The Beginning — L.M. Reed

Jack Knight never went looking for trouble...it found him. Orphaned at a young age--his brother Nicky the only family he had left--Jack struggled to protect him, but the deck was stacked against him from the start...corrupt foster parents, school bullies, and eventually the insidious disease that Jack couldn't fight no matter how hard he tried. Nicky had called him a superhero, dubbing him ‘Jackknife'. Jack, however, knew superheroes weren't real and that he could never live up to his brother's image of him. But he had to try. After joining the Marines and successfully completing boot camp, Private Jack Knight, on a secret mission for the CIA, finds himself alone in the midst of a South American jungle operating in a country rife with political unrest and the beginnings of a drug war, unsure who to trust.