“You lost?”
“Uh… I don’t think so. I’m looking for someone.”
The bartender simply stood mute. One of the men ambled over and took a seat next to her.
She glanced at the man on the barstool, then back at the bartender. Swallowing hard, she said, “Maybe you can help? I’m looking for an inbred redneck with shit for brains?”
She immediately knew neither was the contact when both of their eyes went wide, no recognition of the bona fides at all.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It just popped out.”
The man on the barstool stood up. “You think that’s fucking funny, cunt?”
“No, no,” Jennifer said, her mind racing to spit out an excuse. “I was told I was playing a prank by a guy outside. He said you’d laugh. I’ll go get—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the man punched her hard above the right temple, snapping her head back and causing an explosion of light. He clamped both hands onto her neck and began to squeeze, bending her over backward. The strike rattled her for a split second, long enough to feel her windpipe start to crush. She felt a sliver of panic and uselessly tried to pry his hands away. She began thrashing violently, the fear growing until it blotted out any logical thought. Realizing she was about to pass out, she forced the panic away and focused on what she needed to do.
Rotating to the right, she raised her arm and brought it straight down against his elbow joints, breaking the stiff-arm. Sliding forward, she used her weight to fold his arms, getting within striking range of her attacker. She began to see sparks of light, the man’s grip relentless. She raised her right leg, lodging her foot against the top of the patella on his left knee. She shoved outward with all of her might, praying it would crack the hold.
The strike broke the support of the man’s knee, triggering it to buckle and causing him to blessedly let go of her neck as he fell off balance to the floor.
Jennifer fell with him, scrambling to wrap up his wounded knee in a leg lock. She grabbed his ankle and brought it to her chest while extending his leg. Rotating her legs over his body, she leaned backward, thrusting forward with her hips against his knee while twisting the ankle, desperately trying to damage him enough so that he couldn’t catch her when she ran. If done right, she knew he wouldn’t be catching anything without help for the rest of his life, but she was out of position. She couldn’t get the leverage to break something and was about to be in a stalemate, unable to let go but also unable to hurt him. She heard him yelling from the pain and slapping the ground over and over, the noise finally penetrating her survival instincts.
She backed up a step, then turned to run out of the bar, only to be confronted by the remaining five men, all advancing toward her.
In the room next door, I lost control when Jennifer got whacked in the temple, jumping up and yelling at Turbo.
“What the hell is that? You know the rules. No head strikes to the candidate. What’s he doing?”
Turbo backed up, recognizing that I’d kick his ass all over the room in the next few seconds. No question of whether I could or not.
“Whoa. Wait. I know… Cleary just gets emotional. He’s a little pissed to be supporting this. You know head shots happen every single evolution.”
I advanced on him, my fists balled up. “Not on the first fucking punch. Maybe in the heat of rolling around, but he deliberately hit her.”
Knuckles yelled from behind me, “Let it go, Pike. Don’t stop the evolution. She’s doing okay.”
Still glaring at Turbo, I said, “What do you mean?”
“He tapped out.”
Turbo and I both said, “What?” and ran over to the monitor.
I saw the remaining five men advancing on her and went ballistic again. “What the fuck are they doing? Jesus Christ!”
The house of pain was the final hurdle to Assessment, a beat-down where a candidate had to fight six people and win. Not six at a single time, though. The candidate was supposed to take on one, then two, then the final three. Of course, after the week of hell he had been through, there was no way he could defeat six operators just as good if not better than him. We didn’t expect him to. As long as he kept fighting, kept plugging away, he’d eventually win. It was a little secret only exposed after he was through, and then only if he supported Assessment in the future — when he got his instructions as cadre. Make no mistake, though, it wasn’t a gimme. The candidate had to use every skill he possessed to survive, with the cadre pushing him to the limits.
In this case, I didn’t think the men were going to let Jennifer do that. They were going to end this right now. Teach her a lesson, five on one.
I started toward the door that led into the bar area, intent on stopping the fight. Knuckles grabbed my arm.
“Don’t do it. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You stop it now, and it’s over. Let her go. They aren’t going to permanently hurt her, and we both know Turbo’s team screwed with the conditions.”
I glared at Turbo for a second, then sat back down. “Yeah, well, I screwed with the conditions as well.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I picked this place for a reason. It favors Jennifer. She has something those guys don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s a damn monkey.”
All of the training I had given Jennifer was for one reason: to give her an edge to escape if she found herself in trouble. The Taskforce guys all groaned at the shooting and hand-to-hand, but they missed the point entirely. She was learning the skills to survive, not to replace them. Last year I had seen firsthand how someone could get wrapped up in a dangerous situation no matter what the reason for being there. If Jennifer had had the skills then that she did now, a lot fewer people would have died.
Here in the bar, she didn’t need to beat all six men like a male candidate. She just had to get away from them. I knew she’d figure out how — if she had enough time.
I watched Jennifer throw a chair at the group of men and race to the door leading outside, a thermos on a sling bouncing against her back. I knew the door was locked.
They closed in on her as she violently ratcheted the knob. At the last second, she ran to the other end of the room, the men right behind her. She reached the wall and sprang up, planting one foot and pushing off. She clawed the air for a rafter, but came up short, landing on the other side of the men.
“What are you talking about? All she’s doing is running in circles. They’ll catch her sooner or later.”
I pointed to the gap between the roof and the wall, the bar on the other side. “She’ll be coming through that hole in about a minute.”
Jennifer hit the ground running, putting a table between her and the men. They slowly circled around. When she had two on each side and one in the middle, she leapt up on the table and split the gap, jumping full force into the single man. They hit the ground together, with her springing to her feet and running to the bar. We watched her leap onto the bar and race to the end, where she repeated her wall-jump maneuver. This time, she was high enough to snag a rafter.
She began going hand over hand toward the gap. The men saw what she was doing and tried to block her, one jumping up on the bar himself and swatting at her legs. Without breaking speed, she flipped underneath the rafter, swinging her legs up and over it, until she was crouched on top. She moved with astonishing speed on the two-inch beam, scuttling right to the gap.
I saw her poke her head through the hole, then fall to the ground on our side of the wall. She advanced to the table warily, recognizing me and Knuckles but unsure if that was good or bad. Our faces were stoic.
