Point of Contact

6

Amador pointed out the other features of the hand-forged karambit, then returned it carefully to his leather bag. He then removed two dulled versions — training knives. He stepped back over to Jack, pocketing one as he approached.

“You have trained in martial arts, yes?” Amador asked.

Jack nodded. “Jiu-jitsu, karate, judo. Even a little Krav Maga, thanks to Dom.”

“Good. Then you are familiar with basic blocking and striking with the hands and forearms.”

“Of course.”

“And the more advanced moves that exploit twisting joints, pressure points, and so on? Like aikido?”

“Yes, but I can always get better. That’s why I’m here.”

“Good! Me too! Maybe you can teach me a thing or two.” Amador laughed. And just as suddenly his smile disappeared and his laughing eyes narrowed.

Jack took the hint. He squared up and bowed to his teacher and Amador returned a slighter bow to his student.

“Let’s start with a very basic move, shall we?” Amador raised the karambit high above his head with his right arm. “A common thrust by a street thug or criminal. It takes no training.” He stepped slowly toward Jack and lowered the blade in slow motion. Jack raised his much larger left forearm perpendicular to the strike. Amador’s arm touched Jack’s and they left both arms frozen in the air, holding the position.

Amador turned to Martinez and Dom. “You see? Jack is well trained. He knew how to block this basic strike.” He turned to Jack, much taller than he. “And what does your training tell you to do next?”

Still blocking Amador’s right arm with his left, Jack swung a slow-motion right fist toward Amador’s midsection until it connected.

“Good! Right out of the textbook.” Amador disengaged and took a step back. “Now let’s see what an enemy with a little more skill might be able to do.”

Amador stepped forward again, raising his right arm high again, and slow-motioned his strike down. Jack repeated his block. But when their arms connected, Amador twisted his wrist and turned his elbow in. The dull practice karambit blade turned sharply into Jack’s arm. Faster than an eye blink, the dull blade bit deeper as Amador turned farther and pulled his arm down. The pressure was intense and the leverage against Jack’s arm nearly threw him over. Amador disengaged before Jack lost his balance.

“Of course, with a properly sharpened blade, your arm would be sliced to the bone. You wouldn’t think about the counterpunch. Your brain would be screaming—‘My arm is cut off!’” Amador laughed again.

Jack was impressed. He rubbed his forearm where the blade had touched him. Dom and Martinez nodded appreciatively.

“You’re not injured, are you?” Amador asked, genuinely concerned.

“No, not at all. Just… surprised.”

Amador grinned. “Good. Let’s try one more. Same move by me. But a question first. What is the first thing you’re usually taught when you have no weapon but are being attacked by a man with a knife?”

“Attack the knife. Disarm him,” Jack said.

“Correct. So this time, I will make my clumsy attack and I want you to seize my wrist with one hand and then rip the knife out with the other, just the way you’ve been taught.”

Amador threw another slow-motion overhead strike, driving the blade down toward Jack’s head. Jack countered by seizing Amador’s small wrist in his left hand, then reached for Amador’s gripping hand with his right in an attempt to seize the knife.

“Stop,” Amador said.

Jack froze in place. Amador turned his head to the others seated on the mat.

“You see Jack’s firm grip on my wrist? Very strong! It’s a good move, isn’t it? But watch.” Amador simply twisted his trapped wrist and hand, and the curved blade came into contact with Jack’s wrist. “A real blade instantly cuts through the muscle and tendons of his left hand before his right hand can grab my knife. The pain in his left hand will also cause it to pull away if it can, and his right hand will involuntarily reach for the wounded one. That allows me to continue my attack.”

“Ouch,” Jack said. He could imagine the blood spurting out of the resulting wound that would have disabled his hand and maybe even severed it from the wrist.

“Let’s do some more work,” Amador said. The Kali master coiled, then sped like a skater toward his larger opponent, his shoeless brown feet barely touching the mat, the calluses scraping like a file on sandpaper. Then the slow-motion death dance began again.

They spent the next twenty minutes demonstrating the power of Kali knife-fighting techniques and the vicious striking power of a karambit blade against a trained fighter like Jack. All of Jack’s blocks were easily countered with the flick of the blade. Kicks were stopped, too, and countered with slashes across feet, ankles, and thighs. Amador used his free hand and feet for strikes as well. Jack and Amador stopped in the middle of each strike-counterstrike sequence and demonstrated the subtle but powerful techniques Amador deployed.

“Now let’s switch up. Jack, you attack me, and I’ll defend,” Amador said.

“Do I get the knife?” Jack asked, hopefully.

“You don’t need a knife. You’re much larger and more powerful than me. I’m just a little old man!” Amador laughed. “Begin!”

Now Jack moved in, throwing slow-motion punches and jabs at Amador, easily six inches shorter than him. As in other martial-arts demos Jack had witnessed, Amador used a variety of techniques to dodge or deflect the heavy blows with his free hand but instantly counterstruck with the wicked claw-shaped blade, inflicting slicing wounds across the back of Jack’s hands, around his wrists, down the biceps, across the forearms. They no longer stopped to demonstrate at each point of contact but flowed continuously with the fluid motion of their attacks and defenses.

