Ramsey's Gold (Drake Ramsey Book 1) (17 page)

They set off down a trail that led from the rear of the house into the brush, and ten minutes later emerged into a wide clearing surrounded by tall trees, a stream running through it fed by the nearby hills. Jack set his bag down and, after scanning the periphery to ensure they were alone, turned to Drake and Allie.

“I’ll begin with hand-to-hand combat techniques. We’ll start with defensive, then move to offensive. Allie already knows most of this, but there’s no time like the present for a refresher course. Most of this is based on street fighting, my Special Forces training, and Krav Maga – an Israeli specialty that combines the best of all worlds.” Jack considered Drake’s sweating face. “You said you studied karate? To what belt level?”

“Black. Second Dan. Not a master, but I was the best in my class. I know the pressure points, the various strikes and blocking techniques, kicks, punches… I participated in some competitions, but that was years ago.”

“Okay. And how useful did your training prove in the real world? I’m gathering you had to get physical with some of your bail skips.”

“I did, and the answer is, of limited help. The problem was your opponent doesn’t react the way you’re taught he will. And sometimes he’ll have a weapon. I’d say my wrestling skills did me more good. A full nelson usually quiets down even the most agitated skip.”

“That’s right. All the theory’s fine, but what typically happens is you have an adversary who’ll do anything necessary to survive or escape. What I’m going to teach you is what you should master in a few days. Which isn’t much.”

“Then why don’t we take more time?” Drake asked.

“Because it wouldn’t make any difference. To really see any improvement, you’d have to practice for years. So it’s the basics. The first is that in any engagement, survival is your priority. I know that sounds obvious, but believe me, when some crazy SOB is coming at you like they’re going to kill you, all your training can get forgotten in a heartbeat. So rule number one is that everything you do should be oriented toward surviving. Not on the best way to disable your opponent. Not on some specialized technique that will work every time.” Jack gave Drake a hard stare. “Instead, on doing whatever you can so you can get the hell out of there and live to fight another day.”

Drake nodded, as did Allie, who’d obviously heard it all before.

“The best way to survive is to avoid the fight altogether. If you can’t do that, then you have to focus on ending it as quickly as possible while inflicting maximum damage. That often means attacking preemptively and disabling your adversary before he knows what hit him. Krav Maga focuses on strikes to the most vulnerable areas of the body – the eyes, groin, neck, face, knees, solar plexus, and so on. But the overarching idea is to destroy your opponent in seconds, and discard any notions of a fair fight. What’s fair is what has you surviving. Clear?”

Drake nodded again. “Yup.”

Jack beckoned to him. “All right. Drake, come at me. Don’t hold back. Come at me however you want, with the goal being to put me on the ground. Don’t deafen or blind me, but beyond that, anything goes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just do it.”

Drake spun without warning and leveled a kick at Jack’s chest, intending to follow it up with blows to his abdomen. The next thing he knew he was lying in the grass, blinking, the wind knocked out of him. Jack stood over him, breathing easily.

“Not bad. But you’d be dead. Now I’ll show you what I did, so you understand what you did wrong, and how you should respond to that kind of an attack.” He held out his hand to Drake, who took it shakily. Jack hauled him to his feet. “You okay?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. I’m just…kind of shocked that you were able to do that. I was thinking about how to pull the punches to avoid breaking your ribs.”

“That was one of your first mistakes. I wasn’t thinking about anything except how to take you down. And you’ll notice I didn’t waste any time trying to parry or block your blows. I avoided your kick and used your energy to allow you to turn past the point of no return, and then attacked. If I’d wanted to kill or blind you, you’d be dead or blind. Now let’s take this in slow motion. You do your kick, I’ll demonstrate how to avoid it and neutralize the attacker.”

Drake did as asked, and paid close attention to the sequence of blows Jack used – only two, with a sweep kick that knocked him flat. They practiced a few more times, with Jack taking the role of Drake, allowing him to perfect the timing and the strikes, and then they separated and drank some water.

