The Death Of Captain America Read online

  Doctor Doom fingers a component on his workbench that was once part of a temporal-displacement machine. He knows the dangers of time travel—the multiple realities that it creates, and the disruption to the order of the cosmos.

  “That is not what I was, Skull. That is what I shall become. What we found in the Eisendorf excavation is an anomaly in the time stream. It is a node in an infinite loop that I shall tap into one day and unlock unimaginable secrets. The device you want shall be delivered to the Kronas lab. You understand it can be used only once?”

  The Red Skull smiles under his mask.

  “That will be all I require, von Doom, to ensure this Civil War is just the beginning of my enemy’s suffering.”

  THREE

  DEPUTY Director Maria Hill requested my presence on the Command and Operations Bridge of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, which I reckoned was a good thing. If a head honcho is planning on giving a subordinate a good drumming, or informing them of charges being brought or a demotion being handed down, they usually ask them into their office and close the door.

  Not to be confused with the attack bridge, which is top-side along one edge of the flight deck, the Command and Operations Bridge looms over the Internal Command Center just forward of the main hangar deck. It’s basically a giant catwalk that affords the command element an unimpeded 180-degree view forward through a Vibraniuminfused tempered glass “greenhouse,” and visual access to flat-screen situational displays and holographic real-time event models along the bulkheads.

  So there I am on the open catwalk with my boss, in plain view of hundreds of techs and crew-people who keep the massive attack platform humming and in the air. Deputy Director Hill has strategically placed herself on an elevated platform of the catwalk so I have to look up at her. The panorama of New York City from five thousand feet stretches vertiginously behind her, providing backlighting that diffuses the age-lines around her eyes. No fool, she. No idle chitchat, just straight to the point.

  “You are being reassigned, Agent 13. There will be no administrative actions, no reprimands in your personnel file, and your security clearance will remain at ultra-ultra. You’re very lucky that the shrink at Admin filed a glowingly positive report on your evaluation. The tea-leaf readers at Risk Assessment also gave you a clean bill of health despite your insubordination last month.”

  I figure I’m getting off a lot easier than I expected, so I keep my neutral face on while I thank her respectfully. But she can’t let it just lie there. No, that would be too easy.

  “It goes against my instincts, Sharon, but I’m going along with the consensus here. I’m considering this a one-time offense, and you are damn well going to make certain that it is.”

  Nice passive implied threat there. Neat move using my given name instead of my number. Bet she picked that up from a book on how to be a successful manager. She’s waiting for a reply, a reassurance of compliance or a gesture of obeisance. I’m just not in the mood to suck up, so I simply tell her that I was conflicted, but I’m not anymore. Just the facts, ma’am. She seems to take a quiet delight in informing me of my new assignment. Her eyes flick left and right, and she leans close to whisper, “You’re joining our new task force that will be hunting down Nick Fury.”

  Great. Now my job is tracking down my real boss, the guy I report to off-the-record, and my best chance for helping Steve get through the current situation. Talk about piling stressors on top of stressors. I’ve got a lot to keep close to the vest and under my hat right now, and I get one step closer to blowing it every second I spend in the company of people like Maria Hill and Tony Stark. I’m trying so hard to conjure up those chilling alpha waves I don’t notice there’s somebody standing in the corner of my tiny “stateroom” in the Bachelor Officer Quarters until after I enter and relock the door.

  “Anything wrong, Agent 13?”

  It’s Nick Fury. Or at least the Life Model Decoy of him they have walking around so all the brass with “ultra-ultra-plus” clearances can pretend he’s still around, and being all cooperative and such, when he’s actually hunkered down in an undisclosed location surrounded by passive jammers and not-so-passive booby traps. I have to watch myself here. Is this the L.M.D. that Winter Soldier turned? I know there are a number of Nick Fury decoys, but could this be one of the ones that isn’t co-opted and reporting back to the one-eyed Colonel? My answer is noncommittal. In fact, it’s a question.

  “Why are you here?”

  The robotic Fury raises its eye patch to reveal a retinal scanner.

