Noble Warrior (5 page)

Stanzer's eyes narrowed, but McCutcheon quickly intervened, determined to hear the news. “What's the situation, sir?”

Puwolsky, knowing he had his audience right where he wanted them, began.“Ask yourself, on the streets of Detroit, who has the most soldiers? Who has the most guns? Who has the largest war
chest?” he said. “That's right, the Priests. And in jail, they have the largest army, too. But one-on-one, they're getting their asses kicked.”

“What does this have to do with Kaitlyn?”

“Or his father?” Stanzer asked.

“Fuck my father,” M.D. snapped. “Tell me about Kaitlyn.”

“They're tied together,” Puwolsky explained. “Your dad got pinched and sent for a bid to the same jail where D'Marcus Rose is also serving time. You know the name
D'Marcus Rose, don't you?”

“I do,” M.D. replied. “He's the High Priest who put out the hit out on my family.”

“Correct,” Puwolsky said. “And they're both in Jentles State Prison right now, a.k.a. the D.T. Nickname stands for the Devil's Toilet. Place is downright inhumane,
but since nobody has two hundred and fifty million dollars to build a new penitentiary, and no one in society really gives a fuck about what happens to these street animals once they get locked up,
it's a world where anything goes.”

“So?” McCutcheon asked.

“So they got this sick guard staging gladiator wars between all the rival gangs, and some cat from Brooklyn is fighting for the Princes of Mayhem, the Priests' biggest rivals in the
state of Michigan. Can't nobody touch him. They call him—”

“The Brooklyn Beast,” M.D. said, filling in the blanks.

“You've heard of him, I see,” Puwolsky said.

“You could say that,” McCutcheon replied. Back when M.D. was being pimped out by his father to fight in Detroit's underground cage fighting wars, the Priests had set up a
blockbuster fight, Bam Bam versus the Brooklyn Beast, a war to prove once and for all who the best really was. But the battle never happened because the Brooklyn Beast got pinched for armed robbery
just before the showdown was about to occur.

“There's lots of money involved,” Puwolsky continued. “But more than that, a gang lives by its rep, and with the Priests being punked time after time, it's
affecting their street cred. Which could affect their business operations. Which is a multimillion dollar criminal enterprise. And so when Demon gets tossed into the tank, the High Priest
doesn't want the money he's owed anymore. He wants a fighter who can win for the Priests. In other words, he wants you.”

“But since his father doesn't have him,” Stanzer deduced, “Demon offers up the next best thing he can in order to save his own ass.”

“Exactly. He tells the High Priest that he knows how to flush you out,” Puwolsky said. “Demon told the High Priest that the way to get Bam Bam is to go after his
girl.”

“What exactly does that mean, ‘Go after my girl'?” M.D. asked.

“With the Priests,” Puwolsky replied, “you don't want to know.”

McCutcheon, lost in thought, rubbed his chin.

“And how'd you find out about this?” Stanzer asked.

“Wave hello, Oscar,” Puwolsky said.

A thick-necked guy sitting in a swivel chair staring at a computer monitor raised his arm and waggled his middle finger at Puwolsky.

“That's Oscar Larson,” Puwolsky said. “I work with his brother, Dickey Larson, back in Detroit. The Priests floated a balloon to our side of the fence, got a message to
Dickey that unless Bam Bam resurfaced within the next seven days they were gonna, well, like I said, you don't want to know. However...”

“However what?” Stanzer asked.

Puwolsky smiled a big shit-eating grin. “This is fucking perfect.”

T
op martial artists always operate from a space of inner peace. The world outside can be swimming in chaos, but to the devoted
practioner of the warrior's path, the way is best walked in a calm and balanced manner. Just as seas may rage with waves and choppiness on the surface, underneath the ocean is always steady
and serene.

It's one of the reasons McCutcheon always felt so confident in his ability to ultimately triumph. On the outside he was strong, but on the inside he felt immovable.

Until Kaitlyn. She became the lever that opened a swirling drain.

“Is my sister safe?” M.D. asked. Roughly ten months earlier the FBI had offered M.D. a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: your sister or your girl? McCutcheon chose his sister. Was it
the right choice? Absolutely.

McCutcheon had raised Gemma, protected Gemma, and sacrificed for Gemma. His six-year-old sister always came first. Her dimpled face, her lopsided pigtails, the way she could make M.D. giggle and
smile and laugh when the rest of the world only wanted bone and blood and flesh. Gemma's well-being was the only thing that had gotten M.D. through all those long nights of training, all
those brutal poundings, and all those nasty, gloveless wars on all those violent Saturday nights.

Your sister or your girl?
Was his sister the right choice? Absolutely. Then again, he always wondered why it had to be either/or.

He wanted them both.

“I have no idea about your sister,” Puwolsky replied. “Only Stanzer knows your family's whereabouts. Just a stroke of pure coincidence that I even found you.”

M.D. turned to Stanzer.

“She's safe,” the colonel affirmed. “Your mom, too. But your use of the word
perfect
, Colonel,” Stanzer said, directing his attention at Puwolsky,
“is a bit puzzling.”

“You're correct; nothing's perfect,” Puwolsky admitted. “But this is damn good. Gives us a chance to slip an agent inside the D.T. and break this whole thing wide
open.”

“Not sure I follow,” Stanzer said.

