Marvel Novels--Captain America Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 It’s not About the Individual. It’s About the Design, the Pattern.

  2 Oh, Dying Would Matter to them, of Course. No One Wants to Die.

  3 But Kill Them All and What Does It Matter?

  4 Death Only Matters to Those Left Behind.

  5 If They’re All Gone, What’s Left to Care? The Sky? The Planet? The Stars? No.

  6 History Doesn’t Exist Without Someone Reading It.

  7 History is Also Written by the Winner.

  8 If They’re Gone, No One Will Fret their Questions or Ponder their Existence. No One Except Me.

  9 I’ll Be the Only One Deciding What they Are Worth. So Why Shouldn’t I Decide if they Live?

  10 If Something’s About to Destroy You, The Obvious Choice is to Destroy it First.

  11 But is It so Easy to Destroy if It’s the Most Astonishing Thing You’ve Ever Seen?

  12 How Do You Decide if It’s Worth the Risk?

  13 But Why Would I Ever Value Anything More than Myself?

  14 In The End, What’s Worth More—Me, Or The Things That Make Me Feel Alive?

  15 If I Try to be Objective, It’s Like Trying to Pick One Snowflake Over Another.

  16 If I Were as Callous as the Stars, I’d Flip A Coin. But that Would Be the Same as not Deciding at All.

  17 It Can’t Just Be Luck that Decides For me, It Has to be The Pattern. The Design.

  18 If I had a Million Years, I Could Think Through to Certainty, But I Don’t. I Have to Decide—And Soon.

  19 True Beauty that Can Make the Very Idea of Luck Seem Meaningless, A Placeholder for a Lack of Understanding.

  20 Wanting to Preserve that Beauty Can’t Be Pointless.

  21 Not to Appreciate Beauty, Well, that Would be the Very Definition of Pointlessness.

  22 But Believing in Beauty Doesn’t Mean Risking My Life for it, Does It?

  23 But if I Sacrifice Myself, I do it in Secret. Who Would Know? Who Would Care?

  24 What Would Be Left to Fret My Questions, to Judge Me Good or Ill?

  25 My History Won’t Exist Without Someone to Write It.

  26 I’d Still Remember them, Though.

  27 If I Survive, I May See Their Like Again.

  28 Maybe, In Time, I’ll See Something Better, Even More Worth the Risk.

  29 If I’m Gone, I Won’t See Anything at All.

  30 And Nothing Wants to Die.

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS

  Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

  Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett

  Avengers: Infinity by James A. Moore

  Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther? by Jesse J. Holland

  Captain America: Dark Designs by Stefan Petrucha

  Captain Marvel: Liberation Run by Tess Sharpe

  Civil War by Stuart Moore

  Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

  Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha

  Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover by David Liss

  Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt by Neil Kleid

  Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore

  Venom: Lethal Protector by James R. Tuck

  X-Men: Days of Future Past by Alex Irvine

  X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Stuart Moore

  X-Men: The Mutant Empire Omnibus by Christopher Golden (Nov 2019)

  X-Men and the Avengers: The Gamme Quest Omnibus by Greg Cox (Jan 2020)

  ALSO FROM TITAN AND TITAN BOOKS

  Marvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm by Paul Davies

  Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Art of the Game by Paul Davies

  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed

  The Marvel Vault by Matthew K. Manning, Peter Sanderson, and Roy Thomas

  Ant-Man and the Wasp: The Official Movie Special

  Avengers: Endgame – The Official Movie Special

  Avengers: Infinity War – The Official Movie Special

  Black Panther: The Official Movie Companion

  Black Panther: The Official Movie Special

  Captain Marvel: The Official Movie Special

  Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years

  Spider-Man: Far From Home – The Official Movie Special

  Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse – The Official Movie Special

  Thor: Ragnarok – The Official Movie Special

  Captain America: Dark Designs

  Print edition ISBN: 9781789093483

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789093490

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan edition: October 2019

  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.

  © 2019 MARVEL

  Captain America created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby

  Interior art by Steve Epting, Jackson Guice, Michael Lark, Jay Leisten, Steve McNiven, Mike Perkins, Dexter Vines, and Patrick Zircher

  Special thanks to Jeff Christiansen, Kevin Garcia, Daron Jensen, and Mike O’Sullivan

  Joan Hilty and Stuart Moore, Editors

  Design by Jay Bowen

  VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist

  Associate Editor: Sarah Brunstad

  Assistant Editor: Caitlin O’Connell

  Director, Licensed Publishing: Sven Larsen

  SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel

  Editor In Chief: C.B. Cebulski

  Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada

  President, Marvel Entertainment: 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.

  For David Marquis, a real hero who has devoted his life to bringing the joy of art to over 345,000 schoolchildren in NYC.

  1

  IT’S NOT ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL. IT’S ABOUT THE DESIGN, THE PATTERN.

