The Winter Soldier

 By: MacKenzie Lee

Genre: Marvel, Historical Fiction, Fantasy

Location: FIC LEE

1954: The Winter Soldier is the Soviet Union’s greatest weapon. Assigned the most dangerous covert missions from the USSR’s secret military branch, and guided by a handler who knows him better than he knows himself, he has only one purpose: to obey orders.
But he wasn’t always the Winter Soldier . . .
1941: As World War II begins, sixteen-yearold Bucky Barnes is determined to enlist in the US army—if only the local commander will stop getting in his way. When Bucky is offered enrollment in a training program with the British Special Operations Executive—the UK’s secret service—he leaps at the chance to become a hero. But Bucky has hardly touched down in London when he finds himself running from a mysterious assassin and accompanied by an English chess champion fond of red lipstick and double crosses. She’s in possession of a secret every side is desperate to get their hands on. If only they knew what it was . . .
Decades later, the Winter Soldier struggles to solve the same mystery Bucky is just beginning to uncover. As their missions intersect across time, their lives collide too—in a way that neither of them would have expected, and that will change the course of their respective wars.
In The Winter Soldier: Cold Front, best-selling author Mackenzi Lee explores the youth of one of Marvel’s most compelling characters, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes—and the enemy soldier he is forced to become.

“ I thought you said [your dad] survived the war.”

“He came home.” She picked up her knight, twirling it absently between her fingers as she studied the board. “That’s not really the same, though, is it? He might have been the greatest chess player in the world, but the first tournament he enrolled in after France, he just sat there, staring at the board.”

“What was the matter with him?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Not bodily, anyway. But in his mind, the war didn’t end.” She set the knight on her board, then looked up at Bucky. “The first year he was home, my father went to five funerals for men in his company. By the time I was born, more men he served with had died back in England than had in France. His best friend shot himself through the head at a Veteran’s Parade in Birmingham. My father was there—I was there. It’s the only thing I remember clearly from childhood.”

“Geez,” Bucky murmured.

She glared at the board, though the rattle of her cuffs against the table betrayed her shaking hands. “My father gave up chess. He went to university to study chemistry. He started working on a way to implant memories in the brain—and, the flip side of that coin, how to remove them. He hoped it could be used to treat shell shock.”I t