Coffee, Courage and a Captain

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Escape

Charlotte pressed up against the wall as Steve knocked on the door.

A HYDRA guard came to the door to open it for him, and Charlotte noted how blatantly lax their security was. She supposed they weren't expecting to come across any Allied troops behind their heavily fortified borders, so they weren't on high alert.

Steve slammed the door on the guards head and punched him in the face to knock him out.

Charlotte caught him before he hit the ground and dragged him into the hallway, ignoring Steve's disbelieving look. "They're human too," she argued. "Plus he was being nice and opening the door for us."

Steve just stared at Charlotte, speechless. "Charlotte Red, you truly are something else."

"You love it," she retorted, smiling at him as he held the door open for her to go first.

"I do," he replied softly.

Charlotte hesitantly stepped onto the floor of the munitions factory. The building was huge, tall and cavernous, the concrete floors absorbing all of the heat.

"Holy shit," she gasped, looking at the blue lights. "They've weaponised it. This is categorically Not Good."

"Language," Steve chided before he stared at the technology before them. "What do you mean?"

She pointed at the glowing blue batteries stored in the weaponry on the nearest table. "That powers the gun. It seems to be the ammunition too." She pointed to the disks made up of batteries. "And those are used to power reactors. One of these batteries can power an entire tank."

Steve stood there silently, taking in what Charlotte had just told him. "We have to destroy it," he said, but she shook her head.

"Steve, we could trigger major explosions that would collapse the whole building," she whispered as some men in American Army uniforms walked past, struggling to carry a disc. A HYDRA soldier hit one of them in the back with a baton, and Charlotte watched the man grit his teeth as he took the hit. The group dropped the disc next to a row of other discs and were corralled toward another door by the guard.

"I bet that's where they're kept," Steve muttered, grasping hold of Charlotte's hand and pulling her in the direction the group had gone- ducking and weaving between the bombs and other technological components stored in the factory.

Charlotte noticed the row of doors on the level above the door that the group had just gone into.

"Steve," she murmured, pointing.

A wicked smirk turned up the corner of his lips.

*********

Charlotte kept a lookout at the door as Steve punched the HYDRA guard- who was patrolling the landing and checking on the prisoners in the cells below- and sent him to the ground.

"Charlotte, come on!" he urged as he rifled through the guard's pockets.

The prisoners in the cell below where the guard had landed stood, looking up at the two people standing above them.

"Who are you supposed to be?" one of them asked, squinting at him.

Steve sighed. "I'm Captain America."

"I beg your pardon?" another- wearing a maroon beret- asked in a British accent.

Charlotte finally relieved the guard of his keys, handing them to Steve.

He used the stairs on the landing to access the lower floor, pulling Charlotte with him as he ran over to the cell the men were in.

"Who's the girl?" the first soldier asked.