by Terry Toler
“Oh, come on!” Bae said, as she put her body into a fighting stance. She bounced around with her fists up, and playfully punched at me in the air.
“Seriously! That’s how you’re going to fight me?” I said jokingly.
She punched me in the stomach.
“Ow! What did you do that for?” I said.
“Maybe I’ll teach you some lessons!” She hit me in the stomach harder.
“Stop it!”
“Are you going to teach me or not?”
She started to throw another punch with her right hand. I anticipated it and grabbed her wrist with my left hand and twisted her arm in a counterclockwise position.
Bae immediately cried out in pain and dropped to her knees. “You’re hurting me,” she said, and I released my grip.
“Lesson one. It doesn’t take much to disable a person. That move will cause a three-hundred-pound man to cry like a baby and beg you to stop.”
Bae stood to her feet, rubbing her wrist. When Curly had done that to me, he wasn’t so gentle. My wrist hurt for days.
“First thing is that you don’t want to stand like someone itching to start a fight.”
“How do I stand then?” Bae said like a student would to a teacher when they thought they already knew the answer.
“Just stand like you normally would. You want the other person to think you’re not prepared to fight even though you are. So, stand like this.” I moved my feet slightly about a shoulder’s length apart and put my left foot slightly forward and my weight on my back foot. I took Bae by the shoulders and moved her body, so she was in the same position.
“Like this,” she said, putting her fists up and in front of her.
“Drop your hands to your sides.”
“I won’t be protected. I’ll be wide open for a punch.”
I turned away and started to pack my things.
“What are you doing?” Bae said with urgency. “Aren’t you going to teach me how to fight?”
“I’m not going to waste my time if you’re going to argue with me.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she sneered, angrier it seemed at herself than mad at me. Sort of like a child who had just been reprimanded.
“I’m sorry. I was just asking. I’ll be quiet. I promise.”
I stood back in front of her. “Hands to your sides.”
She dropped her hands.
“Relax your shoulders.” I shook them back and forth to loosen them up some.
“The first rule is to not fight when possible. Anytime you avoid a confrontation, you win even if you know you’re better than that person.”
“Second rule.” I stared into her eyes. Her gazed matched my stare and intensity. “Use the least amount of force possible to defuse the situation. Don’t let your emotions come into play. You’ll have an overwhelming urge to hurt the person. Make them pay for confronting you. Resist that urge. Just because you can kill someone, doesn’t mean you have to.”
“I get that. No revenge.” Bae was a lot more amenable after I had chastised her. That’s a good thing. Curly had a harder time with me than I was having with Bae. My girlfriend Jamie was worse than I was.
“Most people want to throw punches with their fists,” I explained. “That’s how they fight.” I simulated a right hook against her jaw. “That’s an inefficient way to fight for two reasons. Your knuckles are fragile and easily broken. The head is the strongest part of the body. You’re hitting a person with one of your weakest weapons against their strongest defense.
“You’re always armed,” I continued. “Your body has five lethal weapons on it. First is your heel.” I raised my foot and showed her the back of my heel. I had on thick boots with a heavy heel.
Bae wore sneakers. She raised her heel.
“You need to wear different shoes to a fight. Those are fine for everyday life. If you’re on a mission, you want to wear a shoe that you can run in but will also do a lot of damage if you kick someone. Lead with your heel when you kick someone. Toes are like knuckles. They are fragile and easily broken. The back of your heel is strong and won’t break easily. That’s what you want to use. Also, your knee is a weapon. As is your elbow. Feel my knee and elbow.”
I showed her how pointed and sharp they were.
“I see what you mean.”
“The palm of your hand is what you want to use to throw a punch. Feel how hard that is,” I said as I held out my hand.
Bae felt it.
“You said there were five. That’s only four.”
“You’re right. The other is your forehead.” I tapped mine. “That’s probably the strongest of all of them. But to use it you have to be really close to the person. And you can also do damage to your own brain if you hit the person hard enough. So, avoid that if necessary.”
“Avoid a head butt,” Bae repeated.
I stared at her for a moment. She was going a little overboard in being amenable. I needed to get her fire back.
“I slapped her on the head.”
“Hey! What did you do that for?”
I slapped her on the cheek. Hard enough to get a rise out of her.
Bae balled her fists and went into her fighter’s stance.
“See you didn’t listen to anything I just said. You let your emotions take over and you fell into your fighting position. You have to always control your emotions. They will get you killed.”
“What am I supposed to do if someone hits me? Just stand there and take it?”
“Walk away if you can.”
“If that’s not an option then what?”
“Then you hurt the person.”
“How do I do that?”
“It doesn’t take much. All you have to do is hit them where they are most vulnerable. Most people go for the head. That’s wrong. That’s the strongest part of the body. Don’t do that. Plus, you’re a small girl. You’ll get out of balance if you lunge at someone’s head.”
“Where should I hit the person?”
“In the most vulnerable parts of the body. Let’s start at the bottom and work up. Toes.”
“Toes?”
“Yes. Toes are fragile and easily broken. Which of your weapons would you use to hurt someone’s toes?”
