The Death Of Captain America Read online

  When the screaming stops, the gray sky, the rubble, and the mud-filled crater are gone. Bucky is sagging in the restraints of the containment device. Doctor Faustus is stroking his beard with one hand and fiddling with his monocle with the other. A blonde nurse in green hospital scrubs hovers at his elbow. Something about her face looks familiar to Bucky. He is too groggy to place it, and his vision is blurry from the drugs.

  “Very interesting, indeed. I expected you to break easily after what they told me had been done to you by the Russians, but you are giving me quite a challenge.”

  Bucky would love to bite the nose off Faustus’ face more than ever.

  “Get out of my head, fatso.”

  “I understand more about the workings of the human mind than anyone on the planet, boy. Do you imagine I truly care if one such as you disparages my ample girth?”

  What passes across Bucky’s face might be considered mirth if it weren’t so frightening.

  “Nobody likes to be called out for being a bubble-butt, you bloated bucket of blubber.”

  Doctor Faustus maintains his façade of equanimity, but his voice betrays his wounded vanity.

  “Your asinine alliterations fail to goad me, but I like your spirit. It shows you have a mean streak, and that is something I can bend to my own purposes.”

  Faustus turns to the nurse who is assisting him. She holds a tray with an array of loaded hypodermics.

  “Double the dosage this time.”

  “Yes, Doctor Faustus.”

  She jabs the needle into Bucky’s arm and presses home the plunger. The face that glares at Faustus is pure Winter Soldier with no trace of Captain America’s young sidekick in his merciless eyes. The glare fades to blankness, the eyelids droop, and the chin hits his chest.

  Doctor Faustus pops out his monocle to clean it with his tie.

  “Excellent. Now, let’s start again, shall we?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  SAM Wilson is in a REM dream state. He sees himself lying in a narrow infirmary bed with an IV tube stuck in his arm, and sensors taped to his head and chest. The POV is unusually high, and the focus remarkably clear. With a start, he realizes he is observing himself through Redwing’s eyes, and he awakens to see Tony Stark standing over him. Over Tony’s shoulder, a flash of dark feathers reveals the raptor perched atop a medical-data monitor mounted high on the wall. Sam sits up, and pain shoots through his neck.

  “Damn, Stark. How long have I been out?”

  The answer comes from across the room, where Black Widow is leaning against a bank of centrifuges.

  “Since yesterday morning when she zapped the pair of us with a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue neural -neutralizer.”

  “She? Who are we talking about here, Natasha?”

  Tony Stark answers.

  “Agent 13. Sharon Carter. She’s been compromised. To what extent, we are presently uncertain. But we are reasonably sure it was Carter who shot Steve Rogers three times at close range—and that it was her shots, not the sniper’s bullet, that killed him.”

  Falcon springs off the bed and immediately regrets it. He is clutching his head and gritting his teeth when he says, “No way!”

  “I didn’t want to believe it either, Sam.”

  That’s the last thing Falcon wants to hear.

  “That’s bull. Sharon loved Steve. She’d lay down her own life for him. You, of all people, do not get to accuse anyone else of—”

  “Let me finish. It’s highly likely that she’s no longer in control of her own mind. And she’s not the only one.”

  Natasha takes Sam Wilson by the arm and sits him down in a hard chair. Falcon’s anger is still there but redirected now. Black Widow’s voice is level but brittle.

  “In the past few days, twenty S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have disappeared, and the one major link between all of them was that they were undergoing psychiatric review by the same psychologist in our administration building. We think Dr. Benjamin was working for Red Skull.”

  Falcon puts the pieces together.

  “That’s how they were able to free Crossbones.”

  “It would seem so, Sam. Half the security detail assigned to Crossbones failed to report and hasn’t been heard from since.”

  “This shrink, Benjamin—he brainwashed Sharon?”

  “And many others. We’re still running a damage assessment.”

  “So you caught this guy?”

