No Second Chance (2003) by Coben Harlan

Author:Coben, Harlan [Coben, Harlan]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-26T00:42:08.233000+00:00

Chapter 28

A sound made me stop. I turned to my right. I thought that maybe I heard something up there, near the street level. I tried to see, but my eyes were still suffering from the onslaught of the flashlight. The trees also helped cut off my view. I waited, seeing if I heard a followup. Nothing. The sound was gone now. It wasn't important anyway. Tara should be waiting for me at the end of this path. Whatever else might go on, that was all that counted.

Focus, I thought again. Tara, end of the path. All else was extraneous.

I started up again, not even glancing behind'me to check on the fate of the duffel bag with the two million dollars in it. It, too, was, like everything else but Tara, irrelevant. I tried to conjure up the shadowy image again, the silhouette made by the flashlight. I trudged on. My daughter. She could be right here, scant steps from where I now walked. I had been given a second chance to rescue her. Focus on that. Compartmentalize. Let nothing stop me.

I continued down the path.

While with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Rachel had been well trained in weapons and hand-to-hand combat. She had learned much during her four months at Quantico. She knew that true fighting was nothing like you saw on TV. You would never, for example, mess around with a high kick to the face. You would never try anything involving turning your back on an opponent, spinning, leaping--none of that.

Successful hand-to-hand combat could be broken down pretty simply.

You aimed for the vulnerable spots on the body. 1 he nose was good--it usually made your opponent's eyes well up with tears. The eyes, of course. The throat was good too--anyone who has ever been struck there knew how it could shut down your will to fight. The groin, well, obvious. You always hear that. The groin, however, is a difficult target, probably because a man is prone to defend it. It's usually better as a decoy move. Fake there and then go to one of the other more exposed, vulnerable spots.

There were other areas--the solar plexus, the instep, the knee. But there was also a problem with all these techniques. In the movies, a smaller opponent might beat a larger one. In reality, yes, that can happen, but when the woman is as small as Rachel and the man as large as her current attacker, the odds of her coming out on the winning end are very small. If the attacker knows what he is doing, very small becomes pretty close to nonexistent.

The other problem for a woman is that fights never go as they do in the movies. Think about any physical altercation you may have seen in a bar or at a sporting event or even on a playground. The battle almost always ends up in a grapple on the floor. On TV or in a boxing ring, sure, people stand and hit each other.

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