We Were Soldiers
67. The Star-Spangled Man
A break in the day's intermittent rain brought a small measure of reprieve to the sodden ground. Hundreds of war-weary soldiers sat staring up at the stage on anything they could find to keep themselves out of the mud. They cheered the chorus girls who belted out Captain America's introduction to the musical accompaniment of a gramophone that wasn't quite powerful enough to reach the back of the crowd. But the cheers were half-hearted, the faces haunted and grim. They watched through eyes that had seen too much.
From beneath the awning of the nurse's tent, Peggy watched their reactions change as the girls left the stage. The lights in their eyes grew a little dimmer as a flamboyantly dressed man strode out from the wing, but Peggy's heart momentarily lifted. She'd only found out about the USO show twenty-four hours earlier. Colonel Phillips had dropped it into the conversation as if it wasn't even important.
"By the way, the USO's sending Captain America himself to entertain us tomorrow. Ask the Engineers to assemble a stage."
She'd stood there open-mouthed, digesting the casual nugget of information until Phillips noticed she hadn't saluted and left to obey.
"Do you need me to write that down for you, Agent?"
"No sir."
She'd saluted. She'd left. Tried not to be too annoyed that the man had only just decided to tell her that Steve Rogers would be arriving at camp the very next day. It had been a rough couple of weeks for the SSR. They'd suffered significant losses at Azzano, with those who'd managed to return exhausted and injured. Before Phillips could even consider planning a rescue, they'd been ordered to move ten klicks to the south and meet up with a company from the 8th Army, and here they'd sat, guarding an airfield that was so muddy it was barely capable of being used.
And yet, just when things had never seemed bleaker, in strode a splash of colour amongst the soul-crushing olive drab and grey, a tiny spark of light to illuminate the darkness. Well, perhaps not tiny. Steve Rogers was not the same skinny guy he'd been before Project Rebirth. Still, he seemed oddly small, on the stage. As if the emptiness was trying to swallow him into its uncomfortable silence. She thought she saw his shoulders dip a little as his eyes scanned the sea of faces before him. For a man who wanted nothing but to fight, being a show-pony for soldiers must have galled him terribly.
She allowed herself a moment of fancy to wonder whether, during the months since their parting, he'd ever spared a moment to think of her. It was silly. Foolish. Of course he wouldn't have thought of her; he was a USO star now. He had comic books and radio shows and, if the USO posters could be believed, even movies. Now he'd be surrounded daily by pretty women taking a fancy to America's newest darling… and she could hardly blame him if he'd allowed himself the freedom to enjoy the company of women. It wasn't as if he'd had much of a chance before.
Of course, telling herself that didn't stop a little knot of jealousy from burning in her stomach. She'd known Steve before he became a famous symbol of American freedom. She'd appreciated his sense of humour and respected his determination. She just hoped Steve knew she'd seen the best of him before he'd been injected with the serum that had changed his life.
"How many of you are ready to help me sock old Adolf on the jaw?" he asked, his voice carrying well enough for Peggy to hear clearly. Mentally, she groaned. It wasn't the right question to ask men who'd been fighting for months. Men who'd lost friends and brothers-in-arms. His question was met with a resounding silence from which Steve tried to recover. She suspected he'd been given a script to follow, and now that script was letting him down. "Okay. Uh… I need a volunteer."
"I already volunteered!" somebody heckled from the audience. Peggy couldn't make out who it was. "How do you think I got here?"
The comment elicited a laugh from the men around him. Guiltily, Peggy stifled a smile.
"Bring back the girls!" somebody else called. A suggestion that was met with a round of cheers. Poor Steve floundered. He looked to the wings for help that never came.
"I think they only know the one song, but, err, I'll see what I can do."
"You do that, sweetheart," another heckler said.
"Nice boots, Tinkerbell!" added a familiar voice. Hodge.
