"He... just went down like that?"
Peggy Carter's slightly distorted question came through the communicator.
Even through the static, her barely concealed astonishment was audible.
"He has his own way of doing things."
Lynn, on the other hand, was perfectly calm and had even begun checking his equipment.
A pitch-black combat suit and a compact parachute pack.
He couldn't compare himself to that freak, Soldier Boy.
Before setting out, Lynn had sent an encrypted telegram to Tom, a reporter for Stars and Stripes.
The message was simple, but enough to make the sharp-nosed reporter wait by the telegraph without eating or sleeping.
[Exclusive scoop. Code name: "Ragnarok." Location: the mountains near Wrocław, Poland. Subject: the forgotten god of war.]
After tonight, Soldier Boy's legend would no longer be a vague little article in the supplement.
It would become front-page news, an epic written in Hydra's blood and steel.
And he was its sole chronicler.
"Return along the planned route in five minutes. That's an order."
After delivering those final words into the communicator, Lynn cut the connection without giving Peggy a chance to respond.
He took two steps back, then ran forward and leaped.
In the cockpit, Peggy frowned and sighed helplessly at the communications equipment before turning her attention back to the instrument panel.
A feeling of weightlessness came over him, and the roar of the wind filled his ears.
He spread his body in midair and glided in a standard skydiving position.
That gave him plenty of time to enjoy the opening act about to unfold from an excellent bird's-eye view.
"BOOM!!"
A tremendous crash came from the valley below.
The entire mountainside visibly shuddered.
Lynn quickly adjusted his posture and steadied himself in the air, his eyes fixed on the source of the sound.
He saw that Soldier Boy had smashed straight through the outermost concrete fortification of the complex marked "Giant."
Countless fragments of stone and rebar burst outward in a fan from the hole.
The Hydra soldiers stationed inside the fortress didn't even have time to scream amid the impact, which was comparable to a natural disaster.
"Woo-woo-woo-"
After a full three-second delay, a piercing alarm finally echoed through the valley.
Beams from searchlights pierced the night sky, sweeping wildly back and forth.
Lynn deployed his parachute at an altitude of less than a hundred meters.
The black canopy flashed briefly against the night sky, then carried him silently down into a dense pine forest.
He unfastened the parachute pack and casually hid it in a clump of bushes.
Immediately afterward, he took a portable camera from his tactical backpack, one Howard Stark had made with his own hands.
It had been a sudden inspiration of his.
He hadn't expected that genius Stark to actually make it for him in two days.
It was compact, yet had military-grade image stabilization and night vision.
He hung the camera around his neck and adjusted the lens, while he himself melted into the shadows among the trees like a ghost.
A figure was emerging from the billowing dust and rubble.
Soldier Boy was completely unharmed.
He twisted his neck with a sharp crack.
A barrage of gunfire erupted.
The surviving Hydra soldiers fired their heavy machine guns frantically from behind cover, pouring a torrent of fire at the intruder.
Bullets struck Soldier Boy, throwing off sparks.
Soldier Boy was annoyed by the futile attack.
He casually snatched up a millstone-sized chunk of concrete from the ground and hurled it.
The concrete whistled through the air and struck a machine-gun position.
With a thunderous crash, the machine gun, the sandbags, and the three soldiers behind them became a mangled heap of bloody flesh.
This was a one-sided display of violence.
Soldier Boy was like a prehistoric tyrannosaur loose in a sheepfold, destroying everything before him in the most savage fashion.
He punched straight through an armored vehicle, its sturdy steel plating like paper beneath his fist.
He even pulled the driver out along with the seat in disgust and casually crushed the man's head as he screamed in terror.
He leaped across a trench more than ten meters wide and sent an entire squad of soldiers attempting to surround him flying.
Lynn, meanwhile, had become the consummate war correspondent.
Like a ghost, he moved along the edge of the chaotic battlefield, using the explosions and gunfire as cover while seeking the best camera angles.
He recorded Soldier Boy's imposing figure from behind, bathed in firelight and heedless of the hail of bullets.
He recorded the expressions on the Hydra soldiers' faces, a mixture of fear, despair, and disbelief.
He even took a full three-second close-up of the bloodstained shield.
These were all materials for weaving a legend.
When Soldier Boy had torn the outer defense forces to pieces and began advancing toward the steel gate deeper within the fortifications, Lynn switched off the camera.
He had enough footage.
The real show was over.
What followed was garbage time for the scavenger.
Lynn slipped into another auxiliary passage that had been blasted open.
He put on a pair of specially made insulated gloves and, using low-light night-vision goggles, calmly bypassed the triggered alarms.
Soldier Boy had drawn all the attention and forces up ahead.
That had turned the research area in the rear into a treasure vault with its defenses reduced to a minimum.
Lynn's objective was clear.
Hydra's energy-weapon technical database.
According to the intelligence Peggy had provided.
This base was also one of Hydra's most important technical backup centers.
Deep in the Alps, Hydra's headquarters base.
Dozens of surveillance screens displayed scenes of the slaughter at the Giant base.
Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, sat comfortably on his commander's throne.
He felt no anger, only an almost greedy fervor.
His crimson face flickered between light and shadow as the explosions on the screens illuminated it.
"Record it, Valentin!"
"Record his every movement, every exertion of force! Bone density, the limits of his muscles' explosive power! This is the masterpiece that fool Erskine dreamed of! A perfect... sample that can be replicated and surpassed!"
On the screen, Soldier Boy tore an armored personnel carrier in half with his bare hands.
He seized a broken track, the metal chain like a steel python come to life in his hands.
He violently smashed an energy gun emplacement that had just opened fire into a heap of sparking scrap metal.
"Do you see that, Valentin?"
Schmidt didn't turn his head, and his voice trembled as though he had discovered a miracle.
Beside him, a man in a bloodstained lab coat and a pig-face mask stood motionless as a statue.
"This is a true superman!"
"Pure power! The ultimate desire for destruction!"
Schmidt extended a finger and pointed through the air at the figure on the screen, bathed in firelight.
"He is closer to the form of a god than any weapon we have made!"
A faint, suppressed breath came from beneath Professor Pyg Valentin's mask.
"Those puppets you took such pains to stitch together are nothing before him but shoddy dolls that shatter at a touch!"