RainStorm

always talked too much for my taste. He still had the habit,
    it seemed. "You want to start standing, or on the ground?" I asked.
    "Whatever you want, man," he said. "It's your place."
    If he'd intended the comment to rattle me, he'd failed. But I did
    feel some irritation, mild for the moment. I thought I might not be
    able to respond as quickly as decorum ordinarily demanded when
    he tapped out from a submission hold.
    I nodded and started circling. He got the idea and followed suit.
    We closed and I took the back of his neck in my right hand, my
    elbow down, pressed in against his clavicle and chest, controlling
    his forward movement. He grabbed a similar hold with his right
    and yanked my head toward his, the movement fast enough to almost
    be a head butt. I looked down in time to take the impact on
    the top of my skull, where it didn't do anything more than hurt.
    My irritation edged up a notch. But before I had a chance to react
    further, he started muscling me with the neck hold, jerking me left,
    right, forward and back. He was using his hand and elbow confidently,
    which showed some training, and he was strong as hell.
    Time to change tactics. I snapped his neck toward me, and then,
    as he pulled back, used the hold to launch myself into the air under
    him. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dragged him
    down to the mat. I had expected him to try to retreat from my
    "guard," as the position is known in jujitsu, but instead he went the
    opposite way, grabbing and twisting my head in both paw-like hands
    and attacking the underside of my jaw with the top of his head. It
    felt like someone was trying to run a pile driver up through my
    skull. To relieve the pressure, I unlocked my ankles from around his
    back, brought my knees to his chest, and started pushing him away.
    Once again, his reaction showed training: he wrapped his right
    arm around my left ankle from the inside out and dropped back to
    the mat, trying for what I recognized as a sambo foot lock. Sambo
    is a variety of Russian wrestling. It's distinguished by, among other things, its emphasis on foot, knee, and ankle locks, some of which
    can be applied so swiftly and can cause such extensive damage that
    they've been outlawed from various grappling competitions.
    I shot my right foot into his neck and jerked the other leg back,
    just barely getting it clear from between his biceps and ribs. He
    tried to scramble away, and as we scuffled I managed to throw my
    right leg over his left and across his body and to catch his left toes
    under my right armpit. Before he could kick free, I overbooked his
    heel with the inside of my right wrist; clasped my hands together
    and clamped my elbows to my sides; and arched back and twisted
    to my left in my own little demonstration of sambo prowess, a classic
    heel hook.
    Despite the technique's name, the attack is to the knee joint, not
    the heel. The heel serves only as the lever, and I had a nice grip on
    Dox's. He tried to kick with his right leg, but from this position the
    kicks were feeble. I twisted a fraction more and he gave up that
    strategy.
    "Tap, tap," he said. "You got me."
    "Who sent you here?"
    "Hey, I said 'tap!' Come on, now!"
    I twisted another fraction and he yelped. "Who sent you?" I asked again.
    "You know who sent me," he said, grimacing. "Same outfit as
    last time."
    "Yeah? How did they know where to look?"
    "I don't know!"
    He tried to push my leg off. I squeezed my knees tighter and
    twisted his heel another millimeter.
    "Fuck!" he said, loud enough for other people to hear. "C'mon,
    man, I seriously don't know!"
    His breathing was getting more labored, as much from pain as
    from exertion. I looked in his eyes.
    "Hey, Dox," I said, my voice calm, almost a whisper. "I'm going
    to count to three. If you haven't told me what I want to know by
    then, I'm going to twist as hard as I can. Ready? One. Two. Thr--"
    "The girl! The girl! They paid her, or something. I don't know
    the details."
    I almost twisted anyway.
    "What girl?"
    "You know. The Brazilian chick. Naomi something."
    I was less surprised than I would have imagined. I'd have to
    think about that, later.
    "Who's your handler?"
    "Jesus Christ, man, I'll tell you what you want to know. You
    don't have to ... fuck! Kanezaki! Ethnic Japanese guy, about thirty,
    wire-rimmed glasses, says he knows you."
    Kanezaki. I should have known. I'd let him live when I'd first
    found him trying to tail me. I wondered briefly whether that