angels, for God’s sake!” North snapped. “I don’t even know Cassidy, but if we’re willing to kill him … hell, who’s next?”
“That ain’t up to you, Maverick,” Logan said angrily. “You do the job and you take your pay and you go home. And if you need somethin’ to help you sleep, well, you can sure afford it with what we’re paid.”
Before Maverick could answer, Silver Fox spoke up.
“You’re wrong, Logan,” she said simply, and he stared at her.
Her features were jagged. Bitter.
“I don’t know about you, but there isn’t anyone in the world that can make me do something I don’t want to do. I make my own choices. Whatever we choose to do here, each of us, that’s up to us. We follow orders, we don’t follow orders, that’s a choice. I’m not saying I agree with everything Maverick’s said, but I’ll tell you this: if I kill a man, his blood is on my hands, not the Agency’s.
“I’m with Creed on the Widow, and frankly I think
we ought to kill Mystique as well. But Cassidy? I can’t believe you’d even think about killing him,” she said, glaring at Wolverine.
“Hell, nobody else wants the job, I’d be more than happy to hack up the big leprechaun,” Creed growled. “You bunch of bleedin’ hearts are startin’ to make me sick.”
Wolverine leaned back against the wall of the truck. His skull banged lightly against the wall in time with the vehicle’s bouncing in and out of the ruts in the road. He was deeply disturbed by the conversation, not because of the subject, but because of the team’s seeming eagerness to attack one another. There had always been conflict within Team X. But it was growing worse with every operation. And this one was tailor-made to split them apart once and for all.
“Listen up, folks, and listen good,” he drawled. “I never said I was gonna kill Sean Cassidy. Never said I’d be willin’ to kill anyone in cold blood. Cassidy’s a good man. I’d like to have a drink with him when all o’ this is done. What I said was Team X ain’t got the luxury o’ lettin’ anyone get in the way of us doin’ our jobs. Cassidy’s smart, he’ll know that. If he’s not as smart as I think he is, he might end up wearin’ a toe tag. That’s the way this game is played.
“Any o’ you have a problem with that, or a problem with the fact that I’ve got command o’ this op, hop out and walk home right now. Otherwise, shut up and do the job.”
Maverick’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but he didn’t speak for more than an hour after that. Silver Fox glared at Wolverine from time to time, and also kept silent. Sabretooth leaned back against the wall of the truck with his arms crossed behind his head and his eyes closed and a small smile on his face that showed the sharpness of his teeth.
Wolverine had called what they did a game. There had never been a time when he was more aware that it was exactly that, and yet it was a game with no winners.
Poland made the Black Widow nervous. She had only been involved in the espionage trade for a little more than a year, and already she had an international reputation, but at heart, she always felt like a nineteen-year-old girl who still grieved for the loving husband she had lost. She drew her strength from anger and bitterness and the memory of Alexi. But she could never put her fear behind her, not completely. Instead, she faced her fear, analyzed it, and in so doing, transformed it into caution. It had served her well.
In the case of Poland, the Widow’s caution led her to travel as inconspicously as possible. She had been met in East Berlin by her contact, a tall, white-haired, bearded man named Mikhail. In a car that looked nearly decrepit on the outside but was finely tuned within, they had set off for Warsaw at an almost plodding pace. At least, Natasha felt as though they were plodding along. She only wanted to be home. The hatred that she had felt coming from Sean Cassidy had disturbed her deeply. She didn’t understand it, but now she only wanted to forget about it.
She and Mikhail shared the front seat of the car. Anyone seeing them pass might think them father and daughter. Absurdly, she felt safe in his presence, though she could likely have killed him in seconds. But it was the fatherly qualities in the man that allowed her to relax even a little in Poland. He would leave her at the Soviet border, but once there, the Widow would feel at home, and confident. Until then, it was just something else she would try not to think about.
Natasha Romanova had traveled in several Western countries already. She had been cautious, of course, but neither truly afraid nor anxious. She knew where she—where any Soviet, particularly a member of the KGB—stood when she worked a mission in the West. They were the enemy. Crass, simple, materialistic people without honor or compassion or loyalty.
At home in the Soviet Union, or in most of its satellites, from East Germany to Czechoslovakia to Romania, the Widow also knew where she stood. Soviet power was unquestioned. Without the power of the U.S.S.R. to protect them, these satellite nations would be prey to the whims of the West. As an agent of the KGB, she would be not only respected, but feared throughout these lands.
Then there was Poland. The KGB was feared, yes. But respected? Not necessarily. The Polish people had never truly accepted communism. Had, in fact, spurned it whenever possible. While the Poles were certainly thankful when the Nazis were defeated at the end of World War II, they did not see the Soviet Union as liberators, but rather as nothing more than a new oppressor. Though she would never have voiced such an opinion, Natasha had wondered if the Polish view might not have been partly justified, particularly since the Soviets had redrawn the Polish borderline, forcing millions of Poles to migrate west in order to remain within their country’s borders.
