Hard Way (38 page)

"Reacher's out there," Jackson said.

"I don't think so."

Jackson nodded. "He is. That's why Perez isn't back. Reacher got him."

Lane smiled. "So what should I do? Go out and search? With my two men? Leaving you people all alone in here to organize a pathetic escape attempt behind my back? Is that what you're trying to achieve? Not going to happen. Because right about now Reacher is walking past the Bishops Pargeter church. Or are you just trying to give your comrades a little hope in their hour of need? Is this British pluck? The famous stiff upper lip?'

Jackson said, "He's out there. I know it." He was crouching outside the kitchen door, sorting through all the things that Perez had dropped. An MP5K with a thirty-round magazine and a ballistic nylon shoulder sling. A flashlight, now broken. Two black-handled kitchen knives, one long, one short, one serrated, one plain. A souvenir corkscrew from a car ferry operator.

And a potato peeler.

Its handle was a plain wooden peg. Once red, now faded. Tightly bound to it with thick wrapped string was a simple pressed-metal blade. Slightly pointed, with a raised flange and a slot. An old-fashioned design. Plain, utilitarian, well used.

Reacher stared at it for a moment. Then he put it in his pocket. He buried the longer knife to its hilt in Perez's chest. Tucked the shorter knife in his own shoe. Kicked the corkscrew and the broken flashlight into the shadows. Used his thumb to clean Perez's blood and frontal lobe off of the G-36's monocular lens. Picked up the MP5 submachine gun and slung it over his left shoulder.

Then he headed back north and east toward the barns.

Reacher, alone in the dark. Doing it the hard way.

CHAPTER 75

REACHER STEPPED INTO the beaten earth yard. It was a little more than a hundred feet square, with barns barely visible in the dark on the north side, and the east, and the south. All three barns looked to be pretty much identical. Same vintage, same construction, same materials. They had tall sliding doors and tile roofs and wood wall planks, dull gray in the starlight. They were newer than the standalone barns, and much stronger. Straight and square and solid. Which was good news if you were Jackson the farmer, Reacher guessed. But which was bad news for him. No warped boards, no gaps, no cracks, no knot holes.

No immediate way of telling which one was currently occupied.

He stood still. North or east, he guessed. Easier for the truck. Either a straight path in, or a simple ninety-degree right hook. Not the south, he thought. It would have needed a one-eighty U-turn to reach the doors, and it had its back to the house and the driveway anyway. Not a comfortable feeling. Psychologically the possibility of a direct line of sight out the door was important. Even in the pitch dark.

He crossed the yard, slow and silent. His ruined shoes helped. The thick layer of mud on the soles kept them quiet. Like sneakers. Like walking on carpet. He made it to the near left-hand corner of the north barn and disappeared into the blackness alongside it. Circled it, clockwise. Felt the walls. Tapped them, gently. Stout boards, maybe oak, maybe an inch thick. Nailed to a frame that might have been built from foot-thick timbers itself. Like an old sailing ship. Maybe there was an inner skin of inch-thick boards. He had lived in worse places.

He came all the way around to the right-hand front corner and paused. There was no way in except for the main front doors. They were made from four-inch timbers banded together with galvanized steel straps and hung from sliders at the top. U-shaped channels were bolted to the barn's structure, and wheels the size of the Mini Cooper's were bolted to the doors. More U-shaped channels were set in concrete at the bottom, with smaller wheels in them. Practically industrial. The doors would slide apart like theatre curtains. They would open maybe forty feet. Enough to get combine harvesters in and out, he guessed.

He crept along the front wall and put his ear on the space between the door and the wall. Heard nothing. Saw no chink of light.

Wrong one, he thought.

He turned and glanced east. Has to be, he thought. He set off toward it. Diagonally across the square. He was twenty feet from it when the door rolled back. The door was noisy. The wheels rumbled in their tracks. A yard-wide bar of bright blue light spilled out. Xenon beams. The Toyota SUV, parked inside, its headlights on. Addison stepped out through the bar of light. His MP5 was slung over his shoulder. He cast a monstrous moving shadow westward. He turned to roll the door shut again. Both hands, bent back, big effort. He got it to within six inches of closed and left it like that. Still open a crack. The bar of blue light narrowed to a thin blade. Addison clicked on a flashlight and as he turned forward its beam swung lazily across Reacher's face. But Addison's gaze must have lagged it by a second. Because he didn't react. He just turned half-left and set off toward the house.

