Inside Out by Barry Eisler Page A

here.”
    “Look,” the black guy said, his hand easing his jacket back, thumb first. “We can do this the easy way—”
    Ben didn’t give him a chance to finish the move, or even the sentence. He shot an open-hand jab into the guy’s throat, catching his trachea in the web between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the cartilage shift unnaturally behind the blow. The guy’s teeth slammed shut and his head snapped forward.
    The other guy started to shuffle back to create distance, his hand going for something under his jacket. But he was on the wrong end of the action-reaction equation. Ben caught him by the lapels and smashed his forehead into his face. He felt the guy’s nose break. He took a half step back and shot a knee into the guy’s balls.
    He turned back to the black guy, who was clutching his throat with his left hand and groping under his jacket with his right, his eyes bulging. Ben closed the distance, caught the guy’s right sleeve, and yanked him past in the kind of arm drag he’d once favored as a high school wrestler. He hoisted him from behind, rotated him over an upraised knee, and slammed him facedown into the sidewalk.
    The white guy was on his knees, his face a bloody mask. He snaked a jerky arm inside his jacket. Ben took a long step over and kicked him in the face. The force of the kick lifted the guy’s supporting arm clean off the sidewalk and he dropped the gun he’dbeen fumbling for. Ben swept it up—a Glock 23, just like his. He checked the load. Good to go.
    He tracked back to the black guy, aiming the Glock with a two-handed grip. No movement. Track back to the white guy. Same.
    He stepped over to the black guy and bent to take his gun and check for ID.
    A voice came from behind him, feminine, sweetly southern-accented but with steel underneath. “Put the weapon down, sir. Now. Or you’re dead right there.”
    He looked up. Son of a bitch, the black woman. She’d taken cover behind a parked car and was pointing a pistol at his face.
    “I’ll be damned,” he said, slowly lowering the Glock. “You’re with these guys. I didn’t spot that.”
    “Drop. The weapon. Now.”
    Ben didn’t know who they were. They felt like law enforcement. From the way they were armed and what the black guy had said, they could have been FBI. And Hort had said the Bureau was investigating.
    But he’d be damned if anyone was going to take him into custody again. Not today. Not ever.
    He eased the Glock into his waistband. “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
    “Sir, I will shoot you.”
    He looked at her. “Then shoot me.”
    The black guy groaned and started to get up. Ben kicked him in the face and he went down again.
    “Stop that!” the woman yelled.
    “You want to ask me your questions, ask,” Ben said. “Otherwise, I’ve got places to go.”
    There was a long pause. The woman continued to watch him through her gun sights and for a tense moment Ben wondered whether he’d miscalculated, whether she might actually shoot him.
    She watched him for a moment longer, and he could see the tension in her face. Incongruously, he found himself noticing her skin.Smooth, light brown, with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. There was a hint of Asian in the shape of her eyes.
    She lowered the pistol and muttered, “Goddamn it.”
    She came out from behind the car and approached him, the gun in a two-handed grip but pointed at the ground. Ben noted that she was watching his torso, not his face. She was well-trained.
    She walked over to the fallen white guy and knelt next to him. “Bob,” she said, “are you okay? Bob.”
    Bob groaned. He got a hand on the street and started pushing himself up. The woman helped him. While she did, Ben reached inside the black guy’s jacket.
    “Hey!” the woman called.
    Ben extracted a Glock from a shoulder holster. “Too late,” he said. “Doesn’t look like you’re going to shoot me, but I don’t know about this guy.”
    The woman