Black Widow: Red Vengeance (A Marvel YA Novel)

by Margaret Stohl

  “Thirty for the beach view,” Ava said, her voice still low. “Alley view, I’d say twenty-five.”

  Natasha made a slashing motion with her hand at the level of her throat. Kill the conversation. Ava nodded. She understood. Now. Natasha dropped her hand into two fingers, pointing forward—then up. We’re a go. Time for tactical to kick in.

  Ava took a breath.

  Natasha yanked a grappling hook from her waist, unspooling a length of black nylon cord. She tossed it into the air, and it arced toward the second-floor balcony, catching the cinder-block railing. The sound it made as it fell was so quiet it could have been a palm tree thumping against a roof tile in the wind.

  Ava was impressed. She’d only just learned that same toss at the Academy, right after the rope climbing and before the rappel wall. She probably still had the calluses to prove it.

  Natasha pulled the cable tight, attaching the lower end to a length of drainpipe protruding from the asphalt and gravel beneath their feet. Their target was in range, directly above them. She pointed two more fingers up toward the now-dark balcony, and Ava nodded.

  Here we go, she thought, grabbing the rope.

  In front of her, Natasha had rappelled up the crumbling side of the building in the shadows before Ava could even get a decent grip on the line.

  It wasn’t as easy as it looked. Ava tightened her hold, hooked her feet beneath her, and pulled herself up slowly, meter by painstaking meter.

  Didn’t learn this one yet—

  By the time she passed the first-floor balcony, her arms were on fire. By the second, they felt like they were ripping out of their sockets.

  When Ava’s progress came to a halt, just below the concrete patio where Natasha stood, the veteran agent reached down and yanked her over the balcony railing with one hand. Ava rolled soundlessly to the tiled floor, gulping for air.

  At least I’ve got that part down.

  Natasha held a finger to her lips, and Ava nodded. She raised her Glock, and Ava got to her feet, moving her hands to grip the handles of her blades. Ready position.

  Natasha was so fast that even a trained agent would have been hard-pressed to see her actually pull the trigger.

  Two quick blasts—

  POP POP.

  The glass shattered into fireworks in front of them.

  Their target was a real geardo, a hard-core one, especially for a civvie. Half the hotel room was taken up with the guy’s cov-com crap, his covert communications equipment—not to mention more surveillance gear than anyone could personally put to use. Some of it was marked with American flags, some with Kanji. A few dented metal crates bore the faded stamp of a red hammer and sickle. All from the usual circuit of black markets, Ava guessed.

  Between Russia, China, and the United States, we supply the whole world’s superweapon supermarket.

  She’d learned that in Criminal Axis & Access 101.

  Then Ava realized that Natasha had her Glock pointed across the room, and hastily managed to raise her blades.

  “What the—” Maks Milosovich, a.k.a. Maks Mohawk, a.k.a. ZeroHour and Meows of Moscow Lover, cowered on the bathroom tile farthest from the balcony. When he finally dared look up, he dove behind the sink counter. There was really nowhere to hide.

  On the other side of the room, still half-hidden by shadows, Natasha picked up a black metal box with her free hand. “Stingray. Military grade. Nice dirtbox. You’re pretty nosy for a little rich boy, aren’t you?”

  “If I was a rich boy, do you think I’d be staying in this dump? Whoever you think I am, you’re making a mistake,” he spluttered in English, covering his head with his hands. Now sporting a mangy beard and a full head of post-faux-hawked, dyed black hair, along with a rumpled black T-shirt and black jeans, the hacker no longer looked like a playboy from the pages of Hello! magazine, Russian edition.

  “Save it.” Natasha tossed the Stingray to the ground. “That’s a Moscow accent and a five-million-dollar Hublot watch. I can see it from here. Just looking at you makes me feel like I’ve crashed a Ferrari into the VIP room at Garage.”

  Almost immediately the hacker began to pull himself together. “Nobody goes to Garage anymore.” He shrugged. “And it could be fake, the watch.”

  “But it’s not,” Natasha said, picking up a small, black-lidded pot of shampoo from the side of the bed. “Because this crap is Russian Amber Imperial, and that’s going to set you back at least a hundred American dollars. Probably more. Pretty swank for this one-star bedbug-bag.”

