Now it was time to find out if his computer expert had truly earned his pay.
Desh armed himself as usual, threw on an oxford shirt and windbreaker, and rushed to Griffin’s apartment, his mind racing almost as fast as his armored Suburban. The traffic was light, but even so the trip should have taken forty-five minutes. He made it in just over thirty.
Desh felt butterflies in his stomach as he strode briskly through the short, musty corridor of Griffin’s building, anxious to learn what the giant had uncovered. He passed several doors until he came to number 14D. He rapped once on the door and waited, staring at the peephole to help Griffin make a quick identification.
He waited for Griffin to disengage the deadbolt and chain as he had done before, but instead the handle began to turn. Years in the field had trained his subconscious to set off alarms when it encountered anything unexpected, no matter how small, even before his conscious mind could reason out why. He instantly became hyper-alert, just as a woman emerged from behind the door with a gun aimed at his chest.
Already moving forward in anticipation of trouble, Desh lashed out with his right arm to knock the gun lose, and at the same time threw his body sideways to offer a smaller target. But even as he lunged, he realized the woman had anticipated this move, and had begun backpedaling rapidly. She fired as she moved backwards, but despite her rapid retreat, she was forced to jerk her arm aside to avoid Desh’s vicious blow.
If the gun had contained bullets, Desh would have won the day. Despite her quick action and reflexes, he had interfered with her aim enough that the shot only hit his leg, and even injured in this way he would have been on his attacker in an instant, easily able to overpower her.
But she hadn’t fired bullets. She had fired electricity.
With a stun gun, a hit to the leg was just as effective as a hit to the chest. Instead of bullets, two electrode darts had leapt from her gun and stuck like Velcro to Desh’s pants, discharging their massive electric payload in an instant. The electricity completely overwhelmed the tiny electrical signals his brain was sending to control his muscles, causing him to convulse and collapse to the floor, disoriented and paralyzed.
From the instant his assailant had emerged from behind the door, he had known she could only be one person: Kira Miller.
A vague realization came across Desh’s addled mind that he was now sprawled on the floor, completely and utterly helpless, while one of the most dangerous women in the world stood calmly over him.
PART TWO
Encounter
David Desh vaguely felt his legs, arms, and torso being repositioned, and his body being dragged a few feet across the floor like a 180-pound sack of cement, and then heard the apartment door shut quietly. He could see Kira Miller out of the corner of one eye. She was holding a large black duffel with three zippered compartments. Her hair was now longer than in the photos he had seen and she had dyed it blond. She was wearing bulky clothing that was far too large for her, in such a way as to add ten pounds to her appearance, and wire-rimmed glasses. Even dazed as he was, Desh was impressed with the simplicity but effectiveness of her disguise. Unless you had reason to suspect this woman was Kira Miller, you’d be hard pressed to pick her out of a crowd.
Matt Griffin was a massive speed bump on the carpet a few feet away; unconscious or worse.
Desh’s attacker knew his paralysis would only last about five minutes and didn’t waste an instant. She moved as if a Guinness Book official had a stopwatch on her, removing his windbreaker and watch and frantically conducting a full body search, not leaving a single inch of David Desh unchecked. She immediately found both guns and both knives and relieved him of them expertly, along with his shoulder holster.
With this completed, Kira Miller pulled a pair of stainless steel fabric shears from her duffel and hastily cut through Desh’s button-down shirt and white undershirt, tossing both garments aside and producing a large gray sweatshirt from a bag beside her. She pulled the sweatshirt over his head and slipped his arms through as if he were an infant, with remarkable facility but with a decided lack of gentleness. Finally, she produced an assortment of thin white plastic strips from the bag, between two and four feet long.
Desh recognized these thin strips instantly: plastic handcuffs. These plasticuffs, also called zip-strips, could only be removed if someone cut through the hardened, injection molded nylon plastic; a surprisingly difficult task.
She pulled Desh’s right arm out from his body as far as it would go, wrapped the bendable plastic stick around his wrist, and ratcheted it tight. She pulled Griffin’s heavy, lifeless left arm closer to Desh and used a long plasticuff bracelet to cuff the two men together.
Finished, she quickly backed fifteen feet away; showing tremendous respect for Desh’s training and abilities. She was smart and careful. Even the fastest, most accomplished street fighter or martial artist couldn’t disarm a vigilant assailant as long as they maintained a respectful distance. In addition, she had tied him to a virtually immovable anchor—the 300 pound dead-weight of Matt Griffin—who, Desh noted with relief, was breathing shallowly, indicating that at least he wasn’t tied to a corpse. For the moment, anyway. So far, her tactics had been flawless.
When the effects of the stun gun were beginning to wear off, Kira Miller held up a sheet of paper on which she had used black marker to write a message in large, block letters.
SAY A SINGLE WORD, EVEN BREATHE TOO HARD, AND I’LL PUT A BULLETT IN YOUR HEAD.
She put a finger to her lips to underscore the point and pointed his own gun at him meaningfully. She held up a second sheet.
NOD IF YOU UNDERSTAND.
Desh nodded warily. From the look in her eye, he didn’t doubt for a second she would carry out her threat.
She pulled out a third sheet, already prepared, an indication that she had planned her attack with military precision.
STRIP. WAIST DOWN. COMPLETELY NAKED. NO WORDS. NO NOISE.
Desh kicked off his shoes and clumsily pulled off his socks, pants and briefs: a difficult task from a supine position and anchored to Griffin that involved flopping about like a fish out of water and contorting like a circus performer.
Desh was focusing too hard on the imminent threat to his life to waste any energy feeling self-conscious or humiliated about his nudity, but it was human nature to feel more vulnerable when naked, and he was no exception.
Kira tossed him a pair of gray sweatpants that matched the sweatshirt he was now wearing and motioned with her head for him to put them on. He was only too happy to comply. All in all, while she didn’t seem to like his taste in clothing, he was encouraged that she was taking the time to see that he was re-clothed. If her plan was to execute him in the apartment, this wouldn’t have mattered. On the other hand, Desh remembered Jeffrey Dahmer, and he realized it was dangerous to make any assumptions about her actions or motives. She could be dancing to a song that only she could hear.
When he finished re-dressing, she tossed him a pair of soft leather slip-on shoes from her bag, and he managed to get them on his feet. The fit was perfect. And why not? He had bought several pairs of shoes in the past, online, and she now had ready access to the e-mail confirmations of these orders.
She tossed three plasticuff strips to him, one after another, and he gathered them up wordlessly. She held up another sign.