Avengers E-Book

Abnett Dan

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Marvel novels
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 340

Beschreibung

First title in Titan Books' Marvel fiction reissue program, featuring the classic Avengers story: Everybody Wants to Rule the World.HOW MANY VILLAINS DOES IT TAKE TO RULE THE WORLD?Hydra has a synthetic pathogen that will make the entire human race dependent on them for the cure. A.I.M.'s newly developed nanotech compound to enslave humanity is dangerously close to contaminating the world's water supplies. Ultron is poised on the edge of Singularity, Earth's technology at his metallic fingertips. Dormammu has a plan to save the world—by claiming it as his own. The High Evolutionary is rewriting the human genome in a bid to turn humankind into a eugenic slave-race.Everybody wants to rule the world—and only the isolated Avengers can stop them.THE MIGHTY AVENGERS FACE AN ARRAY OF THEIR GREATEST FOES—ALL AT ONCE!

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

About the Author

Coming Soon from Titan Books

The Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Print edition ISBN: 9781785659560

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785659577

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: April 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2018 MARVEL

Cover art by Adi Granov

Avengers created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Editor: Stuart Moore

VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist

Assistant Editors: Sarah Brunstad & Caitlin O’Connell

Manager, Licensed Publishing: Jeff Reingold

SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel

Editor In Chief: C.B. Cebulski

Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada

President: Dan Buckley

Executive Producer: Alan Fine

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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I would like to express appreciation to Stuart Moore, Jeff Youngquist, Sarah Brunstad, and Axel Alonso at Marvel for their patience, support and suggestions during the writing of this story.

Considerable thanks and love is owed to Nik Vincent for first reading, and for helping me order words in right the put (under very tough circumstances).

I was also very lucky to have been able to call on Neil Grant, Elena Artimovich and Ronald Byrd for technical advice. Thank you. All the bits in this book that are correct are thanks to you. Any mistakes are entirely my bad.

This book is dedicated with love to my father-in-law, John Ernest Vincent, 1931–2014.

ONE

BERLIN

16.12 LOCAL, JUNE 12TH

A MATCHED pair of black limousines cruised east across the river. The sky was cloudless and light, and the evening rush was just beginning to build.

The big cars stayed together. They moved with the flow of the traffic, allowing no other vehicles to get between them. At Sarsplatz, they turned north into a light-industrial sector. The buildings were square and modernist, built in the sixties or later. Artful graffiti decorated sidewalls and gates, but the high-end cars in the small parking lots suggested new investment: tech start-ups, specialist engineering, media consultancies.

Auger GmbH occupied the top four floors of a square building at the end of Montagstrasse. The building was screened by poplars along the street side. A large concrete parking structure adjoined the building’s rear. The levels of the parking structure were open-sided. It resembled a stack of styrofoam trays.

The limousines entered the parking structure and wound their way up the ramps, their tires squeaking on the gleaming precast concrete. On the eighth story, they drove past the up-ramp and beyond the parking bays, and pulled up in the turning circle outside the glass doors of the Auger lobby.

Three men got out of each car. Their suits were as immaculately black as the limousines’ bodywork. Their designer shades betrayed as little as the limousines’ tinted windows. Their movements were fluid, their deployment precise. They covered the angles, watching the up- and down-ramps. One walked toward the glass doors and waited, speaking quietly into a wrist-mic.

His name was Gustav. He signaled “clear.”

The Principal got out of the rear car and walked to the doors. He was tall, his perfect suit a dark and expensive gray. He carried a small attaché case. In another age, his bearing might have been called aristocratic.

The glass doors, etched with Auger GmbH’s logo, opened as he approached. The lobby was elegant and well-lit. There was a soft hum of climate control. The receptionist looked up from her semicircular desk.

“Peter Jurgan, for John Rudolf,” the Principal said.

“Herr Jurgan, welcome,” she replied. “Herr Rudolf is expecting you. Please, come through.”

Two of the bodyguards flanked Jurgan as he followed her. Their names were Kyril and Franz. The others waited with Gustav, watching the cars.

The receptionist used a swipe-card to open the inner door, revealing a long, carpeted hallway lined with glass doors. The climate control inside was fierce. The air was several degrees cooler.

She tapped on the fifth door, waited for a response, and ushered the guests into a conference room. John Rudolf rose from the oval table to greet them. He was a handsome, intense man in his thirties. He wore an open-necked shirt, expensive jeans, and designer glasses.

