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remember.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Jesse replied.
    â€œIt’s not great coffee,” Barker said, “but I expect it’s better than what you’ve been getting.”
    â€œI expect.”
    Fuller handed Jesse the cup, and he raised his cuffed hands to receive it. “You think I could take the restraints off now, Dan?” Fuller asked.
    â€œI think not,” Barker replied. “So, Jesse, how are things in prison?”
    Jesse had still not sat down. “Dan, I’m not talking to you while I’m wearing this.” He held up his cuffed hands. “So you can either get this stuff off me right now or go fuck yourself.” Jesse knew he was flirting with a trip back to prison, but he was angry.
    Barker waited a beat before he turned to Fuller. “Kip, get this piece of shit back to the pen.”
    Jesse turned and hobbled toward the door.
    Fuller caught up with him in the hallway. “That was a mistake, Jesse.”
    â€œThe hell with him,” Jesse said.
    Barker’s voice came down the hall after them. “All right, all right, come on back in here and let’s talk.”
    Jesse turned and held his hands out to Fuller, who began unlocking. First the handcuffs came off, then the leather belt that buckled in back, then the chain that connected the cuffs to the leg irons and, finally, the leg irons. Jesse walked slowly back into the conference room, rubbing his wrists and stretching his legs, then he sat down. There were some pencils on the table; Jesse wondered whether he could plunge one into Barker’s neck before either he or Fuller could shoot him.

CHAPTER

4
    B arker took a seat at the opposite end of the table. “How would you like to get out of prison?” he asked.
    â€œI’m already out of prison,” Jesse said. “Now why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me what I have to do to stay out?”
    Barker nodded at Fuller and the younger man placed a briefcase on the table, opened it, took out an eight-by-ten photograph and put it in front of Jesse.
    Jesse saw a head and chest shot of a young man in the uniform and green beret of the Army Special Forces. He was rail thin, handsome, deeply tanned, square-jawed and his chest displayed many ribbons. Master sergeant’s stripes adorned his sleeves.
    Barker opened his own briefcase and took out some papers, glancing at them as he spoke. “This man’s name is Jack Gene Coldwater; that photograph was taken in 1972, and, as far as we know, it was the last picture ever taken of him. Christ only knows what he looks like now. He was born in Ship Rock, New Mexico, in 1949, to a Navaho father and a white mother;he attended the local public schools, played football and was good at it. He turned down a football scholarship when he graduated from high school; instead, he joined the army; he was good at that, too. He was big, smart and tough as nails, and Special Forces got hold of him right out of boot camp. His service record says he was a natural. He pulled four tours in Vietnam and led missions all over the country, north and south, in Cambodia and Laos, mostly infiltration with only a few men; he rose to the rank of master sergeant faster than it should have been possible, and by the time the war ended he was the practical equivalent of a company commander. There were bird colonels who were scared shitless of him, and his commanding officers, his platoon leaders and company commanders, always did what he told them to. He won just about every decoration the army had to offer, except a Medal of Honor, and he was recommended for that. Word is, his regimental commander—one of those colonels who was scared shitless of him—blocked it; I wasn’t able to find out why.
    â€œColdwater didn’t want the Vietnam war to end, and when Saigon fell, he passed up a seat on the last chopper out, then fought a rear guard action for another week. He finished up at Vung Tau,