“That may be sooner than you think,” they heard a voice say. The voice belonged to Kevin Martindale. He was watching the demonstration from a comer of the test chamber. The young, handsome, energetic former president stepped over and greeted Patrick and Hal. Kevin Martin- dale, also a former vice president, had stayed only one term in the White House. He was a strong military advocate, but was voted out of office mostly because of actions he failed to take when the United States was threatened. What the public did not know was that Martindale preferred to use secret, unconventional forces to destroy an enemy’s ability to make war before the situation grew worse.

Now Martindale was head of a secret organization called the Night Stalkers, composed of former military men and women, who performed similar unconventional-warfare missions around the world. But these operations were neither ordered nor sanctioned by any government—Martindale and his senior staff decided which missions to perform and how to perform them. In addition, squeezing or outright stealing money, weapons, and equipment from their their defeated opponents usually funded these operations.

“Very impressive,” Martindale said, a fascinated gleam in his eye. These days, Kevin Martindale wore his hair much longer than he did in his days in the White House or Congress, and he had grown a goatee. He looked and acted quite a bit differently than his more conservative, buttoned-down government persona: Patrick hadn’t yet decided if he liked the new Kevin Martindale. “One of Jon Masters’s new toys?”

“An old toy with some new tricks,” Hal responded, handing the duffel bag over to Martindale.

He was surprised at how lightweight it was. “That’s it? Everything but the armor and backpack?”

“That doubles the weight—still very transportable.”

“Excellent. We should talk to Jon and see if he can make a few units available to the Night Stalkers.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Patrick assured him.

“With the usual three-hundred-percent markup,” Hal chimed in with a broad smile as he finished removing the Tin Man battle armor and stowing it in the duffel bag.

“Fine with me—I’m not paying for it,” Martindale responded dryly.

The comment bugged Patrick—it summarized all of Patrick’s misgivings about being part of the Night Stalkers. Yes, they were doing important work—capturing international drug dealers and criminals like Pavel Kazakov, the Russian oilman and Russian Mafia chieftain, who had the incredible audacity to bribe generals in the Russian army to invade and occupy Balkan states so he could build a pipeline across those countries and make it more profitable for him to ship oil to the West. They had captured Kazakov and dozens of other terrorists, drug dealers, assassins, and international fugitives in less than a year.