  “I could have found it. I could have stolen it,” the hacker said.

  “You could have, but you didn’t. I saw you wearing it at the Krysha Mira last summer, when you ran out without paying your bar tab,” Natasha said, tossing her head. “You were with Vin Diesel, if I remember.”

  “You were at a Moscow nightclub last summer?” Ava asked. Natasha’s eyes flickered over to her, code for “shut it.”

  “They let you into Krysha Mira?” the hacker asked.

  “You know Vin Diesel?” Ava asked the hacker.

  Natasha glared at both of them. “Yes, yes, and now I feel like shooting both of you, so…” She raised her Glock and shot out the bathroom mirror from across the hotel room. The hacker covered his head again as mirrored shards went flying.

  He cursed.

  “Hold up. Can we go back to the whole watch thing? Did you say five million?” Ava was incredulous. “Dollars?”

  “I didn’t say rubles,” Natasha said.

  “But for a watch?”

  “They make that thing out of only diamonds, even the moving parts. It’s like a special flag for jerks to wave at other jerks. Like a Lamborghini,” Natasha said.

  “But you can’t even drive it,” Ava said, dumbfounded.

  “Americans.” The hacker rolled his eyes. “That kind of craftsmanship is art.”

  “Yeah? Is that what you think you are, Maks? An artist?” Natasha began to move forward, striding out of the shadows and toward the hacker. Ava cringed; she knew what was coming.

  “Chto ty ot menya khochesh’?” What do you want from me?

  The answer was a flying right hook.

  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: I like the right hook—but I like the watch more. What a collector’s piece.

  ROMANOFF: We were more interested in collecting the stolen files.

  COULSON: So you just took it upon yourself to decide Ava was ready for field ops?

  ROMANOFF: Moscow rules. I was going with my gut.

  COULSON: What about Rio rules? You were supposed to take time down south to heal.

  ROMANOFF: Widows aren’t supposed to heal, Phil.

  COULSON: That doesn’t mean you both don’t need to.

  ROMANOFF: Maybe it’s better to keep the wounds fresh. Maybe pain is power.

  COULSON: One, you do need to read Dune, and two, I don’t buy it. Ava wasn’t ready.

  ROMANOFF: Was I ready to infiltrate the London Rezidentura at fifteen?

  COULSON: Some would argue you were born ready.

  ROMANOFF: To recruit Berlin operatives twice my age at sixteen?

  COULSON: Some would argue you were twice your age at sixteen.

  ROMANOFF: Maybe Ava and I went on that op to find closure. Is that touchy-feely enough?

  COULSON: For her or for you?

  ROMANOFF: All I knew was that we had to see this thing through to the end.

  COULSON: Even if you were the one ending it?

  RECIFE, STATE OF

  PERNAMBUCO, BRAZIL

  ROOM 217, COMFORT HOTEL

  UZI RECIFE

  “Kak ty menya nashel?” How did yo
u find me?

  The hacker rubbed his jaw as he spoke, lying flat on his back in the shards of plaster and mirrored glass. Natasha noticed he used only Russian now, which she took as a sign that he had given up pretending to be anyone other than Maks Milosovich.

  “Find you? HA!” she said, straightening up. A faded stripe of moonlight crossed her face. It was just enough to give the floored hacker a look at her.

  “You?” He tried to scoot away from her, even rolling over to his hands and knees in an attempt to crawl out of the bathroom.

  Natasha could tell that he’d recognized her. Hence his expression, and his cursing. “Vot der’mo. Lisus Khristos,” he cussed. “Romanova.” She shrugged.

  Ava stepped in front of him at the edge of the bathroom. One wave of an electric blade and he dropped back to the floor, cowering, hands over his head. Ava tried not to look too proud, but Natasha could tell she was.

  “All right, tough guy. Let’s talk,” Natasha said.

  After that, Maks wasted no time. He nodded his head toward the bedroom. “My money’s in there, wrapped in duct tape. Inside the chair cushion, you’ll see, euros and dollars. Tell me, whatever your contract is, listen, I’ll triple it. Ya bogatyy chelovek.” I’m a rich man.

