by Lee Child
He left the car in a corner of the lot, in the sun, where it would dry. Then he walked a long block south to Fountain Avenue. Found a place that had started out as a pharmacy and then had become the kind of drugstore that sold all kinds of small household items. He went in and bought four flashlights. Three-cell Maglites, black, powerful enough to be useful, small enough to be maneuverable, big enough to be used as clubs. The girl at the register put them in a white bag with I love LA on it, three capital letters and a red heart-shaped symbol. Reacher carried the bag back to the motel, swinging it gently, listening to the quiet rustle of plastic.
They couldn’t face Denny’s again for dinner. They called out to Domino’s instead, for pizzas, and ate them in the battered lounge next to the laundry room. They drank soda from a noisy red machine outside the door. A perfect meal, for what they had in mind. Some empty calories, some fats, some complex carbohydrates. Time-release energy, good for about twelve hours. An army doctor had explained it all to them, many years before.
“Objectives for tonight?” O’Donnell asked.
“Three,” Reacher said. “First, Dixon hits the reception desk for anything useful. Second, Neagley finds the dragon lady’s office and hits that. You and I hit the other offices for whatever else they’ve got. A hundred and twenty seconds, in and out. Then third, we ID the security people when they show up.”
“We’re waiting around afterward?”
“I am,” Reacher said. “You guys are heading back.”
Reacher went up to his room and brushed his teeth and took a long hot shower. Then he stretched out full length on the bed and took a nap. The clock in his head woke him at half past midnight. He stretched and brushed his teeth again and dressed. Gray denim pants, gray shirt, black windbreaker zipped all the way up. Boots, tightly laced. Gloves on. The Chrysler keys in one pants pocket, the spare Glock mag in the other. The captured cell phone from Vegas in one shirt pocket, his own phone in the other. The Maglite in one jacket pocket, the Glock itself in the other. Nothing else.
He walked out to the lot at ten minutes before one o’clock. The others were already there, a shadowy trio standing well away from any pools of light.
“OK,” he said. He turned to O’Donnell and Neagley. “You guys drive your Hondas.” He turned to Dixon. “Karla, you drive mine. You park it close, facing west, and you leave the keys in for me. Then you ride back with Dave.”
Dixon said, “Are you really going to leave the Chrysler there?”
“We don’t need it.”
“It’s full of our prints and hair and fiber.”
“Not anymore. A bunch of guys up on Van Nuys just made sure of that. Now let’s go.”
They bumped fists like ballplayers, an old ritual, and then they dispersed and climbed into their cars. Reacher slid into the Chrysler and started it up, the heavy V-8 beat slow and loud in the darkness. He heard the Hondas start, their smaller engines coughing and popping and their big-bore mufflers throbbing. He backed out of his slot and turned and headed for the exit. In his mirror he saw three pairs of bright blue headlights strung out behind him. He swung east on Sunset and south on La Brea and then east again on Wilshire and saw the others following him all the way, a ragged little convoy hanging together in the light nighttime traffic.
63
The great city went quiet after they passed MacArthur Park and hit the 110. To their right, downtown was silent and deserted. There were lights on in Chinatown, but no visible activity. In the other direction Dodger Stadium was huge and dark and empty. Then they came off the freeway and plunged into the surface streets to the east. Navigation had been difficult by day and was worse by night. But Reacher had made the trip three times before, twice as a passenger and once as a driver, and he figured he could spot the turns.
