Battle Born

Chapter 3

"Ruth, report."

"Heading to the east building."

"Take only essentials."

"Aye, Captain."

It was a stealth mission. A bit of a challenge at that too. Everyone knows the Commandos are too good at going in hard and fast, blowing everything up. But this one needs to be handled without triggering anything, especially to Schmidt.

Donning the Hydra soldier's clothes and an empty suitcase, Ruth efficiently makes her way to the building without being detected. She is not that short so she blends in without too much trouble. And the helmet helps by covering her face. The base wasn't as abandoned as the Hydra agent told her. Though not much, there are still a handful of guards and a few scientists all over the site. Whatever happened, it is forcing the workers to abandon this site one by one. As she is getting whatever intel she can find, the Commandos are in similar clothing and are planting explosives all over the buildings.

Putting in the pass-code, one of the informants has provided after carefully infiltrating the base, she takes the stairs down. And it is just her luck that she comes face-to-face with another guard, who starts talking to her in German. So she says the only word in German she knows.

"Ja."

The guard goes eerily quiet and starts to move his hands to his gun. Ruth grabs his hand in a flip second and throws him on his back over her shoulder. She takes her gun from the holster and butts him hard in the head.

She checks her surroundings, and drags the body out of sight into one of the empty rooms nearby.

Grabbing her suitcase from the floor where she flung it earlier, she continues to her destination and gets there in no time. Cabinets full of files litter the room, but she only needs the important ones with the locations of the Hydra bases. To sift through everything would take forever. Luckily, there is a table full of papers and blueprints in one corner that is secluded from everything else.

Hurriedly, she marches there. Blueprints of weapons Schmidt was manufacturing in Kreischberg, and something named Exo-Skeleton are lying around. She grabs both of them. In the first and second drawer, nothing interesting pops up. But the third one is locked. A little nudge with her pocket knife does the trick.

Jackpot. Folders dedicated to six names are neatly categorized. Gotta appreciate neat-freaks of this world. Hydra or not.

She stashes all of them into the suitcase and moves to the door.

"Guys, I'll be out in four."

The way out results in minimal hassle.

"I'm out. Meet you at the rendezvous."

She hurries along, and just arrives when the others burst from the trees from the direction of the site. Ruth nods at the captain and they all scramble for the truck. Just as they are en route to the camp, explosions sound and shake the forest with fire and noise. They ride off, with Dernier's excited giddiness fading in the background.

They arrive at the camp under four hours. That was expected because it was Monty driving. He always drives like the devil himself is on his tail. Every. Goddamn. Time. Promptly, they all file into the strategy room where Carter, Phillips, and Stark are already waiting.

Surveying the files in rapid speed, turns out the folders are all they needed to find most of Hydra's weapons bases. It really was a jackpot. Two bases in Poland, and the rest are in Greece, Czechia, Switzerland and Germany. They all cheer a little around the room. It was due time for some miracles. And now they need only to obliterate them all to high heaven and seven hells. Although, it needs to be hard and fast.