“What can my mighty band of men do for the great Marcus Eames?”

  “I need your help,” Marcus said quietly, as if he were confiding a great secret. “I’ve heard that you have a plan to sabotage the American electric grid.”

  Jasir cocked his head cautiously. While he had sought access to arms and cooperation with others, he had never mentioned the electrical grid in any of his queries. He unconsciously turned his gaze toward the men he suspected of talking. His face was devoid of a smile when he returned to look at Marcus.

  “This is not something I am willing to discuss,” Jasir said. “We have many preparations still to come. Perhaps there is something else you would like to discuss?”

  “No, Jasir, this is what I have come to discuss. Should you be unwilling to discuss, I shall leave,” Marcus said as he quickly rose from his chair.

  “Wait,” Jasir said. A contact like Marcus could not easily be abandoned. If it meant that he had to expedite his plans, so be it. “Please, let us speak.”

  Marcus smiled graciously as he returned to his seat. “Thank you, Jasir. Now let me be direct—from what I have heard, you plan to take out twenty percent of America’s power grids?”

  “Fifty percent!” Jasir said, proudly correcting him.

  Marcus held up his hand.

  “Grids can be repaired, Jasir,” Marcus said in a soft voice. Leaning forward conspiratorially, he added “What if I told you of a way that you could shut down all of America’s power plants, including their nuclear plants, by tricking the CIA into doing it themselves?”

  Jasir looked up in thought. “Is that even possible?”

  “Yes. What matters is their response. If an electrical grid simply fails, they can fix it quickly. More importantly, they can send in many men to hunt you down, and you will die in vain. But if the government believes that restoring power to a grid will threaten national security, they would rather the area stay dark for days—weeks, even—rather than threaten the populace.”

  Jasir nodded. “But how do we convince them?”

  “This government is crippled by cowardice and bureaucracy, Jasir, and you must learn to use that to your advantage. Once you learn their ‘official’ response to a threat such as this, you will have complete control over their actions. Think of the possibility: you and your men will be credited with shutting down the Great Satan, and you will be alive to hear the praise.”

  Jasir’s eyes squinted as his mouth stretched in a toothy grin.

  “We are to be good friends, you and I,” Jasir said. “What could you possibly need from us in return?”

  “The codes you already have for the electrical grids,” Marcus said. “I have a buyer.”

  “What good will the codes be after I have shut down the Great Satan?”

  “My buyers don’t know that. They hired me to get the codes from you. If you shut down the power before they get a chance to do so, that’s their problem. And this way, we shall all profit.”

  Dropping his voice, he continued. “Do you have a place where we can talk further?” Marcus asked. “You obviously have a few…indiscriminate soldiers.”

  Jasir looked around.

  “I did not choose these men,” Jasir admitted. “They are sometimes…too excited for their own good. Let us continue in my office,” he said, gesturing to what had once been the principal’s office.

  Jasir led Marcus through a set of swinging double doors, down a small hallway, and into the office. A faded sticker, proclaiming that the previous occupant had “put the ‘pal’ in ‘principal’” still clung to the door. As soon as both men were inside and the door was closed, Marcus spun Jasir around, and struck him in the back of the head. Jasir’s head smashed downward, into the doorknob. Marcus took Jasir’s pistol from its holster, and kicked him in the chest. Jasir collapsed to the floor.

  Casually gliding back into the gym, Marcus smiled at the guards. “Jasir said that he needs help moving some stuff.”

  All three guards began walking towards the hallway.

  The oldest guard is the largest threat, Marcus noted, after the man refused to take his eyes off him.

  As the double doors swung open, Marcus pulled two slender knives from inside his coat. He lunged at the oldest guard and spun, slicing his jugular before anyone had a chance to reach for their weapons. The guard reached for his throat and Marcus grabbed his rifle, striking him in the forehead.

  It took the other two a moment to process what was happening before reaching for their own rifles. Marcus leapt over the dead man and shot the larger of the two remaining guards in the teeth, spattering blood on the final guard. The young man had managed to raise his rifle, but Marcus was already beside him. He placed the muzzle into the man’s face and pulled the trigger.