Jack picked up the pace of his attacks, adding straight and rounded leg kicks. Amador matched him step for step, blow for blow, dancing inside and out of Jack’s larger frame and delivering crippling knife strikes at the groin, inner thighs, stomach, and face. Other blows were struck with the far end of the knife, the steel retention ring acting like a brass knuckle. It delivered crushing blows to soft tissues, cartilage, and bone in the nose, larynx, and eyes.

“It’s like I’m boxing with a velociraptor!” Jack said, admiring the fluidity of Amador’s movements matched to the vicious talon in the man’s skilled hand.

After the last lethal blow was struck — the curved blade’s inner edge striking Jack below the left ear, then dragging the pointed tip across the carotid artery — the shadow fighting stopped. Jack acknowledged his defeat with a gracious smile and a bow.

“Questions?” Amador asked.

“I noticed that a lot of your knife skills were connected to your openhanded martial-arts technique,” Dom said. “It was kind of hard to separate the two.”

“Good observation. That’s because all forms of openhanded fighting were derived from blade fighting. Swords and knives were always preferred in combat. But what happens when a man loses his sword or spear in battle?” Amador held up an empty hand. “He learns to fight with these. Still, don’t be confused. Empty-hand fighting is different from knife fighting. They are connected, but different.”

“Any more questions?” Martinez asked.

Jack thought about the knife attack on the oil rig that almost killed him. He cleared his throat, carefully picking his words. “Master, it seems as if we would have to study for years in order to master this fighting technique. I would think that Kali, like all martial arts, has a lot of ritual forms and defined movements. How does that translate to real-world knife fighting? Most knife attacks are short and explosive, not like what we did today.”

“An excellent question. First, I would say that learning the art of Kali or any other martial art has many benefits beyond fighting. But you already know that, I’m sure. So to answer your question directly, learning the ‘ritual forms and defined movements,’ as you put it, trains your mind and body to handle the knife and the rhythms of what you call a ‘real’ knife fight.”

“How?” Dom asked.

“There are only three basic moves in a knife attack,” Amador said. He held up his knife and demonstrated each movement as he spoke.

“An overhead strike, a forward thrust, and a slash. That’s it! An unskilled fighter will rely on one of these moves primarily. The most advanced fighter uses combinations of all three. Kali teaches you all three, and how to put them together in a devastating combination.”

Amador stepped closer to Jack. “But I’m not here to teach you Kali or to sell you on the benefits of it. What Bruiser asked me to do was to help you with knife fighting. What I’ve attempted to show you today is not the technique of fighting but the essence of knife fighting itself.”

“The ‘basic’ idea that we must master?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“And what is that?”

Amador held up his karambit. “It’s not this.” He tapped the side of his head with the dull practice blade. “The mind is the knife, son. The blade is only an extension of your will. If a man attacks you with a knife, he is attacking you with his mind. You need to understand the mind of the knife fighter first. Forget the knife. The knife is nothing. It’s the fighter that counts. You beat the fighter, not the knife.”

Jack rubbed his bearded face, trying to process what Amador was saying.

“But there are knife-fighting techniques,” Dom said. “And specific skills to defend against them.”

“Yes, there are. But never forget that the best defense against a knife if you have no other weapon is to use these.” Amador held up one of his bare brown feet. “Notice my advanced technique.” He set his foot back down, turned, and pivoted, taking several short steps away. He called over his shoulder. “Always run away if you can!” he said, laughing.

The three students laughed, too, as Amador crossed back over to the two kneeling men. He stared down at them. “Now, seriously. If you have no weapon against a knife, escape if at all possible. A knife is very dangerous. Nothing to fool with. Understood?”

They both nodded.

Amador held out his open hands. Martinez and Dom carefully held up the razor-sharp karambits and Amador took them in his fighting grip.

“You saw how powerful one blade was in both attack and defense,” the wizened Filipino master said. “Can you imagine what two of these can do in the hands of one who can use them?”

Jack ran through the katas he’d seen in years past. In his mind’s eye he threw punches and kicks at the little Filipino, then watched the two karambit blades in the master’s hands cutting his limbs like scissors or blocking Jack’s unarmored flesh as it struck. Jack felt his two thighs being ripped open at once, his two wrists slashed at the same time, and two pointed claws tearing across his eyes simultaneously. He shuddered.

“Does it matter if we’re fighting an opponent who uses two knives?” Jack asked. “Or do we use the same approach as someone who only uses one?”

Amador’s smile faded. “I will tell you what my master taught me when I was first learning the way of the knife and asked the exact same question.”

Amador handed the two lethal karambits to Jack, then laid a strong hand on Jack’s broad shoulder. His voice lowered. “‘Whenever you are faced with a true master of two blades,’ he said to me, ‘pray to God that He is ready to receive you in Heaven, because in that moment you are surely going to die.’” Amador leaned in closer to Jack. “In other words, my friend, RUN LIKE HELL!”

Martinez belly-laughed. So did Dom. When Amador finally cracked up, Jack allowed himself a grin.

Martinez stood. “Let’s grab some breakfast. All this knife fighting has made me hungry. Then we’ll come back and Master Inosanto will run us through some more of his drills.”

“Works for me,” Amador said. “I’m dying for pancakes!”

Dom stood up to grab his shoes, but Jack just stared at the two blades in his hands, feeling their heft and fearing the worst.