Captain America #452
Man Without a Country Chapter 3: Plan “B”
Captain America has been found guilty of treason and exiled from America. In order to clear his name, Steve Rogers is traveling to Moldovia to find out how the Machinesmith was able to steal secret plans for the Argus anti-aircraft cannon and clear his name.[1]
Stealing an Air Force fighter plane and using it to cross the Moldavian border, Steve and Sharon Carter’s plane was blown out of the sky by the very weapon they are trying to destroy. Luckily, Rogers activated the ejection system in order to prevent their untimely demise.
The shock of doing so causes Sharon to briefly black out and she dreams about the past when she and Captain America were lovers and used to fight side-by-side.[2] Steve notices that the parachute on Sharon’s ejector seat has not deployed and he dives down to her to manually deploy it to slow their descent. Once they are close enough to the ground, Rogers grabs Sharon and leaps into a nearby tree. The ejector seat then crashes onto a frozen lake, breaking through the ice. Steve explains that he allowed this to happen to make their enemies think that whoever landed there drowned.
With night beginning to fall, Steve suggests they find shelter for the night. They find it in a nearby cave. The pair have to sleep close together in order to maintain their body heat, something that Sharon reluctantly agrees to doing. She has another dream about all the times she and Cap fought together in the past.
In the morning, she is woken up by three Moldavian soldiers who found her in the cave. Steve is nowhere to be found and at first, Sharon thinks he went off without her. Fighting her way out of the cave, Sharon gets outside just as Steve returns with a jeep he stolen from a near by base. With some spare uniforms, they disguise themselves as Moldavian soldiers and head to the base where the Argus cannon is being held. Although Steve wants to bluff their way through, Sharon instead fires a gun at the guards at the gate. She then orders Steve to attack her and make it look good. Thinking that Rogers is one of them, the Moldovian soldiers rush to his “aid”. When Sharon begins fighting them, she tells Steve to make a run for it.
Stripping off his disguise, Steve runs for the Argus cannon and uses his photonic shield to destroy it. However, he is knocked out by the blast. When Sharon catches up to him, she discovers that he is not breathing and starts giving him CPR. This revives Steve who then starts kissing Sharon. At first, she accepts it, but then she pulls away and socks Rogers in the mouth, telling not to do that again. Moments later they are hit with a grenade filled with knock out gas.
When they wake up, they find themselves tied up in the Moldavian war room which is playing news footage from the United States. With the increased hostility from Moldavia, the President of the United States has agreed to meet with delegates to negotiate peace. The Machinesmith reveals that this is all a ruse to assassinate the President and plunge both nations into war. The Machinesmith also confirms that all of the information on the Argus cannon were stolen from Steve’s mind when he was being healed by the Red Skull. That, and all of Rogers’ other secrets have been encoded in a gold coin that the Machinesmith now carries. He also reveals that he can now transmit his mind and control multiple robotic duplicates anywhere in the world. When Steve breaks free he is quickly restrained by the Machinesmith’s robotic duplicates.[3] The madman then uses his gold coin to hack into and shut down the SHIELD helicarrier, sending it hurtling toward a mountain while one of his duplicates infiltrates the meeting with the Moldavian delegates in order to assassinate the President.
Recurring Characters
Captain America, Machinesmith, Sharon Carter, SHIELD (Dum Dum Dugan)
Continuity Notes
Captain America was charged with treason in Captain America #450. This issue we learn that the Machinesmith stole the info from Cap’s mind while he was being revived by the Red Skull back in issue #445.
Sharon first met Captain America back in Tales of Suspense #75. They had an on-again-off-again romance until Sharon faked her death to go on a deep cover mission for SHIELD in Captain America #237. Sharon was cut loose under mysterious circumstances and has been fighting to survive over a number of years before re-entering Steve’s life in Captain America #445.
Here, Steve mentions how he thought that the Machinesmith had been “neutered” and was working for Tony Stark. This was an errant duplicate of the Machinesmith that was found and used by Tony Stark in Iron Man #320-324.
