“Doctor’s appointment?”
Brad decided he wasn’t going to lie to this woman about everything if he could at all avoid it. “Actually, my landlord—the ex-Marine, I think I told you—he’s setting up a training program for me. Physical fitness and self-defense.” He wasn’t going to tell Jodie about the countersurveillance and other spy training classes, or the weapons training—hey, he thought, not telling something is different from lying, right? “He thinks I’m too soft and need to do more to help myself in situations like home invasions.”
“Wow,” Jodie remarked, blinking in surprise. “You’re right with this?”
“Sure,” Brad said. “I spend too much time sitting on my ass—a little physical fitness will do me good. One hour a day. I can be over your place around seven.”
“Perfect, Brad,” Jodie said, her worried and perplexed expression quickly disappearing. “I’ll fix us something for dinner. I can pick you up and take you around to your appointments if you don’t feel well enough to ride the bike.”
“I’m good so far, Jodie,” Brad said. He actually liked the idea, but he didn’t know what the gym would look like, and he wanted to get a feeling from Wohl and whoever his trainer was going to be before he brought others around. “But thank you.” He gave her a hug and got a kiss on the cheek in return. “See you around seven.”
“See ya, conch,” Jodie said, and hurried off to her next class.
He received a lot of surprised and some shocked expressions as students on campus saw his big ugly bruise, and Brad actually considered buying some makeup until the thing healed, but kids on campus were fairly open and tolerant—and he sure as hell didn’t want Chris Wohl or his team members to catch him with makeup on!—so he put the thought out of his head and tried to ignore the looks. Thankfully he didn’t need narcotics to kill the pain, so he made it through his classes and his session in the engineering lab on the Starfire project without too much difficulty, only an occasional headache that subsided when he stopped thinking about it and concentrated on something else. Afterward he locked his computer backpack in a locker, retrieved his gym bag, then hopped on the bike and headed off to his first physical-fitness session.
The name of the place was Chong Jeontu Jib, written in both Korean and Latin characters, on the south side of town not far from the airport. It was a simple two-story frame building, old but maintained very well, with a yard fenced in with chain link that had some exercise equipment and weights in a small workout area. Beyond the fence in the back was a gun range set up against a large round dirt wall which formerly surrounded petroleum tanks that stored fuel during World War II bomber training missions. The window in front was covered from the inside with United Korea and American flags, and the glass front door was covered with a large U.S. Air Force flag. Inside he found a counter, and beyond that a large workout room with the floor covered in a blue gym mat. The walls were covered with all sorts of awards, trophies, photographs, and martial-arts weapons.
A short, thin man with a shaved head and gray goatee approached from a back room. “Dexter?” he called out. “This way.” Brad walked around the counter and had just touched the mat when the man called out, “Don’t touch the mat with your shoes on, and only with respect.” Brad hopped off the mat onto a linoleum walkway. The second room was a little smaller than the first, with another blue gym mat on the floor, but instead of decorations and awards it had a weight machine, treadmill, boxing speed bag, punching bag, and posters of arrows pointing to various spots on a human body—Brad was sure he was going to know all he needed to know about that stuff before too long. There was a back exit and what looked like a locker room in the opposite corner.
“You’re late,” the man said. “I’ll let you slide today because it’s your first time here, but now you know where the place is, so don’t be late again.”
“I won’t.”
“I won’t, sir,” the man said. “The sergeant major told me you were in Civil Air Patrol and attended the Air Force Academy for a short time, so you know something about military courtesy. Employ it when you deal with me or anyone on the team. You’ll know when you can address us any other way. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Next time, show up ready to work out. I don’t want to waste time waiting for you to change. This is not your private resort club where you can stroll in and out as you please.”