The fifth novel, Roxellana, concerns the activities of a young woman who hooks up with a minor crime figure and gradually influences his criminal activities.  She has some baggage, however, including her penchant for filming men having sex with her and then blackmailing them.  Twice her victims, including her own father, have ended up dead. 

To liven things up in her relationship with the crime figure, Roxellana proposes that he arrange a new kind of dogfight, one in which the dogs kill men instead of each other.  The boyfriend goes for it and has a few trial runs in which he uses derelicts as victims of the dogs in order to see how long it will take the dogs to kill a typical man, a matter which will be the subject of wagering in the actual dogfights. 

This is a selection in which Sam, Nick and Maria break into a warehouse to rescue two people who are being held by the dogfighter, who intends to kill them at the next dogfight.

From roxellana

Sam helped Maria into her bulletproof vest as Nick checked the weapons one last time.  Sam and Nick would enter through a side door, using Nick’s lock pick, or if need be, C4 explosive, as Maria entered the front.  The operation was to be quick and silent.  Maria, was armed with two handguns and an electronic device; Nick was armed with two .45’s and an M4 rifle; Sam with a short MP5, which he wore slung on his back, and a combat knife.  He was traveling light because he anticipated having to cut the captives free and carry at least one of them out.

The three left the Bloomfield house in three cars, which would be parked at separate locations.  If one of the cars were blocked or disabled, the others would still be available.

At dusk, Maria, dressed in a brown UPS uniform, drove a UPS truck to the front of the building in the Strip District.  Nick had procured the truck to use in this operation.  Maria exited the truck carrying a small box and rang the bell at the front door. Receiving no response, she banged on the door.

“Who is it?” a voice yelled from inside.

“UPS”

“Go to the side door.”

“Already been there.  No answer.  Need a signature.  It says urgent to a Mr. Ilford.”

The door opened a crack and a huge man peered out. 

“Gimmie the box,” he said.

“I can’t get it through that crack.   Anyway, you got to sign for it,” Maria said.

As he opened the door, Maria shot him with a 50,000 volt Tasar which she held out of sight under the UPS box.  Initially, the man just stood there looking at the projectile sticking in his chest, and then he started to vibrate as if he had grabbed a 220 volt line.  Within five seconds, he fell to the floor.  Maria pushed the door open wide enough to slip inside, stepping over his body.  She then closed the door and knelt to make sure he was incapacitated.  His eyes were open, but he seemed unable to move.  She kicked the Smith and Wesson 9mm out of his hand, bound his hands and feet with wire ties, and taped his mouth with duct tape.  When he was secure, she headed down a dimly lit hall in the direction of the room where Celeste was supposed to be held.

Meanwhile, Nick’s lock pick had opened both deadbolts on the side door and Sam and Nick slipped into the building, silently closing the door behind them and heading for the corner of the building where Celeste had been held.  Five minutes later, they met Maria, who had encountered no other guards, and the three headed toward the prison room. 

Roxellana’s diagram had been reasonably accurate.  In the room she had seen Celeste, a light shone out the open door and moaning sounds came from within the room.   Nick and Maria took up rear guard positions down the hall from the open door to prevent others from coming in once hostilities started, and Sam headed noiselessly for the patch of light from the open door.

Sam did a quick peek around the edge of the open door and saw Derringer tied to a chair fifteen yards from the door.  Celeste was tied to another chair in the corner of the room.  Her head hung down as if she were asleep, or possibly drugged.   Grzyb was standing in front of Derringer with a length of rubber hose, with his back to the door. 

“Make easy on self,” Grzyb said.  “I learn from you.  Where this man is.”

Derringer just moaned.  His face was covered in blood. 

“Talk. . . . You live,” Grzyb spat out.

Derringer moaned.  Sam eased his way in the door, imagining himself as a cobra, sliding, sliding, quietly, smoothly, softly, quickly, across the floor, until he got to a fifty gallon barrel seven yards from Grzyb’s back.  The idea was to get out of this without shooting if possible.  Shooting would alert other guards who might be in the building. 

Grzyb’s interrogation seemed to be going nowhere, and when he bent over to pick up something on the floor, Sam came out from behind the barrel, moving fast and silently toward Grzyb.  As Grzyb was bent over, he sensed that someone was behind him and just barely turned his head when Sam’s rear foot jab smacked him full force in the ass. 

Grzyb literally flew through the air for a distance of three feet, until he collided with the wall.  His head went through the plaster into the next room and his body hung limp on the wall.  Sam had hit him with the power of two hundred pounds moving at a run, the right leg extended just before impact with a twist to the hips that gives more zing to the kick.

Sam knelt to free Derringer.  He extracted his knife and cut the rope and tape that bound him to the chair and gently lifted him down to the floor, wiping his face as best he could with the sleeves of his shirt.  Nothing seemed broken and both eyes were there. 

