Girl Takes The Oath (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 5) (17 page)

“It’s all just fighting, Mr. Ambassador, at least in my experience,” Emily replied. “What’s in your heart matters more than a style.”

“You are a soldier, Miss Tenno?” Jiao Long asked.

“And a competitor, sir. Perhaps we’ll meet in the ring.” She said it to test him, and he seemed surprised, but something in his grip indicated otherwise. She held on a moment longer, trying to get a read on him, to feel his pulse, his warmth, his
chi
, but he remained elusive, dark inside, she thought, not lucid, and the smile he flashed at her said he could read her, too, maybe even better than she read him.

That this was not a friend, or even an ally, she saw clearly enough; and something else snatched at the edges of her mood, less clear, not quite focused enough to claim her attention, something restless, crouching, perhaps ready to leap at her…
why couldn’t she see him more clearly?
How sharp her intuitions had been three years ago, how incisively she felt what other people felt. For all its emphasis on discipline, the regimen of the Academy seemed to have dulled whatever acuity her heart used to have. All that remained undetermined for her in this slow decline is whether it was a development to be lamented or welcomed. Did it offer liberation from the great
kami
who haunted her dreams and meditations?

“Mr. Secretary, it’s time,” a gray-suited functionary leaned in to say.

“Well, best of luck in the tournament, Miss Tenno,” O’Brien said. “We’ll all be watching with great interest.”

Zhang bowed to Emily and wished her well, before following the Secretary, trailed by his own security detail. Dong and Jiao left with him, while Michael lingered for a moment.

“Troubled?” he asked, in response to her faraway look.

“No, it’s nothing. I mean…”

“Is that him?” Andie asked.

“Don’t fight him,” Yuki said. “Please, sweetheart, I don’t trust him.”

“I know what you mean, Mom.”

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Chapter Fifteen

The Sweet Science

After two rounds, Emily had registered two wins, one against an Australian sailor, strong and quick—she took him down in three straight falls, once with a leg sweep and heel kick to the chest that left him struggling for air, and twice more with joint-lock throws and a pain compliance hold that led to an early tap-out.

The second match pitted her against the boxing champion from Camp Pendleton, outside of San Diego. Good hand-skills meant she had to be careful inside and at range, since his long arms created a formidable advantage. When he tagged her on the side of the head with a quick left hook, she went down and rolled out of reach.

“That’s my girl,” Connie said, standing on one side of the ring next to Theo.

“Oh, please,” he said. “She totally slipped that punch, and the fall…”

“Do you think they bought it?” she asked, tipping her head to the crowd of Marines watching nearby.

“Clever girl.”

Trying to follow up on his apparent success in the first point, the boxer moved in behind a jab and Emily surprised him by ducking under and striking a sharp blow to the biceps just below the shoulder. He winced in pain and tried to wrap her up in his long arms, but she’d already hit him several more times, once on the opposite arm, twice more to the center of the chest, the soft spot just below the ribs, and one final blow under the chin. As he staggered back from the onslaught, she crossed one foot behind the other to stick a heel into the same spot on his chest.

Theo watched as she stood over her opponent and offered him a hand up. “Man, she knows how to sell it,” he observed.

One more takedown happened so fast, the boxer looked completely helpless—another lunging jab and instead of blocking, she seized his wrist, stepped up on his forward leg just behind the knee—he’d crouched slightly to get a better angle, not realizing how vulnerable it would make him—and kipped up to his shoulder, where she scissored her legs around his neck. The rotational inertia of her body so high above his center of gravity spun him around until he could no longer stand. Once he was down, a chorus of howls and jeers serenaded her as she choked him off, maintaining a compliance hold on the captive wrist, until he tapped out. He stumbled out of the ring, rubbing his neck and looking even more bewildered than the Marines watching on all sides.

“He should be grateful he’s still got his knees,” Connie said. “That wasn’t even close.”

Theo scanned the crowd, wary of the reception, and walked over to a group of SEALs standing off to one side.

“That’s your girl?” one of them asked.

“Not
my
girl. More like a cousin or a niece.” Theo replied.

“And you let her go through with this?”

“Some idiot put her into the men’s division,” another one said.

“What on earth does she think she’s doing?”

“Don’t look at me,” Theo said. “I tried to talk her out of it.”

“That last move she put on Talavera, spinning him down by the neck, that was pretty awesome,” someone behind him said.

