The waitress headed back to my table, put my beer down and said, “Sorry about that, hon,” with a nod to the other table. “I’ll be right back with another bowl of peanuts.
“I don’t think you need to bother,” I said, as I looked back at the guy staring me down. “It doesn’t look like I’ll be here that long.
The waitress turned with a nervous look at the two jerks. She was probably thinking I looked like a nice enough guy and was feeling a bit of regret thinking I was going to get my ass kicked. It was, after all, two against one; and by her reckoning, I was not as big as the other two men. I got that a lot.
I took a long draw on my beer. It was cold and it went down easily. I didn’t think of myself as a drinker, but I learned to drink out of necessity. As a Green Beret I frequently had to meet with local community leaders or tribal chiefs in various countries. Custom usually dictated sharing a drink with strangers. So I would take what was offered. It was a sign of respect and how we gained influence with them. I got used to drinking all kinds of liquor, home-brewed and otherwise. Some of the stuff I had to drink was very potent. Hard liquor, for hard men in a harsh situation. But tonight, the taste of a cold beer is all I wanted, and the Blue Moon just hit the spot.
Despite the fact that I didn’t think I would be there all that long, I figured I had a few minutes to check my e-mail before the two assholes screwed up their courage to come over and pick a fight. Quite a few work-related e-mails had come in since the last time I’d checked. Business was good and I was in high demand. Seems there are enough issues out in the world to keep people like me gainfully employed.
As I looked over my e-mail, I took another draw on my beer, drained the glass, and looked over at the other table. I’m generally slow to anger but have a low tolerance for mean-spirited people. The two guys sitting at the table across from me certainly seemed to qualify. There was a time in my life, before I joined the Army, when I would have averted my eyes and avoided the conflict altogether. But not anymore. I didn’t look for fights, but I didn’t back away from them either. I’d come to believe that all men have aggressive tendencies. It was a ‘survival of the fittest’ thing that probably went back thousands of years. My own tendencies had been drawn out and refined through some of the harshest training in modern military history. You were either good at this or you weren’t. As it turned out, I was very good at it. The two men staring at me either didn’t know that or didn’t care. It was a mistake they would soon regret.
With my beer gone, I turned off my cell phone and leaned back in my chair. It was time. I looked over to study the two guys. They were big men, probably six-two or six-three, 210 pounds, maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old, and appeared to be fit. They looked like ex-football players, with large necks, broad shoulders, and relatively narrow waists. Maybe they grew up on farms, throwing 120-pound hay bales around most of the summer. They had close-cropped hair, which could signify that they were either ex-military or para-military. They appeared to be spoiling for a fight with me, though, and that told me they weren’t too bright. They didn’t know me and what I was capable of. Or worse, they did know about me, and chose to think they were better than me.
They finally stood up, one after the other, and started across the small room toward me. They moved easily, which told me they’d done this before, though I doubted they’d been in life-and-death situations. They looked more like hired muscle and guys who’d always gotten by on their bulk, not their brains.
In the movies, it always seems that the good guy would wait until the first punch was thrown or he would try to talk the bad guys down. But this wasn’t the movies and that was usually a stupid strategy. There were no points for being nice or fair in a bar fight. There were winners and there were losers. When attacked, it was generally best to respond hard and fast and with a weapon that inflicted the most casualties right away. It tended to demoralize the enemy. As far as I was concerned, I’d already been attacked as soon as the guys stood up. The gloves were off.
I was carrying my Sig Sauer with me, but I doubted it would frighten them off. It would probably only postpone the inevitable, and unless I was prepared to use it, I would leave it where it was. I guess I could cap one in the knees and wing the other one, but then the local police would get involved. And I didn’t need that. A couple of guys in a bar fight in this place would probably not raise too many eyebrows. But use of a firearm would draw all kinds of unwanted attention. So my weapon of choice would be me.
I knew they thought they could take me. I could tell they were overconfident by the look on their faces and the way they walked. That would work in my favor. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what to do, why this is happening, or what the outcome might be. I just started processing information. The first man was only a few feet away now and moving toward me. Despite my first impression that perhaps the guy was slightly drunk, I noticed he was moving in a deliberate manner. And drunk or not, the man looked powerful enough to inflict real damage. I clearly couldn’t take this for granted. The guy’s buddy, who was moving toward me, came from a slightly different direction, a second or two behind the first. Strategy. But that strategy would work against them. By coming at me from two directions and a few seconds apart, I would have the opportunity to only fight one of them at a time. Big mistake for them.
I felt my heart rate go up as an adrenaline surge hit, and because I knew with certainty that I was already in a fight that just hadn’t started yet. All I’d wanted was to have a quiet beer or two. That didn’t matter now. I was here, the two men were approaching me, and that was that. There was no doubt in my mind as to what I needed to do. There was no hesitation.
I slowed my breathing, which relaxed my muscles. The first man coming my way was at least one neck size bigger than me. His buddy was about the same. They didn’t get that way naturally, so they must have had some training. No matter.
I stood up and moved quickly to intercept the first man now barely five feet away. As I closed the distance between us, he was taken aback for a split second. I was sure the look on my face had changed from just a guy having a beer to something else, something hard. I looked at him with unblinking eyes. I could see the guy’s hesitation now. He probably expected me to fight back but assumed that would happen only after he got to me and established his position. Just about the time that thought was going through his mind, I slammed my fist into his nose.
He fell back and instinctively dropped to his knees, putting his hands to his face. Blood streamed from his nose, and tears from his eyes clouded his vision. The man had no doubt been hit in the face before but probably never that hard. I doubt he even saw the fist coming. The raging pain I’m sure he felt in his nose and face was immediate and real. Pain from having his brain slammed against his skull from the sudden change in direction would come later. That would slow him down, but he was still a threat. I just needed to deal with the jerks one at a time.
The other man was up and coming on hard now. Seeing his buddy down spurred him on. I timed my distance to the second man and a split second later bring my knee up to my chest and got off a powerful side thrust kick to his knee, bending it backward into an unnatural position with a sickening sound of something like wood breaking, sending him reeling backward over a few tables and chairs. He went down, knowing with certainty in the blink of an eye that he’d be walking with a cane the rest of his life and regretting how that had happened.
Although both men were down, they still had some fight left in them. I knew better than to assume that that was the end of it. The damage I’d inflicted on the two men, while debilitating, was not meant to be lethal, but I wasn’t done with them yet. They’d started this, but I was surely going to finish it and leave no opportunity for them to come after me later when I left here.