Net Force

4

Toni Fiorella was in the small gym practicing djurus when two members of the newest class of FBI mainline recruits came in. There were maybe a dozen people already working out — lifting weights, using the flywheel bikes or punching the heavy bag, but most of them were regulars, instructors or people assigned to Training HQ. The trainees tended to stay in their own gym, which was just fine with her. Newbies, most of them fresh out of law or accounting schools, tended to think they knew everything, and that the Bureau should feel honored they had chosen to grace it with their wonderful presence.

She shifted into a right-front stance, most of her weight on her forward foot, knee bent, did the windshield-wiper-like two-handed block to control the center, left, right, then shot her right elbow upward in a short, tight strike to an imaginary opponent's head. She slapped the elbow with her left hand to simulate the hit, slid the left hand under the right arm, where it stood ready to sweep away an opponent's return punch, then shot the straight right and left punches that followed.

This was the first djuru, and a very simple sequence.

One of the newbies, a tall, muscular man in blue spandex bike shorts and a matching FBI-trainee T-shirt, looked at Toni, then chuckled and said something to his buddy.

The second newbie was a short and compact man, a bit on the pudgy side, with a thick bar of eyebrows. He laughed in return.

Toni ignored the two, did the left punch and chambered that arm by her hip, then stepped forward with her left foot, to mirror the moves she'd just done.

Day's death had affected her more than she would have thought, and Alex's state of mind was also weighing heavily on her. She'd come to the gym to burn off some of her frustration at not being able to reach out to Alex the way she wanted. The workout wasn't helping much, and she wasn't feeling particularly charitable just now.

She finished the series of steps and strikes, made the backfist turn and started back the way she'd come, starting into the second djuru's pattern. In Bukti, there were eight short forms, or djurus, that many sambuts—prearranged fighting sets — and techniques beyond counting based on those few simple routines.

Spandex and Eyebrows had faced off against each other; they danced back and forth, sparring. Even though she knew she should have been concentrating on her form — her guru would have frowned at her lack of attention — she watched the two men peripherally. Spandex threw a lot of high round and spinning kicks, most of them to the head, while Eyebrows barked several kiais, the karate-style guttural yells used for focus, as he backpedaled and ducked or blocked the kicks.

She figured Spandex for one of the Korean styles, Eyebrows for a Japanese or Okinawan fighting form. Both men looked fairly adept, though Spandex was better.

She saw Spandex grin, then launch a flying-spinning back-kick.

Right out of a bad action movie, she thought. She kept her pace even, trying to pretend she didn't notice them. Her expression gave her away, though — she couldn't stop the smile completely.

Spandex caught it, and he was not pleased.

He did a quick bow to Eyebrows to show he was done, then turned to face her. "Something funny, ma'am?" He had a strong Southern accent. Alabama, Mississippi, maybe.

Ma'am. Well, he wasn't paranoid, because she was laughing at him, however hidden she tried to keep it. And, truthfully, she hadn't really tried very hard to hide it. She had to watch this, the feeling of superiority she got when she saw one of the other Oriental fighting styles. Everybody thought their own system was better; she knew hers was.

Toni was about to the end of her set anyhow. She stopped. She knew she didn't look particularly imposing in her old black sweats, wrestling shoes and sweaty headband. And at five-five and a hundred and thirty pounds, she was almost a foot shorter and probably seventy pounds lighter than Spandex. But his tone irritated her.

"No," she said. "Nothing funny."

"Really? I thought maybe you were, you know, amused by my form or something."

"No. It's not amusing," she said. She started to turn away.

Eyebrows decided this was a good time to jump in. He said, "My friend here has a second-degree black belt." He waved at her, as if to take in the form she'd been practicing. "I bet he could teach you some things."

"I'm sure he could," Toni said. Yeah, how to move wrong. But she kept her mouth shut as she headed for her towel. Might as well shower. She wasn't going to be able to concentrate with these two bozos flexing and being macho. She'd grown up with a houseful of brothers; she knew once the testosterone got to flowing, it was like the full-moon tide, there was no stopping it. Pretty soon, these two would be spitting on the ground and adjusting their crotches, or as close as they could get to it indoors.

Manhood was a tricky business. She ought to know better than to mess with it by now.

"So, what is that little shuffle thing you were doing?" Spandex said. He and Eyebrows grinned at each other.

Little shuffle thing. Oh, boy.

She turned back to face the pair. "It's called a djuru," she said. "The style is Pukulan Pentjak Silat Bukti Negara — Serak."

Spandex gave her a big grin. "Sounds like some kind of Thai food with peanut sauce. You, uh, have any rank in it?"

"We don't have belts. You're either a student or a teacher. I'm a student."

"Well, it looks very nice," Spandex said. "Even though I never heard of it."

