Las Vegas on Twelve Dollars a Day

Nearing retirement, an independent contractor enabling CIA technical operations mentors the next generation of patriots in their craft until tragedy pulls him back into the game to rollback China's global ambitions. Jon Prescott had made mistakes in his life, as most people do, but there were some decisions he had made in his past he wanted to rectify. Following 9/11, he started a journey along a path toward redemption, a path that would lead him to the vast stretches of federal lands out west where he would train the next generation of special operators and technical intelligence officers. These young American men and women are fighting to preserve the liberties that America offers and would soon join the fray to flush terrorist strongholds out of East Africa. Although the Tier 1 operators rightfully claim the mantle of leadership in the realms requiring violence of action, the technical enablers of low-vis operations tend to their duty's unseen in the shadows....The web spanning the Middle East and beyond was centuries in the making. Not a web of gossamer silk, but one of malice anchored by conviction, with its center point being Tehran and many radii along each axis of opportunity. This was not a web of wonderous symmetry that artfully caught the sun kissing a sprinkle of glistening dew drops on a pristine spring morning. No, its core of expanding boundaries was a tangled cobweb in the shape of a crescent joining Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Yemen, and western Afghanistan. Within its dark recesses was not Shelob, but a man. A man who sought to sow the seeds of discontent, pollinate the fervor of the adherents of Shia Islamist ideology and reap its bloody harvest under the guise of the tenets of the Cultural Revolution.Qasem Soleimani was not yet at the height of his powers, but well on his way. As the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force, it would be a courtesy to define his role as exporting mischief to influence and fund miscreants ranging from the Islamic Jihad to Lebanese Hezbollah. Such euphemistic characterizations would only be irresponsible. Plain and simple, he was a killer, and he was a hater, but his skills to knit together a blooming network of chaos were to be respected. He was a master strategist and fearsome opponent who devised alliances that prosecuted layers of operations nested within operations with an alacrity that was awesome to behold.The Americans were a problem. Saddam Hussein was a problem, too, but with him removed, Iraq was less manageable in a bid for hegemonic regional dominance. There were other vectors to explore such as Yemen or Somalia, but Soleimani had to devise something to thwart Bush's plans and he knew exactly to whom to commission this task and how best to achieve the desired result...