“Yes, sir.”
The man nodded toward the locker room door. “You got thirty seconds to change.” Brad hurried toward the locker room across the blue mat. “Stop!” Brad froze. “Get back here.” Brad returned. “Get off the mat.” Brad stepped off the blue mat onto the linoleum. “Dexter, you are in a Korean dojang,” the man said in a low, measured voice. “The center of the dojang, the mat, is the ki, which means ‘spirit.’ You train to learn how to accept the spirit of martial arts, the merging of inner peace and outer violence, when you step on the mat, which means you must respect the spirit that resides over it. That means you never touch the mat wearing footwear, you are prepared for a workout and are not in street clothes unless the lesson calls for them, you get permission to enter and leave the mat from a master, and you bow at the waist facing the center of the mat before you step on the mat and before you step off. Otherwise, go around it. Remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get moving.” Brad trotted around the mat and returned wearing his workout gear in record time.
“My name is James Ratel,” the man said when Brad returned, “but you don’t have to worry about real names or call signs because I’m ‘sir’ or ‘chief’ to you. I’m a retired U.S. Air Force chief master sergeant, thirty-three-year veteran, last serving as chief master sergeant of Seventh Air Force at Osan Air Base, United Korea. I’m a master parachutist with over two hundred combat jumps in Panama, Iraq, Korea, and Afghanistan as well as dozens of classified locations, completed Army Ranger School, and I’ve got two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. I am also a fifth-degree black belt and master instructor in Cane-Ja, a fifth-degree expert black belt in Krav Maga, and a nationally certified firearms and baton instructor. Here I give private self-defense and firearms lessons, mostly to retired military. I expect one hundred and ten percent each and every second you are in my dojang. Give respect and you will get it in return; slack off and your hour with me will be pure living hell.”
Ratel retrieved a small device with a neck strap and tossed it to Brad. “Self-defense training takes months, sometimes years, and the danger facing you is immediate,” he said. “So you’re being given this device. Wear it always. It works almost anywhere in the country with a cell signal. If you are in trouble, press the button, and myself or anyone on the team that might be nearby will be able to track you down and assist. More likely, given the adversaries you face, it’ll help us locate your body faster, but maybe we’ll get lucky.” Brad gave Ratel a stunned expression.
“Now, since this is your first day, you’re probably still hurting from being clubbed on the head, and you came in late, which I excused, we’re just going to do a fitness evaluation today,” Ratel went on. “I want to see your maximum number of pull-ups, crunches, dips, and push-ups until muscle failure, with no more than ninety seconds’ rest in between, and your best time on a two-mile run on the treadmill.” He motioned to the other side of the room where the treadmill and other exercise implements were waiting. “Get moving.”
Brad trotted over to the exercise area on the other side of the room. He was thankful that he did so much bike riding, so he thought he was in pretty good shape, but it had been a long time since he had been in a gym, and he had never been fond of pull-ups. He started with those and managed six before he couldn’t pull himself up again. The crunches were easy—he was able to do eighty-two of those before having to stop. Dips were fairly new for him. He got between a set of horizontal parallel railings, grasped them, extended his arms, lifted his feet off the linoleum, lowered his body as far as he could, then extended his arms again. He could manage only three of those, and the third was an arm-trembling strain to complete.