by Lee Child
“The phone in your apartment was new,” Reacher said. “You didn’t have it before, did you? You bought it so that you could leave Susan’s number in it.”
“Why would I do that?” Taylor asked.
“Because you wanted Lane to find you here.”
Taylor said nothing.
“You talked to Dave Kemp in the village store,” Reacher said. “You gave him all kinds of unnecessary details. And he’s the biggest gossip in the county. Then you went and hung out in the pub with a bunch of nosy farmers. I’m sure you would have rather stayed home, under the circumstances. With your new family. But you couldn’t do that. Because you wanted to lay a clear trail. Because you knew Lane would hire someone like me. And you wanted to help someone like me find you. Because you wanted to bring Lane here for a showdown.”
Silence in the room.
Reacher said, “You wanted to be on your home turf. And you figured this is an easy place to defend.”
More silence. Reacher glanced at Kate.
“You were upset,” he said. “Not that Lane was coming, but that he was coming now. Already. Too soon.”
Kate said nothing. But Taylor nodded. “Like I said before, he was a little faster than we expected. But yes, we wanted him to come.”
“Why?”
“You just said it. We wanted a showdown. Closure. Finality.”
“Why now?”
“I told you.”
“Reparations for the wounded aren’t urgent. Not like this.”
Kate Lane looked up from her chair by the fire.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
CHAPTER 68
In the soft light of the flames from the hearth, Kate’s simple and vulnerable beauty was emphasized to the point of heartbreak. She said, “When Edward and I first started fighting he accused me of being unfaithful. Which wasn’t actually true back then. But he was in a rage. He said if he ever caught me sleeping around he would show me how much it hurt him by doing something to Jade that would hurt me even more. He went into the kind of detail I can’t repeat now. Not in front of her. But it was very frightening. It was so frightening that I persuaded myself not to take it seriously. But after hearing about Anne and Knight and Hobart I knew I had to take it seriously. By which time I really did have something to hide. So we ran. And here we are.”
“With Lane right behind you.”
“He deserves whatever he gets, Mr. Reacher. He’s truly a monster.”
Reacher turned to Jackson. “You’re not fixing the backhoe to dredge ditches, are you? It’s not raining and the ditches look fine anyway. And you wouldn’t take time out to do something like that. Not right now. Not under these circumstances. You’re fixing the backhoe to dig graves, aren’t you?”
“At least one grave,” Taylor said. “Maybe two or three, until the whole crew goes home and leaves us alone. You got a problem with that?”
We’ll find Taylor, Reacher had said, on the plane. Lane will take care of him, and then I’ll take care of Lane. Pauling had asked him, What about the others? Reacher had said: If I think the crew will fall apart with Lane gone, then I’ll leave the others alone and let it. But if one of them wants to step up and take over, I’ll do him, too. And so on and so forth, until the crew really does fall apart.
Pauling had said: Brutal.
Reacher had asked: Compared to what?
He looked straight at Taylor.
“No,” he answered. “I guess I don’t have a problem with that. Not really. No problem at all, in fact. I’m just not used to finding people on the same wavelength as me.”
“You keeping your million bucks?”
Reacher shook his head. “I was going to give it to Hobart.”
“That’s good,” Kate said. “That frees up some of our money for the others.”
Taylor said, “Ms. Pauling? What about you? Do you have a problem?”
Pauling said, “I ought to. I ought to have a huge problem. Once upon a time I swore an oath to uphold the law.”
“But?”
“I can’t get to Lane any other way. So no, I don’t have a problem.”
“So we’re in business,” Taylor said. “Welcome to the party.”
After they finished their tea Jackson took Reacher into a small mud room off the back of the kitchen and opened a double-door wall cupboard above a washing machine. In it were racked four Heckler & Koch G-36 automatic rifles. The G-36 was a very modern design that had showed up in service just before Reacher’s military career had ended. Therefore he wasn’t very familiar with it. It had a nineteen-inch barrel and an open folding stock and was basically fairly conventional apart from a huge superstructure that carried a bulky optical sight integrated into an oversized carrying handle. It was chambered for the standard 5.56mm NATO round and like most German weapons it looked very expensive and beautifully engineered.
Reacher asked, “Where did you get these from?”
“I bought them,” Jackson said. “From a bent quartermaster in Holland. Susan went over there and picked them up.”
“For this thing with Lane?”
Jackson nodded. “It’s been a heavy few weeks. Lots of planning.”
“Are they traceable?”
“The Dutch guy’s paperwork shows they were destroyed in a training accident.”
“Got ammunition?”
Jackson moved across the room and opened another cupboard, lower down. Behind a row of muddy Wellington boots Reacher could see the glint of black metal. A lot of it.
“Seventy magazines,” Jackson said. “Two thousand one hundred rounds.”
“That should do the trick.”
“We can’t use it. Not more than three or four rounds. Too noisy.”
“How close are the cops?”
“Not very. Norwich, I suppose, unless there happens to be a patrol car out. But people here have phones. Some of them even know how to use them.”
“You can turn the bird scarer off for a day.”