Peggy rolled her eyes. After almost five months with the American troops, she'd learnt that insults were a large part of Army life, and that trading them was considered a form of camaraderie. A soldier more familiar with Army banter would've shot something right back, but Steve wasn't familiar with Army banter; he took it personally.
"C'mon guys, we're all on the same team here."
His too-serious rejection of their way of life opened a floodgate. One man called, "Hey Captain, sign this!" as he turned and dropped his pants. This one Peggy did recognise; she made a mental note to chew him out later. The men of the 107th had become more unruly since Sergeant Barnes was lost on the mission to Azzano, and the newly-promoted Sergeant Ferguson didn't have quite the same knack for keeping the men in line that his predecessors had. Sergeant Barnes would've appealed to the men's better natures; Sergeant Wells would've threatened them with latrine duty. Sergeant Ferguson didn't have the same confidence in his own authority that the others had possessed in bucketfuls; the men sometimes took advantage of that, even with Corporal Biggs to back him up.
Before Peggy could do anything about it, food was flying. Tomatoes—where the hell had they come from?—went sailing through the air. The men who threw them had good aim; Steve was forced to yank up his shield to divert the ripe projectiles. This had gone far enough. Heckling was one thing, but now they were wasting food. The kitchen staff would throw a fit if they found out.
She stepped out from beneath the awning and pushed her way through the crowd. When she reached the men who'd been throwing tomatoes—a pair from the 8th Army, so slightly out of her jurisdiction—she held out her hand and said, "Hand them over, or I'll let the cook know exactly who's been stealing tomatoes from his stores."
The bag of offending fruits was sheepishly produced. Peggy snatched the contraband and turned back to the stage to tell Steve he could continue without being pelted. It was too late; he strode off as the chorus girls came trotting back to the sound of the gramophones music, and a moment later they were joined by a drum percussionist who provided a jaunty dancing beat. Captain America would be signing no autographs today.
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The stage's canvas roof was poor shelter from the pouring rain, but it was better than nothing. The audience had dashed for cover as soon as the rain started falling again, and the girls were already back in their small tent. Kevin was taking refuge in the tent he now shared with Steve, no doubt completely miserable about the rain, and the cold, and the rural-ness of it all. Out here, it was just Steve and the rain, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so isolated.
When he'd walked out onto that stage, he'd expected it to be like Palermo. He'd expected some small measure of teasing and heckling, but he hadn't imagined it to be so… hostile. Since walking off stage, he'd replayed it over and over again in his mind, and he realised the mistake was his. He shouldn't have expected the men here to be like the men in Palermo. This wasn't a camp with the luxuries of a city close to hand. Palermo was safe. Warm. Comfortable. Out here, the camp could be attacked at any moment. The men were on edge, and they were cold, and they were miserable. They still had a long road ahead of them.
He doodled as he ruminated about his performance. How he'd change it next time. Whether there would even be a next time. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the end of the line. As far as he could go with the show, because there was nobody left who wanted to watch him.
Only… hadn't Kevin mentioned something about London? Steve hadn't been paying attention at the time, but he was sure the guy had said the show would be ending in London. The thought made his heart constrict inside his chest. If he left the front lines, he'd never get back. He'd never find Bucky—if Bucky was even here—and he'd never be allowed to fight like the men who'd so ruthlessly pummelled him with groceries. He'd never get the chance to earn their respect, or to make his dad proud.
He heard quiet footsteps approach as he put the finishing touches on his uni-cycling circus monkey doodle, but ignored them. One of the girls no doubt, come to try and cheer him up. He wasn't much in the mood to be cheered up.
"Hello, Steve."
His head whipped around so fast that he felt the crick in his neck. There, walking amongst the proud eagle statues and the star-spangled banners, was Agent Carter, her hair damp from the rain. At that moment, everything else—his humiliating performance, the desire to fight, the need to find his best friend—fell away, replaced by a surreal, dream-like feeling of this can't be real.
"Hi," he said, the master of eloquence.
"Hi." She offered a muted smile as she folded her coat across her lap and took a seat on one of the wardrobe trunks.
