in position he could see Torrance entering the amounts from a stack of checks into a ledger. Seated at the desk, concentrating on his books, Torrance presented an easy target. Carl remembered what the General had said about surprise being admirable in a fight and fighting fair being something one did only on TV, but he wanted a true test of his abilities.
Carl was no stranger to combat, but his fights had always been with boys like Sandy Rhodes and Mike Manchester, who had no training. Torrance would not quit and he was used to fighting through pain. Carl wondered if he was making a mistake. Was he overmatched? There was only one way to find out.
Carl spotted a rack of dumbbells near the mirrored wall. He decided to draw Torrance into the open space in the dojo. He took a heavy weight from the top of the rack and dropped it. The metal hit the hardwood floor with a loud clanging sound that was amplified by the silence. Torrance leaped to his feet and stared into the darkness.
“Who’s there?”
The black belt walked to his office door and looked around the dojo. Carl backed into the shadows. When Torrance walked into the gym, Carl would confront him. But Torrance did not leave his office. He walked to his desk and bent down. When the black belt turned around he was holding a handgun.
It was suddenly crystal-clear to Carl that he was no modern-day samurai on a mission for his master. He was a fool on a fool’s errand, a teenage boy who was living out a fantasy. General Wingate was not proposing a test when he asked Carl how he thought he would do in a fight with Torrance; he was making conversation. Unfortunately, Carl’s epiphany might have come too late. If Torrance caught him skulking in his dojo dressed like a ninja he would call the police, and Carl would be expelled from St. Martin’s. Carl realized that he had one chance to get out of the ridiculous situation he had made for himself.
As Torrance waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, Carl slipped into the locker room. Torrance flipped on the lights in the dojo a second after the locker room door had swung shut. Carl nudged the door open and watched Torrance walk over to the rack that held the weights. The sensei knelt down and examined the dumbbell that Carl had dropped. Then he looked at the rack. He picked up the weight and placed it where it had been before. Carl heard the sound of metal on metal as Torrance tested the dumbbell’s stability to see if it could have fallen unaided. As soon as he concluded that it could not, Torrance moved to the center of the dojo and surveyed the gym, pointing his weapon as he turned. His eyes passed over the locker room door, then swung back to it. The black belt hesitated for a second, then headed for the lockers.
The locker room was long and narrow. Lockers lined the four walls and a row of lockers divided the room. At the end farthest from the door were showers in an open tiled area. The room offered few places to hide. Carl could dodge around the lockers, but how long could he keep that up? There was a section of the shower room that provided concealment from anyone standing near the lockers, but if Torrance looked into the shower area, he would be able to see Carl. If there was any distance between them, Carl would not stand a chance against a gun.
Suddenly the locker room lights went on. Carl had only seconds to act. The door to the locker room swung open and Torrance walked in. He paused by the door. From the end of the row of lockers in the middle of the room he could see all of the locker room except the shower area.
“Come out now and no one will get hurt. I’ve got a gun and I’ll use it.”
Torrance sounded unworried. Carl had to fight to keep calm.
“I’ll give you a three count. If you’re not out I’m going to shoot to kill.”
Carl considered surrendering. Maybe he could convince Torrance that he’d come in for extra practice. Then he remembered that he was hiding, dressed in black and wearing a ski mask, and he hadn’t gone to the office to ask Torrance for permission to work out. Torrance would turn him over to the police, or else just shoot him. The police would discover that he’d registered at the dojo under a phony name. He’d be expelled from school. It would kill his mother.
Torrance counted to three. He sighed. “Okay, pal. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The karate instructor moved down the row of lockers toward the showers. It was the only part of the locker room he could not see completely. He was three-quarters of the way down the row when Carl dropped on him from the narrow space between the ceiling and the top of the lockers that ran down the center of the room. Torrance stumbled forward and dropped the gun. The space between the lockers was too narrow for Torrance to turn. Carl hit the karate instructor from behind, bringing him to his knees, and applied a choke hold. Torrance was groping for the gun when he blacked out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Talking about his battle with Mark Torrance had worn Carl out. He reached for the glass of water on his bed stand and took a sip.
“Did you tell General Wingate what you’d done?” Ami asked.
“Not directly. There was a story in the newspaper, a novelty item about a black belt being beaten up. I cut it out and mailed it to him anonymously.”
“What happened after you mailed the clipping?”
Carl’s lips twisted into a cynical smile. “The General never mentioned the news story, but he must have received it, because I was drafted a few weeks later.”
“And you think Wingate was responsible for your draft notice?”
“I didn’t at first. I even went to him for help. I had a scholarship to Dartmouth by then, a full ride. The General was the only person I could think of to ask for help. It took a while to get through to him. I kept calling and calling, but he didn’t get back to me for weeks. I’d almost given up when he phoned to say that he’d be in California for the weekend. I went out to the estate. I had all my hopes riding on our meeting.”
“What did he say?”
Carl looked as if the memory of the meeting had exhausted him. He shut his eyes when he spoke.
“Wingate was very blunt. He told me that he couldn’t help me avoid the draft. He thought that I should go. He reminded me that we were in a fight to the death against Communism. He asked me how I could justify going to fraternity parties and football games while boys my age were giving their lives for their country. He said that I’d make an excellent soldier and I could always go to school when my tour was up.”
“How did you feel about his advice?”
“I was very confused, but Wingate…the way he put it, he was so positive and he made it sound cowardly to try and get out of my duty to my country.”
“Did you fight to stay out of the army?”
“No. In the end I just gave in. The General convinced me that it was my duty and that I would regret shirking it for my whole life. He talked so glowingly about the army and what I could accomplish. He asked me if I hadn’t had enough of school, if I wasn’t ready to test myself in the real world.”
Carl rubbed his eyes. “The thing I regret most was what going in did to my mother. She had sacrificed so much for my future; my going to an Ivy League school was her dream come true. When I turned down the scholarship she aged overnight.” Carl’s voice became hoarse, and he could not go on for a moment. “She died while I was on a mission, thousands of miles away. I never knew if she forgave me.”
“What did Vanessa say when you told her that you were going into the army?” Ami asked softly.
“She went ballistic. She was convinced that Wingate had engineered my draft notice to break us up. When I decided to go in, she stopped talking to me. She wouldn’t take my calls, and she avoided me at school. By the time the school year ended I was cutting class so I wouldn’t have to be around her. I just couldn’t take it. To tell the truth, it was a relief to go into basic training.”
“If Wingate did engineer your notice, do you think he did it to break up your romance with his daughter?”
“It might have been one reason, but mostly I think he wanted me in the Unit. You know those special tests I took in basic, the way I was singled out for Special Forces. I think Wingate manipulated my career every step of the way.”
Ami was puzzled. “What is the Unit?”
Rice laughed. “It’s the little man that wasn’t there.”