  Natasha leaned over him, her red curls falling away from her combat suit. “Trust me, neudachnik.” Loser. “You can’t afford what it will cost you.” Show him you aren’t messing around. She pulled back one boot and dug it into the side of Maks’s rib cage.

  “Oy! Bozhe moi? You crazy?” My God. The hacker looked shocked, even outraged.

  “Yes. Now—clothes off.” Natasha gestured with the Glock.

  “Idi k chertu.” He shook his head. Go to the devil.

  “Let me tell you about crazy people, Maks,” Natasha said, pulling a suppressor out of her utility belt. She made a great show of screwing it onto the barrel of her pistol. “We don’t like hidden mics, pocket transmitters, wires—and being told we’re crazy. So take off your shirt.”

  Maks recoiled. “This is a mistake—big mistake—I’m telling you.” He looked over to where Ava stood behind Natasha now.

  “Oh, she’s made bigger,” Ava said. “Trust me.”

  The hacker grabbed the bottom of his black T-shirt, apparently giving up. “Who are you with, Triad? S.V.R.? G.R.U.?” He yanked it angrily over his head. “Whatever they’ve promised, it doesn’t matter. They won’t do it. They’ll kill you first.”

  His pale, bare chest was glistening with sweat, and as Natasha watched him, she noticed the tattoo over his heart, a small trident inked to look three-dimensional. Not the familiar tattoo of the U.S. Navy SEALs, but similar. She made a mental note of it; it was the sort of thing she wished she’d had for Green Dress Girl, that one incriminating detail that the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Triskelion database could organize itself around.

  “Pants,” was all she said. “Faster.”

  “Eto bystro!” This is fast. Maks peeled off his limp black dress socks; only his jeans remained. “If you think you can trust anyone north of the Moskva, you’re out of your—”

  Natasha raised her Glock and shot out the shower door behind him in answer. Maks rolled to his side on the floor, shielding his head from the explosion of glass. “Stop, stop—”

  Ava ducked, covering her ears.

  “Psikh? Out of my mind? Me?” Natasha looked at Maks. “You’re the idiot who thought he could hack S.H.I.E.L.D.” She waved the gun in front of his face. “Then again, they say you’re also the idiot who counted cards in a Triad-run casino in Macao.”

  Maks rolled onto his back like an overturned beetle, now squirming out of his black jeans. Natasha angled her arm so she didn’t have to see his pale, spindly legs or his leopard-print jockeys. Ava looked away.

  “Macao? That’s all talk. It wasn’t about cards,” Maks scoffed.

  Ava frowned. “You were there for vacation?”

  “I had a job, and then I stuck around to watch some pro circuit. Johnny Chan, you seen him play poker? Ten times World Series champion?” He whistled.

  Natasha scoffed. “What is it with Russians and champions?”

  “Two things Moscow loves—the best, and the most,” Maks said. “World champions might as well be human caviar.”

  Natasha nudged him with her foot again. “Why mess with the Triad, then? It’s not like you needed the money.” Keep him talking.

  “Moy golubushka,” Maks said. My darling. As if she didn’t have a boot on his chest and a pistol in his face. “There are better reasons to take a job than money.”

  “Like what?” Ava asked. “Because you’re afraid?”

  “Afraid of what?” he scoffed. “Getting shot in the back of the head and buried in an unmarked grave? By who—Stalin? Jason Bourne? You’ve seen too many movies.”

  “The movies she likes are the ones where she’s doing the shooting,” Ava said.

  Natasha shrugged. “Why did you take the job? You tell us, Russki.”

  The hacker’s eyes focused on the water-stained bathroom ceiling. “Let’s say that I had a client who needed something. Something difficult to obtain, requiring a great deal of my expertise.”

  “So you had to steal something? And you couldn’t just say no?” Natasha asked.

  He looked at her. “Let’s say there would have been…consequences.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Those.”

  “Let’s say that the Triad had in their possession a server containing the location of the required items. Let’s say accessing that server required a certain…proximity. In that case, a trip to Macao to watch Johnny Chan play poker might be useful, no?”

