One Shot (58 page)

'Helen?' he said. 'Do it again.'

He heard her voice: 'OK.'

He walked on. Held his breath.

Thirty-five yards.

Thirty-four.

Thirty-three.

He breathed out. He walked on, doggedly. Thirty yards
to go. He heard panting in his ear. Helen, running. He
heard Yanni ask, off-mike: 'How close is he?'

Heard Cash answer: 'Not close enough.'

Vladimir leaned forward and said, 'There it is again.' He
put his fingertip on the screen, as if touch might tell him
something. Sokolov glanced across.

Sokolov had spent many more hours with the screens
than Vladimir. Primarily surveillance had been his job.

His, and Raskin's.

'That's no fox,' he said. 'It's way too big.'

He watched for five more seconds. The image was
weaving left and right at the very limit of the camera's
range.

Recognizable

size,

recognizable

shape,

inexplicable motion. He stood up and walked to the
door. Braced his hands on the frame and leaned out into
the hallway.

'Chenko!' he called. 'North!'

Behind his back on the west screen a shape as big as
his thumb grew larger. It looked like a painting-by-numbers figure done in fluorescent colours. Lime green
on the outside, then a band of chrome yellow, with a
core of hot red.

Chenko walked through an empty bedroom and
opened the window as high as it would go. Then he
backed away into the darkness. That way he was
invisible from below and invulnerable except to a shot
taken from the third storey of an adjacent building, and
there were no adjacent buildings. He switched on his
night scope and raised his rifle. Quartered the open
ground two hundred yards out, up and down, left and
right.

He saw a woman.

She was running crazily, barefoot, darting left and
right, out and back, like she was dancing or playing a
phantom game of soccer. Chenko thought: What? He
squeezed the slack out of his trigger and tried to
anticipate her next pirouette. Tried to guess where her
chest would be a third of a second after he fired. He
waited. Then she stopped moving. She stood
completely still, facing the house, arms out wide like a
target.

Chenko pulled the trigger.

Then he understood. He stepped back to the hallway.

'Decoy!' he screamed. 'Decoy!'

Cash saw the muzzle flash and called 'Shot fired' and
jumped his scope to the north window. The lower pane
was raised, the upper pane was fixed. No point in
putting a round through the opening. The upward
trajectory would guarantee a miss. So he fired at the
glass. He figured if he could get a hail of jagged shards
going, then that might ruin somebody's night.

Sokolov was watching the crazy heat image on
Vladimir's screen when he heard Chenko's shot and his
shouted warning. He glanced back at the door and
turned to the south monitor. Nothing there. Then he
heard return fire and shattering glass upstairs. He
pushed back from the table and stepped to the door.

'Are you OK?' he called.

'Decoy,' Chenko called back. 'Has to be.'

Sokolov turned and checked all four screens, very
carefully.

'No,' he called. 'Negative. Definitely nothing incoming.'

Reacher touched the front wall of the house. Old plank
siding, painted many times. He was ten feet south of the
driveway, ten feet south of the front door, near a window
that looked into a dark empty room. The window was a
tall rectangle with a lower pane that slid upward behind
the upper pane. Maybe the upper pane slid down over
the lower pane, too. Reacher didn't know the name for
the style. He had rarely lived in houses and had never
owned one. Sash?

Double-hung? He wasn't sure. The house was much
older than it had looked from a distance. Maybe a
hundred years. Hundred-year-old house, hundred-year-old window. But did the window still have a hundred-year old catch? He pressed his cheek against the lower
pane and squinted upward.

He couldn't see. Too dark.

Then he heard the shooting. Two rounds, one close,
one not, shattering glass.

Then he heard Cash in his ear: 'Helen? You OK?'

He heard no reply.

Cash asked again: 'Helen? Helen?'

No reply.

Reacher put the phone in his pocket. Worked the blade
of his knife up into the gap where the bottom of the
upper casement overlapped the top of the lower
casement. He moved the blade right to left, slowly,
carefully, feeling for a catch. He found one, dead centre.

Tapped it, gently. It felt like a heavy brass tongue. It
would pivot through ninety degrees, in and out of a
socket.

But which way?

He pushed it, right to left. Solid. He pulled the knife out
and worked it back in an inch left of centre. Slid it back,
until he found the tongue again.

Pushed it, left to right. It moved.

He pushed it hard, and knocked it right out of its
socket.

Easy.

He lifted the lower pane high and rolled over the sill
into the room.

Cash eased forward and swung his rifle through
ninety degrees until it was sighted due east along the
fence. He stared through the scope. Saw nothing. He
moved back into cover. Raised his phone. 'Helen?' he
whispered.

No response.

Reacher moved through the empty room to the door. It
was closed. He put his ear against it. Listened hard.

Heard nothing. He turned the handle, slowly, carefully.

Opened the door, very slowly. Leaned out. Checked the
hallway.

Empty.

