The Death Of Captain America

by Larry Hama (epub)

  CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA PROSE NOVEL. Published by MARVEL WORLDWIDE, INC., a subsidiary of MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT, LLC. OFFICE OF PUBLICATION: 135 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

  EISBN# 978-1-302-48953-3

  © 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters featured in this issue and the distinctive names and likenesses thereof, and all related indicia are trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. No similarity between any of the names, characters, persons, and/or institutions in this magazine with those of any living or dead person or institution is intended, and any such similarity which may exist is purely coincidental. WWW.MARVEL.COM

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  CAPTAIN AMERICA CREATED BY JOE SIMON AND JACK KIRBY INTERIOR ART FROM CAPTAIN AMERICA #25-42 BY STEVE EPTING, LUKE ROSS, MIKE PERKINS, BUTCH GUICE, ROBERTO DE LA TORRE, RICK MAGYAR, FABIO LAGUNA, ED MCGUINNESS, DEXTER VINES, JASON KEITH AND FRANK D’ARMATA COVER ART BY STEVE EPTING BACK COVER ART BY ALEX ROSS

  Marie Javins, Editor

  Design by Nelson Ribeiro

  Senior Editor, Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist

  Associate Managing Editor: Alex Starbuck

  Assistant Editor: Sarah Brunstad

  Manager Digital Comics: Tim Smith 3

  SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel

  Editor In Chief: Axel Alonso

  Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada

  Publisher: Dan Buckley

  Executive Producer: Alan Fine

  Acknowledgments

  Much thanks, of course, to Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting who wrote and drew the bulk of the Captain America comics arc from which this book is adapted.

  Marie Javins went above and beyond the call of duty in shepherding this project and correcting my lapses in grammar, as well as curbing my tendency to expound on arcane minutiae.

  I am grateful to Stuart Moore and Axel Alonso for having the faith in me to go the distance with the material, and I thank them for their support and patience throughout my learning process.

  Jeff Youngquist is one of the most competent editorial people I have ever worked with. His comments and suggestions were always on the mark, and his ability to track down the most elusive reference was nothing but amazing.

  Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were the creators of Captain America, and their contribution to that character and comics in general is monumental. To list all the others who contributed to Cap’s canon and lore would require quite a few pages, but Stan Lee would top the list for sure.

  The late Mark Gruenwald not only held the record for the longest writing stint on Captain America, he set down the unwavering moral compass point at the core of who Steve Rogers is, and he did it simply by saying “Cap wouldn’t do that” whenever anybody dared to “bring the character into line with modern morality.” We miss you, Mark, and we won’t let the shield fall in the mud.

  PROLOGUE

  LIGHTNING dances across the New York City skyline. Johann Schmidt watches it with detached indifference from his Midtown penthouse. He is old, and he has been “reborn” a number of times, but his hatred remains unabated. He is, after all, a product of his hatred, and it is what really sustains him.

  It has been a long, arduous journey since he was a young bellhop knocking on Adolf Hitler’s hotel-room door in that giddy time before the Nazis blitzkrieged their way into Poland to ignite the cataclysm we call World War II. The Führer himself redubbed Schmidt “der Roter Totenkopf,” the Red Skull, and put him charge of all terrorist and sabotage activities for the Third Reich.

  This appointment propelled the former bellhop to the vanguard of the National Socialist propaganda machine, and in a sublime twist of fate, spurred the United States to utilize the sole product of their secret Operation: Rebirth project, Steve Rogers, in the same way. Enhanced to a level of strength, speed, and perception far above a normal human, Rogers became Captain America. Along with his teen sidekick, Bucky, he took the fight against fascism to the battlefields of Europe and became the Red Skull’s lifelong foe.

  The Red Skull refocuses his vision to contemplate his own reflection as he stands at the sliding terrace doors that look out on the city. The city that is also home to Captain America. The crimson death’s-head mask is a terrifying visage, but it was meant to be, and he has grown used to it—prefers it, even. The former Nazi wills himself to relax—his hands involuntarily forming fists—as he remembers his magnificent dreams of conquest brought to ashes by the Amerikaner Schwein in the red-white-and-blue costume.

  How many times had he seen that verdammt shield carom through his soldiers, minions, and allies? How often had Captain America and his adolescent protégé unraveled his diabolically clever schemes, and destroyed devices that were the fruits of years of research and development? The injustice rankles, but he does not concede. The defeats are temporary setbacks. Did he not precipitate the events that led to Bucky’s death in the explosion of the drone aircraft stolen by Baron Zemo?

  The Red Skull is momentarily bemused. Satan’s words from Milton’s Paradise Lost spring to his mind. “All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield.” The reflection in the glass grins back at him. Yes, the tide is turning in his favor. He has regained possession of a Cosmic Cube, a matrix of interdimensional energy small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, but powerful enough to warp reality. Soon, he will inflict extreme suffering upon Captain America, that insufferable icon of democracy, and everything he stands for will be brought low and trampled in the dust.

  The Cosmic Cube is the key. It has been five years since Aleksander Lukin offered the Winter Soldier to Red Skull in exchange for the Cube. The Winter Soldier being the resuscitated and enhanced James “Bucky” Barnes, who had been turned into a Soviet assassin by Lukin’s guardian and mentor, Vasily Karpov.

