Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

“How?”

“You and Ms. Neagley come in now, we’ll hold you all for a week. Until the heat dies down. Then we’ll let you go. All four of you.”

“Or?”

“We’ll break O’Donnell’s arms and legs and use his switchblade all over Dixon. After having a little guy time with her first. Then we’ll put them both in the helicopter.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Don’t worry about Little Wing,” Lamaison said. “That’s a done deal. Can’t be stopped now. They’re going to Kashmir anyway. You ever been there? It’s a dump. A real shit hole. Bunch of towel heads fighting one another. Why should you care?”

Reacher said nothing.

Lamaison said, “Do we have a deal?”

“No.”

“You should reconsider. Dixon won’t enjoy what we’ve got in mind.”

“Why would I trust you? I’ll walk in and you’ll shoot me in the head.”

“I agree, it’s a risk,” Lamaison said. “But I think you’ll take it. Because you’re responsible for your people’s situation. You let them down. You’re their leader, and you screwed up. I’ve heard a lot about you. In fact I’m sick of hearing your name. You’ll do what it takes to help them.”

“Where are you?” Reacher asked.

“I’m sure you know.”

Reacher glanced ahead through the windshield. Factored in the effect of the window tint and tried to judge the light.

“We’re two hours away,” he said, with a little tension in his voice.

“Where are you?”

“We’re south of Palmdale.”

“Why?”

“We were going to visit with Dean. To piece it all together, the same way Swan did.”

“Turn around,” Lamaison said. “Right now. For Ms. Dixon’s sake. I bet she’s a screamer. My guys will be all over her. I’ll put her on the phone and let you listen.”

Reacher paused.

“Two hours,” he said. “We’ll talk again.”

He clicked off and dialed Neagley.

“We go in sixty minutes,” he said.

Then he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Sixty minutes later the sky in the east was a dark navy blue, almost black. Visibility was fading fast. Years before, a pedantic schoolteacher in the Pacific somewhere had explained to Reacher that first comes twilight, and then comes dusk, and then comes night. She had insisted that twilight and dusk were not the same thing. If he needed a generic word for evening darkness, he was to use gloaming .

Gloaming was what he had right then. Plenty of it, but not quite as much as he would have liked.

He dialed Neagley and clicked off after one ring. Her window dropped and she waved. A small pale hand in the darkness. He started his car and eased away from the curb. No lights. He headed east toward the arriving night and made a right and three blocks later he was skirting New Age’s fence, clockwise, along the back line of their property. He made another right and came down the side of their lot and coasted to a stop against the curb about two-thirds of the way down. If New Age’s place was a clock, he was stopped on the four. If it was a compass, he was a little ways south of east.

He got out and stood still and listened. Heard nothing. Saw nothing. Highland Park was a populated area, but New Age’s place was part of a commercial zone. The work day was over. People were gone. The streets were dark and quiet.

He opened the Prelude’s trunk. Used his fist to smash the courtesy light. Used his thumbnail to slit the plastic around the Evian bottles. He took one out and unscrewed the top and took a long drink. Then he poured the rest of the water away in the gutter. Stood the empty bottle upright in the trunk. He repeated the process eleven more times. Ended up with a neat line of twelve empty one-liter bottles.

Then he took out the gas can.

Five gallons, U.S. liquid measure, which added up to close to nineteen liters. He filled the bottles, very carefully. The benzene fragrance of unleaded gasoline came up at him. He liked it. It was one of the world’s great smells. When the twelfth bottle was full he put the can on the ground. Seven liters still in it. Almost two gallons.

He tore open the bag of polishing rags.

They were foot-square pieces of white cotton jersey. Like undershirts. He rolled them tight, like cigars, and eased them down into the necks of the bottles. Half-in, half-out. The gasoline soaked upward, pale and colorless.

Molotov cocktails. A crude but effective weapon, invented by Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, named by Finns during their struggle against the Red Army in 1939, as a taunt toward the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. I never knew a tank could burn so long , a Finnish veteran had once recalled.

Tanks, buildings, it was all the same to Reacher.

He rolled a thirteenth rag and laid it on the ground. Dripped gas from the can on it until it was soaked. He found the box of wooden kitchen matches and jammed them in his pocket. Lifted the twelve bottles of gas out of the trunk, one by one, carefully, and stood them upright on the road six feet behind the Prelude’s rear bumper. Then he picked up the thirteenth rag and closed the trunk lid and trapped the rag in it, three-quarters out. In the darkness it looked like the car had a tiny white tail. Like a silver lamb.

Showtime , he thought.

He struck a match and held it against the rag trapped in the trunk lid until the rag was burning bright. Then he flicked the match away and picked up the first Molotov cocktail. Lit its wick off the burning rag and stepped back and hurled it high in the air, over the fence. It tumbled through a lazy blazing arc and burst against the base of the main building’s end wall. Gas exploded and flared and then settled into a small burning pool.

He threw the second bomb. Same procedure. He lit the wick off the burning rag, stepped back, and threw hard. The bottle sailed through the same arc and hit the same place and burst. There was a brief white-hot flare and then the pool of flames settled and spread wider. They started to lick upward against the siding.

He threw the third bomb directly into the fire. And the fourth. He aimed the fifth a little to the left. It started a brand-new fire. He followed it with the six and the seventh. His shoulder started to ache from the effort of the giant throws. The grass all around the building’s end wall started to burn. Smoke started to drift. He threw the eighth bottle into the gap between the two fires. It fell short and burst and set fire to the grass about eight feet out. Now there was a large irregular patch of flames, maybe ten feet wide, maybe eight feet deep. Maybe four feet high, red and orange and green with chemical acceleration.

He threw the ninth bottle harder, and farther to the left. It exploded near the building’s door. The tenth bottle followed it. It didn’t burst. It rolled and leaked and burning gasoline welled out and flames raced and crackled through the dry grass. He paused and picked his spot and used the eleventh bottle to fill the gap on the building’s corner. The twelfth and last bottle followed it. He heaved it hard and it hit the siding high up and burst into flames and burning gas spattered the whole end wall.

He opened the trunk lid and knocked the burning rag out and stamped on it. Then he stepped to the fence and peered through. The grass at the base of the building’s end wall and all along the front wall as far as the door was burning fiercely. Flames were leaping high and smoke was pouring upward. The building itself was built of metal and was resisting. But it would be getting warm inside.

Soon be getting warmer , Reacher thought.

He screwed the lid on the gas can and wound up and hurled it like a discus thrower. It soared up over the fence and spun and wobbled through the air and landed dead center in the flames. Thin red flammable plastic, two gallons of gas inside. There was a split second’s pause and then the can exploded in a huge white fireball. For a time it looked like the whole place was on fire. And when the fireball eventually died the flames left behind were twice as high as before and the paint on the siding was starting to burn.