Though Polish authorities cooperated with their Soviet counterparts, Natasha remained dubious about the population at large. So much so, in fact, that when she traveled through Poland, she made it a point to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
Lost in thought, she stared out the passenger’s window of the car. Despite her anxiety, despite the spring that threatened at any moment to puncture the skin of her lower back even through a coat and two layers beneath it, Natasha felt herself drifting off to sleep. As her eyes fluttered closed, shei^w a woman hanging laundry behind a farmhouse in the distance. And as she surrendered to the world of her dreaming mind, she felt, curiously, a pang of sadness she didn’t understand. When she woke, she would not remember it, which was just as well.
“Wake now, Natalia Romanova,” a deep, warm voice called to her from somewhere beyond the wall of sleep.
The Widow’s eyes fluttered open. The sun still shone but it had moved across the sky quite a distance. She was surprised at how long she had slept, and a little embarrassed. She steeled herself for Mikhail’s disapproval, but when she looked at him, he smiled kindly at her.
“You feel better now, I trust,” he said in Russian. “I did not want to wake you, but we are almost to Warsaw.”
“Much better, thank you,” she found herself admitting, and blinked in surprise.
She was not usually so open with people she did not know well. And, if she were truthful with herself, since Alexi’s death, she had kept all others at such a distance that she did not really know anyone well.
Natasha let her head fall against the seat and her eyes lingered on the smoking factories that loomed on either side of the road ahead. The farmland remained all around them, but perhaps half a mile ahead it became overgrown scrub brush and then there were only the factories jutting from the earth like mechanoid volcanoes.
That was Warsaw.
Or at least, the factories were the outer edges of Warsaw. It had been the capital of Poland since the tail end of the sixteenth century, but during World War II, like so many other European cities, it had been reduced to ashes. After the war, the Poles had used old paintings and photographs and rebuilt the capital from the ground up. Around that new old city, modern Warsaw had been built, and around modern Warsaw, the factories had gone up. Passing through, toward the center of the city, was not unlike traveling back in time.
“We’ll go to our checkpoint right away,” Mikhail told her. “You can sleep some more if you like. Otherwise we’ll get fuel, enjoy a quiet meal—you will have access to a shower if you wish—and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “A shower and something to eat. But unless you want to sleep, and don’t want me to drive, I’d like to continue on.”
Mikhail said nothing, only nodded his understanding. The Widow wondered if he did, in fact, understand. She would not be able to truly relax until she was home again. Or, at least, back inside the borders of Mother Russia.
They had passed the factories and were in the thick of the offices, government buildings, and apartment complexes that made up modern Warsaw. The Widow idly gazed out her window at the people on the street and the buildings they passed. For all its complaints, Warsaw was a far healthier city than many others she had seen within the Soviet sphere of influence.
She studied the faces of a pair of old women who walked along in front o
f the facade of a some kind of office structure. Wrinkled lines and silver hair beneath the scarves they wore tied over their heads. They passed a small shop that sold violins and other musical instruments, all made by hand, if the window sign could be believed.
At the end of the block, a man gazed back at her from a street corner. A man with red hair.
The Widow opened her mouth to scream in perfect synchronicity with Sean Cassidy. Mikhail didn’t have time to react to her warning, even if he had heard it. Every window in the car shattered and it rocked up on two wheels before rolling over onto its roof with a crunch of glass and the hideous, eerie scream of metal scraping pavement.
Her eyes flicked open, and Natasha realized that she had been unconscious. But for how long? Where was Cassidy?
Something hot and sticky on her face; it had to be blood. She licked her lips, tasted it, and wondered idly, barely interested, how badly she was hurt. She glanced over at Mikhail, saw the huge shard of glass jutting from his chest and the way the older man’s blood had soaked into his clothes and spattered the dashboard. His white hair and beard were splashed as well, as though he’d been painting and gotten sloppy. But this wasn’t paint.
For several seconds, her mind went numb. Then she saw that Mikhail was breathing, though lightly. The knowledge that he yet lived was compounded by her realization that he wouldn’t be alive for long if he didn’t get medical attention right away.
Dark rage burned inside the Widow. Sirens whooped in the distance, and she hoped that at least one of them was an ambulance. People shouted on the street not far from the car. She almost didn’t hear Cassidy’s approach. But even if she hadn’t heard those footsteps, she would have known he was coming.
The fool announced himself.
“Your time is up, Romanova,” Cassidy said, in English, not even attempting to hide himself.
His attack had shocked her. The Widow had never imagined that an agent of Interpol—albeit a mutant—would stage a daylight, very public assault on anyone, KGB agent or not, anywhere. But especially not deep inside the sphere of Soviet influence. Yes, this was Poland. But no matter what misgivings the Poles had toward the Soviets, they wouldn’t support what appeared to be a Western mutant terrorist attack on unarmed Soviet citizens.
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