Paris is a Bitch

He switched off the camera. I initiated my tracking software, locating his IP address. It was the same one he always used. Previously, I’d hacked his ISP and gotten his billing information, and from there it had been easy to run a background check. Victor Cormack, as far as I could research using both public and private records, had been telling me the truth about his job, his education, his past. On the surface, he was a normal, average person.

But anyone checking out my identity would assume the same about me.

I erased my Internet footsteps, deleting cookies, clearing the cache, and reformatting the C drive. A pain in the ass to do every time I went online, but a necessary one. Then I wiped the keyboard clean with a spritz of Windex and began my morning work-out.

Halfway into it, my encrypted cell phone rang. I finished my two-hundred thirty-ninth push-up, slid the sweaty bangs off my eyebrows with my forearm, and padded over to the breakfast bar to answer it. Only one person—the same person who knew my address—had this number. A call meant work. And work couldn’t be refused. The phone was even waterproof so I could take it into the shower.

I hit the connect button on the touch screen and waited, habit making me tune in to my surroundings. I could smell traces of the green pepper omelet and wheat toast I’d had for breakfast, along with a slightly sour odor coming from the sink telling me dishes needed to be done. The ambient sounds were unremarkable; the thermostat kicking on, the hum of the fridge, the ticking of a wall clock hanging over my computer, pigeons warbling outside.

To continue reading FLEE by J. A. Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson, visit your library or favorite ebook retailer and pick up a copy today.

Part of the appeal of my series about the half- American, half-Japanese assassin John Rain seems to be Rain’s realistic tactics. It’s true that Rain, like his author, has a black belt in judo and is a veteran of certain government firearms and other defensive tactics courses, but these have relatively little to do with Rain’s continued longevity. Rather, Rain’s ultimate expertise, and the key to his survival, lies in his ability to think like the opposition.

Okay, get out your notepad, because:

All effective personal protection, all effective security, all true self-defense, is based on the ability and willingness to think like the opposition.

I’m writing this article on my laptop in a crowded coffee shop I like. There are a number of other people around me similarly engaged. I think to myself, If I wanted to steal a laptop, this would be a pretty good place to do it. You come in, order coffee and a muffin, sit, and wait. Eventually, one of these computer users is going to get up and make a quick trip to the bathroom. He’ll be thinking, “Hey, I’ll only be gone for a minute.” He doesn’t know that a minute is all I need to get up and walk out with his $3000 PowerBook. (Note how criminals are adept at thinking like their victims. You need to treat them with the same respect.)

Okay. I’ve determined where the opposition is planning on carrying out his crime (this coffee shop), and I know how he’s going to do it (snatch and dash). I now have options:

avoid the coffee shop entirely (avoid where the crime will occur);

secure my laptop to a chair with a twenty dollar Kensington security cable (avoid how the crime will occur — it’s hard to employ bolt cutters unobtrusively in a coffee shop, or to carry away a laptop that has a chair hanging off it); and

hope to catch the thief in the act, chase him down, engage him with violence.

Of these three options, #2 makes the most sense for me. The first is too costly — I like this coffee shop and get a lot of work done here. The third is also too costly, and too uncertain. Why fight when you can avoid the fight in the first place? This is self-defense we’re talking about, remember, self- protection. Not fighting, not melodrama. As for the second, yes, it’s true these measures won’t render the crime impossible. But what measures ever do? The point is to make the crime difficult enough to carry out that the criminal chooses to pursue his aims elsewhere. Yes, if twenty-seven ninjas have dedicated their lives to stealing your laptop and have managed to track you to the coffee shop, they’ll probably manage to get your laptop while you’re in the bathroom even if you’ve secured it to a chair. But more likely, your opposition will be someone who is as happy stealing your laptop as someone else’s. By making yours the marginally more difficult target, you will encourage him to steal someone else’s.

Which brings us to an unpleasant, but vitally true, parable:

If you and your friend are jogging in the woods, and you get chased by a bear, you don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your friend.

Except at the level of very high-value executive protection (presidents, high-profile businesspeople, ambassadors and other dignitaries), you are not trying to outrun the bear. You are trying only to outrun your friend.

Let’s combine these two concepts — thinking like the opposition, outrunning your friend — with an example from the realm of home security. And let’s add an additional critical element: that all good security is layered.

If you wanted to burglarize a house, what would you look for? And what would you avoid?

Generally speaking, your principal objectives are to get cash and property, and to get away (home invasion is a separate subject, but is addressed, like all self-protection, by reference to the same principles). You’d start by looking at lots of houses. Remember, you’re not trying to rob a certain address; you just want to rob a house. Which ones are dark? Which are set back from the road and neighbors? Are there any cars in the driveway? Lights and noise in the house? Signs of an alarm system? A barking dog?

Thinking like a burglar, you are now ready to implement the outer layer of your home security. By some combination of installing motion-sensor lights, keeping bushes trimmed to avoid concealment opportunities, putting up signs advertising an alarm system, having a dog around, keeping a car or cars in the driveway, leaving on appropriate lights and the television, and making sure there are no newspapers in the driveway or mail left on the porch when you’re away, you help the burglar to decide immediately during his casing or surveillance phase that he should rob someone else’s house.

If the burglar isn’t immediately dissuaded by the outer layer, he receives further discouragement at the next