The Death Of Captain America Read online

  I level with him. What else can you do with Captain America?

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I didn’t think any of you would have done half the things you’ve done recently. Where does it end, Steve? After you and Tony Stark beat each other to death?”

  “It won’t come to that,” he says as he steps away from me, out into the alley. “You know, I found out something important before Hydra interrupted me. I know who was using that A.I.M. facility. And if he’s in league with Red Skull, we’ve got bigger problems than any of my differences with Iron Man.”

  I watch Captain America walk away, not knowing this is the last I will see of him until after he sacrifices his freedom to end the Civil War.

  INTERLUDE #3

  THE Kronas Corporation Tower is an artless pile of steel and glass that is to architecture what fife-and-drum corps are to music. Its lack of a pleasing aesthetic is intentional. It is meant to project power and authority without standing out too much from its neighboring skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan. Hidden behind the gleaming façade are areas and entire floors sealed off from the casual visitor or average employee. Armored, soundproofed, and shielded by electronic baffles, they house armories, training halls, military-style command centers, and advanced-technology laboratories.

  In one of those laboratories tucked into an unmarked level between the twelfth and fourteenth floors, the Red Skull is giving an introductory tour to the new director of research, who had formerly been ensconced at an A.I.M. facility in Brooklyn.

  The best that money can buy, Herr Zola,” the Red Skull grins. “You will be able to finish your work here under our direct protection.”

  The holographic face projected inside the chest of the robotic body answers in a computer-generated voice.

  “I prefer to operate under my own supervision, but this will suffice for now. I note your use of the collective pronoun. Am I speaking to Red Skull, Aleksander Lukin, or the pair of you in concert?”

  The death’s-head grin never wavers, but the tone of voice grows colder.

  “The Red Skull is firmly in charge here, but Lukin is necessary for autonomous bodily functions. He is no more than a building superintendant locked in the utility basement.” He pauses briefly, and the sham camaraderie returns. “Since the nature of some of your work here is related to your…condition—that is, the process by which you transfer your consciousness from one robotic body to another; perhaps we can discuss the actual mechanics of that process some time over a glass of schnapps and a vial of gear lubricant?”

  The mechanical construct that houses Arnim Zola’s intellect swivels the psychotronic ESP box that sits where a head would be on a human. The single unblinking red visual sensor in the middle of the box focuses on the Red Skull.

  “Ah, but we know the discussion you pursue will be about your own condition, Herr Schmidt.” The robotic voice manages to convey a modicum of Schadenfreude. “But I do not reveal data essential to my continued existence. I thought I had made that clear to you many years ago when you were funding my work in Central America. You may taste of what I create for you, but you shall not be privy to the recipe.”

  The Red Skull assumes the face of acceptance, but what is inside his head is another matter.

  “Your terms are quite satisfactory, as long as I get what is needed. Your importance to this project is paramount. My master plan would not get very far without the unique genius of Arnim Zola.”

  The face in the robot’s thorax never blinks. The lips move, but the jaw does not.

  “And what is the plan this time, Johann?”

  “We’re going to destroy Captain America and every-thing he holds dear!”

  “Oh, that one again?”

  FOUR

  RECENT events have played out so drastically that my perception of time has taken a real beating.

  I can barely believe that Steve Rogers, the hero known around the world as Captain America, has been incarcerated like a common criminal for all these weeks. It makes me angry, sad, and ashamed all at once. I’m angry with the government for currying to paranoia, sad that the citizenry let it happen, and ashamed of myself for not doing more to stand up for the man I love.

  America has a long history of turning its back on its heroes after their shelf lives expire. The Rough Riders who followed Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill came home with malaria and ended up quarantined in a tent hospital at the far end of Long Island, where hundreds died while wealthy summer residents whined about being indisposed by sick soldiers. The doughboys who survived the trenches and mustard gas of World War I marched on Washington when Congress reneged on the bonuses they were promised. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to disperse the marchers, and American soldiers did so by opening fire on the veterans. GIs who were sprayed with Agent Orange in Vietnam and exposed to toxic substances during the Gulf War waited years for settlements, and many died before they received a single penny. So much for heroes, huh?

