Sam Fisher- Fight with Choi

  The faintest spill of emergency illumination from way off down the cavern was all they had, but for Fisher it was ample. After hours of being stuck in the gloom, his eyes were far better dark-adapted than Choi’s. He saw fuzzy, indistinct shapes where his opponent would be virtually blind, and he threw brutal, iron-hard blows at the man’s torso, driving him off balance and back toward the cages.

  Choi fired again and this time the muzzle flare was dangerously close to Fisher’s face, the burn of aerosolized gunpowder searing his nostrils. He grunted in pain as Choi struck his head in a glancing blow with the butt of the semiautomatic, and a sickening wave of nausea welled up. Fisher fought off a bout of dizziness and recovered his balance.

  Reacting with violence, he shoved Choi back against the bars of the cages and landed another punch, scrambling to grab the general’s gun hand before he could bring the pistol to bear.

  The lightbulbs flickered again and Fisher saw a flash of Sarah on the far side of the bars, snaking her hands around Choi’s throat, trying to hold him in place. The general snarled and jammed a backward elbow strike into her chest, pushing her back, but it gave Fisher the opening he needed.

  He was dimly aware of Sarah’s cell door creaking open as he and Choi wrestled over control of the pistol. The lights dimmed and Choi jerked the trigger, firing shots into the rough-hewn ceiling, sending brass shell casings clattering down around them.

  Choi’s bulk was misleading. Fisher had pegged him as an out-of-shape desk officer with delusions of grandeur, but now he was learning the hard way that the major general carried more muscle than expected. But this fight could only end two ways: with Fisher on the ground or Choi in his place.

  The pistol’s slide locked open as the last bullet was spent, and Choi gave a furious bellow, forcing the empty gun down against Fisher’s face. The hot metal burned like a brand and he cried out, recoiling.

  Choi took the moment and used the gun like a club, pistol-whipping it across Fisher’s face. He staggered back, trying block the blows, his skull ringing as he went on the defensive.

  Then the reek of stale piss choked the air and he saw the dim shape of a slop bucket collide with the back of Choi’s head. The hit knocked the general off his pace, as dregs of sour human waste splashed down the back of his immaculately pressed uniform. Sarah’s throw had been brute force and artless, but it did the trick, giving her father the chance to reverse the pace of the fight.

  He wrenched the empty gun out of Choi’s hand, breaking fingers as he did, and the general cried out. Fisher swung the weapon back at him in a savage arc, and the heavy, wood-inlaid butt of the K5 pistol hit Choi in the throat with enough force to crush his trachea. Choi’s hands clapped to his neck in abject panic, and he clawed at his collar as he collapsed to his knees.

  The flickering lights brightened, and in that moment Fisher met the dying man’s gaze. Choi’s expression was one of shock and surprise, as if he had never contemplated it might end this way for him. Reeking of urine and choking to death was an ignoble fate, but he deserved no better. The general fell back and his breaths came in quick, brittle rasps – and then abruptly stopped.

- Dragonfire, Chapter 29