  “I was scanning your quarters for surveillance devices. There is a need for my controller to have a meeting with you. Please step forward to confirm your identity.”

  I pass the test, the patch gets lowered, and the communications interface kicks in, turning the L.M.D. into a disconcerting Nick Fury-proxy with all the gestures and tics of the real thing.

  “Hey, Sharon, we got a real problem here.”

  “You’re telling me, Colonel Fury? I think she knows I’ve been in contact with you.”

  “Maria Hill doesn’t know squat. She suspects. But hell, she suspects everyone I was close to. She’s even got Dum Dum Dugan’s bathroom bugged. I wouldn’t wish that surveillance assignment on Baron Strucker.”

  Conversing with an L.M.D. in proxy mode is off-putting. I keep forgetting, and try to make eye contact. There’s also a slight time delay, which makes me suspect the encrypted signal is bouncing off a satellite. I cut him off abruptly.

  “With all due respect, you are not listening, sir. She just put me on the team that’s supposed to track you down. And now you send your double-agent L.M.D. to my B.O.Q. stateroom for an information exchange that could have been safer with a dead-drop?”

  The Fury duplicate curls his lip, raises one eyebrow, and scratches the back of his head. Somewhere, the real Fury is doing the exact same thing. He’s gesturing at me to sit down, like there’s a long story coming.

  “Kiddo, you’re the one who ain’t listening. I said we got a problem, but it’s not Maria Hill.”

  I sit.

  “First off, you still got that early model S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue neural-neutralizer pistol?”

  “Yes, it’s locked in a safe in my bedroom. Cut to the chase, Fury. Who is it?”

  “It’s Cap.”

  IT’S a long story, all right—full of dramatic tension, good intentions, and bad things happening to good people. Shakespeare would be proud. “Full of sound and Fury,” you might say, but signifying a lot. At the end of the story, he gives me instructions that make everything I’ve done for him so far seem like a walk in the sun. Not just bending the rules and insubordination—chargeable willful acts that violate three national-security acts, the U.N. Charter, several local statutes, and a dozen articles of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Uniform Code of Justice. But Fury reads me like a book, and he has me firmly behind the eight ball. Big Mama Thornton and Janis Joplin were right about what love is: It’s a ball and chain.

  Fury tells me there’s a bundle for me in my desk drawer before he shuts down communications and the L.M.D. reverts to being the not-so-exact duplicate that he is. I wait until the robotic Fury lets himself out of my stateroom before I dare to open the drawer. What I find there is what appears to be a remote-control unit that has a “safety” cover over a red button under an unlit light marked “armed.” The other item is a “black box” about the size of a USB memory stick.

  I spend an hour in-processing my new assignment. I get one printout of my official S.H.I.E.L.D. orders assigning me to my new duties; a new security card; a list of access codes, passwords, and mission-specific acronyms I have to memorize; and a reminder to be at the team operations briefing in one of the wardrooms at 0800 tomorrow. That’s the easy part. Finagling a trip-ticket and checking a S.H.I.E.L.D. Mark V Flying Car out of the hangar deck takes some doing. I have the black box I got from the Fury L.M.D.—I think Fury hands them out like burger-chain toy giveaways. It’s a nontraceable cross-channel jammer that amplifies n
earby wavelengths to overpower spy cams and mics. It will also spoof the GPS built into the Flying Car, as well as the one in my communicator. It tells Central Processing that I’m in Hoboken when I’m really in a part of downtown Brooklyn that hasn’t been infested with hipsters and still has a rundown warehouse district.

  I turned on the infrared dampers, Doppler deflectors, and passive cloaking as soon as I crossed the East River, so it’s not easy to spot my Flying Car as I creep past water tanks and cooling vents on the darkened rooftops. I really wish the S.H.I.E.L.D. techs had chosen a less conspicuous model than an Aston Martin Vanquish convertible. But at least the seats are comfortable, and the sound system takes no prisoners.