They continued throughout the day, pausing only to eat a fast lunch, and by the time the sun was sinking behind the green hills, Drake was bruised and panting, exhausted – although now he was landing as many blows as he was taking. As they made their way back to the house, Jack patted his shoulder, Allie padding alongside him.

“You did well. Tomorrow we’ll concentrate on knife work, then some more hand-to-hand, and then I’ll show you some knots that could save your life in a pinch. Obviously the hope is that you’ll never have to use any of this. Especially the knife work. Because I can tell you firsthand, the scariest thing in the world is someone coming at you all out with a knife. Mainly because there’s almost no way to defend against it.”

Allie smiled when Drake caught her eye. “Which is why he’s not going to focus on defending against a knife attack. More on how to deliver one that will inflict maximum damage. Only problem is that if your adversary has a knife, too, you’re probably not going to come out of it all that great, no matter what happens.”

“Sounds like avoiding a knife fight should be rule number one,” Drake said.

Jack chuckled. “Damn right. But you’ve got that machete of your father’s, so might as well show you how to use it. Thing’s almost big enough to cut a man in two. If you get into a pinch, it could save your life. But only if you know the basics.”

“Which would be, get a gun and shoot first. Early and often,” Drake replied.

“You’re actually not far off. That’s exactly what I’d advise.” Jack paused. “The only other problem being that when people are shot and stabbed, they don’t just fall over dead. I mean, they can, but more often than not, they keep coming. Because unless you get a clean head shot or one right through the heart, it takes time for the body to realize it’s hit. When you have a ton of adrenaline racing through your system, it actually numbs you. A lot of combat veterans who were pretty horrifically wounded didn’t even realize they’d been hit until minutes, or even hours, after it happened.”

“So it’s not like the movies, is what you’re saying,” Drake observed.

Jack laughed again. “You know what? Nothing in life is. And that’s the end of today’s lesson. Let’s get cleaned up and make some dinner. I’m starving.”

The house was quiet upon their return. Drake shed his clothes within moments of getting into his room, and then realized he didn’t have a private bathroom. He rooted around in the closet, found a blue towel, and wrapped it around his waist before walking down the hall. He knocked on the bathroom door, and Allie’s voice called out from inside.

“I got to it first.”

“How long are you going to be?” he asked.

“Not long. Maybe an hour.”

“Are you serious?”

“Okay. Fifteen minutes. I’ve got a lot of hair to wash.”

Drake returned to his room and studied himself in the mirror. Bruising from the day’s lumps was already appearing, but overall he looked fit, the wrestling and karate having sculpted his upper body.

He checked his watch, dropped to the floor, and forced himself to do a hundred pushups, the practice session having convinced him that he’d allowed himself to get soft. Bands of muscles on his arms and shoulders seemed to strain his skin, stretching it to the breaking point. When he finished, he gulped the remainder of the liter of water in his room and then returned to the bathroom, hopeful that Allie was done.

When the door opened, he almost gasped at how good she looked with her hair wet, sporting a towel wrapped around her body, smelling like floral shampoo and soap. She stood in the doorway for a few seconds as Drake moved aside, and graced him with a smile as she brushed past.

“You can put your eyes back in your head,” she called softly behind her.

“They weren’t doing much there,” he said, not bothering to deny admiring her, any response but admission an obvious lie.

When she reached her bedroom, she tossed him a knowing look over her shoulder, and he decided to cut his losses and leave her to the dinner preparations. The warm shower was calling to him after a long day’s exertions, and his better judgment was telling him that with Jack in the mix, he’d be better off sticking to deciphering the journal than exploring the rebellious look in Allie’s dancing eyes.

Chapter Twenty

Thunderstorms moved through the valley while Drake and his companions ate breakfast on the veranda. Fortunately, the morning’s downpours had tapered off enough to continue with their training by the time they’d finished eating.

Paolo’s wife cleaned up the dishes as they returned to their rooms to collect their things. Drake’s body felt every minute of the prior day’s abuse: his shoulders and arms were stiff, and his muscles protested as he climbed the stairs. He withdrew the big knife from his backpack and strapped it onto his hip, the weight oddly reassuring. The knife seemed like a very real link between father and son, and he resolved to wear it for the duration.

