Make Me

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.”