Hostiles. It sounded strange to hear the word, coming out of a teenage mouth. “Ten, maybe fifteen. All clustered in one area, right here.” Natasha tapped the screen. “What do you think, those are some kind of barracks?”
Ava thought about it. “Mess hall, maybe?”
“Ah yes, chow time. Probably. In that case, let’s hope they eat real slow while I take a look around,” Natasha said.
“We,” Ava said.
Natasha looked at her. “You really think you’re ready?”
Because I know you’re not.
“It doesn’t matter. This could be Yuri Somodorov, remember?” Ava was already moving toward the clearing.
Natasha grabbed her with her one good arm. “We’re going in and out for recon, and that’s it. Fact-finding only. A recce. Nothing more than an Amazon tourist op. Do you understand?”
Ava yanked her arm away. “I understand. Map and camera only. In and out, like you said.”
“Just a recon?” Natasha looked at the kid, who already had a hand on the grip of each blade.
“Just a recon,” Ava agreed.
“Fine.” Natasha crouched low, moving to the farthest edge of their jungle cover. Ava followed.
If we’re going to do this, let’s do it quickly, Natasha thought. Timing is everything.
She scanned the building in the distance. “There isn’t enough cover to try to stop for a radiation scan outside. We’ve got to get up and in. The largest purple mass seems to be on the second floor. Two adjoining rooms. I hate stairs, but I think we don’t have a choice.”
“You hate stairs? Why?”
Oh, kid, the things you don’t know—
Natasha looked at her. “Because grenades roll down them,” she said. “If you haven’t learned that one yet, you will.”
Truthfully, Natasha hadn’t learned that one from S.H.I.E.L.D. at all. In fact, she could still see the yellowing paper of the old britantsy training manual—written by the MI5 to fight the Nazis—later stolen by Ivan Somodorov to fight the Brits.
Keep off streets when you can access yards and gardens and alleys. Never use stairs when someone can roll a grenade down them. Always shoot twice; once to kill, once to slow the nervous system more rapidly, for stealth. Only give a fake address when entering a taxi from the street. The best way to cross barbed wire is to have someone lie on it first and take the barbs for you—
“Got it.” Ava eyed the stairs uneasily.
“Stay close,” Natasha said, pushing off the ghosts. “I mean it.”
“Go,” Ava said, crossly. “I can do this, Grandma. You’re worse than Coulson.”
“Three. Two. One—” Natasha took off, keeping her head low and her body half-crouched. Tuck position. Light footfall.
She ignored the pain, focusing instead on what she could see and hear. Shadows and boots.
She kept listening, to make sure Ava was following, which she was.
They stayed in the perimeter shadows for as long as they could, only darting through the clearing surrounding the depot at the last possible moment.
Natasha could feel Ava watching her as they ran. To her credit, the kid never slowed and never faltered. As they moved closer to the building, they could hear the low hum of indistinguishable voices from the other side, but it was hard to make out anything more than the odd word.
“Glupyy—” Stupid. Always.
“Glok—” So they’d heard the sound of Natasha’s Glock.
“Amerikantsy—” Americans. Probably talking about the boot.
Now for the rickety staircase. Natasha took them two at a time, pausing only at the second-floor landing to press her ear to the rusting aluminum door. Clear.
Ava followed right behind, staying in her shadow. One booted foot, one in socks. The corresponding steps even sounded off balance—heavy soft, heavy soft, heavy soft.
“Move it,” Natasha whispered, backing up to the edge of the landing. She’d need to pick up a little speed if she wanted to open that thing.
“What are you doing?” Ava hissed back.
“Kicking in the door.”
Ava flipped open the shorter of her two energy blades—really, that one was closer to a dagger or a hunting knife—and sliced through the lock in three-quarters of a second of blue-lit energy. She powered off the blade and shoved the grip back into her utility belt before Natasha could say a word.
Now, that’s not something they teach at the Academy.
Natasha looked at Ava. Ava shrugged. The door creaked open, and the Widows stepped inside.
