The Death Of Captain America

by Larry Hama (epub)

“You are the plan, Bucky.”

  “That’s insane. This mob scene is a potential incubator for a riot.”

  “S.H.I.E.L.D. is mostly in lockdown due to the investigation launched by Senator Wright—which is why I’m your only backup, and why I’m idling buttoned-up in an alley two blocks away.”

  “Gotta sign off, ’Tasha. I’m getting the old hairy eyeball from a security goon.”

  The Kane-Meyer “rent-a-cop” in the quasi-paramilitary uniform pokes Bucky in the chest with a twenty-four-inch polycarbonate control baton, while keeping one hand on his pistol butt.

  “You packin’, Junior? Got any sharps in your pockets?”

  “No on both counts. They sure didn’t waste any time passing that emergency bill so they could approve the contract with you guys, did they?”

  “Shut up and assume the position against that van.”

  The parked van has an alarm that starts whooping as soon as Bucky leans against it, palms flat and feet spread. The alarm irritates the security officer. The irritation grows when his body frisk produces nothing.

  “Beat it. I see your mug again, I’m running you in.”

  Moving away from the edge of the crowd, Bucky reestablishes contact with Black Widow.

  “So what are you doing for me besides watching my back?”

  “Yesterday, Tony Stark called me into his office for a briefing about our suspension of activities and left the back-door access code for our spy satellites showing on his monitor. He doesn’t make mistakes like that. I’m patching in right now. I’ve been running searches for Kane-Meyer on the data links for the last hour.”

  Something pokes Bucky in the back, and he almost reacts with a spinning kick. Instead, he turns around slowly. A kid in thrift-shop clothes hauling a cooler on a toy wagon is holding out a bottle of water to him: “Only a buck, mister.”

  It’s a reasonable price; glancing around, Bucky can see that the kid has at least ten competitors who are doing a brisk business with protesters thirsty from shouting slogans and chants. The bottle in the kid’s hand is exchanged for a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

  “I’m treating the next nineteen.”

  Twisting off the plastic cap, Bucky looks for a trash can. Black Widow’s next update stops him from taking a gulp.

  “The search is paying off. Kane-Meyer is owned by a company that’s owned by a company that’s twenty steps up the chain owned by Kronas Corporation.”

  “Kronas causes widespread panic and unrest, and then pulls strings to have their own security force put in place to counter it all? That’s a short-term business model, and the Red Skull is more of a long-game sort of player.”

  “Right now, on the ground, we can only deal with the short game. What did you say about a riot? Maybe this is all a diversion.”

  Bucky’s thirst is getting to him. He raises the bottle again.

  “Skull doesn’t back long shots. How do you guarantee a riot?”

  The fine print at the bottom of the water label comes into focus.

  “…A division of KRONOS INTERNATIONAL.”

  An angry roar goes up from the crowd at the demonstration. Later, some witnesses will state that a man in a hoodie with a bandanna covering his lower face, threw a bottle of water at the Kane-Meyer security forces. Others will swear the security men started swinging their batons against the protesters with no provocation.

  Bullhorns blare across the space between Peace Circle and the Garfield Monument, ordering the crowd to move away and disperse. More bottles fly through the air. A solid phalanx of Kane-Meyer security guards advances into the throng.

  In less than a minute, Bucky is in an alley two blocks from the demonstration.

  Black Widow deactivates the cloaking device, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. Flying Car becomes visible hovering behind a Dumpster. She does not divert her eyes as Bucky strips off his street clothes and throws them into the car.

  “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “Skull had it all planned,” Bucky says as he dons the shirt and reaches for the shield stashed into the luggage space behind the seats. “The water was spiked, and it’s probably stuff that dissipates without traces in the bloodstream.”

  Black Widow starts to open her door.

  “Let’s get out there. I’ll cover you—”

  Pulling on the mask, Bucky becomes Captain America. “No. I need you to be my eyes on the big picture. Plug into the sat-cams and the local surveillance networks. Update me on the roll. I have to go out there and do what Steve would have done. I have to save those people from being sacrificed as pawns in the Red Skull’s insane game.”

