The Death Of Captain America Page 13

  A pair of R.A.I.D. troopers hauls away the unconscious Winter Soldier as Faustus leads me out of the containment room and into the corridor of the subterranean facility. Faustus expresses open disdain for the Red Skull’s allies who are playing host to his containment device.

  “Radically Advanced Ideas in Destruction. It’s a particularly unwieldy name and smacks of hubris, as well. Don’t you agree, Agent 13?”

  “I’m no longer Agent 13, and I couldn’t begin to understand the motivations of a group like R.A.I.D., let alone guess the reasoning behind what they call themselves. But I am curious, Doctor Faustus: How did you know you hadn’t broken the Winter Soldier?”

  I realize my mistake as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I shouldn’t have expressed any curiosity. He’s going to know his control is slipping.

  “He was too compliant right away. A hostile subject is always more problematic. You have to break them over and over again to be sure.”

  He didn’t notice. He’s in full gloat mode, too full of himself. The R.A.I.D. troopers dump Winter Soldier on a grate that feeds into a drain and hose him down, washing off the worst of the blood. Faustus goes on.

  “They’re useless until they are fully broken, you know. They have to be willing to do anything for you—to die for you and especially, to kill for you. As well you know, my dear.”

  “Of course, Doctor.”

  “My mother would have done anything for me. She would have died for me and yes, even killed for me. She was very strong, my mother was. Just like you, Sharon.”

  Why is he telling me this? It’s too creepy for words.

  The R.A.I.D. troopers are dragging Winter Soldier face-down by his feet back to the containment device. His chin hits the irregularities in the floor. His teeth snap together like castanets.

  Faustus natters on in his maddening, self-involved way. I imagine working over his face with a ball-peen hammer, smile, and nod at the appropriate times.

  The dish that will be served cold will still be savory.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE raptor circles high above the grimy alley where Falcon and Black Widow stand at an open manhole cover.

  “Are you sure you’re hearing him right, Sam?”

  “It’s not like hearing anything, ’Tasha. Redwing is showing me what he saw—sort of like projecting it in my head. And what he saw was Sharon going down into this manhole right after she zapped us in her apartment.”

  Redwing spirals down and takes up his perch on Falcon’s arm. There’s something about the bird’s eyes that reminds Natasha of velociraptors in a dinosaur movie.

  “Didn’t your bird get zapped, too?”

  “He caught the residual damage from me—same neural pathways that allow us to communicate. He recovered quicker and followed her. But he won’t go down into a sewer, not even if I’m going.”

  Black Widow stares down into the foul-smelling darkness at her feet.

  “I agree with Redwing. I do not relish the thought of going down into a sewer. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

  “We have to do this. We have to find Sharon.”

  “Then let’s get on with it.”

  Redwing casts off from Falcon’s arm and settles on a fire escape, where he drinks from a water bowl set out for a cat. He watches, unblinking, as Falcon and Black Widow descend on iron rungs into the New York City storm-drainage system.

  “Sewer” is a misnomer of sorts. Most of the rainwater that falls on New York City runs off roofs, sidewalks, asphalt, and other impermeable surfaces instead of being absorbed into the ground. It must be redirected to the surrounding bodies of water by a series of conduits. The smaller conduits merge into larger tunnels, which is what Falcon and Black Widow are moving through. Falcon is brooding, keeping his thoughts to himself. Black Widow breaks the silence.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I just found out that my good friend shot and killed my best friend, and that she’s out of her mind. Yeah, I’m just fine.”

  “Good to know, Sam.”

  A passageway just off the nexus of three major conduits is boarded over with plywood and affixed with an official-looking sign that reads, “CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION.”

  A drag mark curves away from one side of the plywood along the filth of the tunnel floor, in an arc indicating a hinge on the opposite side of the plywood. Falcon tugs at the board, and it swings open to reveal a narrow corridor that curves to the left. The corridor ends at a metal hatch. Sam reaches for the handle, but Black Widow stops him. She carefully examines the edges of the hatch.

