Everyone else in the room seemed to have suspended breathing.

Then T'ang moved his lead foot, stroked the hardwood with his toes in a circle that brought his left foot under him. Flowing up from his crouch, he poured his weight onto his left leg, tucked his right foot behind the knee, cocked his left arm over his head with the fingers of that hand pinched together, and gestured toward Komatori with his right hand open, palm upward.

That hand beckoned for Komatori to attack.

Without warning Komatori surged forward.

At the same instant T'ang sprang at him, yelling fiercely.

In unison, as if they were both part of the same technique, they burst into a flurry of movement. Punches from all angles met blocks, blocks became punches and more blocks, Komatori and T'ang swayed in and out from the waist while their arms fired like bolts off a static generator. The spasm in my chest eased, yet I hardly breathed. I couldn't believe that they weren't pummeling each other bloody. But I didn't actually see a blow land.

Abruptly T'ang whirled into a spin so swift that he seemed to flicker.

His leg flipped out, snapping his heel at Komatori's head.

Komatori ducked under the kick, swept one of his own at T'ang's supporting leg. T'ang hopped over the attack into another spin and kick that would've taken Komatori's head off if Komatori hadn't dropped to the floor and rolled away.

T'ang went after him. By the time Komatori regained his feet, T'ang had leaped high into the air. For an instant, a small shard of time, he seemed to hang there, poised to crash down on his opponent like a boulder from a trebuchet. Then he dropped, driving both heels at Komatori's chest.

He hit hard enough to pulverize cement, never mind ordinary human bone or he would have if Komatori hadn't slipped aside. While T'ang was still in the air, Komatori fired a punch from his hip straight into T'ang's sternum. Komatori's hoarse shout covered the thud of impact.

T'ang didn't fall. I couldn't imagine how he managed that. A

blow like Komatori's would've dropped me to my knees for life. But somehow T'ang got his feet under him, landed staggering backward. Two steps later, he recovered his balance.

His flat eyes burned silver with mayhem.

At the edge of my attention I thought I heard the front door open. I turned reflexively. Parker ?

No.

A second later half a dozen people in gis, no, ten, fifteen, charged into the dojo, streaming rainwater as they came. Their gis sported patches that said Master Soon's Tae Kwon Do Academy. They all wore black belts. Apparently Song Duk Soon had brought most of his senior students with him.

What the fuck ?

Before anyone could react, Soon's people rushed into the middle of the room, forcing the combatants apart.

Shock held the dojo for a moment. No one moved. Komatori stood at attention, his expression shrouded. Panting at the force of Komatori's blow, T'ang poised himself on the balls of his feet. The lines of his stance shed threats the way Soon's black belts shed water.

Sternway cocked an eyebrow at me. He might've been laughing.

Goddamn it, how many phone calls did Sue Rasmussen make?

Then Soon spread his arms, cleared a small space around him. The look on his face resembled triumph.

"Disgraceful!" he almost crowed.

"Chops stolen. Masters murdered. Fighting in your dojo. This is the work of children! You disgrace yourselves and your schools. You disgrace the martial arts."

It was Rasmussen's doing. All of it. Unless Sternway himself had told T'ang Wen about the chops.

Any doubt I might've retained was gone, burned away in a flare of perfect outrage.

"I will not allow it!" Soon went on. Water dripped from his gi like eagerness.

"You are fortunate that we were informed. For you yourselves I care nothing. I would leave you to pummel each other like babies. But I will not allow this insult to the martial arts. The newspapers will not make distinctions between us. They will say that all martial artists are wild dogs." He closed his fists.

"It falls to taekwondo-ka to act responsibly."

The sonofabitch sounded like he'd gained the pinnacle of Heaven.

Anointed by the Almighty to achieve his rightful superiority.

Which would've been fine with me. As long as he stopped the fight before T'ang or Komatori got hurt as long as he sent everyone home I didn't give a shit how much stature he assigned himself afterward.

But that wasn't really what he wanted. I could see it in his eyes. One of his black belts was Cloyd Hamson, looking even more belligerent in other words, frightened than he had yesterday. Another was a big Korean man, practically a giant, with a face like a hatchet and the closed remorseless aspect of an ax murderer. He was probably Pack Hee Cho, Soon's chief enforcer.

What Soon really wanted was a fight. He wanted to beat the crap out of every karate-ka and Wing Chun stylist in sight, force the whole damn building to admit that he was the best.

Stung by dread, I started forward. But I was too late. Always too late. Before I'd taken a step, T'ang Wen brought up a yell from the bottom of his heart and struck Soon's nearest black belt hard enough to double the man over.

Instantly the room went up like a high-octane gas fire. Howling their anger and fear, thirty-plus men and women with too much training and too little restraint hurled themselves at each other. By the time I'd finished one step and started another, the uneasy balance of the dojo had shattered into a brawl.

Kicks, punches, throws, yelling and cries, gasps, frantic respiration.

Aronson went down with a gash over his eye that hadn't yet had time to start bleeding. From the floor he kicked his antagonist in the crotch, then clawed his way back to his feet. Komatori cracked heads with his elbows, jammed his palms into ribs. T'ang flashed from opponent to opponent, striking each of them so fast that he was two blows away before they reacted. The giant picked up pajamas and gis indiscriminately, threw them against each other. With every punch and kick he felled someone. A couple of them didn't get up. They lay still and let themselves be trampled.

In the middle of the confusion, Soon measured out spinning kicks that staggered everyone they hit.

Wrenching myself away, I grabbed onto Sternway, shouted, "Do something!"

He sneered in my face.

"Such as?"

Fuck him. Covering my head with both arms and crouching to protect my torso, I crashed into the melee.

Somewhere nearby, a scream pierced the storm. I ignored it. Bodies collided with me, fists jolted my arms and ribs. Kicks landed on me, heavy as bags of sand. I ignored all that as well. Single-minded as a bulldozer, I drove my bulk through the battle.

Toward Pack Hee Cho.

I didn't consider him the most dangerous fighter in the room. Not even close. But he was doing the most immediate damage. And I needed to make an example out of someone. Otherwise none of these misguided lunatics would listen to me.

I got lucky Cho had his back to me. If he'd seen me coming he would've knocked me in half. A blow to the small of my back staggered me, but I shrugged it off, forced my feet back under me. Then I snatched out the .45, reared up, and pounded it at the side of Cho's head.

At that moment I didn't particularly care whether I broke his skull or not.

Although breaking a skull like his was probably impossible. It could've been bone from ear to ear. For the first second or two after I hit him, I actually thought that he wouldn't fall.

Finally he did. Instead of toppling, he slumped almost gently to the floor.