“She coulda snapped his neck with a move like that. Reckless.”

“I don’t get you, Castro,” Theo said. “Which is it? Is she not tough enough or too tough?”

“She better not expect special treatment, you know, if she gets me in the draw.”

“You think you can take her?” Landry asked, and Castro snorted out his disdain.

“How would you handle her?” Morley asked.

“Oh, come on. One solid punch would finish her. Hell, a slap or two and the high hard one would do it.”

“And if she kicks your ass, you’ll let her into the clubhouse?” Theo asked.

“Right, like that’s gonna happen.”

“And Talavera?” Theo asked. “She just got lucky there, I suppose.”

“Whatever.”

“Castro, you’re the one who’s always saying women shouldn’t have lower physical standards, but you meet one who passes the same standards you did and you get all pissy.”

Theo stormed off with these words, frustrated at losing his cool. Over by the aluminum stands, he spied Connie smirking at him. A few feet away, Emily stood with the family, letting Yuki tend to the cheek where she must have thought Talavera had struck her daughter. To go stand with her now would be to sacrifice any credibility he might still have with the Marines and SEALs watching from the other side of the ring. The pressure of waiting threatened to squeeze all the pleasure of the surprise out of him, so he slouched over to the bench where he’d dumped his gear and watched the remainder of the second round matches.

Before last year, the “Brawl” had been run like any number of other martial arts tournaments: open to the public, with the
kumite
judged according to a standard point system—points awarded for blows that would disable if delivered full force, three or five wins a match, and restrictions on acceptable targets. But after a high school girl surprised everyone by winning the men’s
kumite
, the tournament was closed to the public, and the rules modified. Now it resembled a tough-man competition more than a
kumite
, with no restrictions on the force of blows. The only limits imposed were intended to prevent serious injury or maiming. A tap out, often as the result of a submission hold, decided most matches, though a few ended in knockouts.

If Theo hadn’t seen her manhandle the spec-ops mercenaries who’d attacked his sister’s home almost three years ago, he wouldn’t have been able to imagine how she could win a single match under these rules. Smaller, lighter and not any quicker than the men she was likely to meet in the ring, she might be able to outpoint someone with the soft touches of sparring rules, but not in a full-contact match. As it was, Theo only wondered if she could win without seriously hurting someone before it was all over.

After three rounds, a dozen SEALs were added to the tournament, rounding out the remaining field to thirty-two competitors. “It’s now or never,” he thought, as Emily made a beeline for him across the stadium the moment the next match was announced over the loudspeaker.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“It’s only fair.”

“Fair, how? Do you think I won’t fight you, that I’ll give up the tournament?”

“You won’t win their respect like this.”

“Yeah, I already got an earful from Connie about letting the boys win.”

“She’s not wrong, Emily, and I can’t stress that enough. Please, just try not to win the tournament. Proving you’re tough isn’t enough to win over the Marines. You need to show them you can stand up to a friend.”

“And that’s where you come in?”

“More or less.”

“And you think I’ll take it easy on you?”

“That’s not gonna impress any jarheads. And don’t think I won’t knock you on your ass if I get half a chance.”

Not even ten minutes later, and much of that time taken up by the referee explaining the rules once again to the participants, Theo found himself lying flat on his back, staring up into her eyes as she reached a hand down. He’d hit her once, catching her on the jaw-line just below the ear, hard enough to send her spinning to the ground. At least it seemed like he’d hit her, but now he wasn’t so sure he’d felt the impact or any significant resistance from her face and the muscles in her neck. The padding in his grappling gloves would have dissipated some of the force, and he’d heard her cry out when she went down. That was the first point, and he remembered thinking as she picked herself up how pissed at him Andie would be.

The next point was little more than a blur in his memory—she’d punched, he’d blocked and created an opening for a hook-uppercut combination. It all felt right, like she’d go down again, until he felt that sting under his arm. He’d missed her both times, though he hardly knew how, and she’d hit him on the bottom rib, exposed by the overextended arm that missed. When he winced and tried to twist away, she hit him three more times, in the ribs, the biceps—which left him totally exposed—and a stunning backfist across the nose. And things went south from there. He tried to stagger back from the rain of blows that just kept coming, none of them so hard as to put him down, but so many that it felt almost intoxicating. No way to block, since each blow seemed to anticipate his block and his counter. One more step and he’d be out of range, and then something hit him, much harder, like a kick from a mule, right in the center of his chest. It practically lifted him off his feet and planted him on his back a few feet away; breathing became difficult.

