Captain America and Diamondback are hanging onto the damaged ladder dangling hundreds of feet above the Egyptian desert as Baron Zemo fires on them from his aircraft. Pilot John Jameson puts the Quinjet in gear and zooms away, with Cap and his lady partner hanging on for their lives. They make it into the jet only for Cap to find he has lost the fragment of the Bloodstone borrowed from the Living Mummy (last issue)—and they are unaware of the skull-and-crossbones-clad villain stowed away in the rear of the jet….
Batroc and his henchmen return to Zemo’s ship where the French mercenary produces the fragment Cap had lost. The dazed Tristram Macawber repeats his warning about a third party after the stones but is still unable to elaborate. The detector takes them to the heart of Tokyo, a surprising change from the previous locations but still another place of death. Batroc and gang are led to the rear entrance to a restaurant and they burst in to find a mystic and several waiters in the middle of a ceremony to raise a corpse—one that involves the final fragment of the Bloodstone. A fight breaks out but the mercenaries end up with the fragment. As they run into the alley they encounter Captain America who proposes a meeting with Zemo. Batroc gives his boss a call then turns the communicator over to Cap to lead him to a rendezvous. Meanwhile, Diamondback tails the villains….
Cap and his enemies arrive at the meeting place—an inactive volcano. Cap demands to know what the Bloodstones are to be used for; Baron Zemo responds with a threat to blow up a black in downtown Tokyo if Cap does not surrender his two fragments. Meanwhile, Diamond, aboard the villains’ craft, has been searching for the stones and has discovered a coffin with the corpse of the first Baron Zemo inside. Cap returns to his ship to find that Jameson has been overpowered and the fragments stolen. When the mystery baddie (Crossbones) enters Zemo’s craft, the five fragments, now brought together join themselves and raise the old Baron from the dead with an explosion of lightning. But the reanimated corpse with the Bloodstone in its forehead is not Zemo but the Exo-Mind, a more powerful being resurrected and possessing the only available body. The megalomaniacal monster unleashes the destructive power of the Hellfire Helix, which threatens to cause the volcano to erupt. Batroc and his Brigade flee for their lives, while Cap tries to battle the Exo-Mind. "Zemo" can deflect Cap’s shield easily with a sheet of lightning—but Helmut, who has quested so long for the power to raise his father from the dead, will not believe that this is not really his sire. The Exo-Mind intends Zemo Jr. to be the first one whose life will be sucked dry in its scheme to destroy the Earth. As the volcano erupts, Cap prepares a final effort to decapitate the monster with his shield. At the same time, the unseen Crossbones fires a crossbow bolt at the gem. It shatters into the five fragments as the shield shears the Exo-Mind’s head off, dropping it and them into the volcano. Cap seizes Zemo’s hand to save him from falling too but the madman wants to joins his "father" and his glove slips off sending him to his doom. As Cap leaves in his Quinjet, two mysteries remain: what came from the ship that caused the Bloodstone to splinter, and where is Diamondback?