Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

  He stayed down in the mud, thinking hard. He ignored the next lightning flash altogether. Just pressed himself into the landscape, calculating, deciding. He rejected the possibility of the flanking maneuver. That was military instinct. He was dealing with a street shooter, not an infantry soldier. No infantryman would aim for a guy’s eye. Percentages were against it. So maybe she had gone for the Jeep. He swam himself through a stationary muddy circle and raised his head and waited.

  The next flash was a sheet, rippling madly and lighting the underside of the clouds like a battlefield flare. The Jeep was a long way away. Too far, surely. And if she had gone for it, she was no immediate threat. Not all the way back there, not at that distance. So he swiveled back around and crawled on south. Check and clear, zone by zone. He moved slowly, on his knees and elbows. Ten feet, twenty, twenty-five. It felt exactly like basic training. He crawled on and on, and then he smelled perfume.

  It was somehow intensified by the rain. He realized the whole desert smelled different. The rain had changed things entirely. He could smell plants and earth. They made a strong, pungent, natural odor. But mixed into it was a woman’s perfume. Was it perfume? Or was it something from nature, like a night flower suddenly blooming in the storm? No, it was perfume. A woman’s perfume. No question about it. He stopped moving and lay completely still.

  He could hear the mesquite moving, but it was only the wind. The rain was easing back toward torrential and a strong wet breeze was coming in from the south, teasing him with the smell of perfume. It was absolutely dark. He raised his gun and couldn’t see it in his hand. Like he was a blind man.

  Which way is she facing? Not east. She had to be crouched low, so to the east there would be nothing to see except the blank two-foot wall that was the edge of the mesa. If she was looking south or west, no problem. If she’s looking north, she’s looking straight at me, except she can’t see me. Too dark. She can’t smell me either, because I’m upwind. He raised himself on his left forearm and pointed his gun straight from his right shoulder. If she was facing south or west, it would give him an easy shot into her back. But worst case, she’s looking north and we’re exactly facing each other. We could be five feet apart. So it’s a gamble now. When the lightning flashes, who reacts first?

  He held his breath. Waited for the lightning. It was the longest wait of his life. The storm had changed. Thunder was rumbling long and loud, but it wasn’t sharp anymore. The rain was still heavy. It kicked mud and grit up onto his face. Thrashed against the brush. Brand-new streams gurgled all around his prone body. He was half-submerged in water. He was very cold.

  Then there was a split-second tearing sound in the sky and a gigantic thunderclap crashed and a bolt of lightning fired absolutely simultaneously. It was impossibly white and harsh and the desert lit up brighter than day. The woman was three feet in front of him. She was slumped facedown on the ground, already battered by rain and silted with mud. She looked small and collapsed and empty. Her legs were bent at the knees and her arms were folded under her. Her gun had fallen next to her shoulder. A Browning Hi-Power. It was half-submerged in the mud and a small thicket of twigs had already dammed against one side of it. He used the last of the lightning flash to scrabble for it and hurl it far away. Then the light died and he used the after-image retained in his eyes to find her neck.

  There was no pulse. She was already very cold.

  Deflection shooting. His third bullet, instinctively placed just ahead of her as she scrambled away from him. She had jumped straight into its path. He kept the fingers of his left hand on the still pulse in her neck, afraid to lose contact with her in the dark. He settled down to wait for the next lightning flash. His left arm started shaking. He told himself it was because he was holding it at an unnatural angle. Then he started laughing. It built quickly, like the rain. He had spent the last twenty minutes stalking a woman he had already shot dead. Accidentally. He laughed uncontrollably until the rain filled his mouth and set him coughing and spluttering wildly.

  The man stood up and walked over to the credenza. Picked up his gun from where it was lying on the polished wood. Ducked down to the black nylon valise and took out a long black silencer. Fitted it carefully to the muzzle of the gun. Walked back to the chair and sat down again.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. She felt it through the sheet. She wriggled away from him. Swam down in the bed and curled up. She needed to pee. Very badly.

  “It’s time,” the man said again.

  He folded the sheet back. She scrabbled away, holding the opposite hem tight between her knees. Looked straight at him.

  “You said one more hour,” she said. “It hasn’t been a hour yet. I’ll tell that lady. She’s your boss.”

  The man’s eyes went blank. He turned and looked at the door, just for a moment. Then he turned back.

  “O.K.,” he said. “You tell me when you think it’s been one more hour.”

  He let go of the sheet and she wrapped herself up in it again. Ducked her head under it and put her hands over her ears to block the noise of the thunder. Then she closed her eyes, but she could still see the lightning flashes through the sheet and through her eyelids. They looked red.

  The next flash was sheet lightning again, vague and diffuse and flickering. He rolled the body over, just to be sure. Tore open her jacket and shirt. He had hit her in the left armpit. It was through-and-through, exiting in the opposite wall of her chest. Probably got her heart, both lungs and her spine. A .40 bullet was not a subtle thing. It took a lot to stop one. The entry wound was small and neat. The exit wound wasn’t. The rain flushed it clean. Diluted blood leaked all over the place and instantly disappeared. Her chest cavity was filling with water. It looked like a medical diagram. He could have sunk his whole hand in there.

