Shared POV:
Sevastopol, Ukraine 07/18/2009
After extinguishing every trace of them from the plane and stuffing the luggage into their cars the group left the Sevastopol airport behind. Kate lead them outside the city onto the highway. Maya and Daria slept in her backseat through the light traffic around them.
"Agent Romanoff, how is Mr. Asadi?", she asked through her radio device.
Natasha looked at the man in the seat next to her, who still fought his heavy eyelids. She smiled at the tired man and replied: "Fast asleep."
Karman's head shot up. "I'm not sleeping!", he protested and had both agents cracking up.
"What about my girls?", the father asked concerned and the women stopped laughing.
"They're fine. And actually asleep.", she answered calming the father down. He had protested the decision to separate him from his family, up the two agents eventually managed to convince him that it was safer for them since they couldn't guarantee that they were out of danger.
"What about Hosseini?", Kate asked since he had no radio and she couldn't look into his car.
"Seems like he's doing fine. Though it can't be long till he leaves right?", Natasha questioned, knowing that Kate had memorized the map.
"Ten minutes or so.", she considered looking back at the former agent's car.
"Then let's enjoy the backup for as long as it lasts."
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It didn't take long until the morning finally caught up with them, but with the light came heavy clouds and storming wind as far as one could see. The route was pretty and the nature was beautiful. The bridges carried them over bashing rivers and the roads past the coast of an ominous sea. And even though the day had arrived, the day was dark. Hosseini had left their sides hours ago and the rush hour had filled the streets for several hours until it quieted down. Until the people went back home and they got stuck in traffic once more. It took them four hours to get off the island of Crimea alone. A few stops to relieve themselves and to get some food. Including some coffee and energy drinks.
The rain had started pouring from the sky relentlessly for the last two hours and it was tiring to drive through the harsh weather, even for the people who had slept more than two hours in the last three days. To help Kate stay awake, Maya had suggested to play a game as they had to keep the agent awake for only another hour or two.
"Am I old?", Kate asked the little girl who started giggling and nodding.
"Do I have grey hair?", she asked but the little girl strongly shook her head.
"Am I... do I... am I old?", the little girl stammered, deciding to just repeat Kate's question.
"No.", her mother laughed and then patted Daria's head.
"It's your turn Mama.", the little girl hustled.
"Mh, let's see... Am I a man?", she asked, tickling the little girl's belly as the first shot was fired. Out of a reflex, she covered the little girl who screamed in shock. Kate had ducked but still managed to see the car in front of her skitter over the wet asphalt. Shocked she looked around them to see where the shot came from but she couldn't see anyone through the heavy rain.
Natasha somehow managed to put the car back on its trail as the radio went off.
"Natasha are you okay?", Kate called through.
"Yeah, we're fine. They just hit a tire. Go faster.", she called back and pressed her foot onto the accelerator. The metal of their back wheel scratched on the floor and Natasha had to give it her all to keep the car straight.
Kate didn't see it at first, it when the second shot hit agent Romanoff's tire ad the car drifted off the cliff she saw it link through the compromised view. Dazzling, almost polished, beautiful but deadly. A shade of metal she definitely couldn't forget. The red star shone bright and she watched in horror as her partner's car crashed through the wooden fence and disappeared. She hit the brakes and turned the car sideways.
"Stay down!", she shouted at Maya who hovered over her daughter covering her ears as tears fell from the little grey eyes.
Kate lowered her window and shot bullet after bullet at the tall shadow with a metal arm. The shots were fired right back at her. She duck back inside and more shots followed. Aaaand gone was one of her tires. She got back up to fire again but it was hard to shoot at a moving target in a storm of this intensity. If she was close to hitting him he caught the bullets with his arm, coming closer and closer.
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Natasha looked over at the passenger seat. The wound on Kamran's head had busted open again, his glasses were broken and he was unconscious but seemed okay otherwise.
"Mr. Asadi, wake up. We gotta get out of here.", she shook his shoulder and opened her seatbelt.
The backseat had already filled with cold grey water and her feet were starting to get wet as well. She started to pull her gun out of its holster to break the front shield but it was going to take a while, till she would get through the thick glass. A grunt from the man beside her was enough for her to open his seatbelt as well.
