Resurrection - Chapter 22
As they begin to plan the mission, something else happens. Skye reveals some secrets from SHIELD's past that might just serve as motivation for the coming battle, and one agent discovers that his secrets are exposed for all to see.
Chapter 22
Phil considered his players, seeking to design an attack that would succeed despite his limited resources. Assuming the men they sought had some sort of external scanning device it was likely they couldn’t count on a stealthy approach. They’d clearly detected their first two victims, so they had some way of seeing the outside world.
His second consideration was that regardless of the size of his team, the only door that was certain to lead to the bad guys was just that: a single door. That opening would easily become a killing zone if they had to enter in single file. The roof didn’t really seem to offer many options, and an attack from there would require other things. Blasting a hole might work, but then some sort of rope descent to the floor would have to follow, and yet another period of time where his troops would be vulnerable to defensive firepower.
Briefly he entertained the idea of drilling a small hole in the roof and pumping in some sort of incapacitating gas. He might have allowed that thought more consideration if Fitz was available, but preparing that idea would take time, and time was the one thing he knew he didn’t have. Can’t do the opening assault from the roof!
“Okay, we know our objectives,” he said, starting to list them.
“First, we all stay alive and uninjured. That means we avoid those blasters. Second, we cross off the bad guys. There may be as many as seven, but there could be more. That’s just the largest number we’ve seen at one time. Third, we capture that nuralizer intact. That’s just as important as items one and two.”
“We have to assume they have some sort of outside surveillance capability, so we can’t just walk up to that door and barge in.” Trip raised his hand.
“Does the route the two guys took tell us anything about blind spots, or were they reacting to the car…and the guys just happened to be targets when they first came out?”
“Fair point,” Phil responded. “Any sense of that, Skye?”
“It’s impossible to know. They might have sensed the backscatter if they’ve got an appropriate receiver, but we hadn’t been anywhere near this side of the building yet. The scanner got just a glimpse of things as I drove out of there,” she added, moving a different image to the holocom center and placed it on the big monitor.
“This is all it caught. It’s not much. There’s a large open space behind this roll-up door, and these appear to be the two vehicles they used in the last heist. There’s another room here,” she said, pointing to a shadowy wall with a darker opening that was likely a door. “I do see anything like furniture in here with the cars, so probably they have a room or something inside there. We have no idea if they’re sleeping there, and they could likely go out another door, mingle with the folks that work there, and drive away as a part of the regular traffic.”
“Heck, they could even be using one of those delivery trucks to commute.” She shook her head. “There’s just no way to know.”
Phil started to lay out some ideas. “Okay, here’s what I see. We need to open a window. We need to cut off their retreat. We need to be prepared for those blasters. And…we need to assume that it’s going to take some serious violence to subdue them.”
He turned to face Clark for the first time. “Other than the survivor downstairs, how many men do you have?”
Clark screwed his expression into level 10 disdain. “I have four more, but they follow my orders, not yours.” He glanced around at the team. “This is my turf, and we don’t need the cavalry here.”
He’d made several critical errors, but before Phil could discuss the one that bothered him the most, Skye spoke up. He’d punched the wrong buttons, and she wasn’t about to allow him that privilege.
“You are never…NEVER…going to use that term again! Never! I think it’s time you admitted the truth.” She glanced around, wondering what would happen if she continued with what she was thinking. After seeing Jemma’s face, she decided she didn’t much care. The odd man out was Sir Basil, and she decided the man could handle just about anything.
“I wasn’t here the last time,” she began. “Agent Coulson was, so he knows what happened from first hand knowledge.” She turned back to Clark and walked over just a few feet from his face. “Stand up when I talk to you!” she demanded, and for some reason, most likely fear, he actually did stand up.
“That fiasco began when you completely bungled the initial contact. You had been told what to do, but you didn’t do that. You thought you knew better. The other team hadn’t yet arrived, so you decided to play General Custer and wrap everything up before they arrived. The only problem was you ignored the intel on Bennett Gross. You thought you could handle it. You and your six-gun toting sidekick.”
