the best laid plans can

Barton’s file included several notes about his penchant for improvisation, for ignoring orders which he thought were stupid, his inability to remain silent on comms, even during covert operations. He’d worked with nearly every handler and team leader in the agency, and he’d pissed off nearly every single one of them in some way, despite his almost astronomical clearance rate and his frankly insane proficiency with just about any weapon he could get his hands on.

It’d been inevitable that he and the lead handler would butt heads, but that didn’t make it any less irritating when Phil had gotten his orders stating that he was to tag along in a minimal capacity to monitor the situation and intervene or issue other orders as needed to oversee the completion of the mission.