“Maybe they were too scared of Khan to resist him, sir.”

“I don’t believe that’s possible,” the President said. “We’ve seen too many cases of common people toppling dictatorships, and we’ve seen too many cases of common people embracing dictatorships—not because they were coerced into doing so, but because they liked having a strongman in charge. If that’s what the people choose, they can have it—and everything that goes along with it. Egypt is a progressive country. It currently has a free press, allows free expression of ideas, and easy immigration.”

“Mr. President, certainly, you can’t believe—?”

“I most certainly do, Edward,” the President said. “If Egypt wants our help, they need to prove to me that they really want our help—we will not impose our ideals on them, no matter how much we distrust Libya.” He turned to Goff and Venti and went on: “I want the theater and naval commanders fully briefed on the situation in Libya, I want our forces in the Med, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Persian Gulf on the highest state of alert, and I want contingency plans drawn up for air strikes against Libyan forces that move against Egypt. But I am not going to threaten Libya or come to the aid of Egypt unless the people of Egypt elect a president that wants to cooperate and work with us.”

They outlined what they would discuss with the media, including a few items to be leaked by “unnamed sources” in the White House and Pentagon, and then the meeting broke up. Thomas Thom went upstairs to the residence to see what the family was up to and visit with the kids who weren’t in school, and then he entered his bedroom and shut the door behind him. The children and his wife all knew not to disturb him now.

Thomas Thom first learned meditation in the U.S. Army Sniper School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he trained as a sniper himself in order to be a commander of a Special Forces Group. To tell the truth, Thom was not the best shot in the world, and he wondered if he could cut it. But he soon learned that being a sharpshooter was only twenty percent of being a sniper—the mental struggles and challenges of stalking and shooting a living target was the hard part. Snipers had to learn how to move without being detected, sometimes within mere feet of the enemy, and they had to learn to detect a target out of camouflage or deep in cover. They had to have perfect eyesight and exceptional infantry and outdoorsman skills, but most of all, they had to have the mental discipline required to inflict quick, catastrophic, and “one shot, one kill” finality to a pursuit. Thom soon learned that mental discipline—what he called “mental quietude”—was the most important qualification.