November 25, 2015:
Clints followed some leads on the stolen Sentinel parts and calls in backup
Characters
![class="image1"](http://cmbeta.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images//class="image1"/medium.jpg)
NPCs: None.
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Plot:
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
There are advantages to having been in the spy game. Like knowing people. Well okay, Clint knows Oracle kind of by accident and knowing Kate has less to do with him and more with her but still, the principle applies. When last Clint had spoken to Kate he'd promised he'd follow up on the criminal supply chain that's being used to help assemble some very dangerous high tech stuff. And while he hasn't had any luck cracking the trail of money, he has managed to locate a drop off point that's being used by one of the several smuggling rings involved. It's a disused farm off the I-95 between Gotham and New York. Rolling hills, set back about 5 miles from the road. Lots of property and nothing interesting. Basically no one comes here.
Except they do. When Clint had put in the call to Kate and Oracle there'd been several large moving trucks pulling up and men started unloading the contents - all crated - into a barn. If the information goddess looks, she'll notice a power grid and network come online too. Someone's done some fairly extensive and… slightly less than obvious rennovations. At the moment the ex-spy is watching from a field through a pair of binoculars just off the road and waiting for help to arrive.
"This is Oracle." the digitally disguised voice filters through the communicators. "I've got eyes on the area." She's 'borrowed' some time on a satellite and has zoomed into the location. "Getting access to any security systems now."
Green eyes fixed on the screens in front of her, her attention is divided between the satellite view and the avatars floating over the maps. "Check in, please."
For driving between Metropolis and New York, Kate has a car. For hero work, she has a motorcycle. Much easier to fit places, and easier to hide when you need to pull it off the road and trudge through the grass to meet your former mentor. She's got her bow and quiver over her shoulder as she settles in behind him cross-legged in the grass. "Hawkeye in, Oracle," she murmurs. "Also the ninja dork. Found him."
The Ninja Dork is at least not in the ninja suit. He's got a mostly purple sleeveless vest to go with pants and boots. A pair of holsters at his hips hold what look like oversized pistols and of course, quiver and bow. It looks like the suit has a cowl and some IR goggles that go over his face. "Heard that." He doesn't turn around but he's grinning. "Glad you could make it out Hawkeye. Man that's awkward to say isn't it?"
The archer comes up to a knee and hands Kate the binoculars. "Take a look for yourself."
Kate and Oracle both have different views of the same thing. There's a triangle of buildings create by a farmhouse, an old barn and an old equipment shed/garage. The space between the, probably about 50 yards across, is gravel with half a dozen moving trucks. The barn door is open and Kate can see from her vantage point the stacks of crates, many of which are marked in Chinese, and the fact that the interior is both lined with some kind of metal and surprisingly well lit. Seems the dilapidated appearance is only for the outside.
Oracle gets an additional view. A digital one. There's a hardline connecting to the main network underground. Probably fiberoptic. That and the generator mean someone's running a pretty potent computer setup over there. Probably an alarm, maybe some active security measures.
For once, the people all seem to be human. Tatoos indicate probably Triads though they're definitely not all asian. They're armed and quite well. Looks like there's about twenty of them between drivers and loading crew. A well dressed man in a suit talking on a cell phone seems to be in charge.
"How do you want to approach it?" Clint figures Oracle can take down comms and deal with any unexpected upgrades she may have found. Which leaves he and Kate to do the fieldwork. "Looks like there's a covered approach through that little dry watercourse over on the left. And the grass is pretty tall. No real vantage points though unless you want to climb the farmhouse."
Oracle says, "Acknowledged Hawkeye." Ninja Dork, the redhead snorts (but not across the comms, of course). "They've a high speed network connection in and a generator." Her eyes cut to the window that scanning that connection.
Fingers flying over the keyboard in front of her and… yes, there it is, the security system. "Subverting security, you'll be good to go in a minute."
"Sat view shows approximately twenty people in that area." Her satellite view is good, but not so good as to make out the tattoos and markings. "Video feeds acquired, I now have more eyes on that area."
Kate takes the binoculars, getting a look at the layout for herself. "Not weird at all, nebulous guy without a name," she smirks back at Clint as she takes the measure of the place. "I'm Hawkeye, after all." Once she's seen the layout, she passes the binoculars back, thinking it over. "How much intel are we trying to pick up?" she asks. "Because if we take out their electronics, they're not going to see us coming. We could go in, take them down, and take our time with what's inside the warehouse." Of course she thinks the two of them can take out twenty guys.
"I put in a call to SHIELD too so we may have backup. I told them to try to keep it on the DL though, not come bursting in here with a quinjet and a tac team." Because if they do that, spook the guys and raise a fuss they may lose out on valuable intel.
