Net Force - Tom Clancy [14]
Base, angle, leverage. If you had all three, the technique always worked. No exceptions.
She had all three.
Spandex went down like a chainsawed redwood, hit the mat flat on his back. She could have followed up with elbows, knees, whatever, but instead she moved back two steps. She didnt want to hurt him. Just embarrass him.
The entire sequence, from the time of his punch until she stepped away, had taken just under two seconds.
He rolled up and started for her. Bitch!
Well. So much for maam.
He probably had a sequenced attack planned, a favorite combination of kicks and punches, fakes, sweeps, before the killer shot that usually worked for him when he sparred for points. If she stood there and let him get to it, it could be dangerous.
She didnt let him get to it.
As he launched a left jab to set her up, she stepped outside with the two-handed block, alligatored his arm with both hands just above his elbow, pivoted, dropped all her weight to one knee and pinwheeled him. Some of the boxing styles did teach their students how to do a little grappling and how to fall, but apparently Spandexs was not one of them.
He did a half-flip, and slammed into the mat on his upper back again, hard enough to knock his wind out. This was all simple stuff, right out of the first djuru. Why work any harder than you had to?
Toni came to her feet, waiting to see if he was going to try a third attack.
Spandex was not so foolish. This time when he got up, he held out one hand in a no mas gesture. Lesson over. He knew when he was overmatched.
Toni felt pretty good, despite knowing she should not have felt that way. Then she glanced at the entrance to the gym.
Alex Michaels leaned against the wall, watching her.
***
Michaels walked over to where Toni stood. He was in decent shape. He ran three or four miles most days, did a little triking and had a Bowflex machine in his condo for resistance work, but it had been a long time since his hand-to-hand training in the military, and later when hed joined Net Force. Computer geeks didnt spend too much time in real-world hot-field situations. He thought he could handle himself in most one-on-one situations, but he would not have particularly wanted to take on the big guy just getting up off the mat, and after watching Toni toss the poor joker around like a Frisbee, he sure wouldnt have wanted to take her on. He knew from her file what the fighting system was, though he didnt know much about it. Amazing.
Very interesting, he said. Its called silat. Where did you learn it?
She wiped at her face with a towel. There was a little old Dutch-Indonesian woman who lived in my neighborhood when I was about thirteen. Her name was Susan DeBeers. She was in her sixties, retired, her husband recently dead. She liked to sit on the stoop of the building across the street, smoke a small carved meerschaum pipe and enjoy the spring sunshine. One Saturday, four gang-bangers decided they wanted her spot. She got up to leave, but it wasnt fast enough for them. One of them tried to speed her up with a kick.
Toni slung the towel over her shoulder. These guys were eighteen, twenty, had knives and sharpened screwdrivers tucked into their pockets. I was waiting for a bus, I watched the whole thing. It took maybe fifteen seconds, and I couldnt tell you to this day exactly what she did to them. Here was this little old potbellied woman smoking like a chimney who pounded and threw four thugs around like tennis balls, kept her pipe in her mouth the whole time, didnt work up a lather. She put all four of them into the emergency room. I decided I needed to learn whatever it was she knew.
She had a school?
No. I walked across the street a couple of days later-took me that long to get my nerve up-and asked her if she would teach me. She just nodded and smiled and said, Sure. I trained with her until after I graduated from college and moved to Washington. Whenever I go home to visit my folks, I work out