Predator Turnabout 7

"Long ago, in a jungle on the other side of the world, Sloane had spent some idle hours on his downtime working with a little old brown man from Java. He'd never figured out how the Indonesian, whose name had been Setarko, had wound up in Vietnam, or even who for sure he'd been working for at the time. Probably connected to Air America, but nobody had ever said, and Setarko seemed to come and go as he pleased."

"Setarko had a martial art, something called pentjak silat, that he had learned in West Java and had practiced all his life. He was pretty amazing with it-in play, he could go against four or five Marines who were half again as big as he was and knock their dicks into the dirt without working up a sweat. Smooth as hot oil on glass. Then there were the knives. The old man had a rucksack full of them-short, long, daggers, funny hook-shaped ones, and he was an expert with them all."

"There had been a Marine hand-to-hand combat instructor in the unit, Pablito. He was half-
Mexican, half-Italian, a bodybuilder who could bench four hundred pounds. Pablito had grown up on Chicago's meanstreets, and was really wicked with a knife himself. He had just shaken his head when somebody asked him if he could take the old man, blade-to-blade. "Sheeit. Best I could hope for would be to keep dancing until he got worn out and hope I could throw my blade and hit him. Man would fillet me like a fish. I might nick him. You guys? Just as well stab yourselves and save yourself getting all sweaty and tired before you die."pg.228-229 chpt.29