FORTY-EIGHT

REACHER HAD STUDIED THE ELECTRICAL PANEL AND HAD DECIDED to cut all the circuits at once, because of human nature. He was pretty sure that the football players would turn out to be less than perfect sentries. Practically all sentries were less than perfect. It was any army's most persistent problem. Boredom set in, and attention wandered, and discipline eroded. Military history was littered with catastrophes caused by poor sentry performance. And football players weren't even military. Reacher figured the two in the house above him would stay on the ball for about ten or fifteen minutes, and then they would get lazy. Maybe they would make coffee or turn on the television, and relax, and get comfortable. So he gave them half an hour to settle in, and then he cut all the power at once, to be sure of killing whatever form of entertainment they had chosen.

Whereupon human nature would take over once again. The two in the house above him were used to dominance, used to getting their own way, used to having what they wanted, and accustomed to winning. Being denied television or warmth or coffee wasn't a major defeat or the end of the world, but for guys like that it was a proxy version of a poke in the chest on a sidewalk outside a bar. It was a provocation. It would eat away at them, and it would not be ignored for ever. Ultimately they would respond, because of ego. The response would start with anger, and then threats, and then intervention, which would be inexpert and badly thought out.

Human nature.

Reacher hit the circuit breakers and found the stairs in the dark and crept up to the top step and listened. The door was thick and tight in its frame, so he didn't hear much, except the bouts of hammering an inch from his ear, and then the scream from the doctor's wife, which he discounted immediately, because it was clearly staged. He had heard people scream before, and he knew the difference between real and fake.

Then he waited in the dark. All went quiet for the best part of an hour, which was longer than he expected. All bullies are cowards, but these two had a little more pussy in them than he had guessed. They had a shotgun, for God's sake, and he assumed they had found a flashlight. What the hell were they waiting for? Permission? Their mommies?

He waited.

Then eventually he sensed movement and deliberation on the other side of the door. He imagined that one guy would be holding the shotgun, and the other would be holding the flashlight. He guessed they would plan to shuffle down slowly behind the gun, like they had seen in the movies. He figured their primary intention would be to capture him and restrain him, not to kill him, partly because there was a large conceptual gap between sacking a quarterback and murdering a fellow human being, and partly because Seth Duncan would want him alive for later entertainment. So if they were going to shoot, they were going to aim low. And if they were smart, they were going to shoot immediately, because sooner or later they would have to realize that his own best move would be to be waiting right there at the top of the stairs, for the sake of surprise.

He felt the doorknob move, and then there was a pause. He put his back flat on the wall, on the hinge side of the door, and he put one foot on the opposite wall, at waist height, and he straightened his leg a little, and he clamped himself tight, and then he lifted his other foot into place, and he walked himself upward, palms and soles, until his head was bent against the stairwell ceiling and his butt was jammed four feet off the ground.

He waited.

Then the door flung open away from him and he got a split-second glimpse of a flashlight taped to a shotgun barrel, and then the shotgun fired instantly, at point-blank range and a downward angle, right under his bent knees, and the stairwell was instantly full of deafening noise and flame and smoke and dust and wood splinters from the stairs and shards of plastic from where the muzzle blast blew the protruding flashlight apart. Then the muzzle flash died and the house went pitch dark again and Reacher vaulted out of his clamped position, his right foot landing on the top stair, his left foot on the second, balanced, ready, using the bright fragment of visual memory his eyes had retained, leaning down to where he knew the shotgun must be, grabbing it two-handed, tearing it away from the guy holding it, backhanding it hard into where he knew the guy's face must be, achieving two results in one, making the guy disappear backward and recycling the shotgun's pump action both at once, loudly, CRUNCH-crunch, and then shouldering the swinging door away and feeling it crash against the second guy, and bursting out of the stairwell and firing into the floor, not really seeking to hit anyone but needing the brief light from the muzzle flash, seeing one guy down on his left and the other still up on his right, launching himself at that new target, clubbing the gun at the guy, cycling the action again against his face, CRUNCH-crunch, bringing him down, kicking hard against his fallen form, head, ribs, arms, legs, whatever he could find, then dancing back and kicking and stamping on the first guy in the dark, head, stomach, hands, then back to the second guy, then the first again, all unaimed and wild, overwhelming force indiscriminately applied, not giving up on it until well after he was sure no more was required.

Then he finally stopped and stepped back and stood still and listened. Most of what he heard was panicked breathing from the room on his left. The dining room. He called, 'Doctor? This is Reacher. I'm OK. No one got shot. Everything is under control now. But I need the power back on.'

No response.

Pitch dark.

'Doctor? The sooner the better, OK?'

