Lagos, Nigeria

Present Day

Wanda Maximoff was dressed in her street clothes, sipping coffee on the patio of a restaurant in downtown Lagos. As an Avenger, she was known as Scarlet Witch. She acted casual as she listened to Captain America’s voice through a hidden earpiece. He was watching the area from an upper-floor window in a hotel down the block. “All right, what do you see?”

She looked around. The restaurant was across from the police station they were staking out. A pair of uniformed officers stood near the door. “Standard beat cops. Small station. Quiet street. It’s a good target.”

“There’s an ATM in the south corner, which means—”

She knew exactly what it meant. “Cameras.”

“Both cross streets are one-way?”

This didn’t bother her. “So compromise the escape routes.”

“Means our guy doesn’t care about being seen,” Cap said. “He isn’t afraid to make a mess on the way out. You see that SUV halfway up the block?”

She did. “You mean the red one? It’s cute.”

“It’s also bulletproof,” said Natasha Romanoff, more famously known as Black Widow, who was sitting at a nearby table. Like Wanda, she was in a civilian disguise. “Which means private security, which means more guns, which means more headaches for somebody, probably us.”

Wanda thought they were maybe worrying a little too much. “You guys know I can move things with my mind, right?”

“Looking over your shoulder needs to become second nature,” Black Widow answered. She had a good reason to feel that way, and Wanda knew it.

From the top of a nearby office building, Sam Wilson, code-named Falcon, chimed in. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a little paranoid?”

“Not to my face. Why? Did you hear something?”

“Eyes on target, folks,” Cap said, keeping them on mission. “It’s the best lead we’ve had on Rumlow in six months. I don’t want to lose him.”

“If he sees us coming, there won’t be a problem,” Sam answered. “He kind of hates us.”

They had been looking for Brock Rumlow since he’d been unmasked as a Hydra mole inside S.H.I.E.L.D., and they’d finally tracked him down here in Lagos. They suspected he was about to attack the police station, but they weren’t certain yet.

Cap scanned the area and saw a loaded garbage truck forcing its way down a narrow side street, close to their stakeout location. As he watched, it crashed into a parked car, pushing it out of the way. Angry onlookers shouted at the driver, who ignored them. “Sam, see that garbage truck?” Cap said. “Take it.”

Falcon touched a button on his armored forearm, and a bird-shaped robot took off from his back—​he affectionately called it Redwing. It soared over the adjacent buildings and swooped down to street level, hovering under the truck. “Give me X‑ray,” Falcon said. Redwing returned a visual scan of the truck’s interior directly to Falcon’s goggles, along with images of the driver and data about the truck’s cargo.

“The truck’s loaded for max weight, and the driver’s armed,” he reported.

“It’s a battering ram,” Natasha said.

Cap realized she was right. “Go now,” he barked.

“Why?” Wanda asked.

Cap was already moving. “He’s not hitting the police.”

The Avengers swung into action as the garbage truck accelerated out of the narrow street and across an open square in front of a research facility. A sign near the fortified gate read, institute for infectious diseases. The driver dove out and rolled along the pavement as the truck smashed into the gate, destroying it and crashing to a halt on the other side.

Two box trucks appeared from another side street, following the garbage truck’s path. The institute’s gate guards scrambled out of the way. A group of armed men in black body armor leaped from one of the trucks and shot their way across the parking lot, taking out all the security guards in the area. Then two of them fired gas grenades through the windows of the institute’s main building.

As the gas took effect, the institute’s staff dropped to the floor and lay unmoving. Masked and heavily armored men from the truck entered the building while the first combat team stood guard outside.

But they weren’t counting on Captain America. He dropped over the institute’s wall from a nearby building and disabled three soldiers before the rest knew he was there. From the top of a truck, he briefed the rest of the team. “Body armor. AR‑15s. I make seven hostiles.”

Falcon swooped low over an upper balcony overlooking the courtyard, spinning into a double kick that laid out two of the gunmen. “I make five,” he said as Scarlet Witch arrived.

A gunman took aim at her, but she cast a swirling shield of chaos energy that no projectile could hope to penetrate. Then she caught him and flung him into the air, calling out, “Sam!”

Right on time, he dove down and smashed the flying gunman across the courtyard with the leading edge of his wing.

“Four,” he said, and landed next to Cap and Wanda as Redwing scanned the building’s upper windows. “Rumlow’s on the third floor.”

“Wanda,” Cap said immediately, “just like we practiced.”

“What about the gas?”

“Get it out,” he said. The move they had practiced involved her using her powers to throw Cap across distances too far for him to jump. It worked to perfection. Red energy reached out to him and catapulted him up and through a third-floor window. He landed and knocked the nearest gunman sprawling, then ran farther into the building, looking for Rumlow.

Outside, Falcon deflected the incoming fire from Rumlow’s men while Wanda used her powers to draw the gas out of the building. She built it into a tornado that spun up into the open air, dissipating where it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Remote-controlled mini-missiles from shoulder mounts on Falcon’s armor took care of the closer gunmen, but there were still a lot of them.

Inside, Cap reached the secure lab where Rumlow had been. Shattered doorways and windows were an easy trail to follow. At the back of the lab was a cold-storage case with biohazard symbols inscribed on it. It was open and empty. Bad news. Turning back, he called to the team. “Rumlow has a biological weapon.”

“I’m on it,” Black Widow responded. She was on a motorcycle outside the compound, playing a support role and waiting for her moment to provide backup, and now she raced into the courtyard. She saw Rumlow in his battered metal mask, climbing up onto an armored truck to enter through its top hatch, but there were at least half a dozen armed men between him and her. No problem , she thought.

She laid the bike down and tumbled after it as it crashed into the first man. A second went down twitching when she hit him with her wrist-mounted electrical stingers. Three, four, and five caught boots or elbows to the face before they could get off a shot. Six dropped from another stinger, and then it was just her and Rumlow.

But he was a lot tougher than he’d been the last time she saw him. She hit him with almost everything she had, and he didn’t stagger. She finally used a stinger, jabbing it straight into his neck, and he just paused long enough to say, “I don’t work like that no more.”

With that, he threw Natasha down into the armored vehicle . . . ​and dropped a grenade in after her. “Fire in the hole.”

She had only seconds to act, but that was all she needed. With two quick attacks, she knocked out the soldiers in the Humvee with her. Then she crouched down, holding one of them in front of her to shield her from the explosion.

When the grenade went off, the blast blew Natasha through the Humvee’s back door. She hit the ground and rolled to a stop, dazed for a moment. Then she saw where Rumlow was headed and called out to Falcon. “Sam, he’s in the main Humvee heading north.” 6pW/P6w7YC1t1Rp0k+cOeWPU93y1q50lH6JcVVyiaD9WXppAEoM4CRa2sIaQ533T