"Clancy, Tom - Net Force 02 - Hidden Agendas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

left side of his belt, and then pulled the taser and
inspected the weapon to make certain the cartridge in
it was still active. It was. He re clipped it
to his belt, took a deep breath, and blew it out.
"Activate," he commanded the target computer.
"Two to thirty seconds, random start."
The new-model taser was wireless. He wasn't
sure he quite understood exactly how it worked, but
supposedly the twin needles were essentially small
but highly efficient capacitors.
Powered by a simple nine-volt battery, each
needle was slightly thicker than a pencil lead.
The pair carried high voltage, low-amperage
charges, somewhere around a hundred thousand volts, and
when they both struck a target, a circuit was
completed. The compressed gas propellant
--nitrogen or carbon dioxide, depending on the
model--would spit the needles up to fifty feet with
enough force to penetrate clothing.
At normal combat range, about seven or eight
yards, the weapon delivered a knockdown jolt
virtually every time. There was a tiny, built-in
laser. When you squeezed the handle, the little red dot
from the laser showed you where the needles would bracket when
they hit. If you missed, the backup feature was a
pair of electrodes in the handle that would allow the
laser to function as a stun gun--if the attacker
got within range. What the device looked like was a
long and skinny electric razor, or maybe one
of the old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
phasers.
Operation was easy enough. You pointed the laser at
a target, squeezed the handle, lined the laser's
dot up, and thumbed the firing stud. If everything
went right, half a second later your attacker was
jittering on the floor in electrically induced
convulsions, and any interest he might have had in harming
you was the last thing on his mind. Recovery after a
couple of minutes was virtually total, but you could do
a lot in a couple of minutes to an assassin
sprawled helplessly on his back.
Of course, such a device could be used by the bad
guys too.
To counter that, all lasers were required to carry
taggants in their propellant, thousands of tiny
bits of colored or clear plastic that would
identify the registered buyer. There was no way
to sweep all these tags up after a laser was fired--
A mugger appeared and ran at Michaels. The
mugger had a crowbar in one hand. He raised the bar