Chapter 36

There was a sudden coup in North Korea. Weapons supplied by China had found their way into the hands of a large number of people who were tired of being hungry and living without electricity. After the initial fighting between government forces and citizens had died down, the Chinese government stepped in and established an interim government. Even the Chinese soldiers were shocked by the conditions in North Korea.

Three weeks had passed since the attempted missile attack on the United States. Throughout that time, the American Embassy in Beijing had not accepted any calls from the Chinese government. Thus it was that the President of China was shocked when a message requesting his presence at the Embassy showed up on his desk. After arguing with his advisers, the President of China made the trip to the American Embassy. He was greeted at the gate by a Marine and directed to a little room just inside the building.

On entering, he found that he was not facing the Ambassador, but some strange man who he had never met. The man rose and greeted the President of China with undue familiarity. “Hello. I’m glad you could make it.”

“Where’s the Ambassador?”

The man answered, “He’s unavailable until you’ve met certain conditions.”

Convinced that he wasn’t going to like what the little man was going to say, the President asked, “What are they?”

Handing the President of China a small stack of folded papers, the man answered, “We know it was the Premier who ordered that the missiles to be fired at us. We would like to extradite him to the United States to stand trial. The details concerning the delivery of the man to us are in those papers.”

The President of China looked at the papers in his hand and sighed. He asked, “What else?”

“That’s all,” the little man said with a smile. China had already carried out the one thing that the United States had really wanted from it. He escorted the President of China to the door and said, “Thank you for coming here.”

“I’ll deliver the former Premier to your country,” the President said surprised by the leniency of the American demands. If the circumstances had been reversed he doubted that he would have been that lenient. Curious, he asked, “What would have happened if I had refused?”

“I’d rather not answer that question. I really dislike talking about ugly things,” the man answered with a sinister looking little smile.

Mike walked into the house with Cathy. She was giggling at what she had seen on the drive over to his house. There was an elderly couple down the street that had been chasing each other around their yard. The old woman had been topless and her breasts were flopping all over the place.

Smiling, she said, “I can’t believe that your neighbors are out in their garden like that.”

“People aren’t doing that in your neighborhood?” Mike asked.

“They are, but they are all a lot younger than your neighbors,” Cathy said. She turned away from the door and came to a complete stop upon seeing the two massage tables side by side in the living room.

Kim stood between the tables and, using ‘the voice’, said, “Get undressed and get on the tables.”

Both obeyed without argument. Cathy said, “I wish that I could bottle that voice.”

“You and me both,” Mike said as he lay down on his back.

Kim went over to Mike and started massaging his face. Within ten minutes, he was sound asleep as Kim worked on his muscles. Once she had finished with his front, Kim went over to Cathy and said, “Relax. He will sleep until I end the massage. I will finish with you first.”

It amazed Cathy that Kim knew exactly where each knot and tense spot was. The strong fingers of the woman worked at each spot slowly releasing the tension. Cathy found that she was soon asleep under the soothing touch of Kim. She woke and less than a minute later she reached a brain numbing climax.

“Oh my,” Cathy said with a shaky voice.

“You watch him. I show you magic spot on man,” Kim said turning to Mike.

She had him turn over and went to work on his back. Cathy watched as Kim worked on various muscle groups. She could actually see the how Kim ran her hands across his back and then returned to work on little areas with her thumbs. Mike was putty in her hands. After working every muscle from head to toe, Kim woke Mike just enough to turn over.

With very light strokes, she ran her hands up and down his body. She took special care around the insides of his thighs. Still asleep, Mike spread his legs. Kim leaned over to Cathy and whispered, “Watch.”

Cathy watched wondering what the big deal about the hand job was. Cathy could see that he was on the verge of an orgasm when Kim did something rather surprising to him. Shocked, Mike sat up wide eyed. His come sprayed almost to his head as he shouted, “Oh my God!”

It was hard not to laugh at his reaction. Cathy could see that he had no idea of what Kim had planned for him. Kim looked over at Cathy and asked, “Did you see what I did?”

“Yes,” Cathy answered finding that her heart was beating fast.

“Good. Do that to him when you take him in your mouth. He will do anything you say,” Kim said as if Mike wasn’t even in the room.

Mike was staring at Kim wondering why she had done that to him with Cathy watching. Wondering how long it would take for his eyes to uncross, Cathy asked, “Did you like that?”