Reacher thought: Decision?

No-brainer. Take them out one at a time, and thanks for the opportunity.

He took a deep breath and stepped through the blade of light and fell in behind Addison, twenty feet back, fast and silent. Then he was fifteen feet back. Then ten. Addison knew nothing about it. He was just walking straight ahead, oblivious, the flashlight beam swinging gently in front of him.

Five feet back.

Three feet back.

Then the two figures merged in the dark. They slowed and they stopped. The flashlight hit the dirt. It rolled slowly to a halt and its yellow beam cast long grotesque shadows and made jagged boulders out of small golden stones. Addison stumbled and went down, first to his knees, then on his face, his throat ripped clean out by the knife from Reacher's shoe.

Reacher was on his way even before Addison had stopped twitching. With an automatic rifle, two submachine guns, and a knife. But he didn't head back to the barns. He walked on down to the house instead. Made his first port of call upstairs in the master bedroom. Then he stopped in the kitchen, at the hearth, and at the desk. Then he came back out and stepped over Perez's corpse and a little later over Addison's. They're not necessarily better fighters than people currently enlisted, Patti Joseph had said, days ago. Often they're worse. Then Taylor had said: They used to be outstanding, but now they're well on the way to average. You all got that right, Reacher thought.

He walked onward, north and east, toward the barns.

He stopped beside the eastern barn and considered his ordnance. Rejected the G-36. It fired only single rounds or triples, and it fired the triples too slowly. Too much like the sound of a regular machine gun on the TV or in the movies. Too recognizable, in the dead of night. And it was possible that the barrel was bent. Nothing that he would be able to see with the naked eye, but he had hit Perez hard enough to do some microscopic damage. So he laid the G-36 on the ground at the base of the barn's side wall and dropped the magazine out of Perez's MP5. Nine rounds left. Twenty-one expended. Seven triples fired. Perez had been the designated trigger man. Which meant that Addison's magazine should still be full. Which it was. Thirty rounds. The fat 9mm brass winked faintly in the starlight. He put Addison's magazine in Perez's gun. A magazine he knew to be full, in a gun he knew to be working. A sensible step for a man who planned to live through the next five minutes.

He piled Addison's gun and Perez's magazine on top of the discarded G-36. Rolled his shoulders and eased his neck. Breathed in, breathed out.

Showtime.

He sat on the ground with his back against the partly open door. Assembled the things he had brought from the house. A kindling stick, from the basket on the hearth. Three rubber bands, from a jar on the desk. A tortoiseshell hand mirror, from Susan Jackson's vanity table.

The stick was a straight seventeen-inch length of an ash bough, as thick as a child's wrist, cut to fit the kitchen grate. The rubber bands were strong but short. The kind of thing the mail carrier puts around bundles of letters. The hand mirror was probably an antique. It was round, with a handle, a little like a table tennis bat.

He fixed the tortoiseshell handle to the ash bough with the rubber bands. Then he lay down flat on his front and inched the bough forward. Toward the six-inch gap where the barn door stood open. Left-handed. He tilted the stick and turned it and manipulated it until he could see a perfect reflection of the view inside.

Reacher, with a mirror on a stick.

CHAPTER 76

THE MIRROR SHOWED that the barn was strong and square because it had vertical poles inside that held up the roof ridge and reinforced the timber peg rafters. The poles were foot-square balks of lumber anchored in concrete. There were twelve in total. Five of them had people tied to them. From left to right in the mirror Reacher could see Taylor, then Jackson, then Pauling, then Kate, then Jade. Their arms were pulled behind them and their wrists were tied behind the poles. Their ankles were tied together. They had duct tape across their mouths. All except Jackson. He had no tape. But his mouth was a bloody mess. He had deep cuts above both eyebrows. He wasn't standing. He had slumped down into a semiconscious crouch at the base of his pole.

