Chapter Text
One of the many things that the Army had taught him was that you were never promised a holiday. Or, at the very least, not a holiday at home with your family. During the Blip, you were either badly injured or should probably go buy a lottery ticket if you made it home for one, much less Christmas. The closest John had gotten was New Years Day in ‘22 with a promise from his CO that he’d make sure John got to spend Christmas of ‘23 home with his wife. Then the half of the universe that had been blipped out of existence returned and promises went out the window.
He hadn’t expected Christmas of 2024 to be any better, especially when he’d agreed to take on the role of Captain America, but the closer they crept to it, the more carefully optimistic he was becoming. He and Lemar had been non-stop since the Flag Smasher case earlier in the year, but just after Thanksgiving things just… slowed down. Apparently the panel of Congressmen and women that were responsible for overseeing their assignments was more interested in wrapping up their duties on the Hill and getting home themselves. Something could always go wrong, but as he came flying off the couch - yelling at the Army quarterback like he could be heard through the TV - in his own home with the Christmas tree decorated and Olivia and her mom making Christmas cookies, he was starting to become comfortable with the idea.
His father-in-law Nate barked a laugh from the armchair as John flopped back down to the couch. “And that’s how it’s done.”
“The one time of year Dad cheers for the Navy,” Olivia called out from the kitchen.
“If you hadn’t been so damned determined to marry an Army man I wouldn’t have to.”
“Or if the Marines had their own football team,” John popped back, receiving a glare from Nate that made him flash a grin before taking a sip from his beer.
He heard the door open, signalling Lemar’s arrival. “How’re we doing?”
“Losing,” Nate answered and John rolled his eyes as his best friend circled into the living room.
Lemar peeked into the kitchen, likely eyeing the first batch of cookies. “Why are you letting ‘em do that?”
“Because I needed backup and you’re slow.”
“They still won’t hear you, even with Lemar yelling too,” Olivia reminded him and her mother snorted a laugh at that one.
John shot an offended look in her direction. “Who’s side are you on, anyway?”
She was smiling as she stepped out and crossed the living room, handing their newly arrived guest the coveted sugar cookie before leaning down to press a kiss to John’s scruffy cheek. “Always yours.”
His teasing retort was cut off as his phone started to buzz on the coffee table. He looked down, an image that was nearly a decade old by this point of a man in Army fatigues slouched down in a folding chair in the middle of Afghanistan and flipping the camera off flashing with the name Collins across it. He held it up for Lemar to see before sliding the accept bar and putting the phone to his ear. “Hey, man,” he greeted as he stood to move to a quieter part of the house.
“Olivia’s dad giving you hell over the Army-Navy game?” Wes Collins asked.
“Oh yeah. It’s gonna be a full year of gloating if we can’t turn this one around. Are you on base? Lemar and I could use the support.”
“I wish,” Collins snorted from the other end of the line. “I’m in South America. You know that op you guys bailed out of last second?”
“By that do you mean received different orders?”
“Sure, you can call it that. We’ve been chasing down one lead that led to another. It’s been a giant, tangled mess. You would have loved it.”
John glanced over his shoulder from the hall, finding Nate’s attention on the TV and Lemar’s on him like he was expecting something. “Maybe, but something tells me that’s not the reason you’re calling.”
There was a beat of silence from Collins’ end of the line and John could hear brief chattering in Spanish behind him. Once it passed, Collins spoke lowly. “We caught up to Chavez and that led us down a full blown rabbit hole. As far as we can tell, we’re about at the center of it in the investigation and a name popped up: Ethan Voigt.”
“I don’t recognise it.”
“Well, it triggered all sorts of alerts from all sorts of government entities, but every last one noted the point of contact as Captain America. Granted, the alerts are all from around 2014 or ‘15, so they probably meant Rogers, but I guess this is on your plate now.”
Lemar had wandered his way back to the hall at some point and shot John a questioning look. The blond frowned. He motioned and they both stepped back into a room so that he could put Collins on speaker without the rest of the house hearing them. “Lemar’s here. What kind of details do you have on this Voigt guy?”
“Hey, Hoskins,” Collins greeted. “Not much. American-born scientist, worked for SHIELD, and disappeared when it fell.”
“And Rogers as the POC*,” John murmured, the pieces falling together, but it was Lemar that voiced them.
“He’s HYDRA.”
“That’s the running theory for our team here. This just went above our pay grade and the intel walls we’re running up against don’t have anything to do with the holidays. We could use your help, Cap.”
John frowned. “What’s our window?”
“Closing. Rapidly.”
A sigh escaped him as he looked to Lemar who offered his own stiff nod of understanding. They didn’t have to like it, but this was the job. It’s what they’d signed up for. “Send me what you’ve got and I’ll let you know our ETA when I have it.”
“Tell Olivia I owe her one,” Collins offered before ending the call.
Lemar checked his own phone. “Ten days till Christmas Eve. That’s plenty of time.”