“Herr Jurgan,” he said, shaking hands. “Good to see you.”

“And you, John,” replied Jurgan. “I hope everything has come together according to the schedule?”

“It was tight, but I think you’ll be very pleased. Gerhard?”

Three other men were sitting at the table. Like Rudolf, they wore smart-casual clothes. One of them, Gerhard, opened a steel carry-box sitting on the table in front of him. He lifted a polished, chrome mechanism from the molded cushion of the box’s interior. The device was about the size of a thermos flask. It had rotating, milled collars and a set of squat, retractable legs so that it could stand upright.

“This is the prototype,” Gerhard said, extending the legs with a series of soft clicks and setting the device on the table. “We’re ready to manufacture as soon as you sign off.”

“The requirement was four thousand units,” said Jurgan.

“We estimate six months to fill that,” said Rudolf.

Jurgan nodded. “But the initial requirement of one hundred?”

“Three months,” said Rudolf.

Jurgan’s hard face expressed no reaction.

“We had spoken of a tighter turnaround on the initial batch,” he said.

Rudolf shrugged apologetically. “We were bidding to use an assembler in Augsberg,” he replied, “but they just accepted a rival contract.”

“Manufacturing high-spec consoles for American video games, if you can believe it.” Gerhard laughed.

“I can believe it,” said Jurgan.

“So we’re having to outsource to a manufacturer in China,” said Rudolf. “Hence the time extension. Shipping, you see?”

Jurgan didn’t reply. He looked at the device.

“May I inspect it?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Rudolf.

Jurgan picked up the device and turned it over in his gloved hands.

“Lightweight but extremely durable,” Rudolf said proudly. “Portable, of course. Machined to ultra-precision levels. The release timer is here, in the lower ring. Remote and manual activation are also options.”

“Dispersal radius?” asked Jurgan.

“One million hectares,” said Gerhard.

“That seems a great deal,” said Rudolph. “An enormous area for agricultural use.”

“We are developing large-scale agricultural applications in the Midwest,” said Jurgan. “For sheer efficiency, the dispersal range must be considerable.”

Jurgan placed his attaché case on the table and opened the clasps. The case was lined with foam, and the foam was sculpted to form two recesses. In each of the recesses lay a polished metal bulb. One of the bulbs was green, and the other was hazard red.

“What are those?” asked Gerhard.

“Samples of the gene carrier,” replied Jurgan, removing the green bulb.

“They are color-coded,” said Gerhard.

“They’re all inert,” said Jurgan. “Just samples containing purified water and sugar. In application, the color-coding will relate to the specific G.M. load: wheat, rye, barley, corn, soy.”

Jurgan unwound the milled collar at the top of the chrome device and opened the curved lid on its hinge. He dropped the green bulb into the socket and closed the lid. There was a soft sigh as the hermetic seal engaged.

“I just want to see the release operation,” said Jurgan. Rudolf and Gerhard glanced at each other, and Rudolf shrugged.

“Why not?” He smiled.

Jurgan smiled back, and turned the device’s lower ring.

“Thirty seconds,” he said. The ring began to click softly, like the dial of a bank safe, as the timer moved back to zero from thirty.

When it reached twenty, the two bodyguards with Jurgan suddenly moved. Kyril went to the door of the conference room and turned the lock. Franz went directly to the climate-control panel on the wall and turned it to in-room recirculation.

“What are you doing?” asked Rudolf.

The timer reached zero. There was a click, then the sound of something puncturing inside the device. An extremely fine vapor exhaled from the top of the mechanism, filling the conference room with a gauzy mist. For a second, it was like being in a steam room.

The mist dissipated, leaving beads of moisture on the faces and hands of the men present, and on the polished tabletop and leather seats. The surface of their clothing was slightly damp.

Gerhard laughed nervously and wiped his forehead.

“You see?” he said. “Perfect aerosol dispersal, even in a confined space.”

Jurgan nodded.

“It is more than adequate,” he agreed. “An excellent piece of engineering. Entirely to my brief.”

“Your brief was very thorough, Peter,” said Rudolf. “And, if I say so myself, my engineers do very fine work.”

“My brief was very thorough,” agreed Jurgan. He rested his gloved hand on the top of the device. “The machining has been matched. But the brief was also for one hundred units delivered in three weeks.”

“As I explained,” said Rudolf, “the assembler in Augsberg has let us down and—”

“And you failed to find an alternative.”

“China—”

“With a three-month turnaround.”

