Make Me (44 page)

She nodded. Westwood nodded. Reacher took up position, right of dead center, with his H&K ready. New mag, full auto. Chang mirrored him exactly, left of center.

Westwood bent down and grasped the handle.

He threw open the door and jumped back.

There was no hole.

Chapter
57

The hatch assembly had been
bought in a store and then brought home and cemented down on a flat concrete floor. No hole, no stair head. No penetration of any kind. A continuous unbroken slab. The same pebbly surface on the left of the hatch, and the right of the hatch, and under the hatch.

Like a blind eye.

A fake.

A decoy.

Reacher said, “My fault. I wasn’t thinking.”

Westwood said, “Spilled milk. But we need to know where it really is.”

“No,” Chang said. “We need to know if they used it yet.”

Which question was immediately answered by a supersonic
crack
in the air and a hiss of rifling whine and the granular punch of a NATO round passing through a wooden wall, a yard from their heads. Followed instantly by the blast of the rifle itself. Sound waves were slower than bullets. But in this case not much later. Which meant the rifle was close. A hundred feet, Reacher thought. Which was closer than close. It was heading toward point-blank range, even for these guys.

They hustled inside, and another round punched through the wood, leaving a bright spot of sun. And another, eight feet away. Through-the-wall tactics. Sight unseen. Purely random. This was the A-team, Reacher thought. These were the guys who could hit the side of a barn. He walked past tangles of metal to the far back corner. Invisible from the outside. And fairly invulnerable. Not protected by any kind of a physical shield, but protected by the lottery of aiming blind. The walls weren’t worth a damn, but numbers never lied.

He kicked out the back wall siding, low down near the floor, a gap two feet high, and four feet long, and then five, as he punched more boards clear. Big enough to crawl out. First Westwood, then Chang. Another round punched through. Then Reacher. They backed off, keeping the building in line. Behind them was nothing but wheat. To the right of behind them was the building near the broken fence. With the dead guys. The backhoe was parked directly right of them. About twenty yards away. Ahead on the right were the movie studio and the house. Ahead on the left was the generator shed. Plenty of places.

But all of them the wrong side of open ground. Twenty yards minimum. Twenty steps. A long way. Not impossible. It depended on the other guys. How they aimed. How they were trained. If they were trained. A guy who was taught the front-sight mantra might focus so hard he could lose his peripheral vision. Just in the moment. It was possible a guy could walk away unnoticed. It was possible a guy in a gorilla suit could walk away. It would depend on the degree of focus. A person might get away with it.

But three people wouldn’t.

Reacher whispered, “Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll come back out and get you.”

Chang said, “Back out of where?”

“I’m going back in the building.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Not really. Look at what kind of shooters they are. It’s a math thing. To do with probability. I’m no less safe going right where they’re aiming.”

“That’s nuts.”

“It’s a big wall. What are the chances? I’m more likely to develop a rare heart condition on the way there.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“OK, but Westwood stays here. War correspondents maneuver with the second wave.”

Westwood said, “Is that what I am?”

“No, I’m trying to make you feel good. You’re thinking of the book rights.”

“Not completely.”

“Either way, stay here.”

—

Reacher and Chang
walked back to the building, and crawled back inside. The spots of sun made a large constellation. Mostly high. Reacher’s taller brother might have had a problem. But Reacher himself would have been untroubled, and Chang unscathed. Another round passed through, a punch, a
whang,
another spot of sun, high and way to the left, another losing ticket.

Reacher said, “If it’s truly random, all locations are equally likely. Even locations that have been hit before.”

He put his eye to a spot of sun and squinted out.

He said, distorted because his cheek was pressed against the board, “We need to see their muzzle flashes. Then we can chase them off. I want them running.”

Another round passed through, punch,
whang,
sun. Perfect height, but ten feet too far to the right.

“I see one of them,” Reacher said.

Dust in the air. He scraped a blink against the wood.

They waited.

Another round. Punch,
whang,
sun. High and left.

