To a Point : The delicate nature of knife defense

Bendigo Strange
November 12th, 2024
Tuesday (mid-day)

“There is only the matter of constant awareness”
-from the second chapter of the Hagakure

India (February 2007)

We were riding on a two lane black top heading back to the Oberoi in Mumbai, the same Oberoi that would be subjected to a terrorist attack by ten members of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba a year or so later. 

The afternoon was hot in the way that only the Subcontinent can be, and I was nearing the end of a month long, one man executive protection detail that went from New York to Dubai, to Pakistan and then on into India. Mumbai was the last leg, then home.

For most of our trip through India we had a pair of cars that came equipped with two phenomenal drivers that journeyed us out of New Delhi to somewhere south of the Tropic of Cancer, where at that point we boarded a near empty and aged 747 and flew to Mumbai. It was here that the guy who had coordinated the logistics for this trip (not me), had decided to wing it and utilize a driver from the hotel. My objections fell on deaf ears as the Client assured me “Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.”

Still pondering the “will be fine” part as we traveled past a tractor so overloaded with red bricks that it had snapped in two, we seemed to have successfully navigated that day’s “Not-killed-on-the-roads-of India”incident. When unbeknownst to me, Hotel Driver did…something.

That something soon enough appeared in the form of when a black Range Rover performed the prettiest little cut-off ambush one could hope to witness first hand in life without getting killed over. Hotel Driver brought our car to an expedited halt, and it was at this point things proceeded to get interesting. Doors opened on the Range Rover and men stepped out and began walking towards our vehicle.

  I noticed this in my periphery, because at that moment I, rather gently, put my hand on the back of Hotel Driver’s neck and said “Backup.Backup right now”, while looking to see, if in fact there was anything immediately behind us, besides on-coming traffic. For the next ten seconds there wasn’t. 

“Yes” he said, but did nothing. “Dude..backup….reverse….RE-Verse”, “Yes.” staring straight ahead. And then time was up. 

There were no visible guns, but a large man was now at the driver’s door. This being India where they drive on the wrong side, the driver’s side was on the right, and I was seated in the “passenger” seat on the left.  “No worries” I thought, since after all the doors were locked. I threw my right leg over the console, my foot searching for the accelerator, hand about to go on the steering wheel, when the door simply opened up, and there was a very large fist coming in towards the drivers face.

There was a solid smack to the face, followed by another. His buddies were now trying to pull our driver out of the seat.  “DRIVE! DAMNIT! DRIVE!” I began yelling. Seat belts, it turns out, can also save you from getting your head kicked in on the pavement. Try as they did between the seatbelt and my grip on the driver, they couldn’t get him out of the car. Now I shoved our driver’s legs off to the side, allowing the car to lurch forward a few feet, and forcing the other attackers to move away from the now rolling wheels. The big man repositioned himself in front of the door, reared back and prepared to land another punch to our driver’s now bleeding face. “DRIVE!” I yelled again, as my hands moved over and began cutting the steering wheel hard to the right

Knowing that I couldn’t stop the punch that was coming for Hotel Driver’s face, I did the most proactive thing I could think of. 

Grabbing the wrist of Mr. Not-Supposed-to-be-in-Our-Car and, pulled his punch on through, doing my almost best to deflect the blow from the Driver’s skull. And pulled hard I did.

Caught off guard his mouth bounced off the door jamb, then followed the rest of his body on inside the car. He now found himself laying across the gear shifter, and the Driver’s lap. Our faces now inches apart I requested that he leave the vehicle and get back to his car. This was laced with some flurry of expletives. 

His face, that was filled with anger and hatred suddenly cooled when he got the point. Of which I do not mean figuratively, but rather literally. 

After pulling him into the car with both hands, I sank my left thumb into the crook of his elbow. With my right hand, produced, a then new CRKT Hissatsu fixed bladed knife from underneath of my untucked safari shirt, where it had been suspended upside down, under the left arm pit, via a hotel room made paracord sling/ shoulder harness. The point of the fine tipped blade just behind his chin bone where it was soft. When he attempted to raise his head away from the blade I simply let the blade rise. There was no getting away from the sharp pointed knife stuck into the first few layers of skin, a few more ounces of pressure and the seven inch blade would penetrate the bottom of the mouth, then the tongue, into the sinus cavity, and finally resting wherever a seven inch blade would inside a human head.

Whatever anger he had gave way to fear.  Whatever caste system he felt entitled to when he cut our car off, was suddenly at the mercy of someone outside of it. To his credit he was smart enough not to move. Looking past him I glared at his buddies outside. It was dead quiet for a moment when they backed away simply saying “Okay. Okay. Okay. We go. Okay. We go. “ and go they did to the Range Rover. “Get the fuck out.” I said while lowering the point of the blade a quarter of an inch. He did. 

Our driver placed his hand on my wrist to lower the blade as the man exited saying “It’s okay” over and over as he started to cry and swallow. As we all drove away, my Principal (client) simply laughed out loud adding “Well that was exciting!” 

