One Shot (55 page)

Upstairs in the third-floor hallway Chenko loaded his
own Super Match. Ten rounds, Lake City.308s. One
thing Americans did right was ammunition. He opened
all the bedroom doors to speed his access north, south,
east or west, as required. He walked to a window and
turned his night scope on. Set it for seventy-five yards.

He figured he would get the call when the soldier was
about a hundred and fifty yards out. That was about the
practical limit for the cameras. He would step to the right
window and acquire the target when it was still more
window and acquire the target when it was still more
than a hundred yards distant. He would track its
progress. He would let it come to him. When it was
seventy-five yards out, he would kill it.

He raised the rifle. Checked the image. It was bright
and clear. He watched a fox cross the open ground east
to west. Good hunting, my little friend. He walked back
to the hallway and propped the gun against the wall and
sat down in a straight backed chair to wait.

Helen Rodin insisted on staying behind in Franklin's
office. So Reacher and Yanni went out alone, in the
Mustang. The streets were dark and quiet. Yanni drove.

She knew her way around. The address they were
looking for was a loft building carved out of an old
warehouse halfway between the river wharf and the
railhead. Yanni said it was a part of the new urban
strategy. Soho comes to the heartland. She said she
had thought about buying in the same building.

Then she said, 'We should put Helen on suicide
watch.'

'She'll be OK,' Reacher said.

'You think?'

'I'm pretty sure.'

'What if it was your old man?'

Reacher didn't answer that. Yanni slowed as the bulk
of a large brick building loomed through the darkness.

'You can ask first,' Reacher said. 'If he doesn't answer,
I'll ask second.'

'He'll answer,' Yanni said. 'They all answer.'

But John Mistrov didn't. He was a thin guy of about
forty five. He was dressed like a post-divorce midlife
crisis victim. Acid-rinsed too-tight jeans, black T-shirt, no
shoes. They found him all alone in a big white loft
apartment eating Chinese food from paper cartons.

Initially he was very pleased to see Ann Yanni. Maybe
hanging out with celebrities was a part of the lifestyle
glamour that the new development had promised. But
his early enthusiasm faded fast. It disappeared
completely when Yanni ran through her suspicions and
then insisted on knowing the names behind the trust. 'I
can't tell you,' he said.

'Surely you understand there are confidentiality issues
here. Surely you understand that.' 'I understand that
serious crimes have been committed,'

Yanni said. 'That's what I understand. And you need to
understand that too.

You need to choose up sides, right now, fast, before
this thing goes public'

'No comment,' the guy said.

'There's no downside here,' Yanni said, gently. 'These
names we want, they'll all be in jail tomorrow. No
comebacks.' 'No comment,' the guy said again.

'You want to go down with them?' Yanni asked.

Sharply. 'Like an accessory? Or do you want to get out
from under? It's your choice. But one way or the other
you're going to be on the news tomorrow night. Either
doing the perp walk or standing there looking good, like
oh my God, I had no idea, I was only too happy to help.'

'No comment,' the guy said for the third time.

Loud, clear, and smug.

Yanni gave up. Shrugged, and glanced at Reacher.

Reacher checked his watch.

Time ticking away. He stepped up close. 'You got
medical insurance?' he asked.

The guy nodded.

'Dental plan?'

The guy nodded again.

Reacher hit him in the mouth. Right-handed, short
swing, hard blow.

'Get that fixed,' he said.

The guy rocked back a step and doubled over and
then came up coughing with blood all over his chin. Cut
lips, loose teeth all rimed with red.

'Names,' Reacher said. 'Now. Or I'll take you apart a
piece at a time.'

The guy hesitated. Mistake. Reacher hit him again.

Then the guy came up with names, six of them, and
descriptions, and an address, all from a position flat on
the floor and all in a voice thick and bubbly with
mouthfuls of blood.

Reacher glanced at Yanni.

'They all answer,' he said.

In the dark in the Mustang on the way back Ann Yanni
said, 'He'll call and warn them.'

'He won't,' Reacher said. 'He just betrayed them. So
my guess is he'll be going on a long vacation tomorrow.'

'You hope.'

'Doesn't matter anyway. They already know I'm coming
for them. Another warning wouldn't make a difference.'

'You have a very direct style. One they don't mention in
Journalism 101.'

'I could teach you. It's about surprise, really. If you can
surprise them you don't have to hit them very hard.'

Yanni dictated to Franklin the names that John Mistrov
had given up. Four of them corresponded with names
Reacher had already heard: Charlie Smith, Konstantin
Raskin, Vladimir Shumilov, and Pavel Sokolov. The fifth
was Grigor Linsky, which Reacher figured had to be the
damaged man in the boxy suit, because the sixth name
had been given simply as Zee Chelovek. 'I thought you
said Zee was a word,' Franklin said.

'It is,' Reacher said. 'And so is Chelovek. It's a
transliteration of their word for human being. Zee
Chelovek means prisoner-human-being. Like Prisoner
Man.' 'The others aren't using code names.'