  Lukin had inherited all of Karpov’s secrets and treasures, and had risen high in the ranks of the KGB, acquiring the assets and contacts he needed to go rogue and remake himself as the oligarchic head of the Kronas Corporation. Lukin shared Red Skull’s hatred of Western democracies, and he lusted after the Cosmic Cube because he thought it could advance his own plans for world dominion: another reason why Red Skull would never agree to the trade.

  Having control of Bucky Barnes would have provided Red Skull with another dagger to twist in Captain America’s heart—and some interesting genetic material to play with, as well—but giving up the Cube? That would be like sacrificing his queen too early in an even chess match. General Lukin played an arrogant offense, but why give him any advantage at all, nicht war?

  The Red Skull reminds himself that Lukin has been known to press risky gambits with no apparent regard for the endgame. An infant with a straight razor—

  The telephone rings.

  “Hello, Johann, this is—”

  “I know who you are, Aleksander Vasilievich. And I knew you would be calling as soon as your spies reported in. I am holding the Cosmic Cube even as we speak. Such a thing of ephemeral beauty, having no past and no firm foothold in the present. It glows with the light of the future. That future will be mine, and not yours, Lukin.”

  “I am prepared to increase my offer, Herr Schmidt.”

  “If you had anything I wanted, I would simply take it.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Is that a threat? You are more of a fool than—”

  The Red Skull turns away from the glass to stare at the molybdenum steel door of his rooftop sanctum. Still locked and intact. Then why is Lukin prolonging a pointless conversation? Unless…

  The pain i
s so acute he thinks he’s having a heart attack. As he starts to fall, he sees the blood spray from the exit wound in his chest onto the white carpet. He knows there is a bullet hole in the glass behind him. He marshals his unconquerable will before the Cube slips from his fingers.

  The glass slider opens, and a man in black wearing Russian paratrooper boots steps into the room. He picks up both the Cube and the phone.

  “The subject is terminated, General. And the artifact is secured.”

  At the other end of the connection, Aleksander Lukin’s elation is cut short by the realization that there is another presence in his consciousness. Horror and revulsion grip him as more than eight decades of vile memories goose-step through his mind and a voice like a death rattle whispers, “Checkmate, Herr General.”

  PART ONE

  HIGH

  CRIMES

  AND

  TREASON

  ONE

  S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t give me a number and take away my name. That’s not protocol in the U.N.’s Strategic Homeland Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate. I’m still Sharon Carter—even if all the suits, techs, and field ops call me “Agent 13.”

  As a senior field agent, I am authorized to wear the distinctive black armored body suit with white accessories and carry the regulation advanced plasma pistol. But being an old-fashioned girl, I still keep the original-issue .30-caliber machine pistol and a 9mm Beretta under the floorboards in my closet.

  I get my hair “done” in the East Village at a place that still charges less than twenty bucks for a cut, and where the languages of choice are Russian and Mandarin. They don’t realize I can understand most of what they say, but that doesn’t bother me at all.

  Most of the guys who come on to me when I’m in civvies figure it’s no great loss if I reject them. That doesn’t bother me, either. I was never a big one for casual romance. But I have known love, and I know that it comes with as much pain as joy.

  I’m good at my job, even if I’ve made mistakes—like getting involved with somebody I work with. That’s what got me in trouble with my boss, Deputy Director Hill. And that’s how I got stuck with a mandatory psych eval. Minimum ten sessions—with the psychiatrist’s report counting heavily toward whether I get benched, suspended, charged, or reinstated.

  Hill will get her way, no matter what.

  The shrink I was assigned at Admin turns out to be pretty cool. He doesn’t steeple his fingers, and he doesn’t display any tics when I purposely say things to rock his socks. I find myself liking him and trusting him for no discernable reason. Maybe that’s a good sign. The fact that he looks like Martin Luther King Jr. with a shaved head helps, too. He makes me verbalize stuff I might otherwise suppress or deny. I get through nine sessions by holding my cards close and never even peeking. But the tenth session is the high-stakes pot, and both of us know it.

  “So, Agent 13, can you elucidate your anger issues with Deputy Director Maria Hill?”

  “She played me. She leveraged my relationship with Cap—Steve Rogers—because she wanted him to go against his own principles to support the Superhuman Registration Act. And this was after she sicced the Cape-Killer Squad on him. Some name, huh? Cape-Killers. Powered suits of armor to go after people who’d been ‘heroes’ before a lily-livered Congress passed the Registration Act to appease the paranoids.”

  “Captain America is and always has been an active agent of the United States government, and you were the official liaison between him and S.H.I.E.L.D. You had a prior history with this man, and you were aware of the regulations forbidding such involvements, yet you blame Hill—”

  “I managed to work with Steve—Captain America— for a long time without any, um, incidents. We’re both pros. I didn’t expect anything more to come of it. Maybe I was naïve to think it wouldn’t go that way. But suddenly, it just was.”

