Bucky Barnes (the Winter Soldier) and the Black Widow are assaulting a secret facility to stop the terrorist group R.A.I.D. from recovering the third Soviet sleeper agent, when they were fired upon by a Russian-speaking gorilla with a machine gun. Bucky and the Widow try to get into position to fight their odd enemy but the huge ape straps on a jet pack and flies away. Yeah, they don’t believe it either. They meet with their SHIELD contact Jasper Sitwell, who gives them the news of an assassination attempt on Doctor Doom (last issue). From surveillance footage, Bucky recognizes the assassin as Arkady, one of the sleeper agents from Project Zephyr. His mind goes back to that Soviet project to create more expert killers like the Winter Soldier—and he was the one who trained Arkady, Leo, and Dmitri. And now to find redemption he is hunting down these three agents who have been kept in stasis—until now. The intelligent gorilla immediately points to the Russian mad scientist known as the Red Ghost, who was a consultant on Project Zephyr. And so the heroes must uncover who purchased the killers’ activation codes….
In a secret lab in New York, the next sleeper agent, Dmitri, is revived by the Red Ghost….
In Prague, a disguised Nick Fury infiltrates a palatial building, subdues the guards and takes the owner at gunpoint, demanding to know where the next black market auction will be held….
In Chicago, Bucky and Natasha attend the auction undercover and watch the sale of stolen H.A.M.M.E.R. tech to a bidder from Madripoor. When a Pym-particle prototype is offered as the next item for sale, the two agents reveal themselves and fight guards and panicked criminal customers to capture the auctioneer. Bucky demands to know who bought the activation codes for the three Soviet sleeper agents. The auctioneer describes the Red Ghost and assumes he had a grudge against Latveria, because of the other item he bid on….
Elsewhere, the mastermind of the plot against Doctor Doom, Lucia von Bardas, shows off to Arkady her other recent acquisition—a functioning Doombot….