Noble Warrior Read Free

Nebraska—like who in the world moves to Bellevue, Nebraska, from the projects of D-Town?—some black op government guys, fans of McCutcheon’s unique
skill set as a cage fighter, began recruiting M.D. to a covert, anti–domestic terror unit nicknamed the Murk.
    Like so many other adults in McCutcheon’s life, they too wanted him to fight. But for something more. Something bigger. Something worth fighting for.
    America. Freedom. The red, white, and blue.
    After all the betrayal and all the violence during his childhood years, McCutcheon hungered for something positive to latch on to. Corny as it sounds, the whole idea of being one of the good
guys appealed to him. M.D. was a badass. He knew he was a badass. He’d been raised ever since the crib to be a badass. At three he was shadowboxing, at seven he was executing heel hooks, and
by the age of nine he was punching the ticket of thirteen-year-olds who outweighed him by more than fifty pounds. There was never a question about McCutcheon Daniels being a great and mighty
warrior; the question, as posed to M.D., was “Can McCutcheon Daniels be a great and mighty warrior who fights for a great and mighty cause?”
    A gravel-voiced guy named Stanzer envisioned M.D. as a prototype for the next generation of soldier, the kind that could handle the challenges of fighting the next generation of terrorist.
    “The enemy doesn’t have an age limit,” Stanzer barked. “Why should we?”
    M.D. was young. He was skilled. He was the type of lone wolf that could get into places only teens could gain access to and then do some serious damage in an under-the-radar style.
    All in the name of saving American lives. On the inside of Stanzer’s left forearm the colonel wore a tattoo that rationalized it all:
    People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
    Beneath these words rippled the image of an American flag. To Stanzer, his ink wasn’t just body paint; these words gave meaning to his life.
    “Fact is,” Stanzer said to M.D., “sometimes good people have to do some very bad things.”
    Few teens if any had ever excelled in the world of mixed martial arts to the extent that M.D. had. But his whole life he’d been programmed by his piece-of-shit father to fight for
personal, self-centered reasons. Demon Daniels taught his son to dream of winning a belt. Of becoming a world champion. Of living a life of luxury and material wealth. Stanzer spoke of something
more.
    Duty. Honor. Service. A higher calling.
    McCutcheon loved him for it.
    Like legions of others who sign on the dotted line, warring for something bigger than himself rang true to McCutcheon, and M.D. decided to accept the challenge. His country, he was told, needed
him.
    It didn’t take long for Stanzer to recognize that McCutcheon was unlike any other recruit he’d ever seen. Yet for all M.D.’s physical skills, perhaps the most impressive
quality Stanzer saw in McCutcheon was the manner in which he respected the theater of battle. To M.D., the mixed martial arts were more than just a system of fighting; being a warrior meant living
by a set of principles.
    Honor, strength, humility, respect. These weren’t just ideals to M.D.; these were his ethics, on display morning, noon, and night. A lot of MMA fighters worked hard to build their physical
skills in a wide range of the martial arts’s fiercest of fighting styles. M.D. had, too. Yet, as Stanzer noted, Agent ZERO X1 also worked just as hard to embody the warrior’s ethos of
dignity. McCutcheon approached his training with ferocity, his teachers with humility, and his foes with a combination of respect, bravery, patience, wisdom, and unrelenting aggression.
    He stood out as a once-every-decade type of soldier so the colonel fast-tracked him and covertly schooled McCutcheon in the art of modern-day urban assault. Weapons, lock picking, phone hacking,
disappearing like a ghost—McCutcheon