  Every American knows the story of Steve Rogers—the skinny, sickly kid who grew up on the mean streets of New York City back during the Great Depression. How he saw the best and worst this great country had to offer. How he sat, enraged, watching newsreels of the Nazi Blitzkrieg devastating Europe. How he was declared “unfit” and designated “4-F” when he tried to enlist.

  We know how a general in charge of a secret project code-named “Operation: Rebirth” recognized the courage, determination, and honor within that young Steve Rogers. That general, Chester Phillips, asked him to take a risk far greater than parachuting behind enemy lines or storming a beachhead into fields of intersecting machine-gun fire. Steve was supposed to be the first of a whole army of super-soldiers made possible by a serum invented by Dr. Abraham Erskine. That serum had never been tested on a human; for all anybody knew, the side effects could be lethal. That didn’t put Steve off one bit. It just made him more determined to go ahead and take the risk if it meant possibly saving thousands of American soldiers’ lives.

  We all know that everything went wrong when a fanatical Nazi spy sabotaged Operation: Rebirth and shot Dr. Erskine dead before the scientist had a chance to record the latest changes to the formula and treatment, rendering it impossible to recreate. Steve Rogers would be the country’s first and only super-soldier, the sole hero who had to march on in place of the many others who might have been.

  I’m standing in Foley Square in Lower Manhattan in sight of the long steps that lead up to the classical Grecian pillars of the Federal Courthouse. A crowd has been gathering there since dawn. It’s what you might call a polarized gathering. Some are holding signs calling Cap a traitor. Others have preprinted placards reading, “FREE CAPTAIN AMERICA.” Most of the truly hateful signs are misspelled: “Hang the Trayter!”

  Some in the crowd want blood. They sat in front of their home entertainment centers watching the Civil War on plasma screens with surround sound while ingesting great quantities of cholesterol and sugar. They saw the live telecast of the climactic battle during which Captain America threw down his mask, gave up the resistance, and surrendered to the authorities. Their pointy little heads had been inflamed by AM-radio pundits, and now they’re demanding “justice” with all the moral authority of a lynch mob.

  Others remember the Captain America who fought the good fight and never budged an inch on his core beliefs. They respected the Captain America who could not be swayed by fickle public opinion or bought by special interests. They loved the Captain America who clearly put We the People before himself.

  I’m firmly in the latter camp, but I’m so far ahead of the pack that they can’t even see my back. I’m not standing here waiting to catch a glimpse of a tarnished icon as they parade him through the “perp walk” to face arraignment before a federal judge. I’m standing here armed and ready. I am determined that Captain America is not going to spend another day behind bars.

  I hear Nick Fury in my earpiece, telling me it’s a risky plan, but it’s going to work. I tell him I don�
��t need a pep talk. I need backup I can count on.

  “I’ve got a real hotshot watching your six, kiddo.”

  “One guy? He’d better be good, Colonel…”

  “Next best thing to Cap himself.”

  I’m thinking there’s a big gap between Cap and second best, but my boat has sunk before it got out of the slip if I can’t trust Fury’s judgment. So I wait, and the crowd gets antsy. There are senior citizens here who were probably kids when the newsreels of Cap were playing in all the theaters. Their opinions were formed when they were young, and they aren’t about to change them at this late date.

  Movie newsreels were long gone before I was born, but my Aunt Peggy had a 35mm projector. She’d wheel it into her living room, and we’d sit there on winter evenings watching reel after reel of “The March of the News” in grainy black and white—me in my Doc Dentons, and her in a pink chenille robe. There wasn’t a lot of footage of Cap in real action—for obvious reasons—but there were plenty of shots of him talking to the troops before a big mission or visiting the wounded in field hospitals. The looks on the faces of those war-weary GIs told the whole story. They all knew Cap would take a bullet for any of them. They all knew he was one of their own.

  It wasn’t until years later that I found out Aunt Peggy had worked with Cap when she was in France with the Resistance and briefly fallen in love, the only way you can with bombs and artillery shells hitting all around—with wild abandon. All I knew when I was a kid was that she liked to watch those old newsreels over and over, even though they made her cry.

