standard E&S, evasion and search, tactics. That meant flattening
yourself against a wall with a pistol drawn, then shifting to an
orthogonal wall, and repeating the process. They drilled it into field
agents with the training sets, but she never imagined she’d be doing it
in her own apartment, her home, her sanctuary.
She closed the door behind her. Silence.
But there was something. A barely detectable odor of cigarettes, that
was it. Too faint to be from an actual lighted cigarette; it had to be
the residue from the clothing of someone who smoked.
Someone who had been in her apartment.
In the dim light provided by the streetlights outside, she could see
something else: one of the drawers of her file cabinets was slightly
ajar. She always kept them neatly shut. Someone had been searching
through her belongings.
Her blood ran cold.
There was a draft from the bathroom: the window had been left open.
And then she heard a sound, quiet but not quiet enough: the almost
inaudible squeak of a rubber-soled shoe on the bathroom tile.
The intruder was still there.
She flipped on the main overhead light, wheeled around in a crouch, her
9 mm drawn, the weight of it balanced in her two hands. She was
grateful that it was a Sig factory short trigger, which fit her hands
better than the standard model. The intruder wasn’t visible, but the
apartment was small and there weren’t many places he could be. She
straightened up and, adhering to the perimeter rule hug the walls, the
E&S instructors liked to say she made her way toward the bedroom.
She felt the movement of air an instant before the gun was dislodged
from her hands by a powerful kick from seemingly out of nowhere. Where
had he come from? Behind the bureau? The filing cabinets? The gun
clattered as it hit the sitting room floor. Retrieve it, whatever you
do.
Abruptly she was slammed backward by another kick, and she sprawled
against the bedroom door, her back hitting it with a dull thud. She
froze in place as the man took a few steps back.
Except that he was hardly a man. He had the slender frame of an
adolescent. As powerful as he was sinewy muscles flexed under a tight
black T-shirt he looked no older than seventeen. It didn’t make sense.
Slowly, carefully, she got to her feet and began moving, with feigned
casualness, toward the oatmeal-colored sofa. The blue-gray butt of her
Sig-Sauer protruded from under its plaited hem, just barely visible.
“Burglary’s a real serious problem in this neighborhood, isn’t it?” the
man-boy said in a tone of rich irony. His glossy, black hair was cut
short, his skin looked as if he’d only recently started to shave, and
his features were small and regular. “The statistics are shocking.” He
scarcely sounded like the typical delinquents who haunted Southeast
Washington. If she had to guess, she’d say he wasn’t a native of this
country; she thought she detected a trace of an Irish brogue.
“There’s nothing of value here.” Anna tried to sound calm. “You must
know that by now. Neither of us wants any trouble.” She realized her
hand was still numb from the blow. Keeping her gaze on him, she took
another step toward the sofa. Trying for a light tone, she added,
“Anyway, shouldn’t you be in school or something?”
“Never send a man to do a boy’s work,” he replied agreeably. Suddenly
he unleashed another roundhouse kick and she reeled backward against her
small wooden bureau. The blow had landed squarely on her stomach, and
she found herself gasping for breath.
“Did you know,” the young intruder continued, “that as often as not it’s
the owners of handguns who are killed by them? Another statistic that
bears thinking about. You really can’t be too careful.”
He wasn’t a burglar, that much was obvious. He didn’t talk like one
either. But what was he after? She squeezed her eyes shut for a
moment, mentally taking an inventory of her sparsely furnished
apartment, her paltry belongings, the clothes, the lamps, the
humidifier, the clothes… the M26. Must try to find the M26! No doubt
he’d searched the place thoroughly, but this was an item whose function
would not be obvious to those unfamiliar with it. “I’ll get you money,”
she said loudly, and turned to the bureau, opening drawers. “I’ll get
you money,” she repeated. Where had she kept the device? And would it
still work? It had been at least two years. She found it in the large
central drawer, next to several red cardboard boxes of checkbooks. “All
right,” she said, “here it is.”
When she turned around to face him, she had the M26 Tasertron firmly in
her grasp, switched it on, a high-pitched whine indicating that the
device was fully charged.
“I want you to listen to me carefully,” she said. “This is an M26
Taser, the most powerful one they make. Move away from me now, or I
will use it. I don’t care what kind of martial arts you know
twenty-five thousand volts will take the starch out of you.”
The intruder’s expression was blank, but he began to walk away from her,
backing into the bathroom.
The instant the stun gun was activated, the cartridge would fire off the
contactors, two fine conducting wires ending in quarter-inch needle
points. The electricity discharged would be of a voltage sufficient to
immobilize him for a spell, perhaps even knock him out.
She followed him toward the bathroom. He was inexperienced; by backing
up into the small room, he had allowed himself to be cornered. A bad
move, an amateurish slip. She switched the Taser on maximum; there was
no point in taking any risks at this point. The device in her hand
hummed and crackled. A blue arc of electricity played between two
visible electrodes. She would aim for his midriff.
Suddenly she heard an unexpected sound, that of water running, the roar
of the tap turned up full. What the hell was he up to? She lunged into
the bathroom, aiming the Taser, and saw the man-child wheel around with
something in his hands. Too late, she realized his gambit. It was the
nozzle of her handheld shower, which propelled a drenching blast of
water in her direction. Water that would ordinarily have been harmless.
She dropped the primed M26 an instant too late. A bolt of electricity
arced from it toward her drenched torso, a blue bolt of agony. As her
major muscle groups spasmed, she collapsed to the floor, only the pain
cutting through her dazed state.
“It’s been a blast,” the young man said tonelessly. “But I’m already
running late. Catch you later.” He winked, in a caricature of
affection.
She watched, helpless, as he clambered out the bathroom window and
disappeared down the fire escape.
By the time she was able to call the municipal police, she had verified
that nothing was missing from the apartment. But that was the only
question she’d been able to answer. The cops, when they arrived, asked
the usual questions, debated whether to classify the incident as a home
invasion or a burglary, and then seemed to run out of ideas. They’d do
the crime-scene workup they understood that she was some kind of fed,
that she seemed to know what she was talking about. But it would take
several hours. And in the meantime?
Anna glanced at her watch. Eight p.m. She called David Denneen’s home
number. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but is that guest room of
yours free? It seems my apartment has just turned into a crime scene.”
“A crime … Jesus,” Denneen said. “What happened?”
“I’ll explain later. Sorry to spring this on you.”
“Have you eaten yet? Come on over now. We’ll set an extra place.”
David and Ramon lived in a prewar apartment near Dupont Circle, a
fifteen-minute cab drive away. It wasn’t grand, but it was nicely
appointed, with high ceilings and leaded windows. From the savory
aromas she inhaled when she came in chile, anise, cumin she guessed that
Ramon was cooking one of his moles.
Three years ago, Denneen was a junior agent under her command. He was a
fast learner, did good work, and was responsible for several breaks;
he’d tailed a White House special assistant to the Qatar Embassy, a lead
that resulted in a major corruption investigation. She’d filed glowing
reports in his personnel file, but soon she learned that Arliss Dupree,
as the unit director, had been appending “fitness” evaluations of his
own. They were vague but damning in intent: Denneen “wasn’t government
material.” He “lacked the fortitude” expected of an OSI investigator,
was “soft,” “possibly unreliable,” “flighty.” His “attitude was
problematic.” All of it was nonsense, the bureaucratic camouflage of a
visceral hostility, a reflexive prejudice.
Anna had become friends with both David and Ramon, had met them as a