by Lee Child
The sniper was the middle guy. Third from the left, third from the right. Reacher saw the M14 in his hands. Slope arms, out in front of him, turning with him. A familiar shape. Forty-seven inches long, the dull gleam of walnut in the moonlight. Almost four hundred feet away. Reacher moved around the raised hatch lid, slow and easy, no rush at all, and he sighted in, and he breathed in and breathed out, and out, and out, and he fired again.
A miss.
But not a disaster. The round drifted a little left and down and caught the next guy low in the throat.
Reacher leaned a fraction clockwise to compensate and fired again. But by that point the four survivors were all moving. A nine-millimeter Parabellum takes a third of a second to travel four hundred feet, and a third of a second is long enough for a guy to move enough.
A miss.
No one went down.
One in the chamber, seventeen in the box. Reacher moved his thumb and switched to triples. His preferred option, with a B-grade weapon. Quantity, not quality. A random little triangle, like jabbing with a three-legged stool. He aimed generally right and fired.
The right-hand guy went down.
Three survivors. From left to right, numbers one, three, and four. They all knelt and fired back. Wild misses, except for the M14. The .308 came close. But not very. Which was telling. The guy was OK with no pressure at all. But in the heat of the moment he wasn’t the best in the world. Reacher figured they could put that on the guy’s tombstone: Great against unsuspecting women in the dark. Otherwise, not so much.
Reacher fired again, at numbers three and four, the sniper and his immediate neighbor, like a composite target. A triple.
Number four went down.
Not the sniper.
Two survivors.
Reacher had one in the chamber, and eleven in the box. Plus the Glock and two spare magazines, one of them full and one of them two short. He could use the Glock’s rounds in the Colt, if he had to. Same nine-millimeter Parabellums. The magic of standardization. He had no idea what the two survivors had left. The M14 was most likely using a twenty-round magazine. The other guy’s gun might have been anything. A long duel was a possibility. Up close and personal. Within sight. An infantry slugfest. The real kings of battle. A vulgar brawl, which was the kind of fight Reacher liked best.
Numbers one and three were still kneeling. Not close together. Reacher heaved the hatch lid closed and lay down behind it. He clicked back to singles. He wrapped himself around the dome of the hatch and got himself comfortable. The sniper fired at him. Better this time. The round hit the hatch and clanged away, a giant ricochet that might have made it all the way to Lacey’s store.
Reacher lay still, calm and quiet, and comfortable.
He fired back.
And hit the sniper.
Very low on the left side, he thought. Maybe in the hip. Nothing but a flesh wound. Not fatal, but certainly a distraction. The guy spun away and went down prone. Smaller target. The other guy followed suit. He went down flat and started blazing away. Some kind of an attempt at covering fire. Dangerous only to people in the next county, but at least the guy was showing some kind of solidarity. Reacher sighted in on the muzzle flash, and took his time. He aimed a little high and a little right, to allow for what seemed like persistent drift, and he tried to skip one off the concrete and up into the guy’s face. Too dark to see if it worked, but certainly the guy stopped firing. Maybe he was only reloading. Or taking a nap. But he looked very still. Then a distant car drove left to right on the two-lane, maybe six hundred yards away, with its lights on bright, and the moving bubble in the mist backlit the situation for a second, and Reacher came to the conclusion the guy was permanently out of action. He was sprawled in an odd position.
Reacher moved his aim a fraction, back to the wounded sniper. One in the chamber, nine in the box. Ten chances, a static target, four hundred feet. He used the same high-and-right compensation and fired again. And again. And again. He felt he was hitting. But he couldn’t see for sure. There was no answering fire. Then the same car came back the other way on the two-lane. Lost, maybe. Or worried about the gunshots. Not a cop, probably. No blue lights, no red lights, and no sane cop would parade back and forth in the line of fire. The moving bubble of light framed the view for a second. Soft, and vague. The sniper wasn’t moving. He looked hunched, head down, and inert.