  The sound of shouts and stomping feet came from behind the gym, but Marcus was hidden behind the bleachers by the time they entered. Seeing their fallen comrades in the doorway, the men ran toward them, thinking Marcus was behind the doors. A small tap of the fully automatic rifle Marcus had taken removed that mistaken perception.

  Only Jasir’s second-in-command was unaccounted for. Marcus knew that he would either try to arm himself and attack, or, if he were smart, he would flee.

  Marcus sprinted back to the principal’s office, but Jasir was not there.

  Jasir staggered down the long concrete tunnel that had been constructed during the Cold War to shelter children in case of a nuclear attack. He wiped the blood from his face, vowing eternal vengeance on Marcus Eames.

  “I shall hire more men and place a jihad on Eames,” he thought. “The Great Satan can wait.”

  The shots above him stopped and Jasir hurried his pace. When they took over the school as their base, Jasir had hidden both ends of the shelter tunnel. On the inside entrance, they nailed a bunch of boards to the front of the door leading to the tunnel. To a casual glance, it appeared that the door was nailed shut to the wall. The metal hatch outside was covered with fully-grown bushes and impossible to detect unless you knew where it was. Jasir took a deep breath as he reached the other end of the tunnel. The exit door was near, but he was still seeing stars.

  Jasir would have the doctors look at him. There was no telling what damage Eames had caused with his brutish attack. Eames’s reputation as a peaceful trader of information would be revealed as the falsehood it was. Jasir pulled the hatch lever on the reinforced exit door, but it did not budge. He leaned in and pushed harder. The door opened just enough for him to see a chain securing the door from the outside.

  He was locked in.

  “I do my homework,” Marcus said at the other end of the tunnel. “But to be quite honest, you’re so stupid that I didn’t have to do much.”

  “How dare you!” Jasir shouted impotently. “You are…nothing! A mere peddler!”

  Marcus ignored his babbling and pulled a small folder from inside his jacket. Jasir immediately recognized the file and mindlessly reached for his jacket pocket, but it was not there. The folder was the one piece of information he could not leave behind. It contained notes of everything he planned to do.

  And now Marcus Eames held the folder, as if he owned it.

  “Speaking of information, this was the only thing of value I could find in the entire place and I pulled that from your jacket when we first met.”

  Incensed with rage, Jasir pulled a curved blade from the side of his tunic. The blade was specially made to produce cuts that would not heal.

  “Are these all of your plans?” Marcus asked. His voice clearly did not register Jasir as a threat.

  “Die!” Jasir screamed, slashing wildly at Marcus through the narrow gap in the door.

  Marcus stared at the bloody figure as if he were watching a sunset. Jasir led with his knife, but Marcus was already moving with him. Marcus slapped the blade from his hand and punched Jasir in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. Marcus picked up the curved knife and stabbed Jasir in the left shoulder, twisting the blade until it broke off inside the bone. He tossed the handle away and placed his hand over the wound.

  Jasir’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  “That was a nice blade,” Marcus said calmly. “A wound like that won’t heal.”

  Jasir began to scream, but Marcus slapped him hard across the face with his free hand. “Jasir, focus. I am the only thing keeping you alive right now and I need you to listen.”

  Jasir tried to spit at Marcus, but Marcus merely stepped to the side and slapped him again.

  “Are these all of your plans?” he asked.

  Jasir tried to curse, but Marcus grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. The hallway filled with Jasir’s screams. Over the next twelve minutes, with his last breaths, he gave Marcus all of the information he wanted and more.

  And then Marcus bent his arm upward until he heard a thick crack. Lights exploded in the back of Jasir’s eyes and he collapsed to the floor unconscious. Marcus searched him, finding only a small flash drive.

  Marcus set off a few incendiary grenades near the center of the school. He was miles away when the building finally collapsed in on itself, an ancient and fiery hulk.

