The land in New Jersey cost one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Fifty acres of former farmland an hour's drive from Manhattan, between a sleepy little town and a strip of woods where the only neighbors were deer and raccoons. The property bordered a country road whose asphalt, judging by its condition, had last been repaired under Roosevelt.
Naturally, I bought even this land with future price growth in mind. In ten or fifteen years, this land would be worth dozens of times more. New York's suburbs would expand, swallow the farm fields, and turn them into residential neighborhoods. But right now, it was backcountry no one wanted to buy.
Perfect.
Construction had already been going on for three months and was devouring money with the appetite of a starving hippopotamus.
The master plan for the complex lay in my safe, drawn by my instructors and refined by an architect whom Angleton had checked back to the third generation. When everything was finished, and that was still a long way off, these fifty acres would hold a full training base and a proper office for my security company.
Three shooting ranges: close combat out to twenty-five meters, medium distance out to one hundred, and a long range from two hundred and fifty to five hundred for snipers. An indoor tactical complex with an imitation of urban construction: a maze of rooms, corridors, stairwells, where building assaults could be practiced. A three-kilometer obstacle course that Cooper and Haney personally designed while cursing at each other so violently the construction workers kept jumping aside. A gym with a boxing ring, mats, and every kind of training equipment. A twenty-five-meter pool — not Olympic, but enough for training. A cafeteria for two hundred people. Even barracks appeared, because we had enough men who were happy to move here from the holes they lived in on Manhattan and in the Bronx, places that inspired no warm feelings whatsoever. A medical station. Several armories, concrete bunkers with double steel doors and ventilation systems where most of our toys would be stored. An administrative building, and a garage for the vehicle fleet.
Of course, legally building all of this took serious work: zoning, permits, county approvals. The lawyers worked around the clock.
The defenses had also been thought through down to the details and properly framed legally. Observation towers would stand along the perimeter, with three-hundred-sixty-degree views, armored cabins, firing slits, and floodlights capable of turning night into day. Patrol routes were laid out so that every square meter of the territory could be observed from at least two points. At the entrance, a checkpoint with a barrier and concrete blocks arranged in such a way that no car could ram the gate at speed. When the right technologies appeared, this place would be packed with electronics so tightly that even a rat wouldn't slip through unnoticed.
Although even now, I was afraid to imagine how much Wright had already installed here.
Once all of this was finished, storming the complex would become an extremely unpleasant task for attackers. Why such complexity? Why turn a training base into a small fort?
The answer was simple: this was the Marvel world.
Sooner or later, someone or something would come here uninvited. Maybe it would be men with rifles. Maybe men with something worse than rifles. And worst of all, maybe it wouldn't be men at all. Better to be ready and never need it than to need it and not be ready.
At the moment, of all this magnificence, only a few things were complete: a two-story concrete block building containing the gym, locker rooms, and several classrooms; one shooting range; half the obstacle course; a temporary cafeteria in a hangar; and barracks for sixty men. The rest was pits, concrete foundations, and rebar sticking out of the ground.
This whole thing required not just a lot of money.
It required a lot of money.
But even what was already finished looked impressive.
Incidentally, those who decided to live on base received proper conditions: normal bunks, hot water, three meals a day, laundry. But along with the conditions came a level of drill that would make a civilian run away on the second day. The men living here kept order and followed a rulebook Jacob had written personally and hung in every barracks. Wake-up at six, lights out at ten, territory kept clean, alcohol only on leave and off base. Drugs meant dismissal without discussion. Fights among our own meant punishment detail, and a repeat meant dismissal too.
So far, by the way, there hadn't been anyone like that. The guys valued what they had, and after Vietnam and life on the street, a clean barracks with hot showers and filling food felt almost like paradise.
***
I arrived at the base on Saturday morning, before the sun had properly risen. I drove there in my beloved Mercedes. To be honest, I hadn't even thought a car could be this comfortable in this era.