He heard movement in the dining room. A chair scraping back, a hand touching a wall, a stray foot kicking a table leg. Then the door opened and the doctor came out, more sensed than seen, a presence in the dark. Reacher asked him, 'Do you have another flashlight?'

The doctor said, 'No.'

'OK, go switch on the circuit breakers for me. Take care on the stairs. They might be a little busted up.'

The doctor said, 'Now?'

'In a minute,' Reacher said. Then he called out, 'You two on the floor? Can you hear me? You listening?'

No response. Pitch dark. Reacher moved forward, carefully, sliding his feet flat on the floor, feeling his way with the toes of his boots. He came up against the first guy's head, and worked out where his gut must be, and jammed the shotgun muzzle down into it, hard. Then he pivoted onward, like pole vaulting, and found the second guy a yard away. They were on their backs, roughly in a straight line, lying symmetrically, feet to feet. Reacher stood between them and kicked the side of his left boot against one guy's sole and his right boot against the other's. He got set and aimed the shotgun at the floor in front of him and rehearsed a short arc, left and then right and back again, like a batter in the box loosening up his swing ahead of a pitch. He said, 'If you guys move at all, I'm going to shoot you both in the nuts, one after the other.'

No response.

Nothing at all.

Reacher said, 'OK, doctor, go ahead. Take care now.' He heard the doctor feel his way along the wall, heard his feet on the stairs, slow cautious steps, fingertips trailing, the creak and crack of splintered boards underfoot, and then the confident click of a heel on the solid concrete below.

Ten seconds later the lights came back on, and the television picture jumped back to life, and the excited announcers started up again, and the heating system clicked and caught and hummed and whirred. Reacher screwed his eyes shut against the sudden dazzle and then forced them open to narrow slits and looked down. The two guys on the floor were battered and bleeding. One was out cold, and the other was dazed. Reacher fixed that with another kick to the head, and then he looked around and saw the roll of duct tape on the sofa. Five minutes later both guys were trussed up like chickens and bound together back to back by their necks and their waists and their ankles. Together they were far too heavy to move, so Reacher left them right where they were, on the hallway floor, hiding the ruined patch of parquet where he had fired into the ground.

Job done, he thought.

Job done, Jacob Duncan thought. Seth's Cadillac had been retrieved from the road, and both dead Iranians had been stripped to the skin and their clothes had been dumped in the kitchen woodstove. Their bodies had been hauled to the door and left in the yard for later disposal. Then the kitchen wall and the floor had been wiped clean, and the broken glass had been swept up, and the busted window had been patched with tape and wax paper, and Seth's hand had been taken care of, and then Jasper had dragged extra chairs in from another room, and now all six men were sitting close together around the table, the four Duncans plus Cassano and Mancini, all of them tight and collegial and elbow to elbow. The Knob Creek had been brought out, and toasts had been drunk, to each other, and to success, and to future partnership.

Jacob Duncan had leaned back and drunk with considerable private satisfaction and personal triumph, because he felt fully vindicated. He had glimpsed Cassano at the window, had seen the aimed.45, and had talked a little longer and louder than was strictly necessary, proclaiming his undying loyalty to Rossi, cementing the relationship beyond a reasonable doubt, all the while keeping his nerve and waiting for Cassano to shoot, which he had eventually. Quick thinking, courage under pressure, and a perfect result. Doubled profits stretched ahead in perpetuity. Reacher was locked safely underground, with two good men on guard. And the shipment was on its way, which was the most wonderful thing of all, because as always a small portion of it would be retained for the family's personal use. A kind of benign shrinkage. It made the whole crazy operation worthwhile.

Jacob raised his glass and said, 'Here's to us,' because life was good.

Reacher found a paring knife in a kitchen drawer and cut the decapitated remains of the flashlight off the shotgun barrel. Laymen misunderstood gunpowder. A charge powerful enough to propel a heavy projectile through the air at hundreds of miles an hour did so by creating a shaped bubble of exploding gas energetic enough to destroy anything it met on its way out of the barrel. Which was why military flashlights were made of metal and mounted with the lens behind the muzzle, not in front of it. He tossed the shattered plastic in the trash, and then he looked around the kitchen and asked, 'Where's my coat?'

The doctor's wife said, 'In the closet. When we came back in I took all the coats and hung them up. I kind of scooped yours up along the way. I thought I should hide it. I thought you might have useful stuff in it.'

Reacher glanced into the hallway. 'Those guys didn't search my pockets?'

'No.'

'I should kick them in the head again. It might raise their IQ.'

The doctor's wife told him to sit down in a chair. He did, and she examined him carefully, and said, 'Your nose looks really terrible.'