  She was medium-sized. Blond hair, soaked and full of mud where it spilled out under the FBI cap. He pushed the bill of the cap upward so he could see her face. Her eyes were open and staring at the sky and filling with rain like tears. Her face was slightly familiar. He had seen her before. Where? The lightning died and he was left with the image of her face in his mind, harsh and white and reversed like a photograph’s negative. The diner. The Coke floats. Friday, school quitting time, a Crown Victoria, three passengers. He had pegged them as a sales team. Wrong again.

  “O.K.,” he said out loud. “Ballgame over.”

  He put Alice’s gun back in his pocket and walked away north, back to the Jeep. It was so dark and he had so much rain in his eyes he thumped right into the side of it before he knew he was there. He tracked around it with a hand on the hood and found the driver’s door. Opened it and closed it and opened it again, just for the thrill of making the dome light come on inside, illumination he could control for himself.

  It wasn’t easy driving back up onto the limestone. The grit that should have been under the wheels and aiding traction was now slick mud. He put the headlights on bright and started the wipers beating fast and selected four-wheel drive and slid around for a while before the front tires caught and dragged the car up the slope. Then he hooked a wide curve ahead and left, all the way across to the seven o’clock position. He hit the horn twice and Alice walked out of the mesquite into the headlight beams. She was soaked to the skin. Water was pouring off her. Her hair was plastered flat. Her ears stuck out a little. She stepped to her left and ran around to the passenger door.

  “I guess this is the storm people were expecting,” he said.

  Lightning flared again outside. A ragged bolt far to their left, accompanied by an explosion of thunder. The weather was moving north, and fast.

  She shook her head. “This little shower? This is just a taste. Wait until tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  “You will?”

  He nodded.

  “You O.K.?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know when to fire.”

  “You did fine.”

&n
bsp; “What happened?”

  He drove off again, turning south, zigzagging the Jeep to fan the headlight beams back and forth across the mesa. Thirty feet in front of the wrecked VW, he found the first guy’s body. It was humped and inert. He dipped the lights so they would shine directly on it and jumped out into the rain. The guy was dead. He had taken the Winchester’s bullet in the stomach. He hadn’t died instantaneously. His hat was missing and he had torn open his jacket to clutch his wound. He had crawled quite a distance. He was tall and heavily built. Reacher closed his eyes and scanned back to the scene in the diner. By the register. The woman, two men. One big and fair, one small and dark. Then he walked back to the Jeep and slid inside. The seat was soaked.

  “Two dead,” he said. “That’s what happened. But the driver escaped. Did you ID him?”

  “They came to kill us, didn’t they?”

  “That was the plan. Did you ID the driver?”

  She said nothing.

  “It’s very important, Alice,” he said. “For Ellie’s sake. We don’t have a tongue. That part didn’t work out. They’re both dead.”

  She said nothing.

  “Did you see him?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, not really,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I was running, the lights were only on a second or two.”

  It had seemed longer than that to Reacher. Much longer. But in reality, she was probably right. She was maybe even overestimating. It might have been only three-quarters of a second. They had been very quick with the triggers.

  “I’ve seen these people before,” he said. “On Friday, up at the crossroads. Must have been after they got Eugene. They must have been scouting the area. Three of them. A woman, a big guy, a small dark guy. I can account for the woman and the big guy. So was it the small dark guy driving tonight?”

  “I didn’t really see.”

  “Gut feeling?” Reacher said. “First impression? You must have gotten a glimpse. Or seen a silhouette.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “He was facing away from me, looking down to where you fired from. There was a lot of glare. Some rain on his windshield. Then I was shooting, and then he took off. But I don’t think he was small.”

  She nodded, too. “Gut feeling, he wasn’t small. Or dark. It was just a blur, but I’d say he was big enough. Maybe fair-haired.”

  “Makes sense,” Reacher said. “They left one of the team behind to guard Ellie.”

  “So who was driving?”

  “Their client. The guy who hired them. That’s my guess. Because they were short-handed, and because they needed local knowledge.”

  “He got away.”

  Reacher smiled. “He can run, but he can’t hide.”

  They went to take a look at the wrecked VW. It was beyond help. Alice didn’t seem too concerned about it. She just shrugged and turned away. Reacher took the maps from the glove compartment and turned the Jeep around and headed north. The drive back to the Red House was a nightmare. Crossing the mesa was O.K. But beyond the end of it the desert track was baked so hard that it wasn’t absorbing any water at all. The rain was flooding all over the surface. The part that had felt like a riverbed was a riverbed. It was pouring with a fast torrent that boiled up over the tires. Mesquite bushes had been torn off their deep taproots and washed out of their shallow toeholds and whole trees were racing south on the swirl. They dammed against the front of the Jeep and rode with it until cross-currents tore them loose. Sinkholes were concealed by the tide. But the rain was easing fast. It was dying back to drizzle. The eye of the storm had blown away to the north.

  They were right next to the motor barn before they saw it. It was in total darkness. Reacher braked hard and swerved around it and saw pale lights flickering behind some of the windows in the house.