Nice.

Toni smiled. There were a lot of things she generally let pass when she heard them from obnoxious men, and condescension had to be high on her list, since she got so much of it. She was only twenty-seven — that got comments, a woman — more comments, and Italian — that one was usually good for three or four Mafia jokes. She wondered why it was men felt the need to behave with her as they sometimes did. Not all men, not all the time, but enough so that it was sometimes a chore dealing with them. More than sometimes, it seemed to her.

Another day, in a better mood, she'd have smiled and shaken her head and turned away, let the boys have their fun. But right now, she didn't much feel the milk of human kindness flowing through her. It had been a long, crappy night, and was shaping up to be a long and crappier day. She didn't need this. And know what? She didn't have to take it.

So she said, "I'm sorry your education has been so narrow."

Spandex frowned. He knew an insult when he heard it. "Excuse me?"

She smiled wider, as sweet as she could make it. "Which part didn't you understand?"

"Look, ma'am, there's no reason to get snotty."

"Oh, I agree. So, you're a black belt, is that right?"

"That's right."

"Tell you what. Why don't you come over here and see if you can hit me? And I'll show you how my little shuffle works."

Spandex and Eyebrows exchanged glances. Spandex hesitated, and she knew why. This was a no-win situation for him. If he whacked her, he was a big bully picking on a little woman. If she whacked him, his manhood would be in great jeopardy.

"I don't think so, ma'am. I am an expert. I wouldn't want to hurt you."

"I wouldn't worry about that," she said. "I don't think it's likely."

She knew this was not a good thing to be doing. Her guru would be irritated in the extreme to know she was egging this guy on, but she couldn't seem to help herself. The trainee was so arrogant it rose from him like steam from a fresh-cooked hot dog on a winter's day in the Bronx.

Eyebrows waggled the hairy bar at Spandex. "Hey, you don't have to hit her hard. You can pull it. Just show her a couple of your moves."

Spandex grinned. A chance to shine? How could he pass that up? "All right, ma'am."

He walked closer. When he was about three meters away, he stopped. Bowed. Dropped into a narrow horse stance and edged forward, hands lifted, one high, one low. "You ready?"

She almost laughed. Might as well send her a telegram. "Oh, yeah."

He was fast — and he was smarter than he looked. He didn't try one of the flashy and stupid high kicks. He scooted, stepped in, and fired a quick, hard right punch at her chest, right leg leading. It was a good shot, in balance, aimed where it wouldn't cause her any great damage if she missed deflecting it. Kept his other hand up to cover.

Perfect.

He probably expected her to step back and parry, but that was not how it went in her version of silat, not in this situation. She double-blocked with both hands open, stepped toward him, set her left foot down in a front stance and ducked under his outstretched arm as she swung her right elbow into his ribs under the armpit. Made a nice hollow thump when she hit him. Stopped him cold.

Surprised the hell out of him, too.

Her feet were already in place. Base—

She reached up behind him fast, caught his left shoulder with her left hand. Angle—

At the same time, she reached up and across with her right hand and laid it on his forehead, elbow down. Leverage—

Those things done, she pushed forward, then tugged down and back at his shoulder at the same time she swept his head backward.

Base, angle, leverage. If you had all three, the technique always worked. No exceptions.

She had all three.

Spandex went down like a chainsawed redwood, hit the mat flat on his back. She could have followed up with elbows, knees, whatever, but instead she moved back two steps. She didn't want to hurt him. Just embarrass him.

The entire sequence, from the time of his punch until she stepped away, had taken just under two seconds.

He rolled up and started for her. "Bitch!"

Well. So much for "ma'am."

He probably had a sequenced attack planned, a favorite combination of kicks and punches, fakes, sweeps, before the killer shot that usually worked for him when he sparred for points. If she stood there and let him get to it, it could be dangerous.

She didn't let him get to it.

As he launched a left jab to set her up, she stepped outside with the two-handed block, alligatored his arm with both hands just above his elbow, pivoted, dropped all her weight to one knee and pinwheeled him. Some of the boxing styles did teach their students how to do a little grappling and how to fall, but apparently Spandex's was not one of them.

He did a half-flip, and slammed into the mat on his upper back again, hard enough to knock his wind out. This was all simple stuff, right out of the first djuru. Why work any harder than you had to?

Toni came to her feet, waiting to see if he was going to try a third attack.

Spandex was not so foolish. This time when he got up, he held out one hand in a no mas gesture. Lesson over. He knew when he was overmatched.

Toni felt pretty good, despite knowing she should not have felt that way. Then she glanced at the entrance to the gym.

Alex Michaels leaned against the wall, watching her.

