Love Finds A Spider

Chapter 15 - Peter steps up

Chapter 15   -    a real shit-show of a mission...

A brigade of 82nd Airborne paratroopers were performing mop up operations at a now destroyed and smoking Hydra compound located at the Caspian Sea, about 800 miles Northwest of Tehran. The Hydra personnel had fought to the death, and the paratroopers were fine with facilitating that. While they were the last resort, the soldiers were able and willing to take part in shutting down a terrorist stronghold. A flight of F-35s were heading South as a show of force to keep the Iranian military at bay while F-18 Super Hornets were patrolling at higher altitudes maintaining air superiority over the hot zone that was the former Hydra base.

A lone quinjet was making its approach to a landing zone. It set down and the ramp immediately came down. Three figures made their way out, walked to a ridge-line and looked over the smoking ruins.

Rhodey, Bruce and Peter looked out over the destroyed compound.

Without looking at the others, Peter asked "So what's the word on our people?"

Rhodey blew out a breath and replied "Last transmission I got was that the Medevacs were heading towards Ramstein Air Base at mach speed." Looking sideways at Peter's quizzical look, Rhodey added "...Ramstein is in Germany."

"Any status on their conditions...?" Bruce asked.

"Tony ..." Rhodes began, catching his breath, very upset but containing it "...Tony's coded twice, but he's hanging in there." Taking a deep breath, he continued "Clint and Nat ... were recovered from the blown bunker ... no update but I was told they were in very bad condition." "Steve's down too, but no report yet on his condition." Taking another deep breath, Rhodey finished with "Sam received multiple gun-shot wounds and some shrapnel ... he hit the ground hard and they think he has internal bleeding as well as a collapsed lung ... and he's in the best shape of all five."

Bruce cursed under his breath and said "We should have been here ...."

"We would have ..." Peter began, but was unable to continue.

Rhodes let out a low curse and then said sarcastically quoting from their mission brief "... and surprise will be on our side ...." Rhodey then looked aside, receiving a message over his comset. "Roger that, wilco." Looking back at Bruce and Peter he let out a heartfelt sigh and said "All right, let's board and head back to SHIELD for debriefing."

The three took one last look at the smoking ruin of a base, and silently turned and went to the quinjet.

As he made his way up the quinjet ramp, Peter muttered to himself "I SHOULD have been here..."

After touching down back on the helicarrier, Rhodey and Bruce were in a conference room with Nick Fury and other assorted SHIELD personnel. They were on a video conference call with Secretary Ross and other state department persons. Peter was in another office listening to the call on a speaker. Rhodey had insisted that Peter listen to the call, but to only communicate with him via texting. Rhodey knew that Peter was going to have to step up as an Avenger on missions, but still did not trust the state department with Pete's identity.

Fury and Ross were exchanging comments on how the mission had gone totally bad for the Avengers and SHIELD operators and on the necessity of deploying the 82nd Airborne Striker Brigade to use military force to counter-punch and destroy the Hyrdra base.

"This is not good ... not good" Ross kept saying. "The media will roast us for this fiasco. It will make the President look bad ... and the state department look as if we had the intelligence all wrong..."

Exasperated, Fury leaned forward and said "WE DID have it wrong! ... WE DID underestimate Hydra's capabilities ... AND WE TOOK some bad hits. We lost some good SHIELD personnel. More than 20 KIA and dozens more wounded or injured. And the Avengers took a severe beating as well.