Fool Me Once

Option Two: Go for the gun in the hip holster.

The problem with both options was simple. The man had his gun at her head. Maybe his friend by the other window did too. She wasn’t Wyatt Earp and this wasn’t the O.K. Corral. If the man wanted to shoot her, she would have no chance of reaching either the gun or the gearshift in time.

Which left Option Three: Get out of the car-

That was when the man with the gun said, “Come on. Joe is waiting.”

The side door of the van began to slide open. Sitting in her car, both hands on the wheel, Maya could feel her heart pounding against her rib cage. The van door stopped halfway. Maya squinted, but she couldn’t see inside. She turned to the man with the gun.

“Joe…?” she said.

“Yeah,” the man said, his voice suddenly tender. “Come on. You want to see him, right?”

She looked at the man’s face for the first time. Then she looked at the other man. He didn’t have a gun in his hand.

Option Three…

Maya started to cry.

“Mrs. Burkett?”

Through the tears, she said, “Joe…”

“Yes.” The man’s voice grew insistent. “Unlock the door, Mrs. Burkett.”

Still crying, Maya weakly fumbled for the unlock button. She pressed it and pulled the door handle. The man stepped back to let the door swing. He still had the gun on her. Maya half fell out of the car. The gunman started to reach for her arm, but Maya, still with the tears, shook her head and said, “No need.”

She straightened up and then stumbled toward the van. The gunman let her go. And that told Maya everything.

The van door slid open a little more.

Four men, Maya calculated. The driver, the van-door opener, the passenger-side guy, the gunman.

As she got closer to the van, all her training, all those hours in the simulator and at the shoot house, started to kick in. She felt an odd calm now, a moment of near Zen, that feeling when you are in the eye of the hurricane. It was all about to happen now, and one way or the other, if she came out of it alive or dead, she was being proactive. She wasn’t controlling her own destiny-that sort of thinking was nonsense-but when you’ve trained and when you’re prepared, you can act with a sort of comforting confidence.

Still stumbling, Maya turned her head just a little, just the slightest bit, because what she saw now would decide everything. The gunman had not grabbed hold of her when she got out of the car. That was the reason she had poured on the fake tears and semihysterics. To see how he would react. He had fallen for it. He had let her go.

He hadn’t frisked her.

That meant three things…

She glanced behind her. The man had indeed lowered his gun to his side. He had relaxed. He felt she was no longer an active threat.

One, no one had warned the man that she’d be armed…

Maya had been planning the sequence from the moment she started with the tears. The tears were designed to act as a weapon-to make the kidnappers relax; to make them underestimate her; to give her time, before getting out of the car, to plan exactly what she would do.

Two, Joe would know that she’d be armed…

Her hand was already near her hip as she started to run. Here’s a fun fact most people don’t know. Shooting a handgun with accuracy is difficult. Shooting a handgun at a moving target is very difficult. Seventy-six percent of the time, trained police officers miss the shot between three and nine feet. The percentage is north of ninety percent for civilians.

So you always moved.

Maya looked toward the back of the van. Then, without so much as a misstep or warning or even hesitation, she tucked into a roll, hit the pavement as she pulled her Glock out of its holster, and came up aiming directly at the man with the gun. The man had noticed the move, had started to react, but it was too late.

Maya aimed for the center of his chest.

In real life, you never shoot to wound. You point the weapon at the center of the chest, the largest target, the best chance of hitting at least something should your aim be off, and you just keep firing.

Which is what Maya did.

The man went down.

Three, the conclusion: Joe had not sent them.

Several things happened at once.

Maya kept rolling, kept moving, so she wasn’t a stationary target. She turned to where the other man was, the one who had been at her passenger side. She swung her gun up, ready to fire, but the man ducked away behind her car.

Keep moving, Maya…

The van door slammed shut. The engine roared to life. Maya was behind it now, using it as a shield in case the other guy came up firing. She obviously couldn’t stay. The van was about to move, probably in reverse, probably trying to crush her.

Maya made the instinctive decision.

Flee.

The man with the gun was down. The guys in the van were panicking. The final man was hidden behind her.

When in doubt, do the simple thing.