Michaels walked over to where Toni stood. He was in decent shape. He ran three or four miles most days, did a little triking and had a Bowflex machine in his condo for resistance work, but it had been a long time since his hand-to-hand training in the military, and later when he'd joined Net Force. Computer geeks didn't spend too much time in real-world hot-field situations. He thought he could handle himself in most one-on-one situations, but he would not have particularly wanted to take on the big guy just getting up off the mat, and after watching Toni toss the poor joker around like a Frisbee, he sure wouldn't have wanted to take her on. He knew from her file what the fighting system was, though he didn't know much about it. Amazing.

"Very interesting," he said. "It's called silat. Where did you learn it?"

She wiped at her face with a towel. "There was a little old Dutch-Indonesian woman who lived in my neighborhood when I was about thirteen. Her name was Susan DeBeers. She was in her sixties, retired, her husband recently dead. She liked to sit on the stoop of the building across the street, smoke a small carved meerschaum pipe and enjoy the spring sunshine. One Saturday, four gang-bangers decided they wanted her spot. She got up to leave, but it wasn't fast enough for them. One of them tried to speed her up with a kick."

Toni slung the towel over her shoulder. "These guys were eighteen, twenty, had knives and sharpened screwdrivers tucked into their pockets. I was waiting for a bus, I watched the whole thing. It took maybe fifteen seconds, and I couldn't tell you to this day exactly what she did to them. Here was this little old potbellied woman smoking like a chimney who pounded and threw four thugs around like tennis balls, kept her pipe in her mouth the whole time, didn't work up a lather. She put all four of them into the emergency room. I decided I needed to learn whatever it was she knew."

"She had a school?"

"No. I walked across the street a couple of days later — took me that long to get my nerve up — and asked her if she would teach me. She just nodded and smiled and said, ‘Sure.' I trained with her until after I graduated from college and moved to Washington. Whenever I go home to visit my folks, I work out with her."

"She must be getting up there," Michaels said.

"Eighty-two on her last birthday," Toni said, "and I still wouldn't want to try her head-to-head."

"Amazing."

"It's a very scientific art, based on leverage and angles. It assumes you'll be fighting with multiple opponents, all of whom will be bigger and stronger than you. So it relies on technique and not muscle, which in my case is a good thing. Normally, women didn't get into it very far, but Guru DeBeers' husband traveled a lot. He wanted her to have something to protect herself." Toni stopped. "But I won't bore you with any more esoteric fighting stuff."

"No, I'm interested. How does this compare with something like boxing or judo?"

"Well. Most of the older arts come from countries long civilized. Things like Chinese kung-fu, Korean taekwondo, Japanese jujitsu — they've had hundreds, even thousands of years to refine the techniques. Along the way, some of the really ugly stuff got replaced with more spiritual aspects. Fighting to the death tends to get frowned on in civilized company. Which is not to say that an expert in any of these arts isn't dangerous. A good kung-fu or karate stylist will surely hand you your head if you don't know how to stop him."

"I hear a ‘but' in there," he said.

She grinned. "A lot of silat came out of the jungle only two or three generations ago. There are hundreds of styles, although most of it wasn't practiced in public until Indonesia gained independence in 1949. It's real primal stuff, designed for one thing — to cripple or kill an attacker. It's not civilized. It is as deadly and efficient as they could make it. If a technique didn't work, the player who used it either wound up maimed or dead, so that piece didn't get passed on."

"Interesting."

She grinned. "What you saw here? That was the Bukti, the simple stuff. The parent art, Serak, is a whole new ball-game. Really nasty, and a lot of weapon work — sticks, knives, swords, tridents, even guns."

"And you're supposed to be a nice Italian girl from the Bronx. Remind me not to get on your bad side."

"Hey, Alex?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't get on my bad side." She laughed. "Okay, so what's up? You didn't come here to watch me beat recruits up, did you?"

"No, it's business. We've got another problem," he said. "Somebody just blew up the main subnet server at the Net Force post in Frankfurt, Germany."

"You mean the CIA post."

"Right. Net Force being chartered to operate in this country only, except in cases of international emergency and requiring Presidential authorization for such operation, of course what I meant was the CIA listening post."

That got a grin from her. "Memorized that right out of the charter, huh?"

"Why, whatever do you mean, Deputy Commander Fiorella? Net Force would never do anything illegal."

She smiled wider. He kind of liked that, making her smile. The idea that an FBI unit set up to do computer monitoring would be restricted to the United States was fairly foolish. There were no borders on the net; the web stretched everywhere, and while you could access most of it from anywhere, certain systems were easier to log into with a certain amount of proximity. The CIA was willing to lend its name to Net Force from time to time, in exchange for certain favors they couldn't get on their own. The CIA wasn't supposed to operate within the United States, but nobody really believed it did not. "Let me clean up and let's go see," she said.