“It is regrettable—” Rudolf began.

“It is,” said Jurgan. “For you, certainly. I do not like to be let down. For my entire career, I have made it my business not to be let down.”

“I’m sure we can—” Rudolf started to say.

“You can die,” Jurgan said without emotion. He glanced at his watch. It was a very expensive timepiece. “In two minutes.”

Rudolf blinked, uncomprehending.

“Ah, what?” he asked.

Jurgan opened the lid of the chrome device and removed the punctured, expended green bulb. He put it back in its case.

“The pathogen,” he said, “is contained within this room for now. Some traces may have escaped, but contamination will be low. The pathogen operates through skin contact. Given your proximity and the degree of exposure, I’d estimate no more than two minutes.”

He took out the red bulb.

“Of course, there is the antidote. Dispersed in the same manner, on a regular timetable, it can be used to keep the infected individuals alive and prevent the pathogen from activating. This is, of course, how the pathogen will be managed, ongoing.”

He looked at Rudolf and weighed the red bulb in his hand.

“But for you, no such mercy.”

“A pathogen?” asked Rudolf. “A pathogen?”

“Is this some kind of joke?” asked Gerhard.

“The pathogen is call HE616,” said Jurgan. “A synthetic creation. I have named it Breath.”

“This is ridiculous!” Rudolf exclaimed. He reached for the phone on the desk to call security, but Franz placed his hand firmly on the receiver.

One of Rudolf’s colleagues made for the door. Kyril stood in his path and pushed him back toward the table.

“One minute,” said Jurgan.

“This is not funny at all!” said Gerhard. “How dare you come here and play games like this! This is a legitimate business arrangement and—”

“And you reneged,” said Jurgan. “It is most inconvenient. It impacts my timetable, and I am not happy about that.”

“I’ll find an alternate assembler!” Rudolf cried. “There’s absolutely no need for this preposterous and insulting behavior! You squirt us with sugar solution and then terrorize us with claims of—”

“Terrorize,” said Jurgan. “John, that’s precisely what terrorism does. And terrorism doesn’t work if it’s a claim or a lie. It needs a foundation of truth. A genuine threat. That wasn’t sugar solution. And I do not give people second chances when they fail me.”

One of Rudolf’s colleagues, the man who had been blocked from the door, suddenly gasped. Blisters appeared across his hands, cheeks, and throat. He started to shake. Veins stood proud at his temples. Discolored saliva welled over his quivering lip. Convulsing and choking, he fell against the table, slid off it, and rolled onto the floor. The impact of his body sent one of the wheeled chairs skidding across the carpet.

Jurgan glanced at his expensive watch.

“A little early,” he said.

“Oh my god!” Rudolf cried. “For god’s sake, help us!”

Gerhard wailed, looking down at the blotches and blisters that were starting to cover his hands. The other man sat down, swallowing hard. Then he flopped facedown onto the tabletop.

Gerhard retched and then fell, striking his head against the lip of the table on his way to the carpet. Blood flecked the polished glass. Rudolf staggered toward the windows. His blistered hands scrabbled at the slatted blinds, rattling them. When he fell, he tore the blinds down on top of him.

Jurgan looked at the four corpses.

“Hail Hydra,” he said.

He placed a red bulb in the device, closed the lid, and pressed the activator. Mist filled the room again. Franz adjusted the climate-control panel back to building circulation. Kyril packed the device into its carry-box.

“We’re leaving,” Jurgan told them. He passed the attaché case to Kyril and took the steel carry-box with the device in it himself.

Kyril raised his wrist to his mouth.

“Gustav,” he said. “Coming out.”

“Neutralization?” Franz asked Jurgan.

“As required for exit,” Jurgan replied. The bodyguards drew black, blunt-nosed automatic pistols from under their jackets.

They strode together down the hallway toward reception. Two employees of Auger GmbH appeared in a doorway, saw the guns, and retreated in horror. Barely breaking stride, Franz stepped into the room after them and discharged four shots.

He returned to Jurgan as they reached reception. Voices rose in the offices behind them. Someone called out a name.

As they reentered the lobby, the receptionist looked up in alarm. She recoiled at the sight of the pistols and tried to duck behind the desk. Franz aimed his pistol at her cowering form.

One of the glass panels of the lobby’s outer doors exploded in a blizzard of fragments as a spinning disk punched through it. The disk was about three quarters of a meter in diameter and marked on its convex face with a distinctive red-white-and-blue motif.