The wheels quietly crunched over the gravel of the access road. The sentry at the gate, a former Ranger named Gilmore, a broad-shouldered man with red mustache, recognized me, saluted, and raised the barrier.
"Morning, boss!"
"Good morning, Gilmore. How was the night?"
"Quiet as a grave. Just the raccoons, damn their hides. They keep making trouble."
"They do that."
I left the car in the parking lot and walked toward the gym. The morning air smelled of fresh-cut wood, concrete dust, and something fried from the cafeteria, where one of the duty men was already making breakfast. In the distance, beyond the scaffolding of the future tactical complex, single shots sounded. The early birds were already on the range.
When I entered the section where the combat rooms began, I was met by the smell of sweat and the sound of impacts. Through the glass doors of the hand-to-hand training hall, I saw the familiar picture: mats, bodies in motion, rough instructor's barks. Applegate was running the morning session. Twenty men split into pairs were drilling a three-strike sequence: knee, elbow, hip throw. Some did it cleanly, some got tangled in their own feet and received an encouraging jab to the ribs from their partner.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Several heads turned in my direction. The men nodded and greeted me on the move without stopping their work.
"Morning, boss!"
"Pops, over here!"
"Mr. Miller, good morning!"
I shook hands with those closest to me. Harry, a former Marine, a huge Black man with arms like logs, slapped me on the shoulder so hard I almost flew into the wall.
"Boss, when are you getting on the mat yourself? The boys and I heard you're planning to move in here and train with everyone. We're all waiting."
"Soon. I'll settle a couple of matters and start training with you."
"Ah, always those matters," the giant said mournfully. "But that's all right, we'll wait. Thank you for helping get my daughter into kindergarten."
"Don't worry about it." I smiled.
Yes, I was seriously considering moving here with everyone and training in the mornings, maybe in the evenings after work too. I still hadn't moved into another apartment, and living here would be useful in every sense. I hadn't forgotten about my body, even if sleepless nights didn't always let me push myself properly. But I had already reached the level of an ordinary athletic guy, so in theory I could move to the next stage. Besides, I'd get weapon-handling skills too.
Only positives.
And the men would see that the boss wasn't hiding behind their backs. That he was ready to stand beside them, even if he looked pathetic compared with them. For the first while, I would have to screw my pride down tight and be the punching bag. No convenient miracles there. The level of the local boys had already been high before training began, and now it was simply launching somewhere into orbit. Even Harry, who looked like just a two-meter brute, moved fast, smoothly, and, most importantly, skillfully.
Applegate noticed me and nodded without interrupting instruction. I nodded back and continued on, down the corridor, past the locker rooms and showers, toward the far wing of the building.
Here was the sector marked on the plans as "Area A." No sign on the door, only a code lock Wright had personally installed. Four digits, changed every week.
***
Beyond the door was another hall, smaller than the main one. High ceilings, dim light, mats on the floor. Equipment racks along the walls, weapons in locked cabinets, a board with tactical diagrams, and a table in the corner covered in maps and folders. This place was meant not so much for training as for planning and testing new toys. You could say it was the personal space of my elite unit.
Alpha Group.
Right now, they were not training. They stood in a semicircle around a long table where equipment had been laid out.
And this equipment deserved a separate conversation.
Body armor.
In 1976, body armor was exotic. Kevlar was only just entering use; the first models had appeared among police a year or two ago and cost as much as a used car. The military had not yet adopted them en masse, and most people in the country didn't even know such a thing existed.
I had to use every connection I had to reach suppliers. A couple of acquaintances in the police department put me in touch with people from a company that was just starting production. The first batch cost a fortune — five hundred dollars apiece, and that was with a bulk discount. But I did not regret the purchase. After all, this was a huge boost to survivability.
On the table lay twelve sets, one for each man. Black vests with Kevlar panels, capable of stopping a nine-millimeter pistol round and small buckshot. Not perfect. They wouldn't save you from a rifle bullet. But at urban distances, where most gunfights happen up close, it was the difference between life and death.