  Chapter 9

  The Sinanju tribe had never needed a hospital. Most of the injuries and sicknesses were treated by Ike Hodges, the tribe’s only doctor. Doc Hodges was a resident of two worlds. Though his father trained him to follow his footsteps to take over as the next tribal shaman, Ike was also a graduate of UCLA’s medical school.

  He was also on the very short list of people Sunny Joe counted as true friends.

  Though Doc Hodges was two decades his junior, Sunny Joe was happy to see him drag the Sinanju into the twentieth century. He was a bit short on bedside manner, but most of the time, Doc Hodges knew what to do. For the most part, he would just give his patients time to rant and then prescribe a placebo. He quickly realized the similarity between the shamanistic ceremonies that ‘infused magic’ into whatever elixir was given to the patient and modern procedures to providing medicine.

  First, he would glance out the window of his small office as if he were making sure no one was watching and then he would remove a small orange bottle of sugar pills from his top right drawer full of orange bottles of sugar pills. Before he handed it to his patient, he warned them not to take more than one a day. The patient would leave and Doc’s magic—new magic, he called it—worked wonders.

  But a few patients had real problems that were not so easily fixed by placebos. Mick had beat lung cancer in his fifties, but began displaying symptoms again last year. Sunny Joe tried to tell Mick that he could smell it, but Mick balked about following up, mostly because he did not want to face the problem, but also because he did not believe someone could smell cancer. He thought it was Sunny Joe’s way of getting him to visit the doctor. But when the pain started and he began having difficulty breathing again, Mick knew that Sunny Joe was right. He did not make an appointment until Sunny Joe threatened to replace Mick with his son Victor.

  Doc Hodges’ office was a modest metal building, near the main street strip. It was originally designed for schools, but spacious enough for Doc to care of his patients. Sunny Joe entered and Doc Hodges smiled.

  “What ails you today, Sunny Joe?” Doc asked, even though he knew that Sunny Joe’s health was better than his own.

  “Too many things that medicine can’t cure,” Sunny Joe said, sitting down. “I’m just checking to make sure Mick showed up and see if there is anything I can do.”

  “Of course, outside the reservation, doctor/client confidentiality would prohibit me from saying anything,” Doc said, as he did every time Sunny Joe asked about someone from the tribe. “But, between us, Mick is pretty sick. I advised him to seek treatment at a cancer center, but he’s determined to get treated locally or not at all.”

  “He is definitely a stubborn man,” Sunny Joe said.

  “If his body were as stubborn as his mind, he would never get sick.”

  “What’s your diagnosis?”

  “Not good. I am very limited in what I can do in this office. I’ve given him some of my pop’s herbal tea and a few pain medications, but as far as I can tell, he’s only drinking the tea.”

  “I wouldn’t even count on that,” Sunny Joe said, shaking his head. “Is there anything you could do to…improve your daddy’s recipe?”

  “With prescription medicine? Oh, it’s far too late for that. He needs serious therapy and I can’t provide that on the reservation.”

  “What should he do?” Sunny Joe asked.

  “Check himself in to a cancer treatment facility. Yesterday.”

  “Guess it’s time for me to pull rank.”

  “If you want to celebrate Mick’s next birthday, you had better.”

  Sunny Joe thought for a moment. It really would not hurt anything other than tradition to teach Mick the basic breathing technique. It might fuel his cells and make them strong enough to fight his cancer. But if anyone ever found out that Sunny Joe had broken another of the tribe’s primary laws, it would give Paul Moore an excuse to try to have Sunny Joe removed. And even though Chiun, the master of the Korean House of Sinanju was strangely accepting of the fact that Sunny Joe was training Freya, Sunny Joe did not wish to push his luck with Chiun—doing so would only earn him an immediate, one-way ticket to his own funeral.

  “Sunny Joe, get Mick the help he needs. Turtle paste and placebos aren’t going to keep him alive,” Doc said softly.