It was a shield.

It struck Franz before he could fire and threw him backwards through the inner glass door at the rear of reception.

Jurgan and the other bodyguard turned to see Captain America coming for them.

The Sentinel of Liberty—his uniform as red, white, and blue as his famous shield—leapt in through the smashed glass door panel. Kyril fired his weapon. Two shots went wide; the third tore off the Captain’s duralumin-scale body armor.

Captain America crashed into him. His left fist connected with Kyril’s wrist, sending the gun flying. His right fist drove home a punch that snapped Kyril’s jaw up and knocked him headlong across the room. His shades flew off. The attaché case bounced out of his grip.

Jurgan struck Captain America on the side of the head with his free hand. The force of the blow was considerable; it knocked Cap onto one knee. He flip-rolled out of the drop, but Jurgan backstepped, evading the bicycle kick that threatened to take out his legs.

“Not today, my good Captain,” he said.

“Absolutely today,” Cap replied, springing back onto his feet. He lunged.

They traded blows, face-to-face, at phenomenal speed. Each man used his forearms to block and deflect the other’s punches and chops. Jurgan struggled to keep hold of the carry-box.

Cap drove a heel into the side of Jurgan’s knee and, as the man staggered sideways, planted a punch that threw Jurgan against the receptionist’s desk. The impact knuckled over the flatscreen monitor and dislodged a pot of ballpoint pens marked with the Auger logo. Hidden behind the desk, the receptionist cried out in distress.

Jurgan had dropped the carry-box. It lay on the carpet, too far away for him to reach. He looked at Captain America.

“I really don’t like interference in my plans,” Jurgan said, wiping blood from his split lip.

“You should be used to it by now, Strucker,” Cap replied.

Cap knew that surrender wasn’t a likely option. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker was one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, and had been for decades. He was no longer a mortal man. Science and other, more arcane properties had prolonged his life and invested him with superhuman strength and durability.

But Steven Rogers, known as Captain America, had also been gifted by science. His lifespan had been much longer than most men could expect, and his physical abilities were profoundly beyond those of an average human being.

Strucker lunged for the carry-box. Cap leapt, too, body-checking Strucker onto the ground. They landed hard, struggling. Strucker was extremely strong. Cap grappled with him, trying to pin him and lock his arms. Strucker jabbed an elbow into Cap’s throat and then repeated the jab twice more, striking Cap’s sternum. Cap rolled clear, and came back with a punch that connected with the back of Strucker’s skull and drove his face into the carpet.

The terrorist was dazed. Cap dragged him to his feet, attempting to turn him around and push him against the desk to restrain him.

But Strucker was feigning weakness. He lashed out, and his right fist caught Captain America’s chin, jarring him sideways. Strucker laughed. The black leather of the glove on his right hand was smoldering and burning away, revealing the burnished metallic filaments of his favored personal weapon: the Satan Claw.

He swung at Cap again. The Claw sizzled as it came. Cap dodged aside. Strucker raked the Claw back again, and it delivered a vicious electrical charge as it grazed Cap’s right shoulder.

Cap staggered away, wincing as he shook out his stinging arm. Strucker swung another punch, the Claw crackling with power. Cap sidestepped, then drove his shoulder and elbow into Strucker’s ribs. Strucker grunted and almost fell. He wheeled, but missed Cap with his next, hasty jab. Cap deflected Strucker’s arm and punched Strucker in the mouth, breaking one of his front teeth.

Snarling, Strucker regained his balance and swung again.

The Claw connected.

Bright sparks spat from Cap’s chest-armor, and there was a loud electrical crack. Cap flew across the reception area and smashed into the decorative false wall, knocking part of it down.

He didn’t rise.

Strucker spat blood onto the carpet. He grabbed the carry-box and ran for the exit.

“Gustav!” he yelled as he ran. “Extraction now!”

No one answered him. He came out onto the turning circle. Captain America had dealt with Strucker’s entourage on his way into the offices. Gustav and the other bodyguards were crumpled on the ground, their sidearms scattered. One lay across the trunk of the rear limousine. Both drivers had also been taken down. Ernst, the driver of the front car, was struggling to rise from the ground beside the open driver’s door. The “door open” chime was pinging.

“Get up!” Strucker yelled at him, running to the lead car. “Get up and drive!”

