"Very well fought, Ms Abbot!" the stranger said to Sandra as she walked away from the cage, where her opponent, Mike Zinder, still lay unconscious (Gallery 942).

"Thank you," she answered politely.

"So what are you doing for a living at the moment? MMA?"

"No!" she laughed, "It’s only a hobby. I’m a secretary."

"Does it pay well?"

She pulled a face in reply, and the man handed her a card.

"Give me a ring some time, I may have a job for you."

"What would I be doing?"

"Why not give me a ring and find out?" the man chuckled, before walking away.

She did ring the number after a couple of days, and Rob (the name on the card) asked her to come and meet him at a particular address, oddly in the evening. When she got there, she was surprised to find another man, Del, with him. Del did most of the talking, with Mike occasionally nodding.

"What we are is security – sort of," he began. "Only our sort of security takes on different forms. Sometimes passive security – waiting for the bad guys to come to you – doesn’t work. "We favour a more active security, where you seek out the bad guys’ place and take what you need. It’s the old military maxim: the best form of defence is attack."

"Is it legal?" Sandra asked dubiously, at which Del and Rob exploded with laughter, promising to provide a formal contract and assuring her they took health and safety at work very seriously, before guffawing once again.

She should have left it well alone, but she was only 19, and loved a bit of excitement. So she allowed them to continue with the "induction", as Del mockingly called it, and they drove her to a secluded spot, screened by trees.

"See that building there?" Del asked, pointing to a dimly lit place through the darkness. "You’re to break into it on the left side – you’ll see how you can do it when you get there. Once inside, you’re to go along a corridor to the far room, take a memory stick left on the table, and bring it back to us. The stick’s meaningless, we just want you to be able to do it.

"There’s a lone guard in there, Rudi, whose job it is to prevent anyone getting to that room. He knows someone is going to break in, but he doesn’t know when it will be or whereabouts in the building it will be. We’ll provide him with occasional distractions in the adjoining rooms from this laptop. If you can get to the far room without being detected by him, well and good. That’s the primary purpose. If you can’t … well, we still expect you to reach that room. Are you up for it?"

Sandra loved a challenge – ask Mike Zinder – and she excitedly tied a face covering around her mouth and nose. Then she moved silently to the left side of the building.

"I must admit," Rob confessed as they sat in the car and found Sandra on the laptop screen, "I rather hope Rudi does detect her. You wanna see this lady fight!"

"I know you say she was good. ‘Sexy as hell’, I think was the way you described her. She certainly is, too, from what I’ve seen. She’ll be lucky not to be detected, as well. Plus, she’s clever – she’s found the entrance already. Time to distract Rudi."

The screen homed into the inside of the building, Del pressed a button on the keyboard, they saw Rudi give a start, then hurry to one of the rooms to the side of the corridor. Then they found Sandra on the split screen, entering the room at the opposite end of the corridor to the one she was aiming for. Meanwhile Rudi gave an annoyed shrug, realising the noise he heard was another hoax. Then he flinched again.

"He’s heard her!" Rob whispered (for no reason). "Now we’ll see some fireworks!"

Sandra, realising she had been detected, flattened herself against the wall beside the doorway into the corridor. Rudi, uncertain whether it was another hoax or the genuine intruder, approached carefully. He peered round the doorway – and got a kick in his side. Sandra pushed against the wall to give her reverse kick extra force; the strong man gave the slightest of coughs and thrust his left fist at his assailant, who ducked under it.

"Game on!" whispered Rob again, as Sandra dodged Rudi’s right fist, while plunging her right into his stomach. "She’s hurt him – look at his face!"

"Yes, but don’t underestimate him."

"Or her. Lovely left hook!" 

It certainly was. Sandra took advantage of Rudi’s lurch following her punch to his stomach to swing her whole body, led by her fist, in at his jaw. She used speed and momentum to compensate for their disparity in weight, so they saw a fairly slight, curvy young woman send a heavier man reeling to his side.

Del’s eyebrows raised as they saw her then thrust her right fist into Rudi’s stomach again, but lower down. He nodded, understanding that she was intent on injuring his mid-section first. It was the third strike Rudi’s body had absorbed, and they could sense his suffering through the screen. 

Rudi was evidently another exponent of "the best form of defence is attack", and he threw himself into a huge uppercut. He also nearly threw himself over, because it failed to connect, as the ducking Sandra escaped underneath it. 

Seeing a good chance with Rudi overreaching, she kicked. But he recovered quickly enough from stumbling to take it on the left shoulder when it had been meant for his face. True, that was bad enough; but it was like hitting an outside number in darts when she had been aiming for the bullseye.

Deciding to rest that shoulder for a bit, Rudi fired a right cross; but the evasive young woman once again seemed to spirit herself out of danger. The observers in the car noted a look of frustration creeping into Rudi’s face, whereas Sandra was a picture of concentration and anticipation. She crouched, fists at the ready, patiently waiting for her moment. 

Sensing an opportunity, she kicked hard and high. But Del had been right to caution not to underestimate Rudi. He warded it off with his arms crossed defending his face. Again, his arms took a hit, but it was worth it to protect his face. When he, in turn, fired a rising right kick, Sandra neatly edged it out of the way with a raised left arm. In the last couple of minutes or so, both fighters had been models of defensive techniques. As if to illustrate the point, when Rudi high kicked next, Sandra seemed to compress her body, standing on her left leg to escape it. 

"Clever girl!" murmured Rob. Both fighters had been aiming at the other’s face. Rudi, in particular, had become fixated on protecting his face and Sandra now completely took him by surprise by kicking him brutally in the balls. It was as if her last few attacks had been feints to fool him into ignoring her real target. "Think three moves ahead," had been the way she had learnt to fight – and how it paid off now!

Sandra’s boot struck his balls with nasty squelching sound, which made even a cynical man like Del feel queasy. Rudi doubled up and tears filled his eyes. Groaning with agony, he left himself wide open, so Sandra punched him massively on the chin. It was an overhand left, aiming upwards. Any feminist wanting to argue that women could compete with men on their own terms should study the footage of that punch as ammunition to prove her point. Also, anyone with a weakness for a "femme fatale" would adore the sight of the shapely young woman punishing her male opponent.

Carried along by momentum, Sandra now uppercut Rudi’s stomach, marking (literally) her fourth blow to his midsection. She had him coughing as he seemed to fold around her fist. 

"Oh, that’s BEAUTIFUL!" muttered Del, as Sandra took advantage of Rudi’s stoop following her punch to his stomach, to fire a left cross aimed downwards at his jaw. He yelped, somehow managed to stay on his feet, then righted himself – and got her right fist on his cheekbone. 

She was destroying him. It hadn’t been a decline in his ability to resist so much as a collapse. She seemed to be urged on by a fury, gaining speed and strength with each assault. 

One more should do it. Sensing victory, Sandra propelled a left hook at his jaw, leaning into the punch perfectly to give it maximum purchase. There was a crack as her fist met his jawbone, a despairing wail from the victim, then a thud as he dropped to the floor. Sandra knelt on his neck, expertly (and illegally) making him pass out, then stood over him and posed, for a moment forgetting her mission. But it didn’t matter.

"Okay Ms Abbot," Del’s voice came from somewhere, surprising her. "Congratulations, please make your way back to us. Don’t worry about the memory stick, it’s not important. We have a proposition to make to you."