  I know if I tell the shrink what he wants to hear, he’s going to submit a more positive report that will look good in my personnel file. But what’s the use of that? I know Steve would disapprove, and the thought of that makes me feel all hollow inside. Everything is so complicated. At first, I was in favor of the Registration Act. That hero-related tragedy in Stamford that resulted in kids dying shocked me to the core. I’ve never had much use for costumed heroes except for Cap and Falcon. I stood by and watched as Steve built a resistance movement, and saw him fight tooth and nail against his best friends. He paid a terrible price for putting himself above the law. When I tell the shrink all this, he suggests that I didn’t want to betray the man I love.

  There isn’t a whole lot of use in explaining that every soldier knows two contradicting facts: Orders come before friendship, and there are few stronger bonds than those between comrades-in-arms. Most civilians don’t get how we juggle those concepts because they’ve never been there and can’t comprehend how people who have survived combat together feel about each other. It’s why soldiers only tell real war stories to other soldiers.

  It’s the shrink’s job to ferret all this out. So when he calls, I show him my hand. But I don’t flip over my hole cards.

  “In the end, Agent 13, you still betrayed him. Do you want to talk about that?”

  “Steve had been underground for weeks. Every security agency and all the registration-compliant costumed heroes were searching for him, but we had a secret dead-drop for getting messages to each other. I arranged to meet him on a rooftop, and it just wasn’t in his nature to suspect me of luring him into a trap. I’d never felt so dirty as when he kissed me there in the moonlight, and I kissed him back. Afterwards, in a tawdry safe room nearby, in the warm afterglow, he told me I wasn’t going to change his mind. He said people had been turned into walking targets just for knowing him when he’d decided to make his identity public a few years ago, and some of them had been killed. It meant he could no longer partition his life or have any semblance of normalcy. ‘I accepted that because Captain America is who I am, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else,’ is how he put it. So I told him it was still breaking the law, and the rule of law was what our country was founded on. He countered by telling me our country was founded on breaking the law, because that law was wrong. And then he quoted Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine.”

  “And during all of this, you knew a Cape-Killer Squad was on its way to the safe room?”

  “I thought I could win him over. I thought if I could just talk to him face-to-face, I could at least make him reconsider. It was a desperate move to buy some time. I should have known Steve was willing to die for what he believed in, and I didn’t want the man I loved to die.”

  “Agent 13, you have admitted to serious breaches of the Code of Conduct in your After-Action Statement. You did scramble the GPS tracer in your communications unit, and you did give the wrong address to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents? You knew the agents would kick down the door of an empty apartment? You put love before duty. How do you resolve that ethical quandary in your head?”

  “I’d planned to send a signal to the Cape-Killer Squad if I failed to persuade Steve. I really did. But when it came down to it, I just couldn’t. I don’t know why. It’s not like me at all. I’m a good soldier. I stood up and swore all the oaths. But when I was alone there with Steve, I asked him to stay, and I told him that I loved him—God, I hadn’t said that in years. It just spilled out, and there it was in the room with us.”

  The shrink says exactly what I expect, that verbalizing what I’d bottled up was a healthy thing. His face is unreadable when he says it. I guess it’s a basic requirement for psychiatrists. I’m a pretty damned good poker player, and I can usually spot some sort of giveaway, but there’s not a glimmer there. Still, I trust the man, and I ask him outright if I’m no longer fit for duty. He tells me he doesn’t know yet, and we should meet again in two days.

  I’m very relieved, because I love my job despite everything.

  As I go out the door, he tells me one last thing: “I don’t believe we’re done with you yet, Agent 13.”<
br />
  INTERLUDE #1

  THE psychiatrist waits four hours after Agent 13, a.k.a. Sharon Carter, leaves his office. He performs a passive electronic sweep to make sure she didn’t plant any bugs, and then takes the elevator to the main floor and leaves the S.H.I.E.L.D. administrative building by the night door, sweeping his card at the turnstile and waving to the guard. On the dimly lit street, he doubles back on himself twice to make sure he isn’t being tailed and hails a cab to take him across town. It’s past midnight, and traffic is thin. Exiting the cab, he walks several blocks, doubling back three times before he hops into another cab that deposits him at the gate of a small cemetery. The psychiatrist happens to have a key to the gate, but he waits until the street is deserted before he enters.

  On the tree-shadowed path that runs between the tombstones, the Red Skull casually joins the psychiatrist on his late-night ramble. The psychiatrist doesn’t seem as confident as he was with Sharon Carter.

  “Did it have to be a cemetery?”

  “Would you prefer I expose you to your colleagues instead, Doctor? I think not. Much more advantageous for them to believe you are being gnawed by death-watch beetles in some unmarked grave.”

  The psychiatrist turns off the nanotech holographic projector built into his belt buckle. The 3-D holo-mask that disguised his real features flickers for an instant, then disappears, revealing the bearded face of Doctor Faustus. The so-called “Master of Men’s Minds” wedges a monocle over his left eye before he answers. He ignores the Red Skull’s question.

  “It disgusts me that I must disguise myself as a mongrel subhuman. I am frankly surprised that this ruse defies the security system of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Administration Building. It would not pass scrutiny on the Helicarrier.”