Reacher fired again. And again.
One in the chamber, four in the box. He had all the visual information he was going to get. He could fire a thousand times and be no surer than he already was. He came out from behind the dome and started a low crawl north. Elbows and toes. Slow, and painful on the concrete. No reaction from up ahead. No incoming rounds. Reacher held his fire. No point in identifying his position with the muzzle flash.
He stopped a hundred and fifty feet away. Just for a moment. To assess and evaluate. Still no movement. Just vague shapes, humped and low. Then the same car drove by on the two-lane. For a third time. Same bright lights. Same moving bubble. Reacher started to worry a little about who it was. Nosy neighbors could be a problem. Nine-millimeter rounds fired in the open were not loud, but they would be audible at a reasonable distance. The car’s lights showed an unchanged situation. No movement. No sign of life. Possibly a trap.
Reacher crawled onward. Slow and easy. He would hear the hatch behind him if a new player wanted to join in the fun. The springs were loud. The sentries must have heard them too, when he had come up the ladder, but at that point the sentries hadn’t known there were hostiles already inside the building. Maybe they thought they were getting reinforcements. Or a cup of coffee and a sandwich. In that respect they hadn’t been paranoid enough.
Reacher stopped again fifty feet out. There was no movement ahead. Nothing at all. He stood up and walked the rest of the way. And found the five humped shapes, more or less all in a line in the dark. Five men. Four dead. The sniper was still breathing. He must have been hit three or four times. Still alive. Lucky.
But not very.
Reacher kicked the M14 away and slung the Colt back on his shoulder. He grabbed the guy by the belt and dragged him to the rail. He lifted him over, by his belt and the collar of his coat. Then he dropped him. The guy bounced once on the stepped concrete radius and fell forty feet to the ground.
Let’s see if they can hit a Major League fastball.
Strike three, pal.
Reacher turned and jogged the four hundred feet back to the domed hatch. He heaved the lid open and felt with his feet for the ladder.
Chapter 76
If Delfuenso had been correct about no more than two dozen opponents, then there were nine of them left, with maybe one of those nine wounded. The guy in the corridor, one of the five searchers. He had gone down pretty heavily. More than just gravity. Out of the fight, almost certainly. Which left eight still vertical. Better than a poke in the eye. A decent rate of attrition. So far. Reacher opened the blue-spot door and peered out into the corridor.
No one there.
He went room to room, one at a time, from the back of the building to the front, and he saw the same things everywhere: desks and shelves and paper. No people. It took him the best part of ten minutes to clear the second chamber. He entered the first through the garage. He started again, room to room, moving in the opposite direction, front to back.
Desks, shelves, paper.
No people.
Not in the first room, not in the second, not in the third or the fourth or the fifth. He guessed they must all be clustered in the far back corner. Safety in numbers. A defensible position. Unless they were all playing an elaborate game of cat and mouse, moving from chamber to chamber around him. Which was unlikely. But possible.
The third room on the left had been done up like a kitchen. A stove, a refrigerator, a sink. Drawers full of knives and forks and spoons. Food storage. The room opposite was a dining hall. Trestle tables and benches. Beyond that were bedrooms. Like dormitories. Bunk beds, eight to a
room. Three rooms in total. Plus two more, each with just one bed. Privacy, but no luxury. The beds were plain iron cots. Rough sheets, coarse blankets. After that came washrooms and toilets. After that came yet more offices. Desks and shelves and paper.
So Delfuenso had been more or less exactly right. There were accommodations for a total of twenty-six people, max. The wrong side of two dozen, but not by much. One of them would be McQueen, presumably.
Therefore there were nine hostiles still vertical, somewhere.
Then it was eight, because the next room had a guy working feverishly at a desk. Reacher shot him point blank and instantly in the chest, with the Glock, and then it was seven, because the sound of the gunshot stirred things up and he caught another guy running for safety in the corridor, and shot him in the back.
