One Shot

They stood for a moment in the shadows and the silence on the parking apron below Franklin's lighted windows. Then Yanni went to get the Sheryl Crow CD from her Mustang. She gave it to Cash. Cash unlocked the Humvee and leaned inside and put it in the player. Then he gave the keys to Franklin. Franklin climbed into the driver's seat. Cash got in next to him with his M24 across his knees. Reacher and Helen Rodin and Ann Yanni squeezed together in the back.



"Turn the heater up," Reacher said.



Cash leaned to his left and dialed in maximum temperature. Franklin started the engine. Backed out into the street. Swung the wheel and took off west. Then he turned north. The engine was loud and the ride was rough. The heater kicked in and the fan blew hard. The interior grew warm, and then hot. They turned west, turned north, turned west, turned north, lining up with the grid that would run through the fields. The drive was a series of long droning cruises punctuated by sharp right-angle corners. Then they made the final turn. Franklin sat up straight behind the wheel and accelerated hard.



"This is it," Yanni said. "Dead ahead, about three miles to go."



"Start the music," Reacher said. "Track eight."



Cash hit the button.



Every day is a winding road.



"Louder," Reacher said.



Cash turned it up. Franklin drove on, sixty miles an hour.



"Two miles," Yanni called. Then: "One mile."



Franklin drove on. Reacher stared out the window to his right. Watched the fields flash past in the darkness. Random scatter from the headlights lit them up. The irrigation booms were turning so slowly they looked stationary. Mist filled the air.



"High beams," Reacher called.



Franklin flicked them on.



"Music all the way up," Reacher called.



Cash twisted the knob to maximum.



EVERY DAY IS A WINDING ROAD.



"Half a mile," Yanni yelled.



"Windows," Reacher shouted.



Four thumbs hit four buttons and all four windows dropped an inch. Hot air and loud music sucked out into the night. Reacher stared right and saw the dark outline of the house flash past, isolated, distant, square, solid, substantial, dimly lit from inside. Flat land all around it. The limestone driveway, pale, very long, as straight as an arrow.



Franklin kept his foot hard down.



"Stop sign in four hundred yards," Yanni yelled.



"Stand by," Reacher shouted. "Showtime."



"One hundred yards," Yanni yelled.



"Doors," Reacher shouted.



Three doors opened an inch. Franklin braked hard. Stopped dead on the line. Reacher and Yanni and Helen and Cash spilled out. Franklin didn't hesitate. He took off again like it was just a normal dead-of-night stop sign. Reacher and Yanni and Cash and Helen dusted themselves down and stood close together on the crown of the road and stared north until the glow of the lights and the sound of the engine and the thump of the music were lost in the distance and the darkness.



Sokolov had picked up the Humvee's heat signature on both the south and west monitors when it was still about half a mile shy of the house. Hard not to. A big powerful vehicle, traveling fast, trailing long plumes of hot air from open windows, what was to miss? On the screen it looked like a bottle rocket flying sideways. Then he heard it too, physically, through the walls. Big engine, loud music. Vladimir glanced his way.



"Passerby?" he asked.



"Let's see," Sokolov said.



It didn't slow down. It hurtled straight past the house and kept on going north. On the screen it trailed heat like a reentry capsule. Through the walls they heard the music Doppler-shift like an ambulance's siren as it went by.



"Passerby," Sokolov said.



"Some asshole," Vladimir said.



Upstairs on the third floor Chenko heard it, too. He stepped through an empty bedroom to a west-facing window and looked out. Saw a big black shape doing about sixty miles an hour, high-beam headlights, bright tail lights, music thumping and thudding so loud he could hear the door panels flexing from two hundred yards away. It roared past. Didn't slow down. He opened the window and leaned out and craned his neck and watched the bubble of light track north into the distance. It went behind the skeletal tangle of machinery in the stone-crushing plant. But it was still visible as a moving glow in the air. After a quarter-mile the glow changed color. Red now, not white. Brake lights, flaring for the stop sign. The glow paused for a second. Then the red color died and the glow turned back to white and took off again, fast.



