Disneyland for adults. Yes. Decadent in the extreme.
And what was he going to do when this assignment was over? Where would he go? Not home, to the suffocating memories he could not help but have every time he looked around. Perhaps he would move into a desert like the one surrounding this artificial green spot. Away from everybody, to become a recluse, kept company only by spiders and scorpions and real snakes. To be parched dry during the day and to lie on a cot in the chilly nights and listen to the wind scouring the sand, with perhaps the distant howl of a coyote…?
He smiled at his fantasy. No, he would not move to the desert. He would accept another assignment from Plekhanov — for there would always be more assignments from a man like Plekhanov — and he would do it. And he would keep on doing them until one day he came up against a younger, faster, hungrier opponent. And then it would be over.
He would not leap from a bridge, nor swallow his pistol barrel, nor would he run away and hide. He would continue to do the only thing he had ever really known how to do, and he would do it as well as he could. It was what he had. Aside from Anna, it was all he had ever had. It was his path, and he would follow it until it ended.
The dry wind followed him as he walked toward his hotel.
Toni bent over, touched her toes, then dropped into a deep squat. Her knees popped. She stood, and shook out her legs. She was one of only three people in the Net Force gym. Most people didn't work Saturdays, and normally she wouldn't have worked, either, but until they had something on Day's death, plus the new business about Alex, she wasn't going to be taking any days off. Hardly anybody would.
She looked up, and saw Rusty come out of the men's locker room. She hadn't expected to see him here today. The FBI trainees usually got weekends off at this stage of their schooling.
"Guru," he said, offering her a short bow.
"Rusty. I didn't think you'd be here today."
"Well, I knew you'd be working and I didn't have anything else on my schedule. I mean, if it's okay?"
"Sure."
Toni found she enjoyed teaching. It did force her to think about her own form, to make certain it was right before she tried to pass it along. Guru had been right; the teacher learned as much as the student.
They loosened up for another five minutes, stretching and rotating joints. "Okay, let's begin," she said.
He faced her. They bowed in and she started him on the first djuru.
As Rusty went back and forth, repeating the simple block-elbow-punch combination, Toni corrected his form, demonstrated the footwork, adjusted slightly the positions of his hands. She had always had to do a motion dozens or hundreds of times before it sank in, but Rusty was a quick student. He picked up the lessons pretty fast.
After ten minutes of djuru practice, Toni stopped him.
"Okay, today we're going to work on sapu and beset moves."
He nodded, but looked puzzled. "Uh-huh."
She smiled. "Sapu is a sweep, uses the inside of the foot or leg. It means, literally, ‘broom.' Beset is a drag, using the heel or back of the leg. Step in right side and throw a right punch."
Rusty nodded, and obeyed. He threw his fist hard, because to do less was to have to do it over again. She double-blocked with her open hands and then stepped in with her right foot just to the outside of his. "Okay, you see where our feet are? I am outside your attacking foot. We call this luar. Okay, back up and punch again, same way."
He complied.
This time, she blocked and stepped inside. "This position is to the inside, or dalam."
He looked down. "Luar is outside, dalam is inside. Okay."
"Right. In silat, there are basically four positions you can assume in relation to an attacker's feet. So I could have either of my feet forward in relation to yours — left or right on the outside, left or right on the inside. If you came in with a left lead, I'd have the same positions available for that foot, too. So, I've got four basic responses no matter which foot you put forward."
"Okay."
"Punch again, slow this time. The first technique I'll show you is called beset luar."
"Which hand?"
"Doesn't matter. What you can do right, you can do left. What you can do inside, you can do outside. What you can do high, you can do low."
"Sounds like something I should be writing down."
"Don't worry about it. You'll hear it again. And again. And again. Silat is not about hard and fast techniques. It is about laws and principles. It takes a little longer to learn it this way, but once you do, you'll have something you can use anytime. Obviously I have to show you specifics, but the goal is become a generalise. Punch again, slow."
He stepped in and threw a lazy straight right fist at her nose.
"Okay, here's the block, from the outside. Then I shove your arm out of the way and around, like so." She rolled his arm down and across his body to the outside, held onto it just above the elbow with her left hand. "Now, I step in, right foot, and put it right behind your foot. Straight step, not around, like this." She showed him the wrong way, then the right way. She exaggerated the step, turning it into a stamp. "I put my hip against yours, and I cork it inward, just like the djuru stance, do you see? Shoulders and hips square?"
"Yeah."
"This is my base. Then with my left hand, I pull your arm down and slightly behind me. This is the angle. Humans only have two feet, so no matter how they stand, they are always weak in at least two directions. You're strong right now forward or backward, but if I make a diamond pattern using your feet as the center line, you have no power at ninety degrees."
"Geometry," he said, grinning.
"Absolutely. So then I use my right hand up here on your neck. I could have punched or poked, but for now, I just put it there. Elbow down. This is my leverage. So now I've got all three — base, angle and leverage. What happens?"
"I go down?"
"Right. And if I add just a hair of drag with my right foot against your foot, the beset, then you go down a little faster."
She applied a little pressure, tugged with her foot, and Rusty dropped flat onto his back. He slapped the mat hard. He came up.
"One more time," she said. "Slow, so you can see it."
He punched. She blocked, stepped in, corked her hip against his thigh. "It's important to get in close, so you can feel your attacker move," she said. "In silat, you stick to your attacker. It feels dangerous, especially if you are used to outfighting, but if you know what you're doing, inside is the place to be. Use your eyes for distance, your body in close, so you can sense motion without having to see it. You feel my hip, how it's pressed in there?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am, I surely do feel that."
She dropped him again. She'd caught the not-so-veiled sexual tone in his voice. She grinned. If he liked that, wait until she stepped inside and showed him the dalam.
Alex Michaels prowled the hall, too wired to eat. Gridley was working the background on the cane the hitwoman had tried to use against him, and he had people doing seines on the net, following up on the New Orleans VR bank robbery. All the information they could gather was flowing into Net Force, and there wasn't anything he could do to hurry it up. He had a meeting with his top people scheduled for 1:30 p.m., and until then, nothing new to pick at.