The Hard Way

“That’s bullshit.”

“I found Hobart. Knight told him all about it. While they were busy getting their hands and feet cut off.”

Silence.

Reacher said, “Don’t get killed for this kind of crap.”

Burke looked at Groom. Groom looked at Burke. They both looked at Kowalski. There was a long pause. Then Burke looked up.

“OK,” he said. “I guess we could sit this one out.”

Groom nodded. Kowalski shrugged. Reacher stood up.

“Smart decision,” he said. He moved toward the door. Stopped at the hearth and kicked his shoes against the stone again. Asked, “Where are Lane and the others?”

Quiet for a beat. Then Groom said, “There was no room here. They went up to Norwich. The city. Some hotel up there. The guy here recommended it.”

Reacher nodded. “And when is he locking and loading?”

Another pause.

“Dawn the day after tomorrow.”

“What did he buy?”

“Submachine guns. MP5Ks, one each plus two spares. Ammunition, night vision, flashlights, various bits and pieces.”

“Are you going to call him? As soon as I’m gone?”

“No,” Burke said. “He’s not the kind of guy you call with this kind of news.”

“OK,” Reacher said. Then he stepped fast to his left and lifted the poker off its hook. Reversed it in his hands and spun around in one smooth movement and swung it hard and level and caught Carter Groom across the upper right arm, hard and straight and level, halfway between the elbow and the shoulder. The poker was a heavy iron bar and Reacher was a strong and angry man and Groom’s humerus bone shattered like a piece of dropped china. Groom opened his mouth wide in sudden pain and shock but before any kind of a scream got out Reacher had sidestepped two paces to his left and broken Kowalski’s left arm with a vicious backhanded blow. Kowalski was left-handed. Burke and Groom were right-handed. Reacher knocked Kowalski out of his way with his hip and wound up like an old newsreel of Mickey Mantle getting ready to hit one out of the park and smashed Burke across the right wrist with a line drive and pulverized every bone in there. Then he breathed out and turned away and stepped to the fireplace and put the poker back on its hook.

“Just making sure,” he said. “You didn’t entirely convince me with your answers. Especially the one about Lane’s hotel.”

Then he walked out of the saloon bar and closed the door quietly behind him. It was exactly eleven thirty-one in the evening, according to the clock in his head.

At exactly eleven thirty-two by the platinum Rolex on his left wrist Edward Lane closed the Toyota’s rear door on nine Heckler amp; Koch MP5K submachine guns, sixty thirty-round magazines of 9mm Parabellums, seven sets of night-vision goggles, ten flashlights, six rolls of duct tape, and two long coils of rope. Then John Gregory started the engine. Behind him on the rear bench were Perez and Addison, quiet and pensive. Lane climbed into the front passenger seat and Gregory turned the truck around and took off west. Standard Special Forces doctrine called for dawn assaults, but it also called for the insertion of a small advance force for a lengthy period of lying-up and prior surveillance.

At exactly eleven thirty-three by the clock on her night table Jade woke up, confused and hot and feverish with time-zone confusion. She sat up in bed for a spell, dazed and quiet. Then she swung her feet to the floor. Crossed the room slowly and pulled back her curtain. It was dark outside. And she could go outside in the dark. Taylor had said so. She could go visit the barns, and find the animals she knew had to be there.

Reacher retrieved his G-36 from under the saloon bar window at eleven thirty-four precisely and set out to walk back on the road, which he figured would make the return trip faster. Five miles, level ground, no hills, decent pace. He anticipated about seventy-five minutes total. He was tired, but content. Fairly satisfied. Three trigger fingers out of action, the opposing force degraded to about fifty-seven percent of its original capacity, the odds evened up to an attractive four-on-four, some useful intelligence gained. Groom’s ingrained loyalty had led him to lie about Lane’s hotel and probably about the timing of the pla

Forewarned is forearmed, Reacher thought. Not bad for an evening’s work. He walked on, energy in his stride, a grim smile on his face.

Alone in the dark. Invincible.

That feeling lasted exactly an hour and a quarter. It ended just after he walked the length of the Grange Farm driveway and saw the dark and silent bulk of the house looming in front of him. He had called the password at least half a dozen separate times. At first quietly, and then louder.

Canaries, canaries, canaries.

Canaries, canaries, canaries.

He had gotten no response at all.

CHAPTER 73

WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT Reacher raised his rifle to the ready position. Stock nestled high against his right shoulder, safety off, right index finger inside the trigger guard, barrel just a degree or two below the horizontal. Long years of training, absorbed right down at the cellular level, permanently written in his DNA. No point in having a weapon at all unless it’s ready for instant use, his instructors had screamed.

He stood absolutely still. Listened hard. Heard nothing at all. He moved his head left. Listened. Nothing. He moved his head right. Nothing.

He tried the password one more time, soft and low: Canaries.

He heard no reply.

Lane, he thought.

He wasn’t surprised. Surprise was strictly for amateurs, and Reacher was a professional. He wasn’t upset, either. He had learned a long time ago that the only way to keep fear and panic at bay was to concentrate ruthlessly on the job at hand. So he spent no time thinking about Lauren Pauling or Kate Lane. Or Jackson or Taylor. Or Jade. No time at all. He just walked backward and to his left. Preprogrammed. Like a machine. Silently. Away from the house. Making himself smaller as a target and improving his angle of view. He checked the windows. They were all dark. Just a faint red glow from the kitchen. The remains of the fire. The front door was closed. Near it was the faint shape of the Mini Cooper, cold and gray in the dark. It looked odd. Canted down at the front, like it was kneeling.

He walked toward it through the dark, slow and stealthy. Knelt down on the driver’s side near the front fender and felt for the tire. It wasn’t there. There were torn shreds of rubber and a vicious curled length of bead wire. And shards of plastic from the shattered wheel well lining. That was all. He shuffled quietly around the tiny hood to the other side. Same situation. The wheel had its alloy rim on the ground.

A front-wheel-drive car, comprehensively disabled. Both wheels. One had not been enough. A single tire can be changed. Two submachine gun bursts had been necessary. Twice the risk of detection. Although in Reacher’s experience an MP5 set to fire bursts of three sounded more i