The Zec called up from the floor below: "Was that him?"



"No," Chenko called back. "Just some rich kid out for a drive."



Reacher led the way through the dark, four people single file on the edge of the blacktop with the gravel plant's high wire fence on their left and huge circular fields across the road on their right. After the roar of the diesel and the thump of the music the silence felt absolute. There was nothing to hear except the hiss of irrigation water. Reacher raised his hand and stopped them where the fence turned a right angle and ran away east. The corner post was double-thickness and braced with angled spars. Grass and weeds from the shoulder were clumped up high. He stepped forward and checked the view. He was on a perfect diagonal from the northwest corner of the house. He had an equal forty-five-degree line of sight to the north facade and the west. Because of the diagonal the distance was about three hundred yards. Visibility was very poor. There was a glimmer of cloudy moonlight, but beyond that there was nothing at all.



He stepped back. Pointed at Cash, pointed at the base of the corner post.



"This is your position," he whispered. "Check it out."



Cash moved forward and knelt down in the weeds. Six feet away he was invisible. He switched on his night scope and raised his rifle. Tracked it slowly left and right, up and down.



"Three stories plus a basement," he whispered. "High-pitched shingle roof, plank siding, many windows, one door visible to the west. No cover at all in any direction. They bulldozed everything flat, all around. Nothing's growing. You're going to look like a beetle on a bed- sheet out there."



"Cameras?"



The rifle tracked a steady line from left to right. "Under the eaves. One on the north side, one on the west. We can assume the same on the sides we can't see."



"How big are they?"



"How big do you want them to be?"



"Big enough for you to hit."



"Funny man. If they were spy cameras built into cigarette lighters I could hit them from here."



"OK, so listen up," Reacher whispered. "This is how we're going to do it. I'm going to get to my starting position. Then we're all going to wait for Franklin to get back and put the comms net on the air. Then I'm going to make a move. If I don't feel good I'm going to call in fire on those cameras. I say the word, I want you to take them out. Two shots, bang, bang. That'll slow them down, maybe ten or twenty seconds."



"Negative," Cash said. "I won't direct live rounds into a wooden structure we know contains a noncombatant hostage."



"She'll be in the basement," Reacher said.



"Or the attic."



"You'd be firing at the eaves."



"Exactly. She's in the attic, she hears gunfire, she hits the deck, that's exactly where I'm aiming. One man's ceiling is another man's floor."



"Spare me," Reacher said. "Take the risk."



"Negative. Won't do it."



"Christ, Gunny, you are one uptight Marine, you know that?"



Cash didn't speak. Reacher stepped forward again and peered around the corner of the fence. Took a long hard look and pulled back.



"OK," he said. "New plan. Just watch the west windows. You see muzzle flash, you put suppressing fire into the room it's coming out of. We can assume the hostage won't be in the same room as the sniper."



Cash said nothing.



"Will you do that at least?" Reacher asked.



"You might be in the house already."



"I'll take my chances. Voluntary assumption of risk, OK? Helen can witness my consent. She's a lawyer."



Cash said nothing.



"No wonder you came in third," Reacher said. "You need to lighten up."



"OK," Cash said. "I see hostile gunfire, I'll return it."



"Hostile is about the only kind you're going to see, don't you think? Since you only gave me a damn knife?"



"Army," Cash said. "Always bitching about something."



"What do I do?" Helen asked.



"New plan," Reacher said. He touched the fence with his palm. "Keep low, follow the fence around the corner, stop opposite the house. Stay down. They won't pick you up there. It's too far. Listen to your phone. If I need a distraction I'll ask you to run a little ways toward the house and then back again. A zigzag, or a circle. Out and back. Real fast. Just enough to put a blip on their screen. No danger. By the time they move a rifle around, you'll be back at the fence."



