He moves fast, holding the gun with both hands, a few inches above his waist, ready to bring it up and halt and tag her with the laser sight before he fires. The powder in an XREP round is less than in a standard shell; the slug, which is comparatively light, never achieves a velocity that will kill or seriously injure.
The slug is a wonder of miniaturization: three fins that deploy when it leaves the muzzle of the shotgun, enabling it to spin to stay on target; circuitry nestled inside shock-absorbing plastic; a microprocessor that commands a voltage capacitor to fire while also modulating the shape, intensity, and duration of the current; two tiny lithium batteries to power the microprocessor and provide the disabling electrical charge; a transformer to convert battery energy to stunning effect.
He is maybe 120 feet from her, hasn’t yet drawn her attention, and decides to close to eighty, just to be sure to drop her with the first round.
Then she sees him.
22
UPON GLIMPSING THE MAN in her peripheral vision, Jane might have dropped the hammer and gone for the Heckler in her shoulder rig. But intuition inspired her instead to throw the hammer as she pivoted toward her assailant.
He wasn’t holding the weapon as if he expected a hard recoil. The sound of the shot wasn’t as loud as it ought to be, and Jane knew at once that this was a Taser XREP.
Fractions of a second mattered now.
When she moved to throw the hammer, the laser dot on her breast had been displaced to her left arm, but the shooter had squeezed the trigger just then, as the hammer left her hand.
Instantly she began to shrug off the sport coat.
On impact, four electrified barbs on the nose of the projectile hooked the coat sleeve, near the shoulder, instead of piercing her thin T-shirt over her breasts, where it would have administered a disabling shock.
Even as the projectile’s chassis separated from its nose to dangle on a copper wire, exactly as it was designed to do, Jane cried out at the initial—and smaller—localized shock to her left biceps, conveyed through her clothing. But the satin-lined sleeves were already sliding off her arms.
Nearly all people, when hit, instinctively grabbed the dangling wire—which was called the “hand trap”—to tear out the barbs that were delivering the painful localized shock. But if she grasped the live wire, her hand would contract involuntarily. Clenching the wire tightly, unable to let go, she would receive a much bigger shock as electricity flowed through her body. She would spasm, fall, lie paralyzed for twenty seconds, and be disoriented thereafter.
If she didn’t grip the wire, six longer barbs would pop through the fabric of her sleeve and deliver the disabling shock anyway.
Half a second after the nose barbs hooked her coat, even as the chassis of the projectile was separating from the nose to offer the live wire, her right arm was free. As her left arm slipped out of that sleeve, a brief hellish current stung her fingers, but the garment puddled to the ground, sparing her from the full power of the initial shock.
Although she couldn’t feel the laser dot on her body, she knew her assailant must be squeezing off another round. She dropped as she drew the Heckler, the second projectile shattered against the Explorer, and she rolled toward the front bumper.
23
THIS HATEFUL BITCH, THIS SELF-RIGHTEOUS SELF-APPOINTED save-the-world bitch, this counterrevolutionary pig, has the reflexes of a cat, a damn hyperactive cat.
She’s twisting away from the laser dot and shrugging out of the coat even as Ivan is pulling the trigger, so just for insurance he at once fires again.
He’s not thinking about the hammer; it’s a wild pitch meant to distract him, and Ivan Petro won’t be distracted, hell if he will, he’s focused on her, he squeezes off a third round.
Her aim is almost as good as her reflexes. The tumbling hammer, like some instrument in an Olympic event, arcs high and spins down to strike him just as he fires for the third time. It clips his left hand, with which he holds the slide handle that chambers each round.
The pain brings with it an instant numbness, so that he can’t keep a grip on the shotgun with his left hand. And he can’t operate it with only his right.
Two rounds remain in the Taser, useless to him for the moment. The bitch is on the ground, a difficult—almost impossible—target from this distance, when he has only one good hand. She rolls and then squirms along the blacktop toward the front of the Explorer, seeking partial cover from which she can rise into a genuflection and open fire; she’s seconds from using him for target practice. He has no prospect of cover in this open field, only below-the-knee weeds and ribbon grass. Instead of drawing his pistol, he throws down the Taser 12-gauge and runs in a crouch toward the oaks.
24
A CLOUD OF MIDGES BESTIRRED from the grass, circling around her head like some crown of damnation predictive of imminent death, the sun seeming much hotter than it was a moment earlier, and yet a thin cold sweat on the nape of her neck …
The low-velocity rounds from the Taser 12-gauge wouldn’t have drawn the attention of anyone at the distant truck stop, not with the growl of half a dozen eighteen-wheelers coming and going at any one time. The crack of the Heckler, however, might penetrate the truck drone and alert someone.
Anyway, she didn’t dare risk killing the bastard. She needed to take him down, get some answers from him. How did he find her? Was there a transponder on her Explorer? If so, who else knew about it? How many others were coming?
Holstering the pistol, she scrambled to her feet, stomped on the chassis of the Taser projectile that was attached to her sport coat and trailing at the end of the copper wire. She crushed it and stomped again, separating the nose from the wire, protected by the rubber soles of her sneakers. She snatched up the coat, shook it, casting off the debris, and sprinted after her attacker.
He was a big bull on two feet, a minotaur without a labyrinth. She needed to avoid getting close-up physical with him and take him by surprise instead.
She thought the hammer had struck him, might have done some damage, which was why he’d cast aside the Taser 12-gauge and fled.
Fast for his size, with a substantial head start, he would reach the cover of the trees well before she did. If she plunged into the woodlet in his wake, she’d likely plunge as well into a bullet.
She hesitated at the dropped Taser shotgun but then snatched it up to be sure he didn’t return for it. She angled west of him and demanded more speed of herself and hoped that she made the tree line before he dared to stop, turn, and see where she had gone.
After the bright sun, the sudden shadows pooling in the broad glen seemed to have substance, a palpable darkness that was cool on her skin and a pressure on her eyes, its weight imposing a stillness in the oak grove and stifling all sound except her breathing.
She put down the Taser 12-gauge and slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat and stood with her back to a massive tree trunk. She drew the Heckler and held it in both hands, arms close to her breast, muzzle directed toward the crosswork of layered limbs above, her stalker somewhere behind her, fifty or sixty feet to the east.
Waiting for her wide-open eyes to become dark adapted, striving to quiet her breathing, she listened intently but still heard only the distant Peterbilts and Macks, nothing nearby. The trucks were so far away that, instead of growling, they made a throaty, threatening purr, as if they were massive saber-toothed tigers that had crossed a gulf of time to hunt long after the extinction of their species.
Alert for any sound from her stalker, she knew that he likewise listened for the smallest revelation of her position. Cautiously she leaned away from the tree and turned her head to look around it.