Lee Child - A Wanted Man

Two of them. Not three. The dome light in the cab proved it.

Unarmed. Nothing held in their hands, nothing slung on their backs.

They walked towards her.

Reacher was not a superstitious man, nor was he spiritual in any way, nor did he care for ancient taboos. But it was important to him they didn’t touch her.

They shuffled around and looked down, in a head-scratching kind of a way. Like any two grunts anywhere, handed a task. They were Syrians, Reacher figured. But pale. The alleged Italians. They looked stunted. Small, wiry frames. Thin necks.

They got themselves set. They planted their feet. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Their job was pretty obvious. The mechanics were self-evident. The geometry was what it was. The one on the left would do half the work, and the one on the right would do the other half. They would pick up what they could, and the dawn birds would take care of the rest.

They bent their knees.

And the ground behind them opened like a folk tale and a giant nightmare figure rose up out of it, shedding dirt and slime like a waterfall, and it took one long step and smashed its right fist into the back of the left-hand guy’s neck, a huge, vicious, downward-clubbing blow, like the apparition was driving a railroad spike with its knuckles, and then after the impact there was a long, elegant follow-through, the huge fist sweeping way down past the knee, then immediately whipping back up, the same route, like a convulsion, the giant figure jerking at the waist, its elbow smashing the right-hand guy square in the throat.

Then Reacher knelt on the first guy’s chest, and pinched the guy’s nose shut with the fingers of one hand, and jammed the other hand palm-down over the guy’s mouth.

No struggle. Already dead.

The second guy struggled. But not for long.

Reacher wiped his hands in the dirt and headed for the pick-up truck.

THEIR GUNS WERE in the truck, dumped on the seats. Two Colt sub-machine guns, with canvas slings. Like M16 rifles, basically, but shorter and chambered for the nine-millimetre Parabellum. American made, nine hundred rounds a minute, twenty-round magazines, your choice of full auto or three-round bursts or single shots. Reacher didn’t like them much. America had never really gotten into the sub-machine gun business. Not in a convincing way. There were many better choices to be had from Europe. Steyr, or Heckler und Koch. Just ask Delta Force. Or Quantico, for that matter. The guys on the plane wouldn’t be armed with Colts. That was for damn sure.

But still. Something was better than nothing. Reacher checked them over. They were loaded and they seemed to work. He closed the passenger door and tracked around to the driver’s side. He pushed the seat back and got in. The engine was still running. The truck was a Ford. Nothing fancy. He wound both windows down and tucked his Glock under his right thigh and piled both Colts on the passenger seat.

Good to go.

He counted to three and put the truck in gear and moved off slowly. The ground that had felt churned up and lumpy and unreliable underfoot felt just as bad under the wheels. The truck shuddered and slipped and bounced on stiff, load-ready springs. He followed the same course the two guys had used on the way out. A straight line, basically, to the top corner of the building. Its huge bulk stayed shadowy and indistinct most of the way. But as he got closer he saw more of it. Then suddenly it was right there, out his open window. Like driving past a docked ocean liner. Poured concrete, no doubt reinforced inside by thick steel bars, and shaped by temporary wooden formwork. He could see the wood grain here and there, preserved for ever. The curves had been made by stepping flat planks around a radius. What looked smooth from a distance looked brutal and discontinuous up close. In places wet concrete had been forced out through gaps between boards. The building looked like it was lined with unfinished seams. The camouflage paint was thick and crosshatched with brush strokes. Not a tidy job. But then, camouflage talent was all about pattern, viewed from afar. Not application, viewed from up close.

He slowed and took a breath and hauled on the wheel and made the turn around the top corner and saw the north face of the building for the first time. It was a blank concrete wall with three giant protuberances coming out of it. Like squat semicircular concrete tunnels, parallel, each one straight and maybe a hundred feet long. Like elongated igloo entrances. For air raid protection. There would be blast doors at both ends of the tunnels, never to be open at the same time. Trucks would drive in through the first door, and then pause in a kind of quarantine. The first door would close behind them, and the second door would open in front of them. Then the trucks would drive on. Getting out would be the same procedure in reverse. The interior of the structure would never be exposed to external pressure waves.

Missile storage, Reacher thought. The Cold War. Anything, anywhere, any time. If the military wanted it, the military got it. In fact the military got it whether it wanted it or not.

First question: which of the three entrance tunnels was currently in use?

Which was an easy question to answer. The moonlight showed tyre tracks quite clearly. The soft earth was beaten down into two ruts, in and out of the centre tunnel. Practically a highway.

Reacher held his curve, wide and easy, and then he bumped down into an established track that would bring him head on to the centre door. Which was closed. It had a frame wider than the mouth of the tunnel. Like an airplane hangar. The door would open in two halves, like a theatre curtain, rolling on big iron wheels and rails.

Open how? There was no radio in the car. No surveillance camera near the door. No light beam to be tripped, no call button, no intercom. Reacher drove slowly forward, unsure, with the door ahead of him like a high steel wall. Behind the railing on the roof he could see sentries. Five of them, long guns over their shoulders on slings, peering out into the middle distance in what looked like a fairly desultory fashion. Sentry duty was arduous and boring. Not what the average adventurer signs up for. No excitement. No glamour.

Reacher came to a stop with the pick-up’s grille a yard from the door.

The door started to open.

The two halves broke some kind of a seal between them and set off grinding back along their tracks, driven by what sounded like truck engines straining under the load. The whole assembly must have weighed hundreds of tons. Blastproof. Whatever the military wanted. The gap widened. Two feet. Three. There was dim light in the tunnel. Weak bulbs, in wire cages, strung out along the ceiling. Reacher tugged the Glock out from under his leg. He held it, low down and out of sight.

The doors stopped when the gap got to be about seven feet wide. Enough for a passenger vehicle. Reacher took a breath and counted to three and put his left hand on the wheel and touched the gas and rolled inside.

And saw four things: a guy right next to him, right next to a big red button near the first door, and a guy a hundred feet away, right next to a big red button near the second door.

His earlier advice to Delfuenso: Shoot them in the face, before they even say hello .

Which he did, with the first guy. Although not technically in the face. He raised the Glock a little higher and drilled the guy through the centre of the forehead, about where Sorenson had gotten hers.

Save rounds. No double taps . Which was OK. The first one had worked just fine. The guy was in some kind of a baggy green uniform. He had a handgun on his belt, in a big flapped holster. Not like any military thing Reacher had ever seen. More like folk art.