Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

But it was enough. The judas gate exploded inward, with what felt like no resistance at all, and Reacher hurdled through the resulting blank rectangle into a space so dark he could make out nothing at all. There was the feel of cobblestones under his feet, and the sour smell of garbage, and sheer dark walls rising on his left and his right and ahead.

He felt his way along the right-hand wall to the back corner of the yard, where he found a door. Ridged glass above, a panel below, a smooth steel handle, and a lock that felt newer. The glass was probably tempered and reinforced with wire. The lock was probably chased into the door and the jamb. A whole different proposition.

He waited, to see if Croselli would come down and open it himself. Which he might. He must have heard the crash of the judas gate. But he didn’t come down. Reacher waited three minutes, breathing hard, stretching his eyes wide open, willing them to see something. But they didn’t. He stepped up to the door again and traced its shape with his hands. The panel below the glass would be the weak spot. Plywood, probably, maybe three-eighths thick, painted, retained in the frame by quarter-round mouldings. Reacher was wearing shoes he had bought in the London airport two deployments ago, stout British things with welts and toecaps as hard as steel. They had bust heads and kneecaps already that night. Plywood wasn’t going to be a major problem.

He stepped back and poked forward with his toe to fix his target in his mind. Then he kicked out, bang, bang , concentrating on the corners of the panel, viciously and noisily, until the wood splintered and the mouldings came loose.

Then he stopped and listened.

No sound from inside the building.

Which was a bitch. Reacher would have preferred to meet Croselli face to face on the ground floor. He didn’t relish heading up a flight of stairs towards an alert opponent at the top.

He waited some more.

No sound.

He squatted down with his back against the doorframe and punched out the panel with his elbow, until it folded inward, like a miniature door itself, hinged on a few surviving nails. Then he twisted around and put his arm and his shoulder through the hole and reached up and scrabbled for the knob. Which he found easily enough. He had arms like a gorilla. Every childhood photograph of him featured six inches of bare wrist, at the end of every sleeve.

The door opened and he struggled upright and backed off a yard, just in case. But there was no sound inside. Croselli didn’t come out. There was nothing to see. Just darkness. The inside air smelled hot and stale.

Reacher stepped in, to what felt like a narrow lobby with a tiled floor. He slid his feet ahead, one after the other, and he felt a bottom stair. There was a handrail on the left. The opposite wall was less than three feet away. It was painted, and it was damp with condensation.

Reacher went up the stairs, his right hand out in front of him, his left holding the handrail. There was a yard-wide half landing, and then the stairs doglegged and continued upward. At the top was dusty superheated air and a six-by-three upstairs lobby with a sticky carpet and a door at each end. A front room, and a back room.

Under the back room door was a bar of faint warm light.

Reacher stared at it, like a thirsty man in the desert might stare at a cold drink. It was a candle, probably. It was the first man-made light he had seen in more than three hours.

He put his hand under his shirt at the back and pushed the button Hemingway had showed him. It’s red , she had said, which hadn’t helped, because he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, and it was pitch dark anyway. So he had learned it by feel. He tapped his chest, so that a thump could mark the start of the recording. Then he put his hand on the doorknob.

Reacher twisted the knob and pushed the door, one, two, fast and hard, and he stepped into a room lit by a guttering candle. The flame danced in the rush of air. The room was a twenty-by-twenty space with a dark window in the back wall, and a row of old-fashioned safes on the left, like something out of a black-and-white Western movie about bank robbers, and on the right there was a row of file cabinets and a desk, and sitting at the desk in a leather reclining chair was Croselli. The chair was pushed out and turned sideways, so that he was sitting face-on to the door.

He had a gun in his hand.

It was a Colt M1911, a .45 automatic, standard military issue for sixty-six years, hence the model number. It looked a little scratched and battered. It was all lit up by the candle, which was on the desk, welded to a china plate by a pool of its own wax. A standard household item, a few cents at the hardware store, but it felt as bright as the sun.

Croselli said, ‘You.’

Reacher said nothing.

Croselli had shed his jacket and pulled down his tie, but his shirt was still wet. He said, ‘I was expecting Hemingway. What are you tonight, her knight in shining armour? Is she sending a boy to do a man’s job?’

Is he armed? Reacher had asked. Not in the city , Hemingway had said. He can’t afford to be . Not applicable inside his own premises, apparently. Which was a bitch. Reacher looked at the row of safes. There were six of them, shoulder to shoulder, each one about a yard wide and six feet tall. They had keyholes, not combination locks. The door on the far end was wide open, and the void behind it was empty. Their armoury, Reacher guessed. For dire emergencies. Like that very night. Clearly Croselli’s soldiers were all armed, all out on the street, all ensuring protection.

‘You have a gun,’ Reacher said, for the tape.

‘I’m defending my property,’ Croselli said.

‘This is your place?’

‘I’m not a common burglar.’

Reacher took a step. The Colt’s muzzle rose a degree, to track him. Reacher asked, ‘Is your name on the title?’

‘I’m not that stupid.’

‘Then this isn’t your place.’

‘Only technically. Believe me, kid, everything you see here is mine.’

‘What’s in the safes?’

‘Inventory.’

‘Yours?’

‘I already told you.’

‘I need to hear it in short simple words.’

‘Why?’

‘We could do business.’

‘Business?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘You and me?’

‘If you’re smart,’ Reacher said.

‘You broke down my door.’

‘Would you have let me in, if I had knocked?’

‘What kind of business could we do, you and I?’

‘You’re using the New Jersey Turnpike and the Holland Tunnel. Which means you’re getting supplied out of Miami, all the way up I-95. Which means you’re paying over the odds, and you’re losing some to unreliable mules, and you’re losing some to routine New Jersey State Police patrols. I could help you with all of that.’

‘How?’

‘I bring stuff in direct from the Far East. On military planes. No scrutiny. My dad’s a Marine officer.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Anything you want.’

‘What kind of price, kid?’

‘Show me what you’ve got and tell me what you paid. Then I’ll break your heart.’

‘You hurt two of my men.’

Reacher said, ‘I hope so. I need you to understand. You do not mess with me.’ He took another step. The Colt’s muzzle rose another degree. Reacher said, ‘Are you buying from Martinez?’

‘I never heard of Martinez.’

‘Then you’re way over the odds already. Who are you buying from?’

‘The Medellin boys.’

‘I could save you forty per cent.’

Croselli said, ‘I think you’re full of shit. I think this is a Hemingway stunt.’

‘You shut her down.’

‘For which I paid good money. For which I expected a durable result. Anything else is liable to make me angry.’