Strucker’s bodyguards had all been handpicked from the world’s finest private security firms and non-governmental military outfits. They were highly trained, highly skilled, utterly ruthless, and keenly aware of both the fees they were earning and the level of loyalty Hydra expected for such compensation. Despite his broken collarbone and concussion, Ernst clambered into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. Strucker jumped into the rear of the heavy black automobile.

The limo sped away, screeching a hard turn out of the circle, and roared toward the down-ramp.

Shield in hand, Captain America raced out of the reception area. He saw the bright taillights of the limousine receding in the gloom of the parking level. He paused for a moment, gauging the viability of a shield throw, but the car was too far away.

Instead, he turned and ran toward the outer wall of the structure. One of the bodyguards tried to rise and block his path, but Cap knocked him aside with the flat of his shield.

He reached the waist-level wall and looped the shield over his back. It was an eight-story drop to the street below. Without hesitation, he vaulted up onto the concrete wall, swung his legs over, and pushed off, falling feet-first.

He dropped one level, snagging the wall lip with his arms to arrest his descent. Teeth gritted, he hauled himself up and over the wall and back into the structure.

Strucker’s limo had already driven down one level. It thundered past Cap and turned for the next ramp.

Undeterred, Cap turned back and flipped himself over the wall again. This time he dropped three stories. He slammed into the concrete wall span, grabbing the lip with both arms. His chest scraped against the concrete. He heaved himself up and over, dropped onto the precast floor, and started running. He could hear the echo of tires squealing above him. Now he was at least one floor below the fleeing limo.

He saw it coming along the length of the floor above, the light from its blazing headlamps blinking as the car passed each vertical column and concrete riser. He chased it at full sprint, moving parallel on the level below. He arrived at the bottom of the next exit ramp seconds before the car reached the top.

The limo swung around onto the ramp with a brutal squeal. Ernst was a skilled driver, even with a vehicle so heavy and potentially cumbersome. Cap stood his ground at the foot of the ramp as the car burned down toward him. He unslung his shield, gripping its edge with his right hand, and hurled it at the oncoming vehicle with a powerful underarm sweep.

The shield hit the windshield, shattering the armored glass, and punched inside, taking Ernst out of the game. Before the now uncontrolled car could mow him down, Cap leapt aside, rolling hard across the precast.

The car shot past him. It didn’t turn at the foot of the ramp—it simply plowed into a concrete pillar facing the ramp access. The impact smashed in the nose of the glossy black vehicle, and slewed the tail around hard. Airbags fired and inflated. Fluids gushed from ruptured ducts, creating a black, rapidly spreading slick under the car. Steam billowed from the crumpled radiator.

Cap got up and approached the wreck. He dragged his shield out of the mangled, glittering glass of the collapsed windshield and moved toward the rear. He wrenched open the door.

In the back seat, Strucker lay dazed, bleeding from a head wound. Cap reached to grab him by the throat.

He heard a shriek of tires and the roar of another engine. The second limo came down the ramp toward him at high speed, headlamps blazing. Cap glimpsed the near-maniacal face of Gustav at the wheel.

Cap launched himself out of the way. The second car missed him by inches.

Gustav’s vehicle smashed the open rear door of the first car off its hinges and sent it flying in a shower of shattered glass. Gustav lost the headlights on one side of his vehicle, and scraped the wing of his car along the bodywork of the other limo, buckling the door panels and scoring the paintwork down to bare metal.

Gustav threw his limo into reverse, spinning the wheels so hard they billowed acrid smoke from the wheel arches. The limo lurched backwards, the two cars parting with a squeal of complaining bodywork.

Strucker struggled out of his limo and ran crookedly toward Gustav’s car, carry-box in hand. He dragged open the rear door and fell inside. Gustav swung the limo around before Strucker could even pull his door shut. The limo clipped the tail of the crashed car, then accelerated along the parking bay toward the next down-ramp.

Cap ran after it and threw his shield. The red-white-and-blue disk spun through the air and hit the nearside rear wheel as the car turned. The wheel drum buckled slightly, but the limo had run-flat tires. The car continued to accelerate.

The shield bounced off the wheel, soared away, and ricocheted off a concrete column. Cap, still running, caught it as it returned.

Without breaking stride, Cap kicked open the fire door of the stairwell and descended the steps three at a time, sliding his hip off the handrail at each floor-turn.

He got to the ground floor. The fleeing limo had already reached the street exit at the far end of the structure. Without slowing, it tore through the automatic barriers, showering splinters of red-chevroned white plastic, and rocked out onto the street in a wild oversteer.