Was this real? It couldn't be real. Agent Carter. Here. Looking exactly the same as the last time he'd seen her; just as professional. Just as strong. Just as beautiful. Say something, idiot, the part of his mind that was still capable of functioning prompted him.
"What are you doing here?" he blurted out. Real smooth. Just what she wants; the Spanish Inquisition.
"Officially, I'm not here at all." She gestured to the stage with a sweep of her hand. Why had he never noticed before how delicate and slender her fingers looked? "That was quite a performance."
Her words brought the humiliation crashing back down into his surreal, Carter-filled world. She saw the show? She'd seen the awkwardness, and the tomatoes, and the rudely revealed buttocks of a heckler? He quickly glanced away from the look in her eyes. He didn't want to see mockery there. Didn't want to see pity, either. He wasn't sure which would be worse.
"Uh, yeah. I head to improvise a little bit." He scratched his nose, then stopped himself. Bucky had always told him that his nose-scratching was one of his poker-tells when he was bluffing. Steve never realised he was doing it, but it explained why he never won at poker against Bucky. "The crowds I'm used to are usually more… ah…" Respectful. Impressed. Well-fed. "Twelve." Yes, the twelve year old demographic had definitely increased since the comics came out.
"I understand you're 'America's new hope.'" She said it in such a jaded tone that he couldn't help but throw up a defence.
"Bond sales take a ten percent bump in every state I visit."
"Is that Senator Brandt I hear?"
Close; it was Kevin. But it probably amounted to the same. Still, they'd given him a chance. Thanks to both of them, Steve was in Europe. He was a glorified propaganda piece, but at he was on the right continent.
"At least he's got me doing this. Phillips would'a had me stuck in a lab." And not even a nice lab. Alamagordo; some Army Air Field installation. Probably a place with a dark, deep bunker, where Steve would never have seen the light of day.
Agent Carter gestured to his sketch book. "And these are your only two options: a lab rat, or a dancing monkey? You were meant for more than this, you know."
Hearing her say the words he'd been thinking for the past few months opened a floodgate inside him; one through which a tidal wave of sadness came pouring in. She was completely and utterly right. Abraham Erskine hadn't died so that the sum of his work could be paraded around on a stage. Erskine had wanted to make a difference. To create a tool to help win the war in the name of freedom; a tool he had given to Steve, who'd wasted it because people were still closing doors in his face.
When he glanced up at her, her saw something in her eyes. Maybe it was pride, or conviction, or heck, maybe it was just the overcast grey sky reflected in their mirror-like depths. Looking at her, he was struck by a powerful feeling that she wasn't just talking about the serum, and Project Rebirth. Even before that, she'd been in his corner. Plenty of folks believed in Captain America, but those who believed in Steve Rogers were few and far between. Even Bucky, his oldest and dearest friend, had looked at Steve and seen somebody who'd never make it on the front lines, much less to them.
But Agent Carter had.
And now he was sitting here, wearing tights, being given a pep talk by the most beautiful dame in Europe. It didn't seem fair.
"What?" she asked when she noticed his change in expression.
"Y'know, for the longest time, I dreamed about coming overseas, being on the front lines, serving my country. I finally got everything I wanted… and I'm wearing tights."
The warning blare of a passing car horn cut off Agent Carter's reply before it could leave her rouged lips. Steve followed the Red Cross jeep with his eyes. Watched as the driver called for medics who came scrambling from the hospital tent. From the back of the vehicle they carried out a man on a stretcher, and Steve immediately tensed. But even from this distance, he could tell it wasn't Bucky.
Of course it wasn't Bucky. Bucky was probably a hundred miles away from here.
"They look like they've been through hell," he mused aloud.
Peggy nodded. "These men more than most." When he fixed her with a questioning glance, she hesitated only briefly before elaborating. "Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano." Steve's fingers curled into his palm at the mention of the name. Schmidt was the one who'd ordered Erskine killed. A butcher. A murderer. A monster. "Two hundred men went up against him, and less than fifty returned. Your audience contained what was left of the 107th. The rest were killed or captured."