  “Just checking for alarms and booby traps. Can’t ever be too careful these days.”

  A not-very-reassured Falcon tugs open the hatch.

  The continuation of the corridor beyond the hatch is crisscrossed by a tight network of laser beams.

  Falcon steps back.

  “That’s A.I.M. or R.A.I.D. technology for sure. I say we stand down, call it in, and let a S.H.I.E.L.D. assault team rain on their parade.”

  Black Widow takes a circuit-bypass unit from her belt pouch.

  “That’s about as subtle as a B-52 bunker-buster bomb strike. We want to get Sharon out of there alive, don’t we?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE R.A.I.D. nerds are hunched over their consoles or tapping furiously on their tablets when I follow Doctor Faustus into the control center. They are tacitly ignoring the face of the Red Skull glowering from the main encrypted-communications monitor. I suppose Red Skull thinks as little of them as they do of him. They are just utilitarian items to each other. If that masked maniac were here in the R.A.I.D. facility with us, I would find a way to wipe that sneer off his face. The security nerds carry pistols. I have no doubt I could overpower one of them. But I have to put wishful thinking aside for now and plan carefully. I’ll only get one chance, and I’ll have to make the most of it. Skull is furious at being kept waiting.

  “It’s about time you showed up here, Faustus. Too good to answer your messages, are you?”

  “I was taking care of business. Your business, Johann. Attending to our subject, as it were.”

  “Don’t address me by that name, and stop dragging your feet. Your progress with the subject is unsatisfactory. I want the Winter Soldier back in operation, the way he used to be. Efficient, reliable—and, most of all, compliant.”

  Faustus rocks back and forth in his expensive oxfords, hands deep in his pockets, showing no subservience at all.

  “And if it can’t be done in time?”

  “Do not complicate my plans with your failures. If he cannot be useful again in life, I will extract value from his corpse.”

  Red Skull doesn’t bother to sign off, he simply breaks the connection. The screen goes black.

  I should have known that they meant to kill him all along. Nothing in my training prepared me for resisting mental takeover and manipulation, but I have to do it. I have to do it, and I have to make the Red Skull pay for what he’s done.

  Red lights start flashing on the control consoles. Somewhere, an alarm Klaxon blares. A security team runs through the control center and down a corridor toward the alarm. A R.A.I.D. tech turns to address Faustus.

  “Security glitch, sir. There was a power fluctuation in one of our perimeter fields a few minutes ago, so I sent an armed maintenance team to check on it.”

  The blinking red light reflected in Doctor Faustus’ monocle makes him look more diabolical than ever.

  “Why wasn’t I informed immediately?”

  “These things happen. Rats gnaw on the cables, water damages the circuits—but the team never reported back, and their GPS units went dead.”

  “Is that when you initiated the alert and sounded the alarm?”

  “No, sir. First I dispatched a security squad to investigate. I sounded the alert when they failed to report, and their locater units went off the grid.”

  Pushing aside the tech, Faustus looms over the console. He calls up all the surveillance-cam imagery and
the facility map, which shows the security teams as green blinking lights converging on the perimeter breach. My heart flutters a bit as the surveillance cams start to go dead, and the green light closest to the breach goes out.

  Faustus pulls himself erect and turns to face me directly.

  “I don’t believe we’re done with you yet, Agent 13.”

  What?

  I’ve heard that exact phrasing before—

  Oh my god, it’s a trigger. It’s reinstalling and reinforcing all the controls I’ve managed to dismantle so far. I try to resist. I must partition my mind so the real me is still intact and safe, if not fully in charge.

  Another green light winks out on the facility map. A tech at another console shouts in panic.

  “We have visual confirmation, Doctor. It’s the Avengers.”

  The tech holds up his tablet, which is being fed a helmet-cam image from one of the security squads. The picture is shaky and blurred, but seems to show one figure in black and another figure in red pummeling and kicking their way through completely overmatched R.A.I.D. troopers.