He looked up toward Celeste, thinking he would release her next, but he caught a glimpse of movement in his peripheral vision.  It was Grzyb.  He was standing, covered head to toe with plaster, and apparently trying to clear his head.  As soon as he saw Sam, he went into a crouch.  In a blur of movement, Sam saw that he now held a ten inch Bowie knife in his right hand. 

Bowie knives are large weapons, fitted with nine to twelve inch blades sharpened on the leading edge, but also on the clip, which may extend back from the tip four to eight inches along the top of the blade. 

Sam moved without thinking.  There was no time to unsling his MP5.  His own Bowie knife was already in his hand from cutting Derringer’s bonds.  He pushed himself away from Derringer’s limp body, shot his left leg out straight, and lifted himself to standing, but moving away from Grzyb.  As he came up, Grzyb got a glimpse of Sam’s Bagwell Bowie.  The Bagwell knife, hand-forged by Bill Bagwell, is light and extremely maneuverable. Sam shuffled to the right, away from Derringer’s body.

Grzyb’s head, face and body were white with plaster and small chunks of drywall continued to fall from his head.  He had wiped clear spots around his eyes and his mouth and he growled a low growl as he gripped the huge Bowie and circled in a crouch.

Sam had trained with Bill Bagwell, one of the two or three Bowie knife experts in the world.  Bagwell is a knife maker, teacher, and master of the Bowie.  According to Bagwell and others, the Bowie is the deadliest edged weapon ever devised.  Unlike any other edged weapon, the Bowie knife can stab, cut, and back-cut with equal aplomb.  This doesn’t sound like much until you see it in action.  Stabbing and slicing are fairly straightforward, but the back cut is more complex.  Simply described, the back-cut is inflicted by a flick of the wrist backwards just as the forward cut passes out of the adversary’s scope of vision, striking the opponent with the point and the sharp back edge of the blade, and potentially opening his face or his skull from one end to the other. 

Bagwell, who has trained the U.S. Special Services, writes  that if a Navy Seal or an operator in another of special service units—the foremost fighting me we have produced--were transported to a bar on the Mississippi River in the 1830’s he would doubtless be killed within a few minutes by fatal strikes from a Bowie knife. 

The knife Sam carried was the Hell’s Bell model, favored by Bagwell himself, and featuring a guard shaped like an inverted horseshoe, designed to trap an opponent’s blade as he thrust it towards you.  The blade, razor sharp on the main cutting edge and on the top edge as well—called the clip—was eleven inches long.  The grip or handle was six inches long and shaped like a coffin, narrow at the front, widening, and then narrowing again toward the back.  It was made of mahogany and perfectly fitted Sam’s hand.

Sam had been in knife fights before, but they were always quickly concluded, usually after his opponent sustained a cut somewhere, often on the wrist or upper arm, and became instantly convinced that this was not for him.  But none of his opponents had been armed with a Bowie knife and none had moved as Grzyb did, like a fencer.  Sam knew he was in trouble.  Anyone who relished the thought of a knife fight was insane, and engaging in a knife fight with a man armed with a Bowie knife who appeared to know how to handle it, was a flirtation with premature death. 

Fear edged into Sam’s consciousness. He hadn’t prepared himself mentally for this because he didn’t anticipate encountering another Bowie.  But he had been against knife fighters and all one could do in any knife fight is remember the training.  Move with control.  Keep your legs out of reach.  Strike and return.  Use the back edge.  Get him on the back-cut. 

As the two men circled, Grzyb moved gracefully through the standard figure-eight angles-of-attack exercise in which the knife traverses the four figure eight patterns of angled attack – angled attack high, horizontal attack, vertical attack and angled attack low.  Sam noticed that the figure eights were loose and wide, allowing Grzyb to use the weight of the weapon to carry it though the target area, a recognition on Grzyb’s part that he was using a large, heavy blade that needed room to negotiate the corners.  Sam also noticed that as Grzyb’s blade moved, his other hand was in motion, moving in and out of a guard position and always ready for trapping or striking, grabbing or pushing.  In short, Grzyb knew what the Bowie knife was about.

The two men circled each other, each wary.  Grzyb was no less surprised to see Sam’s knife than Sam was to see Grzyb’s.  He’d been up against Kukris in Indonesia and Pangas in Africa, but he’d never encountered another Bowie knife. 

Both men held their left hand a little out from their bodies and the knife hand close in.  Grzyb moved first.  He threw a wide sweeping cut coming in from Sam’s left which Sam caught in the hilt of his Bowie.  Grzyb’s blade was trapped and Sam twisted his knife sharply to the left, nearly ripping the weapon from Grzyb’s hand.  But somehow Grzyb managed to escape the trap and jump backwards, again in the guard position. 

  As soon as the block was made and Grzyb’s momentum stopped, Sam stepped back quickly and withdrew to the guard position.  Sam anticipated that Grzyb’s next move would be a repeat of the first, this time with Grzyb waiting for Sam’s block, and using the tangle of knives as an opportunity to strike with his off hand.  Sam moved his guard to a slightly different position, and he could see Grzyb recalculating.  He couldn’t repeat the first move.  Sam knew then that he was in control.  He could anticipate Grzyb’s technique, which was not complex, and he could block.  The other man didn’t know it, but he was at Sam’s mercy. 