"Ronin, if you like. Or you can keep calling me Hawkeye. I won't refuse to answer to it after all." Clint gives Kate a sidelong grin as he waits for Oracle to work her magic. "Okay, yeah, nuke their communications and electronics. I figured that, yes, we could content ourselves with what's in the warehouse but hey if we get folks to interrogate and computers or something to comb through, so much the better. And by we I mean mostly you and SHIELD… if you're still working together. Heard that got complicated." He hears things.
"Okay…" Clint selects a taser arrow, draws and nocks it. "I go right, you go left?" Meaning he'll take the long grass.
Oracle has compromised the cameras and can see that there appear to be little military type robots in the barn. Normally those are used for disarming bombs and the like. These appear to have machine guns fitted to them. And they're networked. Probably best not to let them get used…
And anyway the archer is off. Sneaking and doing it rather well for a guy in purple leather pants and a spidereye set of goggles. The men near the barn are just finishing up and starting to relax, break out smokes and chat. Kate will come out, if she takes the watercourse, about thirty feet away of a guy with a hoagie and an AK.
Appearing about a block away by leyline, Agent May has answered Barton's request for covert backup. And only May. Her commlink likely appears on Oracle's signal list the moment she's in the area, and she starts moving quickly and quietly toward the coordinates the elder archer sent. Taking a chance, she says quietly for her commlink to pick up, "Oracle, May. ETA thirty seconds."
"Communications and security down. I'm seeing some military robots…" There's a pause as Oracle scans the screen in front of her. "in the barn. I'm going to disable them, but that might a moment or two. Avoid that area until you get my go ahead."
As Mays call comes in, the redhead conferences the comms "Your SHIELD backup will be there in thirty seconds, Ronin. Acknowledged, May."
"I'll try to leave a few for you," Kate grins back at Clint before taking her bow from her shoulder and settling a flash-bang arrow against the string. Why take down one when you can pull some shock and awe on the whole crew? She moves toward the warehouse at a jog, doing her best to keep hidden. "Closing in," she murmurs over the comm.
"Same here." Clint says back, the voice coming out of May's and Oracle's comms as well as Kate's. "Well well. Cavalry's here. Just in time, Agent." The news of the military robots? Not good. But he's going to have to trust that Oracle has it.
The elder archer draws back and aims from his hiding spot. First target? Cellphone guy. He gives to the slow count of fifteen to give May a chance to get into position. "Okay. Going in three… two… one…"
Thwip. BZZZZT! There's an anguished cry as the taser arrow impacts cellphone guy in the head and knocks him over, leaving him twitching on the ground. The response from the thugs is immediate. They begin laying gunfire down toward the grass, fanning out. Most of it, honestly, isn't aimed anywhere near Clint or Kate or even the approaching May. But Ronin ducks down a bit lower, gives it a moment and then rises, firing two bodkin arrows at the trucks to hole their radiators and then a more bulbous one with a concussive tip at the ground near a knot of three which all promptly wind up on their backs.
"And before anyone says it, this is nothing like Bucharest."
The robots, three of them, start to power up. Oracle can see them connecting to the network. If she's going to stop those things from going into action, or take them for her own, now is the time. They still don't know they're compromised… but they're about to.
"You are never going to stop complaining about Bucharest," May quips faintly. "Get over it." She … didn't have the advantage of a silent distance weapon, but now that the bad guys have started firing blindly she doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Drawing her ICER, she picks off two thugs in short order while still on the move, maneuvering to get closer to the buildings at the same time as making herself a difficult target to track.
"Robots moving …" and then a pause "…. and I have them." Oracle provides the update, even as she directs them to provide covering fire for the three in the field. No killing for the redheaded Information Goddess, even now.
Now she has access to the network, she starts her searches - checking manifests and processes to see what what she can find.
On the final count, Kate releases her arrow into the warehouse, which gives her another count of three to burst out of hiding and kick the man with the hoagie and the AK in the back of the head. "Sentry down here," she reports, whipping out another arrow just in time for the flash bang to go off inside the warehouse.
The flash in the barn turned warehouse is actually fortuitously timed. It prevents the drone operators from trying to counterhack Oracle while she assumes control of the drones. They're dazed and confused in there. The sound of crunching meets Kate's boot. Yeah, he won't be getting up. One of the drone operators stumbles out of the door with a sidearm, looking for a target but unable to focus as four men come around one of the trucks with weapons in hand. They're sent scattering a moment later by gunfire from the drones, giving Kate all the time she wants or needs.
"Moving up along the farmhouse side." Clint calls back as he gives another gunman a literal arrow to the knee and then pulls out a 'tanglefoot' arrow. "Okay. Let's see how you like this!" There's a loose group of half a dozen men trying to form a knot of resistance as May comes up and downs two. Then there's a bang near them and all of them have been sprayed with some kind of tacky, sticky substance that looks like kind of tarry bubblegum. Old SHIELD recipe that. One of the things he actually, you know, bothered to learn how to make himself.
