Red Man Down Read Online Free Page A

on her junior rodeo team.
    None of that had any malice in it, though – animals just did what they did and you learned to live with it. It was a whole different thing, she found out, to be attacked by somebody who really intended to hurt her. She’d held her own in her first fight test – paired off with another student, kneeling on the mats in the exercise room with gloves and helmet on, whaling on each other. Each of them secretly thought they’d won, and nobody got a broken nose.
    But the man in the red helmet was a whole different can of worms – one of the elite. She’d walked into the gym and confronted him as she’d been told to do. The man on the door had said, ‘You’re in a fight for your life now, you understand?’ When she’d nodded, smiling, a little cocky, he’d smacked her lightly on the rear and said, ‘Good luck.’
    She remembered walking across the mats, aware of the several observers standing around the walls. The Red Man had stood in the middle of the space, his face showing nothing through the mask. He hadn’t worn a red padded suit any more by the time Sarah did her training – just a padded red helmet and gym clothes. But they still called him the Red Man – partly, she suspected, because it made him sound more awesome. Playing policeman as she’d been told to do, she’d said, ‘Put your hands above your head and turn around!’
    He’d hit her in the face. It hadn’t been a little tap; it’d hurt like hell. And the force of it had knocked her down. Lying on the floor at his feet, she’d felt her confidence drain away like water down a sink drain. It was all she could do at the time to get up, and as soon as she was back on her feet he’d hit her again. The merciless man with the toneless voice had landed two more solid punches and a hard shove before she’d suppressed enough of the fear to begin to fight back. She’d yelled, ‘Stop resisting!’ and swung a roundhouse. He’d deflected it and hit her again, in the ribs, hard. She’d kept punching at him, but it was like punching a wall, hard and unyielding. Soon she’d been on the ground again, with the hard man on top of her. A couple of ludicrous minutes had followed in which she’d yelled, from underneath him, ‘Stop resisting!’ There’d seemed to be no way to get at this monster, who’d clearly been bent on taking away the career she’d set her heart on.
    The other thing she hadn’t known much about till that morning was rage. She’d learned a great deal about it in the next five minutes. Red hot rage had flooded her brain and helped her to go on fighting till she’d somehow rolled out from under him, jumped up and landed a couple of well-placed kicks she’d learned in Tae Kwon-Do. They’d been good enough to earn a welcome grunt of surprise and appreciation from the Red Man, and one of the observers had said, ‘That’s more like it. Now get the cuffs on him, Sarah.’ She’d been awkward with that, too, but she’d done it, and finally got to walk out of that terrible room, past the observers with their straight faces and amused eyes.
    It hadn’t been pretty, but it must have been good enough, because she’d got to stay and try it again later. He’d been patient the next day when he said, ‘Let me show you what you missed at the beginning …’ and began pointing out the behaviors to watch for: the tense shoulders, hostile or dead-looking eyes – ‘And if he turns like this, making a wedge shape, see? That’s to protect as much of himself as possible when he clobbers you.’
    Before she was done she’d had to learn how to respond effectively without the anger – to fight like a savage while staying perfectly calm. Rationalizing the battle had turned out to be one of her strengths, and she’d graduated with high marks from the academy. But she’d never forgotten the pain and terror of that first day’s battle.
    ‘And that’s what it’s for,’ Dietz had said when she’d told him about it.