“Yes.” She started to say something, then noticed the shotgun in its case, propped in the corner. “What’s that?”
“A shotgun,” he said. “John Howard got it for me.”
“For what?”
He took a breath. “To keep at home.”
He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected, but with her being a new mother and all, he was halfway thinking she’d be against the idea. Instead, she said, “Good idea. We need a gun in the house.”
His expression must have shown his surprise. She said, “What, you thought because I like knives I have something against guns?”
“Well…”
“Silat teaches you to use the proper tool for the job. There are times when a gun is necessary.”
He nodded. “How is Guru?”
“She’s fine. Looks great, no slurring of her speech, seems to move like usual.”
“You aren’t worried that the baby will be too much for her?”
Toni grinned. “He woke up from his nap squalling. Didn’t want a bottle or his binky, wasn’t wet, no poop, just yelling his head off. Guru took him from me and he shut up as if she’d turned off a switch. Click! just like that, and he was cooing and grinning. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at him, said, ‘Who are you? What have you done with my baby!’ ”
Michaels laughed. “Get her to teach you that trick. That’s worth a fortune.”
“You’re telling me. Okay. So what do you want me to do?”
“Same thing you used to do. I’ve talked to the director, she doesn’t have a problem with you being here instead of there. You’ll be a consultant, so we can pay you. This most recent attack on the net/web is surely the responsibility of the same group who hit it before. And if they killed the VP to get the security codes, then they’ve raised the stakes. If they are willing to murder, this is going to get uglier before it gets prettier.”
Toni nodded. “I hear you.”
“So let’s get to it. Your old office is yours again. It’s good to have you back, Ms. Fiorella.”
“It’s good to be back, Commander Honey.”
He laughed.
12
Any amusement the FBI recruits might have felt on seeing Net Force’s Commander in a sarong over his sweatpants left at least several of those minds after Michaels slammed their owners onto the gym’s mats hard enough so they bounced. He enjoyed this way more than he should. He’d seen the grins when he and Toni walked in, heard a few chuckles from the recruits on seeing his clothes.
They weren’t laughing now, were they?
Toni had shown some simple self-defense moves, using Michaels as the dummy, and he’d dusted the mats pretty good himself. Then she called for volunteers and had him demonstrate the techniques so she could point out what he was doing and why.
He had earned the right to toss these guys, he figured, aside from the sarong-inspired amusement. He’d paid his share of dues. A couple months ago, when Toni had been working with him on his sparring, she’d put on a pair of boxing gloves and had danced in and out, throwing fast punches. He’d gone after her during one attack, trying to surprise her, and he’d forgotten to cover high-line while he was busy blocking a kick. For his inattention, he’d caught a right overhand smack in the left eye. Even with the glove, he’d worn a mouse and shiner for a week after she’d punched him. Of course, he had felt a certain amount of malevolent glee when he explained the shiner: Hey, what happened to you, you run into a door?
No, actually, my wife punched me in the face. She beats on me all the time.
People who didn’t know about Toni and silat hadn’t believed him. Of course, they’d thought he was joking.
“All right,” the FBI combat teacher said. “Everybody see what just happened there?”
The recruits looked puzzled for the most part. Well, no, they hadn’t seen it.
Duane Presser, the big Hawaiian said, “Don’t let that funny-looking sideways stance rattle you — watch his feet, how he angles in and sectors off. You concentrate on his hands, you’re gonna get tripped. You watchin’ his feet, he’s gonna whack you wid dat elbow. Watch alla him. And watch the distance — this stuff assumes a knife in hand, so you got dat extra half-step to worry about. You all see what I mean?”
“I see it, Chief,” one of the recruits said, his voice full of confidence.
Michaels looked at the man. He was young, maybe twenty-five, tall, and fairly muscular in his sweats and T-shirt. He had a couple inches in height and maybe fifteen, twenty pounds in weight on Michaels. He also had a buzz cut, and what was left of his hair was so still so black it looked like a raven’s wing. His skin tone and facial features indicated some Native American background in his ethnic tap. He’d been watching, not volunteering, and Michaels figured that meant he was smarter than some of the first gung ho chargers to step up. It was a good idea to see what an enemy knew before you risked an attack.
That could be a bad sign for Michaels.
“So, you think you can get past his defenses?” Duane asked.
“Yes, sir, Chief, I believe so.”
Duane nodded. “Show us.”
When the big recruit stepped up to the mat, Michaels saw Duane flash his big grin at Toni, where Raven couldn’t see it. He wished he had Duane’s confidence.
When Raven got closer, he said, sotto voce, “Nice skirt, sir.”
Michaels smiled. SOP, trying to anger an opponent. He said, quietly, “Yeah. Don’t look up it while you’re down on the mat, son.”
“Not gonna happen. Sir.”
“Okay. Let’s see. Show me what you got.”
Raven slipped into a side fighting stance, left foot forward, circled his hands over his face and groin. From the smoothness of the movement, Michaels realized the kid had brought this with him when he joined the feds — it was too slick to come from the Hawaiian’s six-week self-defense course.
Raven said, “What I got is a black belt in tae kwon do, sir.” He sneered, bounced around a little, and edged toward Michaels. “But I won’t hurt you too bad.”
Oh, good. A martial arts jock who wanted to prove his stuff was superior. Michaels was, he had to admit, a little nervous. He’d been studying silat pretty extensively with Toni for more than a year, working out hard, practicing pretty much seven days a week, rain or shine, and he was far from a finished student. Still, he was improving. Toni didn’t pull her punches, and she’d had a few people she knew dance with them at the gym a few times, to make sure Michaels had different-sized and skilled opponents, to help teach him distance and timing. He wasn’t great, but he was not a total dweeb anymore. He hoped.
The kid had just made a mistake — he’d bragged about his black belt, which, like the skirt comment, had been to intimidate Michaels, to make him nervous, but he’d given too much away in doing that. If you thought you might be facing a tiger, that could be a problem. If you knew you were facing a lesser cat, that made things easier.
TKD was mostly a sport these days, though there were some old-style guys around who were excellent fighters, according to Toni. The sport guys liked to kick, they did that to score points, and they liked to kick high, to the head. Standing sideways like that, Raven was going to have to use his front foot if he wanted any speed. A spinning or round kick from the rear leg was going to take too long to get there.