Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Sandy passed Jack a beer, and he brought his piña colada up to his mouth and began drinking it through a straw. The Englishman’s mannerisms didn’t give Ryan much hope he’d have a hell of a lot of assistance in the next few minutes, since he wasn’t aware of many bar fights won by men who ordered piña coladas.

Ryan had to look at Sandy’s eyes over the pineapple spear. He said, “There are a couple of guys at the door watching us. They’ve been following us for a while.”

Sandy started to turn his head. Jack said, “No. Don’t do that. I just need you to be ready to move toward that back door.”

“You’re bloody serious?” He turned his head around slowly, a poor attempt to be covert while looking.

“I’m guessing someone saw us in front of CCS’s office earlier in the day. Who knows, there might be some other below-board operation in that building who runs this outfit, hires them out to lean on anyone they don’t like the look of. I don’t expect any real trouble, but they are going to make a show, just to scare us.”

Sandy saw them now. Two men at the front door. One had dreadlocks, his shirt was open to the waist, and he had a thick nest of necklaces around his neck. The other wore a soccer jersey; he had short hair and his black jersey barely constrained his thick muscles. “Yeah, well, they are already succeeding. What are we going to do?”

He began sucking on his drink, as if the ounce of rum in it was going to calm his nerves.

“We’re going to finish our drinks and head out the back. I think they will confront us, but let me do the talking. We’ll be fine.”

“Why do you want to go into a bloody alley?”

Jack had an answer to this. He didn’t want anyone seeing what he might have to do. He’d worked hard to have a low-profile life, and he was willing to risk an ass-kicking to maintain it.

“We’ll be fine. Trust me.” As he said it, he realized he was pushing his luck with this, but he had the confidence in his physical abilities as well as his ability to talk his way out of whatever might arise.

Sandy said, “Jack, have you forgotten who you are? You can pull out your phone, dial some secret number that I know you have memorized and, Bob’s your uncle, an aircraft carrier will appear in the harbor and whisk us both off to safety.”

Jack would have laughed at Lamont’s master plan, except he was getting his mind in gear for what was starting to look like an inevitable confrontation.

“I’m not calling anybody,” he said, his voice taking on a grave tone. “You and I are going to walk out the back door, head up the alley, and then go to our hotel.”

“And then what?”

“And then I will come up with another awesome plan.”

“Right. Of course.”

A minute later, Jack and Sandy entered the alley. It wasn’t as dark as he had feared it would be; there were a couple of light poles as well as a glow coming from a clapboard-wall casino building that ran the length of the block on the other side of the single-lane alley.

They turned to walk back to the hotel, but had made it only a few feet when two men stepped out of the shadows in front of them.

“Good Lord,” Sandy whispered.

These guys were young and fit. Jack pegged them as part of some local gang. They had tattoos on their arms that were obvious because they wore tank tops.

Jack smiled and continued walking toward them. He scanned their hands and their waistbands for weapons, but he saw nothing. “Evening. Something we can do for you gents?”

The taller of the two spoke with a thick West Indies accent. “You want to be telling us just why the fuck you are so interested in the office building you were snapping pictures of earlier today?”

“Don’t know what you are talking about. We’re tourists.”

“Ya ain’t no tourists, man. You’re down here sticking your noses where they don’t belong, and we don’t like that.”

Sandy spoke up; his voice was cracked with fear. “Look, mate. We aren’t here for any trouble.”

Another West Indian–accented voice spoke up, this one from behind. “Trouble’s here for you.”

Sandy spun around in near terror now. Ryan had heard the door open behind them from the bar, so he just turned calmly and checked to confirm it was the two men he’d seen with the bouncer. His mind was switching into a different gear, he was calm, resigned to the fact these men were going to need to be dealt with, but taking some comfort in the fact his opposition seemed to be supremely confident they had the situation well in hand.

Jack knew he could use that confidence against them.

The man with the dreadlocks spoke now: “We’re here to make sure you boys go back home to wherever you came from and never return.”

“No problem at all,” said Sandy.

Dreadlock smiled, his teeth bright white in the lights of the alleyway. “We’re not gonna take assurances, white boy. We’re gonna put you two in the hospital so you remember your mistake in comin’ here.”

Dreadlocks was the leader of the group, that was plain to Ryan. He was just out of arm’s length now, and while he didn’t have any weapons, Jack knew he had to operate as if all four of them could produce some weapon quickly.

Sandy’s hands were up in surrender now. “Completely unnecessary, gentlemen, I can assure you, your message has been received loud and—”

Sandy broke into a run. All four men moved toward him reflexively, and this opened up Jack’s options. One of the tank-top men crossed right in front of him, so Jack fired out a right jab into the man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious and dropping him in the street. The other tank-top man recognized the threat; he was a few steps farther away, so he stopped his pursuit of the blond and spun toward the dark-haired and bearded American. While doing so he reached for a fixed-blade knife in a scabbard in the small of his back and punched out with his other hand.

Jack closed the distance quickly, and he caught a glancing blow on the bridge of his nose. But before the Antiguan could draw his weapon, Jack was on him. He took him by his right forearm, put the man in a tight wristlock, and pushed his arm away at a forty-five-degree angle. As the man in the tank top screamed out, Jack stomped down on the inside of his knee, dropping the man onto his back in writhing agony next to his unconscious partner.

The other two Antiguans turned away from Lamont to aid their colleagues. They approached Ryan with their own blades drawn; they shouted at him as they advanced up the alleyway.

Jack softened his knees and lowered into a crouch. As the short-haired man in the soccer jersey neared and swung his knife, Jack ducked under his swing, spun around, slammed his back into the onrushing attacker, and grabbed the man’s downward-arcing arm. He twisted the arm, snapping it at the elbow, and the knife dropped to the ground.

Dreadlocks tried to stab Ryan, but Ryan had put the man in the soccer jersey between himself and this final attacker. He controlled the wounded man by holding his arms high and pushing into him with his back, and this stifled the last armed man’s attempts to deliver a blow. Once the man with dreadlocks lowered his knife to switch hands, Jack pulled down on his prisoner’s arms, dislocating one of the man’s shoulders, and then he thrust backward, sending the man in the jersey into the air and crashing into his leader. This took Dreadlocks even more out of the offense and onto the defense. By the time he got his underling out of his way, the tall American was on top of him, swatting the knife away and blasting him with a three-punch combination to his face.

The Antiguan fell onto his back on the concrete alley, and Jack kept up the attack, kneeling over him and raining several more blows.