big one stayed down. I launched myself at the guy, landing on top of him, and jammed my right knee into his solar plexus. The wind came out of him. He tried to rear up, flinging his fists at me without much success. He gasped for breath. He did manage to land a few punches on my ears and one particularly hard one on my left jaw, painful but not disabling. I aimed a drive at his face with everything I had. It connected with a wet crunch. I felt something sharp and hard give way.
He screamed, writhed in agony. His nose was broken, maybe a few teeth as well. Blood spattered my face.
In my peripheral vision I noticed that the weedy computer guy had clambered to his feet and was pulling what appeared to be a weapon from his jacket.
During the brief struggle, I’d dropped the electric razor, so I reached for the heavy weighted Scotch-tape dispenser on my desk. In one smooth sharp arc, I hurled it at him. He ducked, and it clipped him on the shoulder, the roll of tape flying out as it thunked to the floor.
A miss, but it gave me a couple of seconds. The weapon in his right hand, I saw now, was a black pistol with a fat oblong barrel. A Taser.
Tasers are meant to incapacitate, not kill, but take my word for it, you don’t want to get zapped with one. Each Taser cartridge shoots out two barbed probes, tethered to the weapon by thin filaments. They send fifty thousand volts and a few amps coursing through your body, paralyzing you, disrupting your central nervous system.
He hunched forward, Taser extended, and took aim like an expert. He was less than fifteen feet from me, which indicated he knew what he was doing. Fired from twenty feet away, the electrical darts spread too far apart to hit the body and make a circuit.
I leaped to one side and something grabbed my ankle, causing me to stumble. It was the beefy guy. His face was a bloody mess. He was groaning and pawing the air, arms swarming, bellowing like a wounded boar.
The thin sallow-faced one smiled at me.
I heard the click of the Taser being armed.
Sweeping the big black Maglite flashlight from the edge of my desk, I swung it at his knees, but he was quick. He dodged just in time. The Maglite missed his kneecaps, struck his legs just below with a satisfying crack. He made an ooof sound, his knees buckling, and roared in pain and fury.
I reached up to grab the Taser from his hands, but instead I got hold of the black canvas tool bag on his shoulder. He spun away, aimed the Taser again, and fired.
The pain was unbelievable.
Every single muscle in my body cramped tighter and tighter, something I’d never experienced before and just about impossible to describe. I was no longer in control of my body. My muscles seemed to seize. My body went rigid as a board, and I toppled to the floor.
By the time I could move, two minutes or so later, both men were gone. Far too late to attempt to give chase, even if I were able to run. Which I certainly wasn’t.
I got up gingerly, forced myself to remain standing, though I wanted only to sink back to the floor. I surveyed the mess in my apartment, my anger building, wondering who had sent the two.
And then I realized they’d been considerate enough to leave some evidence behind.
32.
The SIG was still under the bed.
The Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter was locked away, as a precaution, in case someone found the SIG. Concealed beneath the bluestone tiles of the kitchen was a floor safe. I popped the touch latch to lift one of the tiles, dialed open the safe, found the contents—a lot of cash, various identity documents, some papers, and the pistol—intact.
They hadn’t found it.
They probably hadn’t even looked for it. That wasn’t what they were here for.
I gathered the things the intruders had left behind in their haste to leave, including a black canvas tool bag and my dismantled cable modem. And one thing more: a little white device connected between one of the USB ports on the back of my computer tower and the cable to my keyboard. The color matched exactly. It almost looked like it belonged there.
I’m no computer expert, by any means, but you don’t have to be an auto mechanic to know how to