Beyond the door was what looked like some kind of large, industrial storage room, stacked high with neatly organized rows of wooden shipping crates. It seemed prefabricated, though it was hard to tell with all the rusting joints and seams.
Definitely military, though. World War II, like I thought.
Bare lightbulbs hung from the interior ceiling scaffolding on single lengths of black rubberized wiring; but the high ceiling was only partially visible in the unlit space. The walls were striped with metal bracing, as if shelves had been removed to make more room for whatever merchandise was occupying the balance of the space.
Natasha cataloged all of the above within the first two seconds of entering the room; what she saw in the third second was slightly more problematic. An empty folding chair stood next to the door. On the plastic seat was an aluminum soda can that had been sawed in half, a makeshift ashtray. Smoke was still coiling up from the can into the air.
“Look.” Ava grabbed Natasha by the arm, pointing.
“I know,” Natasha said, keeping her voice low. “I see it. The Marlboro man can’t be gone long, we have to move fast.”
“Not sure I’d be smoking in a radioactive room,” Ava whispered.
“Life choices.”
Ava’s eyes were wide as she looked over the room. “So whatever’s in these crates, I guess it explains the shipping manifests,” she whispered.
“Yep. Veraport. It’s listed right here on the shipping labels. Christmas morning for all the bad little boys and girls.” As Natasha spoke, her knife came out, and she quickly and quietly sliced through the sealed edge of the nearest crate. She began to pry open the lid. “Let’s take a look at the coal.”
“Coal?” Ava looked at her.
Natasha tugged harder on the wooden crate. “Well, seeing as we crossed the line to Naughty List hours ago—” She pulled harder and the lid ripped off.
Natasha peered inside. Whistled. “Holy crap.”
“What is it?” Ava moved closer to take a better look. “Weapons?”
Natasha shook her head. “Forgive them, Father, for they have sinned.”
Inside the crate, rows of Cristo replicas—miniature statuettes in the image of the world’s most renowned religious icon, the white stone Messiah that rose from atop one of Rio’s famed city hills—had been painstakingly stacked in neat rows. Natasha held one up. “Souvenirs.”
“All this? That’s it?” Ava asked in a whisper.
“Apparently our Russian friends are incredibly devout,” Natasha said quietly, turning the statue over in her fingers. “Not a side of the Red Room I’ve ever seen before.”
“Well, there you go. I guess you can’t judge a book—”
“Hold that thought,” Natasha said. She wrapped the statuette in her dirty shirt—to muffle the sound—and smashed it open on the side of the crate. The ceramic figure shattered, revealing a toothpaste-size, plastic-wrapped pouch of glistening black powder. “Oh, look. You can,” Natasha said, grinning as she shook out her shirt. “Judge away.”
Ava looked startled. “What is that?”
“It’s product,” Natasha said. “Which means money. Which means weapons and ordnance and boots on the ground to carry them.” She tried to keep her voice low, but emotion was creeping into it.
“Product?”
“It’s how dirtbags have come up with dirty money to pay for dirty habits going back thousands of years. Drugs. Oil. Smuggling. You
have to have product if you want to start a war. It doesn’t really matter which product, not for our purposes, anyways.”
“So, you think this black stuff is some kind of drug?” Ava took the bag from Natasha’s hand, examining it closely. “Why would Veraport keep it in a radioactive bunker?” Ava asked.
Natasha searched through the rest of the crate. “Maybe because it’s the last place anyone sane would go?”
“Or maybe this stuff is radioactive? Could it be setting off the radiation scans?”
“I don’t know,” Natasha said, weighing a bag of the black grit in her hand. “It’s definitely not anything I’ve ever seen from our friends at the D.E.A. before. But yes—whatever this is, it’s bad news being used to pay for bad guns that will make even worse headlines.” She shoved the lid back on the crate and opened the next one.
It was full of money, zipped into plastic freezer bags and bound with silver duct tape. “Euros. Dollars. Look at all this cash—” She pulled out a bag of rubles. Russian money. “Not smart, to hide so much money in one place.”