  Faustus is now visibly shaken.

  “That’s ridiculous. Impossible. How could they—?”

  “It’s just two of them. Black Widow and Falcon. Should I close and lock all the blast and containment doors?”

  I am dazed and numb. It’s almost like I’m seeing everything as a disembodied spirit—a ghost of myself, disinterested and observing at a distance. Faustus is stroking his beard obsessively, thinking hard.

  “Complete lockdown. Deny access at containment doors for all security cards except for mine. Erase all the hard drives, dump printouts in the burn box, and start evacuation procedures. And bring me my damned prisoner.”

  He turns to me, grips my jumpsuit collar with his sausage-like fingers, and pulls my face close to his. His breath stinks of jellied pig knuckles and smoked eel, shreds of which are still caught between his teeth from lunch.

  “I don’t believe we’re done with you yet, Agent 13.”

  Doctor Faustus transforms from an odious man with halitosis to a venerable mentor. Everything he has ever said makes perfect sense to me. I know that whatever he asks me to do is in my own best interest. It makes me very happy to please him in every way.

  But then, why do I have this nagging sensation of unease?

  He draws a familiar-looking weapon from his jacket pocket and tucks it into the empty holster on my belt.

  “You’re a soldier, Agent 13. You will do your duty without fail, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Doctor. I will always make the choice that will benefit our cause.”

  “Good.”

  He has not released my collar. He is dragging me down the corridor with him. More lights are flashing, and security teams are jogging past us with heavy weapons. I can hear gunfire now, bursts of full-automatic, and the high-pitched hum of advanced energy weapons. I try to keep pace with Faustus’ clumsy run, but I’m just stumbling along. Why won’t he let go? I only want to serve him.

  Even though he possesses a number of duplicate security cards, he has to search through his pockets until he finds one that lets us enter the escape suite. This is actually a hangar for a R.A.I.D. stealth transport—a clunky squat thing with stubby wings, all flat planes joined in angles to best deflect radar. It sits on a launch rail that slopes upward through a tunnel that probably passes through a derelict building in the industrial neighborhood above. The ramp door on the tail of the aircraft is open, and techs are loading last-minute security items as the launch turbines rev up to speed. The pilot is standing on the ramp, checking the chronograph on his wrist. The window for escape is less than five minutes, at this point. I see it all, crystal clear, and I couldn’t care less. That’s how it is when somebody else is in charge of your mind.

  A communications tech runs up to Faustus.

  “Doctor, your prisoner has escaped. We dosed him with a sedative, got him out of the containment device, and locked him in an Adamantium-laced straitjacket. But he took down two whole security squads with just his feet.”

  Luckily for the tech, Faustus isn’t holding a gun, or the tech would have a smoking hole in his forehead. I’m glad Faustus isn’t angry with me. All I want to do is please him. Faustus hands me one of his security cards.

  “Agent 13, you have three minutes to subdue the Winter Soldier and deliver him here. We will not wait a second longer. Now go.”

  I don’t waste time answering him. I run full tilt toward the source of the commotion in the corridors, against the stream of fleeing R.A.I.D. techs.

  “Faster, Sharon. You have less than ninety seconds to find him and—”

  “Save him. Yes, I must save him.”

  “No, that is not part of the protocol. Subdue him and bring him to me.”

  “But you’ll kill him.”

  “Obey your orders, Sharon. Remember, you killed Steve Rogers, who meant a lot more to you than this one. You can kill him, too, if I ask you to, correct?”

  Somehow, I’m down on my knees on the corridor floor. Muscle spasms and nausea sweep over me in waves. I need to follow orders. But I need to save Bucky. It’s like my brain is trying to rip itself in two. I can’t let Faustus down, but Bucky was—is—oh, lord…Bucky. Am I saying his name out loud?

  “I’m right here, Sharon. And it’s okay.”

  And there he is, standing over me. His face all bruised and battered. His arms still locked in Adamantium restraints. Blood all over his boots.