  The Kane-Meyer security teams had entered the fray fully confident that what appeared to be chaos to the media was essentially under their control from the beginning. Now, that notion begins to dissipate as a red-white-andblue shield mows down an entire rank of their vanguard, bounces off a lamppost, and is caught in midair by a man in a familiar-looking costume who bowls over three more Kane-Meyer stooges before his boots hit the ground.

  The shield smashes another face, a red-gloved fist fractures a clavicle, and a boot with a rolled-over top dislocates a jaw.

  The baton-wielding, helmeted ranks waver. “What the hell?”

  The man with the shield shouts, “Get out of here, now!”

  Some do, but most don’t. The security forces regroup and focus on a single target. Guns are drawn, escalating the fight to an unplanned-for level. Bullets flying true to their marks are deflected by a flashing disk of Vibranium, and then the man with the big white “A” on the forehead of his mask is among the shooters. Those who aren’t hors de combat by way of thrashing shield or pummeling fist fall victim to friendly fire in the panicked melee.

  Flashing red lights are converging on the scene along the Northwest and Southwest Drives: police and Kane-Meyer reinforcements. Phone-cam videos on social networks draw protest supporters and the morbidly curious to the area by the thousands. The man who would be Captain America begins to see the futility of his actions, as well as the consequences. The cognitive dissonance does not disable him. He is too strong for that.

  “Bucky, I have something.”

  “It had better be good, Natasha.”

  “A stealth helicopter just landed on the roof of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. No clearance. And the IFF code doesn’t match up to anything the military, police or Department of Defense has—”

  “That’s it. That’s the main event that this riot is just the diversion for. I’m on my way over there. Hack the building’s CCTV cams and see what intel you can hustle up so I don’t bust in there totally blind.”

  The Dirksen Senate Office Building’s common-area surveillance-camera system has already been hacked and is showing a continuous loop of benign images. The hallways and foyers covered by the cams are actually littered with the bodies of staffers and security personnel. The members of the crew that debussed from the helicopter on the roof, and who are responsible for the mayhem, are alerted to another intruder who has entered the building by crashing through a third-story window. They wait for him at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor.

  “Are you there yet, Bucky? I think the cams are being spoofed.”

  “They are, Natasha. Lots of bodies here.”

  “Any clue to who did it? Do you want me to back you up?”

  “I see the perps—nothing I can’t handle.”

  Sin and her associates, the Serpent Squad, spread out across the top of the stairs. As she aims her pistol at the new Captain America ascending the steps, she laughs, “This is too good to be true.”

  INTERLUDE #14

  THE Secretary of the Treasury is quite upset. He checked into a motel on the outskirts of Alexandria under a false name, and he has placed his video call to the new CEO of Kronas with his room Wi-Fi and a stolen laptop obtained from an intern who has socially unacceptable proclivities about which the secretary has agreed to keep quiet.

  “Mr. Morovin, there are suggestions that yo
ur predecessor, Aleksander Lukin, is in reality still among the living.”

  “Mr. Secretary, it should be noted that S.H.I.E.L.D. has a history of making unsubstantiated statements about us. And at present, they themselves have been discredited and are under investigation.”

  There is no trace of emotion on Morovin’s face on the laptop screen. The secretary wonders whether his own face is betraying him as he answers.

  “It is still worrisome. There could be awkwardness if it came out that Lukin isn’t dead.”

  “There could be awkwardness about your wife and family becoming aware of what you do on Saturday afternoons when they think you’re playing golf. And how awkward would it be for you if the existence of certain numbered accounts in Switzerland and the Caymans came to light? These are not threats, Mr. Secretary. To paraphrase Dickens, ‘These are not the shadows of things that will be, they are the shadows of things that may be, only.’ Didn’t we agree that America’s long-term best interests are entwined with the continued rise in Kronas share prices? Is it not entirely beside the point if you should accrue some small net gain for your selfless patriotism? I certainly hope you are not contemplating backing out of our gentlemen’s agreement, Mr. Secretary. That would be unfortunate.”

