Summary
Rashid OmarCid, a terrorist who was involved in the Black September attacks that took place during the 1972 Munich Olympics, waits for Sand in a dark room of the villa with ten more of Tolstoy’s men. Meanwhile, Sand moves stealthily through the darkness, silently killing the first ones who come for him. He uses his tan raincoat as a decoy, laying it over a bush and then slicing the throat of an American former GI who is tricked into thinking he has shot Sand. From outside the villa, Sand sees Toki standing in a window before pulling the curtains closed.
Sand knows they are luring him into the house. He goes back to the American’s body and removes the man’s head. He approaches the building and lobs the head through a window. The sight of it makes Rashid vomit. The two Vietnamese gunmen with him are terrified of Sand and disgusted by Rashid’s apparent panic; they fire at Rashid, deciding to kill him and drag his body onto the porch so as to buy their lives from Sand. Sand smiles as he lets them run into the darkness. Sand then lights the tips of two arrows he fires into the house. As the fires grow, panicked voices come from the house and cars start up behind it. Sand catches a glimpse of Toki moving past a window.
Sand runs into the burning house to find the two Korean contract killers coming down the stairs with Toki held captive. The Koreans challenge him to combat, goading him by suggesting they don’t believe a Black man could really be a great samurai. Sand agrees, going outside with Joseph and Richard.
Sand strips to the waist, disarming himself as they suggest he should. Sand faces off against Joseph first, who is foolishly overconfident, contemptuously dismissing Sand because he is Black. Sand determines during their fight that Joseph’s pattern is to fake first, attack, and back up when hurt. Sand exploits this pattern by dodging what would have been a fatal kick to the head and smashing in Joseph’s skull. He then kills Richard with his samurai sword. Sand runs to Toki’s body, realizing she is dead; her throat has been cut. However, a moment later he sees that the dead woman is a different Japanese woman who has been used as a decoy. The real Toki is alive. He is relieved to realize this, “even in the midst of the death around him.”
At the Saigon airport, Sand speaks over the phone to Clarke in Tokyo. Clarke is angry Sand sent Ives away, and Sand talks back, saying he had to do it because Ives was a liability to him. Meanwhile, at a café in Paris, Coleman Near meets with Tolstoy to arrange the sale and pick up of munitions. He broaches the subject of not knowing whether he can trust them not to double-cross him once they have the guns. Tolstoy simply asks why he would do that.
When Near walks off, Tolstoy and his men discuss who will kill him; Tolstoy has no issue with Winters doing it. Three sex workers walk over and proposition the men, but Tolstoy has no interest in sex. While two distract Dain and Winters, the third reaches under Tolstoy’s chair and discreetly withdraws a black object. The women walk away and the woman gives the tape recorder to Near in a taxi. He pays them each $1,000 American cash of Clarke’s money.
The next day, Near is drinking bourbon to calm himself. He spent the night listening to the tape recording: he knows Tolstoy plans to kill him as soon as he gets the guns. It isn’t what he bargained for, but he owes “The Baron” William Clarke. He receives a call from Sand, who calls himself Captain Harley and asks for Near to send a driver to the airport. Sand knows Tolstoy is watching Near, and gets the car to take him to Near’s warehouse. Dain watches from a car parked outside as the vehicle with Sand goes in the gates. Inside, Near explains to Sand that he planted the tape recorder before Tolstoy and his men arrived. They listen to the tape, which has captured the men discussing the plan to kidnap Mary Clarke and bring her to Toki.
Sand rests at Near’s warehouse, eating well and getting much-needed sleep. His dreams are invaded by images of the massacre at the samurai houses and visions of Toki in peril. He decides he’ll wait at Mary’s hotel and try to get her out of Paris safely. Across the street from the entrance, Sand waits in the darkness. He watches as Winters’s dark blue Citroen pulls up just as Mary and two friends leave a car.
Winters’s giant blond accomplice scoops up Mary and the three get in the Citroen, which speeds toward where Sand crouches in the darkness. He fires at two tires, making the car swerve out of control and stop. Sand fires at one man when the doors of the car fly open. A grenade rolls toward him, and so Sand shoots the lock of a bakery’s door, frantically pushing it open to dodge the grenade’s blast. His head aches from the explosion, but he knows this is what his training has been for.
As two of Winters’s men enter the bakery to finish Sand off, Sand leaps from the darkness, kicking one in the chest and slicing the other’s throat. On the street, Mary slips away and Winters runs after her. Sand is left to battle Sean, the giant blond. After struggling to kill Sean, but succeeding, Sand stands exhausted; he wants to call it all off. But he recalls Konuma calling him Sandayu. Sand runs after Winters and Mary down the narrow, dark streets.
Analysis
Having learned from the dying Long Minh Sat that Tolstoy is hiding out at his villa, Sand approaches the building at night. Once again, he goes up against the terrorists alone, using his cunning to overcome the well-resourced terrorists who outnumber him. Among Sand’s more gruesome tricks is to throw the dismembered head of one of Tolstoy’s fighters through the window of the villa. In this instance of situational irony, Sand employs a terror tactic to intimidate the terrorist inside. His plan works, and the hired Vietnamese fighters choose to kill their commander as an offering to Sand.
Believing Richard and Joseph, the ironically named Korean contract killers who are trained in martial arts, have Toki captive because he saw her in a high window earlier, Sand agrees to fight both of them, one at a time. The men, having never seen or heard of a Black martial artist, are overconfident as they face off against Sand, who quickly gets the better of them by discerning and exploiting their fighting patterns. However, it seems as though Toki has been lost, her throat cut.
The theme of deception re-enters the story as Sand discovers that the woman he was led to believe was Toki is in fact another Japanese woman, used as a decoy. In this instance of situational irony, Sand is relieved to know Toki is likely still alive, and the dead woman he holds is someone else. It is not too late for him to accomplish his goal of stopping Tolstoy and rescuing the woman he loves.
Olden builds further on the theme of deception with the scene at the Paris café. In advance of his meeting with Tolstoy and his men, Coleman Near plants a tape recorder under Tolstoy’s seat. Not aware they are being recorded, the terrorists discuss with incriminating detail how they plan to carry out the rest of their plot and how they will double-cross Near by killing him as soon as they’ve acquired his munitions. Despite the clear danger of proceeding with Clarke’s and Sand’s plan to keep Tolstoy on the hook, Near agrees to continue helping, showing that he too possesses courage in the face of danger.
The themes of service and resilience arise with Sand’s attempt to thwart the kidnapping of Mary Clarke. Although he is worn out from the battle with Richard and Joseph and distracted by thoughts of Toki in peril, Sand refocuses his attention on the matter at hand. The kidnapping quickly becomes chaotic and extremely dangerous when Winters and his men lob grenades at the meddlesome Sand. When it seems Sand can’t go on, he rallies his strength and takes out the men standing in his way. Although he feels he must give up, Sand remembers the faith Konuma vested in him and recommits himself to being of service.