She nodded. Didn't speak.



"And me?" Ann Yanni asked.



"You stay with Cash. You're the ethics police. He gets cold feet about helping me out, you kick his ass, OK?"



Nobody spoke.



"All set?" Reacher asked.



"Set," they said, one after the other.



Reacher walked away into the darkness on the other side of the road.



He kept on walking, off the blacktop, across the shoulder, across the stony margin of the field, onward, right into the field, all the way into the middle of the soaking crop. He waited until the irrigation boom rolled slowly around and caught up with him. Then he turned ninety degrees and walked south with it, directly underneath it, keeping pace, letting the ceaseless water rain down and soak his hair and his skin and his clothes. The boom pulled away as it followed its circular path and Reacher kept straight on at a tangent and walked into the next field. Waited once again for the boom to find him and then walked on under it, matching its speed, raising his arms high and wide to catch as much drenching as he could. Then that boom swung away and left him and he walked on to find the next one. And the next, and the next. When at last he was opposite the driveway entrance he simply walked in a circle, under the last boom, waiting for his cell phone to vibrate, like a man caught in a monsoon.



Cash's cell phone vibrated against his hip and he pulled it out and clicked it on. Heard Franklin's voice, quiet and cautious in his ear.



"Check in, please," it said.



Cash heard Helen say: "Here."



Yanni said, "Here," from three feet behind him.



Cash said, "Here."



Then he heard Reacher say: "Here."



Franklin said, "OK, you're all loud and clear, and the ball is in your court."



Cash heard Reacher say: "Gunny, check the house."



Cash lifted the rifle and swept left to right. "No change."



Reacher said: "I'm on my way."



Then there was nothing but silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A whole minute. Two minutes.



Cash heard Reacher ask: "Gunny, do you see me?"



Cash lifted the rifle again and swept the length of the driveway from its mouth all the way to the house. "Negative. I don't see you. Where are you?"



"About thirty yards in."



Cash moved the rifle. Estimated thirty yards from the road and stared through the scope. Saw nothing. Nothing at all. "Good work, soldier. Keep going."



Yanni crawled forward. Whispered in Cash's ear. "Why don't you see him?"



"Because he's nuts."



"No, explain it to me. You've got a night scope, right?"



"The best money can buy," Cash said. "And it works off heat, just like their cameras." Then he pointed away to his right. "But my guess is Reacher walked through the fields. Soaked himself in water. It's coming straight up from the aquifer, stone cold. So right now he's close to ambient temperature. I can't see him; they can't see him."



"Smart," Yanni said.



"Brave," Cash said. "But ultimately dumb. Because he's drying out every step of the way. And getting warmer."



Reacher walked through the dark in the dirt ten feet south of the driveway. Not fast, not slow. His shoes were soaked and they were sticking to the mud. Almost coming off. He was so cold he was shivering violently. Which was bad. Shivering is a physiological reaction designed to warm a cold body fast. And he didn't want to be warm. Not yet.



Vladimir had gotten a rhythm going. He stared at the East monitor for four seconds, then the North for three. East, two, three, four, North, two, three. East, two, three, four, North, two, three. He didn't move his chair. Just leaned a little one way, then the other. Beside him Sokolov had a similar thing going south and west. Slightly different intervals. Not perfectly synchronized. But just as good, Vladimir guessed. Maybe even better. Sokolov had spent a lot of time on surveillance.



Reacher walked on. Not fast, not slow. On the map the driveway had looked to be about two hundred yards long. On the ground it felt like an airport runway. Straight as a die. Wide. And long, long, long. He had been walking forever. And he was less than halfway to the house. He walked on. Just kept on going. Looking ahead every step of the way, watching the darkened windows far away in front of him.



He realized his hair wasn't dripping anymore.



He touched one hand with the other. Dry. Not warm, but no longer cold.



