by Lee Child
Reacher glanced at Yanni.
“They all answer,” he said.
In the dark in the Mustang on the way back, Ann Yanni said, “He’ll call and warn them.”
“He won’t,” Reacher said. “He just betrayed them. So my guess is he’ll be going on a long vacation tomorrow.”
“You hope.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. They already know I’m coming for them. Another warning wouldn’t make a difference.”
“You have a very direct style. One they don’t mention in Journalism 101.”
“I could teach you. It’s about surprise, really. If you can surprise them you don’t have to hit them very hard.”
Yanni dictated to Franklin the names that John Mistrov had given up. Four of them corresponded with names Reacher had already heard: Charlie Smith, Konstantin Raskin, Vladimir Shumilov, and Pavel Sokolov. The fifth was Grigor Linsky, which Reacher figured had to be the damaged man in the boxy suit, because the sixth name had been given simply as Zec Chelovek.
“I thought you said zec was a word,” Franklin said.
“It is,” Reacher said. “And so is Chelovek. It’s a transliteration of their word for human being. Zec Chelovek means prisoner–human being. Like Prisoner Man.”
“The others aren’t using code names.”
“Neither is the Zec, probably. Maybe that’s all he’s got left. Maybe he forgot his real name. Maybe we all would, in the Gulag.”
“You sound sorry for him,” Yanni said.
“I’m not sorry for him,” Reacher said. “I’m just trying to understand him.”
“No mention of my father,” Helen said.
Reacher nodded. “The Zec is the puppet master. He’s at the top of the tree.”
“Which means my father is just an employee.”
“Don’t worry about that now. Focus on Rosemary.”
Franklin used an online map and figured out that the address John Mistrov had spilled related to a stone-crushing plant built next to a quarry eight miles north and west of the city. Then he searched the tax rolls and confirmed that Specialized Services of Indiana was its registered owner. Then he searched the rolls all over again and found that the only other real estate registered to the trust was a house on the lot adjacent to the stone-crushing plant. Yanni said she knew the area.
“Anything else out there?” Reacher asked her.
She shook her head. “Nothing but farmland for miles.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “There you go. That’s where Rosemary is.”
He checked his watch. Ten o’clock in the evening.
“So what now?” Yanni said.
“Now we wait,” Reacher said.
“For what?”
“For Cash to get here from Kentucky. And then we wait some more.”
“For what?”
Reacher smiled.
“For the dead of night,” he said.
Franklin made coffee. Yanni told TV stories, about people she had known, about things she had seen, about governors’ girlfriends, politicians’ wives’ lovers, rigged ballots, crooked unions, about acres of marijuana growing behind circular screens of tall corn on the edges of Indiana fields. Then Franklin talked about his years as a cop. Then Reacher talked about his years since the army, the wandering, the exploring, his rootless invisible life.
Helen Rodin said nothing at all.
At eleven o’clock exactly they heard the rattle of a big diesel engine beating off the brick outside. Reacher stepped to the window and saw Cash’s Humvee nosing onto the parking apron. Too noisy, he thought. We can’t use it.
Or maybe we can.
“The Marines are here,” he said.
They heard Cash’s feet on the outside stairs. Heard his knock on the door. Reacher went out to the hallway to open up. Cash came in, brisk, solid, reassuring. He was dressed all in black. Black canvas pants, black canvas windbreaker. Reacher introduced him all around. Yanni, Franklin, Helen Rodin. Everyone shook hands and Cash took a seat. Inside twenty minutes he was up to speed and totally on board.
“Do we have a plan?” he asked.
“We’re about to make one,” Reacher said. Yanni went out to her car for the maps. Franklin cleared away the coffee cups and made space on the table. Yanni chose the right map. Spread it out flat.
