Hard Rain

nastiest signet ring.
    I popped a quick jab over his trapped left arm and up into his neck,
    aiming for just under the jaw line. It wasn't a power shot but it
    didn't need to be; what it needed was accuracy, and that it had. The
    tip plunged in like a corkscrew hypodermic, and before he could pull
    away I twisted downward and ripped back. He yelped and leaped away,
    instinctively clapping his hand over the resultant tear. Blood jetted
    out from between his fingers, and I knew I'd hit the carotid.
    He made a horrified gurgling noise and clapped his other hand over the
    spot, but blood continued to pour out. I swung back to my right. His
    friend had pulled up short, unsure of what had just happened, shocked
    by all the blood. I slipped the doorstop between my thumb and
    forefinger as though it was a knife and brandished it at him Hollywood
    style, my arm extended and the weapon way too far from my body.
    When he realized that I wasn't holding a machete, he tried to grab my
    juicy target of an arm. I let him get my wrist, then made as though I
    was trying to yank free. He braced against the pressure, straightening
    his forward knee, his eyes and all his focus on the weapon. Using our
    counterbalanced pulling to brace myself, I raised my right foot off the
    floor and shot it into his forward knee. At the last instant he saw it
    coming and tried to twist away, but he had too much weight on the leg.
    The kick blew through his knee and he crumbled to the floor with a
    shriek.
    Murakami was still standing between me and the door. He looked calmly
    at the two fallen men, one screaming and writhing on his back, the
    other sitting and clutching his hands tightly to his spurting neck in a
    gesture of burlesque mortification. Then he looked back at me. He
    smiled,
    revealing the bridge.
    "You're good," he said. "You don't look like much, but you're good."
    "Your friend needs a doctor," I said, breathing hard. "If he doesn't
    get proper attention he's going to bleed out inside five minutes, maybe
    less."
    He shrugged. "You think I want him as a bodyguard after this? If he
    wasn't going to die, I'd kill him myself."
    The fallen man was drenched with blood and staring at Murakami blankly.
    His mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged. After a moment he
    slumped soundlessly to his side.
    Murakami looked down at him, then back to me. He shrugged again.
    "Looks like you saved me the trouble," he said.
    C'mon, Tatsu, where the fuck are you?
    He unzipped his jacket and took a respectful step backward before
    shrugging it off. If he'd stayed just a little closer I would have
    moved on him as soon as it was down around his elbows, and he knew
    it.
    He looked at the doorstop, my hand bloody around it. "We're going to
    do this armed?" he asked, his tone dead-man flat. "Okay."
    He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a folded knife. He
    flicked a thumb stud on the handle and the blade snapped out and into
    position. From the instant, semiauto opening, I knew it was a Kershaw
    model, essentially a quality, street-legal switchblade. The cutting
    edge was black, coated with titanium nitride, about nine centimeters.
    Shit.
    In my unpleasant experience, unarmed against a knife, you've basically
    got four options. Your best bet is to run like hell, if you can. Next
    best is to do something immediately that prevents the attack from
    getting started. Third is to create distance so you can deploy a
    longer-range weapon. Fourth is to go berserk and hope not to get
    fatally cut going through and over your attacker.
    I don't care how much training you've had, these are your only
    realistic options, and none of them is particularly good except maybe
    the first. Unarmed techniques against the knife are a fantasy. The
    only people who teach them have never faced a determined attacker with
    a live blade.
    My macho years are at least two decades behind me, and I would have
    been thrilled to turn and run if I could have. But in the enclosed
    space of the dojo, with a younger, and probably faster, enemy standing
    between me and the exit, running wasn't really an option, and I
    realized that the ordinarily depressing odds of emerging unhurt against
    a knife looked downright desolate.
    I glanced over at the bag. It was about ten meters away, and my
    chances of getting to it and accessing the gun before Murakami put that
    blade in me were not good.
    He smiled, the bridge a predatory rictus. "Throw away yours, and I'll
    throw away mine," he said.
    He