Chapter 38: The Commission That Appeared Again

Speaking of which, Russell suddenly remembered something and threw the GPS locator he was carrying to Tony.

　　"Good luck!"

　　When he finished speaking, he stopped paying attention to Tony and Ethan and left the valley straight away.

　　With a satellite phone and a GPS locator, if Tony couldn't find Colonel Rhodes to save him like this, there was little point in him leaving Afghanistan.

　　Tony is now saved.

　　But Russell won't be able to get the "Endosymbiotic Battle Armor" reward for a while.

　　"Activation condition: prevent Tony Stark from becoming Iron Man as a result of the kidnapping!"

　　He had only rescued Tony, and had not yet fully satisfied the activation conditions for the "Inner Symbiotic Armor".

　　I don't have that reward yet, but unsurprisingly, the Inner Symbiosis Battle Armor should be almost there when Tony gets back to Los Angeles alive.

　　In the cave, he saw the small missiles that had been dismantled by Tony and Ethan.

　　And what Tony uses in his chest is still an electromagnet connected to a car battery, not a small ark reactor.

　　Tony now has a concrete plan for building a small ark reactor.

　　He would definitely replace the energy source in his chest with a small ark reactor for safety and convenience.

　　But just because there's a small ark reactor doesn't mean Tony will necessarily be Iron Man.

　　Tony doesn't need to create Mark 1 to save himself now.

　　Even if he had returned to Los Angeles to continue building the Mark 1, the Mark 1 would not have ended up in Obadiah's hands.

　　Without the Mark 1, the engineers at Stark Industries would not have been able to make a fully upgraded version of the Mark 1, the Iron Baron.

　　Without the Iron Baron, of course, Iron Man's famous battle would not have happened.

　　11pm.

　　Russell returned to the Continental Hotel in Kabul.

　　Not long after leaving the stronghold of the Ten Commandments Gang, he met a group of "enthusiastic citizens".

　　After some "friendly" communication, these armed "warm-hearted citizens" gave him their only means of transportation, a jeep that was more than ten years old.

　　When he returned to the hotel, the hotel receptionist gave him a somewhat puzzled look.

　　It was only in the morning that he went out with a huge pile of weapons and supplies.

　　The result was that before the day was over, he was back.

　　Is this the ace in the hole of New York hotels?

　　That's pretty efficient!

　　Back at the hotel, Russell first booked his flight back to New York tomorrow, then changed out of his mountain combat clothes.

　　Bathe, eat, sleep!

　　Early the next morning, he boarded a plane back to New York with his luggage.

　　It's a coincidence.

　　This time, he meets the stewardess who handed him a little note last time.

　　Last time, he had simply ignored the little note handed to him by the flight attendant because he was catching up on his sleep.

　　Now that he didn't need to catch up on his sleep he took a serious look at the prehensile blonde stewardess in front of him.

　　Bigger where it should be, smaller where it should be.

　　Body fat obediently grows where it should.

　　The legs wrapped in black silk looked long and straight, and must have felt good to the touch.

　　The body looks were okay, and the stewardess uniform on her added a lot of points.

　　After an undisguised scowl, he smiled and took the small slip of paper.

　　Melissa!

　　Russell glanced at the name and contact information on the little slip of paper.

　　Looks like this long journey shouldn't be too lonely.

　　......

　　More than twenty hours later.

　　The plane landed at JFK International Airport.

　　Before getting off the plane, Melissa gives Russell a second little note.

　　It's not the same as the one at the beginning.

　　Instead of contact information, the little note that Melissa was now handing over had an address written on it.

　　Russell, still smiling, took the small note Melissa handed him.

　　However, after getting off the plane, he threw the note in the trash.

　　Fast food is fast food, and it's no fun to eat it as a home-cooked meal.

　　Then again, he hadn't expected Melissa, who was tall and built like a Vimeo model, to be that flexible.

　　She can still have so much fun in a cramped place like an airplane bathroom.

　　Manhattan.

　　Sky Apartments.

　　After getting off the plane, Russell drove straight back to his apartment.

　　It's not even 12 noon yet and Diana is working at the museum.

　　When he got back to his apartment, he changed out of the clothes he was wearing, took a nice hot bath, and cleaned up the traces that Melissa had left behind completely.

　　Diana knew he occasionally went out and fooled around, but as long as he didn't go too far Diana turned a blind eye.

　　In Diana's words, it was the instinct of male creatures.

　　She didn't mind Russell having such instincts, but he couldn't go too far.

　　Like bringing a woman home, or, letting Diana see that he has marks left by other women.

　　Thanks to Paradise Island's feudal monarch education.

　　Thanks to the open and inclusive culture of the United States of America.

　　After washing up, Russell went to his study, turned on his computer, and searched for news about Tony Stark.

　　While he was traveling to Afghanistan, most of the news about Tony on the internet was about Tony's philandering.

　　Now, however, what is dominating the headlines is the news that Tony was attacked and injured in Afghanistan.

　　Not kidnapped, but assaulted and injured!

　　The news that appeared on the internet simply said that Tony had been attacked and injured by terrorists in Afghanistan, with no mention of a kidnapping at all.

　　The news is also filled with a lot of references to U.S. troops fighting valiantly to repel terrorist attacks.

　　Valiant U.S. forces thwarted the terrorists' plot!

  Very good!

　　Tony now knows the truth about his kidnapping, but Obadiah's name is not mentioned at all within the news.

　　It's obvious that Tony is going to deal with Obadiah in secret.

　　After skimming through the news reports, which weren't true at all, Russell closed the page and leaned back in his chair to think about what he was going to have for dinner tonight.

　　What Tony wants to do about Obadiah is all up to Tony.

　　As long as Tony doesn't renege, these things have nothing to do with him at all.

　　Just as he was contemplating whether to have a cozy candlelight dinner with Diana at home tonight or go out on a romantic date, his cell phone rang.

　　Glancing at the name displayed on his cell phone screen, he frowned slightly.

　　Winston again!

　　Winston's voice came through as soon as he pressed the connect button.

　　"How are things in Afghanistan being handled?"

　　"Not bad!"

　　Russell replied with a bored look on his face.

　　"In that case, would you like to consider that last commission?"

　　Winston asked without any nonsense, getting straight to the point.

　　"I told you, I'm not interested!"

　　"Fifty million dollars!"

　　"I don't think I'm the only assassin at the hotel, let the client commission someone else, at that price, there should be plenty of interest."

　　Russell again refused.

　　Fifty million dollars to kill a man is an unquestionably high price.

　　At that price, there would be a lot of assassins interested in killing Spider-Woman, not to mention killing Nightcrawler.

　　Of course, interested or not, being able to fulfill the commission is another matter.

　　"This is not your average customer, he's not only important to the hotel, but to the high-top tables as well."

　　"If you continue to refuse, maybe the commission will just turn into an order to come down, and you wouldn't want to see that?"

　　Winston continued.