  I didn’t understand those tears until I was a young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and I came face-to-face with the man she’d lost. He moved like an Olympic athlete and fought like a heavyweight champ. And for all the combat skill and awesome power he exuded, you could still look in his eyes and see nothing but compassion and honesty. Like Peggy, I fell in love immediately—even though I knew that life would take us down different paths, and whatever happiness we could have would be offset by pain and tears.

  My mind gets snapped back to the present by a ripple of expectancy in the crowd. A superhuman-detention van is coming down the street between two armored cars. It’s trailed by unmarked SUVs full of U.S. marshals.

  A door that could have come off a bank vault opens at the rear of the van, and it takes two burly guards to help Cap down because the strength-dampening restraints they’ve put on him make it an effort just to walk. They’ve also replaced his Vibranium-laced costume with a cheap imitation that won’t stop their bullets if they need to get tough with their prisoner.

  The press weenies are elbowing their way to the front, cameras held high, and shouting out questions—

  “Was Tony Stark right?”

  “Are you supporting the Registration Act now?”

  “Have you resigned as Captain America?”

  Cap is half a head taller than the biggest marshal, so I can see his blond head moving within the cordon of blue jackets heading from the van to the courthouse steps. I begin to shove my way closer. I’ve got the authority of my S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform to help clear the way. Part of the mob is chanting “traitor!” A young girl yells, “We love you, Cap!” Something goes flying through the air. It’s a rotten tomato. It hits Steve right in his face. He can’t wipe it away because of the restraints. All he can do is look back in the direction it came from. There’s no hate in that look, just a calm sense of pity. The marshals are alert now. Their eyes scan the crowd, and their hands rest on the butts of their pistols. One of them looks directly at me. I shift sideways, ducking down, but continue to press forward. I pop up to get my bearings and see Steve shifting his gaze from over his shoulder to the back of the marshal in front of him. Crowd density is thicker the closer I get—I’m less than ten feet away, and I can see that what Cap has been staring at on the marshal’s back is a red laser spotting dot. The kind of dot that sits on the point-of-aim of a high-power sniper rifle.

  I fill my lungs to shout out, but Steve yells, “Look out,” and throws himself forward to cover that red dot with his own body. I hear the wet slap of the bullet hitting Steve in the back before the rifle shot echoes across Foley Square,and red blood sprays across blue marshals’ jackets on the white courthouse steps.

  “Sniper!”

  I don’t know whether it’s me shouting that, or somebody else. There’s an eerie second of silence, then pandemonium. The U.S. Marshals, NYPD, and Homeland Security converge on Cap as everybody else flees in panic. My black-and-white S.H.I.E.L.D. outfit marks me as authorized law enforcement as a protective wall of blue gets thrown around Cap. They all let me through, and I’m just a few feet away. A marshal shouts out, “The sniper’s up there,” and points across the square. Everybody turns to look in the direction of that pointing finger except me. I’m focused on Steve.

  Three more shots ring out.

  I see Steve diffused through a fine red mist. He sees me now and calls my name, pink bubbles at his nostrils and scarlet froth at the corners of his mouth. I’m holding him and blinking away tears. Arterial blood is pumping out of new bullet holes. I try to recall my trauma training. I need a piece of plastic to plug the sucking chest wound. Why isn’t anybody helping? Why is Steve looking at me that way? Why does everything feel so wrong?

  The ambulance siren is getting close. One of the marshals has taken off his T-shirt and is trying to stop the bleeding with it. Steve is struggling to say something. I tell him to shush, don’t make the effort, save your energy. I realize he’s telling me to make sure the crowd gets away out of the field of fire. He’s bleeding out on the courthouse steps, and he’s worried about others.

  “Hang in there, kid.” It’s Nick Fury in my earpiece. “You stick with Steve. The EMTs will say you can’t ride in the ambulance with him, but you flash your S.H.I.E.L.D. ID and tell them you have clearance.”

