by Lee Child
On the left side of the gun was a combined safety and fire selector switch. The older versions of the SD that I remembered had a three-position lever. S, E, and F. S for safe, E for single shots, and F for automatic fire. German abbreviations, presumably. E for ein, and so on and so forth, even though Heckler & Koch had been owned by a British corporation for many years. I guessed they decided that tradition counts. But Springfield had given me a newer model. The SD4. It had a four-position selector switch. No abbreviations. Just pictograms. For foreign convenience, or illiterate users. A plain white dot for safe, one little white bullet shape for single shots, three bullet shapes for three-round bursts, and a long string of bullet shapes for continuous automatic fire.
I chose three-round bursts. My favourite. One pull of the trigger, three nine-millimetre rounds inside a quarter of a second. An inevitable degree of muzzle climb, minimized by careful control and the weight of the silencer, resulting in a neat little stitch of three fatal wounds climbing a vertical line maybe an inch and a half high.
Works for me.
Thirty rounds. Ten bursts. Eight targets. One burst each, plus two over for emergencies.
The elevator chimed open on the eleventh floor, and I heard Lila Hoth’s voice in my head, talking about old campaigns long ago in the Korengal: you must save the last bullet for yourself because you do not want to be taken alive, especially by the women.
I stepped out of the elevator into a silent corridor.
* * *
Standard tactical doctrine for any assault: attack from the high ground. The eighth floor was three below me. Two ways down: stairs or elevator. I preferred the stairs, especially with a silenced weapon. The smart defensive tactic would be to put a man in the stairwell. Early warning for them. Easy pickings for me. He could be dealt with quietly and at leisure.
The stairwell had a battered door set next to the elevator core.
I eased it open and started down. The stairs were dusty concrete.
Each floor was marked with a large number painted by hand in green paint. I was quiet all the way down to nine. Super-silent after that. I paused and peered over the metal rail.
No sentry in the stairwell,
The landing inside the eighth floor door was empty. Which was a disappointment. It made the job on the other side of the door twenty-five per cent harder. Five men in the corridor, not four. And the way the rooms were distributed meant that some of them would be on my left, and some on my right. Three and two, or two and three. A long second spent facing the wrong way, and then a crucial spin. Not easy.
But it was four in the morning. The lowest ebb. A universal truth. The Soviets had studied it, with doctors.
I paused on the stairwell side of the door and took a deep breath. Then another. I put my gloved hand on the handle. I took the slack out of the MP5’s trigger,
I pulled the door.
I held it at forty-five degrees with my foot. Cradled the MP5’s barrel in my glove. Looked and listened. No sound. Nothing to see. I stepped into the corridor. Whipped one way. Whipped the other.
No one there.
No sentries, no guards, no nothing. Just a length of dirty matted carpet and dim yellow light and two rows of closed doors. Nothing to hear, except the subliminal hum and shudder of the city and muted faraway sirens.
I closed the stairwell door behind me.
I checked numbers and walked quickly to Lila’s door. Put my ear on the crack and listened hard.
I heard nothing.
I waited. Five whole minutes. Ten. No sound. No one can stay still and silent longer than me.
I dipped the porter’s pass card into the slot. A tiny light flashed red. Then green. There was a click. I smashed the handle down and was inside a split second later.
The room was empty.
The bathroom was empty.
There were signs of recent occupation. The toilet roll was loose and ragged. The sink was wet. A towel was used. The bed was rucked. The chairs were out of position.
I checked the other four rooms. All empty. All abandoned. Nothing left behind. No evidence pointing towards an imminent return.
Lila Hoth, one step ahead.
Jack Reacher, one step behind.
* * *
I took my glove off and zipped up again and rode down to the lobby. I hauled the night porter into a sitting position against the back of his counter and tore the tape off his mouth.
He said, ‘Don’t hit me again.’
I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Not my fault,’ he said. ‘I told you the truth. You asked what rooms I put them in. Past tense.’
‘When did they leave?’
‘About ten minutes after you came the first time.’
‘You called them?’
‘I had to, man.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What did they pay you?’
‘A thousand,’ he said.
‘Not bad.’
‘Per room.’
‘Insane,’ I said. Which it was. For that kind of money they could have gone back to the Four Seasons. Except they couldn’t. Which was the point.
* * *
I paused in the shadows on the Seventh Avenue sidewalk. Where did they go? But first, how did they go? Not in cars. On the way in they had fifteen people. They would have needed three cars, minimum. And faded old piles with night porters working alone don’t have valet parking.
Taxis? Possible, on the way in, late in the evening from midtown. Going out again, at three in the morning on Seventh Avenue? Eight people would have required at least two simultaneous empty cabs.
Unlikely.
Subway? Possible. Probable, even. There were three lines within a block’s walk. Night-time schedules, a maximum twenty-minute wait on the platform, but then escape either uptown or downtown. But to where? Nowhere that needed a long walk at the other end. A gaggle of eight people hustling hard on the sidewalk was very noticeable. There were six hundred agents on the streets. The only other hotel option I knew was way west of even the Eighth Avenue line. A fifteen-minute walk, maybe more. Too big a risk of exposure.
