The Death Of Captain America Page 6

  “So what’s this about handing in your papers at S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

  That’s the first thing he asks. I don’t have to reply. He can see in my face that it’s true.

  “Sharon, you’re one of the best field agents on their roster. Steve wouldn’t have wanted you to throw your career away.”

  I tell him I don’t think I can stomach taking orders from Tony Stark, and I’m just no good anymore. He says it wasn’t my fault. Inside, I’m screaming, “Yes, it was my fault.” And when he tells me there was nothing I could have done, I almost blurt out everything that’s bottled up inside me.

  It’s Rick Jones who saves me from spilling the beans. He walks over, beaming, telling me I haven’t changed at all. Rick had been a substitute “Bucky” for only a short time, but he had remained close to Cap ever since. Rick had even been a pallbearer at the funeral; in his eulogy, Sam had pointed him out as one of the few who knew what it was like to have called Captain America a partner. Sam, concerned and sincere as always, asks Rick how he’s holding up. There’s grief in his eyes, but Rick tells Sam he’s good and apologizes for interrupting.

  Sam Wilson takes the opportunity to make his escape.

  “I’m just on my way out. Sharon, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  He’s gone before I can think of anything to say, and I’m left fumbling for words to fill the awkward silence. The rule in these situations is to avoid eye contact, mumble, and take deep breaths. Rick throws away the rules as he looks directly at me and says, “He really loved you. You knew that, right?”

  In a paranoid moment, it seems like all the conversation has stopped in the bar, and everyone has turned to await my reaction. I’m afraid to look around to confirm this. It takes all the control I have to answer him.

  “Yes. I knew. Thank you for being…a friend.”

  I make my excuses, gather my shreds of dignity, and walk as calmly as I can to the ladies room. I lean against the sink and fight back the sobs. When I look in the mirror, the words come back to me. “Doctor Faustus says remember.”

  What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?

  “Damn it. Damn it all to hell.”

  INTERLUDE #5

  IN the executive penthouse suite atop the Kronas Corporation Tower, Sin aims her pistol at the flat-screen TV that takes up half a wall. A news channel is broadcasting live from the candlelight vigil in Central Park where thousands have gathered to pay tribute to Captain America. The newscaster notes that hundreds of similar vigils are taking place across the country, and the crowds represent advocates and opponents of the Superhuman Registration Act. The man taken into custody at the scene is referred to as the “lone gunman” or the “alleged assassin.” Sin screams at the screen.

  “His name is Brock! Give Crossbones some damn credit, why don’t you?”

  The Red Skull tells his excitable offspring to put her gun away and assures her that Crossbones’ sacrifice will be rewarded. She pouts and does as she is told. Sin may be a willful child, but she is aware of consequences—her father’s views on parenting owing more to Dr. Moreau than to Dr. Spock.

  “I’ve chosen my subordinates for the rest of your plan,” she says as she leaves the room. “I’m ready to move forward.”

  The feelings the Red Skull holds for Sin have nothing to do with love or paternal duty—more like the pride of ownership he feels for certain effective weapons. He has no qualms about putting her aside once she is no longer of use to him. Sentimentality is for the weak. Sin’s mother had been chosen for her breeding qualities, and Red Skull had felt nothing but anger when she died birthing a daughter instead of the male heir she was expected to bring forth.

  After descending on his private elevator to the secret lab, Red Skull strolls the corridors, confident there are no unauthorized visitors to this, the most secure section of Kronas Tower. He remembers the pleasurable perambulations he took through his research labs during WWII—the smell of blood, the screams. He wasn’t sharing a body with an ex-Russian general then. He didn’t have to expend energy keeping another consciousness at bay.

  Doctor Faustus steps out of the lavatory as Red Skull comes down the hallway to the research suites. It does not escape the Red Skull’s attention that Faustus used a paper towel to open the door, but he still does not deign to shake the man’s hand.

  “I was just on my way to see you,” Faustus says as he shoves the moist towel into the pocket of his pin-striped suit. “I was wondering if you will be in my office for the session tonight?”

