Rainfall

“But my arms hurt,” I said again, making a face of near-tears and lifting my elbows to create space between my upper arms and my torso. I saw one of them sneer with disgust.

“Oh God, I think I’m losing circulation,” I moaned. I worked my shoulders in circles until the flashbang was poised over my sleeve, then raised my elbows and started jiggling my arms violently. I felt the device ease into the upper part of the jacket sleeve.

The flashbang wouldn’t slide as easily because of the pressure of my handcuffed arms against my sides. I realized I should have tried to force it out onto my back, where it would have dropped down more easily into my handcuffed hands. Too late.

I lowered my wrists, straightening my arms, and started bouncing on my toes as though I had to urinate. “I need to take a leak,” I said.

The men at the door looked at each other, their expressions indicating that they found me pathetic.

Each bounce brought the device down another crucial centimeter. When it got past my elbow, I felt it slide smoothly down my sleeve and into my waiting hand.

The device had a five-second timer. If I rolled it out too early, they might make it out the door before it went off. If I waited too long, I would probably lose a hand. Not exactly how I was hoping to get the cuffs off.

I pulled the spoon free and counted. One-one thousand . . .

The man at the left of the door reached inside his jacket, started to slide out his gun.

Two-one thousand.

“Wait a second, wait a second,” I said, my throat tight. Three-one thousand.

They looked at each other, expressions disgusted. They were thinking, This is the hard case we’d been warned would be so dangerous?

Four-one thousand. I squeezed my eyes shut and spun so that my back was to them, simultaneously shoveling the flashbang at them with a flick of my wrists. I heard it hit the floor, followed by a huge bang that concussed my entire body. My breath was knocked out of me and I collapsed onto the floor.

I rolled left, then right, trying to take a breath, feeling like I was moving underwater. I couldn’t hear anything but a huge roaring inside my head.

Holtzer’s men were rolling on the floor, too, blinded, their hands gripping the sides of their heads. I drew a hitching, agonized breath and forced myself to my knees, then pitched onto my side, my balance ruined.

One of them pulled himself onto all fours and started feeling his way along the floor, trying to recover his gun.

I rolled onto my knees again, concentrating on balancing. One of the men was groping in a pattern of concentric circles that I saw would lead him momentarily to his weapon.

I planted a wobbly left foot forward and tried to stand, but fell over again. I needed my arms for balance.

The man’s groping fingers moved closer to the gun.

I rolled onto my back and plunged my hands downward as hard as I could, forcing my cuffed wrists below the curve of my hips and buttocks and onto the backs of my thighs. I wriggled frantically from left to right, sliding my wrists down the backs of my legs, slipping one foot, then the other, through the opening, and got my hands in front of me.

I rolled onto all fours. Saw the man’s fingers clutching the barrel of the gun.

Somehow I managed to stand. I closed the distance just as he was picking up the gun and kicked him soccer style in the face. The force of the kick sent him spinning away and knocked me over backward.

I lurched to my feet again just as the second man regained his own footing. He was still blinking rapidly from the flash, but he could see me coming. He reached inside his jacket, going for a weapon.

I stumbled over to his position just as he pulled free a pistol. Before he could raise it, I thrust the fingers of my cuffed hands hard into his throat, disrupting his phrenic and laryngeal nerves. Then I slipped my hands behind his neck and used the short space of chain between them to jerk his face down into my rising knee, again and again. He went limp and I tossed him to the side.

I turned toward the door and saw that the other one had gotten to his feet. One hand was extended and I flash-checked it, saw the knife. Before I could react by picking something up and getting it between us, he charged.

If he had stopped and collected himself he would have had a better chance, but he had decided to trade balance for speed. He thrust with the knife, but without focus. I had already taken a half step to the right, earlier than would have been ideal, but he couldn’t adjust. The blade just missed me. I spun counterclockwise, clamping onto his knife wrist with both hands. I tried to rotate him to the ground, aikido style, but he recovered his balance too quickly. We grappled like that for a second, and I had the sick knowledge that I was about to lose the knife hand.

I yanked his wrist in the other direction and popped my right elbow into his nose. Then I spun in fast, crudely with no setup, taking a headlock with my right arm and grabbing the lapel of my jacket under his chin as though it was a judogi. The knife hand came loose and I hip-threw him with the headlock, my left hand coming in to strengthen the grip on his neck as his body sailed over me. When his torso had reached the extreme circumference of the throw, I jerked his neck hard in the other direction. A crack reverberated up my arms as his neck snapped where my forearm was pressed against it. The knife clattered to the ground and I released my grip.

I sank to my knees, light-headed, and tried to think. Which one of them had the handcuff keys? I thought. I frisked the first guy, whose blue skin and swollen, protruding tongue told me the cartilage fracture had proven fatal, and found a set of car keys but not the handcuff keys. With the other guy I hit pay dirt. I pulled out what I was looking for, and a second later I was free. A quick search on the floor, and I was armed with one of their Berettas.

I stumbled out the door and into the parking lot. As I had expected, there was one car left. I got in, slid the key into the ignition, fired up the engine, and raced out into the street.