It was Taylor who had been wounded. His shirt was torn and soaked with blood, upper right arm. Pauling looked OK. Eyes a little wild above the slash of silver tape, hair all over the place, but she was functioning. Kate was as white as a sheet and her eyes were closed. Jade had slid down her pole and was sitting on her heels, head down, motionless. Maybe she had fainted.

The Toyota had been backed in and turned so that it was hard up against the end wall on the left. Its headlights were turned full on, high beam, shining down the long axis of the building, casting twelve harsh shadows from the poles.

Gregory had his MP5 slung across his back and was wrestling with some kind of a large flat panel. An old door, maybe. Or a tabletop. He was walking it across the floor of the barn, left bottom corner, right bottom corner, gripping it with both hands.

Lane was standing completely still in the middle of the floor, his right fist around his MP5's pistol grip and his left fist around the fore grip. His finger was on the trigger and all ten of his knuckles were showing bone white. He was facing the door, sideways on to the Toyota. Its xenon headlight beams lit up his face in bizarre relief. His eye sockets were like black holes. Borderline mentally ill, people had said. Crossed that border long ago, Reacher thought.

Gregory got the big flat panel front and centre and Reacher heard him say, "Where do you want this?"

Lane answered, "We need sawhorses." Reacher moved the mirror and followed Lane's reflection over to where Jackson was squatting. Lane kicked Jackson in the ribs and asked him, "Do you have sawhorses here?" and Jackson said, "In the other barn," and Lane said, "I'll send Perez and Addison for them when they get back."

They're not coming back, Reacher thought.

"They're not coming back," Jackson said. "Reacher's out there and he's got them."

"You're annoying me," Lane said. But Reacher saw him glance toward the door anyway. And he saw what Jackson was trying to do. He was trying to focus Lane's attention outside of the barn. Away from the prisoners. He was trying to buy time.

Smart guy, Reacher thought.

Then he saw Lane's reflection grow large in the mirror. He pulled the ash bough back, slowly and carefully. Aimed his MP5 at a spot an inch outside the door and five feet four inches above the ground. Put your head out, he thought. Take a look. Please. I'll put three bullets in one ear and out the other.

But no such luck. Reacher heard Lane stop just inside the door and scream, "Reacher? You out there?"

Reacher waited.

Lane called, "Perez? Addison?"

Reacher waited.

Lane screamed, "Reacher? You there? Listen up. Ten seconds from now, I'm going to shoot Jackson. In the thighs. He'll bleed out through his femoral arteries. Then I'll make Lauren Pauling lick it up like a dog."

Reacher waited.

"Ten," Lane screamed. "Nine. Eight." His voice faded as he stalked back to the centre of the barn. Reacher slid the mirror back into place. Saw Lane stop near Jackson and heard him say, "He isn't out there. Or if he is, he doesn't give a shit about you." Then Lane turned again and yelled, "Seven. Six. Five." Gregory was standing mute with the panel held vertical in front of him. Doing nothing.

"Four," Lane screamed.

A lot can happen in a single second. In Reacher's case he ran thoughts through his head like a card player sorting a hand. He considered taking the risk of sacrificing Jackson. Maybe Lane didn't mean it. If he did, then certainly Lane was crazy enough to fire full auto and empty his weapon. Gregory was handicapped. Reacher could let Jackson take thirty rounds in the legs and wait until Lane was clicking on empty and then he could step in and put three through the flat board into Gregory's centre mass and three more into Lane's head. One KIA out of five hostages wasn't excessive. Twenty percent. Reacher had once been given a medal for an outcome worse than that.

"Three," Lane screamed.

But Reacher liked Jackson, and there was Susan and Melody to consider. Susan, the loyal sister. Melody, the innocent child. And there was Kate Lane's dream to think about, the new extended family farming together, growing hay, leaching the old chemicals out of the Norfolk soil, planting wholesome vegetables five years in the future.

"Two," Lane screamed.