There was light from an open doorway fifteen feet
ahead on his left. He paused. Lifted one foot at a time
and wiped the soles of his shoes on his pants. Wiped
his palms. He took a single step. Tested the floor. No
sound. He moved ahead, slowly, silently. Boat shoes.

Good for something. He kept close to the wall, where
the floor would be strongest. He stopped a yard shy of
the lighted doorway. Took a breath. Moved on. Stopped
in the doorway.

He was looking at two guys from behind. They were
seated side by side with their backs to him at a long
table. Staring at TV monitors. At ghostly green images of
darkness. On the left, Vladimir. On the right, a guy he
hadn't seen before. Sokolov? Must be. To Sokolov's
right, a yard away from him, a handgun rested on the
very end of the table. A Smith and Wesson Model 60.

The first stainless steel revolver produced anywhere in
the world. Two and a half inch barrel. A five-shooter.

Reacher took a long silent step into the room. Paused.

Held his breath.

Reversed the knife in his hand. Held the blade an inch
from its end between the ball of his thumb and the
knuckle of his first finger. Raised his arm.

Cocked it behind his head. Snapped it forward.

Threw the knife.

It buried itself two inches deep in the back of
Sokolov's neck.

Vladimir glanced right, towards the sound. Reacher
was already moving.

Vladimir glanced back. Saw him. Pushed himself away
from the table and half rose. Reacher watched him
calculate the distance between himself and the gun.

Saw him decide to go for it. Reacher stepped into his
charge and ducked under his swinging left hook and
buried his shoulder in his chest and wrapped both arms
round his back and jacked him bodily off his feet. Just
lifted him up and turned him away from the table.

And then squeezed.

Best route to a silent kill against a guy as big as
Vladimir was simply to crush him to death. No hitting, no
shooting, no banging around. As long as his arms and
his legs couldn't connect with anything solid there
would be no noise. No shouting, no screaming. Just a
long laboured barely audible tubercular sound as the
last breath he had taken came back out, never to be
replaced.

Reacher held Vladimir a foot off the ground and
squeezed with all his strength. He crushed Vladimir's
chest in a bear hug so vicious and sustained and
powerful that no human could have survived it. Vladimir
wasn't expecting it. He thought this was some kind of
preamble. Not the main event. When he figured it out, he
went crazy with panic. He rained desperate blows down
on Reacher's back and flailed with his feet at his shins.

Stupid, Reacher thought. You're just burning oxygen.

And you ain't getting more, pal. Better believe it. He
tightened his grip. Crushed harder.

And harder. And then harder, in a remorseless
subliminal rhythm that said more, and more, and more.

His teeth ground together. His heart pounded. His
muscles swelled as big and hard as river rocks and
started burning. He could feel Vladimir's ribcage
moving, clicking, separating, cracking, crushing. And
his last living breath leaking out of his starving lungs.

Sokolov moved.

Reacher staggered under Vladimir's weight. Turned
clumsily on one leg. Kicked out and caught the hilt of
the knife with his heel. Sokolov stopped moving.

Vladimir stopped moving. Reacher kept the pressure
full on for another whole minute. Then he eased off
slowly and bent down and laid the body gently on the
floor. Squatted down. Breathed hard. Checked for a
pulse. No pulse.

He stood up and pulled Cash's knife out of Sokolov's
neck and used it to cut Vladimir's throat, ear to ear. For
Sandy, he thought. Then he turned back and cut
Sokolov's throat, too. Just in case. Blood soaked the
tabletop and dripped to the floor. It didn't spurt. It just
leaked. Sokolov's heart had already stopped pumping.

He squatted down again and cleaned the blade on
Vladimir's shirt, one side, then the other. He pulled the
phone out of his pocket. Heard Cash say: 'Helen?' He
whispered: 'What's up?'

Cash answered, 'We took an incoming round. I can't
raise Helen.'

'Yanni, move left,' Reacher said. 'Find her. Franklin, you
there?'

Franklin said, 'Here.'

'Stand by to call the medics,' Reacher said.

Cash asked, 'Where are you?'

'In the house,' Reacher said.

'Opposition?'

'Unsuccessful,' Reacher said. 'Where did the shot
come from?'

'Third-floor window, north. Which makes sense,
tactically.

They've got the sniper up there. They can direct him
based on what they see from the cameras.'

'Not any more,' Reacher said. He put the phone back in
his pocket. Picked up the gun. Checked the cylinder. It
was fully loaded. Five Smith and Wesson.38 Specials.

He moved out to the hallway with the knife in his right
hand and the gun in his left. Went looking for the
basement door.

Cash heard Yanni talking to herself as she moved
away to his left. Low voice, but clear, like a running
commentary. She was saying: 'I'm moving east now,
keeping low, staying tight against the fence in the
darkness. I'm looking for Helen Rodin. We know they
fired at her. Now she's not answering her phone.