  SUMMER, 2005. The dirt-caked vehicle bouncing along Somalia’s flat, thorn-bush savannah looked like any National Army personnel carrier: an olive-drab truck with a canvas-covered bed. As soon as it passed, the locals—many living in domed huts fashioned from spindly branches and discarded plastic sheets—went back to their day.

  They’d seen plenty.

  But within the truck, surrounded by high-tech S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment, Captain America and his two companions sat in air-conditioned comfort. Agent Walter Jacobs scrutinized various screens while Dr. Nia N’Tomo reviewed the notes on her PDA. The blond, blue-eyed Steve Rogers stared out the back, watching tired camels sip the muddy waters of the Mandera Dawa River.

  Brazen sunlight accented the metallic window frame, making it look more like an interdimensional portal than bulletproof glass. The near-wasteland on the other side could almost have passed for an alternate universe. Jiilaal,
one of the two dry seasons, had left the terrain arid hues of tan with patches of green few and far between.

  The view made Rogers wonder whether he’d spent more time on other worlds than he had in this part of his own. National boundaries brought a different sort of danger than cosmic beings. Having been a one-man public-relations campaign during World War II, he was well aware of how complicated propaganda had grown. It’d been easier when the Nazis just thought they were superior. You could prove that wrong by defeating them in combat.

  Here and now, the militant fundamentalist Al-Shabaab controlled a large area to the south. The mere presence of Steve’s stars-and-stripes uniform could be spun as interference from a decadent Western colonizer, providing recruitment fodder for more troops.

  Much as he loathed being seen as one of the bullies he’d spent his life fighting, he’d never wear anything else. Whenever he did right by the red, white, and blue, the principles behind it became not abstractions, but living ideals.

  What had Churchill said? “You can depend upon the Americans to do the right thing. But only after they’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.”

  He smiled at the wry critique. After all, the British Bulldog also said democracy was the worst possible form of government—except for all the others.

  As humans, Rogers thought, all we can ever do is strive.

  The view gave way to a smattering of trees with bone-skinny trunks that seemed too frail to hold their heavy tops. He’d been frail himself once, near death as a sickly child, but who would believe that now? In time, any desert might become a paradise.

  Ahead lay a few stone structures clustered near a rare power line. When the driver veered west, Cap felt relieved. Propaganda aside, when it came to stopping a bacteriological bomb, fewer witnesses also meant fewer possible victims.

  As the buildings shrank into the distance, a beep from the sensor array turned him back to the truck’s dark interior. “Jacobs?”

  The glow from the readout gave the red-haired agent’s sunburnt skin a blue-white hue. “I’ve got a 98 percent confidence match with the signature of an Al-Hussein Scud missile a half-mile off.”

  Frowning, Dr. N’Tomo slumped against the canvas sidewall. “With a 400-mile range, that could hit a number of Wakandan population centers, even if they don’t know what they’re aiming for. I… was right.”

  Being stewards of the world’s only source of Vibranium, a metal with an uncanny ability to absorb kinetic energy, made the tribal nation of Wakanda vastly wealthy—and a target. Rogers understood more than most why a large portion of its wealth was spent keeping its exact location a secret. His shield was fashioned from an accidental combination of Vibranium and an iron alloy.

  He leaned toward Dr. N’Tomo. “If it weren’t for you, we’d still be back in the Helicarrier thinking this was just a bluff.”

  Usually poker-faced, she gave him a slight smile. The look of her brown skin and sharp eyes against the olive green of the borrowed fatigues suited her gravitas. “I’m still disappointed. In my line of work, we’d rather not be in demand.”

  “I hear that.” Wondering how much of his own expression she could see through the mask, he gave her a casual salute. “Then here’s to our early retirement.”

  Bringing a subject-matter expert on a military op was always a dicey proposition, but she was no lab jockey. Great-niece of Wakanda’s royal champion N’Tomo, Nia N’Tomo had done plenty of her own field work with the AIDS epidemics in Swaziland and Ebola outbreaks in West Africa. They’d met for the first time on the Helicarrier, and it hadn’t taken long for Rogers to recognize and admire her instincts.

  “If Somali pirates can acquire a missile and a weaponized virus this easily, I doubt that will ever happen.” She raised a playful eyebrow. “Speaking of free time, S.H.I.E.L.D. spirited me away from my first free day in eight months. I wouldn’t mind sharing a drink when this is over.”

  Already finding her a tough read, Steve wasn’t sure whether she was flirting or being friendly. Being an asthmatic weakling before the war and then lying for decades frozen in Arctic ice hadn’t provided many opportunities for relationships.

  “A drink. I…can’t… I…”

  Her poker face quickly returned. She had been flirting. “I’m sorry if I was being inappropriate.”

  “No, it’s not that. I just metabolize alcohol too quickly for it to have any effect. A result of the Super-Soldier serum. And no one likes a drinking partner with a good memory.” As he kept talking, she frowned, apparently as confused by him as he was by her. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  She studied him. After a moment, the knitted brow turned back into the slight smile.