  “A S.H.I.E.L.D. investigative team found Benjamin’s frozen corpse in his own basement. He’d been there for months. Somebody had been successfully masquerading as Benjamin all that time: That somebody would have had to have been a trained psychologist as well as a master of holographic disguises.”

  Sam is putting it all together in his head.

  “That would make a short list. Add a history with Captain America to the mix and the list gets even shorter. Doctor Faustus tried to brainwash Cap into committing suicide more than once. The last time, he used holograms—in Red Skull’s house, no less—but Faustus was shot dead in his cell while in Federal custody.”

  Black Widow resumes her tale.

  “We sent a forensics team to exhume Doctor Faustus. The body in the coffin had head lice, bedbug bites, and a large quantity of cheap Muscatel in his stomach. The Doctor Faustus we know would turn up his nose at anything less than a Chateau Lafite Rothschild—let alone anything with a screw-top, sold from a cooler.”

  “Faustus and Red Skull working together?” Falcon says. “And Sharon’s under their control? That is not good news, people.”

  Stark strokes his trimmed beard.

  “True, but there is one other thing we should consider. Sharon could have killed the two of you. Neither Red Skull nor Faustus would have hesitated to order her to do so. But instead, she stunned you with a neural-neutralizer.”

  “Does it matter, Tony?”

  “It might.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE Winter Soldier has faded away again, and Bucky is front and center. This time, the dream has a narrator. The boy-sidekick seems to remember that the voice belongs to somebody he called “Fatso,” but he can’t conjure up the face to match it. That’s the way it is with dreams. Except this one seems better produced and edited than the disjointed ramblings the subconscious usually screens. The voice is supercilious and pedantic.

  “Do you remember what it felt like, Bucky? To be part of a team? You were a member of the Invaders, the Allies’ secret weapon against the Axis war machine.”

  Bucky finds himself in the gray, generic rubble of a battle long past. There are tanks rumbling past—big green Shermans with white stars daubed on their turrets. German 88s thunder in the distance. The slow, steady cyclic rate of Browning Automatic Rifles plays counterpoint to the buzz-saw rip of the MG-42s.

  The Invaders are charging an entrenched wehrmacht position. Bucky is covering Cap’s right flank. Sub-Mariner is taking point. Human Torch and Toro are blazing overhead. Bucky drops a spent magazine from his Thompson gun and slaps in a full clip, never missing a step.

  “Of course, unlike the others, you had nothing special to offer. They soared above you. All of them. Can you remember that overwhelming jealousy? That sense of not being able to measure up?”

  Even in his delirium, the boy-soldier knows what is being said is not right.

  “That’s nowhere close to the truth. You’re projecting your own messed-up small-mindedness on to me. That’s how you would have seen it, not me.”

  “There’s no point arguing it. They were like unto gods, while you were a mere human stripling…”

  The Tommy gun spits lead. A figure in field gray throws up his arms and tumbles head-over-heels.

  “…a boy-murderer. A post-adolescent killer of men.”

  “Stop it! It was war. We all killed. We had to.”

  Across the cratered dreamscape, bedraggled German troops put up their hands and approach the Invaders under a white flag. They stumble through the mud and blood with the shambling gait of beaten men,
their eyes downcast. Captain America is hefting a .30-caliber Browning water-cooled machine gun as if it were a child’s toy. He begins to shout as he pulls the trigger.

  “The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi!”

  A steady stream of copper-jacketed lead cuts a swath through the surrendering enemy soldiers. Cap repeats the heinous mantra again and again. Human Torch and Toro rain fire down from the sky. Sub-Mariner strides imperiously through the German ranks, breaking necks with his bare hands.

  No.

  “That’s not Cap. That’s not the Invaders.”

  The past evaporates, leaving the Winter Soldier facing Doctor Faustus in the containment room. The blonde nurse in the white uniform is prepping another hypodermic. There is no more straining against the restraints. But there is no resignation, either—just calculation and patience. Better to conserve strength than expend energy wastefully.

  “It’s not working. You can’t make me believe those guys were anything but heroes.”

  “Is that so? I think you need to be shown that in the real world, there are no true heroes.”