  “Candles,” he said.

  “Power must be out,” Alice said. “The lightning must have hit the lines.”

  He braked again and slid in the mud and turned the car so the headlights washed deep into the barn.

  “Recognize anything?” he asked.

  Bobby’s pick-up was back in its place, but it was wet and streaked with mud. Water was dripping out of the load bed and pooling on the ground.

  “O.K.,” Alice said. “So what now?”

  Reacher stared into the mirror. Then he turned his head and watched the road from the north.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he said.

  There was a faint glow of headlights behind them, rising and falling, many miles distant, breaking into a thousand pieces in the raindrops on the Jeep’s windows.

  “Let’s go say howdy to the Greers,” he said.

  He pulled Alice’s gun out of his pocket and checked it. Never assume. But it was O.K. Cocked and locked. Seven left. He put it back in his pocket and drove across the soaking yard to the foot of the porch steps. The rain was almost gone. The ground was beginning to steam. The vapor rose gently and swirled in the headlight beams. They got out into the humidity. The temperature was coming back. So was the insect noise. There was a faint whirring chant all around. It sounded wary and very distant.

  He led her up the porch steps and pushed open the door. The hallway had candles burning in holders placed here and there on all the available horizontal surfaces. They gave a soft orange glow and made the foyer warm and inviting. He ushered Alice through to the parlor. Stepped in behind her. More candles were burning in there. Dozens of them. They were glued to saucers with melted wax. There was a Coleman lantern standing on a credenza against the end wall. It was hissing softly and burning bright.

  Bobby and his mother were sitting together at the red-painted table. Shadows were dancing and flickering all around them. The candlelight was kind to Rusty. It took twenty years off her. She was fully dressed, in jeans and a shirt. Bobby sat beside her, looking at nothing in particular. The tiny flames lit his face and made it mobile.

  “Isn’t this romantic,” Reacher said.

  Rusty moved, awkwardly.

  “I’m scared of the dark,” she said. “Can’t help it. Always have been.”

  “You should be,” Reacher said. “Bad things can happen in the dark.”

  She made no reply to that.

  “Towel?” Reacher asked. He was dripping water all over the floor. So was Alice.

  “In the kitchen,” Rusty said.

  There was a thin striped towel on a wooden roller. Alice blotted her face and hair and patted her shirt. Reacher did the same, and then he stepped back into the parlor.

  “Why are you both up?” he asked. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  Neither of them answered.

  “Your truck was out tonight,” Reacher said.

  “But we weren’t,” Bobby said. “We stayed inside, like you told us to.”

  Rusty nodded. “Both of us, together.”

  Reacher smiled.

  “Each other’s alibi,” he said. “That would get them rolling in the aisles, down in the jury room.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” Bobby said.

  Reacher heard a car on the road. Just the faint subliminal sound of tires slowing on soaked blacktop. The faint whistle of drive belts turning under a hood. Then there was a slow wet crunch as it turned under the gate. Grit and pebbles popped under the wheels as it drove up to the porch. There was a tiny squeal from a brake rotor and then silence as the engine died. The clunk of a door closing. Feet on the porch steps. The house door opening, footsteps crossing the foyer. Then the parlor door opened. The candle flames swayed and flickered. Hack Walker stepped into the room.

  “Good,” Reacher said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Did you rob my office?” Walker replied.

  Reacher nodded. “I was curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About details,” Reacher said. “I’m a details guy.”

  “You didn’t need to break in. I’d have shown you the files.”

  “You weren’t ther
e.”

  “Whatever, you shouldn’t have broken in. You’re in trouble for it. You can understand that, right? Big trouble.”

  Reacher smiled. Bad luck and trouble, been my only friends.

  “Sit down, Hack,” he said.

  Walker paused a second. Then he threaded his way around all the chairs and sat down next to Rusty Greer. Candlelight lit his face. The lantern glowed to his left.

  “You got something for me?” he asked.

  Reacher sat opposite. Laid his hands palm-down on the wood.

  “I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years,” he said.

  “So?”

  “I learned a lot of stuff.”

  “Like?”

  “Like, lies are messy. They get out of control. But the truth is messy, too. So any situation you’re in, you expect rough edges. Anytime I see anything that’s all buttoned up, I get real suspicious. And Carmen’s situation was messy enough to be real.”

  “But?”

  “I came to see there were a couple of edges that were just too rough.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, she had no money with her. I know that. Two million in the bank, and she travels three hundred miles with a single dollar in her purse? Sleeps in the car, doesn’t eat? Leapfrogs from one Mobil station to the next, just to keep going? That didn’t tie up for me.”

  “She was playacting. That’s who she is.”

  “You know who Nicolaus Copernicus is?”

  “Was,” Walker said. “Some old astronomer. Polish, I think. Proved the earth goes around the sun.”

  Reacher nodded. “And much more than that, by implication. He asked us all to consider how likely is it that we’re at the absolute center of things? What are the odds? That what we’re seeing is somehow exceptional? The very best or the very worst? It’s an important philosophical point.”