“Ever since Detroit went bankrupt, things have gone to hell. Crime is up, schools are down, and they keep slashing our police department budget in ways that make it impossible to function.
My guys' cop cars,” he said, “they don't get oil changes. Ain't got no money. And what happens to a car that don't get its oil changed? Fucking transmission
breaks down. Feels like we got more vehicles sitting in the shop than we do on the street, so my guys, they buy their own Quaker State. And they get pink-slipped anyway. R.I.F. notices come every
three months. You know, Reduction in Force. Whole thing is bullshit.”

The passion of Puwolsky's words turned his cheeks red. As the man in charge of overseeing a special forces unit whose primary goal was to keep the Motor City safe, the colonel's team
had been through the ringer. Fewer officers meant fewer arrests, which meant more violent offenders on the streets, which meant more victims on the crime ledgers and more bodies in the morgue.

“We've always felt like we've had to operate with our finger in a dam,” Puwolsky said. “Now we got our dicks in it, too.”

Puwolsky sniffed his nose, rubbed a meaty paw over his chin and got to the real reason he'd traveled to New Jersey in the first place.

“We want you,” Puwolsky said to McCutcheon, “to assassinate the High Priest.”

Neither McCutcheon or Stanzer replied.

“Like I said, it's almost perfect,” the colonel continued. “They're fucking asking for you, and this D'Marcus guy, he's gotten too large, too big,
he's in control of too much,” Puwolsky said, growing more and more animated. “We need to decentralize power. When the gangs war within themselves or war with one another,
it's the soldiers who die. However, when they're unified, it's the civilians who pay.” Puwolsky flashed soft eyes. “Like your friends David Klowner and Nathan
Wachowski from your MMA gym. Like your girlfriend Kaitlyn Cummings. This guy, the High Priest, he's like a fucking terrorist, and right now you're the only one who can end his
reign.”

“Might I remind you that murder is illegal?” Stanzer said.

“Everything you're doing is illegal, Colonel,” Puwolsky replied. “The question is, would it be immoral?”

McCutcheon didn't speak. Didn't reveal any emotion. Didn't touch his salad, either.

“Just think about it a sec,” Puwolsky said. “You get to eliminate an enemy of the state, you get to avenge the murder of your friends, and you get to save the life of your
girl. Whaddya say?”

“No,” he said.

P
uwolsky spent the next twenty minutes firing below-the-belt shots saying anything he could to coerce McCutcheon into accepting
the mission.

He appealed to M.D.'s sense of duty.

“This is what agents like you do. They deliver justice to the dark corners of our country, where the courts can't reach.”

He appealed to his sense of guilt.

“Why do you even think your friends Klowner and Nate-Neck are dead? Because of
you
!
'
Cause you never let ‘em know what was really going on with the
Priests the night of your last fight. You got
'
em to be your cornermen and they paid for their friendship and loyalty with their lives. And you just let that slide like some little
bitch? Own it, son. Their blood is on your head.”

He appealed to McCutcheon's sense of heroism.

“Detroit needs a champion. Detroit needs someone who is willing to step up on behalf of all the good and decent people who are being terrorized in this city. Aren't you a victim
of that terror? Didn't you come from the ghetto, the belly of that beast? And now you're going to turn your back on all those little kids, on all those helpless mothers, on all the
people who need someone to fight for them because they do not have the power or ability to fight for themselves? Kid, you may be one of the baddest mixed martial artists in the history of the
sport, but deep down underneath it's pretty clear to me that you're nothin' but a little sissy bitch.”

Puwolsky came at McCutcheon with every hurtful arrow he could fire. And Stanzer just sat there letting M.D. take it. He didn't intervene. He didn't stand up for his man. He
didn't once say the words, “All right, that's enough.”

Why? Because this was M.D.'s dragon and no one else could slay it for him.

“You have my answer,” McCutcheon said in a polite and even tone. “May I be excused, sir?”

His cheeks flushed, Puwolsky snorted, pissed that he'd gotten nowhere. What the hell is wrong with this kid? he wondered.

“You may,” Stanzer said to McCutcheon. “I'll be in touch.”

M.D. exited the building and walked to the downtown bus station, knowing that two other agents had already scrubbed and ditched the rented white minivan. His mission done, it was time to head
home.

If he could even call it that. Bellevue, Nebraska, was about as different from Detroit, Michigan, as orange juice was from a kangaroo.

McCutcheon preferred taking the bus back to the Cornhusker State as opposed to an airplane because the long ride gave him a chance to sleep, think, and recover. As he settled into a window seat
and tossed his hoodie over his head, M.D. reflected on all the venomous things Puwolsky had said.

None of it bothered him. Sure, the colonel's words were harsh, but no one had harsher words for McCutcheon than McCutcheon had for himself. On the inside, M.D. understood something about
who he was, a truth so raw that it made Puwolsky's words pack all the punch of cotton candy.

McCutcheon owned secrets. Dark little dirty ones he kept hidden from the rest of the world. He found them so terrible he felt ashamed to even acknowledge their existence.

Deep down, and I hate to admit it, I'm scared. I'm really, really scared.

Beneath his chiseled surface, fear, hurt, sadness, and shame swam in a cesspool of putrid inner funk.

I'm not as strong as everyone thinks. It's just an illusion. I'm actually weak and worthless. A fraud.

The Noble Warrior mask I wear is a lie. People think I am good and decent, but I know the real truth is I'm just a worthless piece of shit. Savage, violent, and guilty of having done
many horrible, hurtful things.