“It’s like a giant chessboard out there,” she said. “Every square is a field a hundred yards across. There are roads laid out in a grid, north to south, west to east, about twenty fields apart.” Then she pointed. Slim finger, painted nail. “But right here we’ve got two roads that meet, and southeast of the corner they make we’ve got an empty space three fields wide and five fields high. No agriculture there. The northern part is the stone-crushing plant and the house is south of it. I’ve seen it and it stands about two hundred yards off the road, all alone in the middle of absolutely nothing. No landscaping, no vegetation. But no fence, either.”
“Flat?” Reacher asked.
“As a pool table,” Yanni said.
“Dark out there,” Cash said.
“As the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat,” Reacher said. “And I guess if there’s no fence it means they’re using cameras. With some kind of thermal imaging at night. Some kind of infrared.”
“How fast can you run two hundred yards?” Cash asked.
“Me?” Reacher said. “Slow enough they could mail-order a rifle to shoot me with.”
“What’s the best approach?”
“Walk in from the north,” Reacher said. “Without a doubt. We could get into the stone place straight off the road and just hike through it. Then we could lie up as long as we wanted. Good concealment until the last minute.”
“Can’t walk in from anywhere if they’ve got thermal cameras.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“OK, but they’ll anticipate the north.”
Reacher nodded. “We’ll pass on the north. Too obvious.”
“South or east would be next best. Because presumably the driveway comes in from the west. Probably too straight and too open.”
“They’ll be thinking the same thing.”
“Makes us both right.”
“I kind of like the driveway,” Reacher said. “What will it be? Paved?”
“Crushed limestone,” Yanni said. “They’ve got plenty to spare.”
“Noisy,” Cash said.
“It’ll have retained a little daytime heat,” Reacher said. “It’ll be warmer than the dirt. It’ll put a stripe of color down their thermal picture. If the contrast isn’t great it’ll give a shadow zone either side.”
“Are you kidding?” Cash said. “You’re going to be forty or fifty degrees hotter than ambient temperature. You’re going to show up like a road flare.”
“They’re going to be paying attention south and east.”
“Not exclusively.”
“You got a better idea?”
“What about a full frontal assault? With vehicles?”
Reacher smiled. “If it absolutely positively has to be destroyed by morning, call the United States Marine Corps.”
“Roger that,” Cash said.
“Too dangerous,” Reacher said. “We can’t give them a second’s warning and we can’t turn the place into a free-fire zone. We’ve got Rosemary to think about.”
Nobody spoke.
“I like the driveway,” Reacher said again.
Cash glanced at Helen Rodin.
“We could just call in the cops,” he said. “You know, if it’s the DA who’s the bad guy here. A couple of SWAT teams could do it.”
“Same problem,” Reacher said. “Rosemary would be dead before they got near the door.”
“Cut the power lines? Kill the cameras?”
“Same problem. It’s an announcement ahead of time.”
“Your call.”
“The driveway,” Reacher said. “I like the driveway.”
“But what about the cameras?”
“I’ll think of
something,” Reacher said. He stepped over to the table. Stared down at the map. Then he turned back to Cash. “Does your truck have a CD player?”
Cash nodded. “Part of the comfort package.”
“Do you mind if Franklin drives it?”
“Franklin can have it. I’d prefer a sedan.”
“OK, your Humvee is our approach vehicle. Franklin can drive us there, let us out, and then get straight back here.”
“Us?” Yanni said. “Are we all going?”
“You bet your ass,” Reacher said. “Four of us there, with Franklin back here as the comms center.”
“Good,” Yanni said.
“We need cell phones,” Reacher said.
“I’ve got one,” Yanni said.
“Me too,” Cash said.
“Me too,” Helen said.
“I don’t,” Reacher said.
Franklin took a small Nokia out of his pocket.
“Take mine,” he said.
Reacher took it. “Can you set up a conference call? Four cell phones and your desk phone? As soon as you get back here?”
Franklin nodded. “Give me your numbers.”
“And turn the ringers off,” Reacher said.
“When are we doing this?” Cash asked.