“Why?”
“Because someone like us calls in the coordinates and someone like Tony drops a bomb on it,” Natasha said.
Her voice was emotionless, which required a huge expenditure of energy—because what she really wanted to do was scream. She had seen it a thousand times, the infrastructure of violence—the bomb maker’s meticulous workshop, the terrorist cell’s litter-strewn rental house, the sniper’s abandoned rifle, still propped at the open window.
She knew she could never escape it; this was her job and her life.
But she could also never recall a time when she was so utterly sick—so completely physically, emotionally sick—of fighting.
And now here I stand in Yuri Somodorov’s drug cache, with signs of the struggle still to come, no matter how badly I want to escape it.
Natasha shoved the bag of cash back into the crate.
Ava stared at the black powder in her hand. “So our Moscow Station informant was right. The Red Room money does come through South America. Veraport, probably run by Yuri Somodorov, is somehow connected to the Red Room’s European operation.”
“You mean Ivan’s operation,” Natasha said. “This is how he funded Istanbul.” The word hung over them like a ghost, and they both felt it.
This room killed my brother. These drugs. Somodorov money.
Ava nodded, slowly putting it all together. “This is the next connection. This room. We’re going to do it. We’re going to crack open the whole network.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Natasha toggled her Cuff and began to scan and photograph the crates. “There’s a whole lot more to the story somewhere. Where are they getting this stuff, and what is it? Where is it going? How can we use it to bring down the rest of the Red Room food chain? We won’t know for certain until we run it through the S.H.I.E.L.D. labs. We may never know.” She toggled off her Cuff and grabbed the plastic pouch from Ava’s hand, dropping it into her pocket. “Let’s keep moving. We’ll get the readings and get out of here.”
“Yest’ yemnogo vera,” Ava said suddenly. Have a little faith.
“What?” Natasha gave her a strange look.
Ava pointed. “Look. There, on the side of the wood—”
A slogan was stamped on the crate in some kind of black industrial ink. One word, VERA, was larger than the others, and it wasn’t just part of the name Veraport.
It was a Russian word, and they both knew it well.
FAITH.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
CLEARANCE LEVEL X
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES & INDIVIDUALS (SCI) INVESTIGATION
AGENT IN COMMAND (AIC): PHILLIP COULSON
RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW
A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA
AAA HEARING TRANSCRIPT
CC: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, SCI INQUIRY
COULSON: Really? You’re going to stop there? When you’re standing in the middle of a radioactive smuggling depot surrounded by armed Russian insurgents and unknown chemical substances?
ROMANOFF: Faith, Phil. You said you want to know the beginning. There was no way we could have known how many things were beginning right there, at that moment.
COULSON: Faith—that’s ironic.
ROMANOFF: You know the Somodorov flair for drama.
COULSON: I guess a little drama makes sense when your cover is religion.
ROMANOFF: Nothing makes sense when you’re talking about the Somodorovs.
COULSON: And you had never seen the drug before?
ROMANOFF: Never. It was like some kind of strange black sand, maybe dust.
COULSON: Not a compound you could identify? Not anywhere on earth?
ROMANOFF: I wasn’t worried about the planets. I was worried about product.
COULSON: How this Veraport cover was using it to fund the missile op?
ROMANOFF: And what the op was—and how it tied back to the Red Room—and how I was going to take it all down.
COULSON: Life’s greater questions, when you’re a super hero.
ROMANOFF: Or just a Romanoff.
COULSON: Can we please get out of this missile depot now?
DEEP IN THE RAIN FORESTS OF
THE AMAZÔNIA LEGAL, BRAZIL
ONE HUNDRED KILOMETERS
SOUTHWEST OF MANAUS
“Faith,” Ava repeated. “Veraport is suddenly a faith-based organization?”
“It’s printed on the bags, too. Look—” Natasha held up the bag of black powder. There it was on the label: VERA. “So Faith could be the name they’re using to sell the drug.”