  “I will be where I need to be, when I decide to be there, Faustus.”

  “Don’t ask for my help, then spit in my face.”

  “If I didn’t need you, I’d rip your guts out through your throat for speaking to me like that.”

  “If we didn’t need each other, I wouldn’t speak to you at all.”

  The blast-proof sliding doors to Arnim Zola’s lab open with a hydraulic hiss, and a robotic voice cuts off the exchange.

  “Forgive me for interrupting this battle of egos, but perhaps you would care to see the progress I have made before you break out the dueling sabers?”

  Red Skull and Doctor Faustus follow Arnim Zola through the lab. They pass a row of his identical robot bodies—all plugged into maintenance and monitoring devices, but none displaying the holographic face that marks Zola’s inhabitance. Zola sometimes transfers his “self” into a spare body so he can fine-tune the one he usually “wears.”

  Zola opens an armored door and leads his guests into the chamber where Doctor Doom’s device is throbbing and emitting pulses of blue light. Only a short while ago, it had been an inert mass of metal, glass tubing, and wires. Now, it is radiating an energy field that distorts light around it, creating the illusion that the room is tilting.

  “You have cracked the device’s inner workings?” asks the Red Skull.

  Zola adjusts a setting to damp the 60-cycle hum. The proximity of the device is causing the hologram on his chest to flicker.

  “Not entirely, Herr Schmidt. But what Victor von Doom can invent, I can reverse-engineer, given proper time and resources.”

  Zola, being entirely robotic, does not experience the vertigo and nausea the device is inflicting on the two humans. He continues, unaware of their distress.

  “Once I totally understand how it functions, I can adapt the technology to suit our needs. Where Doom sought only isolated moments, all of the past and future shall be open to us.”

  Red Skull trips the switch that turns off the device and gathers his composure. He feels better already, but Faustus continues to look out of sorts. Skull snaps at Zola. “Our needs? Us?”

  A relay clicks somewhere inside Arnim Zola’s mechanical frame, and an “obsequious filter” is activated on the speech generator.

  “Excuse me, leader. Your needs, of course.”

  Red Skull takes Doctor Faustus by the arm and leads him out of the lab.

  “Come, my good doctor. General Lukin and I have a meeting this afternoon with the secretary of the treasury,and your presence is required.”

  SEVEN

  PASSENGERS on the Lexington Avenue subway line are unaware that the last stop of the downtown #6 train is the beginning of a track loop that passes through the abandoned City Hall station that has been closed to the public since 1945. Part of the station has been bricked off from the still-operational tracks, but the power lines that serve the station are the same that power the signals and switches, so the lights in the station still work. It is now the scene of the secret wake for Captain America—the one held by the “other side” in the Civil War, those who couldn’t go to the funeral or the official wake.

  Falcon had changed into his costume when he left the bar, flown downtown, and entered the subway via a maintenance access door in the basement of the Municipal Building. Unlike the official wake, the mourners at the secret wake are mostly dressed in their crime-fighting togs, but without their masks. No imported beer on draft, ten-year-old single
malts, or platters of crudités here. It’s strictly a BYOB affair with six-packs in coolers and chips being passed around still in the bag.

  Luke Cage is there with his wife, Jessica, and their newborn. He is about to say something to Falcon, but he has to wait until an uptown train finishes squealing past on the tracks behind the bricks.

  “I saw your funeral speech on TV, Sam. Thought it was something special. Wish I could have said a few words myself.”

  “That was a bum deal, Luke. It wasn’t right—not having you all there. It was worse at the other wake. Felt all wrong, you know?”

  “Everything about this feels all wrong. Like seeing your name on the list of registered heroes.”

  “That was the ticket price for having my say. Otherwise, it would have been nothing but the people who were tracking him down. And Tony Stark…”

  “That was weird, Sam. Seeing Stark break down like that. Considering—”

  Danny Rand, a.k.a “Iron Fist,” gets in his two cents.

  “I almost felt bad for him, but then I remembered that it was Stark who sent me to that concentration camp in the Negative Zone.”