He walked on. He was tempted to run. Running would get him there faster. But running would heat him up. He was approaching the point of no return. He was right out there in no-man's-land. And he wasn't shivering. He raised his phone.



"Helen," he whispered. "I need that diversion."



Helen took off her heels and left them neatly side by side at the base of the fence. For an absurd moment she felt like a person who piles all her clothes on the beach before she walks into the sea to drown. Then she put her palms down on the dirt like a sprinter in the blocks and took off forward. Just ran crazily, twenty feet, thirty, forty, and then she stopped dead and stood still, facing the house with her arms out wide like a target. Shoot me, she thought. Please shoot me. Then she got scared that maybe she really meant it and she turned and ran back in a wide zigzag loop. Threw herself down and crawled along the fence again until she found her shoes.



Vladimir saw her on the North monitor. Nothing recognizable. Just a brief flare that because of the phosphor technology was smeared and a little time-lagged. But he bent his head closer anyway and stared at the afterimage. One second, two. Sokolov sensed the interruption to his rhythm and glanced over. Three seconds, four.



"Fox?" Vladimir said.



"I didn't see it," Sokolov said. "But probably."



"It ran away again."



"OK, then." Sokolov turned back to his own pair of monitors. Glanced at the West view, checked the South, and settled into his regular cadence again.



Cash had a cadence of his own. He was inching his night scope along at what he guessed was the speed of a walking man. But every five seconds he would sweep it suddenly forward and back in case his estimate was off. During one of those rapid traverses he picked up on what looked like a pale green shadow.



"Reacher, I can see you," he whispered. "You're visible, soldier."



Reacher's voice came back: "What scope have you got on that thing?"



"Litton," Cash said.



"Expensive, right?"



"Thirty-seven hundred dollars."



"Got to be better than a lousy thermal camera."



Cash didn't reply.



Reacher said: "Well, I'm hoping so, anyway."



He walked on. Probably the most unnatural thing a human can force himself to do, to walk slowly and surely toward a building that likely has a rifle in it pointing directly at his center mass. If Chenko had any sense at all he would wait, and wait, and wait, until his target was pretty close. And Chenko seemed to have plenty of sense. Fifty yards would be good. Or thirty-five, like Chenko's range out of the parking garage. Chenko was pretty good at thirty-five yards. That had been made very clear.



He walked on. Transferred the phone to his left and held it near his ear. Took the knife out of his pocket and unsheathed it and held it right-handed, low and easy. Heard Cash say: "You're totally visible now, soldier. You're shining like the north star. It's like you're on fire."



Forty yards to go.



Thirty-nine.



Thirty-eight.



"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. Twenty-nine 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 colors. 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 story 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-center. 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 center. 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 amp; 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, toward 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 around 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 labored 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 a 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 rib cage 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 anymore," Reacher said. He dropped the phone back in his pocket. Picked up the gun. Checked the cylinder. It was fully loaded. Five Smith amp; 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. We're hoping she's OK, but we're worried that she isn't."



Cash listened until he couldn't hear her anymore. He shook his head in bemusement. Then he ducked his eye to the scope and watched the house.



Rosemary Barr wasn't in the basement. It took Reacher less than a minute to be completely certain of that. It was a wide-open space, musty, dimly lit, uninterrupted and totally empty except for the foundations of three brick chimneys.



Reacher paused at the circuit breaker box. He was tempted to throw the switch. But Chenko had a night sight, and he didn't. So he just crept back up the stairs.



Yanni found Helen Rodin's shoes literally by stumbling over them. They were placed neatly side by side at the base of the fence. High heels, black patent, gleaming slightly in the ragged moonlight. Yanni kicked them accidentally and heard the sound of empty footwear. She bent and picked them up. Hung them on the fence by their heels.



"Helen?" she whispered. "Helen? Where are you?"



Then she heard a voice: "Here."



"Where?"