Her words were a punch to his gut. A sharp intake of breath whistled through his lips and into lungs that didn't know how to process air anymore. What? Bucky… no. NO! It couldn't be. He'd misheard.
"The 107th?" he asked, internally begging her to correct his mistake, to somehow soothe the panic that was winding its way through his chest, constricting his lungs, stealing his air and his words.
"What?" she asked, when she saw his inner turmoil.
"My best friend's in the 107th! Bucky—Sergeant James Barnes. Is he alive? Do you know?"
"Sergeant Barnes?" she said. "He was your friend?"
"Was?" Something sharp bit into fingers, but he barely felt it. "What do you mean, was?"
She didn't answer at first. Her dark eyes travelled down to his hand, and widened. He followed her gaze. Opened his hand. Found his pencil splintered into wickedly sharp shards that his own grip had pushed beneath the skin. He dropped the ruined pencil and watched spatters of blood paint the floor. Didn't matter. He would heal. Increased metabolism.
"Tell me what happened." Somehow, he managed to make his voice sound calm. Controlled. He managed to put a stopper in the bottle before everything could come pouring out of him. All of this—the USO, the war, the serum—meant nothing if he lost his best friend. Bucky's family! How could he ever go home and tell them their son was dead? He couldn't. Wouldn't.
As she spoke, Agent Carter pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and held it out to him. He took it, because he suspected if he didn't, she'd force it on him. His hand stung when he began wiping the blood away, and he had to pick a few splinters out.
"We got word that the Nazis were moving to take Azzano," she began. "Sergeant Barnes was with the group sent to defend the town. Halfway through the battle, a HYDRA tank rolled up and decimated what was left of the Nazi forces. HYDRA troops began taking our soldiers prisoner. A few of Sergeant Barnes' men made it back; they said he'd ordered them to fall back and deliver intel while he stayed behind to help defend their flank during the retreat. That was the last anybody saw of him."
Steve's world rocked as the scene played out before his mind. The battlefield. The fight. Guns blazing and men falling. A HYDRA tank and soldiers who wore the face of the guy who'd assassinated Dr. Erskine. Troops rounded up and marched away like cattle. Bucky's face was amongst them, worn, dirty, bleeding.
No.
"It's another Sergeant Barnes," he said. "Common name. There must'a been a few guys called Barnes in the 107th. You've got him confused with someone else."
She reached out a hand, lay it gently on his shoulder, and his mind went right back to when his mom had died. How everyone had treated him with kid gloves after that. They hadn't wanted to talk about Sarah Rogers, in case it made him sad. So, they talked around her. Talked about everything else. And her absence became greater because of it.
"I understand," Agent Carter said softly. "When I lost my brother, Michael, I didn't want to believe it at first. Couldn't believe it. But if it helps, there's a casualty list. You could review the names of the men who were lost at Azzano."
Lost. A pale, watercolour way of saying dead. The doctor in the TB ward had been the same. He'd watched Steve sit beside his mom every day for two weeks. When she'd said her goodbye, kissed Steve on the forehead and closed her eyes, the doctor had come along and listened with his stethoscope to the absence of sound from her breast. She's gone. Gone. It was like lost. It implied somewhere, yet nobody knew where that somewhere was. All he knew was that it wasn't here.
He couldn't do that to Bucky's family. He couldn't let their son be lost. He was either alive, or he'd been killed. There could be no in-between.
"Where's the list?" he asked.
"In the command tent. Colonel Phillips is in charge of the condolence letters."
Oh God. What if he'd already written one to Bucky's family? What if it had been sent? What if they were already reading it, crying over it, mourning their son? The thought of their tears threatened to bring his own to his eyes. Bucky's life flashed briefly before him; the adventures they'd had, the fights they'd shared, the sleep-overs and shared dinners and double-dates and bad jokes.
