For his part, Logan found it fascinating that Creed seemed more interested in killing Cassidy than a KGB agent. He didn’t know what Sabretooth had against the Irishman. It might have been nothing more than the fact that Wolverine liked him. In any case, Creed’s jibes and taunts had grown increasingly worse as the trip continued.
Then they passed the Widow’s car.
She’d stripped it of anything that would have identified its owner, but she hadn’t been gone long enough for her scent to disappear. Both Sabretooth and Wolverine caught it immediately. Fresh. They’d literally run back to the truck, and Logan had instructed Igor to force the vehicle faster than it had any right to go.
It wasn’t long before the border came into sight, with barbed wire disappearing off into the forest and a huge gate that barred the road. The guardhouse was mounted with huge spotlights, and Igor hesitated as they crested the hill and they were bathed in the light.
“Go on,” Logan barked in Russian. “They’ll be suspicious. You’ll talk us through or we’ll kill the guards and then you.”
Igor scowled but did not look at him. He kept on.
“Hope you know your place, Mick,” Creed snarled in back. “Just stay out of my way and your buddy Logan will protect you.”
“The name is Cassidy, boyo,” the Interpol agent said, his injured throat issuing a growl of its own. “An’ I plan to do me job, whether ye like it or not. The Widow’s mine.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. He stared at the guardhouse. No soldiers in sight. No guns. Nothing moved inside.
“You’re welcome to her, pal,” Creed growled. “But that disk goes home with us. You got a problem with that, we’ll just bury you next to your girlfriend.”
“Ye might be the one needs a grave, ye big ugly git!” Cassidy snapped.
Sabretooth roared, and Wolverine heard a scuffle. He turned, hissing at them to be quiet. Fox and Maverick were holding Creed back, and Cassidy was about to hit him.
They froze when they heard the noise, the soft, subtle sound of Logan’s Ingram cocking. A tiny sound, really, yet it carried right into the chaos.
Silver Fox stared at him. They all did.
“I swear to God I’ll kill the first one o’ you who makes another move,” he said.
Fox’s jaw dropped, and Logan knew why.
He meant it.
“I said whoever gets in the way of this op would die,” he went on. “That includes the team. Cassidy, you got issues with the Widow, that’s fine by me. But let me tell you somethin’, bub. That disk is goin’ home with us. You have a problem with that, you can get out now or I’ll just shoot you.”
The truck slowed to a halt. Wolverine risked a glance out the windshield. The guardhouse was still quiet. Something was wrong.
“We got trouble outside,” he said. “Somethin’ ain’t right. So when I say ‘go,’ we go. As a team. But don’t forget what I said.”
They all relaxed, started to breathe again. Fox and Cassidy were the only ones worried about a single bullet; it’d take a lot more than that to kill Maverick or Creed, for different reasons. But the threat extended further than a bullet, and they knew it.
Problem was, Creed was still smiling.
“Hey, Victor,” Logan said.
Sabretooth’s head snapped around, and he snarled at Logan through the small window. The smile was gone.
“You got no right to use that name, runt,” Creed said. “You ain’t my friend, you ain’t my mother, and you ain’t my priest.”
“As if you had any of the above,” Maverick grumbled.
Creed ignored him, eyes still on Logan.
“You’re right, Victor. I ain’t your friend,” Logan said. “Just wanted to remind you o’ that very thing. See, bub, you may not think I can kill you, but I guess you know if it came down to it, I’d die tryin’.”
Creed just snarled in response.
And that was where it ended. Today wasn’t the day that fight would take place, but its inevitability was more certain than ever before.
They’d never been friends, but they had been comrades, allies, teammates. They were still that, at least. Members of Team X. They’d keep one another alive for the good of the team, for the success of the op. But Wolverine knew with a sudden clarity that when Team X was nothing but a memory, there’d be nothing left to keep him and Creed from tearing each other apart. Probably literally.
A part of him he’d rather deny existed was truly looking forward to that day.