And he did, without a problem. He slowed three blocks before New Age’s building and let the others close up behind him. Then he led them through a wide two-block circle, for caution’s sake. Then a closer pass, on a one-block radius. There was mist in the air. The glass cube looked dark and deserted. The ornamental trees in the lot were up-lit with decorative spots and the light spilled a little and reflected off the building’s mirror siding, but apart from that there was no specific illumination. The razor wire on the fence looked dull gray in the darkness and the main gate was closed. Reacher slowed next to it and dropped his window and stuck his arm out and made a circular gesture with his gloved finger in the air, like a baseball umpire signaling a home run. One more go-round. He led them through three-quarters of a round trip and then pointed at the curb where he wanted them to park. First Neagley, then O’Donnell behind her, then Dixon in his own silver Prelude. They slowed and stopped and he made throat-cutting gestures and they shut their motors down and climbed out. O’Donnell detoured all the way to the gate and came back and said, “It’s a very big lock.” Reacher was still at the wheel of the idling Chrysler. His window was still open. He said, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
“We doing this stealthy?”
“Not very,” Reacher said. “I’ll meet you at the gate.”
They walked ahead and he put the Chrysler in gear and followed them, slowly. The roads all around New Age’s block were standard twenty-two-foot blacktop ribbons, typical of new business park construction. No sidewalks. This was LA. Twenty-one thousand miles of surface streets, probably fewer than twenty-one thousand yards of sidewalk. New Age’s gate was set in a curved scallop maybe twenty feet deep, so that arriving vehicles could pull off the roadway and wait. Total distance between the gate and the far curb, forty-two feet. Automatically the manic part of Reacher’s mind told him that was the same as fourteen yards or 504 inches or .795 percent of a mile, or a hair over 1,280 centimeters in European terms. He turned ninety degrees into the scallop and straightened head-on and brought the Chrysler’s front bumper to within an inch of the gate. Then he reversed straight back all the way until he felt the rear tires touch the far curb. He put his foot hard on the brake and slotted the transmission back into drive and dropped all four windows. Night air blew in, sharp and cold. The others looked at him and he pointed to where he wanted them, two on the left of the gate and one on the right.
“Start the clock,” he called. “Two minutes.”
He kept his foot on the brake and hit the gas until the transmission was wound up tight and the whole car was rocking and bucking and straining. Then he slipped his foot off the brake and stamped down on the accelerator and the car shot forward. It covered the forty-two feet of available distance with the rear tires smoking and howling and then it smashed head-on into the gate. The lock ruptured instantly and the gate smashed open and flung back and about a dozen airbags exploded inside the Chrysler, out of the steering wheel and the passenger fascia and the header rails and the seats. Reacher was ready for them. He was driving one-handed and had his other arm up in front of his face. He stopped the driver’s airbag with his elbow. No problem. The four open windows defused the percussion shock and saved his eardrums. But the noise still deafened him. It was like sitting in a car and having someone fire a .44 at him. Ahead of him on the front wall of the building a blue strobe started flashing urgently. If there was an accompanying siren, he couldn’t hear it.
He kept his foot hard down. The car stumbled for a split second after the impact with the gate and then it picked up the pace again and laid rubber all the way through the lot. He lined up the steering and risked a glance in the mirror and saw the others running full speed after him. Then he faced front and put both hands on the wheel and aimed for the reception area doors.
He was doing close to fifty miles an hour when he reached them. The front wheels hit the shallow step and the whole car launched and smashed through the doors about a foot off the ground. Glass shattered and the door frames tore right out of the walls and the car continued on inside more or less uninterrupted. It hit the slate floor with the brakes locked hard and skidded straight on and demolished the reception counter completely
and knocked down the wall behind it and ended up buried in rubble to the base of the windshield, with the wreckage of the reception counter strewn all around under its midsection.
Which is going to make Dixon’s research difficult, Reacher thought.
Then he shut his mind to that problem and unclipped his belt and forced his door open. Spilled out onto the lobby floor and crawled away. All around him tiny white alarm strobes were flashing. His hearing was coming back. A loud siren was sounding. He got to his feet and saw the others hurdling the wreckage in the doorway and running inside from the lot. Dixon was heading straight for the back of the lobby and O’Donnell and Neagley were heading for the mouth of the corridor where the dragon lady had come out twice before. Their flashlights were already on and bright cones of light were jerking and bouncing in front of them through clouds of swirling white dust. He pulled his own flashlight out and switched it on and followed them.