Kevlar had only just appeared, and manufacturers still didn't really understand what to do with it. But my innovative little hands knew where and how to interfere. In a few years, vests with ceramic inserts capable of stopping rifle rounds would appear. It would also be possible to combine soft Kevlar with hard armor plates, creating a modular system where the level of protection could be selected according to the task. All of that could be patented now, staking out the ideas on paper, then licensed to manufacturers once the technology matured.
The niche was growing rapidly. Militaries and police around the world were beginning to understand that body armor was not a luxury, but a necessity. Whoever staked out the key patents now would, in ten years, be clipping greenbacks from every contract. Serious connections and money spun around that field, and I wasn't yet in a position to charge into it properly. But my patent lawyers were already working on the applications. The current level would be enough for the boys. Later, when I grew stronger, we could truly spread out.
But what I could already do now, and what no one in 1976 had, lay beside the vests. And my patent people were working especially hard over this development. A little later, thanks to this, we could kick the door into defense contracting. But that piece was too fat to simply hand over to outside manufacturers. We would need to strengthen our own production.
Tactical load-bearing vests.
A system of straps and pouches that allowed a man to carry ammunition, grenades, a first-aid kit, a knife, a flashlight, a radio, and half the devil's own belongings without losing mobility. I had seen such systems in my previous life, standard equipment for twenty-first-century special forces. Here, in the seventies, nothing like it existed. Soldiers carried equipment in belt pouches or simply in backpacks. The Israelis had only just begun experimenting with something similar for their commandos, but mass production was still far away.
The load-bearing vests were sewn to order from my sketches. A sewing workshop on the Lower East Side, whose owner made gear for hunters. The material was simple: strong nylon, reinforced in stress points. Not high technology, but functionally this was head and shoulders above anything on the market.
Helmets were the worst part. In 1976, the army was still using steel M1s, the same pots soldiers had been dragging around since World War II. Heavy, uncomfortable, sliding over the eyes at any sudden movement. For now, we had to make do with what we could get: modified M1s with improved suspension and chinstraps, so they at least wouldn't fly off while running. Not ideal, but good enough for now.
Tactical boots with reinforced soles and ankle support. Knee and elbow pads, simple but reliable. Fingerless gloves for shooting, with reinforced knuckles. Protective goggles with polycarbonate lenses capable of withstanding a fragment or ricochet — nothing like the tactical goggles of the future, but already an order of magnitude better than nothing. We ordered them from an industrial safety equipment manufacturer and adapted them to our needs by adding a rubber seal around the edges and an elastic strap to secure them to the head. Black balaclavas made of thick cotton, covering the entire face except the eyes.
Every element of the equipment was selected, tested, fitted.
The entire uniform was black. Black heavy cotton pants, black jackets, black boots, black gloves, black balaclavas. No camouflage, no spotted patterns. On each vest, on the left side of the chest, was a patch: a round badge on a black background, a silver shield with the letter "A" in the center, the Aegis Security logo. For deniable operations, the patch could be removed in a second, attached with Velcro. Of course, anyone who needed to would easily understand that only we had equipment like this, but for that, witnesses would need to remain, and they would have to present undeniable proof.
All together, it looked…
Impressive.
A man in full Alpha Group gear looked like an alien from the future beside ordinary cops or even soldiers. The equipment was ahead of what active special units had, not technologically, but conceptually. The idea of assembling everything into one integrated system, where each element complemented the others, simply had not occurred to anyone here yet.
At least not in the private sector.
"Boss!"
Ray saw me first. He stood by the table, holding his empty sleeve, and looked at a vest with the expression of a child before a Christmas tree. He had joined the elite unit as an explosives consultant.
"Ray." I shook his hand. "Impressions?"
"Serious piece of gear." He tapped the Kevlar panel with his knuckles. "Where did you get toys like this?"
"Where I got them, there aren't any left."