Reacher dropped the mirror and extended his right arm like a swimmer and hooked his fingers around the edge of the door. Crawled backward, fast, hauling the door with him. Opening it wide, staying out of sight. He dragged it through the full twenty feet of its travel.

Then he waited.

Silence inside the barn. He knew Lane's eyes were on the black void outside. Knew his ears were straining to hear something in the stillness. The oldest of all atavistic human fears, buried deep in the primeval lizard brain, still alive a hundred thousand years after leaving the caves: There's something out there.

Reacher heard a flat cushioned thump as Gregory dropped the panel. Then it was a footrace. From Lane's perspective the door had opened right to left, driven by some unseen agency. Therefore that agency was now outside and to the left, at the end of the door's long travel. Reacher stood up and stepped backward and turned and ran, counter clockwise around the barn. Around the first corner and fifty feet along the south side. Then the next corner, and a hundred feet along the back wall. Then fifty feet along the north wall. He took it slower than maximum speed. Three hundred feet, a hundred yards, four turns, in about thirty seconds. An Olympic athlete would have done it in ten, but an Olympic athlete didn't need to be composed enough at the finish line to fire a submachine gun accurately.

He took the last corner. Came back down the front wall to the doorway, mouth shut, breathing hard through his nose, controlling the heaving in his chest.

Now he was outside and to the right.

Silence inside the barn. No movement. Reacher planted his feet and leaned his left shoulder on the wall, his elbow tucked in, his wrist turned, his hand on the MP5's front grip, lightly, gently. His right hand was on the pistol grip and his right index finger had already moved the trigger through its first eighth-inch of slack. His left eye was closed and his right eye had lined up both iron sights. He waited. Heard a soft footfall on the barn's concrete floor, four feet in front of him and three feet to his left. Saw a shadow in the spill of light. He waited. Saw the back of Lane's head, just a narrow arc like a crescent moon, craning out, peering left into the darkness. Saw his right shoulder. Saw his MP5's nylon strap biting deep into the bunched canvas fabric of his jacket. Reacher didn't move his gun. He wanted to fire parallel with the barn, not into it. Moving his gun would put hostages in the line of fire. Taylor specifically, from what he recalled from the tortoiseshell mirror. Maybe Jackson, too. He had to be patient. He had to let Lane come to him.

Lane came to him. He inched out, back-to, craning left, leaning forward from the waist, looking away. He moved his front foot. Inched out a little more. Reacher ignored him. Concentrated exclusively on the MP5's sights. They were dotted with tritium and implied a geometry as real to Reacher as a laser beam piercing the night. Lane inched into it. First, the right-hand edge of his skull. Then a larger sliver. Then more. Then more. Then the front sight was on the bony ridge at the back of his head. Dead-on cantered. Lane was so close that Reacher could count every hair in his buzz cut.

For half a second he thought about calling Lane's name. Making him turn around, hands raised. Telling him why he was about to die. Listing his many transgressions. Like the equivalent of a legal process.

Then he thought about a fight. Man to man. With knives, or fists. Closure. Something ceremonial. Maybe something fairer.

Then he thought about Hobart, and he pulled the trigger.

A strange blurred purr, like a sewing machine or a distant motorcycle at a light. A fifth of a second, three nine-millimetre bullets, three ejected shell cases spitting out and arcing through the spill of bright light and jangling on the stones twenty feet to Reacher's right. Lane's head blew up in a mist cloud that was turned blue by the light. It flopped backward and followed the rest of his body straight down. The empty thump of flesh and bone hitting concrete was clearly audible, muffled only by cotton and canvas clothing.

I hope Jade didn't see that, Reacher thought.

Then he stepped into the doorway. Gregory was halfway through a fatal split second of hesitation. He had backed up and he was looking left, but the shots that had killed Lane had come from the right. It didn't compute. His brain was locked.

"Shoot him," Jackson said.

Reacher didn't move.

"Shoot him," Jackson said again. "Don't make me tell you what that table was for."

Reacher risked a glance at Taylor. Taylor nodded. Reacher glanced at Pauling. She nodded too. So Reacher put three in the centre of Gregory's chest.