Reacher peeled away from the wall. He said, “I got them both. They’re both the same. The back left corner of the movie studio. About a hundred and ten feet. They’re taking turns, rolling around the corner and bringing their guns up. It’s like a movie about the Marines. One of them is the hog farmer and the other one has hair like a weather guy on TV.”

“Can we get them from here?”

“We can waste a magazine shutting them up for a minute. Then we can move down to the front corner of the movie studio.”

“And do what? Sneak around from corner to corner? Front to back? It’s an awful long way. It’s a rectangular building. Most buildings are.”

“Marines would go through the building. They’d come out the end wall. That’s what anti-tank weapons are for.”

“What would we do?”

“We would take a chance. We would wait for a magazine change.”

Chang said, “Not good enough.”

“You wouldn’t like the good-enough plan.”

“Are you asking me apologetically?”

“You bet your ass.”

“What is the good-enough plan?”

His head hurt.

He said, “It’s a pact with the devil. It guarantees one, but only one. The other guy runs. And apart from that, it’s going to be unpleasant.”

—

Reacher fired first,
because Chang was the faster runner. He stepped between the open doors and aimed at the back left corner of the studio, about two-thirds up, and he saw some splinters, but not enough for two whole seconds. But it shut them up. Chang took over, a mag of thirty, full auto, two whole seconds, and Reacher ran, for the near front corner of the studio, where he reloaded and fired down the length of the building, corner to corner, another whole mag, while Chang ran and joined him, pressing in behind him, out of breath.

“Ready?” he said.

She didn’t answer.

They slipped in the studio door. The vestibule. The smell. The small kitchen, with the mugs and the bottles of water.

They waited.

They heard a noise. A guy rolling around the corner. Like a movie about the Marines.

They waited.

They heard the shot. Aimed at the now-empty and now-distant building. Maybe a hit, maybe not. Either way, Reacher leaned out the studio door and fired half a mag back. No expectations. No time for finesse. But enough time for a message.

Your opponents are now in the building.

Right in your business
.

Reacher and Chang backed in, backward past the bathroom, backward past the aprons, backward through the door at the end. The lights were still on. The woman in white was still there. She hadn’t moved. They stood facing away, like cameramen who had turned to answer a question.

They waited.

The hunters were now the hunted. Their prey was luring them into a bottleneck. They had to show themselves, single file in a narrow hallway, with the lights on. Like walking up a motel staircase two by two. The smart money said don’t go in. Not ever. But they would. They had to. It was their domain. And still their future. All the guys Reacher had ever known, fraud, theft, homicide, and treason, right up to the very end believed there was some chance of getting away with it, and therefore something should be salvaged, if possible. No one wanted to start over with nothing. These guys might save most of their inventory. And their equipment. Reacher assumed high definition cameras were expensive.

So one of them would step inside. But only one. The surprise ending worked only once.

They waited.

Human nature.

The hog farmer showed up. Big hands, broad shoulders, clothes all covered with dirt. Peering around the corner, very cautious, committed to nothing at all except a brief glance. Pressing hard against the wall. Nothing showing. A shoulder, perhaps. Or a nose. Peering again, around the corner, a little farther, leaning out an inch.

Reacher shot him in the forehead. The gentlest touch on the trigger, barely there, in and out, a purring stitch of ten. Game over. Which the last guy heard, obviously, and therefore the last guy was now running. He was all alone. Suddenly prey to primeval fears. Suddenly free to act on them. No witnesses.

In military circles aggressive pursuit was much admired, and any excuse to get out of the room was a good one, so Reacher ran too, with Chang right behind him.

Chapter
58

They hurdled the hog farmer
and spilled out the studio door and headed half left, aiming around the end of the house to the mouth of the driveway. Because the driveway was the goal. Had to be. Human nature. Escape. The only way out. Everything else was wheat.

