The target had been acquired, yes, but not detained. Not yet.
Walker knew that this huge guy was ex-Army because of his stance. You could pick them, in hand-to-hand combat, the differences between Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Even within the four branches of the military, there were differences; and then further differences in what the Special Forces outfits like SEALs and Delta used. This guy was Army. And probably good at the job, once.
New soldiers begin their Combatives training on day three of Initial Military Training at Fort Benning, at the same time they are first issued their rifle. That training begins with learning to maintain control of your weapon in a fight. Keep your weapon, you have a much better chance of survival.
The three basic options taught for encountering a resistant opponent are to disengage to regain projectile weapon range, or gain a controlling position and utilize a secondary weapon, or, as a third option, close the distance and gain control to finish the fight.
This guy had just voluntarily given up his firearm, figuring he had the bulk to do the job, probably assuming his colleague would take action should the unexpected transpire.
That was his mistake.
It was the colleague in the car that Walker was concerned about, not the slab of beef in front of him. In Walker’s experience, it wasn’t so much the bigger they are the harder they fall, but the bigger they are the harder the blows on impact. Smaller guys were faster, they could get in close and dart out again, slip out of mounts and grapples and chokes. Bigger guys had longer reach, and in this case a lot more mass and strength, but this meant a bigger target and surface area for Walker to play with. But the guy behind, at the wheel of the Suburban—he was the trouble. He had firearms and a vehicle at his disposal.
Walker glanced back over his shoulder. Monica was moving about in the car, slowly remembering who and where she was. Over the giant’s shoulder, the figure in the car was watching passively, his hands still on the steering wheel of the Suburban, as though he were ready to drive onto the bridge and roll over them at any given moment. If that were the case, good for Walker—it was easier to dodge a car than a bullet.
So, back to the task at hand.
The giant was a pace away and he shaped up to fight.
Walker recognized the stance and motions and knew that he was a similar vintage to Walker’s service, for surely things had changed in the past ten years that he had been out of the DoD. As the years and decades passed, more and varied martial arts had been added. Joint locks and choke holds became more technical, more useful, more efficient.
Entirely serviceable. Walker had learned them too, the abbreviated Air Force version, then he’d learned further techniques when training with the 24th Tactical. Then he went to the CIA, to the Point, which is where he learned all kinds of improvised weaponry outside of what the DoD taught. Useful, that level of knowledge.
The initial techniques are simply a learning metaphor useful for teaching more important concepts, such as dominating an opponent with superior body position during ground grappling or how to control someone during clinch fighting. They are taught as small, easily repeatable drills, until they master techniques of escaping blows, maintaining the mount, escaping the mount, maintaining the guard, passing the guard, assuming side control, maintaining side control, preventing and assuming the mount. The drill can be completed in less than a minute and can be done repeatedly with varying levels of resistance to maximize training benefits.
“Okay, whirlwind, or do you need me to buy you a drink first?” Walker said. He gave this guy a minute, tops.
The giant attacked hard and fast.
Soldiers are then taught how to gain control of a potential enemy at the farthest possible range in order to maintain their tactical flexibility, then assess the tactical options and how to implement them.
Walker let the blow glance by, spinning around him, so that he could see Monica over the guy’s shoulders. She’d steadied now. She was watching dead ahead, at the scene in front of her, as though seeing the world for the first time and comprehension still a long way off.
The giant stepped in and threw his right arm around Walker’s neck, while Walker braced against the guy’s chest with one arm and grabbed his wrist with his other hand, while the giant pulled Walker in for a head-butt.
Walker didn’t resist. But what he did do was let go of the guy’s wrist and raise his elbow. The crack on impact of elbow and head was spectacular, the guy hit between the eyes with his own vicious pulling motion being a harder blow than Walker could hope to land on his own inertia.
The giant stumbled a step backward.
Monica was sitting upright in the seat. Walker saw her glance down in front of her to where the Colt lay, and then back up to the window, and down again, as if she was thinking but her brain was still a while away from drawing concrete conclusions.
A trickle of blood ran down whirlwind’s nose from where he’d been split open on his Neanderthal-like brow ridge, the crimson running into his mouth where he smiled with now bloodied teeth.
“Ha!” he said. “Good . . . good. Now I’m angry. Puny Air Force man.”
“Yeah. And you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re as useful in a fight as a fart in a whirlwind.”
The smile dropped from the giant’s mouth.
Walker figured this guy hadn’t been in a real fight since he was about fifteen, when, pre-steroids, he would have already been about six-three and a couple of hundred pounds. The other kids on the high-school football teams would have been smart enough to give him a wide berth.
This was fine by Walker. He enjoyed training people, had always enjoyed it. And if this guy survived the fall, then he too would learn a valuable lesson. Even if he didn’t survive, the last moments of falling through the air would be his schooling in physics and a reflection on all that he’d done to get to that point of inevitability.
Walker rushed him.
The two men grappled, arms locked, each trying to make the other turn and drop and submit into a mounted choke hold.
Pound for pound, Walker was stronger.
But the giant had too many pounds on Walker.
Walker gave up fifty percent, just for a half-second, letting the whirlwind get in close, fast. Then Walker switched positions and pulled his arms out of the hold, twisted his body and used all of his weight to turn the guy around. The brute pulled a knife from his boot and as he came up Walker pulled the screwdriver out and put it into the guy’s neck, right into the half-inch-thick pulsating carotid artery, and kicked him off the bridge. As he fell his hand went to his neck and he dropped the knife and he stared up at Walker, wide-eyed. Lesson learned.
Suddenly Walker’s attention was drawn away by a roar to his left.
The Suburban, racing toward him, both the driver’s hands at the wheel, the vehicle so wide that the edges were almost hanging over the bridge. Walker had nowhere to go but over the edge and to hold onto the steel structure underneath or to try to jump onto the Suburban’s hood—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Walker ducked for cover and looked behind him.
Monica was standing next to the truck, her father’s Colt .45 in her hands, holding it double-handed in a steady A-frame braced position.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Walker looked left and dropped down lower in case of a round going astray.
BANG! BANG! POP!
The Suburban’s windscreen was shattered by the heavy .45 rounds, the ninth bullet had gone close enough to the driver to penetrate and explode on impact with the laminated glass. The driver’s face erupted in blood and he put his hands to it, the Suburban careening to the right, hard and fast. It flew off the bridge and dropped like a stone, hitting the side of the canyon with a crunch and falling, tail first, down the tight ravine, smashing onto the body of whirlwind.
Walker, still standing, saw the driver’s face, scratched up more than anything serious, lock in a look of surprise as the car’s gas tank caught alight on the rocks and a plume of fire engulfed the car. Black smoke ballooned up past the bridge and into the sky.