Another point: the thought occurred to him just to tackle her, get her somehow into a submission hold. His superior mass and leverage ought to be formidable advantages, and it would make sense to the Marines. Did he hold back, after the last point? Something went awry, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where or when, or how she’d gotten hold of his right hand. A subtle bit of thumb pressure on the back—
why couldn’t he jerk it free?
—wrist pulled up and hand bent down, harrowing pain, he wanted to slap at her with his left, but he just couldn’t reach her, and when he tried to shift his hips to bring her within range she pushed forward and forced him to his knees. He looked up at her, hoping no tears would show, and she smiled back, and before he knew it she’d stepped over his helpless arm and rolled him over until his face was pressed into the grass, her feet locked over his neck and the captive arm twisted between her legs. If she’d wanted to prolong his humiliation, she could easily have prevented even the motion of tapping out.

One last fall, though he had no notion of it being needed to demonstrate her mastery. Couldn’t he just concede now? No, he’d insisted on this, as the office of a friend, and he had to see it through. Might as well fight like her, sparring-style,
shotokan
. He assumed the position, one fist in front of the other, one foot forward, and she reciprocated, except her hands were wrong, open, one above like a greeting, one below as if expecting a gift. What else to do, but step in and jab, maybe look to slip in a combination behind it? He knew better than to try a kick; even if he hadn’t seen what she could do with her feet in the previous matches, he’d had plenty of other opportunities to find out over the last few years.

When an opening presented itself, he couldn’t resist—a jab to set the distance for the hook, his shoulders rolling through, positioning him for the uppercut. How strange the result felt to him, his arms caught in her sticky blocks. She hadn’t grabbed his arms, merely curled her hands around his wrists—to grab on would make her vulnerable, he could see that much—and every move he made to extricate himself left
him
vulnerable to sharp inside strikes, his neck and face, his ribs and solar plexus. Once entangled, no way out presented itself, and he didn’t play chess as well as she did. She smiled at him again underneath those dark, deep eyes, a friend and an opponent at once. Unnerving.
Had he trespassed, without realizing it, into her personal domain?
The blows came fast and they stung. He was afraid to step back and catch another mule kick in the chest, so he stepped forward and tried to push her away. That’s when she grabbed his wrist and twisted him down, and then over as she pivoted to throw him across the ring.

Lying there, looking up into those dark eyes—“C’mon, big guy. I think you’re done,” she said—letting her hoist him up to his feet, he was certain she’d slipped that punch, and he could almost chuckle at how cleverly she’d manipulated the scene, the referee, the Marines who stood silently staring from the edge of the ring. His ribs made laughing risky so he tried to suppress it, that and something he saw in those eyes, the familiar darkness he’d seen before, warm, welcoming, but something more, a glint of a sharper spirit, he’d almost call it demonic… if he had the nerve. He didn’t feel as banged up as he expected, more bewildered than bruised, as if he’d lost something primal and fierce in the fight.
Had she taken something from him?
She pulled his arm over her shoulder and helped him out of the ring.

“Sorry about the ribs,” she said. “I got a little carried away.”

“It’s okay. I deserved it.”

She sat him down next to Connie in the bleachers, since he asked not to have to face his sister just yet.

“It looked like she took you to school,” she said, once Emily was out of earshot.

“Yup.”

“At least you managed to get a lick in.”

“Yeah, right.”

~~~~~~~

In all her matches, she knew who the audience needed to be: the Marines seated around the ring. Everything she did, every punch, kick or submission hold had to be shaped for them. But another set of eyes concerned her all the while. Dark and brooding, difficult to read, but easy to sense, Jiao Long watched her every move, studied her technique… and she studied his.

Subtle, efficient, occasionally cruel—or so Emily thought—no wasted movements, but without appearing at all rushed, Jiao progressed through the rounds of the tournament as enigmatically as she did. He preferred a soft style, deceptive, elusive, round blocks and fierce joint locks—at least that’s how he seemed to her in the first two rounds. Later, he took another tack, more direct, willing to trade punches, and giving better than he got. He won a fourth round match with three spinning kicks and a knockout. Anyone watching closely would have to conclude that he had no particular style. Emily recognized the illusion, since she was determined to create the same effect for herself.