After a few weeks together, Captain
America and Bucky are operating as a team, capturing Axis spies in
the States and stopping acts of sabotage. But Bucky has an itch to
get into the real War, to go overseas where the combat is. Steve
warns him that it is something he has not prepared for: “taking a
life can be simple…but living with what you’ve done…that’s
not so simple.” They are soon sent on an undercover mission: in
their military uniforms Steve and Bucky go to a carnival. They meet
with an informant who works there, who tells them that the Brandt
Brothers, trapeze artists, have been getting some strange shipments.
They investigate and discover crates of lion statuettes, but are
caught by the suspicious Brandts; Steve improvises an excuse and they
leave. That evening they return as Captain America and Bucky and
find the carnival gone, their informant dying from a knife wound. He
tells them that the Brandts are planning to kill all the soldiers at
the crowded train station down the line. Racing on their motorcycle,
they catch up to the circus train and board it. As they run along the
top of the train to the engine, they are caught by the Brandts; one
of the villains throws a knife which pierces Bucky’s leg and sends
him crashing through a skylight into the clown car. As Cap battles
the Brandts atop the speeding train, the wounded Bucky makes his way
toward the engine, where the fireman is shoveling the lion statuettes
into the furnace. As they near the crowded station, the bad guy
reaches for a switch to open the flue but Bucky throws the knife
piercing the man’s throat….
They later learn that the lions were
made of toxic chemicals; the train would have released a cloud of
poison gas as it sped through the station, killing scores of GIs and
their families. But Bucky is still in shock over killing a man, and
realizes Steve was right about the hardest part….