There they turned back into men and the Punisher was able to kill Vice President Blackthorne, while he let Blaze go, who argued that they were very much alike. After the battle between Vengeance, the Avengers and the Ghost Rider left Tyron Cash and War Machine incapacitated, the two men continued their fight in a church with the Punisher in pursuit. In Washington, Mephisto turned Vice President Blackthorne into Vengeance, so that he could create someone for the Ghost Rider to fight, revealing that he had betrayed his followers long ago. The Ghost Rider effortlessly defeats the Punisher. After fighting the Ghost Rider at O'Hare Airport, Chicago, the team headed for Washington, D.C., where the Vice President himself was believed to be the next target, as he was the last member of a group of individuals who killed John Blaze and his fiancee twenty years prior in a ritual sacrifice, making them rich and powerful men.
The roster of the team was slightly altered to compensate for a new threat in the form of the Ghost Rider, when the Punisher and Tyron Cash were forced to become part of the Avengers. It was revealed afterward that Nick Fury secretly orchestrated the Red Skull's actions in order to reinstate the Avengers for his own purposes, as well as to regain his previous role in S.H.I.E.L.D. Red Skull was taken to a hospital where he was shot in the head by Petra Laskov. The team managed to hold off Red Skull long enough for Captain America to arrive and subdue the Red Skull. The team fought the Skull, but found their attacks useless as the Red Skull made himself invulnerable with the Cube. by forcing the facility's soldiers and agents to cannibalize each other. The Avengers later teleported to A.I.M.'s Alaskan base where the Cosmic Cube was under construction, only to find that the Red Skull now wielded the Cosmic Cube and had betrayed A.I.M. The team was directed to capture Captain America in France and bring him in for questioning, while stopping A.I.M. War Machine captures the rogue Captain America. Captain America disobeyed his superiors and went on a solo mission to find his son. Rogers had recently learned that he sired an illegitimate son, the Red Skull, during World War II. Project Avenger was resurrected by Nick Fury to track down and apprehend the rogue Captain America.
The Red Skull proves his strength to Captain America. Little is known about the original, terminated, Project Avenger, other than it was a Black OPS team and included Hawkeye and Black Widow as two of its members.