“Four o’clock in the morning is my favorite time,” Reacher said. “But they’ll be expecting that. We learned it from them. Four in the morning is when the KGB went knocking on doors. Least resistance. It’s a biorhythm thing. So we’ll surprise them. We’ll do it at two-thirty.”
“If you surprise them you don’t have to hit them very hard?” Yanni said.
Reacher shook his head. “In this situation if we surprise them they won’t hit me very hard.”
“Where am I going to be?” Cash asked.
“Southwest corner of the gravel plant,” Reacher said. “Looking south and east at the house. You can cover the west and the north sides simultaneously. With your rifle.”
“OK.”
“What did you bring for me?”
Cash dug in the pocket of his windbreaker and came out with a knife in a sheath. He tossed it across the room. Reacher caught it. It was a standard-issue Navy SEAL SRK. Their survival-rescue knife. Carbon steel, black epoxy, seven-inch blade. Not new.
“This is it?” Reacher said.
“All I’ve got,” Cash said. “The only weapons I own are my rifle and that knife.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m a businessman, not a psycho.”
“Christ’s sake, Gunny, I’ll be taking a knife to a gunfight? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”
“All I’ve got,” Cash said again.
“Great.”
“You can take a gun from the first one you cut. Face it, if you don’t get close enough to cut one of them you aren’t going to win anyway.”
Reacher said nothing.
They waited. Midnight. Twelve-thirty. Yanni fiddled with her cell phone and made a call. Reacher ran through the plan one more time. First in his head, then out loud, until everyone was clear. Details, dispositions, refinements, adjustments.
“But we might still change everything,” he said. “When we get there. No substitute for seeing the actual terrain.”
They waited. One o’clock. One-thirty. Reacher started to allow himself to think about the endgame. About what would come after the victory. He turned to Franklin.
“Who is Emerson’s number two?” he asked.
“A woman called Donna Bianca,” Franklin said.
“Is she any good?”
“She’s his number two.”
“She’ll need to be there. Afterward. It’s going to be a real three-ring circus. Too much for one pair of hands. I want you to bring Emerson and Donna Bianca out there. And Alex Rodin, of course. After we win.”
“They’ll be in bed.”
“So wake them up.”
“If we win,” Franklin said.
At one forty-five people started to get restless. Helen Rodin stepped over and squatted down next to Reacher. She picked up the knife. Looked at it. Put it back down.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Because I can. And because of the girl.”
“You’ll get yourself killed.”
“Unlikely,” Reacher said. “These are old men and idiots. I’ve survived worse.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“If I get in OK, I’ll be safe enough. Room-to-room isn’t hard. People get very scared with a prowler loose in the house. They hate it.”
“But you won’t get in OK. They’ll see you coming.”
Reacher dug in his left-hand pocket and came out with the shiny new quarter that had bothered him in the car. Handed it to her.
“For you,” he said.
She looked at it. “Something to remember you by?”
“Something to remember tonight by.”
Then he checked his watch. Stood up.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
CHAPTER 16
They stood for a moment in the shadows and the silence on the parking apron below Franklin’s lighted windows. Then Yanni went to get the Sheryl Crow CD from her Mustang. She gave it to Cash. Cash unlocked the Humvee and leaned inside and put it in the player. Then he gave the keys to Franklin. Franklin climbed into the driver’s seat. Cash got in next to him with his M24 across his knees. Reacher and Helen Rodin and Ann Yanni squeezed together in the back.
“Turn the heater up,” Reacher said.
Cash leaned to his left and dialed in maximum temperature. Franklin started the engine. Backed out into the street. Swung the wheel and took off west. Then he turned north. The engine was loud and the ride was rough. The heater kicked in and the fan blew hard. The interior grew warm, and then hot. They turned west, turned north, turned west, turned north, lining up with the grid that would run through the fields. The drive was a series of long droning cruises punctuated by sharp right-angle corners. Then they made the final turn. Franklin sat up straight behind the wheel and accelerated hard.
“This is it,” Yanni said. “Dead ahead, about three miles to go.”