  “Nothing of the sort, Mr. Morovin.”

  “Business as usual, then?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Good night, Mr. Secretary.”

  The connection is broken, and the holographic projection the Secretary had been conversing with flickers and disappears.

  In the Kronas Tower, the corporeal body of Aleksander Lukin crosses the office from beyond the edge of the web-cam and sits behind the desk in the chair that had been “occupied” by the projection. It is the Red Skull who drums Lukin’s fingers on the desktop, and it is the Red Skull who closes the webcam window and quits the video-call app.

  Lukin, who has been reduced to janitorial duties in his own body, asserts himself.

  “This is wrong, Skull. You’ve altered my plans beyond recognition.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lukin. It’s for our mutual benefit.”

  “We were supposed to cripple them and show them the errors of their capitalist ways. Not negotiate with them.”

  “Negotiation is almost always a charade to save the dignity of those who have already crawled under your heel. And are their people not living in fear? Is there not uncontrolled violence on their streets? Will their cities not be burning by the end of the week? Are they not well on their way to being crippled? They might never learn the errors of their ways, Aleksander, but they will surely suffer.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  IN the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Bucky in his new Captain America suit faces off with Sin and her Serpent Squad of Eel, Viper, and King Cobra. He knows that Sin is the Red Skull’s daughter, but the others are just strangers in costumes to him. None of them know that Bucky is the Winter Soldier.

  He has no idea of their capabilities, but he is about to find out.

  Eel attacks first with a massive electro-zap. Bucky pretends to shrug it off as if it were the static discharge from a fuzzy sweater. In reality, he is fighting to keep from blacking out. Bucky’s muscles are wracked by painful galvanic spasms, and he is struggling to regain control of numbed nerve endings. But he isn’t about to give Eel the pleasure of knowing his attack was effective.

  Maneuvering to keep Sin between himself and Eel to prevent getting zapped again, Bucky uses his shield to deflect the bullets from Sin’s pistol as he ducks under the spray from King Cobra’s venomous wrist-shooters. The pain isn’t going away. Bucky knows he has no choice but to fight through it.

  Viper joins the fight, overconfident about the potency of his poison darts. He gets a shield smashed in his face and a knee in his groin for his trouble.

  “Who is this guy?” Eel snarls. “Isn’t Captain America supposed to be dead?”

  Reloading and emptying her gun multiple times, Sin screeches, “He is dead, you morons! This is just some two-bit ringer they brought in to look good in the suit!”

  The shield bounces off two walls, knocks King Cobra’s feet out from under him, and cracks three of Viper’s teeth before returning to the red-gloved hand that threw it.

  Eel voices what the rest of the Serpent Squad thinks: “For a two-bit ringer, this guy has all the moves down!”

  Sin struggles to clear a jam in her pistol.

  “When I’m ready, we’ll all attack him together. He’s not the real thing. We can put him down easy if we pull out all the stops.”

  As the Serpent Squad regroups, Bucky catches movement at the far end of the hall in his peripheral vision. A graying head is peeking out of one of the senatorial offices. Is that Senator Wright? The door slams shut.

  Black Widow’s voice crackles in Bucky’s earpiece: “Full-scale riot engulfing the whole area. I had to move across the Potomac. How are you doing?”

  “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “On my way.”

  “I can handle this.”

  “Not your call, soldier.”

  The Serpent Squad spreads out and charges Bucky from three sides—Eel on the left, Viper on the right, and both Sin and King Cobra in the middle. The necessity of all of them having to track the shield’s flight as it ricochets around the hall erodes this tactic’s effective advantage.

  Before Eel can release another electro-zap, Bucky’s flying kick connects solidly with his forehead and knocks him nearly senseless.

  Viper is looking the wrong way as the shield hits his head from behind. The convulsions triggered by the blow are so severe that he has to grab his own tongue to keep from swallowing it.

  After another carom off walls and ceiling, the shield still maintains enough inertia to give Sin a good crack on the head and break her collarbone. Concussed and reeling from the pain, she screams until she passes out.