They saw him sixty feet ahead, running, looking back, his M16 in one hand and nothing in the other. He was a stocky guy with a red face and big waves of hair all scooped up around his head. He was wearing blue jeans that looked starched. He got near the driveway mouth and glanced back. They ducked in closer to the house. The guy was all alone in the landscape. The hog pen was behind him, and then nothing but wheat before Missouri. The driveway was on his right. Twenty miles to Mother’s Rest.

The guy stood still.

Chang said, “Can you hit him from here?”

Reacher didn’t answer.

She said, “You OK?”

He said, “Ninety percent.”

Which was how he saw it. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing specific. No broken bone, no bleeding wound. But nothing was working right. Not exactly.
The brain is not the same thing as an arm
.

Chang said, “How do we do this?”

Reacher counted back in his head. The rounds aimed at the small building. Punch,
whang
. How many?

Memory.

He stepped out a pace.

The guy with the jeans and the hair raised his rifle.

An M16 at sixty feet. Theoretically a problem. Any competent rifleman could hit with a long gun at sixty feet. Less than forty barrel lengths, for an M16. Practically touching distance. But the guy wasn’t a competent rifleman. That had been proved. At the small building. And now he had been running. Now he was breathing hard. His chest was heaving. His heart was thumping.

Reacher stood still.

The guy fired.

A miss. A foot high and a foot wide. Reacher heard the buzz of the round in the air, and then a distant thump far behind him as it hit a building. The small place near the broken fence, probably. With the dead guys.

He stepped back into cover.

He said, “Sooner or later he’ll run out of ammunition.”

Chang said, “He’ll reload.”

“But not fast.”

“Is that your plan?”

“I need you with me. Just in case.”

“Of what?”

“Two heads are better than one. Especially mine right now.”

“You OK?”

“Not really. But then, how good do I need to be?”

“I’ll go do it.”

“I can’t let you.”

“Not woman’s work?”

Reacher smiled. He thought about the women he had known.

“Just a personal thing,” he said. “Habit, mostly.”

“How do we do it?”

“I’ll draw his fire. He’ll miss every time. I promise. When he clicks on empty I’ll hose him down. Meanwhile you’ll be running closer, so if I miss, you won’t.”

Chang said, “No, we’ll both draw his fire. We’ll do this together.”

“Not efficient.”

“I don’t care. That’s how we’re doing it.”

—

They stepped out.
The guy was still there. All alone in the vastness. Jeans, hair, M16 rifle. Sixty feet away. Chang aimed her gun, one eye closed. Reacher stood still, arms held wide, looking up at the sky, his gun hanging upside down off his trigger finger.
Take your best shot
. The guy did. He raised his gun, held still, and aimed, and fired.

And missed.

Missed both of them.

Chang fired back. Single shot. The spent case spat through the air. The bullet missed. But the guy backed off. Five clumsy paces, backward. Then ten.

Chang fired again. Another case glittered through the air. Another miss. The wheat moved in waves, heavy, and slow, and silent.

The guy raised his rifle.

But he didn’t shoot.

Chang said, “Is he out of bullets?”

Reacher’s head hurt.

He said, “He doesn’t know. He lost count. So did I.”

Then he smiled.

He said, “Do we feel lucky?”

He raised his gun. Two grips, held easy, somewhere between firm and gentle. The front sight, and the blur beyond. He blinked. He had focus, but it was not molecular. Plus he had a microscopic thrill in his arms. Through his whole body.
Difficulties with coordination, movement, memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking
.

He lowered his gun.

He said, “We should get closer.”

They made up the distance the guy had retreated. Slow and easy. Heart rate low, breathing normal. The guy added ten more paces. The jeans and the hair, moving backward, toward the hog pen.

Reacher and Chang got closer.

The smell was bad.

But better than the movie studio.

The guy backed off ten more paces.

And jammed up hard against the hog pen fence.

Reacher and Chang stopped.

The guy raised his rifle.

And then lowered it again. He stood against the fence, all alone, the rails at his back, small and absurd in the emptiness. The sun was high in the south. Far behind the guy his hogs moved out of their shelter. Fat and smooth, glistening with slime. Each one the size of a Volkswagen.