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the wrist hold and grabbed a handful of the kid’s thick black hair. Instead of letting go, though, the kid squeezed his knees even harder. White lights were dancing at the periphery of his vision. Hurley couldn’t believe he just had his ass handed to him by some college puke.
    Still, he did not stop looking for a way out, and with the darkness closing in, he found his answer sitting only a few inches in front of his face. He vaguely remembered a brief discussion about rules before they had started but that wasn’t important right now. Making sure he didn’t lose was what was important. In a last-ditch effort to avoid calamity, Hurley released his opponent’s wrist and lashed out with his now free hand. He found the kid’s gonads and with every last ounce of strength he clamped down and began to squeeze.

CHAPTER 5
    K ENNEDY returned to the lake house just after six in the evening. She was tired, hungry, and not in the mood for another confrontation with Hurley, but there were certain developments that needed to be discussed. One of the unforeseen and increasingly difficult aspects of her job was the inability to communicate freely with her colleagues. Foreign intelligence agencies that operated in Washington were always a threat, but no longer her biggest concern. Now she had to worry about her own government and a new generation of journalists who wanted to break the next Watergate, Pentagon Papers, or Iran Contra scandal. Combined, they had ended hundreds of careers and done untold damage to national security. It was the new sport in Washington to pound on the very agencies tasked with keeping America safe. Surprisingly, Kennedy was fairly ambivalent about it. As her mentor Thomas Stansfield had told her many times, “Great spies don’t complain about the rules, they find ways around them.”
    She parked the car in front of the house and climbed the porch steps, dreading the thought of going another round with Hurley. Kennedy opened the screen door and entered. The rooms to her left and right were empty, so she went down the center hall to the kitchen. Her feet stopped where the hardwood floor transitioned to linoleum. Sitting at the kitchen table was a bruised and battered Stan Hurley. He had a drink filled with ice and Maker’s Mark pressed against a fat lip and a bag of ice held against his swollen right eye. Leaning against the counter directly across from him was Troy Tschida, a thirty-two-year-old former Green Beret and Hurley’s right-hand man. Tschida tried but failed to suppress his amusement over his boss’s battered physical appearance.
    “You think this is funny?” Hurley snarled.
    “Absolutely not,” Tschida said with dramatic, false sincerity.
    “You prick. Wait till I stick your ass in the ring with him. You won’t be laughing after he lands a couple punches.”
    “What happened?” Kennedy asked, genuinely not sure what they were talking about.
    Hurley hadn’t seen her enter, because the bag of ice was covering his right eye, and he didn’t hear her because his ears were still ringing. He turned his head and removed the bag of ice to reveal an eye that was so swollen it was almost entirely closed. The skin above the eye was a shiny bulbous red.
    “What happened,” Hurley said in a voice rising with anger, “was that fucking Trojan hoarse you dumped in front of my house this afternoon.”
    It clicked and Kennedy thought of Rapp. “You’re saying my recruit did this to you?”
    “Don’t fucking play games with me. I am in no mood.” Hurley slammed his glass down on the table and grabbed the bottle of bourbon. He filled it to the brim.
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kennedy said sincerely.
    Hurley took a big gulp and said, “My ass. He’s your recruit. You give me some cut-and-paste fuckin’ jacket on the guy that reads like a ransom note. I know nothing about him. He’s here less than a minute and he up and suggests we find out if he has the right stuff.”