I popped a quick jab over his trapped left arm and up into his neck, aiming for just under the jaw line. It wasn’t a power shot but it didn’t need to be; what it needed was accuracy, and that it had. The tip plunged in like a corkscrew hypodermic, and before he could pull away I twisted downward and ripped back. He yelped and leaped away, instinctively clapping his hand over the resultant tear. Blood jetted out from between his fingers, and I knew I’d hit the carotid.
He made a horrified gurgling noise and clapped his other hand over the spot, but blood continued to pour out. I swung back to my right. His friend had pulled up short, unsure of what had just happened, shocked by all the blood. I slipped the doorstop between my thumb and forefinger as though it was a knife and brandished it at him Hollywood style, my arm extended and the weapon way too far from my body.
When he realized that I wasn’t holding a machete, he tried to grab my juicy target of an arm. I let him get my wrist, then made as though I was trying to yank free. He braced against the pressure, straightening his forward knee, his eyes and all his focus on the weapon. Using our counterbalanced pulling to brace myself, I raised my right foot off the floor and shot it into his forward knee. At the last instant he saw it coming and tried to twist away, but he had too much weight on the leg. The kick blew through his knee and he crumbled to the floor with a shriek.
Murakami was still standing between me and the door. He looked calmly at the two fallen men, one screaming and writhing on his back, the other sitting and clutching his hands tightly to his spurting neck in a gesture of burlesque mortification. Then he looked back at me. He smiled, revealing the bridge.
“You’re good,” he said. “You don’t look like much, but you’re good.”
“Your friend needs a doctor,” I said, breathing hard. “If he doesn’t get proper attention he’s going to bleed out inside five minutes, maybe less.”
He shrugged. “You think I want him as a bodyguard after this? If he wasn’t going to die, I’d kill him myself.”
The fallen man was drenched with blood and staring at Murakami blankly. His mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged. After a moment he slumped soundlessly to his side.
Murakami looked down at him, then back to me. He shrugged again.
“Looks like you saved me the trouble,” he said.
C’mon, Tatsu, where the fuck are you?
He unzipped his jacket and took a respectful step backward before shrugging it off. If he’d stayed just a little closer I would have moved on him as soon as it was down around his elbows, and he knew it.
He looked at the doorstop, my hand bloody around it. “We’re going to do this armed?” he asked, his tone dead-man flat. “Okay.”
He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a folded knife. He flicked a thumb stud on the handle and the blade snapped out and into position. From the instant, semiauto opening, I knew it was a Kershaw model, essentially a quality, street-legal switchblade. The cutting edge was black, coated with titanium nitride, about nine centimeters. Shit.
In my unpleasant experience, unarmed against a knife, you’ve basically got four options. Your best bet is to run like hell, if you can. Next best is to do something immediately that prevents the attack from getting started. Third is to create distance so you can deploy a longer-range weapon. Fourth is to go beserk and hope not to get fatally cut going through and over your attacker.
I don’t care how much training you’ve had, these are your only realistic options, and none of them is particularly good except maybe the first. Unarmed techniques against the knife are a fantasy. The only people who teach them have never faced a determined attacker with a live blade.
My macho years are at least two decades behind me, and I would have been thrilled to turn and run if I could have. But in the enclosed space of the dojo, with a younger, and probably faster, enemy standing between me and the exit, running wasn’t really an option, and I realized that the ordinarily depressing odds of emerging unhurt against a knife looked downright desolate.
I glanced over at the bag. It was about ten meters away, and my chances of getting to it and accessing the gun before Murakami put that blade in me were not good.
He smiled, the bridge a predatory rictus. “Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said.
He really was deranged. I had no interest in fighting him, only in killing him now or running away to wait for a more opportune moment. But maybe I could play this out.
“You going to tell me what this is about?” I asked.
“Throw away yours, and I’ll throw away mine,” he said again.
So much for that. I knew there was a set of weights in back. I might be able to reach them before he got to me. If there were loose plates, I could use them like missiles, wear him down, create an opening that would give me time to deploy the gun. Not a happy prospect against a guy with the reflexes to fight dogs, but I was running out of ideas.
“You first,” I said.
“All right, armed,” he said, and started coming toward me. But slowly, taking his time.
I tensed to go for the weights.
A commanding series of knocks ran out from the front door, and I heard the words “Keisatsu da!” Police! bellowed through a bullhorn.
Murakami’s head swiveled in that direction, but his eyes didn’t leave me. I saw from the reflex that the knocking had startled him, that he wasn’t expecting anyone.
It came again, a fist banging on metal. Then “Keisatsu da! Akero!” Police! Open up!
Tatsu, I thought.
We looked at each other for a long second, but I already knew what he was going to do. He might have been crazy, but he was a survivor. A survivor reassesses odds continually and doesn’t disrespect them.
He gestured at me with the knife. “Another time,” he said. Then he bolted for the back.
I dashed to the gym bag. But by the time I reached it, he’d already made it inside the locker room and had slammed the door behind him. Following him in alone would be dangerous. Better to have Tatsu as backup.
I sprinted to the entranceway. The door was secured with horizontal, spring-loaded bars, and it took me a few seconds to figure out how to work the mechanism. There was a gear in the center that wouldn’t give. There, that latch-press that first. I pressed and turned, and the bars pulled in.
I shouldered the door open. Tatsu and another man were on the other side of it, both with their guns drawn. “Inside,” I said, gesturing with my head. “There’s a back door he might use. He’s got a knife.”
“I’ve already sent a man around back,” Tatsu said. He nodded to his partner and the two of them moved inside. I followed them in.
They noted the two men on the floor but could see that they weren’t going anywhere. We made our way to the back of the dojo. I saw Tatsu’s man move toward the bathroom. “Not there,” I said. “There. The locker room. There’s a back door inside, but he might still be in there.”
They took up positions on either side of the door, crouching to reduce their profile. Each held his gun close in and at waist level in the so-called third eye position, which demonstrated some tactical acumen. Tatsu nodded, and his man, who was on the knob side of the door, reached out and pushed the door inward while Tatsu sighted down the funnel. As the door swung in, Tatsu tracked it with his eyes and his weapon.
Another nod and they went in, Tatsu in the lead. The room was empty. The exterior door was closed, but its bolt was pulled back and the lock I had seen previously was gone.
“There,” I said. “He went through there.” I thought of Tatsu’s other man, the one who had gone around back. He and Murakami would have been on a collision course.
They took up their positions again and went through. I followed them. Behind the building was a tiny courtyard, choked with refuse containers, empty boxes, and abandoned construction materials. A rusting HVAC unit lay disconnected and inert to one side. Opposite, the carcass of a refrigerator leaned sideways against a corrugated wall, its door gone, two of its interior shelves hanging out like innards from a gutted animal.