Captain America is going mad. He is in a dark room, his head filled with visions of friends and family as he tries to piece together what has happened to him. His late father appears to him, encouraging him to start fighting back…
…and Viper and Constrictor are amazed at how quickly the captive Cap fights off the sedative they’ve injected into him. Viper orders her men to take Cap from the cell and the groggy hero fights back, subdued only with a lashing from Constrictor’s electrified coils and tossed in another cell. Undercover SHIELD Agent Gail Runciter risks her top-secret mission to contact Nick Fury….
Back in Brooklyn Heights, former Bucky Jack Monroe is berating himself over his failure to rescue Cap from his captors (last issue). Bernie Rosenthal tells him knock off the self-pity and go help their friend. They go to Sam Wilson, once the Falcon, now a candidate for Congress; he can’t get involved because it would jeopardize his campaign but he can tell them how to contact SHIELD....
Soon Bernie and Jack are aboard the Helicarrier as Fury takes the call from Gail; he rebukes her for breaking cover in her mission to discover what Viper is plotting. Fury also shuts up Bernie for whining and hears from Spider-Woman who is too tied up in her own mission to help….
In his dreams, little boy Cap is still being encouraged to fight for what is right. He is then awoken by Viper via viewscreen and she explains her wicked scheme: from the typical mid-American town of Hartsdale, Illinois, she plans to release poisonous snakes carrying the bubonic plague, creating a deadly epidemic. She closes by gassing Cap back into unconsciousness. Constrictor has overheard all of this and wants no part of genocide. Elsewhere Sam Wilson wakes up with a sudden premonition that Cap is in danger, while Bernie Rosenthal aboard the Helicarrier is also highly concerned.…
At the moment, Dum Dum Dugan and Jack Monroe are flying to the rescue. Jack is now dressed in the Nomad costume worn by Steve Rogers when he briefly gave up being Captain America (see CAP #180-183). Nick Fury thinks that since Steve had earlier defeated Viper as Nomad (#182), Jack in the same costume would give them a psychological edge. Nomad parachutes down to the hills near Hartsdale. He is immediately attacked by dozens of Viper’s foot soldiers; just when things look bad for the hero, suddenly Captain America appears and joins in the fight. Victorious, the two good guys rush into the villains’ underground complex…where they are immediately captured. Nomad learns that Cap is under some sort of mind-control so he secretly signals Dugan to come to the rescue....but Dugan is unconscious, having suffered a heart attack….