Rumor had it that a certain bigshot had been attacked by terrorists in Afghanistan, and there was a name Luke was familiar with: the Jericho missile.
Tony and Afghanistan were the main character and location.
The Jericho missile and the terrorists were the key prop and villains.
Putting them all together, a certain tycoon would use the excuse of building the missile to secretly build a prototype of the Iron Man Armor, which could be described as “crude, fat and round.”
That was the origin of Iron Man.
Not long ago, Tony had unexpectedly come up with the Iron Man Armor early on to compete with Batman.
This had made Luke think that the real Iron Man story wouldn’t happen here.
After all, Tony now had the Iron Man Armor, and wouldn’t necessarily go to Afghanistan. If he did go, he might not necessarily be injured, and if he was, it might not necessarily be a hole in his chest.
If this tycoon was injured in the head and became a patient with a genuine hole in his brain, it was possible he might stick the arc reactor on his forehead and turn into an LED target.
Now, all the conditions had somehow come together.
It was hard for Luke not to suspect that a certain tycoon would still become that superhero with a hole in his chest.
Luke subconsciously grumbled about this unreliable tycoon, but quickly switched his train of thought and continued searching for relevant information.
He couldn’t be sure if the events of Afghanistan had happened again.
Even if they had, Tony wouldn’t be killed right away.
Tony wasn’t stupid; he was even the fated one, who would fight back in a desperate situation.
Luke believed that if anything really happened to Tony, he would still be able to get out of Afghanistan alive.
It wasn’t an especially pressing matter. Luke had to gather enough information first before he took action.
That being said, he had already used a fake identity to book a flight to Afghanistan the next day.
He had money; buying a backup plane ticket every day wouldn’t be considered a waste.
A day later, Luke finished processing his resignation, and boarded a flight to Afghanistan as an ordinary middle-aged man.
Selina, on the other hand, would be going back to Shackelford on this rare break to visit her family.
After she went to New York, she would have even fewer chances to see her family. Naturally, Luke didn’t want to take up her time during this rare vacation.
Although she said that she and Gold Nugget could go along to help, Luke declined with a smile and said that he was going to handle a small situation for someone she didn’t like very much.
Selina didn’t ask any further questions.
Recently, she and Luke often went out to “look at the night view” together, which meant that he didn’t mind her knowing or even taking part in certain things.
If he didn’t want her to take part, there naturally had to be a reason for it.
Thus, she happily packed up and returned to Shackelford with Dollar and Gold Nugget.
Her father had already bought the ranch, and it would be a good opportunity to visit the Hayek family’s new ranch.
When Luke had gone to Mexico to clean up Dito Flores, the drug lord, in the name of saving his colleagues, Selina had been quite traumatized.
She would definitely find it hard to understand if he took her to Afghanistan to kill people for Tony’s sake.
This was purely Luke’s personal decision. It was because he was a kindhearted person who didn’t want to take advantage of Tony for free; it had nothing to do with the “value” of the terrorists.
When Selina went to the airport, Luke had finished investigating the tycoon’s personal security team.
He pretended to be a credit card or insurance company and called the homes of these bodyguards, claiming that a credit card under their name had been stolen or some car of theirs had been involved in an accident. The family would subconsciously tell them the bodyguards’ whereabouts to prove that they had nothing to do with this.
Putting all the intelligence together only proved that Tony had encountered a major problem in Afghanistan.
Otherwise, a military supplier like this tycoon would be protected by the army wherever he went. There was no need to move so many private bodyguards.
The biggest advantage of private security was that they had to follow Stark’s orders. If they had gone to Afghanistan en masse, it could only prove that the tycoon needed a lot of help from his own people.
…
After the flight to Afghanistan, Luke bought a secondhand pickup with cash.
When night fell, he arrived at an American base.
Wearing the Big Dipper Armor again, he waited quietly on the road outside the base for a moment before a military vehicle sped by.
Luke activated his optical camouflage and ran lightly after the truck. As he ran, he grabbed the edge of the truck and jumped into the back.
The driver didn’t notice anything and continued speeding forward. Soon, he reached the gate.
The guards checked the IDs, checked the empty back and bottom of the vehicle with their flashlights, then let the truck in.
Ten minutes later, Luke entered a single ward.
On the bed, a woman wrapped in bandages was sound asleep.
He walked up to her and injected her with a small dose of inducer before he whispered into her ear.
A moment later, he was surprised.
The woman was surprisingly resistant to the inducer. Despite the drug, hypnosis, and Mental Communication, she still resisted his questions.
Luke could only give her a normal dose and repeat the hypnosis process.
Given her extremely poor physical condition, she finally crumbled under the hypnosis this time. She entered a semi-conscious state, and soon confessed everything.
This woman was the only survivor from Tony’s convoy and the female soldier who had been in the same car as Tony.
Her name was Barbara “Bobbi” Morse.
In fact, she wasn’t from the US military, but a SHIELD agent.
SHIELD, who had always been paying attention to Tony Stark, secretly planted an agent next to the tycoon for this dangerous trip to Afghanistan.
Barbara had been severely wounded after saving Tony from the rocket explosion.
She just managed to activate the distress signal, then played dead to avoid the attackers’ cleanup.
As the only survivor of the convoy, she received a lot of attention.
SHIELD planting a spy in the military around Tony was a sensitive issue.
SHIELD didn’t want Barbara’s identity to be exposed, and could only wait for this matter to pass before transferring her to another hospital.
It just so happened that she was heavily injured and couldn’t move for the time being, so she continued to receive treatment here.
Barbara graduated from college two years ago and was 24 years old.
For someone as young as her to be sent on such a high-level mission, she was naturally very outstanding. She was good at stealth and gathering intelligence.
SHIELD sent her here to use her strong points to gather intelligence on Tony from the side.
Tony had been kidnapped after his itinerary was leaked and he was ambushed. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
Fighting hundreds of criminals alone was beyond the abilities of a normal person.
However, Barbara had done her homework before this operation, and was very clear about the situation around the base.
She was smart and quick-witted, and had observed a lot of details in the short time she had been attacked.