Then everything went quiet again. No sound anywhere, even accounting for the fact Reacher was a little deaf after firing so often in an enclosed space. The next room was empty. As was the next. Which was the halfway point in the chamber. Twenty more rooms to go. Ten on each side. Three more blue spots, all on the right. All leading through to the middle chamber. Built like rooms, used like lobbies. Therefore there were still seventeen viable targets ahead. Slow progress. The Quantico team was probably in Illinois airspace by then. Maybe talking to St. Louis air traffic control, getting permission to proceed, setting a course for the approach to Whiteman.
The next room on the left was empty.
Desks, shelves, paper.
No people.
The next room on the right had Don McQueen in it.
McQueen was tied to a chair. He had a black eye and was bleeding from a cut on the cheek. He was dressed in coarse black denim. Like prison garb. No belt. No GPS chip.
There was a man behind the chair.
The man behind the chair had a gun to McQueen’s head.
The man behind the chair was Alan King.
Living and breathing.
Alive again.
Chapter 77
Except the man behind the chair was not Alan King. He was a slightly different version of the exact same guy. Marginally older, a little harder, maybe half an inch taller, maybe a pound or two lighter. But otherwise identical.
“Peter King,” Reacher said.
“Stay where you are,” King said. “Or I’ll shoot your man.”
Reacher said, “He’s not mine.”
Peter King’s gun was a Beretta M9. Army issue. Better than the Glock, in Reacher’s private opinion. Its muzzle was tight in the hollow behind McQueen’s right ear. A dangerous place for it to be. Therefore, job one: make the Beretta move.
Peter King said, “I need you to place your weapons on the floor.”
“I guess you do,” Reacher said. “But I’m not going to.”
“I’ll shoot your man.”
“He’s not mine. I already told you that.”
“Makes no difference to me. I’ll shoot him anyway.”
Reacher raised the Glock.
“Go right ahead,” he said. “Then I’ll shoot you. You pull your trigger, I’ll pull mine. There’s only one definite here. Which is that I’m going to walk out of this room, and you’re not. The only question is whether McQueen is going to come out with me, or stay in with you. You understand that, right? What were you, a forward observer?”
King nodded.
Reacher said, “Then you’ve hung out with real soldiers long enough to have some basic grasp of short-term tactics.”
“You’re not going to give this guy up. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find him.”
“I’d prefer to take him with me, sure. But it’s not a dealbreaker.”
“Who are you?”
“Just a guy, hitching rides.”
“McQueen claims you killed my brother.”
Job one: make the Beretta move.
“The woman killed your brother,” Reacher said. “The cocktail waitress. Even then it wasn’t a fair fight. Your brother was a useless tub of lard.”
King said nothing.
Reacher said, “I bet he burned real well. All that fat? I bet he went up like a lamb chop on a barbecue.”
King said nothing.
Reacher said, “You would too, probably. You’re not much thinner. Is it a genetic thing? Was your momma fat as well as ugly?”
No reaction.
None at all.
“What do you care about your brother anyway?” Reacher asked. “Story is you weren’t even talking to him. Which I guess I can understand. He must have been a real disappointment. What did he do? Wet the bed all the time? Or did he interfere with the family dog?”
King didn’t answer.
Reacher asked, “What kind of a dog was it? Did it yelp?”
The Beretta didn’t move.
Stalemate.
“Tell me,” Reacher said. “I’d like to understand. I’d like to know what came between you. I’d like to know what made you cut him off for twenty long years. Because I had a brother once. He’s dead now, unfortunately. We were both busy all the time. But we talked when we could. We got along pretty well. We had fun. We were there for each other, when we needed to be. I never made him ashamed, and he never made me ashamed.”
Silence in the room. One concrete wall, three plywood walls, a weird, dull acoustic.
Then King said, “It was more than twenty years.”
“What was?”
“Alan was a coward.”
“How so?”
“He ratted someone out.”
“You?”
“His best friend.”
“Doing what? Knocking over a package store?”
