Page 35 of Into the Fire

Evan looked at her blankly.

Her lip curled with disgust. “As in ‘Heading to Maui to slay some fresh young Hawaiian ass.’”

Evan cleared his throat and said, gently, “I’ll do that.”

16

System Overload

Michael Papazian nodded off on his couch, his injured arm supported by a pillow. On the TV, Idris Elba stalked through gray London streets.

One room over, the screen door clanged softly in the desert breeze. There was nothing beyond his porch but a dirt driveway and a half mile of dunes leading to a trailer park and the horizontal bar of the 138 Freeway as it cut through Palmdale.

The screen clanged once more, louder than before, straightening Papazian on the couch and tightening his good hand around the Browning P-35 pistol resting on the cushion beside him.

He stared across the unlit stretch toward his front door.

First there was darkness.

Then a pair of hands, pale and floating.

A face.

Two strokes of the shoulders.

A form, advancing. Papazian found his feet, squinting at the man inside his house.

The man stopped in the doorway of the room, his lower half still lost to shadow. The faint glow from the TV played tricks, illuminating edges of his face, a collection of Picasso parts.

“I wanted to resume our interaction,” the man said. “The one we started outside Grant Merriweather’s office. I want to know who the Terror is. I want to know how many of you there are in the money-laundering ring. I want names and addresses.”

Papazian lifted the pistol and aimed it with a shaking fist. He wasn’t used to shooting with his left hand. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with, chief.”

“Also,” the man said, “the adjective is ‘Hawaiian.’”

Papazian cocked his head. “You cray-cray, bitch?”

“You’re in a heightened state of alert,” the man said calmly. “Your heart rate’s up over a hundred beats a second. Which means your fine motor skills have already deteriorated and your gross motor is compromised.”

Papazian jabbed the gun at the air. “Say what, motherfucker?”

Evan stepped forward into the room. They faced each other across the couch.

Riding Evan’s back in a sling, angled like a samurai sword, was a matte black Benelli M1 combat shotgun. He made no move for it.

Instead he studied the pistol aimed at him, the barrel tip three feet from his forehead. The Browning P-35, known more widely as a Hi-Power, was one of the first successful double-stack mag nine mils. The thirteen-round capacity made it a favorite of many of the world’s militaries since World War II, a sidearm of choice from Aussies to Venezuelans. Nonstop production in Belgium and licensed countries for nearly a century had put it so heavily into circulation that it could be considered nontraceable.

As with all self-loading semiautos, the Hi-Power cannot fire when the slide isn’t locked fully forward in battery. A mechanical disconnector prevents the hammer from dropping.

A design element easily exploited when someone held the weapon within reach.

Evan shot his hand out, cupped the top of the slide, and pushed it back a quarter inch.

Papazian tugged the trigger, but nothing happened. His face frozen with disbelief, he yanked it once more, the pistol bobbing in their shared grip.

Evan twisted the weapon to the side, hyperextending Papazian’s elbow, and jammed the heel of his free hand into the forearm. There was a grinding of bone and tendon and the pop of the radial head unseating.

Nursemaid’s elbow redux.