So, the subway, but to where?
New York City. Three hundred and twenty square miles. Two hundred and five thousand acres. Eight million separate addresses. I stood there and sorted possibilities like a machine.
I drew a blank.
Then I smiled.
You talk too much, Lila.
I heard her voice in my head again. From the tea room at the Four Seasons. She was talking about the old Afghan fighters. Complaining about them, from her pretended perspective. In reality she was boasting about her own people, and the Red Army’s fruitless back-and-forth skirmishing against them. She had said: The mujahideen were intelligent. They had a habit of doubling back to positions we had previously written off as abandoned.
I set off back to Herald Square. To the R train. I could get out at Fifth and 59th. From there it was a short walk to the old buildings on 58th Street.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
The old buildings on 58th Street were all dark and quiet. Four thirty in the morning, in a neighbourhood that does little business before ten. I was watching from fifty yards away. From a shadowed doorway on the far sidewalk across Madison Avenue. There was crime scene tape across the door with the single bell push. The left-hand building of the three. The one with the abandoned restaurant on the ground floor.
No lights in the windows.
No signs of activity.
The crime scene tape looked unbroken. And inevitably it would have been accompanied by an official NYPD seal. A small rectangle of paper, glued across the gap between door and jamb, at keyhole height. It was probably still there, untorn.
Which meant there was a back door.
Which was likely, with a restaurant on the premises. Restaurants generate all kinds of unpleasant garbage. All day long. It smells, and it attracts rats. Not acceptable to pile it on the sidew
alk. Better to dump it in sealed cans outside the kitchen door, and then wheel the cans to the kerb for the night-time pick-up.
I moved twenty yards south to widen my angle. Saw no open alleys. The buildings were all cheek-by-jowl, all along the block. Next to the door with the crime scene tape was the old restaurant’s window. But next to that was another door. Architecturally it was part of the restaurant building’s neighbour. It was set into the ground floor of the next building along. But it was plain, it was black, it was unlabelled, it was a little scarred, it had no step, and it was a lot wider than a normal door. It had no handle on the outside. Just a keyhole. Without a key it opened only from the inside. I made a bet with myself that it let out of a covered alley. I figured that the restaurant’s neighbour was two rooms wide on the ground floor, and three rooms wide above. At the second-floor level the block was solid. But below that, at street level, there were passageways leading to rear entrances, all of them discreetly boxed in and built over. Air rights in Manhattan are worth a fortune. The city sells itself up and down, as well as side to side.
I moved back to my shadowed doorway. I was counting time in my head. Forty-four minutes from the time Lila’s guys had been due to grab me up. Maybe thirty-four from the time Lila had expected their mission-accomplished call. Maybe twenty-four from the time she had finally accepted that things had not gone well. Maybe fourteen from the time she had first been tempted to call me.
Lila, you talk too much.
I pressed back in the darkness and waited. The scene in front of me was absolutely deserted. Occasional cars or taxicabs on Madison. No traffic at all on 58th. No pedestrians anywhere. No dog walkers, no partygoers staggering home. Garbage collection was over. Bagel deliveries hadn’t started.
The dead of night.
The city that doesn’t sleep was at least resting comfortably.
I waited.
Three minutes later the phone in my pocket started to vibrate.
* * *
I kept my eyes on the restaurant building and opened the phone. Raised it to my ear and said, ‘Yes?’
She asked, ‘What happened?’
‘You didn’t show.’
‘Did you expect me to?’
‘I didn’t give it much thought.’
‘What happened to my people?’
‘They’re in the system.’
‘We can still deal.’
‘How? You can’t afford to lose any more men.’
‘We can work something out.’
‘OK. But the price just went up.’
‘How much?’
‘Seventy-five.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Right outside your house.’ There was a pause.
There was movement at a window. Fourth floor, the left-hand of two. A darkened room. Faint, ghostly, barely perceptible from fifty yards.
Maybe the shift of a drape. Maybe a white shirt. Maybe imaginary.
She said, ‘No, you’re not outside my house.’ But she didn’t sound sure.
She said, ‘Where do you want to meet?’
I said, ‘What does it matter? You won’t show.’
‘I’ll send someone.’
‘You can’t afford to. You’re down to your last six guys.’
She started to say something, and stopped.
I said, ‘Times Square.’
‘OK.’
‘Tomorrow morning at ten.’
‘Why?’
‘I want people around.’
‘That’s too late.’
‘For what?’
‘I want it now.’
‘Tomorrow at ten. Take it or leave it.’
She said, ‘Stay on the line.’
‘Why?’
‘I have to count my money. To check that I have seventy- five.’
I unzipped my jacket.
I put my glove on.
I heard Lila Hoth, breathing.
