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"Hasn't he spit out anything?" Tony demands.
Coulson can only shake his head. "We have been trying. Fury has okayed physical methods, but I'd rather not go there."
The Avenger's eyes blaze as they meet the agent's. "Too nice?"
"Too unreliable" Coulson shrugs "Guys like this, by the time you break them far enough to have them tell the truth, they are too broken to be accurate sources."
Torture is good as a mode of catharsis at times. He has known Natasha to indulge in it occasionally.
She is not the only agent who does. But as a tool of interrogation, no. Not for a HYDRA agent.
Phil knows first hand how far a trained agent can resist. You can't break them without breaking their minds.
It is not even simply telling what the interrogator wants to hear - they are more often than not literally unable to remember the information they were refusing to give up.
He knows what that feels like. No, much as Tony - and Phil too, to be honest - would enjoy direct interrogation of the bastard in the next room, it will have to wait. Time is of essence.
"Let me have a try"
The agent looks at him. "Tony, I know you are-"
"Let me" Stark insists "I can get him to talk."
"Fury allowed physical methods, but-"
"I will just talk" Tony promises. "Scout's Honor"
Despite - or maybe because of - the situation, Coulson can't help rolling his eyes. "You never were in the scouts, Stark."
"Hey, I've been with our Captain Boy Scout for months, so that gives me scoutship by proxy!"
"Tony..."
The eyes that meet his are cold, determined, contradicting the joking tone. "Give me a chance. You can pull me out of that room the second I even look like I'm gonna touch that guy."
Coulson hesitates. But then again, it is not like they have all that many options here. He is desperate enough to let Stark try.
At least it will keep the volatile engineer out from under their feet while they think up another plan.
He nods "Be careful."
....
The guy doesn't look like much of a HYDRA agent.
More like an accountant somewhere...except for the eyes. The eyes are cold. Snake eyes. But not quite dead eyes.
Tony enters the room slowly, his eyes fixed on the man
The HYDRA agent looks up, smirking "Oh. I see they didn't get you."
Coulson, watching outside, expects Tony to retort with a quip as usual. Or to start bribing the guy.
Tony, however, just looks at him.
"No. They didn't get me. Because Captain Steve Rogers took the bullet they meant for me."
The agent looks amused
"I heard it reported that the Captain had escaped the team sent to capture him. How fortunate, that he tried to come rescue you."
Tony smiles coldly "The plan was smart. Good timing, to catch me without the suit. Only, you weren't counting on Steve to get away."
"Makes little difference " he shrugs nonchalantly."The Captain is a higher priority target than you. We will get to you in time."
Tony's smile does not waver.
"HYDRA might. You won't."
"Again, makes no difference."
"Maybe. You will not think so in a while."
"Hmm?
"You see" Tony kept his tone conversational "today, you and your bunch of lunatics took away my team. I don't like it when people take away what is mine"
He leans forward slightly
"I really don't like it when I'm just getting out of a boring conference, thinking of going to get donuts, just going about my day, and a bunch of black suited military cos players pour out with automatic guns. I really really don't like it when my leader, my friend, gets in the way of those bullets and his blood is on me."
He holds his hands so that the agent can see the remaining blood stains on them, the blood Tony refuses to scrub off.
The agent's eyebrow rises "Do you expect me to grieve with you?"
"You will grieve " Tony promises "You see, you took my team. You took my friends. You got Captain America's blood on me. You made me watch, once again, as a man worth ten of me went down in my stead."
The agent does not respond, looking bored.
Tony continues "Steve isn't dead. The hits he took are bad, but not fatal bad. We still have a chance to get our people back. But we need to get their location from you."
"You expect me to give that up?"
Even Coulson is slightly disturbed by the look that passes across Tony's face
"Yes" Tony says simply. "You know we have got your blood samples and hair, don't you? DNA samples. At least, SHIELD has. And what SHIELD has, I have."
Phil Coulson frowns. This is not how he expected this to go.
"We can trace your DNA" Tony's voice is calm, musing. "Find your relatives. Your mom. Dad. You aren't old enough to have lost them both, not naturally, anyway. Siblings. Kids. Cousins and second cousins. Anyone connected to you. I can find them all."
He leans closer, lowering his voice. Whispering something in detail to the man before him.
Coulson can't hear what exactly Stark is saying. Stark is deliberately standing at an angle which prevents Coulson and team from reading his lips. But they can see the HYDRA agent go pale.
"You won't do it" the agent declares, feigning a bravado that he does not feel. "SHIELD won't."
"SHIELD won't" Stark agrees, raising his voice back to normal tones. "But what in the world makes you think I'll need SHIELD to help me do this?"
His smile is still unchanging, wide. Coulson is reminded of a Batman comic he had as a kid.
"And what makes you think SHIELD could stop me, if I decided I wanted to do this?"
"You won't " the agent insists again. He is trying to make himself believe it. "You are... You are one of the Avengers. One of the heroes."
