I cursed myself for not anticipating more of them in the house-another stupid mistake that could have gotten us killed. For that matter, it still could. I heard shouting and return fire around the corner of the house and, as I peeked through the brush, I saw a line of several men run into the trees across the yard. Megan was in trouble.
I grabbed Ken by the shoulder. “Come on!” I hissed, and retreated deeper into the woods so we couldn’t be seen from the house. We ran full throttle toward where we had left Megan. A moment later, the gunfire stopped.
I figured there was no reason for us to be quiet. They knew we were out here, and I didn’t relish the idea of being shot by my own daughter. “Megan! We’re coming in from behind!”
No answer. No gunfire.
A second later, Ken grabbed my shoulder and yanked me down to kneel beside him. “We have to slow down and get off of the trails, or we’re gonna run into an ambush.” It ate at my gut, but he was right.
It slowed us down considerably as we eased ahead silently, scanning every clump of brush thoroughly before we moved close to it. As we neared the area where we had left Megan, I thought I heard whispers, though it was difficult to be certain with my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. I grabbed Ken’s arm to get his attention, pointing first at my ear, then to the woods ahead of us. He nodded, understanding. We eased back slowly to circle around, all the while fear for my daughter gnawing viciously at me.
We snuck around to come at the area from the side. Time seemed to crawl slower than we did, but finally we peered through the brush and saw the backs of four men waiting to ambush us as we barreled down the trail. Four shots later, they joined their buddies in Hell.
We moved back into the brush before the echoes had faded. Almost immediately, we heard shouts from our right.
“Jimmy! Rick! Did you get ’em?”
When Jimmy and Rick didn’t answer, the voices began a worried muttering amongst themselves. We slowly eased around to come in behind their location until Ken abruptly signaled a stop. He gestured me to come even with him and pointed. Up ahead and barely visible through the scrub huddled a group of more than a dozen men… and Megan. A dozen of them! How could we possibly take them all?
They all faced away from us, to where we had left Jimmy and Rick facedown in the trees. One of them held Megan as a shield. Every few seconds, one of them would nervously scan the trees, occasionally peering into the clump that hid Ken and me. We couldn’t get closer without risking exposure, yet we weren’t close enough to get them without endangering Megan. I was in a quandary.
The men finally provided the answer. The one holding Megan pulled out a sheath knife and put the blade to her throat. “All right, you bastards! You get out here where we can see you, or I’ll waste the girl.”
There was my chance to get closer, and seeing the way the man held the knife to Megan’s throat gave me an idea. He had unknowingly put Megan in a situation she had been in hundreds of times. It was a classic self- defense situation in our advanced classes- Knife Defense Technique Number Twelve. I hurriedly whispered to Ken and sketched a hasty drawing in the dirt at our feet. He gave me a quick thumbs up, and I quickly began to back away. Soon, I was far enough out and began to run back in the direction from which we had originally come. I wanted to come in from the trail where they expected us, so as not to give away Ken’s location.
The poor fool holding Megan shouted, “You’ve got ten seconds to show yourselves. Then I’m gonna slit her throat!”
“One!”
He had no idea that from the moment he had put the knife to her throat, he was at her mercy. Even if every other man in that group survived, he didn’t stand a chance. I knew exactly what she would do. I only hoped she would wait a few more seconds.
“Two!”
I leaned the carbine against a tree to the right of the trail.
“Three!”
I pulled out one of the smoke bombs, latched the snap of the pouch through the pull ring, then twisted the pouch around to the right side of my web belt where the dangling incendiary wouldn’t be as noticeable.
“Four!”
I began moving quickly down the trail, making more noise as I moved.
“I hear you out there!” he screamed. “Now come out with your hands over your head, or I swear I’ll kill her, man! Five!”
“Okay, I’m coming out!” I raised my hands and stepped around the last bend in the trail. Instantly, all guns pointed at me. They all peered down the trail behind me waiting for more of us to appear.
“Where’s the rest of you?” the knifeman demanded.
“All around you. They all have their guns pointed at you.” I put on my best poker face, scanning the group. There were fourteen of them. “If anything happens to either me or the girl, you’re all dead men.”
They looked even more nervous, rapidly scanning the trees around them.
“Tell them to drop their guns and come out, now!” he shouted frantically.
“If I did that, you’d kill us. That wouldn’t be very smart on my part.”
“What’s to stop me from killing you now?”
“Think about it, you idiot,” I sneered. “Twenty guns pointed at you, and you have to ask a stupid question like that?”
I looked at Megan. Her right eye puffed shut, and the cheek beneath was swollen, but her attitude remained defiant. She’d had worse from tournaments. “Down and out.” I said in a conversational tone.
She furrowed her brow in puzzlement.
“Twelve, down and out,” I said just as calmly. The position of her feet and hands told me she was already prepared to execute the knife defense. What I was trying to tell her was that she needed to drop down immediately after she had done so. She needed to get down and out.
“What the hell does that mean?” the man asked. Megan’s expression asked the same question.
Comprehension dawned on Megan’s face, and she set her weight. All she needed was a distraction. I smiled at the guy. “Don’t worry about it, just hurry up and kill her.”
Now he was really confused. “Wha-?”
It was the last thing he ever said. One of the main things I drilled into my students was that the human brain has about a half-second reaction time. In other words, if the brain was busy doing something else, it took that long to react to new stimulus. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, Megan knew he was concentrating on something other than her. With the distraction she needed, she shifted her weight and twisted her head, swiftly bringing her left hand to grasp the thumb of his knife hand, pulling it over her left shoulder as her right hand slapped behind his elbow and drove the knife into his own throat.
His throat fountained scarlet, and he instinctively threw himself backward as Megan dove for the ground, but it was too late for him. One of the men closest made a grab at her, but missed. For a heart stopping moment, I saw every gun in the group shift toward us. Then Ken opened up with the machine gun, and I saw five of them die as they turned to face the new threat. The others dropped to the ground as I dove and yanked the smoke bomb off of my belt, leaving the retaining ring dangling from the pouch snap. As smoke began to billow out, I tossed it into the crowd. The smoke washed over them as they shot blindly into the brush from which Ken had fired. Megan and I belly-crawled away as quickly as possible, hidden now by the advertised “fifty thousand cubic feet of thick white smoke.” The minute we hit the trees, we scrambled to our feet and started running.
It would only take a few seconds for them to realize that Ken was no longer shooting at them. The plan had been for him to fire a quick burst, doing as much damage as possible, and then to leave the area before they could get a fix on his location. After that, he would follow my earlier route and meet us back on the trail.
Megan and I tore down the trail and rounded the first curve. I saw the carbine leaning against the tree where I had left it and grabbed it on the run. As we rounded the next curve, I grabbed Megan’s shoulder and pulled her off of the trail to the right, where we ran only a few yards through the brush before kneeling in some scrub to hide and pant for breath.
Handing her the pistol from my holster, I fumbled my belt pouch open to grab another smoke bomb. Then I
