Turns out, when Tony Stark “died” as part of the Reborn event, James Rhodes inherited his money and got keepsies on the War Machine Army.
As War Machine, he defies Nick Fury to go on a rescue mission across enemy lines, to save a diplomat who was kidnapped by a foreign government.
Nick thinks he’s dumb to go do it. Bathsheva Joseph, a SHIELD agent who will appear throughout this series, says she feels dumb too sometimes. Okay.
Cable sees it happening on TV and is afraid War Machine will start a war by his actions, so Cable goes to stop him.
And so we find ourselves at the main event.
It’s a knock-down drag-out, but we don’t get to see the conclusion because Deathlok interrupts.
So it turns into a three-way battle, but for some reason Deathlok doesn’t make the cover for issue #2.
The three fight until the local army shows up, then they team up and fight the army.
Well, Deathlok and Rhodey fight them. Cable teleports away.
Pussy.
After yet more battling (lots of fighting, but this is a book about a guy named War Machine, after all), SHIELD Agent Joseph shows up to arrest Deathlok and War Machine (trying to prevent an international incident). So issue #3 is just War Machine and Deathlok on the run from SHIELD.
And Deathlok still doesn’t make the cover. This is starting to feel like racial discrimination.
The story ends with the diplomat killed by the bad government and Rhodey swearing to continue the man’s work, eliminating dictatorships across the globe.