I am not a karate genius, and I can’t break two-by-fours or shatter bricks with the edge of my hand—a hand good for that often isn’t good for much else—but there are ways of doing it. I hit the Chinese youth with everything I had and knew, and he was dead before he started to fall. The guard came alert, looking my way, as I’d meant him to; the submachine gun steadied; and I was going to be dead, too, in another instant. Then the twisted scarf went around his neck from behind and drew up tight, and the gun clattered to the stone floor, sliding toward me. I went for it, out the open cell door, and I was barely in time. The guard broke free and came for the weapon in a headlong dive, just as I snatched it and rose. That put him in precisely the right position for me to bring the butt down hard on his neck. I smashed it down once more to make quite sure. It was very quiet in the ward. There was no sound in the hall, either. I looked at my left arm, where a hypodermic was sticking out of the biceps, strangely unbroken.