“Start the music,” Reacher said. “Track eight.”
Cash hit the button.
Every day is a winding road.
“Louder,” Reacher said.
Cash turned it up. Franklin drove on, sixty miles an hour.
“Two miles,” Yanni called. Then: “One mile.”
Franklin drove on. Reacher stared out the window to his right. Watched the fields flash past in the darkness. Random scatter from the headlights lit them up. The irrigation booms were turning so slowly they looked stationary. Mist filled the air.
“High beams,” Reacher called.
Franklin flicked them on.
“Music all the way up,” Reacher called.
Cash twisted the knob to maximum.
EVERY DAY IS A WINDING ROAD.
“Half a mile,” Yanni yelled.
“Windows,” Reacher shouted.
Four thumbs hit four buttons and all four windows dropped an inch. Hot air and loud music sucked out into the night. Reacher stared right and saw the dark outline of the house flash past, isolated, distant, square, solid, substantial, dimly lit from inside. Flat land all around it. The limestone driveway, pale, very long, as straight as an arrow.
Franklin kept his foot hard down.
“Stop sign in four hundred yards,” Yanni yelled.
“Stand by,” Reacher shouted. “Showtime.”
“One hundred yards,” Yanni yelled.
“Doors,” Reacher shouted.
Three doors opened an inch. Franklin braked hard. Stopped dead on the line. Reacher and Yanni and Helen and Cash spilled out. Franklin didn’t hesitate. He took off again like it was just a normal dead-of-night stop sign. Reacher and Yanni and Cash and Helen dusted themselves down and stood close together on the crown of the road and stared north until the glow of the lights and the sound of the e
ngine and the thump of the music were lost in the distance and the darkness.
Sokolov had picked up the Humvee’s heat signature on both the south and west monitors when it was still about half a mile shy of the house. Hard not to. A big powerful vehicle, traveling fast, trailing long plumes of hot air from open windows, what was to miss? On the screen it looked like a bottle rocket flying sideways. Then he heard it too, physically, through the walls. Big engine, loud music. Vladimir glanced his way.
“Passerby?” he asked.
“Let’s see,” Sokolov said.
It didn’t slow down. It hurtled straight past the house and kept on going north. On the screen it trailed heat like a reentry capsule. Through the walls they heard the music Doppler-shift like an ambulance’s siren as it went by.
“Passerby,” Sokolov said.
“Some asshole,” Vladimir said.
Upstairs on the third floor Chenko heard it, too. He stepped through an empty bedroom to a west-facing window and looked out. Saw a big black shape doing about sixty miles an hour, high-beam headlights, bright tail lights, music thumping and thudding so loud he could hear the door panels flexing from two hundred yards away. It roared past. Didn’t slow down. He opened the window and leaned out and craned his neck and watched the bubble of light track north into the distance. It went behind the skeletal tangle of machinery in the stone-crushing plant. But it was still visible as a moving glow in the air. After a quarter-mile the glow changed color. Red now, not white. Brake lights, flaring for the stop sign. The glow paused for a second. Then the red color died and the glow turned back to white and took off again, fast.
The Zec called up from the floor below: “Was that him?”
“No,” Chenko called back. “Just some rich kid out for a drive.”
Reacher led the way through the dark, four people single file on the edge of the blacktop with the gravel plant’s high wire fence on their left and huge circular fields across the road on their right. After the roar of the diesel and the thump of the music the silence felt absolute. There was nothing to hear except the hiss of irrigation water. Reacher raised his hand and stopped them where the fence turned a right angle and ran away east. The corner post was double-thickness and braced with angled spars. Grass and weeds from the shoulder were clumped up high. He stepped forward and checked the view. He was on a perfect diagonal from the northwest corner of the house. He had an equal forty-five-degree line of sight to the north facade and the west. Because of the diagonal the distance was about three hundred yards. Visibility was very poor. There was a glimmer of cloudy moonlight, but beyond that there was nothing at all.