“Go,” he said.
Team X hustled out of the truck, and Cassidy along with them. Wolverine kept his weapon aimed at Igor’s back, and they all trekked up to the guardhouse together, alert for any sudden movement or sound.
Inside, they found the guards, dead.
“I don’t get it,” Maverick said. “Why would the Widow—?”
“Not the Widow,” Sabretooth grumbled.
“You’ve got her scent, too?” Logan asked.
Silver Fox grunted. “Whose scent, as if I didn’t know?”
There was movement outside the guardhouse, on the Soviet side. Their weapons came up instantly and in unison.
“She got away,” Mystique said. “And when I catch up to her, she’s going to die slow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Creed snarled.
But Logan didn’t respond at first. He’d left Mystique behind, and yet she’d managed to not only bypass them, but catch up to the Widow without them. They’d have to either kill her, or take her with them. Obviously she was too clever to be left to herself. She might jeopardize the op just by being out there on her own.
But kill her?
They’d let Cassidy live, and with his vengeance kick, he wasn’t much better than Mystique. The Widow’s death was a given, unless she just decided to hand that disk over.
Wolverine had begun to think he might be growing a conscience. And if that were the case, he shouldn’t have field command of Team X. If he were truthful with himself, he would have to wonder if there was any place for him at all on the team.
For now, Mystique got to stay alive. But he’d keep a close watch on her. Maybe he wasn’t as cold-blooded as he’d once thought. Maybe he did need a reason to kill.
Even so, he hoped Mystique would give him one.
* * *
Langley. A nice, quiet town in Virginia, as far as most of America was concerned. But to politicians and diplomats and conspiracy nuts around the world, that place had another definition, that word another meaning entirely. It wasn’t a town; it was a facility. Langley was the national headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.
No matter what anyone said, Logan thought, no matter how many times they denied it, CIA HQ in Langley was the place where every other American covert agency and operation and assassin got their orders. No matter who they thought they worked for, it all led back here eventually. But nobody could ever prove that. As far as the public at large knew, the CIA were Boy Scouts in comparison to some of the covert units the tabloids wrote about. They might not have been as whitewashed as S.H.I.E.L.D. or SAFE, but they wouldn’t get their hands dirty with the nasty work.
Which was, of course, exactly what the public was supposed to think.
Any records still in existence that referred to Team X or the “Agency” that had employed them would be inside those walls. Getting in wasn’t going to be easy. Mystique’s talents might get her in, but it wasn’t a one-person job, and Wraith and Wolverine couldn’t exactly walk right past the front desk.
On the other hand, Wraith was a teleporter, and he had, in his possession, a blueprint of the entire Langley facility.
“We’ll start in the APO file room,” Wraith said.
Wolverine nodded, but didn’t turn to look at him. He stared across open ground to the fence that surrounded CIA headquarters. Something stirred in his gut, a warning, probably. This whole thing didn’t sit right with him, but he wasn’t sure exactly what was bothering him about it.
“Wolverine,” Mys
tique said.
“I’m payin’ attention,” he replied. “Just thinkin’ is all. So we pay a visit to the Authorized Pinheads Only library, and then what?”
“Anything on Team X should be in there. That stuff was a long time ago, almost long enough that it’ll be public record soon,” Wraith said. “Or some of it will, at least.”
“But if there’s an active file, it won’t be in there, right?” Wolverine prodded. “It’ll be ‘eyes only’ computer access, from a room that’s impossible to get into and even harder to get out of. You maybe can teleport in, but you’ll still set off alarms.”
Wraith smiled. “You’ve seen too many movies, Wolverine,” he said. “Why do you think our national secrets aren’t so secret? Too many people have ‘eyes only’ clearance as it is. We get into that computer system, we’ll be all right.”
Wolverine narrowed his eyes, cocked his head slightly to study Wraith. “John,” he said, “you’d better not be leadin’ us astray, bub. You already left me hangin’ once, back in East Berlin. It ain’t gonna happen again.”