He turned and stepped into the rain. A soldier had already pointed out the command tent to him, earlier in the afternoon, and now he ran for it, slowing only to call, "Come on!" to Agent Carter over his shoulder. She hoisted her coat up over her head, and followed.
Despite the rain, the command tent was a hive of activity. Five colonels, their XOs and support staff made for cramped quarters. Phillips had a desk, but it was a small one. He looked up when Steve marched towards him, not even a glimmer of surprise registering on his craggy face.
"Well, if it isn't the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan," the colonel barked. "What is your plan today?"
"I need the casualty list from Azzano," Steve told him. He probably should'a saluted, but it was too late now. Besides, he was still wearing tights. No chance he was gonna salute a man while wearing tights.
"You don't get to give me orders, son," Phillips countered.
Idiot. Should'a saluted. "I just need one name: Sergeant James Barnes, from the 107th."
Phillips' gaze shifted to Carter's face, and he pointed his pen at her. "You and I are gonna have a conversation later that you won't enjoy."
"Please tell me if he's alive, sir. B-A-R—"
"I can spell," the colonel interrupted. He stared at Steve for a moment, long and hard, and it was all Steve could do to stand there and not fidget. Finally, Phillips stood and gestured to the letters piled on his desk. "I've signed more condolence letters since the start of this campaign than I would care to count, and Sergeant Barnes' is amongst them. I'm sorry."
Steve's hands twitched as, in his mind's eye, he picked up the letters and ransacked the pile for Bucky's. If he could destroy that letter, he could make all of this a lie. Bucky's death… his alleged death… wouldn't be true.
"Has his letter been sent?" he asked.
Phillips nodded. "The Azzano letters went last week."
Steve's heart dropped. If the letters had been posted, that meant they could already be on their way back to the States. Any day now, Mrs. Barnes might look up from baking her trademark apple pie and see the postman walk through the yard carrying an eagle-stamped letter in his hand. He could already feel her heart breaking; his own heart was breaking in sympathy inside his chest.
"What about the others?" he asked. "The ones taken prisoner." Bucky might be amongst them. Steve's eye was drawn up, to a map pinned to a board. He saw the front line sketched out, and the location of numerous small towns and villages. "Are you planning a rescue mission?"
"Yeah, it's called winning the war."
"But if you know where they are, why not at least—"
"They're thirty miles behind the lines," Phillips barked, "through some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe." His finger tracked upwards to a place called Krausberg, just over the Austrian border. "We'd lose more men than we'd save. But I don't expect you to understand that, because you're a chorus girl."
Steve tried to keep the scowl from his face. More and more of the other officers were listening in to Phillips' dressing-down. No doubt tales of Captain America being called a chorus girl would be spreading around camp by the end of the day. But that didn't matter; Steve wouldn't be there to hear them. Phillips had unwittingly given him he location of where the POWs were being kept.
"I think I understand just fine," Steve assured him, his heart beating a calm rhythm now that he had a plan.
"Well then understand it somewhere else." Phillips strode past, to stand with a couple of the other colonels around a table with a topographical map laid on top. "If I read the posters correctly, you got someplace to be in thirty minutes."
Steve's eyes drifted once more to the map on the board. Krausberg.
"Yes sir. I do."
If there was another response, he didn't hear it. He strode out from under the khaki roof and made a beeline for the USO's storage tent. Here, their belongings, props and general day-to-day show items had been stashed safely out of the way. The girls' short dresses were neatly hung from a clothes rail; his trusty old shield was dumped unceremoniously on a table.
It shouldn't be too hard to take a jeep. Camp security was pretty lax. Whilst waiting for the girls to get ready for the show, he'd watched the comings and goings of the troops. Men were moving all the time, and often they left a jeep running with its key in the ignition while they carried out their business in camp. All he had to do was find one that was waiting for its driver to return and… borrow… it. He'd need supplies, too. Rations, water, a blanket, maybe a map…
The rustle of fabric was Agent Carter dashing into the tent behind him. He knew it was her, even with his back to her, because he could smell her perfume.
