Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

Sixty-three seconds gone , he thought.

He stood stock-still and played his flashlight beam all around his dead friend’s office. It was untouched. It was like Swan had just stepped out to the bathroom or gone out for lunch. There was a coat hanging on a hat stand. It was a khaki windbreaker, old, worn, plaid-lined like a golf jacket, short and wide. There were file cabinets. Phones. A leather chair, crushed in places by the weight of a heavy barrel-shaped man. There was a computer on the desk. And a new blank notepad. And pens, and pencils. A stapler. A clock. A small pile of papers.

And a paperweight, holding the papers down. A lump of Soviet concrete, irregular in shape, the size of a fist, gray and polished to a greasy shine by handling, one flat face with faint traces of blue and red sprayed graffiti still on it.

Reacher stepped to the desk and put the lump of concrete in his pocket. Took the pile of papers from under it and rolled them tight and put them in his other pocket. Suddenly became aware of a softness under his feet. He played the flashlight beam downward. Saw rich red colors reflected back. Ornate patterns. Thick pile. An Oriental rug. Brand new. He recalled the cord on Orozco’s wrists and ankles and Curtis Mauney’s words: It’s a sisal product from the Indian subcontinent. It would have to come in on whatever gets exported from there .

Eighty-nine seconds gone , he thought. Thirty-one to go .

He stepped to the window. Saw Karla Dixon far below in the darkness, already on her way out of the lot. Her pants and her jacket were scuffed and coated with white dust. She looked like a ghost. From crawling around in the wallboard dust, he guessed. She was carrying papers and some kind of a white three-ring binder. She was lit up in short blue pulses by the strobe on the front of the building.

Twenty-six seconds to go.

He saw O’Donnell run out below like he was escaping from a burning house, taking giant strides, carrying stuff clutched to his chest. And then Neagley a second later, running hard, long dark hair streaming out behind her, arms pumping, with a thick wad of green file folders gripped in each hand.

Nineteen seconds to go.

He crossed the office and touched the jacket on the hat stand, gently, on the shoulder, like Swan was still in it. Then he stepped back behind the desk and sat down in the chair. It creaked once as he settled. He heard the sound quite clearly over the siren.

Twelve seconds to go.

He looked out at the manic flashing in the corridor and knew he could just wait. Sooner or later, maybe in less than a minute, the men who had killed his friends would show up. As long as there were fewer than thirty-four of them he could sit right where he was and take them all down, one by one.

Five seconds to go.

Except that he couldn’t, of course. Nobody was that dumb. After the first three or four KIAs had piled up in the doorway, the rest of them would regroup in the corridor and start thinking about tear gas and reinforcements and body armor. Maybe they would even think about calling the cops or the FBI. And Reacher knew there was no way to be sure of putting the right guys down before he lost a three-or four-day siege against a whole bunch of trained SWAT teams.

One second to go.

He exploded out of the chair and out through the broken door and jinked left into the corridor and right into the stairwell. Neagley had wedged the door open for him. He hit the first floor about ten seconds over budget. He dodged around the inert Chrysler in the lobby and was out in the lot fifteen seconds late. Through the wrecked gate and out in the street forty seconds late. Then he ran toward the pale gleam of the silver Prelude. It was a hundred yards away, distant and innocent and alone. The other two Hondas were already gone. He covered the hundred yards in twenty seconds and hurled himself inside. He slammed his door after him and struggled upright in his seat. He was breathing hard, mouth wide open. He turned his head and saw a set of headlights in the far distance, moving very fast, coming toward him, swinging around corners, then diving low from braking.

Altogether three cars showed up. They came in fast and stopped short all over the road outside the wrecked gate and they stayed there, parked at random angles, engines still running, headlights blazing through the night mist. They were brand-new Chrysler 300Cs, dark blue, pretty much identical to the one already parked in New Age’s lobby.

Altogether five guys got out of the three cars. Two from the first, one from the second, two from the third. Reacher was a hundred yards away and watching through tinted glass and the corner of New Age’s fence and he was dazzled by the six headlights, so he couldn’t make out much detail. But the guy who had arrived alone in the second car seemed to be in charge. He was a slight man, wearing a short raincoat that looked to be black. Under it he had some kind of a white T-shirt. He was staring at the breached gate and gesturing the others to stay well away from it, as if it was somehow dangerous.

An ex-cop , Reacher thought. Instinctively reluctant to contaminate a crime scene .

Then the five guys formed up close together in a tight arrowhead formation, with the man in the raincoat closest to the wreckage. They advanced on it, slow and wary, one step at a time, leaning forward from their waists, heads thrust forward, like they were puzzled by what they were seeing. Then they stopped and backtracked fast and retreated behind their cars. The engines shut down and the headlight beams shut off and the scene went dark.

Not too dumb , Reacher thought. They figure this could be an ambush. They think we could still be in there .

He watched them until his night vision came back. Then he took out the cell phone he had brought back from Vegas and beeped his way through all the menus until he was on the last number the phone had dialed. He hit the call button and put the phone to his ear and watched out the window to see which of the five guys would answer.

His money was on the guy in the raincoat.

Wrong.

None of the five guys answered.

None of them reacted. None of them pulled a phone from a pocket to check the caller ID. None of them even moved. The ring tone in Reacher’s ear went on and on and then cut to voice mail. He clicked off and redialed and the same thing happened. He watched, and nobody moved a muscle. It was inconceivable that a Director of Security would be out on an emergency alert without his cell phone switched on. It was inconceivable that a Director of Security would ignore an incoming call in such circumstances. Therefore none of these five was the director of security. Not the guy in the raincoat. He was third man on the totem pole, at best, allowing for Swan’s number-two spot. And he was acting like a guy in third place. He was slow, and ponderous. He had no instinctive grasp of tactics. Anybody with half a brain would have figured out his best course of action long ago. A small square building, potential armed hostiles inside, three solid cars at his disposal, he should have solved his problem already. All three cars go in, high speed, different directions, they circle the building, they draw fire, two guys go in the back, two guys go in the front, game over.

Civilians , Reacher thought.

He waited.

Eventually the guy in the raincoat made the right decision. Painfully slow, but he got there in the end. He ordered everyone back in their cars and they maneuvered for a spell and then burst into the lot at high speed. Reacher watched them circle the building a couple of times and then he started the Honda and headed west.