Brad, a typical, eighteen-year-old, young, African-American man has just hired a number of unlikely heroes to join the military. They set off an obsession in a CIA agent who gets snared in a web of lies and threats as he tries to experience all of the excitement of attending college.
As he enlists help from a rag doll, his older German friend, his middle-class parents, and the widow of an Australian adventurer, the CIA agent leaves a decades-long trail of blood coast to coast across the United States.
However, the path to a fictitious, historically black college in North Carolina is filled with danger and animosity. Focused and self-directed, Brad is also very smart and very rich. He blows up a decrepit building. He comes from an academic background and enjoys researching the Vietnam War.