Rainfall

found Holtzer’s car in the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner. After confirming the license plate, I drove over to the nearby Marriott, where I took the license plates from a parked car. At the edge of the deserted parking lot of the Tyson’s Corner Galleria, I switched the plates over to the rental van I was driving. The new plates and the light disguise I was wearing would be enough to beat any unforeseen witnesses or security cameras.

    I drove back to the Ritz. The spaces adjacent to the Taurus were taken, but there was an empty spot behind it to one side. It was better not to park alongside him anyway. If you’re savvy about the ways of my world, or even just sensitive to where and how you’re likely to be mugged, you’ll get nervous if you see a van parked right next to your car — especially a model with darkened rear windows, like mine. I pulled in, nose forward so the van’s sliding door would be facing Holtzer.

    I checked my equipment. A 250,000-volt “Thunder Blaster” guaranteed to cause disorientation upon contact and unconsciousness in less than five seconds. A medium-sized pink rubber “Super Ball,” available for eighty-nine cents at pretty much any drugstore. A portable defibrillation kit like the ones some airlines are beginning to keep on their commercial jets, small enough to tote around in an ordinary briefcase and considerably more expensive than the Super Ball.

    Shocking someone out of a ventricular fibrillation is tricky business. Three hundred and sixty joules is a massive dose of electricity. If a shock like that is applied at the top of the heart’s T wave — that is, between beats — you’ll induce a lethal arrhythmia. Modern defibrillators, therefore, have sensors that automatically detect the QRS complex of the heartbeat, which is the only instant at which the shock can safely be applied.

    Of course, the same software that is designed to avoid the T wave can be reconfigured to initiate it.

    I reclined the electronic seat a few degrees and relaxed. It was a safe bet that Holtzer would be heading over to the CIA’s campus sometime in the morning, so I expected to have to wait only a few more hours.

    At six-thirty, about a half hour before it would get light outside, I walked over to the far end of the garage and urinated into some potted hedges. I limbered up for a few minutes, then headed back to the van, where I enjoyed a breakfast of cold coffee and Chicken McNuggets, left over from the previous evening. The culinary joys of surveillance.

    Holtzer showed an hour later. I watched him emerge from the elevator and head toward me. He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie. Standard Beltway attire, practically Agency issue.

    His mind was elsewhere. I could see it in his expression, his posture, the way he failed to check the likely hot spots in the garage, especially around his car. Shame on him, being so careless in a potential crime zone like a parking garage.

    I slipped on a pair of black cowhide gloves. A click of the switch on the Thunder Blaster produced a sharp arc of blue sparks and an electric crackle. I was ready to go.

    I scanned the garage, satisfying myself that for the moment it was empty. Then I slipped to the back of the van and watched him move to the driver’s side of the Taurus, where he paused to remove his suit jacket.
Good
, I thought.
Let’s not get any wrinkles on your funeral suit
.

    I waited until the jacket was just past his shoulders, the spot that would make effective reaction most awkward for him, then swung the van’s side door open and moved in on him. He looked up when he heard the door open, but had no chance to do anything but drop his mouth open in surprise. Then I was on him, my right hand jamming the Thunder Blaster into his belly, my left propping him up by the throat while the shock scrambled his central nervous system.

    It took less than six seconds to drag his dazed form into the van and slide the door shut behind us. I pushed him onto the ample backseat, then gave him another hit with the Thunder Blaster to make sure he was incapacitated long enough for me to finish.

    The moves were routine and it didn’t take long. I buckled him in with the lap and shoulder belt, pulling the latter all the way out and then letting it retract fully until it was locked in place. The hardest part was getting his shirt open and his tie out of the way so I could apply the paddles directly to his torso, where