John Wraith’s smile faltered. “Why, Logan,” he said. “I’m getting the feeling that you don’t trust me.”
Then the skinny man with the sunglasses pulled an H&K semiautomatic nine millimeter from beneath his armpit and checked the clip. He was about to put it away when Wolverine reached out and snatched it from Wraith’s grip. He ejected the clip and slowly popped the bullets out one by one. Off to his left, he heard Mystique allow herself a soft chuckle. When the clip was empty, he slid it back into place, and gave Wraith back his gun.
“I don’t trust you,” Wolverine told him. “An’ I don’t want any killin’ on this op.”
He turned to glare at Mystique. “That goes for you, too, Raven.”
She raised her hands in surrender.
“No matter what you may think, either o’ you, this ain’t like old times. We’re gonna find out who’s behind all this, and when it comes down to it, if there needs to be lives taken to save Maverick and the Widow and the others, well, that’s one thing. But this ain’t the field. CIA man draws down on you in the middle o’ Prague, that’s different from him doin’ it when you’re poppin’ uninvited into his livin’ room. Back then, we were stealin’ secrets and takin’ lives. Now we’re here to expose secrets and save some lives. We all clear on that?”
Wraith patted a hand against the empty gun in the holster under his arm and nodded, without smiling.
“Crystal,” Wraith said.
“All right, then, Kestrel,” Logan said, “take us in.”
The APO file room was actually more like a library than Wolverine had imagined. Smaller, of course, but not by much. The “librarian” had been a lanky research assistant with round, frameless glasses and a goatee. Hardly the dark-suited, stone-faced man in black so frequently associated with the CIA.
The man looked so pitiful when they appeared in front of him that Logan had almost felt bad when Mystique took him down. But unconscious was better than dead.
Instantly, Mystique morphed and became a precise doppelganger for the research assistant. She looked busy behind the desk where a trio of computer terminals held records of what was within the aisles and aisles of bound records inside the APO file room.
There were guards outside. They’d suspected that and found out the hard way. Mystique had gone to the door and opened it, only to be confronted by a man and woman, both armed, who were a bit hostile about this break in procedure.
“Hey,” Mystique had said, holding up her/his hands in defense. “I just wanted to know if either of you guys have any Advil. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
Wolverine smiled as he ducked behind a row of bound volumes. Mystique’s idea of a joke. The research assistant would certainly need something for his head when he woke up.
Logan and Wraith would have to stay back in the aisles as much as possible while Mystique checked computer references and tried to access modern records cross-referenced to APO files.
There were no files on Team X.
On the other hand, it took less than half an hour to find the file numbers on each member of the team, logged by their individual codename, as well as the numbers for the files on Mystique and the Black Widow. Mystique wrote them down, and Wraith and Wolverine split the list, keeping away from the door as much as possible.
“Found the file for ‘Codename: Wolverine,’” Wraith announced in a hushed voice. “But the ‘Codename: Sabretooth’ file isn’t where it ought to be.”
Logan frowned and scanned the bound volumes in front of him. The bound file on Silver Fox was numbered 2797.5. That one was right where it should be. He thought about it, but ended up leaving the thick volume where it was. Fox was dead. They’d come back to that file if they needed to. But she wasn’t really in this at all, except as a painful part of his memory.
For a moment, he thought of the cabin in the valley where he’d laid her body to rest. Once a year, he returned to that place, just to tell her that he would always love her, no matter what. And to tell her that he was sorry for everything that had happened. Sorry that he wasn’t there to stop Creed from taking her life.
He hung his head a moment, and wondered again why Sabretooth was still alive, why he hadn’t killed the maniac years earlier. And he knew the answer. Because he could never truly be certain of what was in his head, and it was possible Creed hadn’t killed Fox at all. But Sabretooth was more than happy to take the credit, even if it was just to drive Logan mad. There was nothing Creed would like more than to draw the primal beast that lay within Wolverine to the surface.
