“You don’t get paid?” Linus asked.
“Nope. Not unless we’re activated by the governor.”
“How often do you train?”
“One weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, just like the National Guard.”
“Except no pay,” Linus repeated.
“Yeah.” Michaels smirked, then added in a mock-heroic tone, “Our pay is the satisfaction of a job well done.”
“Sounds great,” Marcus said sarcastically.
“Actually some of the units get called up by the state pretty regularly, and when they do, the money is very good.”
Michaels finished paying for his energy drink and continued, “Well, I’ve got to be off. I’m heading home to Anchorage to take some of my guys into the mountains near Healy for some of that free training. Here’s my card. Call me sometime if you’re interested in joining us. Like I said, we always need someone with experience, especially if you can teach.”
Marcus reached out and accepted the card. “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.” Michaels smiled and walked out.
As the door closed behind Michaels, Marcus noticed motion at the rear of the store. Two men came out of the restroom. Their heads moved above the shoulder-height racks that held various grocery items and merchandise. Something about them seemed foreign.
They picked up a couple of bags of chips from the metal wire racks, then stopped at the refrigerated cabinet and pulled out large cans of Rock Star energy drink from behind the glass door. The rubber soles of their new-looking Sorel mukluk boots squeaked on the linoleum tiles with each step.
The two strangers saw Marcus looking at them. He nodded and smiled in a friendly greeting when they made eye contact, then he turned back to his dinner.
Marcus felt uneasy. He didn’t know what it was, but his internal antennae sounded an alarm. His senses leaped to a heightened state of alert like a Doberman Pinscher awakened by a noise in the night. After twenty years’ hunting bad guys in some of the worst places in the world, he knew to listen to these internal signals. His body tensed with a fight-or-flight level of energy that pulsed electrically through his nerves.
Linus noticed the mood change come over his friend. He looked up to take notice of the two men making their way toward the front of the store. As they approached, their words become audible.
Marcus’s tension increased tenfold. During his career in the Marine Corps, he had served as a specialist in anti-terrorist operations. He had discovered at an early age that he had a talent for learning languages. Albanian, specifically the dialect of northern Albania and the southern parts of the former Yugoslavia, was the main language the Marine Corps decided he should study at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, early in his career. According to the military, he was natively fluent. Despite the fact that there were very few brown skinned in that part of the world, the military decision-makers believed he could be used in a variety of roles throughout the region. During the Yugoslav civil war and the later Kosovo war, Marcus’s skills were employed extensively.
One of the men, who stood about six feet tall with a thick black mustache and closely cut hair, spoke with a distinctive Gheg accent from northern Albania. The other was shorter, blond and blue-eyed. He was clean-shaven and carried himself on an athletic frame. His chiseled facial features made him look like he came from a long line of Nazi poster boys. His accent was Kosovar.
The pair spoke openly in Albanian as they approached the counter. They obviously assumed that neither of the others understood them.
“Look, Nikola, they even have mud people here in this frozen 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
