Battlefield ★ Bucky Barnes

XVI. We Have A Ghost To Catch

Half an hour had passed since Sam, Connie, Steve, and Natasha confronted Jasper Sitwell. Sam's car was now of max capacity, or so it seemed. Steve and Sam occupied the driver's seat and the passenger's seat, while Connie, Natasha, and Sitwell sat in the rear of the vehicle. Connie sat in the middle due to her small stature and her hatred of feeling so compacted in such a small space. Being stuck in Sam's car was definitely not ideal for her, but she had to remember that she had suffered through much worse.

The five of them were currently on the way to Triskelion to put a stop to Project Insight. It was quite a long drive back into the city, and this annoyed Connie slightly. She was ready to confront the situation in order to put it behind her, but she and the rest of the crew couldn't do so if the traffic didn't want to cooperate.

"Hydra doesn't like leaks," Sitwell uttered from his spot beside Connie, earning a look from the brunette.

Sam looked in his rear view mirror at the officer, his expression displaying nothing but annoyance. "Then why don't you try stickin' a cork in it?"

Natasha then leaned forward, catching Steve's attention. "Insight's launching in sixteen hours. We're cutting it a little bit close here."

"I know. We'll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the helicarriers directly," Steve said as Natasha leaned back in her seat.

Sitwell looked at Steve with pure shock on his face. "What? Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible idea."

A thud on the roof of the car could be heard as Sitwell finished his statement, and before anyone could even think, the back window had shattered and Sitwell was being yanked from the car and thrown into oncoming traffic across the median. Connie attempted to grab the officer, but her efforts were futile. She noticed the glint of a silver pistol in her peripheral, however, followed by yet another thud, and in seconds she was jumping into action.

Connie jumped into the front seat just as a bullet exploded through the roof where she had previously been sitting. She hopped onto Steve's lap, while Natasha jumped onto Sam's; each of the women protected the men from the bullets that threatened to end their life. Steve pulled the emergency brake immediately, and the car screeched to a stop, sending the man on the roof of the car flying across the pavement.

As Connie looked up to face their attacker, she was met with pure surprise, not to mention a bit of fear. The man who now stood in front of Sam's Chevy Malibu, dressed from head-to-toe in nothing but tactical gear, was the Winter Soldier. The metal arm glowing brightly in the sun was only a further indication of such.

Natasha was just as shocked and afraid as Connie seemed to be, and in a moment of realization she whipped out her gun, aiming it directly at the man standing in the middle of the road. She was not allowed to get a shot off, however, as the back of the car was struck with a phenomenal force, sending the vehicle straight towards the soldier. Sam attempted to stop the car, but it was considerably hard to control the vehicle as Natasha continued the search for her weapon on his lap.

The redhead could not locate her weapon quick enough, which in turn alerted Connie that something needed to be done. She removed her firearm from her jacket and aimed it towards the roof of the car, just as the masked man ripped the steering wheel from the vehicle. She fired off three shots, but none of them struck the soldier.

They were struck instead by the large Hummer trailing behind them, leaving the battered car in a worse state than it already was in. As Steve took notice of the potentially fatal situation, he grabbed Connie and pulled her close, just as he did with Natasha and Sam.

"Hang on!" he exclaimed as he knocked at the door with his shield.

The door detached from the overturning vehicle immediately, leaving the four of them to fall onto the expressway below. They slid for several seconds across the pavement before stopping, though Sam had fallen off, leaving him to roll to a stop across the hot pavement.