Book excerpt: Bucky Barnes is the prisoner of a private war. Fighting for good against consummate evil during WWII, he learned the deadly skills of warfare--only to have these tools exploited by the Soviets' Cold War machine. Memories of his time as a brainwashed assassin haunt him still, never more so than when he dons the star-spangled uniform once worn by Steve Rogers. And just when he thougt he could break free of the chains of his history, he is thrust into a new nightmare: a Russian prison camp housing a handful of his most vicious and revenge-minded Cold War peers. For Bucky, each ponderous minute that ticks by in the gulag brings another new threat to his life. But for his friends--Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter and Black Widow--it is a race against time to undo the wicked conspiracy that has used Bucky's past as the Winter Soldier to trap him in a life of cruelty worse than any he's ever experienced. COLLECTING: CAPTAIN AMERICA 617-619; and material from 616