Lee Child - Gone Tomorrow

I zipped my jacket. Started walking. I hugged the far side of Madison and overshot 58th by a couple of yards. I crossed the avenue and came around the corner with my shoulder tight against the frontage of the buildings. I needed to keep below her line of sight. I passed the first old building. Passed the second.

I said from forty feet below her, ‘I have to go now. I’m tired. Times Square, tomorrow morning at ten, OK?’

She answered from forty feet above me. She said, ‘OK, I’ll send someone.’

I clicked off and put the phone back in my pocket and dragged the dead guy all the way into the alley. I closed the door behind us, slowly and quietly.

THERE WAS A LIGHT IN THE ALLEY. A SINGLE DIM BULB, IN A dirty bulkhead fixture. I recognized the dead guy from the photographs in Springfield’s Homeland Security folder. He had been number seven of the original nineteen. I didn’t remember his name. I dragged him the length of the space. The floor was old concrete, worn to a shine. I searched him. Nothing in his pockets. No ID. No weapon. I left him by a small wheeled trash receptacle covered in baked-on grime so old it didn’t smell any more.

Then I found the inner door to the building, and unzipped my jacket, and waited. I wondered how long it would take for them to get worried about the missing guy. Less than five minutes, I figured. I wondered how many there would be in the search party. Just one, probably, but I hoped for more.

They waited seven minutes and sent two men. The inner door opened and the first guy stepped out. Number fourteen on Springfield’s list. He took a pace towards the alley door and the second guy stepped out after him. Number eight on Springfield’s list.

Then three things happened.

First, the first guy stopped. He saw that the alley door was closed. Which did not compute. It could not be opened from the outside without the key. Therefore the original searcher would have left it standing open while he prowled the sidewalk. But it was closed. Therefore the original searcher was already back inside.

The first guy turned around.

Second thing, the second guy also turned around. To close the inner door quietly and precisely. I let him get it done.

Then he raised his eyes and saw me.

The first guy saw me.

Third thing, I shot them both. Two three-round bursts, brief muted purring explosions each a quarter of a second long. I aimed for the base of their throats and let the muzzle climb stitch upward towards their chins. They were small men. Their necks were narrow and mostly full of arteries and spinal cords. Ideal targets. The noise of the gun was much louder in the roofed alley than it had been out in the open. Loud enough for me to worry about it. But the inner door was closed. And it was a stout piece of wood. Once upon a time it had been an outer door, before some earlier owner had sold his air rights.

The two guys went down.

My spent shell cases rattled away across the concrete.

I waited.

No immediate reaction.

Eight rounds gone. Twenty-two remaining. Seven men captured, three more down, three still walking and talking.

Plus the Hoths themselves.

I searched the new dead guys. No ID. No weapons. No keys, which meant the inner door wasn’t locked.

I left the two new bodies next to the first one, in the shadow of the trash can.

Then I waited. I didn’t expect anyone else to come through the door. Presumably the old Brits on the North West Frontier had eventually gotten wise about sending out rescue parties. Presumably the Red Army had. Presumably the Hoths knew their history. They ought to have. Svetlana had written some of it.

I waited.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out and checked the window on the front. Restricted Call . Lila. I ignored her. I was all done talking. I put the phone back in my pocket. It stopped vibrating.

I put my gloved fingers on the inner door’s handle. I eased it down. I felt the latch let go. I was fairly relaxed. Three men had gone out. Conceivable that any one of them might return. Or all three of them. If anyone was inside, watching and waiting, there would be a fatal split second of delay for recognition and a decision, friend or foe. Like a major league batter sorting a fastball from a curveball. A fifth of a second, maybe more.

But no delay for me. Anyone I saw was my enemy.

Anyone at all.

I opened the door.

No one there.

I was looking at an empty room. The abandoned restaurant’s kitchen. It was dark and dismantled. There were shells of old cabinets and gaps in the countertops where appliances had been hauled away to the secondhand stores on the Bowery. There were old pipes in the walls where once faucets had been attached. There were hooks in the ceiling, where once saucepans had hung. There was a large stone table in the centre of the room. Cool, smooth, slightly dished from years of wear. Maybe once pastry had been rolled on it.

More recently Peter Molina had been murdered on it. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the table I had seen in the DVD. No doubt at all. I could see where the camera must have been positioned. I could see where the lights had been set. I could see knots of frayed rope on the table legs, where Peter’s wrists and ankles had been tied.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

I ignored it.

I moved on.

There were two swinging doors leading to the dining room. One in, one out. Standard restaurant practice. No collisions. The doors had porthole windows set eye-high to an average man of fifty years ago. I ducked down and peered through. An empty room, large and rectangular. Nothing in it except a lone orphan chair. Dust and rat shit on the floor. Yellow light coming in from the street through the big filthy window.

I pushed the out door with my foot. Its hinges yelped a little but it opened. I stepped into the dining room. Turned left and left again. Found a back hallway with restrooms. Two doors, labelled Ladies and Gentlemen . Brass signs, proper words. No pictograms. No stick figures in skirts or pants.

Plus two more doors, one in each of the side walls. Brass signs: Private . One would lead back to the kitchen. The other would lead to the stairwell, and the upper floors.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

I ignored it.

Standard tactical doctrine for any assault: attack from the high ground. Couldn’t do it. Not an available option. Around the time the Israeli list was being written the SAS in Britain had been developing a tactic of rappelling off roofs into upperstorey windows, or smashing through the roof tile itself, or blowing through directly from one adjacent attic to another. Fast, dramatic, and usually very successful. Nice work if you could get it. I couldn’t. I was stuck with the pedestrian approach.

For the time being, at least.

I opened the stairwell door. It swept an arc through a tiny thirty-inch by thirty-inch ground-floor hallway. Directly across from me, close enough to touch, was the door that led out to the residential entrance. To the street door with the single bell push and the crime scene tape.

Directly out of the tiny hallway rose a single narrow staircase. It turned back on itself halfway up and rose the rest of the way to the second floor out of sight.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out and checked it. Restricted Call . I put it back in my pocket. It stopped vibrating.

I started up the stairs.

THE SAFEST WAY UP THE FIRST HALF OF A DOG-LEGGED staircase is to walk backwards, looking upward, with your feet spread wide. Backwards and looking upward, because if overhead resistance comes your way, you need to be facing it. Feet spread wide, because if stairs are going to creak, they’re going to creak most in the middle and least at the edges.