Fifty yards away the black door opened. The covered alley. A man stepped out. Small, dark, wiry. And wary. He checked the sidewalk, left and right. He peered across the street.
I put the phone in my pocket. Still open. Still live.
I raised the MP5.
Sub-machine guns were developed for close-quarters combat, but many of them are as accurate as rifles out to medium ranges. Certainly the H&K was reliable out to at least a hundred yards. Mine was fitted with iron sights. I moved the selector lever to single shot and put the front sight square on the guy’s centre mass.
Fifty yards away he stepped to the kerb. Scanned right, scanned left, scanned ahead. He saw the same nothing I was seeing. Just cool air and a thin night mist.
He stepped back to the door.
A taxicab passed by in front of me.
Fifty yards away the guy pushed the door.
I waited until I judged his momentum was all set to move forward. Then I pulled the trigger and shot him in the back. Bull’s-eye. A slow bullet. A perceptible delay. Fire, hit. The SD is advertised as silent. It isn’t. It makes a sound. Louder than the polite lithe spit you would get in a movie. But not worse than the kind of thump you would get from dropping a phone book on a table from about a yard. Noticeable in any environment, but not remarkable in a city.
Fifty yards away the guy pitched forward and went down with his torso in the alley and his legs on the sidewalk. I put a second bullet into him for safety’s sake and let the gun fall against its strap and took the phone back out of my pocket.
I said, ‘You still there?’
She said, ‘We’re still counting.’
You’re one short, I thought.
I zipped my jacket. Started walking. I hugged the far side of Madison and overshot 58th by a couple of yards. I crossed the avenue and came around the corner with my shoulder tight against the frontage of the buildings. I needed to keep below her line of sight. I passed the first old building. Passed the second.
I said from forty feet below her, ‘I have to go now. I’m tired. Times Square, tomorrow morning at ten, OK?’
She answered from forty feet above me. She said, ‘OK, I’ll send someone.’
I clicked off and put the phone back in my pocket and dragged the dead guy all the way into the alley. I closed the door behind us, slowly and quietly.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
There was a light in the alley. A single dim bulb, in a dirty bulkhead fixture. I recognized the dead guy from the photographs in Springfield’s Homeland Security folder. He had been number seven of the original nineteen. I didn’t remember his name. I dragged him the length of the space. The floor was old concrete, worn to a shine. I searched him. Nothing in his pockets. No ID. No weapon. I left him by a small wheeled trash receptacle covered in baked-on grime so old it didn’t smell any more.
Then I found the inner door to the building, and unzipped my jacket, and waited. I wondered how long it would take for them to get worried about the missing guy. Less than five minutes, I figured. I wondered how many there would be in the search party. Just one, probably, but I hoped for more.
They waited seven minutes and sent two men. The inner door opened and the first guy stepped out. Number fourteen on Springfield’s list. He took a pace towards the alley door and the second guy stepped out after him. Number eight on Springfield’s list.
Then three things happened.
First, the first guy stopped. He saw that the alley door was closed. Which did not compute. It could not be opened from the outside without the key. Therefore the original searcher would have left it standing open while he prowled the sidewalk. But it was closed. Therefore the original searcher was already back inside.
The first guy turned around.
Second thing, the second guy also turned around. To close the inner door quietly and precisely. I let him get it done.
Then he raised his eyes and saw me.
The first guy saw me.
Third thing, I shot them both. Two three-round bursts, brief muted purring explosions each a quarter of a second long.
I aimed for the base of their throats and let the muzzle climb stitch upward towards their chins. They were small men. Their necks were narrow and mostly full of arteries and spinal cords. Ideal targets. The noise of the gun was much louder in the roofed alley than it had been out in the open. Loud enough for me to worry about it. But the inner door was closed. And it was a stout piece of wood. Once upon a time it had been an outer door, before some earlier owner had sold his air rights.
The two guys went down.
My spent shell cases rattled away across the concrete.
I waited.
No immediate reaction.
Eight rounds gone. Twenty-two remaining. Seven men captured, three more down, three still walking and talking.
Plus the Hoths themselves.
I searched the new dead guys. No ID. No weapons. No keys, which meant the inner door wasn’t locked.
I left the two new bodies next to the first one, in the shadow of the trash can.
Then I waited. I didn’t expect anyone else to come through the door. Presumably the old Brits on the North West Frontier had eventually gotten wise about sending out rescue parties. Presumably the Red Army had. Presumably the Hoths knew their history. They ought to have. Svetlana had written some of it.
I waited.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out and checked the window on the front. Restricted Call. Lila. I ignored her. I was all done talking. I put the phone back in my pocket. It stopped vibrating.
I put my gloved fingers on the inner door’s handle. I eased it down. I felt the latch let go. I was fairly relaxed. Three men had gone out. Conceivable that any one of them might return. Or all three of them. If anyone was inside, watching and waiting, there would be a fatal split second of delay for recognition and a decision, friend or foe. Like a major league batter sorting a fastball from a curveball. A fifth of a second, maybe more.