I could see Bae thinking as her eyes wandered. “The heel,” she answered.
“Very good.” I walked around Bae, so I was behind her now. I wrapped my arms around her in a bear hug. “How could you get out of this?” I asked.
She wriggled back and forth, but my grip was too strong. “Don’t struggle. Maintain your control. Struggling wastes energy. Remember, a heel is a weapon and toes are vulnerable.”
“I stomp on your foot.”
“Exactly! And you stomp hard. Viciously. With all your might. Make every blow count.”
Bae stomped her foot. I moved mine away. Even with my thick boots, a hard stomp would hurt.
Bae stomped her feet several times.
“Harder!” I said.
“Good! You’re doing good.”
Bae’s eyes brightened from the encouragement.
I took my position behind her again. “Another vulnerable area is the shin. And the knee. A kick to the shin or knee with your heel will drop even the strongest man.”
Bae raised her leg and tensed like she intended to do it. I stopped her. “Just simulate it. Slowly.” I didn’t want her kicking my shin with her heel. I knew firsthand how much that hurt.
She practiced it several times. “Good.” I turned her around, so she faced me again. I showed her how to pivot and hit a person in the shin or knee with her heel before they could react. After a few tries, she actually got surprisingly good at it.
“Another vulnerable area in men is the groin.”
I could see Bae blush as she turned her eyes away.
“That will put a man down in a second. But it’s also hard to pull off. Men naturally try to protect that area. So, the blow has to be a surprise.”
“Which weapon do I use?”
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“Heel and knee. Let me show you.” I moved Bae so she stood close to me.
“If you are really close like this, use a knee.” I showed her how to bring her knee straight up in the air and use it as a weapon.
“If you’re behind a man, you can kick him like this between his legs. You’re not using your heel but the top of your foot which is almost as good.”
I demonstrated it to her. She tried it several times until she got it.
“Don’t bother with the midsection of your enemy’s body. There’s a lot of protection there. Focus on the lower body or the head and face. The vulnerable areas in the head are the neck, mouth, nose, eyes, and side of the head. The temple area.”
I pointed to each as I mentioned it.
“If you hit someone in the jaw, it might not faze him. It might do more damage to your hand than to his head. But if you hit him in the mouth and break a bunch of teeth, or in the nose, or poke him in the eye with a finger, you’ll stop him in his tracks.”
For more than an hour, I showed Bae a number of moves which she practiced until she got the general idea. We could’ve gone on longer, but another loud bang interrupted us.
“Cheongos,” the lady said with more urgency.
“I guess we’d better pack and let her clean the room.”
Packing didn’t take long at all. We had nothing to pack. We were out the door in less than two minutes.
When we opened the door, the maid had a scowl on her face. I put five dollars’ worth of won’s in her pocket and kissed her on the forehead which brought a huge smile to her face.
“You just gave her two month’s wages,” Bae said.
“Final lesson for today. Another rule of being a spy. We see enough bad things in the world and bad people. So, help others any time you can.”
26
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
“Have you heard from Alex?” Brad asked Jamie.
Jamie Austen sat in the office of Brad Rice, Alex’s CIA handler, having been summoned early that morning for a meeting with no explanation why. She’d learn that asking for a reason was a waste of time. The higher ups would tell her what she needed to know, when she needed to know it.
The purpose of the meeting was probably to give her a mission. Even though Brad wasn’t her handler, he sometimes had operations that crossed over into her area of specialty. Jamie was a CIA officer in the sex trafficking division of the Agency. She infiltrated trafficking organizations and rescued girls and did what she could to close down the operations, or at least put a major dent in their effectiveness.
When either she or Alex was on a mission, they always understood the possibility of getting the call they both dreaded. She didn’t let her mind go there. Alex was in South Korea. Nothing about his mission was considered dangerous or would put him in harm’s way. No more so than driving to the grocery store in Arlington, Virginia, where they both lived in separate condos.
“Have you heard from Alex?” Brad asked.
Now, she wasn’t sure what to think. The question could be interpreted one of two ways. Maybe Brad was just making conversation before he got to the purpose of the meeting. Or . . . there was some problem related to Alex, and, being his girlfriend, she might have some information they didn’t have.
Brad was the consummate professional and impossible to read, so Jamie decided to let the conversation play out before she became alarmed.
“Not for several days,” she answered.
Brad let the response hang in the air for what seemed like a minute but was only a few seconds—enough time to send alarm bells firing in her head.
“Why do you ask?” Jamie finally asked.
“Alex is missing,” Brad replied bluntly.
Jamie’s heart did a complete somersault in her chest. “Missing! For how long?” she asked, sitting up on the edge of her chair. This wasn’t the first time Alex had gone missing on a mission, so she tried to keep calm.
“Two days,” he replied. Brad sat back in his chair, spinning a pencil around and around in his fingers. He wasn’t telling her something.
“Did he have any reason to go dark?”
“None whatsoever. This was supposed to be a routine mission. On the scale of importance, what he was doing was extremely vital to our interests, but he shouldn’t have run into any trouble. He was working out of the South Korean cyber lab. It’s very secure.”
