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wasteland. He must be the descendant of slaves,” said the blond-haired Kosovar as Marcus smiled at them.
    “He looks strong,” replied the tall one. “Stupid, but strong. I bet he would sell for a good bit on the markets of Yemen. He would make a good household eunuch for some Arab Sheik.”
    The pair let out a chuckle.
    “When we complete the job, that is what we should do,” said the Kosovar, “Get into the slave business and put all the American blacks back on the Arab slave market. We will be rich!”
    The tall Albanian looked at Marcus, smiled widely, and said in nasal Gheg, “You are a big, stupid black oaf, and I will enjoy cutting your balls off someday.”
    The two grinned with mock friendliness and put their items down on the counter.
    “Howdy,” Marcus said in English. “You guys must work for the power company, right?”
    “Yes,” replied the blond. “We were just out here working on the outage.”
    He spoke very good English with only the slightest hint of an accent.
    “Boy, that outage was something, wasn’t it?” Linus asked. “All day long, and then poof! It comes back on.”
    Nikola responded in strongly accented English, “It is working now, just a simple case of a burned-out transformer on that main link. Allah willing, it won’t happen again.”
    Linus raised his eyebrows at Nikola’s statement and said, “Yeah, God willing.” He finished scanning their snacks with the infrared barcode reader attached to the cash register and added, “That’ll be thirteen dollars and seventy-two cents.”
    The Kosovar opened his wallet and handed Linus a hundred-dollar bill. As he did so, Marcus glanced down briefly and noticed the man had a thick stack of cash in his wallet—what appeared to be thousands of dollars.
    The Kosovar took his change and goods, and then turned to the door, Nikola close behind. When he pulled the door open, a thick, rolling mist churned in as the frozen outside air met the warm interior atmosphere.
    The Albanian turned back toward them. “Have a good night, gentlemen. Insha’Allah.”
    “Yeah,” Marcus replied. “Stay warm out there.”
    The bell above the door jangled loudly as it closed behind the two. Marcus and Linus heard the Tanana Valley truck start up. A moment later, the Albanian electricians sped off into the night on the highway, heading back toward Fairbanks. Marcus and Linus sat in silence as the sound of the truck faded.
    “So, Marcus,” Linus asked, “Did you get what they said? I only remember bits and pieces of those European languages, but that sounded like Yugoslavian or something. Am I close?”
    “Albanian,” replied the retired Marine.
    “Albanian? Isn’t that your main military language?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So, what did they say?”
    “They’re going to cut your balls off and sell you as a eunuch to an Arab sheik.”
    “Excuse me?” Linus’s eyes widened. “I think Cara would have something to say about that.”
    “Actually, they were talking about me.” Marcus took a mouthful of his stew. “They’re up to something. They talked about finishing a job.”
    Linus crossed his arms over his chest. “Think we should call the cops?”
    “Yep.”
    Linus reached for the phone and added, “In my humble opinion, it sounds like they’re a couple of Tangos.”
    “Well, the problem would be getting cops to believe a report about terrorists in Salt Jacket.” Marcus set down his spoon. “Give me your phone, though. They nearly ran me over on Johnson Road. I got the number from the side of the truck. I’ll call the cops and report them for reckless driving. We can see what turns up.”
    Linus handed the wireless phone and reached across to hand it to Marcus. He froze when the sound of truck tires crunched on the gravel-strewn snow of the parking lot. Bright beams of light shot through the window next to the cash register as a large pickup truck pulled in to the first parking space near the door.
    The engine idled with a deep rumble