The Deep End, Part 2: Magic Bullets

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, has just become the Secretary of Defense.[1] When a series of supply convoys have gone missing in Iraq, Tony decides to investigate the mystery personally. As his military transport prepares to land at Baghdad International Airport, Tony decides to drive his new Stark All-Terrain Vehicle out the back before the plane reaches the ground. This impresses the soldiers on the ground and gives his assistant, Bob Ezzard, a fright. He soon meets with the man in charge Brigadier General Krebs. He is escorted inside where he is immediately swarmed by various government officials who have concerns about different interests in Iraqi. Tony tells them that he’ll address all of their concerns after he deals with the problem up north, and leaves them for Bob to deal with.

Krebs is willing to take Stark up north as there are a few secure areas up there he can see. However, Tony wants to get hands on resolving the missing convoys near Hatra. Since he can’t talk out of it, Krebs insists that Tony wear body armor if he’s not going to be in his Iron Man suit the entire time. Tony insists on leading the convoy, telling Krebs that the SATV uses a low intensity repulsor to sweep for mines and improvised explosive devises. It is also protected by metal plating the automatically drops down when the sensors detect someone pointing a gun at any of the windows.

On the trip North, Tony gets to know more about the soldiers he is riding with. Hearing about the supply chain issues he has been having supply chain issues. Tony assures them he’ll resolve those problems. That’s when they happen upon some locals working on a broken down car. The soldiers are weary that this might be an ambush, but the SATV scanners don’t pick up any conventional weapons so they pull over to see if they can help. That’s when the men turn and face them. They are all armed with paint-ball guns and spray the SATV’s side doors with some kind of liquid that begins eating through the metal plating of the car. The soldiers quickly speed off to a safe distance while the rest of their team engages the enemies.

However, the tanks and other combat vehicles are just as vulnerable to this powerful acid. With the situation rapidly deteriorating, Tony quickly changes into Iron Man to assist in the fight. As he engages the enemy, they get lucky and manage to get some of this gunk in his repulsors and jet boots, rendering them useless. He still has the strength augmentation that the armor provides. He uses this to smash past the enemy insurgents and grabs his troops and tries to get them to safety. When he can’t get away fast enough, he shields the soldiers with a force field while he bares the brunt of the enemy attack. That is until the soldiers in the SATV return and mow the enemy soldiers back. Tony doesn’t think lethal force was necessary, but he is reminded that his desire to make the military non-lethal won’t happen over night.

With the battle over, Tony uplinks with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Frederick, Maryland, and sends them a scan of the acid that was used against them. Vice Admiral Landauer reports back that it looks like a super-charged version of leptospirllium ferroxidans, a naturally occurring bacteria that eats metal and excretes acid. The only person he knows was working with this was a chemical weapons expert that operated in the region over a decade earlier. Codenamed Vitriol, they worked in the region over a decade earlier before they had a falling out with the regime and disappeared without a trace.

It’s by this point that they are passing through a village, where the soldiers become weary thatt they might be passing through an ambush. Since they need to get through the city to reach the ruins further north, he tells them to step on it. However, he orders them to stop when they are about to run down two locals being threatened by a man with a machine gun. Iron Man leaps off the SATV and takes out the gunman. The man they just saved asks them to take his daughter, telling them that she knows the ruins well and can help them. While the soldiers are reluctant to do it, Iron Man decides to take him up on the offer. Assisting her into SATV, Tony introduces himself to the burqa wearing woman. She tells him that her name is Leyla.

They soon arrive at the temple in Hatra where a squad of soldiers and an archeologist went missing. As they search the ruins for clues, Leyla tells them that this was a temple where they worshiped the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. She leads them to a pool of the chemical agent they were attacked with earlier. Iron Man warns her to stay away but she strips off her burqa and dives in. Moments later, the woman emerges from the pool of powerful acid made of the same substance. Claiming to be Ishtar reborn, Leyla orders the men to submit to her or die.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, “Ishtar”

Continuity Notes

1. For the whole story on how Tony Stark became Secretary of Defense, see Iron Man (vol. 3) #73-78.

Topical References

• This story was written during the early days of the War on Terror and the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that were in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As such, a lot of the attitudes and depictions of the United States government are influenced by this particular point in time. While these themes are merely implied, they should be considered topical.

• That said, the story is rooted as taking place in and around Iraq. This fact cannot be changed without altering the story. Modern readers should interpret this story as taking place in Iraq, although not during the conflict that took place between 2003 and 2011. One could assume that this is a conflict unique to the fiction, much in the same way that Marvel has created the Sin-Cong Conflict to stand in for Modern Age stories that were written during and featuring the Vietnam War.

• The military vehicles and weapons used in this story were of the type that were used at the time this story was published. Their depiction should be considered topical as military equipment is eventually retired from use when something new becomes available.

• When one of the soldiers refers to Northern Iraq as “Indian Country”, Tony tells him not to use such terminology. This is an old military term meaning that they are going into territory where the locals could be hostile. It harkens back to the colonization of America and the American Frontier, when groups of Native Americans were (for good reason) hostile towards travelers. It’s a dated term and is considered offensive to some. Couldn’t tell you if the military in the US still uses it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

• One of the troops says that he had to order some of his gear from Wal-Mart. This should be considered topical as Wal-Mart is a real world business.

• Vitriol is stated as working as a chemical weapons researcher that worked during Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1990s. As Landauer states that he investigated Vitriol himself, all references to 1990s Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and Gulf War I would be considered topical due to the Sliding Timescale. Modern readers should interpret this to mean that he investigated a Middle Eastern dictator and their chemical weapons capabilities of which Vitriol worked for. This would have happened 14 years prior to the main story as opposed to a specific year.