The Ultimates: Against All Enemies by Alex Irvine Page B

Garza. "I—oh," Steve said. "Admiral. I was expecting someone else."
    "Captain. May we come in?"
    Steve stepped aside and let Garza pass. A second man, who had spook written all over him, followed. Garza stood in the middle of Steve's living room, not speaking or touching anything while the spook took out some kind of sensor apparatus and scanned every surface. It took ten minutes or so, at the end of which he said, "Looks clear, Admiral."
    "Okay, Larry. Fire me up a baffler and then Captain Rogers and I will have a talk." Larry pocketed his first apparatus, came up with another one, and put it on the coffee table between Steve's couch and the TV He flipped a little toggle switch on its face, and it began emitting a low hum.
    "All set?" Garza asked.
    "Yes, sir."
    "See you in the car, then." Larry left without another word and Admiral Garza sat on the couch.
    "Go ahead and finish your breakfast, Captain," he said.
    Steve found that he wasn't hungry anymore. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'd just as soon talk first," he said. "What's with the spook stuff?"
    "I don't really have to tell you that, do I?" Garza said. "You know what we're doing here." I do, Steve wanted to say. And even though I think it's the right thing to do, something about it makes me sick to my stomach.
    "Anyway," Admiral Garza said. "What I'm here about is the next step."
    "The next step," Steve repeated.
    "We've got the screeners in production, Steve. That's an important step. But already there's pushback from Altobelli; he's twisting all kinds of arms on the Hill to try and limit SKR's ability to sell and install the screen-ers. What needs to happen now is a concerted push on our part. We need to tell the American people that this can help protect them, and tell them that they need to get behind us so we can make this argument—their argument—in Congress and over the airwaves." Garza leaned forward and tapped Steve on the shoulder. " You're going to be critical to this effort. Americans feel like they know you, Steve. They admire you. The women have crushes on you and the men want to be like you." Steve's bullshit detector went off. "Admiral," he said. "With all due respect, you're laying it on a little thick."
    "This is a pitch, Steve," Admiral Garza said. "You don't have to do a single thing I'm asking you to do. I can't order you around. All I can do is trust that you and I have similar ideas about what this country needs. Can I trust in that idea, Captain Rogers?"
    The real question here, Steve thought, was whether Garza could trust Steve to do as he was told. Which was exactly the question he had been chewing over himself the night before. It was decision time. Could he commit to this, not knowing what exactly might come of that commitment later?
    On the other hand, could he stop now?
    Garza stood. "I can see you need some time to think," he said. "You know how to find me, right?" He started to walk toward the door, but stopped when Steve, too, stood. Admiral Garza turned to face him, and Steve said, "Admiral, I wouldn't have come this far if I didn't think we were doing the right thing."
    Garza nodded as if he'd heard what he needed to hear. "Good, Captain. You're going to be needed as we move forward. I might ask you to come to Washington soon. Will you be able to navigate that with your commitments to SHIELD?"
    "Yes, sir. I will."
    Admiral Garza opened the door. "And we'd like you to meet some people in Los Angeles, too," he said before leaving. 'You won't mind a little fun in the sun while we save the world, right?" Sun Tzu probably said that somewhere, too, Steve thought, as the door swung closed. 16
    For Janet Pym, the sudden change in Steve's behavior seemed like a relapse after all of the progress he'd made during the last year adapting to the twentieth century. For a while there, he'd almost seemed like a normal person... not that she could get judgmental about normality given her own, ahem, altered genome. But still, he was coming