  “What went wrong, Colonel Fury? The plan—”

  “No plan survives the first five seconds of combat, Sharon. I sicced your backup on the shooter; there’s somebody else on that case, too. You keep yourself together and make sure the bad guys don’t try to get in an insurance shot at the hospital.”

  I’m holding Steve’s hand, and I don’t plan to let go.

  FIVE

  THE man who had been leaning against the lamppost on the other side of Foley Square when the shots rang out looks like he could be a mob enforcer, an undercover cop, or an incredibly fit hipster. What he is, is an ex-KGB assassin.

  James “Bucky” Barnes came dressed for action in his Winter Soldier togs, with a loose black leather jacket worn on top for discretion’s sake. He’s sprinting up the fire stairs of the building across the street from the ‘30s office tower in which he saw the muzzle flash. Nick Fury had told him he was just there as backup, and Sharon Carter was the main act. There was supposed to be a plan. He taps his earpiece and hopes it sounds irritating on the other end.

  “Is this your plan, Fury?” he asks as he kicks open the roof door.

  “No, damn it, Bucky—this is something else. You saw the flash? The shooter is up in—”

  “I saw it. I’m on it.”

  “I’ll check in with you later, kid. I gotta talk Sharon through maintaining security on Cap on the way to the ER at Mercy.”

  Emergency room? Steve’s not dead. There’s still a chance. There’s still hope.

  Bucky builds up speed racing across the rooftop, then pushes off from the parapet. Forward velocity and body streamlining carries him two stories down and across the street to crash through the window where he’d spotted the sniper firing. He rolls to his feet with a locked-and-loaded .45 in his fist.

  Nothing.

  He rotates, holding the pistol in a modified Weaver combat stance, visually searching the room in quadrants as per his training. There’s a scoped 7.62X54mm Dragunov (SVD) rifle left carelessly on the floor of the vacant office. The shooter has taken the spent cartridge with him, but the stink of smokeless powder is still in the air. Fury’s voice cr
ackles in the earpiece.

  “Talk to me, kid.”

  “The shooter policed his brass and got in the wind. Can you access a satellite and track his exit? There’s a broken skylight right above me.”

  “I’ve got that working right now. Will get back to you when I have him pinpointed.”

  A winged blur in a red-and-white costume hurtles down from the smashed skylight, knocks the pistol out of Bucky’s hand, grabs him by the collar, and almost takes him down to the floor. Bucky holds his ground and pushes back, ready to take back the initiative, but sees that his attacker is the Falcon—one of the Avengers, and another longtime former partner of Captain America.

  “I would have thought judging by appearances was beneath you, Falcon. Is that what you learned from Steve?”

  The red gloves tighten on Bucky’s leather collar, but not too tight. There’s hesitation now. Some thought damping the rage. Bucky points with his head at the rifle and the smashed-in window.

  “If I was the assassin, why would I enter this place by crashing though the window? Why would I still be here with the smoking weapon while the spent cartridge is missing? And why wouldn’t I have squeezed the trigger on my second pistol by now?”

  It dawns on Falcon that what he feels pressing into his side is the muzzle of a .45 automatic identical to the one he knocked out of Bucky’s hand moments before. The two men had both thought of Steve Rogers as an older brother, and neither wants to be a Cain to the other’s Abel. Falcon lets go and steps back. Suspicion has not completely left his face.

  “I had my own memory tinkered with, so I think I have an inkling about where you’ve been. And Cap always stood up for you, even when it looked like you’d gone over to the other side. I’m not pushing my own issues with you if we’re on the same wavelength here.”

  Falcon watches Bucky closely as he thumbs up the ambidextrous safety catch on the .45 and holsters it. He notices the hammer is left cocked and locked over a live round in the chamber. Bucky retrieves his primary .45 from where it fell on the floor. He notes that Bucky drops the clip, inspects the breech, performs the safety checks to make sure the sear wasn’t damaged by the impact before he reloads it, reengages the safety, and tucks the .45 back into the empty holster. A good soldier never deviates from weapon procedures. Is Bucky still a good soldier? Cap thought so. That will have to do for now.