  “I don’t have a lot of love for Tony Stark right now,” Falcon says. “But he wasn’t the one who killed Cap.”

  Luke Cage isn’t convinced. There’s more than a little antagonism in his voice.

  “Tony Stark set Steve Rogers up like a duck in a shooting gallery with that perp walk. I don’t know if Stark meant to or not, but it sure looked like Cap lost heart after that face-off with Iron Man. Why else would he take a hit like that?”

  Peter Parker drops down from his perch near the top of a pillar. He’s got on his black Spider-Man suit, and he has his own opinions.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve been over the footage a thousand times. Ran enhancement programs and watched them again. Cap spots the laser dot on the marshal in front of him, turns, and somehow figures out where the shooter is. Then, he deliberately pushes the marshal out of the line of fire and takes his place under the laser dot. That was the first shot. The crowd went nuts, and that’s when the rest of the shooting started. With the strength-dampening restraints, it probably took everything Cap had to just walk up the steps, but he was still a hero right up to the end.”

  The station goes quiet long enough for everyone to hear water dripping from the overhead air vents. Spider-Woman breaks the silence by raising a bottle of Merlot.

  “Is it time, then?”

  Plastic cups are topped off and raised in salute. The questioning eyes all turn to Falcon, who has no hesitations about what to say.

  “Here’s to Steve Rogers. He was one of the first of us, and he will always be the best of us.”

  “The best of us,” is the response that echoes around the station. As the cups are drained, a cell phone chirps. Sam Wilson answers and stares at the text message. Luke Cage asks whether there’s someplace else he has to be.

  “Yes, damn it.”

  The Falcon pulls on his mask and leaves his second wake of the night.

  THE bar is on the other side of town and is the sort of establishment Sam Wilson would feel uncomfortable walking into while wearing street clothes. It’s the type of place that sells beer in longneck bottles and shots of cheap rye to an all-male clientele that is blue-collar, disaffected, and white. The bartender is leaving, shouting into his cell phone at a 911 operator as Falcon enters. The dust is still settling, and the patrons who remain conscious are moaning or whimpering. The television above the bar is playing a rebroadcast of the funeral.

  Bucky is leaning on the pool table staring at the blood on his gloved hands. Falcon rolls the eight ball across the table and sinks it in the side pocket. Bucky looks up, and there are tears in his eyes.

  “Damn, Bucky. When Fury said you were in the deep doo-doo, I didn’t think you’d be taking out the entire bar. Please tell me it’s a Hydra front, or an A.I.M. monitoring station…”

  “Nope. They were just morons.”

  Falcon’s gaze drifts up to the television.

  “That’s what started it,” Bucky explains. “I came in here to watch it and have a beer. I just wanted to see my best friend’s funeral. The guy I hadn’t had the guts to face for the past year. And now he was gone, and I couldn’t even show my face when they put him in the ground. The bartender called it a ‘freakin’ tragedy.’ The guy two stools over said it was more of a cover-up, that Cap wasn’t really dead. Then, a big lug with a Navy tattoo who was chalking up a cue-stick pipes in saying the tragedy was burying him in Arlington—that it was for heroes, not traitors. When I told him to say it again, he started parroting that talk-radio line of tripe—that Cap turned against the will of the American people and dishonored the uniform he wore.

  “I sort of lost it right then, Sam.”

  Falcon doesn’t say a word.

  “Yeah, I know what Cap would have done. He’d have tried to reason with the guy. He’d have told him just because the majority of citizens believe something doesn’t make it right. He’d have said the majority of Americans once believed in slavery and opposed women’s suffrage. And he’d have walked away from the confrontation before it went physical.

  “But I’m not Cap.”

  Bucky looks around at the devastation he has caused.

  “I can’t help thinking Steve would be ashamed of me right now, and that makes me miss him more than anything. Through the worst days of the war—when I wanted to throw out the rule book; when I was looking into the abyss, and the abyss was looking right back at me—Cap was my conscience, my moral compass, and my confessor. And now I have nothing.”