“Then you charged in and discovered that everything you’d been told was true. There were already two SHIELD agents inside, essentially hostages. There were also a number of Gross’ followers, and they were willing to die defending the leader of their cult. You’d been told that, but you chose not to believe it!”
“So…the whole thing went sideways, and now you’re useless. Two more hostages, and two less men to complete the mission as planned. In short, you intentionally created a major problem out of what should have been a simple takedown. Now a bunch of people had to die.”
Clark was completely cowed by Skye’s outburst, but Phil decided to let her continue. He knew what she was likely to reveal, but thought that maybe it was a good idea for his team to understand what that comatose woman lying downstairs meant to them.
“So…weapons were out. An assault by a team would become a blood-bath and any chance for both the hostages and the followers was eliminated. As Agent Coulson and the others tried to conceive of a strategy that would lead to success, Melinda May took it upon her shoulders to change the equation. She was uniquely qualified to do that.”
“She went in unarmed. She was prepared to talk, maybe to deal, and hopefully to defuse the situation. She held a couple of special cards in her hand, and she might have been able to play them if you hadn’t completely…completely screwed up the whole affair.”
Skye glanced at Jemma and Trip. “Melinda May was married to one of those followers. Her husband was in there. Her brother-in-law was in there too. Her sister-in-law, the brother’s wife, was there. She had three relatives there, and she wanted desperately to save them. That’s what she set out to do, but you weren’t done fucking it up!” Skye wasn’t big on profanity, but if ever there was a time to swear this was it.
“So, she started off talking, and maybe she was making some progress. It’s hard to know for certain, but I’ve listened to the audio feed and it sounds like maybe things were calming down a little. She and Gross were having a conversation, so that was a start. Then another voice suddenly joins the mix. When I first heard the recording I had no idea who that voice belonged to. It was just a male voice.”
She turned to look at Phil, wondering if he knew who that voice had been since the official reports never identified it. “But today, listening to you earlier, I know who that voice is. You have an interesting little lisp when you pronounce the letter S. It’s not a big deal, and it probably doesn’t bother you at all. But…it bothers me. It bothers me because the voice on that audio, the voice that turned the conversation into a bloodbath had that same little lisp.”
Skye walked forward two steps, pushing her finger directly into Clark’s chest. “That voice was you. You’d already screwed up the mission once, and now you felt obligated to screw it up further, to screw it up again. In your official version of things you claimed that the voice was one of the disciples of Gross, but it wasn’t, was it? It was you, Agent Clark! The cavalry tried to clean up your mess, and in the end you just tried to hide your own ineptitude.”
“You lied, and it cost the lives of Melinda’s husband. Maybe he was wrong about following Gross, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. And certainly Melinda May didn’t go in there with the idea she was going to kill her own husband, nor his brother and wife.”
Skye’s face was a furious red now, and growing even moreso. “You forced that situation upon a fellow agent of SHIELD, and then lied to cover your own ass. YOU LIED! You caused the death of innocent people and Melinda May saved your life. She should have crossed you off too.”
Skye turned to face the rest of the team. Trip’s expression betrayed nothing, but Skye knew what he was thinking. Jemma was aghast, never having suspected the truth behind the cavalry stories. Sir Basil was stoic, giving away nothing of his thoughts, for although he had been with SHIELD for years, and along the way had heard various stories about the field, he hadn’t spent much time trying to understand them.
“We’re going to cross off Bennett Gross, and all of his followers. Personally I don’t care if any of them live or die. If they live, that’s fine…because we’ll find them some cozy cramped little cells at the fridge, or maybe just drop them off on some deserted, uninhabited island somewhere. I don’t much care either way. But I do know we’re going to capture that weapon intact, and we’re going to bring Melinda May back to life.”
She turned to face Phil. “She helped you back from death. She helped bring me back from the brink. It’s time for us to pay off those debts.” Then she turned back to face Clark.
“When this is over, I’m going to see that the original investigation is re-opened, and I will testify. You’re all done with SHIELD, and there’s a place waiting for you in the fridge.” Clark began moving his mouth, although no words seemed to exit. Skye sensed he was about to challenge her, and she was ready.