Twenty-one seconds gone, he thought.
There were two elevators halfway down the corridor. Their indicator panels showed it to be a three-story building. He didn’t press the call button. He figured the alarm would have already shut down the elevators. Instead he flung open an adjacent door and hit the stairs. Ran all the way up to the third floor, two steps at a time. The sound of the siren was unbearable in the stairwell. He burst out into the third-floor corridor. He didn’t need his flashlight. The alarm strobes were lighting the place up like the disco from hell. The corridor was lined on both sides with maple doors twenty feet apart. Offices. The doors had nameplates on them. Long black plastic rectangles, engraved with letters cut through to a white base layer. Directly in front of him Neagley was busy kicking down a door labeled Margaret Berenson. The stop-motion effect of the alarm strobes made her movements weird and jerky. The door wouldn’t give. She pulled out her Glock and fired three aimed shots into the lock. Three loud explosions. The spent brass kicked out of the pistol’s ejection port and rolled away on the carpet, frozen by the strobes into a long golden chain. Neagley kicked the door again and it sagged open. She went inside.
Reacher moved on. Fifty-two seconds gone, he thought.
He passed a door labeled Allen Lamaison. Twenty carpeted feet farther on he saw another door: Anthony Swan. He braced himself against the opposite wall and wound up and delivered a mighty kick with his heel, just above the lock. The maple splintered and the door sagged but the catch held. He finished the job with a sharp blow from the flat of his gloved hand and tumbled inside.
Sixty-three seconds gone, he thought.
He stood stock-still and played his flashlight beam all around his dead friend’s office. It was untouched. It was like Swan had just stepped out to the bathroom or gone out for lunch. There was a coat hanging on a hat stand. It was a khaki windbreaker, old, worn, plaid-lined like a golf jacket, short and wide. There were file cabinets. Phones. A leather chair, crushed in places by the weight of a heavy barrel-shaped man. There was a computer on the desk. And a new blank notepad. And pens, and pencils. A stapler. A clock. A small pile of papers.
And a paperweight, holding the papers down. A lump of Soviet concrete, irregular in shape, the size of a fist, gray and polished to a greasy shine by handling, one flat face with faint traces of blue and red sprayed graffiti still on it.
Reacher stepped to the desk and put the lump of concrete in his pocket. Took the pile of papers from under it and rolled them tight and put them in his other pocket. Suddenly became aware of a softness under his feet. He played the flashlight beam downward. Saw rich red colors reflected back. Ornate patterns. Thick pile. An Oriental rug. Brand new. He recalled the cord on Orozco’s wrists and ankles and Curtis Mauney’s words: It’s a sisal product from the Indian subcontinent. It would have to come in on whatever gets exported from there.
Eighty-nine seconds gone, he thought. Thirty-one to go.
He stepped to the window. Saw Karla Dixon far below in the darkness, already on her way out of the lot. Her pants and her jacket were scuffed and coated with white dust. She looked like a ghost. From crawling around in the wallboard dust, he guessed. She was carrying papers and some kind of a white three-ring binder. She was lit up in short blue pulses by the strobe on the front of the building.
Twenty-six seconds to go.
He saw O’Donnell run out below like he was escaping from a burning house, taking giant strides, carrying stuff clutched to his chest. And then Neagley a second later, running hard, long dark hair streaming out behind her, arms pumping, with a thick wad of green file folders gripped in each hand.
Nineteen seconds to go.
He crossed the office and touched the jacket on the hat stand, gently, on the shoulder, like Swan was still in it. Then he stepped back behind the desk and sat down in the chair. It creaked once as he settled. He heard the sound quite clearly over the siren.
Twelve seconds to go.
He looked out at the manic flashing in the corridor and knew he could just wait. Sooner or later, maybe in less than a minute, the men who had killed his friends would show up. As long as there were fewer than thirty-four of them he could sit right where he was and take them all down, one by one.
Five seconds to go.