  The shockwave from the explosion buffets the car one second before I hear the big whomping thud. Shattered glass tinkles for a two-block radius. My GPS destination is the blast’s epicenter. Right where I’m supposed to find Cap. I have to fight the controls to stabilize the Flying Car since it switches over to helicopter-style inputs while in hovering mode, turning the steering wheel into the cyclic and the fake gearshift into the collective. Above eighty mph forward speed, the controls revert to fixed-wing mode. I position myself where I can just see down into the alley, but keep most of the vehicle hidden from any eyes down there. A steel door has blown out, and black smoke is billowing from inside. A single figure staggers out of the burning building.

  A figure with a big, round shield.

  But there are others leaping down into the alley from fire escapes and running in from the street. Menacing figures wearing armored suits and brandishing overkill weaponry.

  The Cape-Killer Squad is too intent on their target to see me. Their target is Cap, and they’ve got him cornered. I personally doubt they have a chance against Cap since Winter Soldier was able to wipe up the street with them. But that incident has made the Cape-Killers jumpy and their already itchy trigger fingers even itchier. The squad facing Cap is a reinforced heavy-weapons unit authorized to load 60mm “Hulk-Buster” rounds and hyper-velocity armor-piercing micro-projectiles. Their built-in loudspeakers echo in the alley.

  “Captain America, you are ordered to surrender by authorization of orders from the president! Put the shield down, and raise both hands palms forward and open! You are already injured, so don’t force us to open fire.”

  What? He’s wounded? I have to bank severely to get a clearer view. There’s blood trickling from his nose, and he’s unsteady on his feat. Those are symptoms of concussion, inner-ear imbalance, and worse. He was in an enclosed space during an explosion, so he’s got temporary tinnitus degrading his hearing. There’s a good chance he can’t understand the orders and ultimatums he’s being given. Cap answers the Cape-Killers, but doesn’t comply.

  “I’ve had this conversation with you people a few times already. Hasn’t Director Hill shown you the videos of those encounters?”

  It really looks like the fools are going to unload on Cap. Two or three are yelling at the same time, which is never a good sign in a group of nervous armed men. I roll out over the alley, point the nose towardthe ground, and goose the throttle while I grab the “remote” I got from the Fury L.M.D. I flip open the safety cover, which makes the “armed” light glow; point it at the Cape-Killers; and punch the red button—all while plummeting straight down. Just before impact, I execute another roll and pull back hard on the wheel, which brings me level and burns off drop velocity. The Cape-Killers are all twitching on the alley pavement like a bunch of dying cockroaches.

  I know I don’t have to slow down for Cap to be able to hop on board. I floor it as soon as I feel the jolt of him dropping into the shotgun seat and grab altitude. I tell him there’re more armored suits on the way, and we have to make ourselves scarce. He’s looking back, concerned.

  “What did you do to them? Are they hurt?”

  That’s just like him. No hello kiss, no “thanks for saving me, sweetie.” But worrying about the welfare of hard men who were ready to kill him, that’s what tops his priority list. I wave the remote at him, with the safety reengaged.

  “They’re just stunned and unconscious. Electromagnetic overload pulse—broadcast directly into their suits via their commo systems. Fury got his hands on one of their helmets and reverse-engineered a way to disable them without killing the grunts inside.”

  He pulls off his cowl, and his eyes are clear and bright as they stare back at me. If I had to name the shade of blue they are, I’d say “uncompromising.” I’d like nothing better than to be driving through the night with Steve in an open-top sports car, but that’s in another reality. In this one, I’m aiding and abetting a fugitive in a twenty million dollar piece of classified hardware. I keep my eyes on the altimeter and artificial-horizon indicator, but I can feel those uncompromising eyes drilling into the side of my head.

  “Is that why you flew to my rescue?” he asks. “Because Nick Fury ordered you to?”

  I’m annoyed and don’t want to answer. I ask my own question.

  “What happened back there before the explosion?”

  He’s not annoyed. He’s more disappointed—which, coming from Cap, is like fifty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails. I swallow hard and listen.

