A Clean Kill in Tokyo

was left. I didn’t know if there were other men outside.
    The two men remained at the door, their faces impassive.
    Some deep part of me welled up, insisting on going out fighting.
    “These cuffs are starting to hurt,” I said, slowly coming to my feet. “Can you do anything?”
    One of them laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the pain in a few minutes.”
    “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 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 to 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 to 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 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.
    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 cuffed 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 the other one had gotten to his feet. One hand was extended and I