Lee Child - Persuader

They said nothing.

“I’m an inch away from nailing Quinn,” I said. “I’m not butting out now.”

They said nothing.

“And I can get Teresa Daniel back,” I said.

“ATF can get Teresa Daniel back,” Eliot said. “We go to ATF now, we’re off the hook with our own people. The maid was theirs, not ours. No harm, no foul.”

“ATF isn’t up to speed,” I said. “Teresa will be caught in the crossfire.”

There was a long silence.

“Monday,” Villanueva said. “We’ll sit on it until Monday. We’ll have to tell ATF by Monday at the latest.”

“We should tell them right now,” Eliot said.

Villanueva nodded. “But we won’t. And if necessary I’ll make sure that we don’t. I say we give Reacher until Monday.”

Eliot said nothing more. He just looked away. Duffy laid her head back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling.

“Shit,” she said.

“It’ll be over by Monday,” I said. “I’ll bring Teresa back to you here and then you can head home and make all the calls you want.”

She was quiet for a whole minute. Then she spoke.

“OK,” she said. “You can go back. And you should probably go back right now. You’ve been gone a long time. That’s suspicious in itself.”

“OK,” I said.

“But think first,” she said. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“I’m not your responsibility,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Just answer the question. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Now think again. Still sure?”

“Yes,” I said again.

“We’ll be here,” she said. “Call us if you need us.”

“OK,” I said.

“Still sure?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So go.”

She didn’t get up. None of them did. I just eased myself off the bed and walked out through the silent room. I was halfway back to the Cadillac when Terry Villanueva came out after me. He waved me to wait and walked across to me. He moved stiff and slow, like the old guy he was.

“Bring me in,” he said. “Any chance you get, I want to be there.”

I said nothing.

“I could help you out,” he said.

“You already did.”

“I need to do more. For the kid.”

“Duffy?”

He shook his head. “No, Teresa.”

“You got a connection?”

“I got a responsibility,” he said.

“How?”

“I was her mentor,” he said. “It worked out that way. You know how that is?”

I nodded. I knew exactly, totally, and completely how that was.

“Teresa worked for me for a spell,” he said. “I trained her. I broke her in, basically. Then she moved up. But ten weeks ago she came back to me and asked if I thought she should accept this mission. She had doubts.”

“But you said yes.”

He nodded. “Like a damn fool.”

“Could you really have stopped her?”

“Probably. She would have listened to me if I had made a case why she shouldn’t do it. She’d have made up her own mind, but she’d have listened.”

“I understand,” I said.

And I did, no question about it. I left him standing there in the motel lot and slid into the car and watched him watch me drive away.

I stayed on Route One all the way through Biddeford and Saco and Old Orchard Beach and then struck out east on the long lonely road out to the house. I checked my watch as I got close and figured I had been away two whole hours, of which only forty minutes were legitimate. Twenty minutes to the warehouse, twenty back. But I didn’t expect to have to explain myself to anybody. Beck would never know I hadn’t come straight home and the others would never know I had been supposed to. I figured I was right there in the endgame, freewheeling toward victory.

But I was wrong.

I knew it before Paulie got halfway through opening the gate. He came out of his house and stepped across to the latch. He was wearing his suit. No coat. He lifted the latch by butting it upward with his clenched fist. Everything was still normal. I had seen him open the gate a dozen times and he was doing nothing he hadn’t done before. He wrapped his fists around the bars. Pulled the gate. But before he got halfway through opening it he stopped it dead. He just made enough space to squeeze his giant frame through. Then he stepped out to meet me. He walked around toward my window and when he got six feet from the car he stopped and smiled and took two guns out of his pockets. It happened in less than a second. Two pockets, two hands, two guns. They were my Colt Anacondas. The steel looked dull in the gray light. I could see they were both loaded. There were bright snub-nose copper jackets winking at me from every chamber I could see. Remington.44 Magnums, without a doubt. Full metal jacket. Eighteen bucks for a box of twenty. Plus tax. Ninety-five cents each. Twelve of them. Eleven dollars and forty cents’ worth of precision ammunition, ready to go, five dollars and seventy cents in each hand. And he was holding those hands very steady. They were like rocks. The left was aimed a little ahead of the Cadillac’s front tire. The right was aimed directly at my head. His fingers were tight on the triggers. The muzzles weren’t moving at all. Not even a fraction. He was like a statue.

I did all the usual things. I ran all the numbers. The Cadillac was a big car with long doors but he had put himself just far enough away that I couldn’t jerk my door open and hit him with it. And the car was stationary. If I hit the gas he would fire both guns instantly. The bullet from the one in his right hand might well pass behind my head but the car’s front tire would roll straight into the path of the one from his left. Then I would hit the gates hard and lose momentum and with a blown front tire and maybe with damaged steering I would be a sitting duck. He would fire ten more times and even if I wasn’t killed outright I would be badly wounded and the car would be crippled. He could just step over and watch me bleed while he reloaded.

I could sneak it into reverse and howl away backward but reverse gear is pretty low on most cars and therefore I would be moving slowly. And I would be moving directly away from him in a perfectly straight line. No lateral displacement. None of the usual benefits of a moving target. And a Remington.44 Magnum leaves a gun barrel at more than eight hundred miles an hour. No easy way to outrun one.

I could try my Beretta. It would have to be a very fast snap shot through the window glass. But the window glass on a Cadillac is pretty thick. They make it that way to keep the interior quiet. Even if I got the gun out and fired before he did, it would be pure chance if I hit him. The glass would shatter for sure, but unless I took all the time I needed to make absolutely certain the trajectory was exactly perpendicular to the window the bullet would deflect. Perhaps radically. It could miss him altogether. And even if it hit him it would be pure chance if it hurt him. I remembered kicking him in the kidney. Unless I happened to hit him in the eye or straight through the heart he would think he had been stung by a bee.

I could buzz the window down. But it was very slow. And I could predict exactly what would happen. He would straighten his arm while the glass was moving and bring the right-hand Colt within three feet of my head. Even if I got the Beretta out real fast he would still have a hell of a jump on me. The odds were not good. Not good at all. Stay alive, Leon Garber used to say. Stay alive and see what the next minute brings.

Paulie dictated the next minute.

“Put it in Park,” he yelled.

I heard him clearly, even through the thick glass. I moved the gearshift into Park.

“Right hand where I can see it,” he yelled.

I put my right palm up against the window, fingers extended, just like when I signaled I see five people to Duke.