Before he could speak, she reached down, pulling her badge out of her hip pocket and flipping it open. “I’m Level 10, and yes, I have that power!”
Chapter 22
Phil considered his players, seeking to design an attack that would succeed despite his limited resources. Assuming the men they sought had some sort of external scanning device it was likely they couldn’t count on a stealthy approach. They’d clearly detected their first two victims, so they had some way of seeing the outside world.
His second consideration was that regardless of the size of his team, the only door that was certain to lead to the bad guys was just that: a single door. That opening would easily become a killing zone if they had to enter in single file. The roof didn’t really seem to offer many options, and an attack from there would require other things. Blasting a hole might work, but then some sort of rope descent to the floor would have to follow, and yet another period of time where his troops would be vulnerable to defensive firepower.
Briefly he entertained the idea of drilling a small hole in the roof and pumping in some sort of incapacitating gas. He might have allowed that thought more consideration if Fitz was available, but preparing that idea would take time, and time was the one thing he knew he didn’t have. Can’t do the opening assault from the roof!
“Okay, we know our objectives,” he said, starting to list them.
“First, we all stay alive and uninjured. That means we avoid those blasters. Second, we cross off the bad guys. There may be as many as seven, but there could be more. That’s just the largest number we’ve seen at one time. Third, we capture that nuralizer intact. That’s just as important as items one and two.”
“We have to assume they have some sort of outside surveillance capability, so we can’t just walk up to that door and barge in.” Trip raised his hand.
“Does the route the two guys took tell us anything about blind spots, or were they reacting to the car…and the guys just happened to be targets when they first came out?”
“Fair point,” Phil responded. “Any sense of that, Skye?”
“It’s impossible to know. They might have sensed the backscatter if they’ve got an appropriate receiver, but we hadn’t been anywhere near this side of the building yet. The scanner got just a glimpse of things as I drove out of there,” she added, moving a different image to the holocom center and placed it on the big monitor.
“This is all it caught. It’s not much. There’s a large open space behind this roll-up door, and these appear to be the two vehicles they used in the last heist. There’s another room here,” she said, pointing to a shadowy wall with a darker opening that was likely a door. “I do see anything like furniture in here with the cars, so probably they have a room or something inside there. We have no idea if they’re sleeping there, and they could likely go out another door, mingle with the folks that work there, and drive away as a part of the regular traffic.”
“Heck, they could even be using one of those delivery trucks to commute.” She shook her head. “There’s just no way to know.”
Phil started to lay out some ideas. “Okay, here’s what I see. We need to open a window. We need to cut off their retreat. We need to be prepared for those blasters. And…we need to assume that it’s going to take some serious violence to subdue them.”
He turned to face Clark for the first time. “Other than the survivor downstairs, how many men do you have?”
Clark screwed his expression into level 10 disdain. “I have four more, but they follow my orders, not yours.” He glanced around at the team. “This is my turf, and we don’t need the cavalry here.”
He’d made several critical errors, but before Phil could discuss the one that bothered him the most, Skye spoke up. He’d punched the wrong buttons, and she wasn’t about to allow him that privilege.
“You are never…NEVER…going to use that term again! Never! I think it’s time you admitted the truth.” She glanced around, wondering what would happen if she continued with what she was thinking. After seeing Jemma’s face, she decided she didn’t much care. The odd man out was Sir Basil, and she decided the man could handle just about anything.
“I wasn’t here the last time,” she began. “Agent Coulson was, so he knows what happened from first hand knowledge.” She turned back to Clark and walked over just a few feet from his face. “Stand up when I talk to you!” she demanded, and for some reason, most likely fear, he actually did stand up.
“That fiasco began when you completely bungled the initial contact. You had been told what to do, but you didn’t do that. You thought you knew better. The other team hadn’t yet arrived, so you decided to play General Custer and wrap everything up before they arrived. The only problem was you ignored the intel on Bennett Gross. You thought you could handle it. You and your six-gun toting sidekick.”
“Then you charged in and discovered that everything you’d been told was true. There were already two SHIELD agents inside, essentially hostages. There were also a number of Gross’ followers, and they were willing to die defending the leader of their cult. You’d been told that, but you chose not to believe it!”