  Noticing the wry look from Jacobs, Steve quickly changed the subject. “An old Scud wouldn’t be hard for anyone to find, if they’ve got the cash. But you can’t get weaponized rabies locally. The pirates have a history of working with financiers, even more now that the international push has driven them to attempt more land operations.”

  “I’ve been too buried in rabies research to read the latest brief. Any theories yet on who?”

  He shrugged. “Someone who wants Vibranium and doesn’t care how they get it.”

  “A lot of choices, then. Still, this seems especially desperate. Even if they manage a launch, our air defense has an excellent chance of knocking it out of the sky. The real concern is if something goes wrong on the ground. The three of us have been vaccinated, but given the high cost and the lack of an actual cure, an airborne rabies epidemic would devastate the local populace, and we can’t even be certain our vaccine is effective until we identify the strain.”

  “Which is why I’m here to neutralize any resistance while you and Jacobs secure the payload for transport—or, if possible, nullify the virus on site.”

  “We’re expecting 15 or more armed guards. I assume you’re all right with those odds?”

  “Actually, it’s not really fair to the guards, doctor.”

  This time she definitely smiled. “The name is Nia.”

  “Steve. And I make it a point never to disappoint a top-ten epidemiologist.”

  “Top five, actually, Steve.”

  He liked the way she said it, as if correcting poor grammar.

  As the truck slowed, Jacobs cleared his throat. “As top of my class at interpreting beeps and flashing red lights, I need you both to know we’re within 50 yards of the target. Are we all set to handle the virus, doctor?”

  “Incineration would be best, but as long as it’s still outside the human body, UV irradiation will suffice.” She raised what looked like an unusually large spotlight gun. “And this provides a much more concentrated blast. If there’s any sign the virus has been released, the hazmat suits are ready.”

  Only flat landscape was visible from the rear; Rogers shifted closer to Jacobs to check the forward view on his monitors. They’d reached the edge of a desert village: six or seven round huts, a few with thatched roofs, separated by low rock walls. With most of the inhabitants likely indoors avoiding the heat, it looked empty, save for two children leading an elderly man. They stopped to stare at the truck.

  “We’re out in the open. I don’t like this.”

  Jacobs smirked. “We’re in a truck on a plain with scrub grass and low bushes. Without a cloak, it’s not as if we have a choice. But the idea was to keep it small—that’s why you’re here instead of an entire task force.”

  Rogers grunted agreement. “I do have the advantage of not taking up much space. Can’t say the same for a missile launcher.” He tapped the glass, pointing to the largest hut. “And that’s the only thing in visual range big enough to hold one.”

  Jacobs zoomed the truck’s camera toward the hut entrance. It caught a glint of something metallic in the dry darkness. “That’s it. But where are the guards?”

  Nia moved nearer to watch. “Inside?”

  “Pull back,” Rogers said. The camera returned to a wider view, but it showed only dirt and patches of low ve
getation. “Those bushes. I’ve seen them everywhere but inside the villages. Look how they’re arranged, almost as if in…”

  Before Rogers could say formation, one of the gangly things tumbled sideways. A man—thin, but muscular—rose from the hole beneath it. Dry earth rained from the patterned scarf around his head and the RPG gripped in his hands.

  Rogers headed for the rear door. “On it.”

  Jacobs switched on the comm; though already several feet away, Rogers could now hear Dr. N’Tomo’s instructions to the driver as if they were whispered in his ear.

  “Get us to that hut immediately.”

  As he flew through the doors, Cap said, “Belay that order. Appreciate your enthusiasm, doctor, but you’ll have to keep your distance until I clear the area.”

  She glared at his back. “And if they launch?”

  “They won’t, Nia.”

  Before landing, he shouted to the elderly man and the children, “Run!”

  His boots raised tan dust-puffs that grew into a small cloud. He rolled left, spun toward the guard, knelt and threw his shield. A hot blur of sun-drenched red, white, and blue struck the RPG in the center, splitting it in two.

  Before the visual could travel the short distance from the gunman’s eyes to his brain, the shield slammed into his skull. He was out. More trained meteor than boomerang, the shield returned to Rogers’ waiting hand.

  Less than a second had elapsed, but five more “bushes” had fallen away. Two men scrambled from the waist-deep holes. Another three stood where they were and opened fire. There was no cover, but with the shooters still in the holes, their bullets sprayed low to the ground, making them easy for Rogers to avoid. Like a quick round of whack-a-mole, another shield-toss took out all three. By then the two runners were on him, and the remaining bushes had been tossed aside.

  More gunshots came his way. Missing outright or careening off his shield, they flew helter-skelter into stone walls, dirt, or sky.

  Some of the guns were automatic, a few single-shot. Rogers’ keen senses and hard-won experience told him what came from where. The two charging men had pistols. The ones in the holes, now too numerous for another shield strike, held the greater firepower. Unfortunately, the rising dust made it difficult to see every weapon they carried.