Sam ran through some possibilities.  If he lunged at Grzyb’s right eye, one of his favorite moves, and then flicked his wrist to the left, moving the tip of the blade in a reverse propeller motion and catching Grzyb’s skull as the blade started its downward arc, he could rip the center of Grzyb’s brain out of his head by that simple downward propeller motion.  If he performed a similar move on Grzyb’s hand, the Bowie would sever all the bones and nerves of the hand, leaving the fingers flapping in air.  But he was in control and he didn’t need to kill him.  He would strike shallow.

Grzyb lunged wide to Sam’s right with a thrust, main edge down, ending in a thrust to the head, main edge up. Grzyb intended to flick the thrust into a back-cut to Sam’s face.  But as the lunge came, Sam stepped left and sliced the back of Grzyb’s wrist in a back-cut motion of his own.  Grzyb winced, but came back into the guard position, both men circling.  The back of Grzyb’s wrist was dripping blood.

Sam then initiated a shallow sweeping cut from right to left, and anticipating that Grzyb would come in behind the arc of his knife to cut his arm, Sam immediately initiated a back-cut before his forehand arc was complete and before he even saw any movement from his opponent.  Sam’s back-cut was in motion when Grzyb initiated his strike, And Grzyb saw it, but his brain could not process the information in time to withdraw and avoid Sam’s back-cut.  Sam’s knife, whipping in the back-cut mode, sliced Grzyb’s wrist again, this time to the inside.  Grzyb cried out and danced to the rear, his knife hand now covered in blood.  His teeth were clenched and he glared at Sam in a murderous hatred, the plaster flying from his hair as he shook his head in a fury.

Sam moved to Grzyb’s left.  Grzyb didn’t seem to want to move in that direction, so that’s the direction Sam moved.  Grzyb was trying to pull his sleeve down to stem the bleeding, but it wasn’t working.  Blood was dripping on the floor.  Sam made a feint.  Grzyb moved, but not with the speed he had earlier displayed.  He was worried about the cuts and he was slowing down.  The bleeding was clearly getting to him. 

Grzyb was now growling as he circled.  His knife was making small circles and he bobbed and moved his left hand in ways meant to distract Sam.  Sam stayed steady and kept circling.  Suddenly, Grzyb delivered a powerful slash coming again into Sam’s left.  Again Sam intercepted the blow with the inverted horseshoe guard of his knife.  The collision of blades this time made a clunking sound and this time Grzyb’s blade was trapped.  He could not withdraw it because of the twisting pressure Sam applied.

Sam twisted his own blade further to the left and wrenched Grzyb’s blade free.  Somewhere far off in the corner of his mind, he heard the big knife clatter on the tile floor.   Instantly, seizing the advantage, Sam lunged forward, plunging the Hell’s Bell into and through Grzyb’s shoulder.  The penetration was just below Grzyb’s right collar bone.  Immediately, Grzyb let out a deafening scream and fell to the rear, disengaging himself from Sam’s knife and sprawling on the floor at Sam’s feet.  Sam’s knife had gone entirely through his body before it was extracted when Grzyb fell.  The top of Grzyb’s shirt was soaked in blood and blood was quickly spreading to the floor.  Sam sidestepped and kicked Grzyb’s knife into a far corner.  Grzyb lay there gasping for breath.  His only weapon was gone and he was seriously injured.  He looked at Sam with intense, but dispassionate hatred.

Nick appeared in the door holding an M4 rifle at the low-ready position.  Sam was breathing hard, and was seemingly transfixed by the sight of his opponent on the floor in front of him. 

“Are you all right, Sam?” Nick said, pointing the rifle at Grzyb.

“Yeah,” Sam said.  “Go get Celeste.  I’ll watch this guy.”  Sam stood over Grzyb, his big knife covered with Grzyb’s blood.

Nick cut the ropes and tape binding Celeste to the chair and massaged her wrists and ankles so that she could stand.  She mumbled something incoherent and sobbed as Nick freed her.  Maria came in and helped lift Derringer into position so that Nick could get him into a fireman’s carry while Maria helped Celeste.  Sam moved to the door.

At the door, Sam paused and said, “Tell your boss he had his chance and he blew it.  He shouldn’t have sent you out to kill me.  Now it’s gonna cost him.  If I were you, I’d stay out of it.”

Grzyb said nothing, but sat there staring vacantly at Sam and breathing heavily.

Sam walked back to his fallen opponent, sheathed his knife, grabbed Grzyb by the shirt collar, and dragged him to a sitting position  up against the wall.  He extracted a large gauze compression bandage from his combat pack and ripped Grzyb’s shirt open, placing the compression bandage on the wound, and wrapping a length of gauze around Grzyb’s torso to keep pressure on the wounds front and rear. He said, “Keep pressing on the front.”

When Grzyb, weak from shock and the loss of blood, looked up, Sam was gone.

Steel City V available now at Amazon.com