John chuckled and shook his head. “You’re an eternal optimist, you know that?”
“One of us has to be.”
“I’m just a pragmatist,” he said as he patted his best friend’s shoulder and started back to the living room to face the disappointment that was sure to follow the announcement.
*POC = Point of Contact
——
Collins provided everything that the Ranger team - still working out of Chile - had scraped together on Voigt and John sent expedited requests through their own channels for anything else they might have. Old SHIELD files were often redacted beyond usefulness these days, but he had some weight to throw around these days. Who else was supposed to go after HYDRA if not Captain America?
Olivia hadn’t been thrilled to find out that they’d be leaving immediately, but nearly fifteen years of active duty service as an Army Ranger deployed with the 75th Regiment had taught her to roll with the punches just as much as it had taught him. She ran interference with her mom as he threw the essentials into a bag and caught him for a private kiss goodbye and a promise that he’d focus more on coming home in one piece than making it home in time for Christmas.
A jet was waiting on base when he arrived, Lemar standing on the tarmac in his Battlestar uniform. John joined him and they were wheels up just a few minutes later, the nearly ten hour flight the only time they had to catch up on the intel that had been made available to them.
“Gotta give it to the team that they traced Chavez’s chemist all the way back to this guy,” Lemar mused as he flipped through one of the reports.
John nodded. “With HYDRA decimated, he’d have to find funding somewhere else. Question is if this is his only funding.”
Lemar made a small sound of acknowledgment. “I’m not showing that we have a lot on what he actually did for HYDRA.”
“No, we don’t have that intel. Apparently he slipped out in the chaos when Rogers, Romanov, and Sam took HYDRA down in ‘14.”
“Not that I really want to loop him in, but did you reach out to Sam?”
John flipped to the next page of intel, giving himself a moment to weigh his response. Sam had saved Lemar’s life in the final fight against the Flag Smashers and that had bought at least a chilly truce between the two teams that should have been on the same side, but they were hardly on friendly terms after everything. “I think if he and Rogers had uncovered anything about him, it would have been in here.” He flipped the page again, pursing his lips together thoughtfully. “I did reach out to Bucky, though.”
“What would he… oh.” John glanced up to see the sour look that had rested on Lemar’s face. “Right. The whole Winter Soldier thing. Does he even remember all of that?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t answer and I haven’t gotten a call back yet. Not sure I will.”
That left them with the SHIELD files for now, even if Bucky might have additional details if they were lucky. A sharp featured man in his mid-fifties, Voigt was Harvard trained with advanced degrees from Oxford and Peking Universities in the scientific and medical fields. He had been stationed at the Hub for most of his SHIELD career, but there was a facility referred to as the Guest House that had been unredacted for their eyes only, though no additional details were provided for that stint or what it might have entailed. His accomplishments and accolades filled up several pages and had given him access to enough classified information to make John’s stomach turn. He’d had his hands in research, experimentation, and training up the next generation, which meant he might have access to students that had been cleared to go into the private sector after SHIELD was officially dismantled. There seemed to be a lot more unknowns than knowns.
They made good time flying in and touched down in a private airport in Chile where Wes Collins met them along with his Chilean counterpart Capitán Tomás Vega, who seemed very eager to get a man linked to HYDRA out of his country as soon as possible. Introductions were brief as all four men geared up to get to work.
—-
When they were young, he and John had spent nearly every penny of their allowances on the Howling Commando comics and memorabilia, sharing and trading so that they never missed an issue for the entire run. Reading the historical accounts of Captain America and his Howling Commandos fighting nazis in mostly-kid-friendly comic format had been a favourite part of their childhood. Now, so many years later, they were gearing up to go after a HYDRA agent. Despite their admittedly impressive careers with the Rangers, this felt like a whole different arena. “Imagine what ten year old us would say if they could see us now,” Lemar murmured and received a stifled laugh from his best friend who was decked out in his own Captain America uniform.
“We wouldn’t believe us,” John answered quietly, as they moved through the woods in the sharp incline towards the compound that they had high-confidence intelligence saying Voigt had set up shop in. It was built into the mountain side, giving it a strong defense at the back and an open view to anyone that might be approaching from below. The single road through rough terrain made entry by vehicle impossible without alerting them and an aerial assault limited to a helicopter. They’d agreed that it was worth the extra effort to take the compound on foot, leaving them a better chance at catching the many guards by surprise so that Voigt was less likely to slip away. The approach was one that Lemar knew well from the countless ops they’d run together on the other side of the world. The location might be different, but with Collins’ unit being their old unit, it felt familiar.
Vega motioned and John tapped the comm in his ear. “Start approach.”
It didn't take any more than that. They all understood the job at hand and split off to do it. Lemar broke left, John taking the center, and Collins took the furthest angle right, each with a handful of Rangers and a couple of Vega’s men as well. They moved in quickly, quietly, and Lemar could hear the muffled shouts down the way as his own team moved in under his command.
