Synopsis / Summary / Plot
An assassin called Beck is contacted by Emil Stein, leader of the terrorist cadre D.A.N.T.E. He offers Beck a job with his organization, with greater power as a reward. Elsewhere Captain America is engaged in battle with his acrobatic enemy Batroc; miles away at the same time, Iron Man is taking down the Fixer’s remote controlled gadgets. Their respective foes defeated, the heroes are approached separately by SHIELD leaders: Cap by Nick Fury and Iron Man by Dum-Dum Dugan. The SHIELD agents explain the threat posed by D.A.N.T.E. and the need to locate the group’s hideout and stop their assassination plot, adding an incentive: for Iron Man, the evidence that D.A.N.T.E. is using Stark armor technology, for Cap the revelation that the enemy leader is his old foe Stein, though SHIELD carefully conceals from each the fact that the other is working on the same case.
Pursuing the trail separately leads the two heroes to a computer research facility in Texas under attack by D.A.N.T.E., where they discover each other and team up to fight D.A.N.T.E.’s armored agents. The villains escape with the tech data they came for with the one captured being blown up by a self-destruct program. Meanwhile in Paris, Beck steals Nazi Sleeper technology from a government computer and eludes the guards. As the heroes compare notes, we discover that each envies the other: Cap wishing he could escape the bonds of the past and harness futuristic technology like Tony, and Tony desiring Steve’s grace, daring, and idealism. Nick Fury contacts them to warn them that D.A.N.T.E. is planning a hit at the upcoming U.S.-Japan trade talks. In Washington, Iron Man advises canceling the trade talks but is told that the President will not allow them to give in to terrorists and he is introduced to Mr. Nishimura, the Japanese delegate. Nishimura speaks of honor and brings in his daughter to ask Iron Man for his protection, which he can not refuse. On the evening of the talks, Captain America disappears mysteriously and Nishimura is confined to his bed by a bout of food poisoning. The building where the talks are held is assaulted by an army of armored terrorists, outnumbering Iron Man. Cap wakes up as prisoner aboard Stein’s ship, as the terrorist leader explains that their plot is to disrupt the talks by murdering Nishimura. The assassin will be Beck, his body turned into the ultimate killing machine by the stolen Stark and Sleeper technology.
Left alone, Cap manages to escape his bonds and don D.A.N.T.E. armor. Outside Iron Man conceives of a way to defeat the overwhelming numbers facing him: he rises into the air and magnetizes his armor, drawing his opponents to him, then downloads a virus which renders their armor useless, including his own. As he plummets, Captain America swoops down on a stolen jet cycle and plucks him from the sky. At Nishimura’s hotel the villains are plotting to murder the Japanese delegate and his daughter horribly. The heroes arrive and the armored Cap must battle the cyborg Beck, machine against machine, while Iron Man, his own armor useless, must strip most of it off to stop Stein, man-to-man. As Cap impales Beck on a spiked metal decoration, Iron Man turns the terrorist’s electrified stick against him, burning a hole in the ex-Nazi’s chest. Iron Man tells Steve, “You did it, you won.” Cap’s reply: “No, Tony, we won.”