"Come on Kamran, your family is waiting for you up there.", she said strained as she started to hit the glass with the bottom of her gun repeatedly.
"I... I'm up.", he said clearly ropy.
"Well then...", she said as the glass shattered, "Let's get out of here."
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She duck back down to reload, expecting the soldier to keep shooting at her, but he did nothing of the sort. Confused she looked back up to see the shadow turned away from their car, slowly moving towards the cliff. It clicked. She understood.
"Don't move!", she demanded and Maya nodded. She kicked open her door just in time to see Natasha's red hair just above the ground. Right in the shadow's crosshairs.
Natasha pulled herself up and then the scientist, without seeing the man in the middle of the street. Only when they both got on their feet she saw the gun pointing at Kamran and as she swore to do she stepped in front of him without a second thought. She heard the shot but she was never hit. Instead, the big shadow was now crumbling onto the floor.
Kate kicked the gun away from his hands toward Natasha, who picked it up. Nevertheless, more shots blasted through the air.
"Crap!", Kate yelled and ran back to where she came from. A line of shadows had formed when neither of the agents was looking. Maya had been the only one who had noticed and had decided to shoot them down. She tried her best and eliminated half of them but whatever she did, she couldn't avert them from opening the car doors and pulling both her and Daria out into the storm. She fought hard until she blacked out.
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Kate reached the car as the jeeps of their attackers drove past them nearly hitting her. She rushed to Maya's side who laid against the car in an unhealthy position by the back door. She checked the inside of the car but found no trace of Daria. Hectically she kneeled down next to Maya and tapped her face.
"Maya. Maya wake up. Where is Daria? Maya!" The eyes opened and the woman coughed in pain, just as the other two arrived.
"I couldn't stop them.", she mumbled in pain.
"Did they take her?", Natasha asked and the mother nodded, while her husband held her in his arms.
Natasha pulled Kate to her feet and grabbed hold of her sleeve, pulling her roughly away from the car.
"What the fuck did you do?!" she yelled at the younger agent, who she pushed in anger.
"Nicht auf Englisch."( "Not in English."), Kate replied, irritating the redhead. She watched her consider her options then listened to the next yelled sentence, knowing that her partner was right.
"Ich habe dir gesagt, - befohlen-dass du immer bei den beiden bleiben sollst. Was war daran so schwer zu verstehen?!"("I told you -ordered you- to stay with them at all times. How was that so hard to do?!"), she
"Ich habe dein Leben gerettet!"( "I saved your life!"), Kate yelled back, trying desperately to defend her actions.
"Er hätte mich nicht erschossen.."("He wouldn't have shot me."), Natasha denied. The anger in her cooking over.
"Doch hätte er."("Yes, yes he would've!") She knew it. He would've pulled the trigger without hesitation.
"Das weißt du nicht!"("You don't know that!")
"Doch tu ich."("Yes, I do.")
"Wen interessiert's? Du hast es zugelassen, dass sie Daria entführen. Die ist bestimmt gerade scheiße verängstigt, weil du deinen Job nicht machen konntest. Du hast die falsche Entscheidung getroffen."("Well, who cares?! You let them take Daria. She's probably shitscared right now, cause you didn't do your job. You made the wrong choice."), she lowered her voice in the last sentence, still shouting through the loud rushing of the rain.
"Ich bin meinem Bauchgefühl gefolgt, so wie du gesagt hast!"("I followed my gut like you told me to do!"), Kate argued, reminding her boss of the lesson she gave her.
"Nein, du bist deinem Herzen gefolgt und genau das ist das Problem."("No, you did what your heart told you to do and that's exactly the problem."), Natasha said, sliding from anger directly into regret. "I should've never let you this close to me. We both fucked up, now we got to fix it.", she said turning back to the couple whose eyes she had been feeling in her back since the two agents started to argue.
Kate nodded in agreement and started to walk back to the car and Natasha quickly joined her.
"Aber es ist nicht deine Schuld.", Kate whispered just outside of the couple's reach.
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Thank you a lot for reading this chapter
I have some difficulty writing conflicts
Let me know what you think about my story
~1698~