“Obviously. But I shouldn’t really be using that, either. An organic farm doesn’t need a bird scarer. No pesticides means plenty of insects for the birds to eat. They don’t go after the seed. Sooner or later people are going to realize that.”
“So the bird scarer is new, too?”
Jackson nodded. “Part of the planning. Set to start firing at dawn. That’s when we expect Lane to come.”
“If I had a sister and a brother-in-law I’d want them to be like you and Susan.”
“I go a long way back with Taylor. We were in Sierra Leone together. I’d do anything for him.”
“I never went to Africa.”
“Lucky you. We were fighting a bunch of rebels called the West Side Boys. I saw what they did to people. So I know what Hobart went through. Burkina Faso wasn’t far away.”
“You OK with all of this? You’ve got roots here, literally.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Take a vacation. All of you. I’ll stay.”
Jackson shook his head. “We’ll be OK. One round might do it. The G-36 is a pretty accurate piece.”
Jackson stayed in the mud room and closed and locked both cupboards. Reacher stepped back into the kitchen and sat down next to Taylor.
“Tell me about Gregory,” he said.
“What about him?”
“Is he going to stand by Lane? Or you?”
“Lane, I think.”
“Even though you served together?”
“Lane bought him. When he was in uniform Gregory always wanted an officer’s commission, but he never got it. It burned him up. And then Lane made him a kind of unofficial lieutenant. Status, at last. Meaningless bullshit, of course, but it’s the thought that counts. So I think Gregory will stick with him. Plus he’ll be offended that I didn’t share my secret. He seemed to think that two Brits abroad should share everything.”
“Does he know this area?”
Taylor shook his head. “He’s a Londoner, like me.”
&n
bsp; “What about the others? Will any of them turn?”
“Not Kowalski,” Taylor said. “Not Perez. Turning would require some brain activity, and those two are room-temperature IQs at best. Probably not Addison, either. But Groom and Burke aren’t dumb. If they see the ship is sinking they’ll get off fast enough.”
“That’s not the same thing as turning.”
“None of them is going to come over to our side. You can forget about that. The best we can hope for is neutrality from Groom and Burke. And I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.”
“How good are they? All of them, as a whole?”
“They’re about as good as me. Which is to say they’re on a slippery slope. They used to be outstanding, but now they’re well on the way to average. Plenty of experience and ability, but they don’t train anymore. And training is important. Back in the day, training was ninety-nine percent of what we did.”
“Why did you join them?”
“The money,” Taylor said. “That’s why I joined them. Then I stayed with them because of Kate. I loved her from the first moment I saw her.”
“Did she love you back?”
“Eventually,” Taylor said.
“Not eventually,” Kate said, from her chair by the fire. “Truth is it was really pretty quick. One day I asked him why he had never had his teeth fixed and he told me that he had never even thought about it. I like that kind of self-respect and self-confidence in a man.”
“You see anything wrong with my teeth?” Taylor asked.
“Plenty,” Reacher said. “I’m surprised you can eat. Maybe that’s why you’re so small.”
Taylor said, “I am what I am.”
Exactly one hour after they came in and lit the fire they drew lots for the first round of look-out duty. Jackson and Pauling pulled the short straws. Jackson sat in the Land Rover at the back of the house and Pauling sat in the Mini at the front. That way each of them could cover a little more than one hundred eighty degrees. Across the flat land they could see a mile or more. Ninety seconds’ warning if Lane came in by road, a little more if he came in across the fields, which would be a slower approach.
Reasonable security.
As long as the daylight lasted.
CHAPTER 69
The daylight lasted until a little after eight o’clock. By then Reacher was in the Land Rover and Kate Lane was in the Mini. The sky darkened in the east and reddened in the west. Twilight rolled in fast, and with it came an evening mist that looked picturesque but cut visibility to less than a hundred yards. The bird scarer fell silent. All afternoon and into the evening it had been firing at unpredictable random intervals between a minimum of fifteen and a maximum of forty minutes. Now its sudden silence was more noticeable than its noise.
Taylor and Jackson were in one of the barns, working on the backhoe. Pauling was in the kitchen, opening cans for dinner. Jade was still at the table, drawing.
By eight-thirty visibility was so marginal that Reacher slid out of the Land Rover and headed for the kitchen. He met Jackson on the way. Jackson was coming back from the barn. His hands were covered with grease and oil.
Reacher asked, “How’s it going?”
“It’ll be ready,” Jackson said.
Then Taylor appeared out of the gloom.
“Ten hours to go,” he said. “We’re safe until dawn.”
“You sure?” Reacher said.
“Not really.”
“Me either.”
“So what does the U.S. Army field manual say about nighttime perimeter security?”
Reacher smiled. “It says you put a shitload of Claymores about a hundred yards out. If you hear one go off you know you just killed an intruder.”
“What if you don’t have any Claymores?”
“Then you hide.”
“That’s the SAS way. But we can’t hide the house.”
“We could take Kate and Jade someplace else.”
Taylor shook his head. “Better if they stay. I don’t want my focus split.”
“How do they feel about that?”
“Ask them.”