“Uh,” Mike answered flustered by the entire experience.

“Good answer,” Cathy said with a smile. Seeing that he was somewhat upset, she said, “She did the same thing to me, but you slept through it.”

Pointing in the direction of Mike’s bedroom, Kim said, “Go to bed and have fun. You both relaxed enough to have very good time.”

Mike looked across the desk at James Wentworth the Third. In a very soft voice, he said, “I’m tired of the killing.”

“I’m not surprised. There has been a lot of that,” James said watching Mike as he struggled to find the right words to say. Mike’s answer was not what he had been expecting to hear when he had offered the man the chance to take over the Middle East Section.

“I’d like to return to the domestic counter-terrorism section,” Mike said.

Knowing that Mike had basically dismantled the remaining terror leadership in the United States, James seriously considered the request. The problem was that there wasn’t much left for Mike to do there.

Shaking his head, James asked, “Your teams are doing a great job. I’d love to have your guidance as we move closer to the primary source of terrorism.”

“You can get along without me. There are others who are just as good as or better than I am,” Mike said giving a little shrug of his shoulders. He didn’t believe that he was indispensable.

“You were the one who found Jamal,” James said.

“That was luck,” Mike said with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders.

James studied Mike and then asked, “Did you know that in certain circles you have become known as the Hunter because of your ability to find terrorists?”

“I’ve heard that,” Mike answered shifting in his chair.

James considered his options. He asked, “What will you work on if I return you to the domestic side of the house? There’s not much going on there.”

“I’ll track down the hundred most wanted terrorists that remain,” Mike answered. He rubbed the nub of his left middle finger and then said, “I’m very good at that.”

James thought about it for a minute. He knew that Mike wasn’t going to take over the Middle East Section. Although things were quiet in the Asian Pacific region, there was always the chance that things would flare up again. He decided that a compromise was needed.

He suggested, “How about you stay with the Asian Section? It’s not very active at the moment. You and your team can spend half of your time hunting down the big players in the Muslim Brotherhood. You’ll have access to the whole world. In fact, I’ll make that a general policy that all individuals can look for the top one hundred terrorists during intelligence lulls.”

Mike thought about the suggestion. He felt that if he was able to take out the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood that it would speed the peace process along quite a bit. The real problem was that they didn’t know too much about the men who were really running the show. He was convinced that none of the Western intelligence services even knew who the top men in the Muslim Brotherhood were.

He finally answered, “I’ll do it.”

“Great,” James said rising from behind his desk. He reached across the desk with his hand and said, “I expect to hear about some spectacular catches, Hunter.”

Karen walked over to Mike on unsteady feet and said, “Unk.”

Mike grinned and picked up the little girl. Giving her a little hug, he asked, “How’s my favorite niece?”

Karen cooed and sucked her thumb. Sanjay laughed and said, “She sure does enjoy your visits.”

“They grow up so fast,” Mike said enjoying her attention. Sanjay’s other two daughters barely gave him the time of day, but Karen always came over to greet him when he visited.

“So when are you going to marry Cathy?” Sanjay asked.

He knew that Mike found spending time with Karen was a bittersweet experience. He enjoyed playing with the little girl, but it reminded him of how much he missed having Robert in his life.

The question startled Mike and he answered, “I don’t know.”

Sanjay shook his head and said, “You might want to start thinking about it. The women are making plans.”

Mike blew a raspberry on Karen’s tummy causing her to laugh. Looking over at Sanjay, he said, “The only plans that I’m interested in at the moment involves firing up the barbecue grill and cooking some steaks.”

Several hours later, Mike and Sanjay were watching the news while recovering from a very nice steak dinner. Both were drinking scotch and making comments about the different news stories while the women were in the dining room drinking coffee.

Mike commented, “I noticed something about the nature of the cable news stations the other day. It seems to me that the coverage of international news constitutes almost eighty percent of the news time.”

“I noticed that,” Sanjay said bobbling his head in agreement. The local cable company had even started broadcasting the news from other countries with translations provided by subtitles. He said, “I think that all of the fighting here has made people aware of the fact that events overseas can affect them.”

“Yes. At least we aren’t bombarded with news stories about ill behaving Hollywood types any more,” Mike said relieved that hours of discussion about the misadventures of decadent female celebrities had been replaced with real news. He found it irritating that news about men dying for their country could be displaced by a story about some actress giving the Paparazzi a beaver shot while getting out of her car.