Chapter 1646 - Trump Card VS Trump Card

But the aging Director Pierce couldn't compare with an athletic female agent.

He had barely bent down, when the gun was kicked away by a high heel.

A white calf was right in front of him. The director had a helpless expression on his face as he slowly straightened. "Agent Romanov, you're really good."

Natasha picked up the gun on the floor and walked back to the table. "Thanks, but do you have anything else to say?"

Even as she moved, she paid attention to Pierce's expression, eyes and body language out of the corner of her eye.

What she saw wasn't comforting.

As a top secret agent who specialized in spying and gathering intelligence, she knew much more about bigshots than regular agents.

Right now, Pierce certainly wasn't acting like he was at the end of his rope.

He might be faking calm, but that was unlikely. The most reasonable answer was that he still had a card up his sleeve.

She didn't think that a wily old fox like Pierce would only have a Strike force team and the pin.

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It was a common tactic.

In fact, she hadn't underestimated Pierce, but had overestimated him.

Pierce didn't expect his subordinates to fail to take control of the command center, while the super soldier couldn't break away from his fight with Steve.

Natasha's assumption didn't affect her judgment.

More than 20 Strike force members were rushing over. This was the simplest and most straightforward trump card.

But right now, Pierce had to reveal another trump card to prevent Natasha from shooting him.

He sneered. "Oh? It seems the pin was useless on you. However…"

Glancing at the three council members on the floor, he said unhurriedly, "It's not hard to kill them."

There was no doubt about that.

The three council members had probably been knocked out by the intense electric current from the brooches.

Given Hydra's style, the effect definitely wouldn't be so small.

Apart from this subduing function, it had to have an instant kill function.

But Natasha didn't think much of it. "Go ahead. It has nothing to do with me."

Given the current situation, she wouldn't kill Pierce, but it wasn't a problem for her to shoot him in the legs a couple of times.

If the three council members survived and saw that Pierce was unharmed, they might hate her.

If they died, she wouldn't have to worry about them complaining.

At the very least, she had saved council member Holly, which could be considered leaving the World Security Council one last hope.

Thinking quickly, she went to the table and put her gun down. She then opened the virtual screen.

Pierce couldn't help but focus on the screen.

Seeing what she was doing, he had a strange expression on his face. "Putting SHIELD's internal files online – are you sure you want to do that?"

Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she said calmly, "Can't I?"

Pierce said, "If you do that, the whole world will know about the suspect things SHIELD has done. It'll be completely destroyed."

Natasha sneered. "If SHIELD is left standing, it'll just be a tool for Hydra. Now, let Hydra be buried with it."

Pierce's expression was awful.

In fact, he didn't really care about the information going public.

If Project Insight was successful, it wasn't important whether or not it was revealed that Hydra was in SHIELD.

If the project failed, the heart of things wouldn't change even if he escaped, and whether SHIELD collapsed or not wouldn't affect him much.

What made him uneasy was her attitude.

Just like how Natasha was a veteran agent who was good at reading people, Pierce was an old fox who had seen much.

Natash was calm, as if everything was under her control — just like how she had sensed that Pierce still had a trump card.

But Pierce was one of Hydra's top leaders, a member of the World Security Council, and a former director of SHIELD.

No matter how good Natasha was, she was just a field agent.

She hadn't killed him and cut off the head right away – what gave her the confidence to compete with him?

Nick Fury! The thought flashed through Pierce's mind, and his expression turned ugly.

Nobody knew better than he did how difficult it was to deal with Nick Fury.

Pierce regretted handing over the position of director to that monster.

A moment later, Pierce's expression turned even more unsightly.

The Strike team that had been on their way didn't show up, and there was no response to his orders.

He had lost this first round.

The three council members were a life-saving deterrent, and couldn't be casually thrown away.

Pierce had to play another card.

He cursed inwardly. If it wasn't for the fact that Hydra had lost a lot of manpower in SHIELD recently, the people on his side wouldn't be stretched so thin.

In terms of combat ability in particular, not only had the elite Strike force lost more than 50 people, even the captain, Rumlow, had died last night.

Thankfully, Pierce had more than one trump card.

As he activated the emergency rescue order, he noticed that Natasha was actually thinking of opening a classified document. He couldn't help but say, "You can't open that. It requires two A-level clearances."

Only two people at HQ had this so-called A-level clearance: The SHIELD director and the American member of the World Security Council.

A few days ago, that had been Nick Fury and Pierce.

Now that Nick Fury was dead, his clearance had naturally been canceled, and there was just Pierce.

Unless the council acknowledged a new director, these files would just be sealed in the database.

Natasha just gave him a glance. "You don't have much time left."

She then said, "Didn't you say that you could help? Come over now."

Pierce subconsciously looked around. Clearly, she was talking to someone else.

Soon, a guy wearing a combat uniform and a black hood over his head walked in.

It was the Level 2 clone.

The Level 1 clone was in the command center, so the Level 2 clone naturally had to come and take a look at Pierce.

This was basic respect for this Hydra boss, and had nothing to do with experience and credit points.

Why was Natasha so calm?

Because this "John Doe" guy was a bigshot middle man, whom Tony had guaranteed was the strongest trump card.

All she needed to do was make an equal exchange.

They could talk about the price later, but for now, she had confidence.

She had only started decrypting the files after asking John Doe.

Luke wasn't in a hurry to take a look at Pierce. Instead, he gave a small box to Natasha. "You can use this."

He stood two meters to the side so that the two of them just so happened to be facing the decryption windows on the virtual screen.

Natasha opened the box and found a cold, preserved eyeball. She held it up to the decryption window.

"A-level clearance detected. Nicholas J. Fury."

Both Natasha and Pierce looked at Luke in shock. Had Luke turned the one-eyed creature into an eyeless creature?

Luke, however, calmly had the decryption window scan his right eye.

"A-level clearance detected. Alexander G. Pierce. A-level clearance confirmed. Encryption unlocked, safety protocol canceled."