  The nurse has the next needle in Winter Soldier’s arm already. The tang of salt air fills his nostrils. Sea birds are crying, and a supercharged engine is roaring. He’s Cap’s young sidekick again, and his fingers are numb from clinging to the fuselage of a top-secret American prototype aerial drone stolen by Baron Zemo. Captain America is hanging on to the wing. The two of them know the new weapon cannot be allowed to fall into Hitler’s hands, but they also know that the one-of-a-kind aircraft can’t be replaced. Bucky pries open the guidance-system hatch and makes a horrifying discovery.

  “Steve, it’s booby-trapped. It’s going to explode! We have to drop off!”

  “No, Bucky. We can’t let it be destroyed. You have to defuse it.”

  Even with the wind fierce in his eyes, Bucky can see that the self-destruct unit is serially wired to two anti-tamper devices.

  “Can’t defuse it, Cap! We’re both going to die!”

  “You still have to try, Bucky. And since I’m the one who matters and can’t be replaced, I’m the one who’s going to survive. Do your duty, soldier.”

  Cap lets go of the wing and falls away toward the cold waters of the sea. It seems that even above the roar of the engine, Bucky can still hear the relays on the detonator clicking into place.

  “But you failed, didn’t you? The device detonated, and all of Uncle Sam’s investments were wasted: the drone prototype, Captain America, and you.”

  “I died. Cap never said that. He would never—”

  “That’s what was in his mind, Bucky. But you didn’t stay dead, did you? You were brought back to life, and your blown-off arm was replaced, and you were turned against your own people. You were put in limbo between assignments, so you had no life apart from inflicting terror and death. What a horrible fate, and all because Steve Rogers considered you expendable.”

  “That’s a lie. Steve told me to jump. It was my own decision.”

  “The facts are that he survived, and you died in the freezing waters—unwanted and unappreciated. Cast off like worthless junk.”

  “No.”

  “Can you deny any of the facts?”

  “I’m confused—

  “The only time you were ever appreciated was when you were the Winter Soldier.”

  “But—”

  “So who would you rather be? Bucky or Winter Soldier?”

  The man in the containment device falls silent and closes his eyes. Ten minutes pass without a stir. The nurse grows visibly nervous. Doctor Faustus waits patiently. He has waited through longer silences in his time. Faustus lets his attention wander for a moment, and he turns back to find an intense pair of brown eyes staring back at him.

  “What am I doing in these restraints, and why the hell are you staring at me like that?”

  “Do you know who you are?”

  “I am the Winter Soldier.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Doctor Faustus. You work for my boss, Lukin.”

  “And whose command are you under, soldier?”

  “I follow orders, and you are higher on the chain of command than I am.”

  “Excellent. I knew that all I had to do was lead you back to where you had already been.”

  The Winter Soldier rattles the restraints.

  “You can unlock me now, Faustus.”

  Doctor Faustus presses a button, and the containment device releases the Winter Soldier.

  “Now, you can return my weapons.”

  “Not yet. I don’t take anything at face value. Are you prepared to follow my orders as you would those of General Lukin?”

  “I thought we had already established that?”

  Faustus extracts a large automatic pistol from the pocket of his tent-like jacket and extends it butt-first.

  “I require a practical demonstration of your loyalty. I want you to take this gun and shoot my nurse. A clean head-shot, please. We are not sadists.”

  The nurse drops her tray. Hypodermics roll across the floor.

  Doctor Faustus backs away to give the Winter Soldier a clear field of fire.

  “You remember Agent 13, don’t you? Sharon Carter, consort of Steve Rogers, enemy of the Russian Motherland?”

  Winter Soldier raises the pistol and takes careful aim. The look in her eyes tells him all he needs to know, and he is quite resigned as he squeezes the trigger and feels the recoil.