“So…the whole thing went sideways, and now you’re useless. Two more hostages, and two less men to complete the mission as planned. In short, you intentionally created a major problem out of what should have been a simple takedown. Now a bunch of people had to die.”
Clark was completely cowed by Skye’s outburst, but Phil decided to let her continue. He knew what she was likely to reveal, but thought that maybe it was a good idea for his team to understand what that comatose woman lying downstairs meant to them.
“So…weapons were out. An assault by a team would become a blood-bath and any chance for both the hostages and the followers was eliminated. As Agent Coulson and the others tried to conceive of a strategy that would lead to success, Melinda May took it upon her shoulders to change the equation. She was uniquely qualified to do that.”
“She went in unarmed. She was prepared to talk, maybe to deal, and hopefully to defuse the situation. She held a couple of special cards in her hand, and she might have been able to play them if you hadn’t completely…completely screwed up the whole affair.”
Skye glanced at Jemma and Trip. “Melinda May was married to one of those followers. Her husband was in there. Her brother-in-law was in there too. Her sister-in-law, the brother’s wife, was there. She had three relatives there, and she wanted desperately to save them. That’s what she set out to do, but you weren’t done fucking it up!” Skye wasn’t big on profanity, but if ever there was a time to swear this was it.
“So, she started off talking, and maybe she was making some progress. It’s hard to know for certain, but I’ve listened to the audio feed and it sounds like maybe things were calming down a little. She and Gross were having a conversation, so that was a start. Then another voice suddenly joins the mix. When I first heard the recording I had no idea who that voice belonged to. It was just a male voice.”
She turned to look at Phil, wondering if he knew who that voice had been since the official reports never identified it. “But today, listening to you earlier, I know who that voice is. You have an interesting little lisp when you pronounce the letter S. It’s not a big deal, and it probably doesn’t bother you at all. But…it bothers me. It bothers me because the voice on that audio, the voice that turned the conversation into a bloodbath had that same little lisp.”
Skye walked forward two steps, pushing her finger directly into Clark’s chest. “That voice was you. You’d already screwed up the mission once, and now you felt obligated to screw it up further, to screw it up again. In your official version of things you claimed that the voice was one of the disciples of Gross, but it wasn’t, was it? It was you, Agent Clark! The cavalry tried to clean up your mess, and in the end you just tried to hide your own ineptitude.”
“You lied, and it cost the lives of Melinda’s husband. Maybe he was wrong about following Gross, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. And certainly Melinda May didn’t go in there with the idea she was going to kill her own husband, nor his brother and wife.”
Skye’s face was a furious red now, and growing even moreso. “You forced that situation upon a fellow agent of SHIELD, and then lied to cover your own ass. YOU LIED! You caused the death of innocent people and Melinda May saved your life. She should have crossed you off too.”
Skye turned to face the rest of the team. Trip’s expression betrayed nothing, but Skye knew what he was thinking. Jemma was aghast, never having suspected the truth behind the cavalry stories. Sir Basil was stoic, giving away nothing of his thoughts, for although he had been with SHIELD for years, and along the way had heard various stories about the field, he hadn’t spent much time trying to understand them.
“We’re going to cross off Bennett Gross, and all of his followers. Personally I don’t care if any of them live or die. If they live, that’s fine…because we’ll find them some cozy cramped little cells at the fridge, or maybe just drop them off on some deserted, uninhabited island somewhere. I don’t much care either way. But I do know we’re going to capture that weapon intact, and we’re going to bring Melinda May back to life.”
She turned to face Phil. “She helped you back from death. She helped bring me back from the brink. It’s time for us to pay off those debts.” Then she turned back to face Clark.
“When this is over, I’m going to see that the original investigation is re-opened, and I will testify. You’re all done with SHIELD, and there’s a place waiting for you in the fridge.” Clark began moving his mouth, although no words seemed to exit. Skye sensed he was about to challenge her, and she was ready.
Before he could speak, she reached down, pulling her badge out of her hip pocket and flipping it open. “I’m Level 10, and yes, I have that power!”