  “I’d been spinning my wheels too long, and I let this whole conflict steer me off course. I made up my mind it wouldn’t take me over, wouldn’t let me accept an imposed status quo, wouldn’t let me ignore my duty. Back before the war—the big war—I stood up in a windowless room in Fort Hamilton, faced the flag, and took an oath to ‘defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.’ There is no expiration date on that oath, no escape clause, no rider of ‘limited liability.’ I don’t care if I’m the only one who sees it that way. It’s my own weight to carry—to paraphrase Father Flanagan, ‘It ain’t heavy, it’s my country.’

  “So I said to hell with Tony and S.H.I.E.L.D., and all of them. The Red Skull is my priority, and I aim to keep him square in my sights. That psychopath made his televised statement a week before Nitro blew up a whole neighborhood in Stamford and killed all those innocent civilians, a week before Tony and Reed Richards decided to build a gulag for noncompliant super heroes in the Negative Zone. Organizing the resistance to the Registration Act blinded me, but a one-eyed man saw everything more clearly. Nick Fury never let up on his hunt for Red Skull, and this is the first time in a dog’s age that he’s picked up anything resembling a scent. Fury intercepted a transmission from A.I.M. to the Skull that originated in the warehouse back there in Brooklyn.”

  I feel compelled to butt in.

  “Advanced Idea Mechanics used to be part of Hydra, but split off in the sixties. They’re anarchistic tech-savants, one-stop shopping for state-of-the-art nasty hardware. But they can’t extrapolate the results of their actions. Red Skull has been a frequent client of theirs.”

  Immediately, I feel foolish for having told him something he already knows. Why do I keep trying to impress him? I want to bang my head on the steering wheel.

  “A tenuous connection,” he says, “but it was all I had, so it was worth following up. I got there to find that Nick wasn’t the only one who overheard that message. I caught the rear end of a Hydra assault force entering through the alley door. They only left two guards at the door, so I bounced my shield off their heads, appropriated one of their acid-green pajama-suits, and took a stroll through the premises. My guess is that Hydra was taking advantage of the ongoing chaos to make a power grab, and a rival group like A.I.M. was an obvious target. Hydra was too late, though. The facility was deserted and stripped. All the burn boxes were still smoking, as were the mainframes. Distinctive stench of thermite in the air, and the drop pits full of acid were still bubbling.

  “The last place they would wipe would be the security station, and that’s where I lucked out. The timed self-destruct module had failed. One of the fatal flaws in A.I.M. technology is overengineering—and the more complexity you have, the more chances for things to go wrong. Playbacks of security vid
eos from labs and workstations were up and running on the bank of displays. None of the doors to those facilities was wide enough for M.O.D.O.K., so who was working here? And why was he or she reporting to Red Skull? I was pretty shocked when a face I knew appeared on one of the screens, but the room filled up with Hydra goons at that moment.”

  “They spotted my non-Hydra red boots right away, and it was all downhill from there—mainly for them. There were hordes of them, crawling out of the woodwork like green-and-yellow termites. They’re very good at shouting slogans, but not so good at hand-to-hand combat. Opening fire on full automatic in closed quarters was not to their advantage, either. When you’re grossly outnumbered, friendly fire is your friend. Their leaders are fitted out with Semtex underwear and have orders to self-destruct if they determine a mission has been compromised. If he hadn’t announced his intentions, I doubt I would have been able to get my shield up in time.”

  I tell Cap that Fury had found out that the A.I.M. cell got tipped off and flew the coop. Fury also had hard intel that Hydra was on the scene, but he had no way to warn Cap because all their communication is through dead-drops. Sending a backup was his only choice.

  “But why send you?” he asks. “I thought you were conflicted?”

  “I got off the fence after they blew a hole in Goliath’s chest.”

  Cap stays silent until after we cross the East River and make our way over the rooftops of Tribeca. I know a few dark alleys off Hudson Street where I can drop him off without being seen. I switch to hover mode and flare in to touch down lightly. Cap pulls his cowl back on but doesn’t open the door.

  “Those Cape-Killers showed up awfully fast after the explosion.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing. He goes on.

  “Tony and Reed have cut unholy alliances with some pretty nasty characters. Bullseye and Green Goblin are world-class psychotic sociopaths…”

  There’s real anguish in his eyes when he asks, “You don’t think they’d use Hydra, do you?”