The cynical ex-cop, hardened and scarred by wars in the streets of Los Angeles, and more recently, in the secret dirty wars fought by Able Team, watched the wind caress the Virginia landscape. He saw Rosario Blancanales leave the farmhouse. In an easy jog, his Puerto Rican partner started across the hundreds of yards of pasture toward Lyons.

Lyons returned to his karate exercises. A heavy bag swung from one of the oak's lower branches. Four feet long, eighteen inches in diameter, the vinyl bag weighed a hundred pounds. To hit it approximated hitting a standing two-hundred-pound opponent. Lyons had raised the bottom of the bag to the level of his own crotch. The top twelve inches of the bag represented the opponent's head and face. In the hour of his workout, he had progressed through punches, elbow strikes, knee lifts, and right-leg front kicks. Now the left-leg kicks…

He gave the bag a shove to get it swinging. In appropriate stance, he waited as the bag swung back, then snapped his left foot into the crotch zone. The second kick slammed the bag back an instant later. The third kick came as fast as Lyons could drive it into the rag-packed bag.

Kicking fast and hard, Lyons never let the bag swing forward. It hung at an angle as his kicks slammed the heavy bag back. After twenty-five kicks, he let his momentum carry him forward. He slammed his left elbow into the throat zone, stepped past the bag and whirled to drive his right fist into his imaginary opponent's kidney even as his left arm screamed with pain. Ignoring the pain, he wiped sweat from his eyes as Rosario Blancanales jogged up.

"Ready for a party?"

Lyons reached for his sweat shirt. "Mack sending us out again?"

"I'm serious. A party." Blancanales looked at the huge bruise on Lyons's left arm. A calm, quiet ex-Green Beret born in Puerto Rico, Blancanales served as medic, interpreter and indigenous-operations specialist for Able Team.