  Falcon takes Bucky by the arm and turns him toward the door.

  “We need to get you out of here, Bucky. The cops will be here any minute.”

  As Bucky lays a roll of bills on the bar, Tony Stark’s attempt at a eulogy gets replayed on TV for the umpteenth time that night. Bucky can’t tear his eyes from the screen and Stark muttering, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” breaking into tears, and walking away from the podium. Falcon is tugging hard on his arm, but Bucky isn’t moving.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  The man who used to be Captain America’s teen sidekick acknowledges to himself that he can’t bring Steve Rogers back to life. He can’t be the hero Cap wanted him to be. But he knows he can do one thing.

  He can kill Tony Stark.

  The man who used to be the Soviet Union’s most skilled assassin lets the hero in the red-and-white costume lead him to the door as sirens approach in the night.

  “Okay. Let’s roll,” Bucky says.

  EIGHT

  THE line for the new Captain America exhibit at the American History Museum in Washington, D.C., stretches around the block. Tony Stark had been on network news telecasts in the morning announcing that the uniform and shield used by Steve Rogers would be on permanent display there, and that there would be no “new” Captain America. The title, the mantle, and the equipment were to be retired.

  The man who had been closer to Captain America than anybody else on the planet has stood in the queue for more than two hours. The security is tight, but Bucky is not worried. Nick Fury’s upgrade on his prosthetic arm included a jamming device for metal detectors, an airborne-molecule neutralizer for dogs, and a false-image array for X-ray machines. Nothing short of a pat down will reveal the two pistols, combat knife, grenades, and other lethal devices concealed about his person.

  He enters the exhibit room in a controlled group of ten. Guards are posted to prevent visitors from touching the bulletproof glass that encases the artifacts. The room was intended to convey the respectful atmosphere of a shrine, but a trace of carnival sideshow has infiltrated the design.

  Bucky is still seething from the remarks Tony Stark made on television—such hypocrisy and gall, after what he did, to call Cap “the finest man I ever met.” And to say it was “a national tragedy that he was taken from us,” after he was responsible for Cap being on the federal courthouse steps
and in the sniper’s sights. The bronze plaque noting that the exhibition was made possible by a donation from Stark Industries makes Bucky clench his fists with rage.

  The exhibit’s centerpiece is Cap’s uniform and shield. A brass rail keeps the public at more than an arm’s length—but to what end? Nothing short of a low-yield nuke could damage the Vibranium-laced costume or the solid Vibranium shield. An elderly woman is standing nearby, regarding the relics as if they were the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail.

  “He saved my father’s life during the war. Him and Bucky and the Invaders.”

  With a start, he realizes she is younger than he is.

  “Oh, really? Where?”

  “The battle of Saipan. My dad never stopped talking about it.”

  Bucky doesn’t tell her he and Cap weren’t even close to the Pacific Theater at that time. Saipan had been a living hell, and he surmises that her father felt more comfortable making up stories about costumed heroes than telling his child what he really experienced. Every soldier knows better than that. So the man who was both a boy-soldier and the Winter Soldier does not trample her memories. He knows he could never do that to anybody else.

  What Bucky also knows is that as fine a tribute as the exhibit is to Captain America, Tony Stark is full of crap.

  The shield in the display case is a fake.

  It might fool everybody else, but it can’t fool somebody who saw it up close for so long. It can’t fool somebody who could probably tell you what it smells like.

  And that means that Tony Stark is lying through his teeth.

  The promise about not letting anybody else wear the suit or carry the shield is no promise at all. It’s all a sham. They’ll wait a year a two—then, with the public clamoring for a new Captain America, Stark might even clone him. As long as they have the real shield stashed away somewhere, they won’t be able to just let it sit. They’ll grow a clone, or zap some steroid-pumped yahoo with gamma rays or jack him up with some new serum. Any way they do it, it’ll be a “good soldier” who buys into their worldview and does what he’s told. He’ll never stop to question right or wrong. He’ll never think about the collateral damage. James Buchanan Barnes is not about to let that happen. He’s not letting some unworthy stranger carry it.