'I know,' Reacher said. He could see it between his eyes, purple and swollen, out of focus, an unexpected presence. He had never seen his own nose before, except in a mirror.

'My husband should take a look at it.'

'Nothing he can do.'

'It needs to be set.'

'I already did that.'

'No, seriously.'

'Believe me, it's as set as it's ever going to get. But you could clean the cuts, if you like. With that stuff you used before.'

Dorothy Coe helped her. They started with warm water, to sponge the crusted blood off his face. Then they got to work with the cotton balls and the thin astringent liquid. The skin had split in big U-shaped gashes. The open edges stung like crazy. The doctor's wife was thorough. It was not a fun five minutes. But finally the job was done, and Dorothy Coe rinsed his face with more water, and then patted it dry with a paper towel.

The doctor's wife asked, 'Do you have a headache?'

'A little bit,' Reacher said.

'Do you know what day it is?'

'Yes.'

'Who's the president?'

'Of what?'

'The Nebraska Corn Growers.'

'I have no idea.'

'I should bandage your face.'

'No need,' Reacher said. 'Just lend me a pair of scissors.'

'What for?'

'You'll see.'

She found scissors and he found the roll of duct tape. He cut a neat eight-inch length and laid it glue-side up on the table. Then he cut a two-inch length and trimmed it to the shape of a triangle. He stuck the triangle glue-side to glue-side in the centre of the eight-inch length, and then he picked the whole thing up and smoothed it into place across his face, hard and tight, a broad silver slash that ran from one cheekbone to the other, right under his eyes. He said, 'This is the finest field dressing in the world. The Marines once flew me from the Lebanon to Germany with nothing but duct tape keeping my lower intestine in.'

'It's not sterile.'

'It's close enough.'

'It can't be very comfortable.'

'But I can see past it. That's the main thing.'

Dorothy Coe said, 'It looks like war paint.'

'That's another point in its favour.'

The doctor came in and stared for a second. But he didn't comment. Instead he asked, 'What happens next?'

FORTY-NINE

THEY WENT BACK TO THE DINING ROOM AND SAT IN THE DARK, SO they could watch the road. There were three more Cornhuskers out there somewhere, and it was possible they would come in and out on rotation, swapping duties, spelling each other. Like shift work. Reacher hoped they all showed up sooner or later. He kept the duct tape and the Remington close by.

The doctor said, 'We haven't heard any news.'

Reacher nodded. 'Because you weren't allowed to use the phone. But it rang, and so you think something new has happened.'

'We think three new things have happened. Because it rang three times.'

'Best guess?'

'The gang war. Three men left, three phone calls. Maybe they're all dead now.'

'They can't all be dead. The winner must still be alive, at least. Murder-suicide isn't normally a feature of gang fights.'

'OK, then maybe it's two dead. Maybe the man in the Cadillac got the Italians.'

Reacher shook his head. 'More likely the other way around. The man in the Cadillac will get picked off very easily. Because he's alone, and because he's new up here. This terrain is very weird. It takes some getting used to. The Italians have been here longer than him. In fact they've been here longer than me, and I feel like I've been here for ever.'

The doctor's wife said, 'I don't see how this is a gang war at all. Why would a criminal in Las Vegas or wherever just step aside because two of his men got hurt in Nebraska?'

Reacher said, 'The two at the motel got more than hurt.'

'You know what I mean.'

'Think about it,' Reacher said. 'Suppose the big guy is at home in Vegas, taking it easy by the pool, smoking a cigar, and his supplier calls him up and says he's cutting him out of the chain. What does the big guy do? He sends his boys over, that's what. But his boys just got beat. So he's bankrupt now. He's fresh out of threats. He's powerless. It's over for him.'

'He must have more boys.'

'They all have more boys. They can choose to fight two on two, or ten on ten, or twenty on twenty, and there's always a winner and there's always a loser. They accept the referee's decision and they move on. They're like rutting stags. It's in their DNA.'

'So what kind of gangs are they?'

'The usual kind. The kind that makes big money out of something illegal.'

'What kind of something?'

'I don't know. But it's not gambling debts. It's not something theoretical on paper. It's something real. Something physical. With weight, and dimensions. It has to be. That's what the Duncans do. They run a transportation company. So they're trucking something in, and it's getting passed along from A to B to C to D.'

'Drugs?'

'I don't think so. You don't need to truck drugs south to Vegas. You can get them direct from Mexico or South America. Or California.'

'Drug money, then. To be laundered in the casinos. From the big cities in the East, maybe coming through Chicago.'