If you have ever seen the little painted red indicator on the door locks inside a car door, then you know a red indicator shows the door as unlocked. Click it, the latch flicks down to black and the door is now identified as LOCKED. Apparently, in this particular model that served as the hotel taxi the car’s manufacturer decided that the red/orange indicator meant that the door was LOCKED. Which is indicative of India herself where a side to side head wiggle that looks like a no to a Westerner in fact means yes.  

All that evening through dinner, and then back in my room I was severely put off by the fact that I had allowed us to ride around all day with unlocked doors. Replaying the events of the day had left a pit in my stomach, yet I felt like I was missing something that I had not realized. 

Calling room service I ordered a pot of coffee, and a pastry then sat with my feet on the window sill looking out into Back Bay and the Arabian Sea, thinking. What would have happened had those damn doors just been locked. Closing my eyes I began playing that out.

The men would have either yelled some profanities at the driver and walked back and drove off. “Nope.” Remembering what would have happened had they gotten our driver out of the car.

With the driver frozen I would have then taken command of the vehicle and drove us out of the fray from the passenger side, possibly hitting one of them with the vehicle. Then my mind realized something else. 

Most likely they would have given chase. Neither the our driver nor our little taxi would have been capable of outrunning the larger Range Rover. I suddenly had a vision in my head of our car overturned and upside down with severe injuries to every one of us. THAT was a very likely scenario. Our road raging attacker and his buddies were not going to let the slight go. Either way my knife under his chin had sent the universal message that needed sending. Consequently, had I used something like a blackjack, or club and commenced to hitting him on the arms, shoulders, head in place of the knife it may have led to an interaction with law enforcement later at the hotel. There are no free lunches and we learn by doing.

My Client would retell this tale some months later at a dinner party, but it was on the flight home where he, a self-admitted hot head, asked me how I kept from losing my cool during the altercation. I explained that I was not in the anger business. For me it was never personal. In this line of work there is the  expectation TO be attacked. If I lost my temper every time I had endured a problem in my job, whether it was insult or altercation, I would have been dead or in prison a long time ago. He then asked me who “trained” me to do that, referring to sticking my knife under the aggressor’s mandible. I laughed noting that no one really trains you for that specifically, that comes from the capacity to think outside the box.

Training is a wonderful thing, but one must be an active thinker and observer. There is the old adage “what you do in training is what you will do in real life” and I have found this to be true. For good and for bad.

That day in India, with my knife stuck under the man’s chin I was thinking a lot, and I was thinking as fast as I could in multiple directions. I was over eight thousand miles from home, with zero legal protections. I was also doing something else. Bluffing.

I had zero intentions of impaling the man’s skull with a seven inch blade. I did however need to de-escalate the situation quickly. Not just because there were multiple aggressors, or that one of them might have been looking for a pistol in the Range Rover. I was very concerned about a high speed rear end collision. We were quite literally stopped in the middle of a busy roadway in late afternoon traffic. There is never just one issue when you have to contend with a dangerous situation, and that is why instructors work to get their students to look around during training. But if you are just going through the motion of waggling your head to follow instruction then you need to reevaluate your decision making paradigms. Between the dead serious look on my face, and the needle point of the blade he never once felt I was bluffing.

I sense your concern. Someone once told you to never pull a gun unless you intend to use it, and I would say that advice remains. Though I will add, that if you spend the majority of your three decades of working how I have, you learn to adapt to the circumstances that encompass oneself. I am not a teacher, instructor, nor trainer. I am a worker bee. A professional problem solver for my client base.

If one lives (and writes) long enough you are bound to find contradiction in your own words. A quarter of the way into the 21st century I would caution against carrying a seven inch bladed knife for defense. However just a couple of winters ago while working undercover late one evening, the mere presentation of another long bladed knife thwarted an assault from two individuals. An encounter which I will cover in a future post.

We live in a strange time with regards to using for knife for personal defense. A polymer pistol with a tactical light or even an optic on top is the norm. I suspect something like one in five homes have an AR-15. Society can grasp the understanding of shooting an attacker or a person carrying a firearm for personal protection from all sorts of predators.

Yet somehow  the idea of carrying a large fixed blade knife for personal defense is apt to make even the most successful defense attorney raise their retainer rate. 

Man’s history of edged weapons for personal defense predates the bow and arrow. In many parts of the world the fixed blade knife prevails in daily carry and use. The Middle East with it’s Jambiya, the Sikh with his Kirpan. The Gaucho of South America with their Facón. The Kukri carried by the Gurkha is the stuff of legend, even today. I have openly carried machetes that I purchased from the local general stores found in Central America and Mexico, and looked like any other person walking around. Man, woman or child. I have carried a blade as both a primary and backup weapon. Fixed and/or folder at various points and time, and have done so for a very long time.

I see you. Scratching your head wondering okay, but what is the lesson in all of this? Here in the age of the Social Media Influencer you are taunted with the latest “thing”. The latest pistol, the latest bag…the latest knife. Influencers of all background will, because of sponsorship, pitch to you the newest way to be one of the cool kids.

So I tell you of this to provide a very real world experience so that you may think. To do so for yourself. Do not be risk adverse with regards to your personal security, but by the same token do not simply disregard common sense with how you may be viewed in the court of law and public opinion. Because those two things are almost now one and the same. Think clearly and decisively with a focus on how to get out of the situation with no harm done, all the while understanding how to get harm done.