He started to kneel to pick up the AK, but before he could get his hand on the weapon another man raced in through a dim doorway ahead and to his left, on his way towards the back door. This man also wielded a Kalashnikov, but he had not expected to see a threat inside the house, so his weapon was not up and ready to fire.

Court identified this man as the young Aryan Brotherhood member with the 88 on his neck. As the man raised his gun towards the stranger, Court swung the car tire at him underhanded, and it slammed into his face with a thud audible over the hammering drumbeat of the heavy metal.

The young man’s head flew back, banged against the door casing. He slid down, unconscious and flat on his back on the hallway floor.

The Aryan Brotherhood man by the back door who had taken the tire to the jaw rolled slowly to his knees and reached for his weapon, but Court kicked him in his already bloody face and spun him into the air, dropping him against the locked back door.

Court lifted one of the AKs off the ground now, but as he did so a shrill scream caused him to look back over his shoulder. Down the full length of the paneled hallway, some twenty-five feet away, a woman held something over her head.

Court recognized the item immediately, although he could not help but recoil in surprise. It was a katana. A traditional Japanese sword.

Not good.

And it got worse. Court realized the sword was being brandished by a meth head. The woman might have been in her twenties or thirties, but her skin was dry and leathery and stretched across the bones of her pockmarked face, and every exposed inch of her arms and neck was covered in scabs and tats. Her white blond hair was oily and thin, and the black T-shirt and jeans she wore were torn and threadbare.

He was as afraid of the woman as he was of the deadly weapon in her grasp.

The meth head with the sword charged. She was no expert with this weapon of hers; Court determined this instantly. In the narrow hall she should have been advancing forward with the point of the katana, but instead she swung it from side to side, slamming the blade into both walls as she closed wildly.

Court did not see her any differently because she was a woman; any sense of chivalry or gender bias in a force-on-force encounter had been trained out of him years and years ago. He saw her only as a threat. A target. He brought the AK up to his shoulder, used his thumb to make sure the fire selector was set to semiautomatic, centered the blade sight on her chest, and moved his finger to the trigger.