The blow to the side of his head dropped Ridley Fox to the floor. The cold surface against the side of his face, the jarring pain, and the spinning were the last things he remembered before he blacked out. When he awoke, the throbbing pain remained as he was dragged by his legs across the floor, the concrete scraping the back of his scalp. He opened his eyes, only to stare into the barrel of a Russian AK-108 assault riffle that was less than a foot above him.
    His fiancée, Jessica, died at the hands of his captors two years ago. Would it be instant, like hers, or would they torture me first? Fox guessed the latter. She was murdered just a few hours after he proposed to her. He promised her to give up his career in the Joint Task Force Two (JTF2)—Canada’s equivalence to America’s SEALs—to settle down with her. The heavy drinking and bar fights soon followed. That ended shortly with Fox in a prison holding cell. That’s where he met his current CIA superior, General Paul Downing, and learned everything about the weapons consortium know as the Arms of Ares—his captors.
    Fox mentally shook away that memory as he watched a tangled web of exposed pipes and cheap wire mesh-covered light bulbs that ran along the ceiling while being dragged along a concrete floor. One of the guards yelled at him in Russian. Although Fox was fluent in the language, as well as a few others from each continent, he was too disoriented to listen. All he did was count down to the moment of his own execution.