It was a text from Natasha: Mission active. Moving now. Meet you at the roadside.
Steve looked at the screen, then at Sam. "I've got to go." He offered his hand. "Thanks for the run. If you can call it that."
Sam took his hand and laughed. "Yeah, thank you for that. Really. Thirty miles."
"You kept up longer than most."
"I didn't keep up at all." Sam released his hand and stood. "Hey — if you ever want to come by the V.A., let me know ahead of time. I'll make sure someone at the front desk knows your face."
"I'll hold onto that." Steve turned and walked back toward the path.
A black Corvette came around the corner before he'd gone twenty yards, slowing to idle at the curb. The window came down.
Natasha leaned out with the expression of someone who was genuinely enjoying herself. "Hey — either of you know the way to the Smithsonian? I'm looking for a fossil."
Sam crouched down and looked across to where she was sitting. "Hey."
Natasha tilted her chin at him. "Hey."
Steve pulled the door open and got in, looking back at Sam through the window. "Don't go anywhere."
"Yeah, I'm not going to run anymore today." Sam watched the Corvette pull away. "Believe me."
The Trident Building was operating at reduced energy. You could feel it in the hallways — the particular quiet of an organization that had taken a real hit and hadn't finished counting the cost yet. Smith took the elevator to his office, sat down, and had approximately four minutes before Sharon Carter and Barbara Morse knocked and came in.
Both of them were carrying the specific composure of people who had been busy for days and had prepared for this meeting. Smith nodded at them.
"The ship hijacking," he said. "I heard Fury pulled Natasha and Steve for it."
Sharon Carter confirmed it. "The Kree invasion left the agency critically short-handed. The director's been looking at every available pool, including this department."
"He asked for three combat teams," Smith said. "I said no."
A pause from both of them.
"He's not wrong that you're short," Smith continued. "But the Inspector General's office isn't a reserve roster. Natasha is different — she's an Avenger who happens to work here, and this mission is within her normal operational profile." He looked at Sharon. "As for the rest: push the Academy cohort. Graduate the current class early and put them in front-line slots. That solves his staffing problem without dismantling what we're doing here."
Neither of them had a counterpoint. He moved on.
"Status update. What has the team found?"
Sharon opened her folder. "Seven corrupt officials identified and documented since the last report. The highest-clearance individual is Level 6, UK branch. We've got the full file on him and on six others — two from the French branch, one stationed in Hong Kong, and several others." She paused, then shifted to the second item. "We've also flagged a Level 8 agent named John Garrett. His conduct profile has several anomalies, and we identified a pattern suggesting he's been concealing a health condition. We were building toward making him the centerpiece of the next phase."
Smith kept his expression neutral.
Garrett. The Clairvoyant. One of HYDRA's deepest-placed assets in S.H.I.E.L.D.
"He was the commanding officer aboard the Helicarrier," Barbara said, completing the picture. "He and the entire crew were lost when the Dark Aster's cannons hit it. The investigation flag on him is still open technically, but we can't actively pursue a file on a confirmed casualty."
"You're right that you can't," Smith said. "Leave Garrett's file inactive." He looked at the two of them. "But pull his recruitment and promotion records. Every agent he personally brought in, every commendation he wrote, every career he advanced over the last ten years. Follow that thread. Don't name it as a Garrett investigation — run it as routine network analysis." He sat back. "You'll find something. If you don't find anything, I want to know that too."
Sharon wrote it down.
"Are the agents lost in this incident going to be resurrected?" Barbara asked. It came out as a genuine question, not a diplomatic one.
"I don't know," Smith said. "Plan as though they won't."
He stood up. "Keep the investigation running. And the Super Soldier Serum situation — I'm going to address that before I leave today."
The two of them exchanged a look as he walked past them toward the door. He caught it in his peripheral vision and didn't comment on it. The Serum was not a small thing in an organization where the gap between enhanced and non-enhanced was increasingly visible to everyone inside it.
Fury's office was four floors up. Smith didn't knock.
Fury looked at him from behind his desk without any particular surprise. He'd probably known Smith was in the building for the last twenty minutes.
"Inspector General."
"You're pulling agents from my department because you lost two thousand people on the Helicarrier." Smith sat down. "I understand the math. I don't agree with the solution."
"The Academy won't be ready for six months. I need bodies."
