Chapter 181

My group was finishing up breakfast in the hotel restaurant as the others found their way to the coffee pot. Hangovers were apparent. We had already checked out and the bags were in the car.

We arrived at the college and began completing our tour that we used to design the security system. Ching Lee and Vicky were with me and Cindy and Mary Ann went with Mark. Mark and I both viewed this as a training session.

My group walked along the north side of college. There were three huge parking lots there that would hold hundreds of cars each. Then there was a 50 foot strip of greenery, then a side walk, and then a two lane highway. On the other side of the highway there was large condominium style housing development - better than a slum - possibly lower middle class.

I felt pretty sure that this development was the source of a lot of the college problems and if I could have the data researched by location it would back up my suspicions.

I walked off the distance after I had reset the GPS marker on my phone at the starting point. I was going to use the length of the walk to add in the cost of a wrought iron fence, ten foot high with 6" spacing, with the little pointy things at the top. It would intersect with same type of fence along the east end of the main college and separate it from the industrial park behind it.

As the three of us made the walk I noticed a couple of young men cross the highway a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. There were two more that stayed on that side of the street. They began loitering on the sidewalk near where the intersecting fence would be.

Ching Lee asked "Do you see the men up ahead?"

"Yes. I suspected this was a possibility. That is why I told you to leave your purse and bulky things in the car. You can't defend yourself with your hands full."

"Are we going to turn around?" she asked.

Vicky answered for me, "We are here to do a job, not walk away from everyone that we don't like."

We continued on, marking off the locations of trees and shrubs on the map as the counter noted the distance. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mark and his group off in the distance to the right, looking at the buildings.

When we arrived at the intersecting point of the imaginary fences the two men stepped in front of us. The rougher looking one of the two pulled a knife.

"Give us your money!" he demanded.

"I am not carrying a purse right now. I have no money," I replied.

"Then give me your phones," he demanded again, "or I am going to cut you and take them."

"No, I am not going to give you my phone. I need it for work and it had special features like this little button right there," I said as I tapped the emergency button. A siren started to wail from the phone as loud as its volume would go and a recording started breaking into the sirens wail, "Help police." The phone automatically dialed 911 after a 15 second delay in case you hit the button by mistake.

Mr. rough and tough yelled, "You're dead you dumb bitch" as he lunged at me.

I tossed the phone and countered the knife lunge and began a series of defensive and offensive moves that I taught in the gym classes. As I held his knife arm at bay I began working over his face. A finger went deep into his left eye then a fist to the throat as he tried to figure out what suddenly happened to his vision, followed by the massive pain the finger had caused. I followed that with an arm chuck across the bridge of his nose. He had dropped the knife and was trying to get away from me. Taking my phone was the last thing on his mind now.