The others came over. Eddie and Frank, of course, had joined the elite unit. After all, they had already worked in this direction and had been part of the core of the entire idea from the beginning. From the old guard, Billy was here too, our sniper and the company soul in one body. The guy shot so well that even Cooper, who had seen plenty of shooters in his life, only shook his head after their first joint range session and said, "Where did you dig him up?" It turned out Haney had also heard something about him through army channels, and that meant a lot, because impressing Haney was harder than convincing a cat to take a bath.
For separate operations where specific actions were required, Victor Poliak, our demolitions man, joined the group. He worked well in tandem with Ray. Marcus was part of the group in case a raid needed to be loud, noisy, and involve a machine gun, which he provided with frightening joy. Aside from them, there were eight new faces here, each a professional hard to find anywhere, men with service records that would make civilians' eyes climb onto their foreheads.
Eric Haney rounded out the company. Naturally, I had tried to talk the instructor out of joining a combat group, because losing a specialist like him on some night outing would be criminal stupidity. But he categorically refused to remain in the rear. Said he had not left Delta to sit with a stopwatch at the obstacle course while his boys crawled under bullets. In the end, we reached a compromise: he commanded Alpha Group in the field, but only on operations where his presence was truly necessary, not every single outing.
"Well then, gentlemen," I said, looking around at them. "Tried them on?"
"Tried them." Haney lifted a vest and turned it in his hands. "Comfortable. Weight is distributed properly, doesn't restrict movement. Who designed the load-bearing rig?"
"I gave the sketches. The craftsman brought them to mind."
"Good sketches." He nodded with professional approval. "Pouches in the right places. You can pull a magazine blind. I never would have thought a civilian would come up with something like this while our eggheads at the Pentagon haven't."
Billy had already pulled on a vest, fastened it, and jumped in place.
"Doesn't swing around," he reported with satisfaction. "And doesn't press on my tits. You know, I'm a sensitive guy."
"Shut up, Billy," Eddie said without malice.
"No can do, sir." He saluted and immediately turned to me. "Boss, will there be a sniper version? The standard rig doesn't work for me. Gets in the way when shooting prone."
"There will be. A separate modification for sniper positions is already in progress."
"Beautiful." His face spread into a grin. "That's why I love you, boss. You take care of us. Not like the army, which gave me a helmet three sizes too big and said it built character."
Eddie snorted.
"The helmet didn't help you. Your head was empty before, and it stayed empty."
"But nobody ever hit it. Coincidence? I think not."
The men laughed.
"Boss, I have to say," Eddie said, gesturing at the table with the equipment, the hall, everything around them. "This is what we lacked in the army. Proper gear, proper training, proper attitude. Frank and I did two tours in Vietnam. Saw plenty. But we never had preparation like this."
Frank nodded.
"Cooper knows what he's doing. Applegate too. And Haney…" He looked at Eric with respect. "That man drilled us in a month better than the army did in a year."
"Don't exaggerate," Haney raised a hand. "You were already good. I just removed the unnecessary and added what was missing."
"Modest bastard," Billy rolled his eyes.
This pleased me.
Very much.
You could say the mechanism had finally started working, and the money, nerves, and sleepless nights I had invested were beginning to produce concrete results. Though we still had plenty of room to grow, and the road would be long.
"All right, enough tenderness." I clapped my hands. "Show me what you've learned."
***
I spent the next hour watching Alpha Group train, and it was probably the most impressive hour of my new life.
Haney gave the command, and everything began at once. The door flew open from a single hit, while two more men came through the windows on hooks and ropes. Flashbangs went in, a bang, a burst of light, and while the imaginary enemy would still be trying to recover, the assault team was already in the room. A couple of precise blank shots at the "terrorists," quick movement to cover, "hostages" extracted.
The whole thing took six seconds.
Maybe seven.
My jaw dropped.
