that completely masked the crunching sound of bone against bone.
Continuing his hip-twisting, counter-clockwise spin-move, Bulatt slammed his right forearm solidly into his rear assailant’s face; the brain-scrambling strike crushing the man’s nose and knocked him unconscious at the same instant, thereby cutting off his agonized scream in mid-shriek.
Then, as his rear-assailant was still crumbling to the ground, Bulatt reversed his spin move, used a sweeping left forearm block to deflect his front assailant’s slashing fist strike and knock him sideways; caught the man’s wrist with both hands; pulled him forward off balance; and then drove a hip-snapping round-kick square into his solar plexus. The impact drove most of the air out of the muscular man’s lungs, and dropped him to his knees in shock.
“Hold on,” Quince Lanyard said, suddenly shifting the focal point of his spotting scope over a few feet, zooming in, and then refocusing, “I think we’ve got something interesting going on out there after all.”
“What is it,” Jake Gavin asked from the back of the camper, his head snapping up alert.
“Not sure just yet, mate; but I think the copper’s are starting to have a go at each other.”
“Bloody hell,” Gavin exclaimed as he scrambled up into the main camper bed, “let me see.”
Reacting with reflexes honed from twenty-some years of martial arts and law enforcement training, Bulatt immediately stepped away from his two downed assailants — one now face down unconscious on the wet asphalt, and the other trying to regain his feet, red-faced and gasping for air — into a classic defensive stance.
“You fucking… bastard — ” his front assailant managed to gasp out with what little air he’d managed to suck into his nearly-paralyzed lungs.
“You really want to stay down,” Bulatt warned. “Don’t push it.”
The struggling man looked like he was going to try to say something else. But then, with what appeared to be a super-human effort, he forced himself erect, lunged at Bulatt with his hands extended for what he probably intended to be a lethal throat strike; and then absorbed the full boot-sole impact of a leaping front kick that snapped his head back with a burst of blood from his split lips.
Bulatt could have stepped back, allowing his front assailant to crumble to the ground next to his unmoving partner, and then resorted to far-less-violent control techniques to subdue and handcuff his assailants. Both men were badly hurt, and not really capable of causing any further grief at the moment.
He considered the idea as he watched the big man stagger backwards, trying to maintain his balance on wobbling legs; and probably would have halted his counter-attack, had the man’s initial hand-strike not been attempted in such a savage and potentially lethal manner.
And then, too, it occurred to Bulatt that the big fellow just might be useful in the serious discussion that was going to take place in the next few minutes.
So, instead of showing mercy to a defeated opponent, he lunged forward into the man’s muscular chest with his shoulder, whirled to his left, driving his left elbow into the man’s ribs and sternum with another screaming ki-yi — shattering and separating left-side rib bones from cartilage; whirled back around sharply with his right elbow, causing precisely the same damage to the big man’s right rib cage and sternum; and then stepped back and away into the same defensive stance as the stricken man collapsed to the wet pavement in a unconscious heap.
“Holy mother of God,” Jake Gavin whispered, his right eye glued to the spotting scope.
“What’s the matter?” Quince Lanyard demanded.
“He took them out, those big SWAT roosters, both of them, one-two, like they were a couple of snot-nosed kids.”
“What? Let me see that scope,” Lanyard demanded, grabbing for the spotting scope.
“I’m telling you, mate,” Gavin said as Lanyard fumbled to re-set the scope on the camper mattress, “I think that bloke could take our man Wallis on, straight up, hand-to-hand, and maybe even walk away with the silver cup.”
“No fucking way,” Lanyard whispered, and then blinked in disbelief as he tried to focus the scope’s rain- blurred field on view on the two sprawled bodies in front of the dark blue van.
“Maybe not; but you and I definitely want to be there to watch if the boss and that lad ever do square up.”
Bulatt was moving quickly now, working on the assumption that his freedom of movement could start closing down at any moment.
A search of the dark blue van’s rear storage compartment revealed a number of useful items, including a roll of nylon strapping tape, a six-foot length of heavy chain that was probably used to tow cars, a pair of heavy-duty padlocks, and several soft drink cans in a plastic ice chest filled with crushed ice and water.
Bulatt used the strapping tape to tightly secure the hands of his rear assailant behind his back; taped his ankles together; dragged the limp body into the back of the van; turned him over and around so that he was lying face down with his head near the van’s rear double doors; checked to make sure he was breathing steadily; secured one end of the chain snugly — but not too tight — around the man’s thick neck with one of the locks; and connected the other end of the chain to the welded portion of the van’s rear bumper mount with the second lock.
After gently closing the van doors against the chain, Bulatt used the strapping tape again to secure his front assailant’s hands behind his back, creating a strapping-tape hobble that would limit the extended movement any one foot to eighteen inches.
Then he went back to his van to collect some of his gear, inserted a pair of electronic noise-suppressors in his ears, locked the satchel in the camera case, returned to the dark blue van, grabbed the now-semiconscious and softly-moaning man by his jacket collar, propped him up against the side of the van, set the soft drink cans aside, and then tossed the ice-water contents of the plastic chest into his face.
The big man’s eyes flew open in shock; first from the sudden impact of the icy water, and then from the searing pains in his ribs and sternum that sent hot needles into his brain with every slight movement of his legs, arms and upper torso.
“Okay, sport,” Bulatt said as he yanked the big man to his feet, and then held him steady until he finally stopped blinking in shock and gasping for breath, “now that we’ve come to a mutual understanding, I think it’s time we had a serious talk with some of your friends.”
The receptionist looked up — first in surprise, and then in shock — as Bulatt shoved his bleeding and strapping-tape-secured assailant in through the front door entrance to Hood Electronics; and then proceeded to support and muscle the barely-conscious man past the reception counter toward the right-side door in staggering eighteen-inch steps.
“Can I help — ?” the receptionist tried.
“That’s all right, I’ll announce myself,” Bulatt said as he shoved his trussed-up assailant through the second door.
Bill Rightmore was still holding the phone in his hand, trying to understand what his frantic receptionist was trying to tell him, when a big man — whose arms and feet were restrained by strapping tape — staggered through the closed swing-doors to his research lab and then collapsed to the floor; immediately followed by another familiar figure with a pistol in one hand and a federal agent badge case in the other.
“What the hell — ?!” Rightmore started to demand, his right hand making a reflexive grab for a nearby drawer before Bulatt waved him off with the Sig Sauer.
“Federal Agent,” Bulatt said calmly as he sat down on the edge of one of the lay-out tables, and placed his badge case back into his jacket pocket. “Move over by the doors.”
“But — ?”
“Do it now,” Bulatt ordered, calming aiming the Sig at the ashen electronics expert’s chest with his right hand while he pulled his Blackberry cell phone out of its belt holder with his left.
“You won’t shoot me,” Rightmore tried as he began to move grudgingly toward the now-closed doors. “You can’t; I haven’t done anything to provoke you.”
“Yes, you have… and yes, I can, Mr. Rightmore, because I consider you to be a very dangerous man; someone who is perfectly capable of going for a hidden weapon — as you tried to do just a moment ago — and
