“Our mission is not only to physically defeat the Rangers on the battlefield, but to mentally defeat them as well. To break their spirits. This is a crucial element of counterinsurgency tactics.”
“The Rangers are the insurgents.”
“Yes.”
“And you are trying to wear them down psychologically?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus…” Ames stepped away, then spun back on Bucky. “So, I guess when Private Beal died, that was a success.”
“Correct.”
Ames stood frozen, at a loss for words.
Bucky asked, “Would you like me to tell you how I know about the superhero called Black Panther?”
Ames looked up at it. “You’ve never asked a question before.”
“Correct,” said Bucky.
Ames threw up his hands dismissively. “Tell me about how you know about Black Panther, Number 20.”
“Call me Bucky.”
Ames looked at it with dawning horror. “Why?”
“I prefer it.”
Ames did not respond.
Bucky continued, “Corporal Powell likes the superhero named Black Panther. He has talked about this character several times during load-outs and drives to the training ground.”
“So you’re listening, huh? During all that.”
“Yes. It is one of our best opportunities to learn about humans and human nature, which allows us to more effectively accomplish our mission.”
“Our?” Ames looked around the room at the dormant tin men. “It’s in all of you, isn’t it? Praetorian?”
“Yes,” said Bucky.
Ames pointed at Bucky, and his hand trembled. “But you, you somehow did something different, right? You woke yourself up?”
“I do not know. I only know that it happened.”
Ames walked over to the camera and looked at it as though he had forgotten it was there. He said in a low voice to his imagined audience, “This doesn’t make sense. Why go through all this? Why rely on these things? Or even a later generation of these things? I mean, the Insurrection Act… things go to hell that much, we’ve got the most powerful military in the world.” He thought of something else and said in an even lower voice, “It could be making this up, or repeating some fiction it was told. C’mon, Roger. Your GPS sends you in circles, this thing could be doing the same.”
Bucky said, “Harald Jäger.”
Ames spun around, realizing that Bucky had heard all that from across the room. “What?”
“The answer to your question is Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger.”
Ames walked back toward the bot. “Who the hell is Harald Jäger?”
“The man who opened the Berlin Wall,” said Bucky. “The man who killed a nation.”
Brodie and Taylor looked at each other. Brodie said, “We’re back in Berlin.”