They hit the gate - the choke point that had the capability of making them easy targets if they didn’t get over quickly enough - and went up and over the fence. Lemar hauled himself over, his boots hitting the ground on the other side with a thud and he and his team continued up the mountainside without pause. They took down guards along the way, hoping that the scrambler that they’d been waiting on to move in was successfully confusing the compound’s security.
The first good indication that they still had their element of surprise came when they reached the actual structure and took on another wave of very surprised security. Lemar spotted one man grabbing for his walkie talkie, but he was too far to get hands on him before he radioed an alert. He was ready to take the shot - which would also kill their element of surprise, though not with the precision a radioed alert would - but a shield spun through the air, colliding with the man and sending him sprawling. His radio skidded out of reach.
“We’ve got movement on the helipad,” the alert came over the comms and Lemar motioned to Alex Sanders, a Ranger he’d known since boot camp. The other man gave a sharp nod of acknowledgement and Lemar darted after John, who was already on his way up.
While John had always been a handful of steps faster than Lemar in full sprint, he hadn’t been able to leave him in the dust until the serum. Now, Lemar was running at full speed, desperately trying to catch up as they wound their way up through the compound towards where the schematics had shown a helipad on a massive balcony.
A bullet clipped his arm, mostly deflected by the Kevlar suit he wore, and Lemar pivoted hard. He leveled the gun already in his hand, spotted the shooter, and took the shot as he continued his momentum to miss the bullets that tried to finish the job the first one had failed at. He fell into a roll on the hard floor beneath him and popped up behind a pillar. He waited, his breathing as even as it could be, and he listened carefully. Gunfights had broken out through the compound as the others pushed through and he frowned. There were too many sounds bouncing off of too many angles. He was going to have to take his chance.
Lemar swung around, Baretta up and the squeak of a boot on the hard floor had him swiveling around, firing the round off and following immediately with several more. He didn’t know which one found its mark, but there was no question that one had as the man’s head slammed back with a 9mm-sized hole between his eyes.
Great. Now he was really behind.
Several downed guards on his way up left Lemar with the distinct impression that he was at least heading in the right direction. The doors leading out to the helipad had been slammed open hard enough to take them off their hinges, giving him a clear view of John in full sprint like he thought he was going to catch the helicopter already lifting off. He wouldn’t, and he should have known that, but he wasn’t slowing down. Worse, as the aircraft started to pull away from the platform, he picked up speed.
His best friend’s name was choked off by shock as John took a flying leap off the side of the balcony, using the edge to leverage himself up and further out, grabbing onto the landing skid midair.
—-
He hadn’t thought, just reacted, and that instinct had been right. Which was good, because he had no idea if he could survive the fall off of the helipad and down the side of the mountain. Somehow he’d managed to get the right amount of leverage off the side as he flung himself after the fleeing helicopter, slamming into the landing skid hard enough that it should have knocked the breath out of his lungs.
John took a fraction of a moment to focus before swinging his legs up, wrapping them around the skid to give him a better grip. With that done and the helicopter still gaining altitude, he loosed one hand to reach into his belt, searching for the tracking device.
“I hope you’ve got a plan,” Lemar’s voice rang in his ear.
“Working on it,” John grunted back, fingers finally wrapping around the small device and he slapped it onto the body of the aircraft. “Got the tracker in place.”
“Yeah? Now what?”
“Time to get to work.” He adjusted his grip up, leveraging himself into the open door and took the guard nearest to him by surprise as he grabbed him by the front of his uniform and flung him out the door behind him with one hand, reaching for his shield with the other. He got it up just in time to deflect the shot coming from Voigt’s personal guard, the bullet ricocheting into the ceiling.
Voigt, poised on the other side of his guard and against the closed door on the other side of the craft, turned an angry shade of red, shouting in Spanish that the man was going to get them all killed. The guard - with limited options in such close quarters - lunged at John, finding himself pinned between the bench seats backing up to the cockpit’s seats and John’s shield.
Movement flickered over John’s left shoulder and he risked a look back to see Voigt grabbing a strap hanging from the ceiling. That was his only warning as the pilot rolled dangerously to the right, gravity dragging anything or anyone not strapped down towards the open door. He felt his boots slip and he scrambled, releasing his captive to grab for something to hang onto. The guard went flying out with a terrified scream and John caught hold of the running board along the opening. He kicked his dangling feet to find footing on the landing skid to leverage himself back into the helicopter as it leveled back out, but his boot slipped and he struggled to hold his grip. All the strength in the world wouldn’t help him if he could find something to hold onto.
Voigt stood over him, sneering down. “Not quite a match to your predecessor, are you?”
There. He found his footing and was ready to use it as Voigt pulled a weapon that looked like a gun from his jacket and aimed. John was moving, but could only move so fast as a blast of energy slammed into him, the force throwing him back and into freefall to the mountain below.