Lee Child - One Shot

The Zec called up from the floor below: “Was that him?”

“No,” Chenko called back. “Just some rich kid out for a drive.”

Reacher led the way through the dark, four people single file on the edge of the blacktop with the gravel plant’s high wire fence on their left and huge circular fields across the road on their right. After the roar of the diesel and the thump of the music the silence felt absolute. There was nothing to hear except the hiss of irrigation water. Reacher raised his hand and stopped them where the fence turned a right angle and ran away east. The corner post was double-thickness and braced with angled spars. Grass and weeds from the shoulder were clumped up high. He stepped forward and checked the view. He was on a perfect diagonal from the northwest corner of the house. He had an equal forty-five-degree line of sight to the north facade and the west. Because of the diagonal the distance was about three hundred yards. Visibility was very poor. There was a glimmer of cloudy moonlight, but beyond that there was nothing at all.

He stepped back. Pointed at Cash, pointed at the base of the corner post.

“This is your position,” he whispered. “Check it out.”

Cash moved forward and knelt down in the weeds. Six feet away he was invisible. He switched on his night scope and raised his rifle. Tracked it slowly left and right, up and down.

“Three stories plus a basement,” he whispered. “High-pitched shingle roof, plank siding, many windows, one door visible to the west. No cover at all in any direction. They bulldozed everything flat, all around. Nothing’s growing. You’re going to look like a beetle on a bed- sheet out there.”

“Cameras?”

The rifle tracked a steady line from left to right. “Under the eaves. One on the north side, one on the west. We can assume the same on the sides we can’t see.”

“How big are they?”

“How big do you want them to be?”

“Big enough for you to hit.”

“Funny man. If they were spy cameras built into cigarette lighters I could hit them from here.”

“OK, so listen up,” Reacher whispered. “This is how we’re going to do it. I’m going to get to my starting position. Then we’re all going to wait for Franklin to get back and put the comms net on the air. Then I’m going to make a move. If I don’t feel good I’m going to call in fire on those cameras. I say the word, I want you to take them out. Two shots, bang, bang . That’ll slow them down, maybe ten or twenty seconds.”

“Negative,” Cash said. “I won’t direct live rounds into a wooden structure we know contains a noncombatant hostage.”

“She’ll be in the basement,” Reacher said.

“Or the attic.”

“You’d be firing at the eaves.”

“Exactly. She’s in the attic, she hears gunfire, she hits the deck, that’s exactly where I’m aiming. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”

“Spare me,” Reacher said. “Take the risk.”

“Negative. Won’t do it.”

“Christ, Gunny, you are one uptight Marine, you know that?”

Cash didn’t speak. Reacher stepped forward again and peered around the corner of the fence. Took a long hard look and pulled back.

“OK,” he said. “New plan. Just watch the west windows. You see muzzle flash, you put suppressing fire into the room it’s coming out of. We can assume the hostage won’t be in the same room as the sniper.”

Cash said nothing.

“Will you do that at least?” Reacher asked.

“You might be in the house already.”

“I’ll take my chances. Voluntary assumption of risk, OK? Helen can witness my consent. She’s a lawyer.”

Cash said nothing.

“No wonder you came in third,” Reacher said. “You need to lighten up.”

“OK,” Cash said. “I see hostile gunfire, I’ll return it.”

“Hostile is about the only kind you’re going to see, don’t you think? Since you only gave me a damn knife?”

“Army,” Cash said. “Always bitching about something.”

“What do I do?” Helen asked.

“New plan,” Reacher said. He touched the fence with his palm. “Keep low, follow the fence around the corner, stop opposite the house. Stay down. They won’t pick you up there. It’s too far. Listen to your phone. If I need a distraction I’ll ask you to run a little ways toward the house and then back again. A zigzag, or a circle. Out and back. Real fast. Just enough to put a blip on their screen. No danger. By the time they move a rifle around, you’ll be back at the fence.”

She nodded. Didn’t speak.

“And me?” Ann Yanni asked.

“You stay with Cash. You’re the ethics police. He gets cold feet about helping me out, you kick his ass, OK?”

Nobody spoke.

“All set?” Reacher asked.

“Set,” they said, one after the other.

Reacher walked away into the darkness on the other side of the road.

He kept on walking, off the blacktop, across the shoulder, across the stony margin of the field, onward, right into the field, all the way into the middle of the soaking crop. He waited until the irrigation boom rolled slowly around and caught up with him. Then he turned ninety degrees and walked south with it, directly underneath it, keeping pace, letting the ceaseless water rain down and soak his hair and his skin and his clothes. The boom pulled away as it followed its circular path and Reacher kept straight on at a tangent and walked into the next field. Waited once again for the boom to find him and then walked on under it, matching its speed, raising his arms high and wide to catch as much drenching as he could. Then that boom swung away and left him and he walked on to find the next one. And the next, and the next. When at last he was opposite the driveway entrance he simply walked in a circle, under the last boom, waiting for his cell phone to vibrate, like a man caught in a monsoon.

Cash’s cell phone vibrated against his hip and he pulled it out and clicked it on. Heard Franklin’s voice, quiet and cautious in his ear.

“Check in, please,” it said.

Cash heard Helen say: “Here.”

Yanni said, “Here,” from three feet behind him.

Cash said, “Here.”

Then he heard Reacher say: “Here.”

Franklin said, “OK, you’re all loud and clear, and the ball is in your court.”

Cash heard Reacher say: “Gunny, check the house.”

Cash lifted the rifle and swept left to right. “No change.”

Reacher said: “I’m on my way.”

Then there was nothing but silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A whole minute. Two minutes.

Cash heard Reacher ask: “Gunny, do you see me?”

Cash lifted the rifle again and swept the length of the driveway from its mouth all the way to the house. “Negative. I don’t see you. Where are you?”

“About thirty yards in.”

Cash moved the rifle. Estimated thirty yards from the road and stared through the scope. Saw nothing. Nothing at all. “Good work, soldier. Keep going.”

Yanni crawled forward. Whispered in Cash’s ear. “Why don’t you see him?”

“Because he’s nuts.”

“No, explain it to me. You’ve got a night scope, right?”

“The best money can buy,” Cash said. “And it works off heat, just like their cameras.” Then he pointed away to his right. “But my guess is Reacher walked through the fields. Soaked himself in water. It’s coming straight up from the aquifer, stone cold. So right now he’s close to ambient temperature. I can’t see him; they can’t see him.”

“Smart,” Yanni said.

“Brave,” Cash said. “But ultimately dumb. Because he’s drying out every step of the way. And getting warmer.”

Reacher walked through the dark in the dirt ten feet south of the driveway. Not fast, not slow. His shoes were soaked and they were sticking to the mud. Almost coming off. He was so cold he was shivering violently. Which was bad. Shivering is a physiological reaction designed to warm a cold body fast. And he didn’t want to be warm. Not yet.