'Possible,' Reacher said. 'Certainly it's something very valuable, which is why they're all in such an uproar. It has to be the kind of thing where you smile and rub your hands when you see it rolling in through the gate. And it's late now, possibly, which is why there are so many boots on the ground up here. They're all anxious. They all want to see it arrive, because it's physical, and valuable. They all want to put their hands on it and babysit their share. But first of all, they want to help bust up the logjam.'

'Which is what?'

'Me, I think. Either the Duncans are late for some other reason and they're using me as an excuse, or this is something a stranger absolutely can't be allowed to see. Maybe the area has to be sanitized before it can come in. Have you ever been told to stay away from anywhere for periods of time?'

'Not really.'

'Have you ever seen any weird stuff arrive? Any big unexplained vehicles?'

'We see Duncan trucks all the time. Not so much in the winter.'

'I heard the harvest trucks are all in Ohio.'

'They are. Nothing more than vans here now.'

Reacher nodded. 'One of which was missing from the depot. Three spaces, two vans. So what kind of a thing is valuable and fits in a van?'

Jacob Duncan saw that Roberto Cassano's mind had been changed once and for all by the dead man in the Cadillac's trunk. Mancini's, too. Now they both accepted that Reacher was a genuine threat. How else could they react? The dead man had no marks on him. None at all. So what had Reacher done to him? Frightened him to death? Jacob could see both Cassano and Mancini thinking about it. So he waited patiently and eventually Cassano looked across the table at him and said, 'I apologize, most sincerely.'

Jacob looked back and said, 'For what, sir?'

'For before. For not taking you seriously about Reacher.'

'Your apology is accepted.'

'Thank you.'

'But the situation remains the same,' Jacob said. 'Reacher is still a problem. He's still on the loose. And nothing can happen until he's accounted for. We have three men looking for him. They'll work all night and all day if necessary. Just as long as it takes. Because we don't want Mr Rossi to feel we're in any way the junior partner in this new relationship. That's very important to us.'

Cassano said, 'We should go out too.'

'All of us?'

'I meant me and Mancini.'

'Indeed,' Jacob Duncan said. 'Perhaps you should. Perhaps we should turn the whole thing into a competition. Perhaps the prize should be to speak first when we sit down to renegotiate the profit share.'

'There are more of you than us.'

'But you are professionals.'

'You know the neighbourhood.'

'You want a fairer fight? Very well. We'll send our three boys home to bed, and I'll send my son out in their place. Alone. That's one against two. As long as it takes. May the best man win. To the victor, the spoils, and so on, and so forth. Shall I do that?'

'I don't care,' Cassano said. 'Do whatever you want. We'll beat all of you, however many you put out there.' He drained his glass and set it back on the table and stood up with Mancini. They walked out together, through the back door, to their car, which was still parked in the field, on the other side of the fence. Jacob Duncan watched them go, and then he sat back in his chair and relaxed. They would waste some long and fruitless hours, and then all in good time Reacher would be revealed, and Rossi would take the small subliminal hit, and the playing field would tilt, just a little, but enough. Jacob smiled. Success, triumph, and vindication. Subtlety, and finesse.

The road outside the dining room window stayed dark. Nothing moved on it. The two Cornhusker vehicles were still parked on the shoulder beyond the fence. One was an SUV and one was a pick-up truck. Both looked cold and inert. Overhead the moon came and went, first shining faintly through thin cloud, and then disappearing completely behind thicker layers.

The doctor said, 'I don't like just sitting here.'

'So don't,' Reacher said. 'Go to bed. Take a nap.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Nothing. I'm waiting for daylight.'

'Why?'

'Because you don't have street lights here.'

'You're going out?'

'Eventually.'

'Why?'

'Places to go, things to see.'

'One of us should stay awake. To keep an eye on things.'

'I'll do that,' Reacher said.

'You must be tired.'

'I'll be OK. You guys go get some rest.'

'Are you sure?'

'Positive.'

They didn't need much more persuading. The doctor looked at his wife and they headed off together, and then Dorothy Coe followed them, presumably to a spare room somewhere. Doors opened and closed and water ran and toilets flushed, and then the house went quiet. The heating system whirred and the taped-up football players muttered and grunted and snored on the hallway floor, but apart from that Reacher heard nothing at all. He sat upright on the hard chair and kept his eyes open and stared out into the dark. The duct tape bandage itched his face. He did OK for ten or twenty minutes, and then he slipped a little, like he knew he would, like he often had before, into a kind of trance, like suspended animation, half awake and half asleep, half effective and half useless. He was a less than perfect sentry, and he knew it. But then, practically all sentries were less than perfect. It was any army's most persistent problem.

Half awake and half asleep. Half effective and half useless. He heard the car and he saw its lights, but it was a whole stubborn second before he understood he wasn't dreaming.