'Neither is the Zee, probably. Maybe that's all he's got
left. Maybe he forgot his real name. Maybe we all would,
in the Gulag.' 'You sound sorry for him,'

Yanni said.

'I'm not sorry for him,' Reacher said. 'I'm just trying to
understand him.'

'No mention of my father,' Helen said.

Reacher nodded. 'The Zee is the puppet master. He's
at the top of the tree.'

'Which means my father is just an employee.'

'Don't worry about that now. Focus on Rosemary.'

Franklin used an on-line map and figured out that the
address John Mistrov had spilled related to a stone-crushing plant built next to a quarry eight miles north
and west of the city. Then he searched the tax rolls and
confirmed that Specialized Services of Indiana was its
registered owner. Then he searched the rolls all over
again and found that the only other real estate
registered to the trust was a house on the lot adjacent to
the stone-crushing plant. Yanni said she knew the area.

'Anything else out there?' Reacher asked her.

She shook her head. 'Nothing but farmland for miles.'

'OK,' Reacher said. 'There you go. That's where
Rosemary is.'

He checked his watch. Ten o'clock in the evening.

'So what now?' Yanni said.

'Now we wait,' Reacher said.

'For what?'

'For Cash to get here from Kentucky. And then we wait
some more.'

'For what?'

Reacher smiled.

'For the dead of night,' he said.

They waited. Franklin made coffee. Yanni told TV

stories, about people she had known, about things she
had seen, about governors' girlfriends, politicians'

wives' lovers, rigged ballots, crooked unions, about
acres of marijuana growing behind circular screens of
tall corn on the edges of Indiana fields.

Then Franklin talked about his years as a cop. Then
Reacher talked about his years since the army, the
wandering, the exploring, his rootless invisible life.

Helen Rodin said nothing at all.

At eleven o'clock exactly they heard the rattle of a big
diesel engine beating off the brick outside. Reacher
stepped to the window and saw Cash's Humvee nosing
onto the parking apron. Too noisy, he thought. We can't
use it.

Or, maybe we can.

'The Marines are here,' he said.

They heard Cash's feet on the outside stairs. Heard his
knock on the door.

Reacher went out to the hallway to open up. Cash
came in, brisk, solid, reassuring. He was dressed all in
black. Black canvas pants, black canvas windbreaker.

Reacher introduced him all round. Yanni, Franklin, Helen
Rodin.

Everyone shook hands and Cash took a seat. Inside
twenty minutes he was up to speed and totally on
board. 'They blanked a nineteen-year-old girl?' he said.

'You'd have liked her,' Reacher said.

'Do we have a plan?'

'We're about to make one,' Reacher said. Yanni went
out to her car for the maps. Franklin cleared away the
coffee cups and made space on the table. Yanni chose
the right map. Spread it out flat. 'It's like a giant
chessboard out there,' she said. 'Every square is a field
a hundred yards across. There are roads laid out in a
grid, north to south, west to east, about twenty fields
apart.' Then she pointed. Slim finger, painted nail. 'But
right here we've got two roads that meet and southeast
of the corner they make we've got an empty space three
fields wide and five fields high. No agriculture there. The
northern part is the stone crushing plant and the house
is south of it. I've seen it and it stands about two
hundred yards off the road, all alone in the middle of
absolutely nothing. No landscaping, no vegetation. But
no fence, either.' 'Flat?' Reacher asked.

'As a pool table,' Yanni said.

'Dark out there,' Cash said.

'As the Earl of Hell's waistcoat,' Reacher said. 'And I
guess if there's no fence it means they're using
cameras. With some kind of thermal imaging at night.

Some kind of infrared.' 'How fast can you run two
hundred yards?' Cash asked.

The?' Reacher said. 'Slow enough they could mail-order a rifle to shoot me with.'

'What's the best approach?'

'Walk in from the north,' Reacher said. 'Without a
doubt. We could get into the stone place straight off the
road and just hike through it. Then we could lie up as
long as we wanted. Good concealment until the last
minute.' 'Can't walk in from anywhere if they've got
thermal cameras.'

'We'll worry about that later.'

'OK, but they'll anticipate the north.'

Reacher nodded. 'We'll pass on the north. Too
obvious.'

'South or east would be next best. Because
presumably the driveway comes in from the west.

Probably too straight and too open.' 'They'll be thinking
the same thing.'

'Makes us both right.'

'I kind of like the driveway,' Reacher said. 'What will it
be? Paved?'

'Crushed limestone,' Yanni said. 'They've got plenty to
spare.'

'Noisy,' Cash said.

'It'll have retained a little daytime heat,' Reacher said.

'It'll be warmer than the dirt. It'll put a stripe of colour
down their thermal picture. If the contrast isn't great it'll
give a shadow zone either side.' 'Are you kidding?'

Cash said. You're going to be forty or fifty degrees
hotter than ambient temperature. You're going to show
up like a road flare.' 'They're going to be paying
attention south and east.'