One Shot (39 page)

This wasn't Charlie. No way would anybody call this
guy small. Not large, but definitely not small, either. And
he didn't have black hair. And this wasn't the guy who
had killed the girl. Not big enough. So, add one to the
tally. Not four of them. Five of them. At least. Maybe
more.

Plan?

Was this guy armed? Possibly, but only with a
handgun. He hadn't been carrying anything longer. And
Reacher was sanguine about his chances as a moving
target a hundred and twenty feet in front of a guy with a
handgun. Handguns were across-the-room weapons,
not down-the-street propositions. Average range for a
successful engagement with a handgun was about
twelve feet. He was ten times more distant. And he
would hear the sound of the slide in the stillness. He
would have time to react.

So, what was the plan? It was tempting to think about
doubling back and taking the guy down. Just for fun.

For retaliation. Reacher liked retaliation. Get your
retaliation in first, was his credo. Show them what
they're dealing with.

Maybe.

Or maybe not. Or maybe later.

He walked on. He kept his steps silent. He kept his
pace steady. He let the guy behind him fall into the
rhythm. Like hypnosis. Left, right, left, right.

He forced everything out of his mind except the distant
footsteps behind him.

He zoomed in on them. Concentrated on them. They
were there, faint but perceptible. Crunch, crunch,
crunch, crunch. Left, right, left, right. Like hypnosis. He
heard the sound of a cell phone being dialled. Just ten
little electronic squawks, very quiet, almost inaudible,
coming at him on the breeze in a random little
sequence.

He took a random turn and walked on. Left, right, left,
right. The streets were deserted. Downtown was dead
after working hours were over. The city still had some
way to go before it grew a vibrant urban community.

That was for sure. He walked on. Heard faint sibilant
whispering, forty yards behind him.

The cell phone. Who are you talking to, pal? He walked
on. Then he stopped on the next corner. Glanced right
and turned left, into a wide straight cross street, behind
the cover of a four-storey building.

Then he ran. Five paces, ten, fifteen, twenty, fast and
silent, across the street to the right-hand sidewalk, past
the first alley he saw, into the second. He crouched back
in the shadows, in a blank grey double doorway. A fire
exit, maybe from a theatre or a movie house. He lay
down flat on his front. The guy had been used to a
vertical target. Instinctively he would be looking six feet
off the ground. A low shape on the floor would mean
less to him.

Reacher waited. He heard footsteps on the opposite
sidewalk. The guy had seen his quarry turn a tight
radius from the left-hand sidewalk of one street onto the
left-hand sidewalk of the next street. Therefore
subconsciously he would concentrate on the left, not
the right. His first thought would be to look for still
vertical shapes in the alleys and the doorways on the
left.

Reacher waited. The footsteps kept on coming. Close
now. Then Reacher saw the guy. He was on the left-hand sidewalk. He was moving slow. He was looking
indecisive. He was glancing ahead, glancing left,
glancing ahead. He had a cell phone up at his ear. He
stopped. Stood still. Looked back over his right
shoulder, at the doorways and the alleys on the other
side of the street. Worth checking?

Yes.

The guy moved sideways and backwards like a crab,
diagonally, facing the street ahead of him and searching
the right-hand sidewalk all at the same time. He moved
out of Reacher's field of view like a film running in
reverse.

Reacher stood up silently and moved deeper into the
alley into total darkness at its far end. He found a fat
vertical kitchen vent and slid round behind it.

Crouched on his haunches and waited.

It was a long wait. Then the footsteps came back. On
the sidewalk. Into the alley. Slow, soft, careful. The guy
was on his toes. No sound from the heels.

Just the scrape of leather soles on grit. They rustled
gently and low-level echoes of the sound came back off
the alley's walls. The guy came closer. And closer.

He came close enough to smell.

Cologne, sweat, leather. He stopped four feet from
where Reacher was hidden and peered hopelessly into
the darkness. Reacher thought: Another step and
you're history, pal. Just one more and it's game over for
you.

The guy turned round. Walked back to the street.

Reacher stood up and followed him, swift and silent.

Tables turned. Now I'm behind you. Time to hunt the
hunters.

Reacher was bigger than most human beings and in
some ways quite clumsy, but he could be light on his
feet when he needed to be and had always been good
at covert pursuit. It was a skill born of long practice.

Mostly it employed caution and anticipation. You had to
know when your quarry was going to slow, stop, turn,
check. And if you didn't know, you had to err on the side
of caution. Better to hide and fall ten extra yards behind
than give yourself away.

The guy in the leather coat searched every alley and
every doorway on both sides of the street. Not well, but
adequately. He searched and he moved forward, prey to
the mistake that all adequate people make: I didn't
screw up yet. He's still somewhere up ahead. He spoke
twice on his cell phone. Quietly, but with agitation
obvious in the tenor of his whisper. Reacher slipped
from shadow to shadow behind him, hanging well back
because the bright lights at the end of the street were
getting close. The guy's searches became faster and
more cursory. Hopeless and panicked, all at the same
time. He made it to within twenty feet of the next turn
and stopped dead and stood still.

