The Killing League

4.

Nicole

The man crouched in front of Nicole Candela, his hands moving in a circular motion, the right hand holding a knife.

Nicole, her back against the wall, leaned forward, her hands also rotating in a circular pattern. The man blocked the path to the room’s small door, and Nicole had nowhere to run. Sweat ran down her face as the man inched toward her. She felt a slight pain in her left leg where Kostner’s punji stick had buried itself. Despite surgery and rehab, it sometimes still ached. She was never sure if the pain was real or one of her many phantoms.

It was the slightest disturbance of air in the room, the most subtle intake of breath that set Nicole in motion. When her assailant took the tiniest bit of breath, she bent slightly at the knees, saw his right arm shooting at her with the knife out ready to slash. She brought her left arm up, tapped the outside of his right arm near the elbow and pushed it across her body. She brought her right arm up, hooked the man’s knife hand, then pinned her left forearm against his tricep.

Keeping her feet shoulder length apart, she applied pressure and felt the man’s arm start to hyperextend, and in seconds would break-

“Okay, okay Nicky!” the man said.

Nicole dropped her arms and stepped back. Her instructor shook his arm loose, and tossed the rubber knife across the room into the equipment basket.

Eric Anderson smiled at her and she thought again of how he was one of those men difficult to put an age on, but Nicole guessed he was nearly fifty. He had a shaved head, and bright blue eyes. He was shorter than she was, but thick and powerful. He moved like a boxer.

“Good, very good,” he said.

“Thanks,” Nicole said, a small smile on her face.

Anderson showed her several ways to tighten her trapping technique and make her footwork more efficient.

As she gathered her equipment up and headed for the door, Anderson walked with her.

“You’re doing well, Nicky,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel good,” she said. “This training is tough, but when I leave I feel great.”

They had been working together for several years, and from the beginning she had fallen in love with the martial art.

She had chosen Pekiti Tirsia for good reason. A fighting art originally from the Philippines, she learned that it is not a sport. There are no tournaments. It is a warrior art that teaches practitioners not just how to defend against multiple attackers, whether they use hands, clubs, knives or guns, but how to kill.

The other thing that attracted her to Pekiti Tirsia was that it includes a lot of work with knives. In fact, the literal translation of the name was “to cut into small pieces.” Ever since her attack, she had been very, very fond of knives.

“It will become even more and more natural,” Anderson said. “When it matters, you won’t think about it. Your mind reverts to the lowest denominator. You’ll perform by sheer instinct only those moves you’ve practiced thousands of times. You know them so well, they happen almost by themselves. That’s why we train.”

“I understand,” she said. And she did. More than her instructor could ever know. Because she had been in that type of situation. And she knew firsthand that, yes, you really did revert to the simplest things you knew. It was difficult just to think, let alone act.

They gave each other the traditional Pekiti Tirsia goodbye, a closed fist against the heart and said “Mumbuhi,” which means “health.”

She walked out to her car, threw her gym bag in the backseat, and got behind the wheel.

She checked her watch. There was just enough time to go home, let out her dog, and get to the most important night of her life.