“What was the mission?” Jamie asked, knowing Brad wouldn’t answer.
“You aren’t authorized to be briefed,” Brad said matter-of-factly in a monotone, emotionless voice.
“Come on!” Jamie said with some anger behind the words. “It’s me. What’s so important that I can’t know about it? If Alex is missing, I think I have the right to know the details.”
Jamie had a high security clearance, but the CIA had a “need to know” policy that was strictly adhered to. Alex couldn’t even tell her what the nature of the mission was, and she hadn’t asked.
“I’m sorry,” Brad said sincerely.
Jamie knew that pushing him further wouldn’t help. “Why are you concerned?” Jamie asked. “It’s not unusual for one of us to be off the grid for two days.”
“We have reason to believe his life is in danger.”
Jamie tried to tamp down the panic. How could Brad be so aloof when he said words that serious? He was almost apathetic. She knew he cared about Alex’s safety as much as she did; he just sounded so unfeeling about it.
Brad leaned over the desk and said in a quieter voice, “Off the record . . .”
Jamie was shocked he was doing this. She leaned in. The door was closed, and there was no need for the melodrama, but she knew the body language was Brad’s way of saying that secrecy was of utmost importance. She sensed he was about to drop a bombshell on her.
“We think Alex went to North Korea,” Brad said.
“What?” Jamie bolted out of her seat and did a couple laps around her side of the room. That was the last thing she expected him to say. It wasn’t a bombshell. The news was like a live grenade had been thrown in the middle of the room.
“Are you telling me that Alex is missing in North Korea?” Jamie said, not believing the words she heard coming out of Brad’s mouth. The CIA didn’t operate in North Korea except by drones and spy satellites.
“That’s what we think,” Brad said.
Jamie sat back down but then got up again and paced around the room like a caged tiger. Her mind was trying to process the information. Missing in North Korea meant likely imprisonment or death. She tried to keep her mind from going there, but the worse-case scenario kept rearing its ugly head and overriding everything else.
“Do you think he was captured?” Jamie asked hesitantly, dreading the answer.
“I think so. Yes.”
Jamie was surprised by the candidness. He must be convinced something horrible had happened to Alex, and he would eventually have to tell her anyway. If Alex was captured in North Korea, he wasn’t coming back. Diplomacy might get him back but that could take years and only after Alex was tortured for information to within an inch of his life.
An American student was captured in North Korea a few years ago and came back brain-dead after confessing to being an American spy. He wasn’t a CIA asset. The confession was coerced out of him. He was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in a prison camp but was near death after only two. While he was released through diplomatic channels early and came back to America, he died shortly after his return. North Korea said he died of natural causes and they released him for humanitarian reasons. All of which we knew were lies but had no way of getting justice.
“Why would Alex be in North Korea?” Jamie asked in an accusatory tone.
“I want you to know that I did not send Alex to North Korea,” Brad said. “He went on his own. He was supposed to go to South Korea, find the location of the cyber lab in North Korea and come home. That was it. I swear.”
Brad w
as telling her more than he was supposed to. Obviously covering his own hide. This was likely going to the highest levels of the government if it hadn’t already. A lot of people were probably already working on containing the fallout.
“That idiot!” Jamie said aloud but mostly to herself. They’d talked about getting engaged when Alex got back. Why would he take such a huge risk? She knew why. She’d done it herself more times than she could count.
“You know Alex better than anyone,” Brad said. “He felt like he had a good reason to go there. I think he thought he could infiltrate the lab and activate Kryptonite.”
The whole thing suddenly made sense. That was something Alex would do. He’d been frustrated that the CIA wouldn’t let him use Kryptonite, despite his many pleadings. He did all that work, and it was just sitting on the shelf. Alex was convinced Kryptonite could turn the cyber war in our favor if used properly.
“Did he activate it?” Jamie asked.
“Yes. But the North Koreans found out about it. We’re even blocked from accessing it. We think Pok is behind it.”
Jamie let out a groan. Alex was well intentioned, but his actions may have sabotaged the whole program. All his hard work was now in the hands of his mortal cyber enemy.
“Where is the location of the lab?” Jamie asked.
“Don’t even think about it!” Brad exploded. “I’ve already got one missing agent. I’m not going to have another.”
“Let me go to South Korea at least,” Jamie retorted. “I’ll snoop around and see what I can find out.”
“Out of the question!” Brad countered. “You’re as bad as Alex with your lone ranger, shoot from the hip, charge up the hill, and take no prisoners attitude.”
Jamie forced a smile on her face. “I think that’s a record for the most metaphors in a sentence.”
“I’m serious,” Brad said. “We’ve warned both of you that going off mission was going to backfire someday. Well now it has. Big time.”
Jamie could see his emotions coming out. Brad seemed genuinely concerned for Alex but would also be ticked beyond measure that Alex got himself in this predicament without authorization. And he was powerless to do anything about it. They were always warned that the CIA would deny even knowing them if they fell into harm’s way.