  “So you raided the Triad’s server while counting cards in their casino?” Natasha whistled. “Bold move, Mohawk. I’d be impressed except—well, here you are. So what went wrong?”

  “Your hands,” Ava said suddenly. “Show us—”

  As Maks held up ten fingers, Natasha saw that every knuckle was discolored and strangely lumpy. “Triad handshake? They break those one at a time?” She almost felt bad for the guy.

  “They tried.” He dropped his hands. “By then, I had what I needed.”

  “And the card counting?” Ava looked at him.

  “Triad’s cover story. Better than admitting they were hacked.” He waved it off.

  Natasha studied him. “So now what? You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a one-star hotel room in Recife with a target on your back?”

  “I was thinking about Orlando,” Maks said with a smile.

  “Yeah? Think again, unless you tell me why you hacked my Sametime account,” Natasha said.

  “That had nothing to do with me.” Maks held up his hands. “Tol’ko poslannik.” Only the messenger.

  “Talk like that won’t even get you to Tampa,” Natasha said. She pointed her Glock at the toilet this time, looking back at him inquiringly. “Try again.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  BOOM!

  Natasha fired—and porcelain exploded into powder.

  “Ty chto blya?” What are you doing? Maks flung his hands in front of his face; his scraggly beard was now covered with finely powdered toilet shrapnel. “I don’t know! I told you, I have a client, it wasn’t my idea!”

  “The one who sent you to Macao to steal the server?” Natasha looked interested.

  “Yeah, a real cyka.” It wasn’t a compliment. “Someone who found me through my father, that’s all I know.”

  “Someone you were really so afraid of that you’d rather hack the Triad than disappoint them? Sounds like a keeper,” Natasha said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “I didn’t ask for the job, and I didn’t want it. But like I said, I couldn’t say no.”

  “What was it? The job?” Ava asked.

  He didn’t look at either one of them. “Identity wipe. Classified military server. It was supposed to be totally secure.”

  “So you mean me,” Natasha said. “I was the job. You were the UNSUB.”

  �
�Yes.” He nodded. “I didn’t write the cyka messages, though. I didn’t even understand them. I just relayed them.”

  “Not good enough,” she said, moving her gun closer to his head.

  Maks twisted his head away from her. “Look, I have the digits of a bank account in São Paulo where my paycheck was wired. That’s it. One and done. You can take it all. Don’t kill the messenger. Please—”

  “Shoot the messenger,” Ava corrected him.

  “Oh, you can shoot him, that he can live with, he’s Russian. Just don’t kill him,” Maks said glumly, staring up the barrel of Natasha’s Glock.

  “I want everything you have, every record of that job. The numbers of the account. Any records from your client or your father,” Natasha said. “The whole op.”

  “Look. You don’t get it. You seem like a nice person—” Maks began.

  This is taking too long. Natasha stepped back and fired three times in rapid succession. Once on each side of his head, once just above it. The linoleum tile curled up from the floor, from the impact.

  “Nice? Really?” Ava asked Maks. He was shaking now.

  The guy started to babble. “Take my advice and forget it. Go home to Orlando. Have your Starbucks. Be an American. You don’t want this. Trust me, I’m giving you an out.” He was really rattled. “This isn’t about money. I can’t buy them off and you can’t stop them.”

  “Stop them?” Ava stared. “Stop what?”

  “This! What happens next! What do you think? Leave now or you’re going to end up just like me. Maybe worse,” he said. “You’re going to end up dead. Both of you, everyone.”

  “You seem pretty sure about that,” Natasha said.

  The hacker looked away. “How about we talk about something else. Anything else. Moscow? Military secrets? From the S.V.R. and the G.R.U.—or the CIA? You pick? Two-for-one special?”

  “What’s that, a going-out-of-business sale?” Ava asked.

  “We’ll pass,” Natasha said.

  He shrugged. “Your grave.”

  “Speaking of graves, one more thing,” Ava spoke up, this time in Russian. “Do you know the name of the operative who tried to blow us up? Maybe a young girl? What about the name Somodorov? Does that ring a bell?”