Date: 19 March
Time: 2100 hours
Objective: Athena
She was a true warrior.
Subduing her had required all my skill and training. Even
the weapon hadn't been enough to make her submit. Not like
the others. Not until she'd felt the prick of the blade,
sensed drops of her own blood trickling down her neck. At
that point she'd quivered, then gone still. She was too
smart not to. She wanted to fight. I could see it in her
eyes. But she didn't. In the end, I'd won. I injected her
with the Nembutal, and in five minutes her eyes went dull
and her body went limp.
I had her.
Her warm, drugged body slumped against my shoulder. It
felt good. My timing and execution had been perfect. It
was Spring break. She wouldn't be missed for days.
By then it would be too late.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York City
March 20th, 4 PM
The auditorium crackled with anticipation.
It was the final seminar of the two-day "Crimes Against
Women: How Not to Become Another Statistic" conference.
The panel of experts included Jimmy O'Donnelly, an NYPD
detective from the Special Victims Unit; Sharon McNally, a
psychologist who specialized in counseling victims of
violent crimes; Dr. Charles Hewitt, a professor of
statistics and mathematics right here at John Jay; Dr.
Lillian Doyle, also a John Jay professor but in the
sociology department; Lawrence Clark, a retired Supervisory
Special Agent from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, a
component of the NCAVC-- the investigative branch of the
Bureau's Critical Incident Response Group.
And Sloane Burbank, the final name on this impressive list
of experts.
All of them had spoken. Now it was her turn.
The moderator ran through Sloane's impressive credentials,
which included a year in the Manhattan DA's office before
joining the FBI full-time, where she was trained as a
crisis negotiator by the CNU, the operational branch of the
FBI's CIRG division. Currently, she was an independent
consultant who worked with law enforcement, corporations,
and educational institutions, training them in crisis
management and resolution. She was also a certified Krav
Maga instructor. And all at thirty years old.
With an admiring nod in her direction, the moderator
stepped away from the mike and turned the room over to
Sloane.
Amid enthusiastic applause, Sloane rose from behind the
speaker table, thinking for the dozenth time how good she
sounded on paper. And she was good-- just not as good as
she'd been a year ago. Then again, perception outweighed
reality. She was the only one who'd know the difference.
Exuding her usual energy and self-assurance, Sloane
unbuttoned her blazer and tossed it over the back of her
chair. She wasn't surprised by the skepticism she saw on
some of the faces in the audience. Their reaction was
nothing new. And it was something she'd used to her
advantage more times than not.
Despite her impressive resume, she was a fine-boned woman
with a delicate frame and the fresh-scrubbed features of a
college student. That made people doubt her abilities--
enough so that many of them wrote her off.
Let them. It gave her the advantage. And having the
advantage gave her power.
As Sloane knew, power came in many forms.
She pulled on her protective gloves and walked to the front
of the room, dead center, with the aisle stretching before
her, and the two sections of the auditorium split on either
side of her.
"So far tonight, you've heard about coping with the
aftermath of a physical attack, ways to avoid one, and some
profiles of typical victims and assailants," she
began. "Every bit of what you learned is true. But there's
another truth. We can't always control the circumstances
in which we find ourselves. So what happens when you wind
up in a parking lot alone at night, your car is ten rows
back, and a creepy guy who's built like a Hummer is lying
in wait?"
She held out her gloved hands, palms up, to show she was
unarmed, then pointed at her pocket-less and holster-less
black turtleneck and slacks. "I'm dressed just like you
would be. No weapon. No handy object to act as one. And
no purse, although if I had one, I wouldn't have time to
grab for my cell phone or, even better, for a can of pepper
spray. That's why I learned Krav Maga."
A spark of interest flickered in the audience's eyes-- even
those who'd been Doubting Thomases.
"Brief background," she began. "Krav Maga is a whole
different breed of self-defense. Its roots trace back to
Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazi terrorism. It was
founded by Imi Lichtenfeld, who refined his street fighting
skills protecting his and other Jewish families from
attack. Lichtenfeld later emigrated to Israel, further
developed those techniques, and then taught them as Chief
Instructor for the Israeli Defense Forces. In Hebrew, Krav
Maga means `contact combat'-- training designed for the
unpredictable nature of street fighting. There are no
rules. No trophies for good form. Only survival."
As Sloane spoke, a brawny man wearing a ski mask crept out
from behind the curtains at the front of the room, visible
to the audience, but not to Sloane.
He whipped a knife out of his pocket and charged forward,
leaving Sloane no time to prepare and the audience no time
to react.
Grabbing Sloane's left shoulder, he pressed the knife to
her back. "Get in my car," he ordered in a gravelly voice.
It was like someone flipped a switch.
Sloane whipped around in a quick body turn. Her left
forearm shot forward, locking against his right wrist to
deflect the knife attack, and propelling her into the
offensive strike of delivering a forward horizontal punch
to his throat with her right elbow. As he gasped for air
and recoiled from the simulated blow to his throat, her
left hand snapped up, pinching his knife-wielding arm in a
vice-grip between her upper arm, forearm, and chest. The
nutcracking pressure caused the knife to fall from his hand.
Threat obliterated.
Sloane then trapped her assailant's head with her right
forearm, grabbed his shoulder with her left hand, and
yanked his upper torso down, jerking her knee upward in a
lighting strike to his groin.
She stifled a smile as she felt him inadvertently tense and
arch away from her, even as he responded on cue, doubling
up and crying out as if he'd been castrated. She finished
him off with a downward elbow strike to the back of his
neck, then pushed him away as he collapsed on the floor,
writhing in mock agony.
It was all over in ten seconds.
"I'm crushed by your lack of faith," Sloane murmured as she
helped him up, applause filling the auditorium. "I barely
tapped your windpipe. Did you really think I'd kick your
balls through your nose?"
"Never crossed my mind." His reply was drowned out by the
applause. "I know you're a pro. Pure reflex on my part."
"I'll try not to take it personally."
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