Point of Impact

handle with the hole in it. The cutting hooks themselves looked like little talons. The steel had an intricate pattern of lines and whorls in it.

“The traditional ones are usually longer and sharp on both edges. Guru had these made for her by a master knife smith and martial artist in Keenesburg, Colorado, a guy named Steve Rollert. I guess it must be ten, twelve years ago, now. They are forged Damascus, folded and hammered to make hundreds or thousands of layers in the steel. Edge is heat-treated differently than the body, so it’s hard and will stay sharp, while the body has a little more flex to it.

“See, you put your forefinger through the hole and grip it so. You can also turn it around and use your little finger, with the blade coming out on the thumb side, like this.”

She demonstrated the move, then moved it back to the first grip.

“And perfectly legal to carry around, I suppose?”

She grinned. “Actually, you can in some states if you wear them on your belt, out in the open. Not most places if you conceal them.”

“Kind of like brass knuckles,” he said. “Or maybe knuckle, singular.”

“But much better,” she said. “The blades are extremely sharp, and you can hit with the ring end without hurting your finger.”

“Great.”

She missed the sarcasm, or more likely, ignored it. “Aren’t they?” She did a little series of moves, whipping the two knives back and forth.

A slight error and there was gonna be blood everywhere. His or hers. He took half a step back.

“They aren’t very long,” he said, and even as he spoke, he was glad they weren’t longer.

“ ’Cause they are slashers rather than stabbers. All the major peripheral arteries are fairly close to the skin’s surface. Carotids, antecubitals, femorals, popliteals. These will reach all of those. Cut a big artery, and you bleed out pretty quick if you don’t do something. Kill you quicker than not breathing will, and blood is lot harder to replace than air.”

“How nice.”

“I remember this guy Rollert has a sense of humor, too. These are custom work, but he makes a tool-steel version of these coated with black Teflon. He calls them box cutters, and that’s how he markets them. ‘Why, what’s the problem, Officer? This is a box cutter, see, it says so right there on the handle.’ I’ve got a set of those tucked away somewhere. Of course, those cost about a twentieth of what these did.”

She waved the knives again, getting into it. It was spooky to watch those things blur as she whipped them around.

“What’d the cheap ones cost?”

“About fifty bucks each.”

“You mean these two little pieces of steel cost a thousand dollars?!”

“Quality doesn’t come cheap.”

Michaels shook his head. His darling bride, carrying his unborn son, was a mistress of death and destruction. She talked about such toys the way other women talked about getting their hair done.

“You can do your djurus holding one of these in each hand, and with only a slight adjustment, do them the same.”

“Yeah, and slice off my nose if I make a mistake.”

“Better your nose than some… other extremity.” She grinned. “Don’t worry. By the time you know all eighteen djurus, you’ll be able to use these or a longer knife or a stick, no problem. Might nick yourself if you get sloppy, but as long as you keep proper form, you won’t. Silat is weapons-based, remember. Only use your hands if nothing better is available.”

She waved the little knives back and forth, crossing and uncrossing her hands in patterns that looked damned dangerous to him.

But she was excited, and as upbeat as he’d seen her lately, and he liked seeing that.

“These were the first knives Guru showed me how to use. Traditionally, they were backup. Women carried them a lot. You could wind one into your hair or tuck it into a sarong. These have a leather sheath, but the old-style ones made in Java usually have wooden scabbards. Supposedly, there were guys in the old country who could grip them between their toes and turn your legs and groin into hamburger while you were still checking their hands for a weapon.”

“Lovely.”

She kept twirling and slicing the air as she talked. “They make them longer, but the short ones are best for djurus. Even though djurus are practice and knives are for application, you can do the moves with steel hands. Watch.”

She stopped moving, and then did djuru three. Her hands didn’t move any slower than they did when she did the form unarmed, at least not that he could tell. “See? You block or punch like usual, only these give the moves more of a sting.”

“ ‘A sting,’ right. I’d be careful on djuru two,” he said. “Way your boobs are getting big, you come across your chest on that inside block, you’ll shear off a nipple.”

She laughed, then put the knives back into their little velvet nests. “Thanks. I feel better. Now I can go back and finish sorting my shoes.”

She handed him the box. “Put these somewhere we won’t forget them, and I’ll show you how to play with them when we get a chance.”

She went back to her chore, and he looked at the box. Well. He knew what she did for fun when he married her. She had saved his life with the art once, and he had learned enough to use it himself, a little. He had been training seriously for almost a year, and he seldom missed a day of practice, thanks to Toni’s proximity. After nearly being brained once by an assassin using a cane and pretending to be a little old lady, Michaels could hardly bitch about the down-and-dirty side of fighting. Pentjak silat was about as dirty as it came, and when somebody was trying to bash your head in, all bets were off. When you reached into your bag of tricks, this was the stuff you wanted to come up with. A guy charging at you with mayhem in mind might think twice if he saw you whirling these nasty little claws around with a demented grin while you did it. He sure as hell would.

Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!

He smiled at the wooden box and went to put it on a shelf in the living room. It would make a great conversation piece at a dinner party. Or a conversation stopper, depending on what you wanted to do.

It would be very interesting to see what the two of them decided to teach their son when he got old enough to wonder about all those funny dances Mama and Daddy did. For certain, they would show him how to protect himself. Michaels’s father had taught him how to do a little boxing when he’d been about six or seven, and while he’d never been very good at it, at least he had developed a sense of self-confidence in his ability to protect himself.

Once he’d started learning silat, he realized how much he didn’t know, but since he hadn’t spent a lot of time fighting, it had worked out okay anyhow.

Funny to think about, teaching your son how to fight, when he wasn’t even born yet. Next thing you knew, he’d be buying him baseball gloves and electric trains.

14

Quantico, Virginia

Michaels had left the director’s office, feeling a nagging sense of unease. Director Allison had ostensibly called him in for a progress report, but the real reason was, he was sure, that she had been given the word to light a fire under his ass. His backside certainly felt warm enough when she was done talking. She wasn’t exactly dumping on him for what the agency had or had not done so far, but she must have used the term “interagency cooperation” ten times during their conversation. As much as he hated politics, Michaels knew what that meant.