"You need combat teams that are actually prepared for what they're going to encounter. Pulling oversight agents and handing them Quinjet seats isn't a solution, it's a liability." Smith let that sit for a second. "I'll lend you two squads. Natasha's team and Barbara's team. Temporary reassignment, existing command structure intact, mission parameters vetted through my office before deployment."
Fury's expression didn't move much, but something behind it recalculated. "And?"
"Howard's Super Soldier Serum gets allocated to the Inspector General's department. My people get access."
A two-second pause. "Send me the list."
Smith stood up and headed for the door.
"Two thousand families," Fury said, not quite at his back. "Two thousand people who aren't coming home. Whatever else is going on — that's not a small number."
Smith stopped. Held there for a moment.
He walked out.
Over the Indian Ocean, at altitude, the Quinjet carried a small team toward a problem.
Rumlow stood at the front and laid it out without unnecessary framing. "Target is the Lemurian Star. Mobile satellite launch platform, S.H.I.E.L.D. asset. Pirates boarded ninety-three minutes ago during active satellite deployment. They've been there long enough to get organized."
Steve looked up from the mission brief. "What do they want?"
"30 million."
"30 million."
"It's a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship," Rumlow said. "They know what's on it."
"So this isn't a navigation incident," Steve said. "They came prepared."
Natasha was already reading the intelligence feed. "At that number, there's a specific motive behind the ask. Nobody demands three billion dollars on a whim."
Steve looked at Rumlow. "The leader."
"George Bartók. Former General Directorate of External Security, French branch. Interpol Red Notice. Thirty-six confirmed assassination contracts before France expelled him. He runs professional operations, which means the people with him know what they're doing." Rumlow pulled up the profile. "Combat power readout puts him above ten. He's enhanced."
Steve absorbed that. It explained why Fury had called him specifically.
"Hostages?"
"Mostly technical personnel. One S.H.I.E.L.D. official — Jasper Sitwell. All of them locked in the kitchen section."
Steve handed the brief back. "Alright. I'll clear the deck and work toward Bartók. Natasha — engines, then hold for orders. Rumlow, stern with your team, extract the hostages and get them to lifeboats." He looked at both of them. "Stay off channel until you hear from me."
Rumlow turned to his squad. "You heard him. Move ready."
The Quinjet settled into approach altitude. Steve moved to the back. Natasha came up beside him and pulled up a secondary display.
"Channel's secure?"
"Seven is clean," Steve said.
"Good." She glanced at him. "Any plans this weekend? I know someone in the statistics department—"
"All my plans fell through. Everyone I used to make plans with is dead."
She didn't push it. A moment later: "Christine. Statistics. She'd say yes."
"That's probably why I haven't asked."
"Too careful or too—"
"Too busy." He stepped to the ramp edge and looked down at the dark water. The Lemurian Star was a gray shape in the distance, navigation lights on, no apparent distress signals. Which meant the crew was controlled and quiet, or already past the point of sending them.
Behind him, one of Rumlow's commandos clocked the empty parachute rack and looked at Rumlow.
"Parachute?"
Rumlow grinned. "He's the Captain. He doesn't need one. We do, though — keep that in mind when you're making career decisions."
Steve hit the water at an angle, arms forward, body straight, entering at enough of a diagonal to kill terminal velocity without snapping anything. He came up thirty meters from the hull.
He was on deck in under ninety seconds.
The first guard came around a container stack from the wrong direction. Steve took one step to close the gap and put him down quietly, catching the body before it could make noise. He moved.
The shield came off his arm and he threw it through a calculated arc — three targets in a line, first deflection, second direct, third on the return. The weapon came back to his hand before any of them hit the deck. He was already moving when the third one landed.
The next group was four. He led with a running kick that sent one into the railing with enough force to end the engagement before it started. The remaining three had about a second to react, which wasn't enough. A sweep took one off his feet. A shoulder throw sent the third into the second, and a single strike to the throat closed out the combination.
None of them had gotten to an alarm panel.
He checked sightlines and moved again.
For a man whose combat output registered close to eighty on a Scouter, this deck was a series of problems that required approximately one solution each. He wasn't being brutal about it. He was being efficient. Every strike went to a target that ended the engagement with one contact, and he didn't throw a third punch where two were sufficient, or a second where one was enough.
He reached the center section of the deck with the forward area cleared. Below, through the grating, he could see the kitchen corridor lights.
Somewhere deeper in the ship, Bartók would be sitting with Sitwell and a very large number.
Steve looked at the access hatch and went in.