I caught the gun in my left hand and used my right foot to blast his legs out from under him in deashi-barai, a side foot sweep that I had performed tens of thousands of times in my quarter century at the Kodokan. I went down with him, keeping my weight over his chest, increasing the impact as he slammed into the floor. I felt the gun go off as we hit the ground, heard the pffft of the silenced report and a crack as the round tore into the wall behind me. Keeping control of the gun, making sure it was pointed anywhere but at me, I rose up to create an inch of space between our bodies, spun my left leg over and past his head, and dropped back in juji-gatame, a cross-body armlock. I took the gun from him and broke his elbow with a single sharp jerk.

The second guy had now recovered enough to get a gun out. But, like his partner, he was adrenalized and having trouble with fine motor movements. His hand was shaking and he hesitated, perhaps realizing that if he pulled the trigger he might hit his partner, over whose torso my legs were crossed and whose ruined right arm was pulled tight across my chest.

I straightened my right arm and focused on the front sight, placing it on the second guy’s torso, center mass. The gun was a Glock 21 in.45 caliber. Healthy stopping power. I willed myself to slow it down, make it count.

The guy under me jerked and my aim wavered. Fuck. I squeezed my legs in tighter and leaned back closer to the floor, trying to offer the second guy a reduced profile. I knew from experience that bullets tend to skim close to the ground rather than bounce off it. The guy under me would function as a human sandbag for any shots that hit the deck short of our position.

The second guy moved the gun, trying to track me, the movements overlarge and shaking. Then, maybe because he saw the cool bead I was drawing on him, his nerve broke. He started shooting in a spray-and-pray pattern, his eyes closed, his body hunching forward involuntarily. Pffft. Pffft. Pffft. Small clouds of dust kicked up along the concrete around me, puffing out lazily in my adrenalized slow-motion vision. I heard the sounds of ricochets. Someone screamed.

Slow. Aim. Breathe…

I double-tapped the trigger. The first round caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. The second missed, going off into the wall near the ceiling. I compensated and fired again. This time I nailed him in the back near the spine and dropped him to the floor.

I lurched to my feet and moved toward him. Around us, people were running from the scene, pushing up against the mass of other shoppers. The immediate area was suddenly empty.

I walked up to the one I had just dropped. He was on his stomach, writhing, groaning something unintelligible. I shot him in the back of the head.

The first one I’d hit with the flail was flat on his back, his legs splayed back under him, seemingly unconscious. I shot him in the forehead.

I turned to the last one. He was on his ass, scrambling away from me on his feet and good arm. His face was green with pain and terror. I shot him in the chest and he collapsed to the ground, his legs still kicking. I took three long steps forward and shot him again, in the forehead. His head rocketed back and he was still.

I looked around. Pandemonium now. Screams and shouting and panic.

I needed to get the hell out. But I also needed information. Under other circumstances, I would have tried to keep one of them alive for questioning, but in a public place like this that course was impossible.

I scooped up the flail and shoved it into one of the outer pockets of the navy blazer I was wearing. I was glad I’d thought to tie the thing off-if I hadn’t, the batteries might have rolled all over the place after I’d thrown it, with my fingerprints on them.

I walked over to the last guy I’d shot and opened his jacket. Cashmere. The label under the breast pocket proclaimed Brioni. This guy was wearing three or four thousand bucks on his back. The shirt, admittedly not shown to its best advantage soaked in blood, looked similarly fine. His neck was adorned with a nice gold chain. His pockets, though, were empty. Nothing but a wad of Hong Kong dollars and a packet of fucking breath mints. Smart, not carrying ID. If they get pinched, they dummy up, call the embassy, maybe, get bailed out. But which embassy? Whose?

I went to the next guy, knowing this was taking too long, hating the risk. Another Brioni jacket, along with a gold Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. But that was all.

The third guy had a cell phone clipped to his belt. Yeah, that was him, the one Keiko and I had passed at Shun Tak terminal. Sunglasses. I pulled the phone free and opened his jacket. More Brioni. More empty pockets, save for the shades from which he had derived his short-lived nickname. The pants pockets were empty, too.

I looked up, then behind me. The corridors were packed with fleeing people. A stampede panic tends to feed on itself long after the originating cause is gone. Probably most of these people didn’t even know what they were running from, hadn’t seen or heard anything. My escape routes weren’t going to open up anytime soon.

Elevator, I thought. I ducked into the loading area and pressed the down button with a knuckle. I stood there for an agonizingly long time, feeling exposed, until the damn thing finally arrived. The doors opened. I stepped inside, hit the ground floor and “close” buttons. The doors slid shut and the elevator lurched downward.

I pulled the baseball cap out of my pocket and jammed it down onto my head. I pocketed the cell phone, slid the gun into my waistband, and shrugged off the blazer, exposing the white shirt underneath. In the immediate aftermath, witnesses would remember only gross details-color of the clothes, presence of a necktie, that sort of thing. The new hat and disappeared jacket would be enough to get me out of here. I pulled out the shirttails and let them fall over the gun.

The elevator doors opened. It was calmer down here, but there was an unusual agitation in the crowd and it was clear that something had happened. I moved down one of the corridors, easing past shoppers who were looking behind me, searching to see what was going on back there. My pace was deliberate but not attention-getting. I kept my face down and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.

By the time I had reached the entrance where we had first come in, the collective rhythm of the people around me was normal, just food shoppers absorbed in the serious business of picking out the freshest fish or the most delectable cut of meat. I moved past them and into the street.

I folded the jacket and slipped the gun inside it, wiping it down as I walked, making sure I covered all the surfaces. I did it by feel. Barrel. Trigger guard. Trigger. Butt.

Fingerprints were only part of the problem, of course. When you’re stressed, you sweat. Sweat contains DNA. Likewise for microscopic dead skin cells, which, like sweat, can adhere to metal. If you’re unlucky enough to get picked up as a suspect, it’s inconvenient to have to explain why your DNA is all over the murder weapon. The dead men’s clothes, which I had touched while searching them, were less of a problem. They wouldn’t take prints, and I probably hadn’t handled them sufficiently to leave a material amount of sweat or skin cells behind.

I turned into an alley choked with overflowing plastic garbage containers. An aluminum leader ran down the side of one of the alley walls and into an open drain beneath. I moved the leader out of the way and dropped the gun into the drain, seeing a satisfying splash as I did so. I checked behind me-all clear. I committed the batteries to the same final resting place, wiping each with the socks as I did so, then moved the leader back into position and walked on. Unlikely that the gun or batteries would ever be discovered where I had left them. Even if they were found, the water would probably wash away any trace DNA. And even if DNA were present, they’d need me in custody as a suspect to get a match. A good, layered defense.