Cap’s custom Harley was propped in one of the ground-floor bays where he had left it. He leapt astride it, kicked it to life, and tore away with his shield across his back.

The matte-black bike had originally been a Street 750, but the tech guys at S.H.I.E.L.D. had seriously upgraded its performance. Cap, no mean mechanic himself, had tinkered, too. The goal had been the perfect balance of maximum speed and optimal road-holding ability.

Cap’s wheels cracked over the fallen pieces of barrier, and he hit the street, leaning hard into each turn. The limo was still in sight, driving recklessly fast. Traffic was light in the district, but it wouldn’t be for long. Rush hour was coming. Cap gripped the throttle and started to close the distance, taking a racing line and cutting corners to gain as much ground as he could.

He synched his suit-mic to the bike’s com unit.

“Whisper, this is Sentinel,” he called.

The radio link crackled over the roar of the Harley’s straining engine.

“Sentinel, this is Whisper. Go.”

“Are you painting me, Whisper?”

“Affirmative, Sentinel. We have you on screen.”

Somewhere above Berlin’s cloud cover, a S.H.I.E.L.D. recon plane in stealth mode had him locked. Cap took another corner hard.

“It’s Strucker,” Cap said, concentrating on the road ahead. “I’m in pursuit. Can you lock target?”

“Target sighted and locked.”

“Strucker’s got something. Cargo he clearly doesn’t want to give up. Can you patch me in to Fury?”

“Uh, negative at this time, Sentinel.”

“Then give me a direct priority link to Avengers Tower.”

“Apologies, negative. S.H.I.E.L.D. shadow on you, sir. Choppers inbound, and security details moving in from the north and east. That’s the available limit right now.”

“Understood,” Cap replied. He dearly wanted to ask why neither the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. nor his fellow Avengers were online. But wondering what kind of emergency might have called them away was a distraction.

Strucker was an emergency all by himself. Any time Hydra showed one of its ugly heads, it meant the world was in trouble. Cap had been undercover in Berlin for three days following leads. Now that he was coming up for air and assistance, everyone was busy.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. It was taking every ounce of his nerve and skill to stay on Strucker’s tail at these speeds. One lapse in concentration, one distracted moment of worry, and he would spin out or plow into oncoming traffic.

And Strucker would be gone.

“Get EMT and tac support to Auger GmbH,” he instructed. “Suspect injuries, fatalities on site. Go in full-tac. Hydra agents on the ground. Secure the location and lock it down. I want a full site-condition review and summary as soon as this is done. Strucker had business there.”

“In work, Sentinel. Tac teams dispatched.”

“Tell local to clear the route,” Cap ordered. “Strucker’s not stopping for anything. I do not want civilian collateral.”

“Understood.”

Cap could already hear sirens in the surrounding streets. He passed at least one fender-bender where cars had swerved to avoid Strucker’s speeding limousine.

“Track the target,” Cap said. “Find me some corners to cut.”

“Affirmative. In work.”

The limo was running hard. Each time Cap began to close, boosting his speed on a straightaway, the car turned hard and changed course. They were entering a busier part of the city. Vehicles were screeching to a halt, sounding their horns as the car and its bike pursuit blasted past. A delivery truck barely avoided collision with the limo and shunted into a bus shelter. A group of cyclists scattered and fell in their effort to get out of the car’s way when it swung out into the facing lane to get around a line of stopped traffic.

“Next block, cut left,” the link said.

“Got it,” replied Cap.

He turned hard, his rear wheel slipping out, and raced along a serviceway between a factory and a row of retail outlets. Litter fluttered and flew in his wake. The roar of his engine echoed off the buildings around him.

He exited the mouth of the serviceway, narrowly missed a curb, and joined another street. Car horns sounded. He put one foot down to steady his turn, slithered a little, then accelerated off. The cut had shaved a few hundred meters off his lag. The limo was up ahead, powering down the wrong side of the street into heavier traffic.

Cars swerved out of its way. Two off them crunched together, sideswiped. A Polizei traffic car, light strap flashing and siren wailing, changed lanes and tried to cut off the limo.

The car piled right through it, its massive bulk hurling the police vehicle aside into a nose-to-tail spin, scattering headlight glass and broken bodywork.

Cap slalomed around the wrecked police car and picked up speed. He veered left to miss a garbage truck, then hard right to dodge a bus. Its windows were full of wide-eyed, horrified passengers.