"Moving to go between the house and barn." May takes down another two with her ICER (you're welcome, Oracle) then makes a run for the building proper. No reason to be sneaky anymore, after all. Oh, and anyone that gets in her way? She had elbow reinforcements put into her jacket for a reason.
Oracle is, of course, appreciative that May is using ICERs, although the redhead would never presume to request that of any SHIELD agent.
With the robots under her control, she maintains the covering the fire whilst waiting for the searches on the computer systems to complete … she's good, but it still takes time but finally the results of the search start to display. So far, nothing out of the ordinary - well, what she expected. Smuggled and stolen goods to build Sentinels….
Kate smiles slightly to herself as the drones inside get shut down, though the four men incoming are more of an issue at the moment. Sure, she could bog them down with some foam arrows, or take them out with tasers. But Kate hasn't really been getting out of the Hall of Justice much lately. Sometimes you just need to get back into the thick of things.
She clips her bow onto the side of her quiver, breaking out a pair of staves instead as she wades into the men. It's a blur of motion after that, kicks and punches, as she uses their own momentum against them, swinging one into another just in time to twist a third into a lock that pops his shoulder right out of its socket.
BANG That's not the sound of an AK going off. It's actually the sound of Clint shooting a runner. He'd run out of zappy arrows. Fortunatly he hadn't run out of rather large rubber bullets. That guy won't be getting up any time soon. And he'll be hurting for a while.
May finds a few people in her way. Who subsequently wish they had not been but as she emerges on the other side of the trucks, Clint's coming around, trying to cover the area. And Kate's just finished up teaching a bunch of very hardened criminals that just because she's a woman and a bit on the small side doesn't mean she can't kick their collective asses.
"Area's clear?" He asks Oracle as he relaxes. When she looks she'll be able to confirm that it is.
"Nice work Kate. May." The archer lifts his goggles and shakes out a little. "I can see 'desk time' hasn't dulled either of you." Not that he'd expected it to.
"So, this is the part where we let SHIELD and the JL:A figure out who takes what into custody? Oracle, got anything?"
Indeed she does. The manifest. Electronics, guidance systems, parts for the Meta Scanners and… two crates full of palladium blocks? What on earth do they want with palladium?
Melinda May gives Clint the flat look that he's likely VERY accustomed to at the desk comment. "I'd like to see you try to do my job for a day, Barton." She can see it now. He'd get one look at the gremlin in the tupperware and Fitz's portal buster and likely go running for the hills. "I can have a SHIELD cleanup team here within about a half hour." That's also the time frame for when Clint needs to be gone, she knows.
"Areas clear." Oracle reports to the team. "And … we've got lots. Most telling is the two crates of palladium. I would suggest that be secured fairly quickly." Listing off the rest of the equipment, in a more general manner, she frowns deeply.
She knows what they're trying to make here and it's concerning.
Kate looks down at the men, breaking out zip ties to start restraining them. "May, if you think SHIELD has the resources to act on this, I've got no problem saying I was never here," she notes over the comms, glancing back toward Clint. "Not sure how far I trust the DEO with this sort of thing just yet." It's a terrifying day when Kate trusts SHIELD.
Ugh. Them. Clint hasn't heard more than rumors but if that's the reaction they're getting from Kate - one of the most easy going human beings on the planet - then it sounds like the rumors were like. "Palladium? What are they going to do wi- no, nevermind. I'll ask later." Looks like they're done here. "Kate are you going to be in town later tonight? I'll be you know where if you are." She's busy, but hey, a guy can hope right?
"May, Oracle, thanks for the help. Sorry to leave you to do all the clean up but…" Uh… no, actually he's not sorry. "… you know. Not official. Anyway, catch you soon. Keep me in the loop if you can." And with that it's time to collect his shafts and head back to his car. Which is a ways up the road.
Melinda May nods to Barton as he makes his getaway, then looks at Kate. "Up to you, Bishop, but your being here will make all of this easier to explain." In other words, she'll let Kate take all the credit for her and Clint's work here. With that, though, she moves to also help with trussing up the downed evildoers while making the call to SHIELD.
Of course, the Information Goddess is downloading the information. SHIELD will get a copy, so will the JL:A. "Kate" the redhead speaks to the archeress "Can you let the other teams know what we found here?" Much better to come from Kate than the 'eye in the sky'…
"Yeah, I can do that. Send me the info once it's all downloaded?" Kate answers Oracle, stepping back once the men have been safely restrained. "I should get out of here too, if I don't want to explain to the DEO why I ceded a site to SHIELD. Apparently 'I didn't sign up to play interdepartmental power games' doesn't qualify as enough of an explanation for this sort of thing."
May's expression quirks ever so slightly at Kate's reasoning — the equivalent of a wicked grin on her. "I'll make it official, then, so they can't try to blame you." She clears her throat slightly, then says in her most 'I am serious, so you had better listen' voice, "I hereby claim this crime scene for Spain, I mean, SHIELD." And yes, she manages to stay straight-faced.