Except that he couldn’t, of course. Nobody was that dumb. After the first three or four KIAs had piled up in the doorway, the rest of them would regroup in the corridor and start thinking about tear gas and reinforcements and body armor. Maybe they would even think about calling the cops or the FBI. And Reacher knew there was no way to be sure of putting the right guys down before he lost a three-or four-day siege against a whole bunch of trained SWAT teams.
One second to go.
He exploded out of the chair and out through the broken door and jinked left into the corridor and right into the stairwell. Neagley had wedged the door open for him. He hit the first floor about ten seconds over budget. He dodged around the inert Chrysler in the lobby and was out in the lot fifteen seconds late. Through the wrecked gate and out in the street forty seconds late. Then he ran toward the pale gleam of the silver Prelude. It was a hundred yards away, distant and innocent and alone. The other two Hondas were already gone. He covered the hundred yards in twenty seconds and hurled himself inside. He slammed his door after him and struggled upright in his seat. He was breathing hard, mouth wide open. He turned his head and saw a set of headlights in the far distance, moving very fast, coming toward him, swinging around corners, then diving low from braking.
64
Altogether three cars showed up. They came in fast and stopped short all over the road outside the wrecked gate and they stayed there, parked at random angles, engines still running, headlights blazing through the night mist. They were brand-new Chrysler 300Cs, dark blue, pretty much identical to the one already parked in New Age’s lobby.
Altogether five guys got out of the three cars. Two from the first, one from the second, two from the third. Reacher was a hundred yards away and watching through tinted glass and the corner of New Age’s fence and he was dazzled by the six headlights, so he couldn’t make out much detail. But the guy who had arrived alone in the second car seemed to be in charge. He was a slight man, wearing a short raincoat that looked to be black. Under it he had some kind of a white T-shirt. He was staring at the breached gate and gesturing the others to stay well away from it, as if it was somehow dangerous.
An ex-cop, Reacher thought. Instinctively reluctant to contaminate a crime scene.
Then the five guys formed up close together in a tight arrowhead formation, with the man in the raincoat closest to the wreckage. They advanced on it, slow and wary, one step at a time, leaning forward from their waists, heads thrust forward, like they were puzzled by what they were seeing. Then they stopped and backtracked fast and retreated behind their cars. The engines shut down and the headlight beams shut off and the scene went dark.
Not too dumb, Reacher thought. They figure this could be an ambush. They think we could still be in there.
He watched them until
his night vision came back. Then he took out the cell phone he had brought back from Vegas and beeped his way through all the menus until he was on the last number the phone had dialed. He hit the call button and put the phone to his ear and watched out the window to see which of the five guys would answer.
His money was on the guy in the raincoat.
Wrong.
None of the five guys answered.
None of them reacted. None of them pulled a phone from a pocket to check the caller ID. None of them even moved. The ring tone in Reacher’s ear went on and on and then cut to voice mail. He clicked off and redialed and the same thing happened. He watched, and nobody moved a muscle. It was inconceivable that a Director of Security would be out on an emergency alert without his cell phone switched on. It was inconceivable that a Director of Security would ignore an incoming call in such circumstances. Therefore none of these five was the director of security. Not the guy in the raincoat. He was third man on the totem pole, at best, allowing for Swan’s number-two spot. And he was acting like a guy in third place. He was slow, and ponderous. He had no instinctive grasp of tactics. Anybody with half a brain would have figured out his best course of action long ago. A small square building, potential armed hostiles inside, three solid cars at his disposal, he should have solved his problem already. All three cars go in, high speed, different directions, they circle the building, they draw fire, two guys go in the back, two guys go in the front, game over.
Civilians, Reacher thought.
He waited.
Eventually the guy in the raincoat made the right decision. Painfully slow, but he got there in the end. He ordered everyone back in their cars and they maneuvered for a spell and then burst into the lot at high speed. Reacher watched them circle the building a couple of times and then he started the Honda and headed west.