"Here. Keep going."



Yanni walked on. Found a black shape rolled tight against the base of the fence.



"I dropped my phone," Helen said. "Can't find it."



"Are you OK?"



"He missed me. I was leaping around like a madwoman. But the bullet came real close. It scared me. I just dropped my phone and ran."



Helen sat up. Yanni squatted next to her.



"Look," Helen said. She was holding something in the palm of her hand. Something bright. A coin. A quarter, new and shiny.



"What is it?" Yanni said.



"A quarter," Helen said.



"So what?"



"Reacher gave it to me."



Helen was smiling. Yanni could see the white of her teeth in the moonlight.



Reacher crept down the first-floor hallway. Opened doors and searched rooms to the left and right as he went. They were all empty. All unused. He paused at the bottom of the stairs. Backed away into an empty twelve-by-twenty space that might once have been a parlor. Crouched and laid the knife on the floor and pulled out his phone.



"Gunny?" he whispered.



Cash answered: "You back with us?"



"Phone was in my pocket."



"Yanni found Helen. She's OK."



"Good. The basement and the first floor are clear. I think you were right after all. Rosemary must be in the attic."



"You going upstairs now?"



"I guess I'll have to."



"Body count?"



"Two down so far."



"Lots more upstairs, then."



"I'll be careful."



"Roger that."



Reacher put the phone back in his pocket and retrieved the knife from the floor. Stood up and crept out to the hallway. The staircase was in the back of the house. It was wide, doglegged, and shallow-pitched. Quite grand. There was a wide landing halfway up where the dogleg reversed direction. He went up the first half-flight backward. It made more sense that way. He wanted to know right away if there was someone in the second-floor hallway looking down over the banister. He kept close to the wall. If stairs creaked at all, they creaked most in the middle of a tread. He went slowly, feeling with his heels, putting them down gently and deliberately. And quietly. Boat shoes. Good for something. After five up-and-back steps, his head was about level with the second-story floor. He raised the gun. Took another step. Now he could see the whole of the hallway. It was empty. It was a quiet carpeted space lit by a single low-wattage bulb. Nothing to see, except six closed doors, three on a side. He breathed out and made it to the half-landing. Shuffled left and crept up the second part of the dogleg going forward. Stepped off the staircase. Into the hallway.



Now what?



Six closed doors. Who was where? He moved slowly toward the front of the house. Listened at the first door. Heard nothing. He moved on. Heard nothing at the second door. Moved on again but before he reached the third door he heard sounds from the floor above. Sounds that were coming down through the floor. Sounds that he didn't understand. Sliding, scraping, crunching noises, repeated rhythmically, with a single light footfall at the end of every sequence. Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. He stared up at the ceiling. Then the third door opened and Grigor Linsky stepped out into the hallway right in front of him. And froze.



He was wearing his familiar double-breasted suit. Gray color, boxy shoulders, cuffed pants. Reacher stabbed him in the throat. Instantly, right-handed, instinctively. He buried the blade and jerked it left. Sever the windpipe. Keep him quiet. He stepped aside to avoid the fountain of blood. Caught him under the arms from behind and dragged him back into the room he had come out of. It was a kitchen. Linsky had been making tea. Reacher turned out the light under the kettle. Put the gun and the knife on the counter. Bent down and clamped Linsky's head between his hands and twisted it left and jerked it right. Broke his neck. The snap was loud enough to worry about. It was a very quiet house. Reacher retrieved the gun and the knife and listened at the door. Heard nothing except: Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. He stepped back into the hallway. Then he knew.



Glass.



Cash had returned fire through Chenko's favored northern vantage point and like all good snipers had sought maximum damage from his one shot. And in turn, like all good snipers, Chenko was keeping his physical environment operational. He was cleaning up the broken glass. He had a twenty-five percent chance of being directed back to that particular window and he wanted his passage through the room clear.



Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. He was using the side of his foot to sweep the glass aside. Into a pile. Then he was stepping forward to sweep the next arc. He would want a clear two-foot walkway through the room. No danger of slipping or sliding.



How far had he got?



Reacher crept to the next staircase. It was identical to the last one. Wide, shallow, doglegged. He walked up backward, listening hard. Slide, scrape, crunch, tap. He crossed the half-landing. Kept on going forward. The third-floor hallway had the same layout as the one below, but it wasn't carpeted. Just bare boards. There was an upright chair in the center of the corridor. All the doors were open. North was to the right. Reacher could feel night air coming in. He stayed close to the wall. Crept onward. The noises got louder. He flattened against the wall. Took a breath. Pivoted slowly and stepped to his left. Into a doorway.



Chenko was twelve feet from him. Facing away. Facing the window. The lower pane had been pushed up behind the upper pane. Both panes had been blown out. The room was cold. The floor was covered in glass. Chenko was clearing a path from the door toward the window. He had about three feet left to go. His rifle was upright against the wall, six feet from him. He was stooped, looking down, concentrating hard on his task. It was an important task. Skidding on a pebble of glass could cost him precious time in a firefight. Chenko had discipline.



And ten seconds to live.



Reacher put the knife in his pocket. Freed his right hand. Flexed it. Stepped forward. Just walked slow and silent down the path that Chenko had cleared. Four quiet paces. Chenko sensed it. He straightened. Reacher caught him around the neck from behind. One-handed. He gripped hard. Took one more long fast stride and stiff-armed Chenko forward with it and threw him out the open window, headfirst.



"I warned you," he whispered into the darkness below. "You should have put me down when you had the chance." Then he took out his phone.



"Gunny?" he whispered.



"Here."



"Third-floor window, where you returned fire. You see it?"



"I see it."



"A guy just fell out. If he gets up again, shoot him."



Then he put the phone away and went looking for the attic door.



He found Rosemary Barr completely unharmed, sitting upright on the attic floor. Her feet were taped, her wrists were taped, her mouth was taped. Reacher put his finger to his lips. She nodded. He cut her free with the bloodstained knife and helped her stand. She was unsteady for a moment. Then she shook herself and gave a kind of nod. Then a smile. Reacher guessed that whatever fear she had felt and whatever reaction she was feeling right now had both been neutralized by some kind of a steely determination to help her brother. If she survived, he would survive. That belief had kept her going.



"Have they gone?" she whispered.



"All except Raskin and the Zec," Reacher whispered back.



"No, Raskin killed himself. I heard them talking. The Zec made him do it. Because he let you steal his cell phone."



"Where's the Zec likely to be?"



"He's in the living room most of the time. Second floor."



"Which door?"



"Last on the left."



"OK, stay here," Reacher whispered. "I'll round him up and I'll be right back."



"I can't stay here. You have to get me out."



He paused. "OK, but you've got to be real quiet. And don't look left or right."



"Why not?"



"Dead people."



"I'm glad," Rosemary said.



Reacher held her arm down the stairs to the third-floor hallway. Then he went ahead alone to the second. All quiet. The last door on the left was still closed. He waved her down. They made the turn together and headed to the first floor. To the front of the house. To the room he had entered through. He helped her over the sill and out the window, to the dirt below. He pointed.



"Follow the driveway to the road," he said. "Turn right. I'll tell the others you're coming. There's a guy in black with a rifle. He's one of ours."



She stood still for a second. Then she bent down and took off her low-heeled shoes and held them in her hands and started running like hell, due west, through the dirt, toward the road. Reacher took out his phone.



"Gunny?" he whispered.



"Here."



"Rosemary Barr is heading your way."



"Outstanding."



"Round up the others and meet her halfway. There's no more operational night vision. Then stand by. I'll get back to you."



"Roger that."



Reacher put the phone away. Backtracked through the silent house, on his way to find the Zec.