The sword was already up, poised, and as we entered, it flashed. Out went the electronic box with one clean stroke, the encased wires severed at the exact point where they exited from the gray metal. There was no alarm, not a sound. We'd iced it.
Beautiful.
I figured there would be time for exactly two more strokes, but they had to be right, intuitively perfect. So at that moment I shut down my rational mind, took a deep breath, and gave my life to Zen. Mental autopilot.
The connecting doors slid open, and there stood the guards. We'd caught them both flat-footed. So far, so good. Now the sword . . .
Yukio Mishima, whom I mentioned earlier, once asserted that opposites brought to their logical extremes eventually come to resemble one another, that life is in fact a great circle. Therefore, whenever things appear to diverge, they are actually on a path that brings them back together—an idea of unity captured visually in the image of the snake swallowing its own tail. According to him there is a realm wherein the spirit and the flesh, the sensual and the rational, the yin and yang, all join. But to achieve this ultimate convergence you must probe the edge, take your body and mind to the farthest limits.
I'd been reflecting considerably on what this meant to us. Noda's two heavies personified brute physicality, the body triumphant; Tam and I were meeting them with the power of the mind and, I hoped, finely honed intuition. Whereas these may seem the farthest of opposites, as with the symbol of the snake, they merged at their extremities. They became one. I knew it and the two startled guys now staring at us understood it as well. Mind and body were about to intersect. The circle had joined.
Their Uzis—about two feet long, black, heavy clip, metal stock—were hanging loosely from shoulder straps several inches away from their hands. I saw them both reach for the grip, but that sight didn't really register. My cognitive processes were already shut down.
While the first man's left-hemisphere neurons were telling his right hand to reach downward, the sword was already moving, milliseconds ahead. It caught the gun's heavy leather strap, parting it like paper, and the Uzi dropped, just eluding his fingers. He stood naked.
That was all for him and he immediately knew it. If you're looking at a razor-sharp katana, you don't get a fallback try. However, the second guard, dark eyebrows and bald head, now had time on his side. Up came the automatic, one-handed.
Right here let me say you've got to admire his pluck. If I'd been staring at a four-foot katana that could have bisected me like a noodle, I might have elected to pass. But he'd weighed the odds and concluded he had a chance. Again, though, his rationality bought us time. The neurons firing in his brain were setting in motion a sequence of logic. He was thinking.