Chapter 1642: Director Nick’s Curtain Call?
Steve smiled bitterly. “You know that I don’t even know how to use a smartphone properly.”
Natasha’s smile grew even wider. “You even still use a notebook to remember things. You are indeed a fossil. Wait, when I asked you about the kiss earlier, don’t tell me you were remembering the first girl you kissed?”
Steve: “…Let’s not talk about that. We’re still friends.”
Lost for words, Natasha shook her head with a smile and sighed inwardly. She had been right.
After chatting for a while, they got back to business and started discussing their next move.
Tony had provided long distance support and the bigshot who sold everything had shown up, but not a single member of the Bat Squad had made an appearance – the duo realized that they probably wouldn’t be getting any external help in this matter.
In recent months, Nick Fury had arranged for them to carry out many missions against Hydra.
They had already been mentally prepared for the current situation.
Nick Fury’s warning also made them understand that it would be very difficult for them to get support on the surface this time — whether from the government or from superheroes.
That was because Hydra itself was s.h.i.+ELD, and even in the American government. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to flourish to this extent right under Fury’s nose.
In a situation like this, any sort of intervention would turn this into a fight for justice.
At that time, whether it was the government who cleaned up Hydra or Hydra who seized the opportunity to purge the government instead, who knew how much more chaotic it would become.
The duo held no expectations whatsoever when it came to the politicians.
Of the people Hydra sent after them, who the h.e.l.l knew which ones were truly in the dark about everything, or were putting on a show, or were Hydra loyalists.
It was impossible to wipe them out completely.
It was like sending everyone who peddled weed to prison, which would be 70% of the population. It was unrealistic.
That was also the reason why Luke had never confronted the government head-on.
If he directly blew up that sh*thole, all it would do was just get the stench on him.
With a gentler approach, he could dig parts of it out whenever he had the time. Not only could it be used as “fertilizer” for his “fields,” he could prevent the sh*thole from continually getting bigger.
If someone w.i.l.l.y-nilly killed to their heart’s content without considering the consequences, Hydra would be delighted that there were still some fools in this world helping them accomplish their great goal.
Terrorists were the best example.
Who knew how many crimes had been committed under the banner of terrorism while all sorts of capital groups reaped the profits.
Those who died were basically ordinary people.
The capital groups, on the other hand, could continue enjoying themselves.
…
Suddenly, Natasha’s phone pinged.
She took it out and saw a spam message.
Taking note of the numbers in the message, she opened F2F with another phone and typed a few keywords before she found a user page.
She opened a blog with some posts on the scenery in D.C..
Looking at the posts, which weren’t too long, she found a few letters in key positions and converted them into numbers to get a set of coordinates.
She opened the map function in F2F and quickly found the coordinates. She pointed at them and said to Steve, “Let’s go. Someone’s waiting for us here.”
Steve picked up the s.h.i.+eld and hid it under his optical camouflage cloak. “Who is it?”
Natasha activated the face portion of the nanosuit and turned into an ordinary-looking young woman. “It might be a trap, but it could also be a ‘dead person."”
Steve activated the face portion of his suit and turned into an ordinary-looking middle-aged man.
Hearing that, he paused. “You mean…?”
“Nick Fury.” Natasha shrugged. “In any case, this secret means of contact is only used after he’s ‘dead."”
…
Luke didn’t continue tailing Steve and Natasha, because he didn’t need to.
Could they still go missing after putting on his equipment?
The Bat Squad members were taking turns to rest.
Luke was the first to take a break.
In any case, he only needed to sleep for two hours to be full of energy.
With him taking the lead, there was no need for the others to try and hold out.
The minors, in particular, had long quieted down. Clearly, after a few hours, their excitement had faded.
It would be a waste not to let them get some rest.
The night grew deeper.
Information flew about underground as more and more people began to pay attention to what had happened in D.C. during the day.
Nick Fury was dead.
For most people in this world, this sort of information was basically nonexistent.
In fact, few ordinary people knew that there had been a change of directors at s.h.i.+ELD.
But the news was astonis.h.i.+ng enough for the bigshots in the underworld.
The man in charge of the most powerful agency on Earth was dead, just like that.
Many ambitious people had examined his body and confirmed that it really was cold.
While a few things had happened leading up to his death, it was hilarious that s.h.i.+ELD’s director had been killed by a few ordinary guns.
If the guy really could die that easily, he would’ve long been burnt to ash by a bunch of superhumans and mercenaries sometime in the past decade, and his ashes would’ve been chucked into the gutters of D.C..
That was just how much Nick Fury was hated.
A s.h.i.+ELD director who wasn’t hated by everyone couldn’t be a good scapegoat.
This s.h.i.+ELD director had died before he could smoothly hand over power – there were too many implications and opportunities in that.
It wasn’t just external departments that had ideas, but also s.h.i.+ELD’s internal departments.
Even Hydra couldn’t swallow the whole colossus that was s.h.i.+ELD.
It was just like during Stark Industries’ purge, when the shareholders had hundreds of forces behind them.
In s.h.i.+ELD, Nick Fury and Hydra were just the two biggest “camps,” and not everyone inside each camp was on the same wavelength.
Outside of these two camps, there were other forces with different thoughts who were meddling.
The European branch distanced itself from the alliance between American and the European Union.
The South American branch was located in a chaotic landscape and was known to be a ripe place for making money – it had even less to do with HQ.
The African branch was quite small and far away. Like South America, it had abundant resources and often dealt with turmoil.
Because of China, the Asian branch was in a special situation, and had little to do with HQ.
Nick Fury had gotten the rotten part of the deal when he took over, but he had been able to persevere for decades – only a naive person would think he was useless.
Now, this tricky and fierce person was dead. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a lot of people were shaken.
Without this super paranoid handler around, a lot of people were already thinking about how many resources and benefits they could take from s.h.i.+ELD.
The director had to “die” to complete his plan to escape and completely s.h.i.+ft the blame. He could no longer use his “Nick Fury” ident.i.ty.
But the tyc.o.o.n definitely knew that he was still alive, so Nick Fury simply gave Tony a large amount of resources beforehand to keep his mouth shut and as a favor.
As for the resources that were difficult to plunder, various forces had joined the fray, and the situation was becoming even more chaotic.
Whether it was Luke, Nick Fury or Hydra, no one knew what would happen tomorrow.
However, they were all looking forward to it.