Chương 5
"I don't give a damn if she was the Commandant of the Marine Corps," Colt spat, the veins in his thick neck bulging against his skin. "She's in my house now."
"Colt, don't—" Vance lunged forward, reaching out a thick hand to grab the boy's shoulder.
Colt violently shrugged the older man off. "Get off me, Marcus! Watch this."
He moved fast for a two-hundred-pounder, closing the four-foot gap with the heavy, forward-driving rhythm of a collegiate wrestler looking for a double-leg takedown. He dropped his level, extending both arms to wrap around my hips and drive my spine into the concrete. It was the correct move against an untrained opponent, using sheer mass and momentum to crush whatever resistance existed.
It was the completely wrong move against someone who had spent thirty years teaching recruits how to kill men wearing sixty pounds of body armor.
I didn't step back. Stepping back gives an aggressive striker the distance to generate kinetic force. Instead, I stepped directly into his line of attack, angling my left foot outside his right knee to kill his forward drive. My left hand caught the side of his neck, thumb hooking violently behind the ear into the mastoid process, while my right palm drove upward into the base of his nose.
The crunch of cartilage was loud and wet.
Colt grunted in shock, his head snapping back as his vision flooded with involuntary tears. His legs stiffened, his momentum abruptly arrested. A sport fighter is trained to reset after a missed shot, to step back, bounce on the balls of his feet, and circle.
I gave him no space to reset.
Before he could pull his head down to guard, I clamped my left fingers into the collar of his trap muscle, dropped my entire body weight, and drove my right elbow down across his exposed collarbone. The bone didn't snap, but the impact sent a sickening shudder through his upper torso. He stumbled sideways, coughing, one hand reaching up to clutch his bleeding face.
"You crazy old bitch—" he roared, swinging a wild, looping right overhand with enough raw power to cave in a skull.
I slipped inside the arc of the punch, letting his forearm graze harmlessly across the heavy canvas of my shoulder. My right hand caught his wrist, twisting it inward to compromise his joint integrity, while my left forearm drove hard into the crease of his elbow.
Joint manipulation in the Marine Corps isn't designed to secure a submission tap; it is designed to remove the limb from the equation.
I leaned my hip into his center of mass and levered down. Colt’s arm twisted at an unnatural angle. A high, reedy squeal tore out of his throat as he was forced to his knees to keep his shoulder from dislocating.
"Stay down," I told him, my breath barely elevated.
Colt didn't stay down. Blinded by fury and humiliation, he drove his forehead up into my chest, trying to butt me off balance. The impact drove the air from my lungs and forced me back two paces, breaking my grip.
He scrambled to his feet, blood smearing across his teeth and chin, breathing like a broken bellows. "I'll kill you! I'll put you in the ground next to your husband!"
He charged, throwing a straight, heavy combination intended to overwhelm my guard through sheer violence.
I let him come.
I parried the jab with my left palm, deflected the cross with my right forearm, and stepped deep into his pocket. When a man overextends with a power punch, his entire ribcage lifts and opens.
I drove the heel of my palm into the soft tissue just below his sternum—the solar plexus. The air left his body in an explosive, wet gasp. His eyes bulged, his knees buckling beneath him. As he doubled over, clutching his stomach, I brought my right knee straight up into his chin.
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The impact sounded like a baseball bat striking a side of beef.
Colt Lusk flew backward, his feet tangling in the edge of the wrestling mat. He hit the floor with a massive, shuddering thud, rolled once onto his side, and lay there, gasping like a landed fish, unable to draw air into his paralyzed diaphragm. Blood poured freely from his ruined nose, pooling dark and heavy on the black vinyl.
