Lee Child - One Shot

Vladimir had gotten a rhythm going. He stared at the East monitor for four seconds, then the North for three. East, two, three, four, North, two, three. East, two, three, four, North, two, three . He didn’t move his chair. Just leaned a little one way, then the other. Beside him Sokolov had a similar thing going south and west. Slightly different intervals. Not perfectly synchronized. But just as good, Vladimir guessed. Maybe even better. Sokolov had spent a lot of time on surveillance.

Reacher walked on. Not fast, not slow. On the map the driveway had looked to be about two hundred yards long. On the ground it felt like an airport runway. Straight as a die. Wide. And long, long, long. He had been walking forever. And he was less than halfway to the house. He walked on. Just kept on going. Looking ahead every step of the way, watching the darkened windows far away in front of him.

He realized his hair wasn’t dripping anymore.

He touched one hand with the other. Dry. Not warm, but no longer cold.

He walked on. He was tempted to run. Running would get him there faster. But running would heat him up. He was approaching the point of no return. He was right out there in no-man’s-land. And he wasn’t shivering. He raised his phone.

“Helen,” he whispered. “I need that diversion.”

Helen took off her heels and left them neatly side by side at the base of the fence. For an absurd moment she felt like a person who piles all her clothes on the beach before she walks into the sea to drown. Then she put her palms down on the dirt like a sprinter in the blocks and took off forward. Just ran crazily, twenty feet, thirty, forty, and then she stopped dead and stood still, facing the house with her arms out wide like a target. Shoot me , she thought. Please shoot me . Then she got scared that maybe she really meant it and she turned and ran back in a wide zigzag loop. Threw herself down and crawled along the fence again until she found her shoes.

Vladimir saw her on the North monitor. Nothing recognizable. Just a brief flare that because of the phosphor technology was smeared and a little time-lagged. But he bent his head closer anyway and stared at the afterimage. One second, two. Sokolov sensed the interruption to his rhythm and glanced over. Three seconds, four.

“Fox?” Vladimir said.

“I didn’t see it,” Sokolov said. “But probably.”

“It ran away again.”

“OK, then.” Sokolov turned back to his own pair of monitors. Glanced at the West view, checked the South, and settled into his regular cadence again.

Cash had a cadence of his own. He was inching his night scope along at what he guessed was the speed of a walking man. But every five seconds he would sweep it suddenly forward and back in case his estimate was off. During one of those rapid traverses he picked up on what looked like a pale green shadow.

“Reacher, I can see you,” he whispered. “You’re visible, soldier.”

Reacher’s voice came back: “What scope have you got on that thing?”

“Litton,” Cash said.

“Expensive, right?”

“Thirty-seven hundred dollars.”

“Got to be better than a lousy thermal camera.”

Cash didn’t reply.

Reacher said: “Well, I’m hoping so, anyway.”

He walked on. Probably the most unnatural thing a human can force himself to do, to walk slowly and surely toward a building that likely has a rifle in it pointing directly at his center mass. If Chenko had any sense at all he would wait, and wait, and wait, until his target was pretty close. And Chenko seemed to have plenty of sense. Fifty yards would be good. Or thirty-five, like Chenko’s range out of the parking garage. Chenko was pretty good at thirty-five yards. That had been made very clear.

He walked on. Transferred the phone to his left and held it near his ear. Took the knife out of his pocket and unsheathed it and held it right-handed, low and easy. Heard Cash say: “You’re totally visible now, soldier. You’re shining like the north star. It’s like you’re on fire.”

Forty yards to go.

Thirty-nine.

Thirty-eight.

“Helen?” he said. “Do it again.”

He heard her voice: “OK.”

He walked on. Held his breath.

Thirty-five yards.

Thirty-four.

Thirty-three.

He breathed out. He walked on doggedly. Twenty-nine yards to go. He heard panting in his ear. Helen, running. He heard Yanni ask, off-mike: “How close is he?” Heard Cash answer: “Not close enough.”

Vladimir leaned forward and said, “There it is again.” He put his fingertip on the screen, as if touch might tell him something. Sokolov glanced across. Sokolov had spent many more hours with the screens than Vladimir. Primarily surveillance had been his job. His, and Raskin’s.

“That’s no fox,” he said. “It’s way too big.”

He watched for five more seconds. The image was weaving left and right at the very limit of the camera’s range. Recognizable size, recognizable shape, inexplicable motion. He stood up and walked to the door. Braced his hands on the frame and leaned out into the hallway.

“Chenko!” he called. “North!”

Behind his back on the West screen a shape as big as his thumb grew larger. It looked like a painting-by-numbers figure done in fluorescent colors. Lime green on the outside, then a band of chrome yellow, with a core of hot red.

Chenko walked through an empty bedroom and opened the window as high as it would go. Then he backed away into the darkness. That way he was invisible from below and invulnerable except to a shot taken from the third story of an adjacent building, and there were no adjacent buildings. He switched on his night scope and raised his rifle. Quartered the open ground two hundred yards out, up and down, left and right.

He saw a woman.

She was running crazily, barefoot, darting left and right, out and back, like she was dancing or playing a phantom game of soccer. Chenko thought: What ? He squeezed the slack out of his trigger and tried to anticipate her next pirouette. Tried to guess where her chest would be a third of a second after he fired. He waited. Then she stopped moving. She stood completely still, facing the house, arms out wide like a target.

Chenko pulled the trigger.

Then he understood. He stepped back to the hallway.

“Decoy!” he screamed. “ Decoy !”

Cash saw the muzzle flash and called, “Shot fired,” and jumped his scope to the north window. The lower pane was raised, the upper pane was fixed. No point in putting a round through the opening. The upward trajectory would guarantee a miss. So he fired at the glass. He figured if he could get a hail of jagged shards going, then that might ruin somebody’s night.

Sokolov was watching the crazy heat image on Vladimir’s screen when he heard Chenko’s shot and his shouted warning. He glanced back at the door and turned to the South monitor. Nothing there. Then he heard return fire and shattering glass upstairs. He pushed back from the table and stepped to the door.

“Are you OK?” he called.

“Decoy,” Chenko called back. “Has to be.”

Sokolov turned and checked all four screens, very carefully.

“No,” he called. “Negative. Definitely nothing incoming.”

Reacher touched the front wall of the house. Old plank siding, painted many times. He was ten feet south of the driveway, ten feet south of the front door, near a window that looked into a dark empty room. The window was a tall rectangle with a lower pane that slid upward behind the upper pane. Maybe the upper pane slid down over the lower pane, too. Reacher didn’t know the name for the style. He had rarely lived in houses and had never owned one. Sash? Double-hung ? He wasn’t sure. The house was much older than it had looked from a distance. Maybe a hundred years. Hundred-year-old house, hundred-year-old window. But did the window still have a hundred-year-old catch? He pressed his cheek against the lower pane and squinted upward.