Net Force - Tom Clancy [53]
That cane was at home. The one she inspected at the moment, the Instructors model, was almost identical to the Combat style, same length and diameter, but the crook was a hair wider and the horn was rounded instead of beaked. It looked a lot more like the cane an old lady should be using to hobble about with. It wouldnt do for some eagle-eyed cop to see that pointed horn and think: Why, Granny, what a sharp stick you have
The weapon looked okay, so the Selkie left the kitchen and padded naked into the living room of her rental condo where she had set up her practice target. This was a section of an inch-and-a-half-diameter aluminum rod with a ringbolt on one end. The rod was wrapped in a pad of biogel, the same stuff they used to soften racing bike seats and the insteps of running shoes; the gel was then covered with a stretched sheet of chamois leather and held tightly in place with duct tape. It wasnt exactly the same as flesh over bone, but it was close enough for her purposes. At home, she had a wing chun training dummy set up with similar wrapping, so she could work the full range of angles, with weapons or feet and hands, but on the road, one had to make do.
She got a sudden mental image of herself trying to check a wing chun dummy in at an airport with her luggage, with the reaction that would bring, and grinned.
A thin nylon rope ran from the targets eyebolt through a second eye hook shed screwed into a ceiling rafter; the other end of the line was tied to a doorknob. This way, she could adjust the targets height. Right now, it was at knee level. Knees were great targets for a stick-a broken knee put a big crimp in anybodys fighting style.
She moved within range of the target, took a couple of cleansing breaths and assumed her basic stance, cane in front of her, tip on the ground, both hands on the crook. She was aware she would look very interesting to a watcher were not all the curtains pulled closed: a naked woman standing with a cane in front of her crotch in the middle of a room empty except for something weird hanging from the ceiling. She grinned. Shed always liked working out nude, there was something so primal about it.
She cleared her mind. Wait. Wait
She whipped the cane up from the floor in a short arc from her right, slid her right hand to mid-shaft to guide the strike, her left hand to the carved grip to power it.
The solid thunk of the wood into the padded bar felt very satisfying. A good hit.
She spun the cane, caught the target in the crook, pulled it toward herself, then pivoted the stick and hit the padding from the opposite side.
One more solid hit and the target stopped cold, no swing.
Yes!
She pulled the cane back, held it like a pool cue and thrust the tip forward. Hit the target high, knocked it back.
Yes.
It was just practice, but even so, the Selkie was in the zone-she was in the killing zone. And there was no place more exciting.
17
Monday, September 27th, 3 p.m. Maintenon, France
Plekhanov sat in an old stone bell tower, a long-barreled Mauser Gewehr Model 1898 rifle balanced across his knees. The piece weighed about four and half kilos, was intrinsically accurate, fired the 7.92mm cartridge at high velocity, and had an appropriate-period M73B1 telescopic sight mounted upon it. Even though the scope was American-made, used primarily on the Springfield 1903, some of the optics had found their way into Germany. This was somewhat ironic, given the uses to which they had been put. The long bolt made the rifles action slow to operate, and it held only five rounds in the box magazine, but the range would be enough to allow plenty of time to escape despite the sluggish operational speed.
The church steeple was the tallest