"Johnny, why are you doing this? The Chinese could shift the balance of global power using this technology. What about your family? Do you want them to grow up communists?" Tabitha said. Johnny laughed at her.
"Screw 'em all! I'm going to live the rest of my life on a beach surrounded by naked women. I've been waiting for one more big score, and this is it, baby! Who cares about the politics of the rest of the world? Let 'em get their own island." He touched his ear as if someone was talking to him. He held up his left wrist and said, "Okay, move out!" The three men left for the north clearing, each of them carrying probe components. Johnny shot the battery pack powering the Van der Graaf generators. It spewed acid on the ground as the generators wound down. The Clemons Dumbbells started whining loudly and at about the pitch of a referee's whistle. I could see occasional flashes of light coming from the interior of the damaged, ECC number one. I guessed that we had about six minutes, maybe less.
Johnny looked at the generator that we had brought up the hill. He fired a couple rounds into it. Fuel drained from the tank. I guess we should have been glad that it didn't explode. I looked to my left at Tabitha. She seemed calm. I shifted my weight so that my right leg was slightly in back. I knew if I made a move it would have to be like a sprinter out of the starting blocks and I wanted my strongest leg in back to push off with.
"I can't have you flying off and telling anybody about this, can I? It was nice meeting you two." He turned and raised the pistol toward Tabitha. I rushed him. I was one step further away from him than I needed to be. He fired a shot just as my right hand slammed into his right wrist. I gripped his wrist tightly and yanked his arm forward under my left armpit. Then I completed the move with a Jackie Chan style arm crawl. I quickly grabbed his arm with my left hand just above the elbow on the nerve center and pressure point there, and pulled him further toward me. I held his hand tightly under my left armpit as I let go of his wrist with my right hand, and then proceeded to karate chop (knife hand strike) Johnny Cache on the right side of his neck. His hand went limp from the blow to the neck and the gun fell to the ground. With my right hand, I pushed up on his chin and tried to sweep his feet with my right leg. The intent was to throw him to the ground, but Johnny Cache was obviously a pro and was having none of that.
Johnny grabbed my flight suit by the right shoulder and rolled his weight backward. He threw his legs out from under him as he twisted to his left. We both hit the ground hard staring each other eye to eye and on our sides. The next few seconds were a flurry of grabs, counter grabs, attempted leg wraps, and punches. Each of us was trying to get an advantage over the other as we grappled and rolled on the sand. I was able to get his left hand barred for a split second, which allowed me to get a punch into the side of his head and roll on top. Johnny rolled his head minimizing the damage. He must have allowed me to bar his left hand as a ruse, because I felt a searing pain on my right side. Then I saw a shiny glint from the corner of my eye—Johnny Cache had a knife!
I lunged as hard as I could forward and over his head. Judo-rolling to my feet, I faced Johnny, ready for his attack. He got to his feet a little slower and more cautiously. He smiled insanely as if he were enjoying this.
"Not bad, Doc. At least I'll have some fun out of killing you, after all!" he said.
I felt my right side with my left hand. I was bleeding but not bad. The wound was a slice not a puncture. It was nothing fifty or so stitches, some antibiotic ointment, and a few bandages wouldn't fix. I readied myself for a knife attack. Although Bob had never taught me how to dodge bullets, he had taught me seventeen different ways to defend against a knife. Ten of them are very painful to the attacker. The other seven are passive. I planned to use one of the painful techniques.
Johnny and I circled each other cautiously. This allowed me to survey the area. Tabitha was on the ground motionless. I thought she was still breathing, but it was hard to tell. Johnny's crew had already disappeared from the clearing and were on the way to their helicopter. It was just Johnny Cache and me.
Johnny held the knife hilt forward in his right hand. The blade pointed back toward his elbow. Obviously, Johnny had some military self-defense training in his life. I was guessing Special Forces. He shifted to a left side forward fighting stance with his fists high and his elbows out Muay Thai kickboxing style. I always loved to fight people using this style's fighting stance. The high elbows leaves the ribs wide open for a roundhouse kick. Of course, real Muay Thai fighters train from childhood getting kicked in the ribs. Their ribs are broken many times throughout their lives. As they are repeatedly broken, they get calcified and harder. Johnny looked American. I didn't believe he was a real Muay Thai fighter.
Johnny and I made several feints at each other attempting to bait the other into a bad move. Like I said, Johnny was a real pro. I decided that it was now or never. I kicked him low at the knee with my right leg. He picked up his knee and let his calf take the blow. Without setting my kick down I rechambered it and side kicked him just below the belly button. He moved backwards from the force of the kick so I kept coming at him. I sat down the side kick into a spin side kick followed by an inner crescent kick that was aimed for the hand with the knife in it.
I missed the knife! As I sat the kick down I knew that I had better get out of the way. Johnny lunged toward me with a left jab then a spin backfist, which was really a spin knife jab. I backed up as best I could. The knife blade whizzed by my face two inches in front of my eyes. Had I been two or three inches closer, the knife would've buried hilt deep into my temple and that would've been that.
The reality of the knife strike shook me slightly. I backed off a bit more and composed myself. I tested the waters with a couple of very quick jabs and knee high front kicks. Johnny slapped them away with ease and sliced at me a time or two. I picked up my left foot to feint a kick. Johnny didn't buy it. But when I faked a punch with my right I could have sold him swampland in the Everglades to go with it. He stepped in to slice at me thinking that I was going to commit to the right punch. I was trying an old tournament trick—called a dash punch—that I had used successfully a thousand times. I pulled back the punch and slipped to the left. Then, I hammer fisted his right wrist with my left hand as hard as I could and the knife fell free. I followed by rotating my body into a front stance to get the full force of my body weight into a right palm heel strike to the bridge of his nose. Grabbing the back of his hair with both hands, I yanked him forward, slamming his chest into my right knee and then threw him past me to the right as I stepped through and turned back to a right side fighting stance. I kicked the knife as far away from us as I could.
Johnny rolled to his feet. I could see he was pulling something from his left boot so I didn't give him time to finish standing. I tackled him, expecting a full fifteen-yard penalty for clipping. The only whistle that blew was the constant screeching of the soon to explode ECC.
The thing was getting so close to exploding now that the randomly collapsing electromagnetic fields were creating shock waves in the air around the device. The shockwaves in turn were causing luminescence all around the ECC. Micro supernova explosions were taking place every second.
Johnny and I rolled into the ECC as I was grabbing for his hand. We had all four hands on the small handgun and were kneeing each other and I attempted to head butt him twice with very little success. His nose was bleeding profusely where I had just broken it with the palm heel strike; I didn't care for getting his blood all over me, but, it couldn't be helped. We rolled back and forth and the gun went off twice. I managed somehow to roll on top of him and force his hand against the ECC into the region where the sonoluminescence was occurring.