Edge of Tomorrow by Wolf Wootan Page B

Her back was to the man whose instep she had crushed, and she
did not see him draw a six-inch dirk from a scabbard on his left
hip. She was too busy delivering a knee to the face of the bent
over man. She then chopped his right shoulder, breaking his collar
bone, and he fell to the ground. When her knee had smashed his
nose, blood spurted everywhere. She had heard him scream in Farsi,
“Kill her now, Ali!”
    When she saw the blood, the white-haired lady
screamed again.
    The man called Ali grabbed a fistful of Ms.
Steppe’s long, black ponytail and yanked her head back, then moved
the knife toward her exposed throat. By now, Hatch was there. He
put his left hand on the back of Ali’s head, grabbed his chin with
his right, gave a sharp jerk, and Ali’s neck snapped like a match
stick. Ali released his hold on her hair and dropped the knife as
he fell to the ground. Sydney Steppe spun her head toward Hatch to
see what had saved her from getting her throat slit. She saw Hatch
step back as the limp body dropped to the ground like a sack of
grain.
    While she stared in amazement at Hatch and
the dead Ali, the bleeding man on the ground picked up the knife
with his left hand and lunged upward at her.
    “Look out!” Hatch yelled. “The knife!”
    She quickly spun back around, grabbed the
wrist of the hand that held the knife with her left hand and pushed
it to her left, grabbed his left elbow with her right hand and
twisted the arm in one powerful, smooth motion. This maneuver sent
the point of the knife, not into her as intended, but into the
man’s right chest. He screamed as it went into his body up to the
hilt. Blood came out of his mouth as he crumpled to his knees, then
fell to the ground on his face. She took her toe and rolled him
over. Red foam was bubbling out of his mouth.
    “Asshole! ” she
growled furiously as she stomped his crotch.
    Hatch knelt down and felt his throat for a
pulse. There was a very weak one, but he knew this man would not
live much longer. The internal wounds were bleeding him out
rapidly.
    Carlos had run to the scene as soon as he
heard the woman scream, and had seen most of the incident.
    “What’s happening, Mr. Lincoln?” he
gasped.
    “ Call 911, Carlos. Cops and
paramedics, and an ambulance! Now!” Hatch said calmly, but firmly,
as if giving orders in the field was nothing unusual for him.
Carlos scurried away to do his bidding.
    Hatch glanced at Sydney Steppe. She seemed
more in a rage than scared to death as most women would have been.
But he had seen her demonstrate that she was far from an ordinary
woman.
    He asked her, "Are you all right?"
    “ Thanks to you I am. Mr. Lincoln? Is
that what Carlos called you? I owe you my life! I can't believe I
let those two camel drivers get the drop on me like that. I'm
usually not that careless.”
    “ Do you know who they are? Are you
implying you know they’re Arabs?” he asked.
    “No. I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them
before. I know they are Arabic because this one,” she pointed to
the one with the knife in his chest, “yelled in Farsi to the other
one to kill me,” she answered. “Based on his accent, I would say
they were Iranians.”
    Hatch saw a flash in her dark-brown eyes that
could be anger, or something else. He wasn’t sure what it meant.
She was obviously not a random target. She was highly trained in
hand-to-hand combat and understood Farsi well enough to discern
accents. He had never seen that maneuver she had used to turn that
man’s knife back into his chest, and he thought he knew most useful
defensive techniques in existence.
    “Shit! I got that bastard’s blood all over my
shirt! And it’s one of my favorites!” she exclaimed, looking down
at her breasts, which were splattered with blood.
    “There is blood on your knee, too. It must
have happened when you smashed his nose,” commented Hatch, as he
took the opportunity to stare openly at her breasts and lovely,
long legs.
    A crowd had formed at