Free Small Wars by Matt Wallace Page A

instructions and some of his funky stones?”
    â€œGrowing gold from bare rock is a little advanced for me, Cin,” Ritter informs her.
    Ryland is genuinely offended. “I would expect more than a cheap rebuke such as that from a fellow countryman … person … thing. You know.”
    â€œI am none of that.”
    â€œYou may not possess my rustic brogue, but O’Brien speaks of Irish ancestry.”
    â€œBlack Irish,” Moon adds with his typical lack of taste, sensitivity, or actual knowledge.
    Cindy thrusts the flat of her palm into the back of his head hard enough that he has to shake off the blow afterward.
    â€œThat’s not even what black Irish means, you little shit.”
    â€œShe hit me again,” Moon complains to Ritter.
    â€œYou deserved it again.”
    â€œChildren,” Cindy curses them under her breath, replacing her earbuds. “All of you. Fucking children.”
    2011—Las Vegas, Nevada
    The ballroom of The Pirate’s Doubloon Hotel and Casino, miles from the Strip.
    Home to countless cold-roast-beef-and-string-bean Shriners convention dinners, arts and crafts expos, and wedding receptions bereft of a single tuxedo.
    A vinyl banner that was printed at FedEx Kinko’s proclaims the event to be “ Hot Zones 3rd Annual International Combat Knife-Fighting Tournament” in a discontinued Windows font. About two hundred people are in attendance for the popular so-called “mercenary” magazine’s keystone yearly event. The walls are lined with merchandising tables crewed by knife dealers, survivalists handing out pamphlets ranging from useful to paranoid to batshit, and several companies hocking paintball warrior weekends and related “experiences.”
    Ritter enters the scene just in time for the finals of the tournament that has lasted for two days and drawn competitors from all over the world (and in true “all over the world” fashion, 90 percent of those competitors are Americans, who’ve been joined by a handful of Scandinavians on holiday, a surly German war fetishist, and a Filipino ex-soldier whose entire village took up a collection to send him to the tournament).
    The final two competitors stand shirtless in the ring. Cindy wears a basic black sports bra while her male opponent is allowed to freely flaunt his nonfunctioning nipples. They both have numbers scrawled on their stomachs in thick red marker, and they’re armed with knives fashioned from hard nylon that are typically used in training and demonstrations.
    They wear no protective gear.
    This isn’t a safety-oriented crowd.
    Their ring is composed of four elongated plastic folding tables arranged in a haphazard square, allowing them just enough room to maneuver. Two referees in Hot Zones T-shirts observe the match from different angles.
    Cindy’s opponent is a determined-looking Jicarilla Apache who has traveled to the tournament with a small battalion of supporters from the reservation, all of them wearing T-shirts that declare them “Team Perea.”
    When one of the refs gives them the command, the two finalists begin slashing at each other, dipping forward and leaping back with frantic speed. There’s some technique to be seen among the spastic feints and strikes, but actual combat is a messy, disjointed affair. Speed and determination often win out over casual martial-arts training.
    Cindy is a pit bull, her knife hand obsessively going for her opponent’s throat. Each time the plastic blade connects with flesh the referees separate the two of them and award her a point.
    They fight to five points.
    Cindy harmlessly slashes Perea’s throat five times without positive contact from his blade even once.
    When the final point is awarded no one in the crowd seems particularly happy she’s won.
    Unsurprising, considering she’s one of maybe five women in a ballroom of two hundred men.
    The top prize is fifteen