The Suspicious Nuclear Bomb

Evenson did not stand on ceremony. He shut the door, sat down on the sofa with an imposing air, crossed one leg over the other, and said directly to Nick Fury, "Don’t you think that Nuclear Bomb was far too suspicious?"

"Yes, I also think the committee’s decision was highly improper—excessive, even." Nick Fury rose and walked over to the liquor cabinet, taking out a bottle of amber-colored liquor. "Have a drink."

He even showed off the bottle in his hand to Evenson. "Haig & Haig whisky. Fine stuff, hard to come by."

But then he grew sorrowful again. "Coulson had a bottle like this too. He always wanted to drink it after the most thrilling mission of his life. What a pity… sigh." Nick Fury let out a sigh and personally poured Evenson a drink.

"He was a hero. He died a worthy death." Evenson raised his glass and drained it in one gulp.

Nick Fury drank a glass with him, but inwardly, he truly breathed a sigh of relief. The point of doing this was to soothe Evenson.

Just think about it. You were fighting desperately on the front lines, only for the rear to toss an atomic bomb your way. How would that make you feel? Putting himself in Evenson’s shoes, Nick Fury knew he would not have been able to stomach it either. He truly feared that Evenson might retaliate against the world in a fit of anger.

And he had not brought up Coulson for no reason. It was a way of revisiting the deep friendship between Evenson and S.H.I.E.L.D. And besides…

Nick Fury refilled their glasses. "Coulson was a hero. His death was also a tremendous loss to me, but…" Nick Fury deliberately hesitated. "But to the committee, Coulson was merely a number on a death list."

"They are career bureaucrats. Everyone is just a number to them, so sometimes their decisions may seem unreasonable, cold, even utterly inhuman."

In short, every mistake was the committee’s fault. It had nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. or himself.

"Fury, I think you misunderstood me." Evenson set down his glass and smiled. "I didn’t come here to complain or air my grievances. I think there is a serious problem here, something that absolutely cannot be brushed aside with the word ‘improper.’"

Nick Fury’s brow twitched. Could there be some other hidden truth here? "Tell me what you think."

"The Battle of New York lasted nearly two hours, from the opening of the portal to the end." Evenson stroked his chin. "But until the very end, the only ones who showed up were the National Guard, and they arrived just as it was wrapping up to handle the aftermath. Other than that, I didn’t see a single other combat unit."

"I don’t know where the nearest US Army base to New York is." Evenson spread out his right hand. "But even if they were far away and the ground forces couldn’t mobilize into position within two hours, what about the Air Force?"

"Doesn’t the US government constantly boast that its Air Force is the best in the world? But two hours into the fight, why didn’t I see a single F-22 enter the battlefield?" The corner of Evenson’s mouth curled upward. "Isn’t that strange?"

New York had been under attack for two hours. Neither the Army nor the Air Force arrived. With a response time like that, the president would probably want to gun down his own Secretary of Defense with a machine gun.

"Perhaps they were delayed by procedure." Nick Fury offered a guess that he himself did not really believe. "There are many procedures to go through before the military can use force in a city."

"Maybe someone was obstructing things. Besides… sending troops into a city to resist an alien invasion couldn’t be approved even after two hours, yet deploying nuclear weapons was approved awfully quickly." Evenson said sarcastically.

"The use of nuclear weapons was ordered directly by the committee. The plane responsible for dropping the bomb took off directly from my Helicarrier. I’m afraid they did not consult with the US government beforehand."

The cleanup work over the past two days had kept Nick Fury so busy that he had not had time to think through many other matters. Now that Evenson had pointed it out, doubts began to rise in his heart as well. What exactly was this committee? They had directly used nuclear weapons to bomb New York, disregarding millions of American civilians. How could the US government possibly let that go afterward?

"So, the only ones fighting the aliens in New York were us Avengers, the New York police, and the National Guard that arrived at the end." Evenson said without even lifting his eyelids. "It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Earth’s resistance against the alien invasion had not truly begun yet, would it?"

After pondering for a long time, Nick Fury slowly nodded. Though the Avengers were powerful, they were only a special response unit, an emergency team. In a real war between two sides, the backbone should have been a massive army.

Not to mention, if two air wings had entered the battle at the time, the situation in New York would definitely have been much easier.

"But the real resistance had not even begun, and conventional weapons had not been deployed." Evenson frowned and asked in feigned confusion, "Yet they went straight for the trump card. Can a decision like that still be called merely improper?"

Seeing Nick Fury fall silent in thought, Evenson continued, "And the Cosmic Cube was continuously supplying energy at the time. What if the nuclear explosion had somehow stimulated it? Then… heh heh." Evenson gave two dry chuckles. "The outcome would have been truly impossible to predict."

"Besides, after I intervened, the situation in New York had already improved drastically. It had nowhere near reached the point where we needed to make a last stand. So what sort of consideration led the committee to make such a mad decision?"

Once Evenson unleashed his ultimate move, the battle had turned around, and they had already found a way to close the portal. Even without sending reinforcements, the Avengers alone could have cleaned up New York. Yet even so, the committee had launched the nuclear bomb without regard for anything else. That was precisely why Evenson had concluded that the reason behind its launch could not be simple.

"The committee members may be bureaucrats, but anyone capable of serving as a committee member should at least be mentally sound." Nick Fury muttered in a low voice. He truly could not understand why the committee had been so bent on having its way. What could they possibly gain by blowing things up like that?

In the end, unable to make sense of it, he could only shake his head with a bitter smile. "Could it be that every committee member was scared stupid at the time? That they became so hysterical they turned brain-dead?"

"If they were merely hysterical, I wouldn’t be this worried." Evenson said with a curl of his lips.

Nick Fury was immediately stunned. So Evenson thought that the world’s highest authority going hysterical whenever something happened and wanting to nuke everything was not even the real problem?

"Then what exactly are you worried about?" Nick Fury now thoroughly hated Evenson’s habit of only saying half of what he meant.

"What I’m truly worried about is…" Evenson narrowed his eyes and said gravely, "They understand nothing, yet insist on overthinking everything."