Ли Чайлд - Blue Moon

Someone asked, ‘How did it happen?’

‘The Russians, obviously,’ Gregory said. ‘Shock and awe east of Center, clearing half the field, pre-empting a possible defensive alliance, before turning their full might on us alone.’

‘Good strategy.’

‘But badly executed,’ Gregory said. ‘They were clumsy at the lumber yard. Every cop and every firefighter in the city is over there. The east side will be no use to anyone for months to come. Too much scrutiny. Bribes only go so far. Some things can’t be ignored. I bet the whole thing is already on the television. In the spotlight, literally. Where no one wants to be. Which makes the west side the whole enchilada now. Now they’ll want it more than ever.’

‘When will they come for us?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gregory said. ‘But we’ll be ready. Starting right now, we’ll go to Situation C. Tighten the guard. Take up defensive positions. Let no one through.’

‘We can’t sustain Situation C indefinitely. We need to know when they’re coming.’

Gregory nodded.

‘Aaron Shevick must know,’ he said. ‘We should ask him.’

‘We can’t find him.’

‘Do we still have people at the old woman’s house?’

‘Yes, but Shevick never shows up there any more. Probably the old woman tipped him off. Obviously she’s his mother or his aunt or something.’

Gregory nodded again.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘There’s your answer. Call our boys and tell them to bring her in. She can get him on the phone, while we’re working on her. He’ll come running, the first time he hears her scream.’

Vantresca had picked them up a mile from the lumber yard, which meant the Shevicks’ house was another mile further on, to the southwest, like two sides of a triangle. The black Jaguar rumbled through the streets. By then it was mid-morning. The sun was high. The neighbourhood was harsh with light and shadows. Reacher asked Vantresca to pull over at the gas station with the deli counter. They parked in the back, next to the car wash tunnel. A white sedan was inching its way through, under the thrashing brushes. There was blue foam and white bubbles everywhere.

Reacher said, ‘I guess now we can put the Shevicks in an east side hotel. No need to hide any more. There’s no one left to care if we’re seen walking in with them.’

‘They can’t afford it,’ Abby said.

Reacher checked Gezim Hoxha’s potato-shaped wallet.

He said, ‘They don’t need to.’

‘I’m sure they would prefer it all spent on Meg.’

‘It’s a drop in the ocean. And this ain’t a democracy. They can’t stay in their house any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘We need to get this thing rolling. I want their capo unsettled. Gregory, right? I want him to hear us knocking at the door. Might as well start right here, with the guys outside the house. They’ve been cluttering up the place long enough. But there might be a response. So the Shevicks need to move out. Just for the time being.’

‘There’s no room in the car,’ Barton said.

‘We’ll take their Lincoln,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll drive the Shevicks to a fancy hotel in the back of a Town Car. They might like that.’

‘They live on a cul-de-sac,’ Vantresca said. ‘We’ll be approaching head on. No element of surprise.’

‘For you, maybe,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll go in the back again, and come out through the house. Behind them. While they’re trying to figure out who the hell you guys are. That should be a surprise.’

The Jaguar rolled back out to the main drag, and took the early right, and the left, and stopped in the same spot Reacher and Abby had parked the Chrysler, before dawn, outside the Shevicks’ back-to-back neighbour. Outside the informer’s house, whose calls would henceforth go unanswered, because the instrument on the other end of the line had long ago melted. Like the Chrysler had been, the Jaguar was lined up exactly parallel with the Lincoln, nose to nose and tail to tail, about two hundred feet apart, the depth of two small residential lots, with two buildings in the way. But only for a moment. Reacher got out, and it rolled onward.

Reacher walked through the neighbour’s front yard and wrenched open the fold-back section of fence. He walked through the neighbour’s back yard. To the rickety back fence. Which was either the neighbour’s, or the Shevicks’, or shared. He had no great desire to climb it again. So he kicked it down. If it was the Shevicks’, then Trulenko could buy them a new one. If it was the neighbour’s, then tough shit, for being an informer. If it was shared, then fifty-fifty on each of the above.

He walked through the Shevicks’ back yard, past the spot where the photographs had been taken, to their kitchen door. He knocked gently on the glass. No response. He knocked again, a little louder. Still no response.

He tried the handle. Locked, from the inside. He looked in through the window. Nothing to see. No people. Just the heart-monitor countertops and the atomic table and the vinyl chairs. He tracked along, past the photography spot, to the next window in line. Their bedroom. No one in it. Just a made bed and a closed closet door.

But an open room door. Beyond which he saw a moving shadow out in the hallway. A complicated two-headed, four-legged shape. One half tall, the other half short. Slight movement, like a halfhearted struggle and an easy restraint.

Reacher put his hand in his pocket. Chose the fresh Glock. Seventeen rounds, plus one in the chamber. He hustled back to the kitchen door. He took a breath, and another, and backhanded his elbow through the glass, and snaked his hand in and turned the lock, one smooth movement, and he stepped inside. Noisy, obviously, which meant right on time a head stuck in, around the door to the hallway, to find out what the hell was going on. A pale face, pale eyes, fair hair. Black suit coat, white shirt, black silk necktie. Reacher aimed an inch below the knot of the tie, but he was a fair man, so he didn’t fire until he saw a hand with a gun swing into clear air, on a fast arc a yard below the face, whereupon he pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the guy big enough to stick his thumb in. The round went through and through and punched into the far wall beyond. The guy went down vertically, like a cut puppet.

The roar of the shot died away.

Silence from the hallway.

Then a faint muffled whimper, like a weak old person trying to scream, with a strong man’s hand clamped over his mouth. Or her mouth. Then the scrape of a shoe, hopeless, going nowhere. Token resistance. The dead guy was leaking blood on the parquet. It was soaking into the seams. A mess. Reacher found himself figuring a couple of yards would need to be replaced. Trulenko could pay for it. Plus spackle, for the bullet hole in the wall. And paint. Plus new glass for the kitchen door. All good.

Silence from the hallway. Reacher backed away to the outside door. The obvious play was to split up, into two squads, and send one out a back entrance, and around the building . He stepped over the broken glass and out to the yard. He turned right, and right, and right again. He paused a beat at the front of the house. He saw the Lincoln, parked on the street, with no one in it. No sign of the Jaguar. Not yet. He traced its route in his head. North to the next major cross street, west to the main drag, south to their usual turn, and then into the development, with its narrow streets and its tight right-angle corners. Five minutes, maybe. Six maximum. They wouldn’t get lost. Abby knew the way.

He moved along the front of the house, on the grass a yard from the wall, because of the foundation plantings. He looked in the hallway window at a shallow angle. Saw a second guy with a pale face and a black suit. He had his meaty left palm clamped over Maria Shevick’s mouth. In his right hand he held a gun, with its muzzle jammed hard against the side of her head. Another H&K P7, steely and delicate. His finger was tight on the trigger. Aaron Shevick was standing a yard away, rigid, wide eyed, plainly terrified. His lips were clamped. Clearly he had been told to keep quiet. Clearly he wasn’t about to risk disobedience. Not with a gun to his wife’s head.