How to Archer (4 page)

Yes. If some barefoot dude comes lurching at you in slow-motion wearing loose-fitting pajamas. Which, even though it’s probably happened to me a dozen times (cuckolded husbands, above), doesn’t mean they should build an entire martial art around it. Most of the time you can stop those guys dead in their tracks by just reminding them whose fault the whole situation really is: Did I make you spend so much time at the office? Did I make you play three rounds of golf last weekend? Answer: No, I didn’t. I was too busy pinning your wife’s ankles to her ears.

I have not actually trained in karate, which I’ve often been quoted as calling “the Dane Cook of martial arts.” However, I believe that Dane Cook has since become the Dane Cook of comparisons, so that now the joke has lost all meaning.
²⁴

Krav Maga is Hebrew
²⁵
for “Beat the shit out of it. Literally, until it shits.” It’s also where I hang my self-defense hat. Which in this case is a yarmulke, because Krav Maga was developed in 1930s Czechoslovakia by a Jewish guy named Imi Lichtenfeld, who taught it to other Jews so that they could defend themselves against attacks by their anti-Semitic neighbors, When Israel achieved statehood in 1948, Lichtenfeld taught Krav Maga to the Israeli Defense Forces so that
Israel
could defend itself against attacks by its anti-Semitic neighbors.
²⁶

And I won’t digress into geopolitics or religion or ideology (mainly because I don’t care what you think about any of those things—or anything else, for that matter). But when it comes to fighting, who better to learn from than a people who have been beset, on all sides and for millions of years, by enemies who want nothing more than their complete and utter annihilation?

Answer: the Jews.
²⁷

The way I heard it, Bruce Lee took this idea to
so
he
could star in it. But they totally screwed him. And you know, not to take anything away from David Carradine, but still.

Thailand’s national sport, Muay Thai, is a truly devastating form of kickboxing which utilizes not only the fists and feet, but also the knees and elbows. It is also another discipline
in
which I have not been trained, but
on
which I do like to gamble. Not unlike jai alai.
¡Vaya!

I never trained in this discipline, but
savate
is French for “face kick.” And while the French have a reputation for being effeminate, beret-wearing cheese-nibblers, I think this is unfair, Because they also have a reputation for having the French Foreign Legion. So the next time you’re feeling adventurous, walk into a bar in Algiers and call a Legionnaire a
putain de merde.
Then walk outside and feel around in the sand with your hands, trying to find your head.

As we learned in the section on unarmed combat, my entire body is essentially a weapon. I have killed men with my bare hands. I have killed a man with my bare feet. I have killed a man, albeit accidentally, with my bare knee. But as any secret agent worth his single-malt will tell you, the best way to keep a knife sharp is
to not use it.
Which was supposed to be a clever segue into the section on bladed weapons (below), but I guess now I have to explain what I meant by that, which is this: whenever possible,
avoid unarmed combat.
Because there’s no sense breaking your hand on an enemy’s head when you can just put a bullet in it. In fact, while you’re at it, go ahead and double-tap that poor bastard: it’s not like there’s a bullet shortage.
²⁸

I normally don’t carry a knife, for two reasons. One: this may sound fussy, but I don’t care for the way they affect the fall of my suit jacket. Two: God invented silencers for a reason.

If I feel that I need to carry a knife on a mission—which, again, is exceedingly rarely—it will, and can only, be a Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife.

And say what you will about the British secret services (they’re pussies, etc.), they know how to make a knife. I like the Fairbairn-Sykes for its proven ability to penetrate an enemy’s ribcage with minimal effort. And also for its heavy steel pommel, which is excellent for cracking open walnuts. If I’m ever in a forest or something.

Swords, especially samurai and/or ninja ones, are exceptionally cool. However, their use is of limited practical value to the secret agent, especially given the fact that somebody invented gunpowder about a million years ago. I have not trained in fencing (or vaginal hygiene), so if I am forced to use a sword in combat, I just swing it around like a baseball bat while screaming, at the top of my lungs: “There can be only one!” Which, if done correctly, is surprisingly effective.

After seeing the (shamefully Academy-snubbed) film
Road House,
I was intrigued by the idea of having a razor-sharp blade built into one of my handcrafted Italian shoes. I asked my Italian cordwainer
²⁹
—Antonio Carbone of Casa di Scarpe Carbone—if it would be possible to have this done the next time he was resoling a pair of balmorals for me. Well, you would’ve thought I asked him if he could slap some bigger tits on
la Vergine Maria
and, while he was at it, maybe give her a little more
cuscino
for the
spingendo.
I’ve never seen a man so indignant in my life (a woman yes, but never a man). And although I’ve apologized repeatedly and profusely and Antonio says he’s forgiven me, I can tell he thinks a little bit less of me. As a human being.

Go German or go home.

And yes, I know: they’re a horrible people. But they also make excellent firearms. And while I’m sure many of you are of the opinion that one should always buy American, you’re stupid. Because even though the Colt .45 ACP M1911A is an excellent sidearm-the design of which has remained almost totally unchanged since before WWI-it utterly ruins the lines of my suits. And I personally am not willing to sacrifice style for a teeny little bit of extra stopping power.

Which is why my service weapon is the Walther PPK, Chambered for the .32 ACP cartridge, my Walther has a magazine capacity of seven rounds, plus one in the chamber. And if whatever you’re shooting doesn’t die after you pump eight thirty-two-caliber slugs into it, it’s probably a dragon.

While I am
extremely
fond of my Walther PPK (and if the good folks at Carl Walther GmbH Sportwaffen are reading this book and wish to contact me about becoming a corporate sponsor, I would be open to that), I usually carry a backup weapon, Which is also a Walther.
³⁰
This weapon is an ultracompact, semiautomatic Walther TPH—chambered in .22 LR
³¹
and with a magazine capacity of six rounds, plus one in the chamber—which I keep in my underwear.

Again, there’s a reason why the Third Reich, at its peak, stretched from Leningrad to London: the Germans make good guns. And yes, I know the Nazis lost WWII. I get the paper, But they lost because all the Wehrmacht officers were constantly being rotated off the front lines so they could return to Germany to have their uniforms altered—in a futile attempt to keep up with the constantly changing fashion trends of an unwinnable, two-front war—by Hugo Boss.
³²

They did
not
lose because their assault weapons weren’t awesome. So for my money (which is not actually my own personal money), when I need an assault weapon, I reach for either the MP 40 or the StG 44. And yes, it’s a little creepy at first. But you get over it. Mainly because firing 550 rounds a minute out of either of these weapons gives you a gigantic boner.

My personal preference for German assault weapons notwithstanding, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that regime-toppling workhorse, the AK-47 (or its Chinese variant, the Type 56). Designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947, the AK-47 has a well-deserved reputation for being an exceptionally reliable weapon. It will perform under even the harshest conditions: you can get an AK-47 wet, you can get an AK-47 dirty—hell, you can drag it through a cranberry bog—and you will still be able to fire it accurately. But, while doing so, you will look like a rapper.

I should also take a moment to mention the Uzi. Which, in addition to being an accurate and reliable subcompact assault weapon with both a high muzzle velocity and an extremely high rate of fire, is yet another reason not to mess with the Jews.