Under or Over: Hawkeye & Black Widow

CHAPTER #36

Barton didn't think it was coincidence that the Council had requested him to track down Nick Fury.  S.H.E.I.L.D. had many skilled agents to do that very thing.  What Hill's file didn't tell him was what Fury had done to become compromised.  There were too many unanswered questions.  One thing he was 100% sure of was that Fury was not a spy for HYDRA, nor would he spill his guts about S.H.E.I.L.D.  The way the Council had acted about the Teseract, made him think that one of the members on it, was the mole.  Too much interest in destruction and weapons, than in keeping the planet safe.  And why had the Council allowed S.H.E.I.L.D. to have Reeser work on a portal device, when that's the very thing they wanted to prevent; alien access to EARTH.  Agent Hill was too by-the- book to be a double agent, which is why she was Fury's second in command and acting Director.  Captain America's assignment had also been an order from the Council.  That took him out of direct contact with S.H.E.I.L.D. Something definitely smelled fishy and it wasn't his feet.

Who wanted Fury and Captain America out of the picture?  Why did they want them gone?  If an attack was being planned, then why hadn't anyone attacked Banner or Stark?  Would Fury even know the answers to his questions or even tell him if he did?

"Sir, your S.H.E.I.L.D. ID is being used to track you.  Do you want Jarvis to disable it?" Bird asked.

"Not yet.  Where I'm going first is not where Fury will be, but it will look like I am obeying Director Hill."

"Understood Sir."

"He'll be deep in New York City, it's his town.  But he will be hard to find on his home turf.  Fury knows how to stay off camera and to work a disguise.  He's too smart to use anything except cash.  Anything linking him to S.H.E.I.L.D. he'll have ditched or bartered away.  Bird ask Stark if he gave Fury an emergency burner phone or com."

"That's a negative sir.  But Fury does know the private sequence to use from a pay phone."

"So he's not in danger, or Stark would've been contacted.  Have Jarvis check if S.H.E.I.L.D. reported any missing inventory over the last six months."

"Nothing missing, but a few items marked to be destroyed were not accounted for; some weaponry that was malfunctioning, one of the new uniforms that was an early prototype, etc.  Jarvis is uploading the complete list to me now," Bird reported.

"Fury must have set up shop elsewhere, if Goldman didn't take that stuff for HYDRA," Clint deducted.  "Bird have Jarvis give you a list of all Fury's old contacts that are still alive, especially from when he was a Ranger."

"Yes sir."

The council had twelve members and they had ties to the world political powers, United Nations and USA military. Even though the Director of S.H.E.I.L.D. took their orders from the Council, no one knew very much about them. Their names and their faces were in no data base on Earth, so who monitored them? One or all could be working for HYRDA or some other alien race.

All these thoughts and conspiracy theories ran through Barton's mind as he rode around New York, apparently looking for Fury.  He took a quinjet, which Bird shadowed while cloaked, to some of the more distant regions, of where Fury was thought to be hiding.  Instinct told Barton that Fury was in New York somewhere, not these other locations.  He reported into Hill regularly, but as the week ended she told him to only report in if he found a lead.  As Barton expected, by the end of the third week, S.H.E.I.L.D. no longer monitored his movements.  When Barton did get a solid lead on Fury, he didn't report to Hill, he let Stark and Banner know.  He would then cloak his movements, just in case someone was watching.  Stark did report that Fury had not used any dimensional or universal portal, because his energy signature was still on planet Earth.  At least that's what Barton was able to understand from Stark's scientific explanation.