So Reacher did. He took a shortcut through the house and went out to the Mini. Told Kate to take a break for dinner. Then he offered to drive her and Jade anyplace she wanted to go, a hotel, a resort, a spa, Norwich, Birmingham, London, anywhere. She refused. She said as long as Lane was alive she wanted Taylor close by with a gun. She said a farmhouse with stone walls three feet thick was the best place she could think of to be. Reacher didn’t argue with her. Privately he agreed with Taylor. Split focus was a bad thing. And it was possible that Lane’s guys already had covert surveillance going. Maybe even likely. If so, they would have the roads covered. They would be watching cars pass by. Looking for Taylor, primarily. But if they were given the chance to see that what was supposed to be Susan and Melody Jackson was actually Kate and Jade Lane, then the whole game would change.
Dinner was a random mixture of canned stuff that Pauling had found in cupboards. She wasn’t much of a cook. She was too accustomed to dialing her Barrow Street telephone and calling out for whatever she wanted. But nobody seemed to mind. Nobody was in the mood for a gourmet menu. They planned as they ate. Agreed to set up two two-person watches, sequential, five hours each. That would take them through until dawn. One person would patrol the blind gable wall to the south, and one would do the same thing to the north. Each would be armed with a loaded G-36. The first watch would be Taylor and Jackson, and at half past one in the morning Reacher and Pauling would take over. Kate Lane would sit it out. The possibility that a hostile nighttime reconnaissance probe might identify her was too much of a risk.
Reacher cleared the table and washed the dishes and Taylor and Jackson went outside with their G-36s cocked and locked. Kate went upstairs to put Jade to bed. Pauling put logs on the fire. Watched Reacher at the sink.
“You OK?” she asked him.
“I’ve done KP before.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
He said, “We’ve got an SAS guy on one end of the house and a Parachute Regiment guy on the other. They’ve both got automatic weapons. And they’re both personally motivated. They won’t fall asleep.”
“I didn’t mean that, either. I meant with the whole thing.”
“I told you we wouldn’t be putting anybody on trial.”
Pauling nodded.
“She’s cute,” she said. “Isn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Kate. She makes me feel ancient.”
“Older women,” Reacher said. “Good for something.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. Give me a choice, I’d go home with you, not her.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m weird like that.”
“I’m supposed to put people on trial.”
“So was I, once. But I’m not going to this time. And I’m OK with that.”
“Me too. That’s what’s bothering me.”
“You’ll get over it. The backhoe and a plane ticket will help.”
“Distance? Six feet of earth and three thousand air miles?”
“Works every time.”
“Does it? Really?”
“We splattered a thousand bugs on our windshield yesterday. A thousand more today. One extra won’t make any difference.”
“Lane isn’t a bug.”
“No, he’s worse.”
“What about the others?”
“They’ve got a choice. The purest kind of choice there is. They can stay or they can go. Entirely up to them.”
“Where do you think they are now?”
“Somewhere out there,” Reacher said.
A half-hour later Kate Lane came downstairs again. The tails of her borrowed shirt were tied at her waist and the sleeves were rolled to her elbows.
“Jade’s asleep,” she said. She turned sideways to squeeze past a displaced dining chair and Reacher figured it was possible to see that she was pregnant. Just. Now that he
had been told.
He asked, “Is she doing OK?”
“Better than we could have hoped,” Kate said. “She’s not sleeping great. The jet lag has screwed her up. And she’s a little nervous, I guess. And she doesn’t understand why there are no animals here. She doesn’t understand arable farming. She thinks we’re hiding a whole bunch of cute little creatures from her.”
“Does she know about the new brother or sister or whatever it’s going to be?”
Kate nodded. “We waited until we were on the plane. We tried to make it all part of the adventure.”
“How was it at the airport?”
“No problem. The passports were fine. They looked at the names more than the pictures. To make sure they matched the tickets.”
Pauling said, “So much for Homeland Security.”
Kate nodded again. “We got the idea from something we read in the newspaper. Some guy left on a short-notice business trip, grabbed his passport from the drawer, and he’d been through six separate countries before he realized it was his wife’s passport that he had grabbed.”
Reacher said, “Tell me how the whole thing went down.”
“It was pretty easy, really. We did stuff in advance. Bought the voice machine, rented the room, got the chair, took the car keys.”
“Taylor did most of that, right?”
“He said people would remember me more than him.”
“He was probably right.”
“But I had to buy the voice machine. Too weird if a guy who couldn’t talk wanted one.”
“I guess.”
“Then I copied the photograph at Staples. That was tough. I had to let Groom drive me. It would have been too suspicious to insist on Graham all the time. But after that it was easy. We left for Bloomingdale’s that morning and went straight to Graham’s apartment instead. Just holed up there and waited. We kept really quiet in case anyone checked with the neighbors. We kept the lights off and covered the windows in case anyone passed by on the street. Then later we started the phone calls. Right from the apartment. I was very nervous at first.”
“You forgot to say no cops.”
“I know. I thought I’d blown it immediately. But Edward didn’t seem to notice. Then it got much easier later. With practice.”