The limo hit roadworks, tearing through the red-and-white temporary barriers and scattering the frantic work crew. It avoided the heavy surfacing machine the crew had been operating by pulling out hard across the median strip. A sports car skidded to get out of its way, then fishtailed into a van and a compact.

Cap was closing. The sheer density of rush-hour traffic was forcing the limo to go slower. Where cars blocked its way, Cap could weave and slip in between moving traffic.

Strucker appeared, leaning out of the limo’s rear passenger window. He was clutching a machine pistol.

He opened fire, blasting at the bike on his tail. Cap saw the muzzle flash and the bullets coughing dirt-smoke from the road surface to his left. He steered out, pulled his shield off his back, and dropped it in front of his chest and chin. Riding a Harley with one hand was not ideal, especially at high speed.

Strucker changed clips and fired again. Rounds spanked off Cap’s shield, making it vibrate and shudder. A bullet took out the headlamp of his bike. Stray rounds smacked into vehicles on either side of him and chewed into the road.

Cap accelerated into another gap, just missing a truck. He pulled around it, trying to move up on the side opposite Strucker’s firing position and hoping to restrict the terrorist’s cone of fire.

Strucker saw what he was doing, and he disappeared back into the limo.

Changing sides, Cap thought. He did the same. By the time Strucker and the gun appeared out of the other passenger window, Cap had pulled hard across the lane and was coming up on the rear quarter of the limo where Strucker had previously been positioned. He saw Strucker attempt a shot, curse the angle, and duck back inside.

Cap got closer. He wondered whether he could risk a jump from bike to speeding car. He was so close—so very close—matching speeds, but the chance of rebounding off or missing a grip was too great.

The rear window of the limo exploded as Strucker shot it out. The glass chips pelted back at Cap. Strucker slammed in a third clip and began shooting through the ragged window space. Cap took several shots against his shield, and then revved hard and burned up along the left side of the limo. Strucker appeared at the passenger window and resumed shooting, but Cap had switched the shield to his side. Cap swung in recklessly and slammed the shield flat against the window opening, knocking Strucker back into the passenger seat.

The car suddenly veered away to the right. Cap saw they were coming up fast on the rear of a slow-moving eighteen-wheel rig. The limo had swerved to avoid ramming it. Cap jerked the wheel hard, narrowly averting a crash. The speeding vehicles passed the rig on either side—limo to the right, bike to the left. As soon as they were past it, they swung together again. Strucker hosed another clip at Cap. Shop windows on Cap’s side of the street shattered.

“Damn you,” Cap snarled, too aware of how many innocent people were in the vicinity. He spurred closer to the racing limo, blocking gunfire with his shield.

The limo started to slow. There was a heavy stream of traffic ahead, backed up from a busy bridge crossing.

Cap took his chance. He steered in sharply and leapt. The Harley kicked out underneath him, fell sideways, and was left spinning and sliding in the road in a trail of friction sparks.

Cap landed, belly-first, on the hood of the car and clung on. He felt himself slipping, but scrabbled to keep his grip. At the wheel, Gustav started to snake the limo violently from side to side in an attempt to throw Cap off.

When that didn’t work, Gustav drew his handgun, opened the driver’s window, and leaned out to spray shots across the car’s nose. One tore across Cap’s left sleeve, barely deadened by the armor. Cap got his shield around and blocked two more shots. He tried to gain purchase with his boots to kick up the hood and attack through the windshield. If he could tackle Gustav, the chase would be over.

Trying to shoot at the Avenger had distracted Gustav from driving. Cap heard Strucker yell out from the rear. Gustav hauled on the wheel.

The speeding limo swiped the end of one of the stationary cars in the queuing traffic, barely avoiding a full-on collision. The halted cars cannoned into each other.

But Gustav had lost control. The limo struck the curb violently and lurched up onto the sidewalk for thirty meters. It ripped down a row of railings one after another, and then smashed through a safety barrier.

Captain America was still clinging to the hood.

The limousine burst through the bridge abutment and cleared the towpath at a height of six meters. Trailing debris and the tatters of its tailpipe system, it plunged headlong toward the broad, calm river far below.

TWO

69˚ 30’ SOUTH, 68˚30’ WEST

07.26 LOCAL, JUNE 12TH

IT WAS a long drop.

He came tumbling and spinning out of the floor hatch into the shocking cold and turbulence.

Below him, dense cloud cover. Below that, uncertainty.

Hawkeye had performed several HALO drops in his career—but always with prep, and never in an emergency.

