I had to be careful, though. His physical skills and toughness were obvious, but more than that I expected his tactics to be sound, too. Old-style savateurs practice what they call malice, or dirty fighting, using improvised weapons, deception, anything to get the job done. It becomes a mind-set, a mind-set with which I am firsthand familiar. I expected that Belghazi would be equally so.
I circled left, my hands up in a boxer’s stance. He did the same, his hands held lower, his posture looser, again moving fluidly, light on his feet. Of course I had no intention of boxing with him or otherwise trying to engage him at a distance. That was his game, not mine. But if I offered him a familiar appearance, say, the appearance of the kind of opponent he was accustomed to facing in the gym and in the ring, his body might automatically respond to the recognizable stimuli, much as mine had done a moment earlier when I had landed with a judo ukemi. In which case he would begin to approach me as though I was another savateur, thereby, I hoped, creating an opportunity for me to close with him. He wouldn’t be unacquainted with grappling-savateurs call their grappling style lutte, a derivative of Greco-Roman wrestling designed more to maim than to restrain-but I had little doubt that, if I could take him to the ground, the advantage would be mine.
He chambered his right leg, feinted, then returned the foot to the ground. He repeated the maneuver. And again. The upraised leg started to return to the ground and I saw my opening. I shot forward. But the third time had been no feint, or in fact it had been the real feint, and the leg reversed course and whipped in from my left. I covered up with my left elbow and the toe of his shoe caught me between the biceps and triceps. It felt like I’d been hit with a hammer. He retracted the kick, then shot it in again, this time toward my forward knee. I lifted the leg just as his heel landed, and, although it hurt, the impact was dissipated enough to prevent meaningful damage.
He replanted his right foot and I shot my own kick in, a basic front kick off the back leg aimed at his knee. He twisted clockwise off the line of attack and parried inward with his left hand. I reached out and managed to snag his left sleeve with my right hand. I rotated counterclockwise, dragging his sleeve down and around, ruining his balance and forcing his body to follow. As he spiraled in toward the ground, I changed direction and brought my left hand up under his hand. I swept my right leg around clockwise along the ground and levered his arm backward, trying to break it. Even with his balance destroyed, though, his reflexes were quick. Rather than resisting the wristlock, he launched his body into it, getting ahead of the lock’s momentum and saving his arm.
He landed on his back and I immediately dropped onto his solar plexus, my left knee leading the way. He grunted and I heard the wind being driven out of him. I kept his arm and dragged it upward, simultaneously sliding my left foot under his ribs, preparing to fall back in a jujigatame armlock and take out his elbow. But again he showed both quick reflexes and sound training: as I whipped my right leg across his face and dropped back into the lock, he spun his body in my direction and retracted his arm like a man trying to yank out of a straitjacket sleeve. His reaction cost me some of my leverage, but I still held enough arm to damage him. He reached around with his left hand and grabbed his right wrist to prevent me from straightening his arm. I brought my left leg up and hacked at his wrist with my heel. His grip broke. I popped backward and levered his arm against the natural movement of the elbow joint. I felt an instant of resistance from the surrounding ligaments, then felt the joint break with a resounding crack. He screamed and writhed under me.
And in that instant I realized I had lost track of his other arm. It had disappeared from my view. My stomach lurched with the knowledge. Then, as that lurch rolled sickeningly through me, his right arm flashed into view, light glinting off the surgical steel he was holding in it. A second razor, deployed after the attacker had been lulled by disarming him of the first. Malice.
I clamped his head tighter with my right leg and squeezed my knees together, increasing the pressure on his ruined elbow. He screamed again, but he was fighting for his life now and wasn’t going to be stopped by pain alone. He slashed at my thigh with the razor. I tried to grab his wrist but missed, and the blade cut deep into my quadriceps. He pulled back, then immediately cut me again. There was no pain, really, adrenaline taking care of that for the moment, but a gout of blood spouted out of the wounds. He slashed again. Again I missed the grab, and this time he cut my wrist. The next time I caught him. Immediately I shifted my leg off his head and blasted a hammer fist into his face, snapping my body forward to generate momentum and getting my weight into the blow. Once. Twice. Again.
I felt his body go limp and the razor dropped from his hand. I transferred his wrist to my left hand and groped for the razor with my right. There it was, on the ground, next to his thigh. I grabbed it carefully and slid off him. His face was a bloody mess and he was groaning, seemingly semiconscious.
I knelt beside him and hooked the fingers of my free hand under his jawline. I hauled his head back and raised the razor.
A voice cried out sharply in Japanese from behind me. “Yamero!” Stop!
I froze, thinking, What the fuck?
I looked back over my shoulder. Two serious-looking Japanese stared back at me, each with a pistol pointing at my face. “Yamero!” one of them said again. “Kamisori otose!” Drop the razor!
I did as he asked and started to stand. My right leg wobbled, then went out under me. I looked down and saw why. My thigh was gashed wide open and spurting blood. My wrist was doing the same.
I sank down to my knees and looked at them. “You must be Belghazi’s new yakuza friends, is that right?” I asked them in Japanese.
They ignored me. Beside me, Belghazi stirred.
He must have had them positioned up the road as backup, and they’d moved in when the shooting started. Maybe they’d been accompanying him since Macau. Sure, he knew I would be looking for Arabs again, and he’d even supplied a few-distractions at the periphery, diverting me from the real players. Tatsu had been right.
Belghazi groaned and sat up, then got unsteadily to his feet. I watched him, my face impassive. I was already kneeling, and now I placed my hands calmly across my bloody thighs, the fingers pressed lightly together and pointed in at forty-five degrees. I drew my head and shoulders up into seiza, or natural posture, the formal attitude of traditional Japanese culture, an integral element of martial arts, of the tea ceremony, and, perhaps most of all, of the dignified moments before seppuku, or ritual suicide.
Belghazi rocked on his feet, cradling his broken arm, blood running down his face from a gash in his forehead. It looked like one of the hammer fists had broken his nose. His body convulsed, then he leaned forward and vomited. His men watched and said nothing.
He spat a few times and wiped his face with his good hand. For a few moments he stood leaning that way, catching his breath. Finally he straightened and said to me in English, his voice ragged, “How have you been tracking me?”