Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Sixty-Two: Tourism

The recon Quinjet rattled as it cruised at a low altitude. The wings carved through the dense cloud cover, the aircraft bouncing turbulently as they bowed and flexed. Sailing through the maelstrom of snow and fog, snow stuck to the aeronautic flaps. The windows frosted over, the crystallized ice resembling a spiderweb, with beads of moisture clinging to the threads.

The hum of the stealth jets propelling them along vibrated the canister they excused for a hull, the metal walls quivering at the bolts. Beyond the frozen portholes, Clint could see the flashing red lights adorning the tips of the wings, shrouded with cloud even at close proximity.

"Have you got your earpiece in?" Coulson checked, strapped into the jumpseat opposite, bolt upright with two seatbelts crossed over his chest.

Clint tapped his ear furtively, wincing as feedback squealed from all the probing. "Yeah, it's in... And on," he called to be heard over the purr rumbling the aircraft.

Coulson winced in turn, Clint's voice amplified through his earpiece. "Your mic seems to be in order too," Coulson assessed, encrypting the wavelength on his brick of a PDA. "Alright, now it's simple as jumping out of a plane!" He chirped.

"One minute to ETA!" A voice rung out from the cockpit, tinny in the enclosed space. "Scared, Barton?" Bobbi called from the head of the hull, flashing a winning smile over her shoulder.

"I don't get scared, Bobbi. What do you take me for?" Clint retorted aloofly, smirking like a schoolboy.

He could feel the adrenaline pulsing through him, flooding every ventricle and vein, it was the flightiness at the base of his spine and the tingle in his fingertips. Growing up with an abusive dad, it seemed cowardly to be petrified of such superficial things as heights, the dark, or death. A quiver was in his hands, which he scarcely tamed with a furl of his fists, and he swallowed the pusillanimous lump in his throat.

"Thirty seconds," Bobbi informed him, unlocking the bay door at the butt of the jet.

A hiss susurrated as the lock depressurized, and a sibilation snaked from the hydraulics as the hatch lowered. The air entered the container with a whoosh, and the aeroplane shook. The sound was fierce, and Clint fought the headwinds to reach the door.

"On my mark!" Bobbi's voice crackled in his earpiece, secured beneath his cowl.

Clint's secured the chute tighter, leather-coated fingers fumbling with the fiddly buckles. He shielded his eyes with the goggles supplied and stared down into the void. Passing punctures in the clouds revealed the drop.

"Ten-"

He could see the bulky expanse of the city, all the beacons of the night time. The cars and lorries that crawled along like ants in tow on winding streets dotted with lampposts. The enclaves of light where squares broke the orderly patterns of streets, hubs of luminescence. The sprawl of streets was labyrinthine; intricate webbed lines of light, lanes threaded between, strands of the city reaching out into the countryside until they trailed away.

"Nine-"

Beneath the rushing of air and the howling of the wind, he was aware of the apogee of noise orchestrated by the city. The screeching of tires, the tooting of horns, the racket of engines buzzing. The industrial clanking of cranes and construction vehicles as they tried to reconstruct areas devastated by conflict.