S teve fell through the stormy night toward the hijacked  ship, then veered away and somersaulted at the last moment so he hit the water feet-​first. The icy shock up his legs felt good, like the first little jab to the face when you were sparring. It woke you up, let you know it was time to focus on the mission. He’d fallen from a few hundred feet, and went pretty deep. He surfaced, climbed the side of the ship’s hull, vaulted the railing, and then landed softly behind an unsuspecting mercenary on patrol.

Steve grabbed him from behind and covered his mouth, putting him in a chokehold until he was unconscious. Then he lowered the mercenary to the deck. He needed to keep up the element of surprise as long as he could.

He went counterclockwise around the deck of the ship, taking out the mercenaries as he found them. He used exactly as much force as was necessary to stop them from sounding the alarm.

Everything went fine right up until he had made an almost complete circuit of the ship. Then, just as he began to turn into the middle of the deck to get inside and head for the galley, he skidded to a halt. One of the mercenaries had him covered with an automatic rifle. “Don’t move!” he shouted.

Steve froze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another armed mercenary. They had overlapping fields of fire and he had no place to run. He could probably take them down, but he was going to lose some blood doing it.

Then there was a soft pop and the nearest mercenary collapsed. Before he even hit the deck, the second man also fell. A moment later Brock Rumlow dropped out of the sky, parachute trailing behind him over the deck. He held the rifle he’d used to drop the two mercenaries. Good shooting , Steve thought. It wasn’t easy to be accurate when you were hanging from a parachute on a windy night and shooting at a moving target on the deck of a ship, which was also moving. Rumlow was among S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best.

“Thanks,” Cap said.

“Yeah,” Rumlow said with a grin. “You seemed pretty helpless without me.”

Natasha and the rest of the team dropped around them and together they all started off to the next mission objective: Find Sitwell and also find Georges Batroc. “What about the nurse who lives across the hall from you?” Natasha asked Steve as they walked. “She seems kind of nice.”

Her name was Kate, and Natasha was right. She was nice. Steve appreciated what Natasha was trying to do, but his mind wasn’t on romance right then. “Secure the engine room, then find me a date.”

“I’m multitasking,” she said, and vaulted a railing before dropping down to the lower deck, where the engine room was. TlR0PxYuzYUhW07ANSr0sRTihDElDQItkoM6LV613tpvxngKQOd6CLbMtvYRo/WE