"One of the Avengers" Tony echoes "You've got that right. With them, I'm a hero. But you lot have taken the Avengers away. So I'm just Iron Man now. Nah, not even Iron Man. Just Tony Stark."
"Is that supposed to scare me?" Coulson knows this man and men like him. The mocking tone in his words is feigned.
"You went soft, Stark. Saw what your bombs actually did, threw up like a baby watching his first scawy movie and ran back home crying. You didn't have the stomach to even see what really happens, forget actually do it."
Tony nods "Yes. I can see why you'd think that. A lot of people think that. Including some of my friends. That what I saw in Afghanistan was too horrible for me. They are wrong."
He is casually tapping a pattern on the table between them, careless in posture. "Do you know what Project Pluto is?"
The agent stays silent, tries to stay smug. He doesn't fully succeed.
Tony continues. "It's a nuclear powered ramjet cruise missile. With a nuclear payload. It is a flying nuclear reactor carrying a nuclear warhead. You launch it comparatively normally. A solid booster will do. Just enough to get it to hypersonic speeds. Because, you see, ramjets are picky like that. They work only at hypersonic speeds. But once you get that baby going, it goes on and on."
"Is there a point to this rambling, Stark?"
Coulson can't blame the HYDRA guy for wanting to interrupt.
The look on Tony's face as he talks about the weapon...it is too much like love for his handler to feel okay with. Tony pays no attention
"It can keep running for months on end, no fear of running out of fuel. You send it up to fly in hypersonic circles over the ocean, you don't have to worry about anyone managing to destroy it. And when you have to send this baby out, just send the signal. It'll start heading to the targets. Yeah, you heard that right. Targets. You don't think something that costs quite that much will be wasted on a single hit, do you? "
The HYDRA guy looks genuinely puzzled, if also unnerved.
" It will fly down, still hypersonic, just skimming over the water and way below radar range. Then it gets over land, still stays low. You wanna try intercepting it? It's travelling at five times the speed of sound less than twenty or thirty kilometres above the ground. Good fucking luck. When it reaches the target, it drops a nuke and is out of blast range before the bomb reaches the ground. Rinse and repeat."
Oh yes, that expression is definitely love - proud papa talking about how little Alice won a gold star kind of love.
"Once the warheads have all been deployed? The fun isn't over yet. Remember what I said about ramjets? They can keep going. On and on and on. It will keep going in circles over the enemy territory. At low altitudes. Constant hypersonic bangs. Going on and on. You know what it is. You know what it has done. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. It will keep on going. There isn't an anti arcraft missile in existence that can catch up to this thing."
Tony grins
"And when some suicidal squad finally stops it? Shoots it down? Maybe puts up a wall of flack or something? Or maybe it finally runs out of fuel and crashes? There is a nuclear reactor aboard. I don't exactly have precise calculations, but believe me, it's going to be a very messy crash. The gift that keeps on giving."
The HYDRA agent calls up a smirk "You planning to send hypersonic ramjets after my family, Stark?"
"No. Not really. There are more interesting methods. I just want you to keep Project Pluto in mind. And the fact that I am the one who designed it. Jericho was baby toys by comparison. Pentagon turned down Pluto. You wanna guess how bad a weapons project has to be for Pentagon to say it has gone too far?"
"You don't make weapons anymore "
Tony laughs out loud at that
"What do you think the suit is? A prosthesis? I just quit selling weapons, buddy. I never quit making them. I just keep them for me and my folk these days."
He leans forward
"I didn't get a brain transplant after Afghanistan. I am still me. Still the guy who designed weapons too fucked up for Pentagon to consider. The reason I made weapons? Because I could. And sometimes because I thought it would keep my people safe. I quit because I found that my weapons were killing the wrong people. And not enough of the right people."
"You are..."
"I designed - still design - things that kill and maul. Things that are built for the sole purpose of doing things that would sicken even you. I do it to protect those I care about. And now, you and your people have taken people I care about"
Coulson turns away from the interrogation for a moment to glance at Maria Hill beside him. She gives him a tight nod. Her eyes are fixed on Stark as well.
Within the room, Tony continues
"There is something about Cap that makes you want to be the good guy. There is something about Bruce that makes you want to be the kind of guy whom he can trust. There is something about Natasha that makes you believe whatever red is there in your ledger, you can still erase it. They keep me the hero. Keep me the good guy. And you have taken them away. That is not the kind of mistake you want to make."
Ten minutes later, the HYDRA agent is talking. They have a location.
Calls go through. Teams called in. The rescue mission is in progress. They are going to be alright.
Maria Hill is standing beside Coulson on the helicarrier deck "Do you still think Operation Morning Star is an over reaction?"
Coulson hesitates for a moment"...No. Not really."
She nods, and looks back into the screens before them.
The Morning Star protocols involves procedures on how to deal with Stark on the event of an Avengers' death.
If Steve Rogers were to die, Stark is to be kept under constant observation.
If the entire team is taken out, Stark is to be apprehended and kept in custody till psych assessment can be made.
Coulson was once offended by the idea. He no longer is. He only wonders whether it will be enough.