The slog to the clearing took longer than the prior day. Flocks of birds rose into the gray sky as they passed, the air smelling like ozone and wood smoke, the tall grass rustling softly from stray gusts of wind, the trail now mud, pulling greedily at their shoes with every step. When they arrived, Jack stood by the same spot and gave a brief lecture on knife techniques, and then demonstrated them with a short length of dowel he’d found in one of the drawers.

It was immediately obvious why anyone with a functioning brain would want to avoid a knife fight at all costs. When Jack demonstrated the most effective attack, it was truly terrifying. He held the dowel low by his right side as he used his left to block any potential threat. Drake could see why no matter how skilled the defender, he was going to get cut – in most cases, badly cut.

“Add to the pure violence of a knife-wielding attacker your inability to do much to stop him, and you’ll see why it’s the absolutely last thing you ever want to deal with.”

They continued, and after a morning focused on knives, they munched on sandwiches while Jack chatted about guns.

“Let’s talk about silencers. Specifically, on pistols. First, they’re called suppressors, not silencers, by anyone who knows anything about them. Second, with ordinary ammo they’re still really loud. So if you’re thinking you can be like one of those guys on TV and sneak up on your target and pop him without anyone noticing, think again.”

Drake nodded. “What I’m getting out of all this is that it’s hard to kill someone, hard to do so quietly, and hard no matter what method you use.”

Jack grunted. “Yep. But at the end of the day, a gun’s the surest chance you have, so if you can’t dodge a fight altogether, which is what I keep coming back to as the smartest choice, it’s how you want to take on your attackers. But the same things that will make you harder to shoot will work against you. Moving, for instance.”

“I found that out the hard way back in the Rio slum,” Drake affirmed.

“Five more minutes and we’ll start on knots. Allie, this will be more interesting for you. I’ve never really shown you most of these.”

Allie didn’t look convinced. “How about some kind of super ninja skills? That’s what I want to learn.”

Jack grinned. “The takeaway from all this is that your best skill is the ability to stay calm under pressure. That’s a very rare trait. Most soldiers can’t manage it. So that’s what we’ll be practicing. Because to have a chance against professional killers, who
will
be calm, you need to match them, or you’ll be dead before you know it.”

A cloudburst hit in the afternoon and they had to run for the house, getting soaked by the warm rain in the process. When they arrived, Jack stood under the overhang, water dripping off his nose, watching the deluge.

“That’s one of the things I remember about the trip with your dad. The rain. It hits out of the blue, and it soaks everything. That was the worst part about it. Worse than the bugs, the snakes, you name it. Constant rain. At least at this time of year, it might be a little better than when we were there – right in the middle of the wet season.”

“How long were you in the jungle for?”

“Almost a month. Seemed like it was never going to go anywhere, and then your father discovered the remains of one of the outposts built along the trail from Peru to Paititi. We actually found that in the area that’s laughingly referred to as their Matsés National Park. Don’t let the name fool you – it’s a frigging swamp. Mosquitoes the size of baseballs, venomous insects too numerous to count. Small wonder nobody’s bothered to do much exploration there.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Dad,” Allie said.

“Nothing I say will prepare you for the reality of that place – and the Brazilian side’s as bad or worse. This is a vacation at the Ritz compared to what we’re going to be going into.”

A car bounced up the drive, both sides covered in mud up to the windows, and Jack squinted to make out the driver. “That’s my meeting. You two get cleaned up. No point in trying to do anything more with this coming down. If all goes well, we’ll be getting out of here soon.”

Drake and Allie exchanged puzzled looks and she shrugged. Drake followed her into the house, both trailing puddles of water on the rustic hardwood floor. Allie climbed the stairs and looked over her shoulder at Drake with a small smile.

“You want the first shower?” she asked.

“I was thinking I could wrestle you for it. Sort of like combat practice.”

“Haven’t you gotten beaten up enough? If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he wanted to torture you.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything. Plus, you looked way too amused by my misery.”