“Doesn’t matter what they were doing,” King said. “Alan walked, and his best friend didn’t.”
“And you would never do that, right?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Because you’re a man.”
“You got that right,” King said.
“So face me like a man,” Reacher said. “Take your gun out of McQueen’s ear and count to three and go for it.”
“What, like a duel?”
“Call it whatever you want. But stop using an innocent man for a shield. That’s a pussy’s trick.”
“He’s not an innocent man. He’s a federal agent.”
“He’s tied to a chair. You can get back to him afterward.”
“You think you’re going to lose?”
“There are two possible outcomes here. Both should be considered.”
No answer.
“Pussy,” Reacher said.
“We count to three, right?”
“If you can.”
“Then we fire?”
“One of us does.”
“Start with your gun down by your side.”
“You first.”
“On three,” King said. “Guns down. You and me both. Then we count to three again. Then we fire.”
Reacher watched the guy’s eyes. They were OK.
“Works for me,” he said.
King said, “One.”
Reacher waited.
King said, “Two.”
Reacher waited.
King said, “Three.”
Reacher lowered his gun, loose and easy against his thigh.
King did the same thing.
McQueen breathed out and leaned away.
Reacher watched King’s eyes.
King took a breath and said, “OK.”
Reacher said, “Ready when you are.”
“On three, right?”
“Go for it.”
King said, “One.”
Strategy. It was the other guy that mattered. Reacher knew as sure as he knew anything that King was going to fire on two. It was a cast-iron certainty. The first count had been a decoy and a reassurance. One, two, three, guns down. It had set a rhythm and a precedent. An expectation. It had established trust. For a reason. King had it all figured out. He was a man with a plan. It was right there in his eyes. He was a smart guy.
&n
bsp; But not smart enough.
He wasn’t thinking strategically. He wasn’t thinking himself into his opponent’s frame of mind.
Reacher raised the Glock and shot him in the face, right after the one.
Chapter 78
After that it got harder, not easier. First Reacher couldn’t get McQueen out of the chair. He was tied to it with thin cord pulled very tight and the knots were hard as stones. And second, the survivors somewhere in the rooms beyond had finally gotten the message. They must have heard the shot close by and as soon as King didn’t come out all triumphant they started up with a half-assed version of Custer’s last stand. Either that or they were all planning to run for it. And either thing would put live bodies in the way. Reacher heard them all crowding together in the corridor. He heard the snick of slides being pulled. Automatic weapons, being checked and readied. He heard an urgent muffled conference, not far from the door, half in English and half in Arabic.
He asked, “What does Wadiah mean, anyway?”
McQueen said, “Safekeeping.”
“I thought so.”
“You speak Arabic?”
“The odd word.”
“Don’t you have a knife?”
“I have a toothbrush.”
“That won’t help.”
“It’s good against plaque.”
“Just get me out of this damn chair.”
“I’m trying.”
The cord was too tough to break. It was some kind of a blend, maybe cotton and nylon, woven tight, about a quarter of an inch across. Probably tested against all kinds of strains and weights.
Reacher said, “I have a key.”
McQueen said, “I’m not in handcuffs, for God’s sake.”
Reacher pulled out the fat man’s key. He nicked at the rope with the rough-edged tang, down by McQueen’s right hand. The tang cut some fibers. Maybe two or three. Out of maybe ten thousand. Reacher said, “Put some tension on it. As much as you can. You’re FBI, right? Make like you’re trying to lift your pension.”
McQueen’s shoulder and biceps bunched and the cord went hard as iron. Reacher sawed at it. Not back and forth. He had to pluck at it. The key worked only one way. But it made progress. Outside the door the voices were loud. Two factions. Doubt and questions, resolve and encouragement. Reacher was rooting for the doubt. Just for a little while longer. McQueen kept the pressure on. Fibers snapped and severed, first a few, then several, then many, then an eighth of an inch, then most of them, then only a few remained, and finally McQueen tore his right hand loose.