Logan took a deep breath, held it, moved on.
“The file for ‘Codename: Maverick’ is missing as well,” Wolverine said in a low growl.
“No file for ‘Romanova, Natasha,’ ” Wraith reported.
“I’ve got the file on ‘Darkholme, Raven,’ ” Logan whispered.
He held the volume under one arm and continued checking numbers on the shelves against those written on the scrap of paper in his hand. His current objective was 4223.1. He scanned for it, fully expecting to find it there, given the pattern of what was missing.
But he didn’t.
Eyes narrowed, he stepped out of the aisle and walked back four rows to where Wraith crouched, flipping through the file on “Codename: Wolverine.” Logan dropped the book on Mystique to the ground, only to get an alarmed hiss from the woman herself. She was right, too. It wouldn’t do to alarm the guards.
The only sound was metal on bone as he popped his claws and knelt next to Wraith.
“Where’s your file?” he asked.
Wraith frowned and looked at him. “What are you saying, Logan?”
“I’m sayin’ the files on the folks who’ve already been abducted ain’t here,” Wolverine growled. “My file, Mystique’s file, we got those. Where’s yours?”
They stared at one another for a long time. Wraith wasn’t scared, and Wolverine had to give him credit for that. He was either brave, or too stupid to realize the fact they’d once been on the same team wouldn’t stop Logan from using his claws if Wraith was involved with all of this. The no-killing rule only went so far.
“I can’t answer that,” Wraith said finally. “Maybe since I’m still an employee, all my files are still active and are only accessible under ‘eyes only’ clearance.”
Wolverine sensed Mystique behind him, caught her scent as well.
“Sounds plausible, Logan,” she said.
Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by the irony of the entire situation. He and Mystique, whom he’d once wanted to kill and never trusted, trying to figure out what to do about a member of Team X, whom he knew they couldn’t trust, in order to save former friends turned enemies and former enemies turned friends.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Whatever.”
“I can’t get ‘eyes only’ access in here. We need to be in either the director’s office or the central computer file area, both of which have to be heavily
guarded.”
“So we hit the central computer area,” he replied. “Wraith teleports us in, then we’re gone.”
Wraith chuckled. “Again, this isn’t the movies, Wolverine. CCF has huge glass windows in the front. Unless you’re invisible, you can’t get in unless you’re supposed to be there.”
“So we try the director’s office,” Mystique said.
Wraith nodded.
“Get us in, John,” Wolverine said, a warning in his voice.
“Sorry, but I can’t,” Wraith replied. “Teleportation is not an exact science. I’ve been in this room before. I’ve never been in the director’s office. There may have been renovations the blueprints don’t reflect. There could be desks, chairs, house-plants—you should know these things, Logan. Didn’t you ever discuss teleporting with Nightcrawler while you were X-Men together?”
At the mention of her son, Mystique blinked and looked away. That was a relationship whose dysfunction hadn’t even begun to be examined. Wolverine thought that both Mystique and Nightcrawler would prefer it that way.
“So what do we do?” Logan asked. “How do we get in there?”
Wraith smiled. “You’re gonna love this,” he said.
Wolverine felt the gut-wrenching twist of reality falling out from beneath him, felt the momentary loss of equilibrium that came with teleportation, and then the three of them were standing inside a women’s bathroom.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mystique snapped, a hand to her head, trying to focus again now that teleporting had stolen her concentration and forced her back to her true appearance.
“What do you think I’m doing?” a female voice asked from the farthest stall.
Wolverine, Wraith, and Mystique stared at one another. Then the two men turned to look at Mystique. After a moment, she rolled her eyes, threw up her hands, and walked down to the other end of the bathroom. Wolverine went to the door and turned the lock.
A toilet flushed. Mystique shook her head, covered her eyes with her hands. Wraith laughed softly to himself, but Wolverine didn’t think it was funny. Not at all. This wasn’t a game, but Wraith sure seemed to think it was.
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