Lee Child - One Shot

The five-week journey ended on the eastern bank of the Volga, where the recruits were unloaded like cattle and forced to run straight for a small assemblage of old river ferries and pleasure cruisers. Half a mile away on the opposite bank was a vision from hell. A city, larger than anything the Zec had ever seen before, was in ruins, belching smoke and fire. The river was burning and exploding with mortar shells. The sky was full of airplanes, which lined up and fell into dives, dropping bombs, firing guns. There were corpses everywhere, and body parts, and screaming wounded.

The Zec was forced onto a small boat that had a gaily-colored striped sunshade. It was crammed tight with soldiers. Nobody had room to move. Nobody had a weapon. The boat lurched out into the freezing current and airplanes fell on it like flies on shit. The crossing lasted fifteen minutes and at the end of it the Zec was slimy with his neighbors’ blood.

He was forced off onto a narrow wooden pier and made to line up single file and then made to run toward the city, past a staging post where the second phase of his military training took place: two quartermasters were doling out loaded rifles and spare ammunition clips in an endless alternate sequence and chanting what later struck the Zec as a poem, or a song, or a hymn to complete and utter insanity, over and over again without pausing:

The one with the rifle shoots

The one without follows him

When the one with the rifle is killed

The one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots.

The Zec was handed an ammunition clip. No rifle. He was shoved forward, and blindly followed the back of the man ahead. He turned a corner. Passed in front of a Red Army machine-gun nest. At first he thought the front line must therefore be very close. But then a commissar with a flag and another huge megaphone roared at him: No retreat! If you turn back even one step we will shoot you down ! So the Zec ran helplessly onward and turned another corner and stepped into a hail of German bullets. He stopped, half-turned, and was hit three times in the arms and legs. He was bowled over and came to rest lying on the shattered remains of a brick wall and within minutes was buried under a mounting pile of corpses.

He came to forty-eight hours later in an improvised hospital and made his first acquaintance with Soviet military justice: harsh, ponderous, ideological, but running strictly in accordance with its own arcane rules. The matter at issue was caused by his having half-turned: Were his wounds inflicted by the Motherland’s enemy, or had he been retreating toward his own side’s guns? Because of the physical ambiguity he was spared execution and sentenced to a penal battalion instead. Thus began a process of survival that had so far lasted sixty-three years.

A process he intended to continue.

He dialed Grigor Linsky’s number.

“We can assume the soldier is talking,” he said. “Whatever he knows, they all know now. Therefore it’s time to get ourselves an insurance policy.”

Franklin said, “We’re really no further ahead. Are we? No way is Emerson going to accept a damn thing unless we give him more than we’ve got right now.”

“So work the victim list,” Reacher said.

“That could take forever. Five lives, five life histories.”

“So let’s focus.”

“Great. Terrific. Just tell me which one you want me to focus on.”

Reacher nodded. Recalled Helen Rodin’s description of what she had heard. The first shot, and then a tiny pause, and then the next two. Then another pause, a little longer, but really only a split second, and then the last three . He closed his eyes. In his mind he pictured Bellantonio’s audio graph from the cell phone voice mail. Pictured his own mute simulation, in the gloom of the new parking garage, his right arm extended like a rifle: click, click-click, click-click-click .

“Not the first one,” he said. “Not the first cold shot. No guarantee of hitting anything with that. Therefore the first victim was meaningless. Part of the window dressing. Not the last three, either. That was bang-bang-bang. The deliberate miss, and more window dressing. The job was already done by then.”

“So, the second or the third. Or both of them.”

Click, click-click.

Reacher opened his eyes.

“The third,” he said. “There’s a rhythm there. The first cold shot, then a lead-in, and then the money shot. The target. Then a break. His eye is lagging in the scope. He’s making sure the target is down. It is. So then the last three.”

“Who was the third?” Helen asked.

“The woman,” Franklin said.

Linsky called Chenko, and then Vladimir, and then Sokolov. He explained the mission and pulled them all in tighter. Franklin’s office had no back entrance. There was just the exposed staircase. The target’s car was right there on the apron. Easy.

Reacher said, “Tell me about the woman.”

Franklin shuffled his notes. Put them in a new order of priority.

“Her name was Oline Archer,” he said. “Caucasian female, married, no children, thirty-seven years old, lived west of here in the outer suburbs.”

“Employed in the DMV building,” Reacher said. “If she was the specific target, Charlie had to know where she was and when she would be coming out.”

Franklin nodded. “Employed by the DMV itself. Been there a year and a half.”

“Doing what exactly?”

“Clerical supervisor. Doing whatever they do in there.”

“So was it work-related?” Ann Yanni asked.

“Too long of a counter delay?” Franklin said. “A bad photo on a driver’s license? I doubt it. I checked the national databases. DMV clerks don’t get killed by customers. That just doesn’t happen.”

“So what about her personal life?” Helen Rodin asked.

“Nothing jumped out at me,” Franklin said. “She was just an ordinary woman. But I’ll keep digging. I’ll go down a few levels. Got to be something there.”

“Do it fast,” Rosemary Barr said. “For my brother’s sake. We have to get him out.”

“We need medical opinions for that,” Ann Yanni said. “Regular doctors now, not psychiatrists.”

“Will NBC pay?” Helen Rodin asked.

“If it’s likely to work.”

“It should,” Rosemary said. “I mean, shouldn’t it? Parkinson’s is a real thing, isn’t it? Either he’s got it or he hasn’t.”

“It might work at trial,” Reacher said. “A plausible reason why James Barr couldn’t have done it, plus a plausible narrative about someone else doing it? That’s usually how you create reasonable doubt.”

“ Plausible is a big word,” Franklin said. “And reasonable doubt is a risky concept. Better to get Alex Rodin to drop the charges altogether. Which means convincing Emerson first.”

“I can’t talk to either one of them,” Reacher said.

“I can,” Helen said.

“I can,” Franklin said.

“And I sure as hell can,” Ann Yanni said. “We all can, apart from you.”

“But you might not want to,” Reacher said.

“Why not?” Helen asked.

“You’re not going to like this part very much.”

“Why not?” Helen asked again.

“Think,” Reacher said. “Work backward. The thing with Sandy being killed, and the thing in the sports bar Monday night, why did those two things happen?”

“To tie you up. To prevent you hurting the case.”

“Correct. Two attempts, same aim, same goal, same perpetrator.”

“Obviously.”

“And the thing Monday night started with me being followed from my hotel. Sandy and Jeb Oliver and his other pals were cruising around, standing by, waiting until someone called them and told them where I ended up. So really it started with me being followed to my hotel. Much earlier in the day.”