  Bucky.

  “We’re getting out of here. You and me. I let Cap down on the courthouse steps, and I’m going to make it right.”

  Oh, Bucky. It’s all too wrong to ever be made right again. But I don’t say that aloud. He gives me that boyish, earnest look of his.

  “Come on, Sharon. Get it together, and let’s blow this pop stand. I know there’s a part of you still in charge in there.”

  I’m in here, but not in charge.

  I pull out the neural neutralizer that Faustus returned to me, thumb the power switch up to “full,” and squeeze the trigger. Bucky is still twitching uncontrollably on the floor as two R.A.I.D. security troopers arrive to help carry him back to the escape transport.

  Security teams cover our retreat, keeping up a steady suppressive fire. Falcon and Black Widow are less than fifty yards behind us. I force myself not to think about them. It keeps away the vertigo.

  Bucky is dumped roughly into the transport. The hydraulic pistons close the ramp, and we accelerate up the launch rail. Explosive charges blast open the building covering the escape silo, and fragments of brick and timber bounce off the fuselage as we zoom skyward. I strap in as best I can, watching Bucky bounce and roll as we hit thermals and wind shear between the buildings. The pilot shouts over the din of the engines.

  “One of them is coming after us, and he’s gaining!”

  Somebody who can fly fast enough to catch up to a R.A.I.D. mini-jet? That has to be Falcon. He’s my friend— wait, he’s my friend—pain stabs through my brain. The pilot is maneuvering wildly to shake the pursuit. Bucky goes weightless as we flip over to roll into a dive, and he slams back to the deck as we level out. We go nose-up, and Bucky rolls all the way back to the ramp.

  The ramp.

  Steady, Sharon. Compartmentalizing my thoughts, I unbuckle my seat belt and stand. I take a secured-cargo harness strap and clip the snap hook to the D-ring on my combat harness.

  “What are you doing? Sharon, stop. What are you—?”

  “Shut up.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Shut up.’ I know how to get rid of the Falcon.”

  Faustus knows what I’m doing before I grab the handle to the emergency ramp. Unfortunately, he’s too smart to unbuckle his seat belt.

  Bucky, the only one in the compartment who isn’t strapped in, is sucked out before the ramp opens completely.

  Before I close the ramp, I see Falcon change his flight path to intercept Bucky’s plummet
ing body. It’s not much,but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.

  The pilot announces that we are at sufficient altitude for full passive-cloaking stealth mode. We are now invisible to S.H.I.E.L.D. radars and sensors. Doctor Faustus is not what you would call mollified. “

  What’s going on in the rest of your mind, Agent 13? Hmmm? Why would you release our prisoner?”

  Keep it simple and straightforward, Sharon. Don’t elaborate, and don’t allow any leakage of your real thoughts.

  “Because it worked. Falcon didn’t stop us, did he? And weren’t you going to kill the prisoner, anyway?”

  I force myself to think about Swedish furniture and ironing—anything but the truth. Faustus stares at me, unblinking. Minutes tick by before he says anything.

  “Yes, well—I have reviewed the permutations and extrapolations; all the alternative outcomes are highly unsatisfactory, and quite terminal. Your actions may have doomed us in Red Skull’s eyes, but that net result is possible to negotiate.”

  Keeping the relief off my face takes considerable will.

  INTERLUDE #11

  THE Red Skull is quite to the point.

  “You’re right, Faustus. I should have you taken out into the alley and shot you behind the ear.”

  “But long-term practicality trumps short-term emotionality?”

  They are walking through a corridor of a secure private level in Kronas Tower. The techs and security men who pass the man with the monocle and the man in the skull mask in the hall ignore them with good reason: the desire to stay among the living.

  “But failure, like losing the Winter Soldier…” the Red Skull hisses. “Most would have fled rather than bring me such news.”

  “A man must be responsible for his mistakes. How many grand plans have come to ashes because subordinates failed to pass negative results up the chain of command?”