He hadn’t even had time to strap on the drop-pack properly. It was hooked over one shoulder, the other set of harness straps flying and snapping in the ferocious air.

Get it on, get it fixed, get it secure. Stabilize…

He was spinning, inverting. The air slammed against his face. No mask, no respirator. He couldn’t breathe. He spread his arms and legs, trying to control his free fall. Slipstream was trying to rip the drop-pack off his back. He fumbled, caught the flying straps, and managed to cinch them around his other shoulder.

Burning debris and plumes of whipping black smoke streaked the sky around him. Whatever had hit the Quinjet had taken it out of the sky, bursting through the hull and then shredding it. Surface-to-air. A missile. Rotating, he glimpsed the Quinjet’s nose cone flaming like a comet into the cloud banks, drizzling dirty smoke.

Did she get out, too? Please, God, let her have gotten out, too…

He hit the clouds. Visibility cut. He was dropping through an icy void of soft white, but it felt as though he were suspended, motionless.

Arms out, Barton, legs out. Belly down, chin up.

How long did he have? Twenty seconds? Thirty? He had no altimeter, and he didn’t know how high up the Quinjet had been flying when it was hit. If the cloud cover was low-lying, he might reach the ground at any second. He wouldn’t even see it coming up at him.

The pressure was intense. He couldn’t hear because of the wind-chop in his ears. Droplets of blood from one nostril were flicking up across his cheek and eye. He felt like he might hurl. That wouldn’t be a good look. Not heroic at all…

The drop-pack wasn’t a ’chute, not even a compact HALO version. It was a one-use lifter unit based on repulsor technology developed by Stark Industries. “Oh, a jet pack,” Barton had laughed when Stark first showed the units to the Avengers. He’d gotten a scowl in return. Not a jet-pack. Just a device to “slow and soften a terminal descent.”

If he activated it too early, it would burn out its fuel cell, and then he’d be falling again. If he activated it too late…

Give me a sign, he thought.

Hawkeye fell out of the bottom of the clouds; with a sudden shock, visibility returned. The landscape yawned below him. A vast mat of dense green vegetation. A slanting horizon. A dappled, yellow sunset sky that washed a golden cast over the view. The glitter of threading rivers. The twinkle of the faraway Gorahn Sea. The rough-tooth gray line of the Eternity Mountains, ghostly in the distance.

The jungle below was dense. Really dense. Before the attack, they’d been circling the Quinjet trying to find a viable landing zone. Hitting the tree canopy was going to hurt, drop-pack or no drop-pack.

A meteor streaked past him, dragging flames behind it. One of the ’jet’s engine pods. It shot diagonally through the sky and impacted in the forest below. There was a bright flare, and a boom he could hear despite the wind. He could see fire in the impact-hole the burning junk had made in the tree cover.

He realized how fast the ground was coming up. Where was a flier when a guy needed one? Where was Thor or Iron Man?

Yeah, where the hell were they? Before the missile strike, he’d been flying for over an hour without base contact.

He reached for the center of the harness, found the activator stud, and pressed it. Nothing happened. He began to thump the harness stud frantically, as though he were giving himself CPR. Come on! Come on!

Damn you, Stark! The damn thing isn’t wo—

Then he realized it was. The repulsor lift was so quiet he couldn’t hear its throb over the buffeting wind. He was floating, drifting downward like a seedpod.

He angled himself feet-down. Okay, this was better. This was working. This, he could handle.

He hit the trees anyway.

Branches ripped and snapped at his face. Creepers tore. Leaves whipped against him. He glanced sideways off a tree bole with winding force and felt the bark rake his skin. The suddenly gloomy air was full of dust, leaves, insects, debris. Tumbling like a rag doll, he felt like an idiot. Where was his famed acrobatic skill and grace now?

He hit another branch. Then another. He cursed in anger and pain and inadvertently swallowed a leaf. Choking, he fell farther, glancing off large trees, smaller trees, cross-branches, and creepers as thick as anchor chains. Limbs flailing, he shredded through veils of hanging moss. The drop-pack, choked with leaf fiber, shut down.

He landed on a bed of ferns, bounced, ricocheted off a mossy boulder, and landed face-down on swampy ground. Then, and only then, the drop-pack restarted, raising him a foot off the forest floor as if he were levitating on his belly.

It died again. He fell on his face.

Silence. He exhaled, and then sat up coughing, spitting out bits of leaf.