"What do you plan to do?" she demanded. "Walk to Austria?"
Packing his bag, he answered idly. "If that's what it takes."
"You heard the colonel. Your friend is most likely dead."
Her words hit the emotional umbrella he'd erected around himself and ran down like drops of rain. If Bucky was dead, he'd find proof. Until he had proof, Bucky was still alive, and no arguments to the contrary would sway him.
"You don't know that."
When she spoke again, he could hear the desperation rising in her voice. He couldn't blame her, not really. She saw this as a fool's errand that would probably get him killed. She didn't understand that it wasn't his wellbeing he was concerned for. But… even in his haste, he could appreciate that she was concerned for him.
"Even so, he's devising a strategy. If he detects—"
"By the time he's done that, it could be too late," he interrupted. A flicker of annoyance in her eyes warned him against interrupting her so rudely again. "Look, I don't have time to wait until the war's over," he said, striving for calmness in his voice. If she thought he was running off with his head hot, it would only put her back up even more. "Bucky's my best friend. Sometimes, he's been my only friend. He's pulled my ass out of the fire more times than I can count. We grew up together, closer than brothers. If it was your brother behind that line, what would you do?"
Her tight-lipped silence was all the confirmation he needed. On the way out of the tent, he stopped by the shelved row of helmets the girls used as props during their dance. Props they might be, but they were genuine Army helmets, just painted in the show's colours. They'd do a better job at deflecting bullets than his own skull. But did he want S for Steve, or A for America?
He grabbed the A helmet. I'm going in there as Captain America, but I'm coming out as Steve Rogers. And I'm bringing my friend with me.
Agent Carter caught up with him at the first abandoned jeep he found. He tossed his duffel bag onto the back seat and pulled his brown leather jacket over his shoulders. When he dared to glance at her, rain-soaked but even more beautiful because of it, her dark eyes were full of reproach. He was doing this with or without her support, but it would be nice to know she was still rooting for him. That she wasn't going to run back and tell Phillips what he'd done the moment he was out of camp.
"You told me you thought I was meant for more than this," he said. "Did you mean that?"
There was no hesitation. Just a deepening look of conviction. "Every word."
He offered a brief smile. He hated lies and platitudes. "Then you gotta let me go."
He hopped into the driver's seat and grabbed hold of the wheel, but before he could put the vehicle into gear, Agent Carter was there, hands beside his and a barely suppressed sparkle of excitement in her eyes.
"I can do more than that."
"What do you mean?"
She glanced around, waiting for a couple of soldiers to pass. "Come with me. And bring your bag and that helmet."
A brief war was fought inside him. One voice in his head told him to stop wasting time and continue with his jeep plan. A second voice advised him to put a little trust in Agent Carter. So far, she hadn't let him down, and she knew this area better than he did.
He grabbed his gear and followed her. When he was close enough, he asked quietly, "What's the plan?"
"Howard has a plane, and he's a damn good pilot."
The mental image of Howard Stark in a plane, sliding all over the airfield, was rudely thrust into Steve's mind. "Have you seen the airstrip recently?"
"It's a small plane. He can take off at the edge of camp."
Steve swallowed the lump lodged in his throat. Six hours ago, he'd told himself he wouldn't be getting back in a plane any time soon. But this was Bucky. Bucky, who would walk through fire and go to hell and back for a friend. There was no question, nothing to even consider; if there was a plane, he'd take it. Whether it was made of metal or made of paper, he'd take the risk.
They found Howard Stark tinkering with some contraption inside a small, contraption-filled tent, humming the theme song of The Star-Spangled Man to himself as he worked. When he glanced up and saw Agent Carter, he smiled. When he saw Steve behind her, the smile turned into a grin.
"Mr. Rogers! An excellent first performance you gave us today. Having the girls come in to do that encore… and then the second and third encores… brilliant!"
