I’d calculated wrong of course. There was no way that I’d be able to beat him from two paces away. Screwdriver against Beretta . Beretta's going to win every time. But the guy had also made a miscalculation, because he hadn’t accounted for Nazari. All she needed to do was grab his gun arm, which she did, and pulled down hard. Which wouldn’t have worked, on its own, because the guy was very strong. However strong Nazari was, he was stronger.

But she wasn’t alone, she was with me. We were a team, a unit. And by the time the guy had compensated for the new force pulling at his arm, I had the screwdriver out and ready, slipped into my left palm. While the Beretta swung over, shrinking that space, I was stepping forward. And with each step I was creating more space that he needed to cover. One more step and I shifted my weight to the left. The Beretta kept swiveling toward my body mass but by the second step I was inside his swing and it was all over.

My problem was that the screwdriver was in my left hand and because I was stepping to the left, it was the wrong hand. So as I took that step, away from the Beretta, I tossed the screwdriver from my left hand to my right hand in mid-stride, while my weight was shifting. The right hand caught it in mid-air, around head height. The guy’s eyes lost focus trying to track the tool, suddenly so close to him. The momentum of stepping towards him swung my weight forward, and I drove the tip of the screwdriver into his left eye.

It made no sound as it went in, and I pushed it deep, there was a click when the thin bone behind the eye was penetrated and gave way, and then the screwdriver entered his brain. The gun dropped to the ground with a clatter. Nazari stepped clear. By then I was behind the guy, turning to look at his back. She was in front of him. We both watched.

The guy didn’t drop. He tottered on his feet like an unstable ice skater. Then, he walked out of the room and through the front door, like he had some really important place to go.

I followed him. The guy was stumbling down the terrace stairs. He was making a strange high-pitched humming sound. Nazari stepped past me. She shot him three times with the Beretta he had taken from her, and then dropped. The first round went in at the middle of the guy’s back, the last demolished the vertebrae at the base of his neck. He crumpled face down and silent.

She moved to him and put a single round into the back of his head. She looked back at me. “You okay?”

“Fine, why do you ask?”