  INTERLUDE #10

  KRONAS Corporation operates a training center at a remote location in the middle of a dense forest. It looks and functions like a military base, and that is exactly what it is. Tonight, most of the Kronas security forces are gathered at the center to hear an address from their leader: Aleksander Lukin, corporate oligarch and ex-general of the KGB. Lukin ascends to the podium wearing the mask of the Red Skull, but is it really the Red Skull wearing the form of Aleksander Lukin? Who can tell? Certainly not Lukin himself, who has had the Red Skull living in his brain for so long now he can no longer distinguish between what thoughts are his own and what thoughts are those of Johann Schmidt. For all intents and purposes, the man standing behind the microphone at the podium is the Red Skull wearing Lukin’s form.

  The security men have been prepped with a special gas concocted by Doctor Faustus to ensure their wholesale acceptance of what is about to be laid out for them. The former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents subverted by Faustus have been similarly treated and are watching an encrypted broadcast at a secure location. Red Skull has no need to tap the microphone to make sure it is live—the sound technicians know the consequences of failure.

  “Soldiers of Kronas, I am the Red Skull, and I have made a pact with your leader, the great General Lukin. Together, Aleksander Lukin and I shall lead you down the path of greatness. The days of glory for which you have all waited so long are nearly upon us.”

  The crowd murmurs with no great confidence, the gas notwithstanding. Why should they trust this stranger in the Halloween mask?

  “Do not let this fearsome visage confuse you. It was meant to strike fear in the hearts of the weak and the inferior. It was meant to inspire the courageous and the strong-willed—like all of you.”

  The murmuring dwindles and stops. He has their attention now, and the gas is having its full effect.

  “You, who are about to embark on a great adventure into the annals of history. You, who will never be forgotten because you will have dared to aspire to heights the lowly cannot comprehend. You, who will march with me and Lukin to unprecedented victory…”

  He pauses for effect. The Kronas soldiers lean forward in anticipation, holding their breath.

  “…when we write America’s epitaph in its own blood!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I’M still alive.

  I can hardly believe it. The pistol, with the slide locked open on an empty clip, is smoking in Winter Soldier’s hand. The muzzle points directly at the tip of Doctor Faustus’ nose. The heavie
r man’s monocle and face are stippled with black, smokeless powder residue.

  “One blank cartridge in the chamber.”

  The Winter Soldier says it so matter-of-factly I want to scream. Did he know that when he pointed the gun at me first, before he turned it on Faustus? But more importantly, does Doctor Faustus realize that the shock of thinking I was going to die has weakened his hypnotic hold on me? I don’t have complete control of myself yet, but I can feel his power over me slipping. I have to bide my time, though. I have to work on taking back more control, but I can’t let him know it’s happening.

  “The weight wasn’t right.”

  What? The Winter Soldier said that. I have to concentrate. Have to stay sharp. The pistol rises. What’s he doing? Is he about to pistol-whip Faustus?

  Faustus issues a sharp command.

  “Recalcitrance.”

  Two sharp electrodes pop out of the butt of the pistol in Winter Soldier’s hand, piercing his palm and thumb. A “drive-stun” Taser on full power zaps him so hard he falls to the floor, writhing in pain as violent muscle contractions knot up his arm like a dozen cramps. Faustus looks at the twitching and thrashing with a revolting sneer on his face.

  “I told you I take nothing for granted. You should have known I wouldn’t trust you with a functional weapon. You could have at least tried to shoot Carter just for appearances.”

  Winter Soldier grunts through clenched teeth.

  “Go to hell. Wasn’t going to pass up taking a shot at your ugly mug, was I?”

  A size-12 handmade English oxford comes smashing down on Winter Soldier’s face with the considerable heft of Doctor Faustus behind it. “Ah, James—you are becoming tiresome.”

  The stomping continues until the man on the floor is quite still and a pool of blood is spreading out from under his head.

  “Nurse, I require a wipe.”

  There is a stack of gauze pads among the supplies on the stainless-steel medical trolley next to the containment device. I fold one and hand it to Faustus. He cleans the powder residue from his monocle, and then bends down to carefully daub the blood off his shoes with the same pad. I take advantage of the lull in the proceedings to shed the baggy hospital scrubs I’m wearing over my jumpsuit and combat rig.