"Howard, we need to borrow your plane," Agent Carter said.
Suddenly, Stark was all business. "Oh? Where are we going?"
"Austria."
This is it, thought Steve. The moment when Agent Carter's plan falls apart. Nobody in their right mind would fly a plane over the Alps and into a hostile country. Heck, it's dangerous enough flying over Italy.
And indeed, Stark's dark eyes looked troubled beneath furrowed brows. "Austria, hmm? What's the occasion?"
"My best friend, Sergeant Barnes, went missing at Azzano," Steve explained. "I'm going to find him."
"What, that black fella from the 370th?"
"Howard."
It was amazing how much unspoken warning women could put into a single word issued in a very specific tone of voice. Bucky's mom had been able to do it, and Mary-Ann, too. A word. A tone. A glare. It said more than the most eloquent of political speeches, and even Steve wanted to wince despite the glare being aimed at another man.
"Alright, alright." Stark threw his hands into the air. "We'll go rescue Sergeant Sarcasm. You two wait here for a few minutes while I go change into something more appropriate for high-altitude flying and perform a few pre-flight checks on Amelia."
Steve couldn't help it. The question was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "Amelia?"
Stark aimed a loving smile at the nearby tarp-covered plane.
"You named your plane?"
"After the world's greatest female aviator, no less: Amelia Earhart." Stark issued him another grin. "She went missing over the Pacific during a circumnavigational flight six years ago. Some say she died in a burning fireball; others think she absconded from her husband with another man."
Steve's stomach did something unpleasant. "That doesn't inspire me with confidence in your plane."
"I met Amelia once, the year before she disappeared. Very feisty." Stark rubbed his hands together. "Right. Let me go get changed. I'll be back in less than ten minutes. While I'm gone, please don't touch anything. I know what you soldiers are like for stealing things and breaking things and leaning on—"
"Just go," Agent Carter scowled.
He did. That left Steve alone in the company of the most beautiful woman on either side of the Atlantic. Her gaze assessed him frankly, as if measuring him against some invisible scale for the upcoming rescue mission. If Bucky were already here, he'd probably say something entirely inappropriate yet charmingly Bucky-ish, if he saw Carter looking at Steve like that. Like what you see? perhaps, or, Our latest model of Steve Rogers is a little rough around the edges, but it's undergone some significant bodywork upgrades. In fact, maybe Bucky had already tried a little of his charm on Agent Carter. Only one way to find out.
Steve cleared his throat. "So. You… um… knew Bucky? I mean, Sergeant Barnes? Know him, I mean. Not knew him. Present tense."
Agent Carter suppressed a smile, probably at his clumsiness. "Not very well, but well enough to know that he was—I mean, is—a good soldier and a good friend. The men in his regiment think very highly of him, as does Colonel Phillips."
Steve couldn't help the quiet snort that came from his nose. "Right. He thinks so highly of Bucky that he won't even send a rescue party."
"Things aren't always as they seem, Steve," she said, her voice surprisingly gentle. He looked into her eyes, then quickly looked away before he could drown in them. This wasn't the time to be thinking about dames. He had to stay focused on Bucky. "Colonel Phillips wanted to mount a rescue operation as soon as he heard that HYDRA was involved and taking men captive. But we were ordered to retreat behind the line's current position and meet up with a company from the 8th Army. When we got here, he tried again to plan a rescue, but there are too many other colonels interfering, and one went to General Patton, who forbade any rescue attempt. Called it a waste of resources."
"Oh." He hadn't realised the Army was so… so… political. He'd always thought the armed forces were above that sort of thing. That when he joined up, he wouldn't have to deal with politicians anymore. Clearly, that wasn't the case.
Now he had to deal with politicians who carried guns, and he wasn't sure whether that was better, or worse.
Author's Note: With regards to the location of the HYDRA factory, the MCU wikia names it Kreischberg, whilst in the film's subtitles, Peggy names it Krausberg. I've chosen to go with the latter.