  The shield is back in Bucky’s hand before Sin hits the floor.

  Bucky allows himself a tight smile. I can do it, Steve.

  King Cobra clutches his chest and collapses on the floor as if he were having a heart attack. Bucky is not fooled, but he gives King Cobra points for a wise tactical decision. After a quick glance at each to determine that Eel, Viper, and Sin are effectively out of action, Bucky switches his full concentration back to King Cobra.

  Six shots from a high-powered pistol ring out in quick succession.

  Bucky finds himself staring into the pile of a maroon Government Service Agency carpet and understands that he has been rendered momentarily unconscious and is now facedown on the floor. Pain radiates from his back like seismic waves. He fights it down and thinks hard. Where is the shield? If he dropped it when he fell, where would it be? He recognizes the swagger in the heavy footsteps behind him before he hears the voice.

  “Nobody gets away with hurting my girlfriend, you star-spangled loser.”

  Crossbones.

  The scene reconstruction runs through Bucky’s head as per his KGB training: Crossbones slipping out of an office along the corridor and coming up behind him. Crossbones raising the revolver and firing. All six shots tightly grouped in the center of Bucky’s mass.

  A hard kick from Crossbones rolls Bucky over on his back.

  Crossbones steps back to deliver another kick, and his boot crunches down on something hard on the carpet. Bucky watches though slitted eyes as Crossbones raises his foot to examine what is trapped in the tread. Bucky knows it’s a deformed magnum bullet. It’s deformed because it was deflected.

  “Bulletproof inner layer under the shirt, bone head,” Bucky grunts as he kicks upward into Crossbones crotch so hard that the big man’s feet leave the floor.

  A fast tactical assessment tells Bucky that Viper and Eel are out of the game, King Cobra is still playing possum, and Sin has recovered her wits and sassy lip—if not her tactical effectiveness.

  “Don’t just stand there like a dumb ox, Brock. KILL him!”

  Crossbones shru
gs and draws his fist back for a punch that never gets delivered because Bucky’s iron-hard fingers have penetrated the intercostal space between the eleventh and twelfth ribs on Crossbones’ right side. The fingers grasp the eleventh rib and crack it outward through the skin.

  Most people would be screaming. Crossbones won’t lower himself to such a display of weakness. He snaps orders instead.

  “Quit your faking, Cobra—get Sin out of here. This situation is going to hell.”

  Bucky extracts his fingers from the rib cage, closes them into a fist and snaps Crossbones’ jaw shut with a hard uppercut.

  “It’s already there, stupid.”

  AT the other end of the hall, two burly Kane-Meyer enforcement troopers have kicked down Senator Wright’s door and are firmly escorting the legislator down five flights of fire stairs to the basement tunnel that leads to the Capitol building. The Senator is protesting: “Faustus’ plan won’t work now—”

  The larger of the two troopers tightens his grip on the Senator’s arm.

  “Not to worry, sir. We’ll edit the footage. Keep moving.”

  THE buzzing sound Bucky hears is hard to distinguish from the ringing in his ears that is the result of a fresh onslaught of right and left hooks from Crossbones. Between wondering how Crossbones can keep punching with a rib sticking out of him and how he is going to counter the relentless counterattack, it dawns on Bucky that his earpiece has been knocked loose.

  A series of pile-driver jabs from his prosthetic arm gives Bucky the leeway to reseat the earpiece. Black Widow sounds as worried as it is possible for her to sound.

  “—where are you?”

  “Fourth-floor foyer, Natasha. I’m—”

  Taking advantage of Bucky’s diverted attention, Crossbones grabs him with both hands, lifts him above his head, and runs full-tilt at the window. With no purchase on the floor, Bucky doesn’t have the leverage to inflict further damage. The last thing Bucky sees as he gets thrown through the closed window is King Cobra carrying a semi-conscious Sin toward the fire stairs.

  The window explodes outward in a welter of splintered glass and molding. The best that Bucky can do for himself is to twist his body so he doesn’t impact the pavement face-first. He has passed the second floor and is bracing himself when he hits—