Despite the new gear, which the men seemed to have gotten used to in a matter of hours, everything looked as if they had rehearsed it for years. Everyone knew his position. Everyone worked in pairs. Everyone handled his own task and didn't climb into someone else's.
Then the scenario changed. Haney rearranged the mannequins, complicated the setup, and everything repeated with the same precision. There were variations where freeing the "hostage" seemed practically impossible. I personally stood there unable to imagine how to extract him without "killing" him in the process. But the boys showed that tactics mattered too. If Billy, with his sniper rifle, couldn't get a clean shot because the "terrorist" was blocked by the hostage or standing behind cover, the team switched to another plan: flashbang into the room, careful flank approach, silent hand-to-hand neutralization.
Everything drilled. Everything calculated. Everyone knew what the man next to him was doing, and what he himself was supposed to do.
Then came pair work on the mats. Hand-to-hand combat by Applegate's system, but made harder: knives, pistols, confined spaces, full gear. Eddie against Haney. Frank against Peter. Billy, who usually preferred to work at range, moved surprisingly well up close, and it was clear Applegate had trained him separately for good reason.
In my previous life, I used to spend hours on YouTube watching training videos of Alpha Group or the SAS, and every time I thought that in real life it probably looked even cooler than on screen. Now I knew for certain: in real life it looked ten times cooler and ten times scarier, because you understood that each of these honed movements ended with someone's death in a real situation. And for these men, the only difference between a training mannequin and a living person was that the living one fell faster.
The brothers came over to me after sparring, soaked with sweat, breathing heavily, but satisfied.
"Well?" Eddie wiped his face with a towel.
"Impressive," I said honestly. "I've never seen anything like it."
Haney approached us, a stopwatch around his neck and a notebook in hand.
"And you won't," he said. "Nowhere. We've introduced a lot of new things into the training, the equipment, practically everything. Our instructors are the best in their fields, and I think we could already compete with many active special units."
"That's right, boss," Frank nodded. "We're shocked ourselves at the level we've reached."
Billy, sitting on a bench and lovingly wiping his scope, raised his head.
"Boss, is it true they'll finish the five-hundred-meter range soon?"
"In two months. The builders promised."
"Two months…" He rolled his eyes dreamily. "Now that's possibilities. You know, boss, I've already shot everything there is to shoot at two-fifty. I miss long distances. Five hundred is a serious conversation. Wind, ballistics, patience."
"Can you stop blowing the heads off every mannequin at two-fifty, by the way?" Eddie grumbled. "How many times can you do it? You want to shoot at the head, and there's just empty space. I'm afraid to imagine how many hits you've put there. We can't replace them fast enough."
"Well, it happens." Billy scratched the back of his head and gave a guilty smile. "Haven't been this interested in shooting for a long time. Got carried away."
I closed my eyes and massaged my eyelids.
Each mannequin cost money, by the way.
"All right, boys. I can say I'm satisfied with everyone, and you've all done well. I need to get to the company. As usual, there's a mountain of work."
"Boss, it's Saturday!" Billy stared at me with such sincere outrage it was as if I had just told him Santa Claus didn't exist. I looked at him silently, and he immediately wilted. "All right, all right, I know you work more than we do. Just find time to rest once in a while," he said quickly, apparently deciding it was better to change the subject. "By the way, we heard you're planning to move in here. That'll be great! And tell the boys on office duty we said hello. We're stuck here all the time and miss them."
I smiled, shook hands with those nearby, and drove to the office.
Yes, it was Saturday. But the office wasn't empty. There were workers there who wanted to finish their tasks, and there were plenty of them. Somehow, in the company, an atmosphere had formed where people enjoyed what they were doing. No one forced them to work weekends; they stayed on their own.
Unfortunately, I was not going to enjoy anything today.
At the office, Chen, her assistant, and, to my horror, Hood were waiting for me. Unlike my other workers, Hood did not like working weekends. This trio had been sounding the alarm for two weeks already, and judging by Chen's tone when she called me yesterday evening, I would not be escaping them easily this time.