Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This issue has a couple of flashbacks to James Rhodes acting as a consulting pilot to the military in Dubai. A suicide bomber gains access to the base, followed by more terrorists. Rhodey gets his limbs blown off and the rest of him is in bad shape too. This leads in to the flashback in #1 where Tony Stark gave him his present cyborg body.
In the present War Machine is invading Mackelroy army base on the trail of the source of the Ultimo virus he fought in #1-5. He's been careful only to hit hardware (specifically disabling all transport) rather than soldiers. He breaks into the R&D facility looking for evidence, and finds the giant head of the Ultimo robot, which attacks him with its eye-beams.
In Avengers Tower Norman Osborn and Victoria Hand are watching the events unfurl. HAMMER can't bomb the place because War Machine's crew are doing something to disrupt attempts to target the area. The nearest Initiative team, the Desert Stars, are busy chasing Tyrannus. Jason Strongbow (American Eagle) has followed War Machine out of last issue and out of the Navajo reservation. But Osborn can't rely on him after their last encounter.
Osborn wants Strongbow to arrest Rhodes. He tries threats and he tries bribes. But Jason tells him War Machine isn't the problem. The Ultimo head is attacking the base personnel.
Jim uses his armour's ability to appropriate and incorporate any chunks of technology to build a large robot that War Machine can sit inside and control. So its big robot vs giant robot head.
American Eagle lends a hand by leaping onto the head and stabbing a large piece of metal into the edge of one of its eyes. War Machine uses that to gouge the eye out and attaches it to his own robot. One blast from its own eye-beam clobbers the Ultimo head, and splits it open.
War Machine exits his big robot and enters the defeated head. Inside he finds technicians headed by Dr Phillip Prometheus, who developed the Ultimo virus. Prometheus tells him that Ultimo's brain is elsewhere, and he doesn't know where. Suzi Endo of WM's team accesses the base's computers and finds that the alien robot's CPU has been split and stored in 3 separate locations.
War Machine heads to 1 target, while Suzi contacts 2 more team members Bethany Cabe and Jake Oh in a plane circling over Kansas. They will put on other War Machine suits to take the other 2 targets. Rhodey's destination is a Stark facility in Plano Texas, where someone who might be Tony Stark recognises Jim and seems to be involved in the Ultimo tech.