  Chapter 10

  When the CIA constructed Mike’s Bar in the late fifties, it was a time when ‘secrecy’ and ‘military’ were words that no one questioned. Mike’s not only concealed one of the most comprehensive Presidential bunkers ever designed, it was built far off the beaten path in a small Illinois hamlet just outside St. Louis. While the menu touted four columns of mixed drinks and the bar itself always carried ample bowls of pretzels, Mike’s true commodity was privacy. Officials were able to conduct top-secret negotiations and trade deals far from the prying eyes of Beltway reporters and pesky sub-committees.

  Mike’s opulent interior more than made up for the drab exterior. The designers had installed a custom horseshoe-shaped mahogany bar, complete with solid brass rails. Full-grain leather seats surrounded the bar. The dining tables were solid teakwood with gold-leaf inlays. Tiffany glass chandeliers dangled above each table. Even the floor was hand-scraped wood for an old-world feel.

  The first ‘Mike’ was appointed to run the bar for the last two years before his retirement and during that time, he served all the great Cold War spies, from MI6 to Mossad. He loved the assignment so much that he overstayed his post by eight years.

  As technology made face-to-face meetings among intelligence agents a thing of the past, Mike’s Bar was used less frequently over the years. The latest Mike to run the bar looked around, seeing very little of the glory days. The wooden flooring had begun to warp and crack from age and lack of care. The original hand-scraped texture had long ago been buried beneath layers of cheap wax and floor polish. The fine leather seats had been replaced sometime in the nineties with cost-effective plastic-topped barstools. The stained-glass chandeliers had been sold and replaced with fluorescent lights.

  The only thing that remained was the Monster. That’s what the current Mike called the bulletproof mahogany bar that stood in the center of the bar. Through its fifty-year history, it had withstood everything: fights, spills, clumsy patrons, and, during one particularly tense evening, five shots from a 9mm handgun.

  Mike wiped down the Monster and slid a tall glass of beer to an old man at the end of the bar. Surprisingly, nothing spilled. The old man who grabbed the beer was Patch Edwards, a retired Colonel from the Australian Air Force. For a few years, Patch worked alongside the CIA. Legends of Mike’s Bar were still floating around when he was in the service. Patch made sure to put it on his bucket list.

  For the past three weeks, he had been the bar’s only regular patron.

  “Now that’s how you’re supposed to serve beer, mate!” Patch said, his smile revealing only three teeth.

  Mike smiled and joined him at the end of the bar.

  “Don’t count on me doing that all the time,” Mike said. “If I spill it, you’re buying a new one.”

  “Money I got, Mike,” Patch said and then the smile drained from his craggy face. “The thing I’ve been running out of is friends. You ever get someone drop by from the glory days?”

  “Nah, but I’ve only had the bar a year. In fact, I had no idea that this place even had a claim to fame until you showed up and I still don’t know whether to believe you or not. I really just bought it because it was already named Mike’s,” Mike lied.

  In fact, just about everything other than Mike’s first name was a lie. To Patch and other inquisitive bar guests, Mike Nelson was a retired steel worker who had purchased the bar after his wife left him. In reality, Mike was a covert gatekeeper protecting one of the most secret agencies in American history. Mike was the eighth owner of the bar. He had been assigned the bar after the last ‘Mike’ retired.

  Unlike the heady years of the sixties and seventies, Mike did not have to arrange secret meetings or cater specialty meals. Unlike the original Mike, he did not have a kitchen staff or a gourmet chef. He had beer, liquor, and the Monster.

  His job was very simple: if anyone came in who seemed suspicious, Mike would tap the alarm, notifying Ben Cole. The alarm would freeze the elevators and if necessary, Mike would kill the intruder. If he were successful, he would send the code to Ben, who would have the option of unlocking the elevators, or detonating the explosives that lined the block. The resulting explosion would tear a hole in the middle of the town, killing hundreds of people. The explosion would be blamed on a faulty gas line. The paperwork had already been prepared, showing that the mayor had ignored years of complaints from his city planning department.