And gave up. Just quit. He stood in the middle of the
sidewalk and listened to his phone and said something
in reply and then dropped his arms to his sides and all
the covert rigidity went out of his body. He slumped a
little and walked straight ahead, fast and big and loud
and obvious like a guy with no purpose in the world
except getting directly from A to B. Reacher waited long
enough to be certain it wasn't a trick. Then he followed,
moving silently from shadow to shadow.

Raskin walked past the sports bar's door and headed
up the street. He could see Linsky's car in the distance.

And Chenko's. The two Cadillacs were parked nose to
tail at the kerb, waiting for him. Waiting for the failure.

Waiting for the hole in the air. Well, here I am, he thought.

But Linsky was civil about it. Mainly because to
criticize one of the Zee's appointees was to criticize the
Zee himself, and nobody would dare to do that.

'He probably took a wrong turn,' Linsky said. 'Maybe
he didn't intend to be on that particular street at all. He
probably doubled back through the alleys. Or else went
into one of them to take a leak. Delayed himself and
came out behind you.'

'Did you check behind you?' Vladimir asked.

'Of course I did,' Raskin lied.

'So what now?' Chenko asked.

'I'll call the Zee,' Linsky said.

'He'll be royally pissed,' Vladimir said. 'We nearly had
the guy.'

Linsky dialled his phone. Relayed the bad news and
listened to the response.

Raskin watched his face. But Linsky's face was always
unreadable. A skill born of long practice, and vital
necessity. And it was a short call. A short response.

Indecipherable. Just faint plastic sounds in the earpiece.

Linsky clicked off.

'We keep on looking,' he said. 'On a half-mile radius of
where Raskin last saw him. The Zee is sending us
Sokolov. He says we're sure of success with five of us.'

'We're sure of nothing,' Chenko said. 'Except a big
pain in the ass and no sleep tonight.'

Linsky held out his phone. 'So call the Zee and tell him
that.'

Chenko said nothing.

'Take the north, Chenko,' Linsky said to him. 'Vladimir,
the south. Raskin, head back east. I'll take the west.

Sokolov can fill in where we need him when he gets
here.'

Raskin headed back east, the way he had come, as
fast as he could. He saw the sense in the Zee's plan. He
had last seen Reacher about fifteen minutes ago, and a
furtive man moving cautiously couldn't cover more than
half a mile in fifteen minutes. So elementary logic
dictated where Reacher must be. He was somewhere
inside a circle one mile across. They had found him
once. They could find him again.

He made it all the way down the wide straight cross
street and turned south towards the raised highway.

Retracing his steps. He passed through the shadows
under the highway and headed for the vacant lot on the
next corner. Kept close to the wall. Made the turn.

Then the wall fell on him.

At least that was what it felt like. He was hit a
staggering blow from behind and he fell to his knees
and his vision went dark. Then he was hit again and his
lights went out and he pitched forward on his face. Last
thing he felt before he lost consciousness was a hand
in his pocket, stealing his cell phone.

Reacher headed back under the highway spur with the
cell phone warm in his hand. He leaned his shoulder
against a concrete pillar as wide as a motel room and
slid round it until his body was in the shadow and his
hands were in the light from a lamp on a pole far above
him. He took out the torn card with Emerson's numbers
on it and dialled his cell.

'Yes?' Emerson said.

'Guess who?' Reacher said.

'This isn't a game, Reacher.'

'Only because you're losing.'

Emerson said nothing.

'How easy am I to find?' Reacher asked.

No reply.

'Got a pen and paper?'

'Of course I do.'

'So listen up,' Reacher said. 'And take notes.' He
recited the plate numbers from the two Cadillacs. 'My
guess is one of those cars was in the garage before
Friday, leaving the cone. You should trace the plates,
check the tapes, ask some questions. You'll find some
kind of an organization with at least six men. I heard
some names. Raskin and Sokolov, who seem to be low-

level guys.

Then Chenko and Vladimir. Vladimir looks good for the
guy who killed the girl.

He's as big as a house. Then there's some kind of a
lieutenant whose name I didn't get. He's about sixty and
has an old spinal injury. He talked to his boss and
referred to him as the Zee' 'Those are Russian names.'

'You think?'

'Except Zee. What kind of a name is Zee?'

'It's not Zee. It's the Zee. It's a word. A word, being used
as a name.'

'What does it mean?'

'Look it up. Read some history books.'

There was a pause. The sound of writing.

'You should come in,' Emerson said. Talk to me face to
face.'

'Not yet,' Reacher said. 'Do your job and I'll think about
it.'

'I am doing my job. I'm hunting a fugitive. You killed the
girl. Not some guy whose name you claim you heard, as
big as a house.' 'One more thing,' Reacher said. 'I think
the guy called Chenko also goes by the name of Charlie
and is James Barr's friend.' 'Why?'