Alexei stood behind her. “You mean on the streets? To people? That is so messed up.”
“So messed up,” Ava said, slowly.
Natasha closed the last crate of statuettes. “It’s all frightening, which is why we aren’t sticking around to find out more. Let’s take the reading and go before the Marlboro Man gets back on smoking duty.”
“Right,” Ava said. “The reading. I’m on it.” She ripped open a Velcro pocket and removed her ComPlex from her utility belt. She tossed the plexi on top of the wooden crate, and the blue-lit map appeared.
“Faster,” Natasha said, edging toward the window. “The Russians are on the move. We have to wrap this up.”
“She’s right,” Alexei said. “It’s too risky.”
Ava tapped the screen, toggling to the radiation map. “I don’t know what any of these numbers mean, but they’re triple—no, quadruple—what we were seeing outside.”
“So you’ve got the read? We’re good to go?”
“Wait. It’s not coming from the crates.” Ava looked up. “The numbers double again on that side of the room.”
“So what does that mean?” Alexei asked. “The numbers?”
“Something’s over there,” Ava said. She began to move as she scanned the room, finally stopping at the door opposite the stairs where they had entered. A brightly pulsing purple target now lit up the plexi screen. “It’s almost definitely behind that door.”
“What is?” Alexei took a step toward the door.
“Great. We’ve got the numbers now,” Natasha said, shoving a crate back into place. “As soon as we get far enough away to get a signal, I’ll call for air support. We have planes that can sniff out a radiation reading without going below ten thousand feet.”
“Whatever it is, there are five of them.” Ava looked up, stricken. She moved her fingers to the handle of the corroded steel door. “The handle’s warm.”
“Do you have to do this?” Alexei looked back at her.
Natasha shook her head. “Don’t make me pick you up and carry you out, because I will.”
Alexei disappeared through the door.
“Two minutes more,” Ava said. Then she pulled the door wide open and stepped through it—saying nothing at all.
Ava didn’t know what she was looking at, only that it was evil. They were evil.
�
��Bombs. They’re bombs,” Alexei said, standing next to her.
The bombs lying in the shadow room might as well have been five sharks moving through the water, with five sets of glinting teeth.
“Holy…” Her voice trailed off.
Natasha’s voice came from behind her, in the other room. “Let me guess,” she began. “Five stolen missiles, at least three meters long, judging from the numbers.”
“Sounds about right,” Alexei said.
“Steel casing. I’m going to say less than a meter in diameter. And based on the radiation, active warheads, so I’m thinking tactical ballistic missiles.”
Alexei shook his head. “How active?”
“I’m also guessing there’s nothing too short range about these suckers. So yeah, I’m thinking you’re staring at a roomful of B-61s.”
Alexei looked back through the open doorway to his sister.
Ava remained motionless, though she wanted to run.
“Yep.” Natasha stepped up behind her. “Nailed it.”
“I can’t believe it,” Ava said.
“What did you think it was going to be?” Natasha shook her head. “Plutonium’s a pretty clear tell.”
“I just never thought—I don’t know.”
Ava’s face went even paler; she couldn’t take her eyes off the five cylindrical bombs. “You think this is what Maks was so afraid of? Nuclear weapons?”
“He should be,” Alexei said.
Natasha shrugged. “Something to do with this, anyways.”
“Did you know?” Ava asked, quietly. “Before?”
“She knew,” Alexei said. “She always knows.”
Natasha’s face was unreadable. “I just hoped I was wrong.” With that, the Black Widow took over—moving closer, holding her Cuffs in front of her face, expertly pressing a three-millimeter sensor that appeared along one edge. A small burst of light projected out from her wrist as she scanned the room, digitally recording its contents.
Ava frowned. “So where did they come from?”
“We better find out,” Natasha said.
Ava held up her ComPlex again. The ionizing radiation counter began to crackle with intensity, and she held it out to Natasha. “Check out those numbers. Does that remind you of something?”
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