Operation Cisco

She sat on the far edge of the Mexican café on the outskirts of the city. Her hat was pulled down to cover her eyes, but it was still just high enough for her to observe the vicinity. Director Fury had come to her with a very secret assignment- so secret that if any information were to leak out about it, it could cause mass panic. That was the last thing she wanted. For that reason, she was only given limited information on the target suspect. He was an African American male in his early 40’s with the right side of his face covered in burn scars from a supposed “accident”. Should be easy enough. An hour had already passed and she had been waiting in the same inconspicuous spot. Undercover wasn’t the simplest strategy but it sure was helpful. Nobody had even suspected her until a short Mexican waitress came over to her with a little notepad. “Can I get you anything, señorita?” the waitress asked in accented English. She smirked and lifted her hat just a little higher before quietly replying, “Dame un café con leche pequeña.” The waitress smiled and nodded, jotting it down on her little notepad then walked off. She needed to do everything in her power to become part of the crowd, even if that meant having to whip out her language skills. Whatever it took. Another half an hour passed until finally, the suspect arrived. Putting her coffee down, she took a minute to make a few observations. Almost automatically, she knew that the man looked suspicious. He was wearing a black jacket and gloves in eighty-degree weather. His whole outfit was black, which made him look like a typical, semi-scarred robber. Totally not out of place at all… Her eyes followed him as he told the waitress what he wanted and sat down near a window overlooking the outskirts. Something definitely was off about him. He would write something on a napkin and show it to himself and even though she couldn’t see what he was writing, she knew that he was communicating somehow. But there was no one around him, which made it even weirder. By the time his order came to him, he had written five different messages to himself and he had no idea that she was watching him. Who the hell was he writing to? She got up quickly and headed to the trashcan to throw away her coffee. When she passed him, their eyes finally met for a few seconds. His expression was stern and even when she turned to throw her empty cup in the garbage, she could feel his eyes on her. Her head turned to face him again, her expression matching his. She knew she couldn’t say anything to him for risk of revealing something he shouldn’t know. After all, he already seemed to have something special about him that could be used against S.H.I.E.L.D. The man stood, held his position for a few more seconds and made his way out of the café. She waited until he distanced himself before quickly leaving to follow him. Her eyes never left him as they both headed towards the gleaming skyscrapers of San Jose. As they got closer, it became increasingly difficult for her to follow him as more and more people walked in between from all directions. She didn’t give up though, she needed to report to Director Fury with good news and that meant bringing him back to the helicarrier. Suddenly, his head turned to the left slightly and began to sprint away. He knew that she was following him, not that she didn’t have a slight feeling about it. She sprinted after him, being sure to avoid the pedestrians. She tried to drown out the voices around her and focus on her target. He was getting away quickly so she needed to call backup. “The centipede is escaping! I repeat, the centipede is escaping!” she yelled into her earpiece as she ran through a group of people like an obstacle course. She was obviously instructed to use code phrases to refer to her secret target. She continued to chase the man, but soon she lost him in the crowd. Dammit. Hopefully her backup would catch him. She decided to jog towards the direction she last saw him. Eventually, she received a message through her earpiece. “We’ve lost him. One minute we saw him, the next he jumped right up into the sky and landed on a building. It was crazy.” She closed her eyes and frowned. It couldn’t be. Director Fury would not be happy. “Agent Stark?” her partner said into her earpiece. “Head back to the helicopter. Tell Director Fury that His plan is working and that I’ve come to stop him. He’ll know what I’m talking about,” she answered seriously. “Where will you go?” Looking straight at a flyer posted on a window of a nearby shop, she smirked, “San Francisco.”

Notes