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Annie and Mai Ling caught up with their classmates at the
top of the stairs on the main floor of the museum. The class was going to spend
the whole day at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, touring all the popular exhibits.
The two girls were walking through the rotunda, on their
way to the coal mine exhibit, when Annie noticed a college-aged Chinese student
standing off to their left. She didn’t think anything of it, until she looked
to her right and saw another Chinese.
This one had long hair and a menacing look.
When Annie looked left again, the first Chinese was
joined by another—and then another. Looking back to her right, Annie saw two
more college-aged Chinese. And there was another one standing straight ahead of
them.
“Mai Ling?” Annie said to her friend, quietly and
calmly. “Don’t look now, but I think we’re being followed.”
“I know,” Mai Ling whispered back to Annie. “I
recognize some of them as members of the Chinese Freedom League.”
“Which means they’re probably not here to see the Baby
Chicks exhibit,” Annie said wryly. “There must be a dozen of them.”
“Sixteen that I counted,” Mai replied. “What do we do
now, Annie?”
“You know anything about protecting yourself?” Annie
asked. “I’m pretty good at karate and Tae Kwon Do, but I may be in over my
head with this many of them.”
For the first time, Mai Ling smiled confidently.
“I also have some experience in the martial arts,” she
replied. “Let us compare our fighting styles.”
As if on cue, the Chinese gang emerged from the crowd and
circled the two young girls. In response, Annie and Mai Ling positioned
themselves back-to-back, so that they were facing their opponents on both sides.
“Attack or defend?” Mai Ling asked Annie. She warily
eyed the gang of Chinese that surrounded them.
“You have to ask?” Annie said, with a smile. “Attack,
of course.”
With that, Annie and Mai Ling sprang into action!
Annie let out a loud yell and leapt straight at her first
opponent. She hit him in the midsection with a flying kick, and sent him
sprawling.
As he went down, Annie landed between two other Chinese.
She took them both out with a series of spinning kicks to their heads.
Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap!
The goons fell backwards in unison, dazed.
Behind Annie, Mai Ling rushed forward in a low stance. Then
she jumped almost straight up, spinning in mid-air and delivering spinning kicks
to her three closest opponents.
Whap! Whap! Whap!
Mai Ling landed between two other Chinese, and waited for
them to rush her. Then, as they attacked, she used their own energy against
them—and flipped them head-first into each other!
On the other side of the rotunda, Annie was going
one-on-one with one of the larger goons. She delivered a swift kick below her
opponent’s right knee. This brought him to the ground, in a kind of
half-kneel.
While he was down, Annie brought her knee up to his chin.
At the same time she delivered a karate chop to the back of his neck. With a
loud crack! the Chinese fell face-first to the floor!
Mai Ling’s next opponent was punching forward with his
fists, in short choppy motions. Mai used her forearms to deflect the blows, then
countered with a series of quick jabs to the head.
She kept jabbing as she circled him, clockwise, in rapid
jumping movements. By the time she’d completed a full circle, the Chinese goon
was seeing stars. The goon toppled forward before he had a chance to defend
himself against Mai Ling’s powerful blows.
Meanwhile, Annie was surprised when one of the goons
grabbed her from behind. As she struggled in his grasp, another goon went into a
strike stance. He was gathering energy for a powerful blow.
Before he could act, Annie planted her right foot on the
floor and entwined her left leg around her captor’s right leg. With a quick
motion, she leveraged her captor’s own weight—and threw him over her head,
directly at the would-be attacker! Both men went down, hard. Annie put them away with a series of karate chops to their necks.
Behind her, Mai Ling was moving like a snake as she faced
two attackers simultaneously. She crouched down, coiling her arms around herself—and then recoiled in a powerful strike!
This first strike was followed by a combination of quick
jabs and spiraling kicks. She had her attackers reeling. Annie looked over her
shoulder, and Mai Ling was moving so fast her movements were a blur!
Annie turned to focus on her latest opponent. She released
a roundhouse kick that caught him on the side of the head. This goon was better
trained than the others, and he used the energy from Annie’s kick
to spin himself around. Then he delivered a side kick to the back of Annie’s
legs.
As she went down, Annie reached out and caught the goon’s
foot. She threw all her weight on the back of his knee. At the same time, she
twisted his foot with all the force she could muster. A loud snap!,
followed by his cry of pain, told her that he would be out of action for some
time.
Mai Ling now faced the largest of the gang. She launched a
sequence of spinning kicks, then a combination of kicks and punches.
The goon laughed off the attack, and changed positions.
Mai Ling settled into a defensive stance. Her large
opponent moved forward with a series of chain punches to her head and shoulders.
She was able to deflect most of the punches, but was starting to get dazed.
Then the goon lunged forward with a great roundhouse kick.
Mai ducked under the kick and moved into her opponent, just as he was turning in
his follow-through.
She crouched down and placed a powerful kick to the back of
the goon’s knee. Then she followed that by grabbing his right arm and pulling
it straight. He continued spinning in a circle as Mai Ling jabbed hard at
his outstretched arm. She listened to the snap! of the elbow and felt his
arm go limp as he spun into the ground.
He didn’t get up.
Catching her breath, Mai Ling looked up and saw Annie
backing away from two more Chinese on the other side of the rotunda. Mai counted
another half dozen men circling around, all in attack positions. Some of the
first goons were starting to rise from where they had fallen.
Annie was right, Mai Ling thought to herself. There
are just too many of them!
“Annie!” Mai Ling called across to her friend. “We
must retreat!”
Annie leapt and spun to stun both her opponents with a
single kick. Then she turned to answer Mai Ling.
“This way!” Annie cried out. She pointed towards the
entrance to the coal mine exhibit.
The two girls dashed across the rotunda, punching and
kicking any goons who got in their way. They ran straight to the elevator cage
at the front of Old Ben No. 17. Entering the elevator, then punched the Down
button—and waited.
“Come on come on come on come on,” Annie muttered as
she waited anxiously for the cage door to close.
The steel doors moved slowly together. The doors were still
partly open as Annie and Mai Ling watched one last attacker run the final few
yards to the elevator—and fling himself through the opening!
The Chinese was halfway through the opening when the doors
caught him around his waist. He looked on, wide-eyed, as Mai Ling braced herself
against the back wall of the cage. Then she delivered a powerful upward kick
that caught him on the jaw—and blasted him back out of the elevator!
Annie and Mai Ling slumped against the walls of the cage as
the elevator started to travel downward. It seemed like they were already
hundreds of feet deep, but it was all sleight of hand. The elevator ran down a
shaft covered with canvas walls that simultaneously slid upwards on
rollers.
The effect was that they seemed to be traveling farther and
faster than they really were. Annie knew that when the doors opened at the
bottom, they would really only be one level down in the museum, on the same
floor where they had left Zach and Moose fifteen minutes earlier.
Just then the two girls felt the elevator slow and then
come to a stop with a soft thud. As the doors slid slowly open, Annie
held her breath. She was expecting to see more of the Chinese gang. But the
elevator opened into an empty room, the rotary dump of the Old Ben coal mine.
“I should call Zach,” Annie said as they exited the
cage. She felt for her earpiece, and for the first time noticed that it was
missing. “Drat! I must have lost my communicator in the fight.”
“That is unfortunate,” Mai Ling replied, a note of
urgency in her voice, “but I fear we have more immediate problems.”
Annie looked at Mai Ling, and saw her pointing in the
opposite direction. There, blocking the exit, were a half-dozen angry
Chinese—fully armed with semi-automatic weapons!
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