CHAPTER 72

CARTER GROOM WAS facing the door on the far side of the table. He looked up just like the bartender had but Kowalski and Burke moved a lot faster than the farmers. They spun around and stared. Reacher stepped the rest of the way into the room and closed the door gently behind him. Stood completely still.

“We meet again,” he said, just to break the silence.

“You’ve got some nerve,” Groom said.

The room was decorated in the same style as the foyer. Low ceiling beams, dark varnished wood, ornate wall sconces, thousands of brass ornaments, a wall-to-wall carpet patterned in a riot of red and gold swirls. Reacher moved toward the fireplace. Tapped the toes of his shoes against the edge of the hearth to shed some mud. Took a heavy iron poker from a hook and used the end of it to scrape dirt off his heels. Then he hung the poker back up and flapped at the bottom of his pant legs with his hands. Altogether he spent more than a minute cleaning up, with his back turned, but he was watching a clear convex reflection of the table in a bright copper bucket that held kindling sticks. And nobody was moving. The three guys were just sitting there, waiting. Smart enough not to start anything in a public place.

“The situation has changed,” Reacher said. He moved on, toward the west-facing window. It had open drapes and a sliding storm pane on the inside and a regular wooden frame on the outside that would open like a door. He pulled out a chair from the table nearest to it and sat down, six feet away from the three guys, four feet and two panes of glass away from his rifle.

“Changed how?” Burke said.

“There was no kidnap,” Reacher said. “It was faked. Kate and Taylor are an item. They fell in love, they eloped. Because they wanted to be together. That was all. And they took Jade with them, obviously. But they had to dress the whole thing up, because Lane is a psychopath where his marriages are concerned. Among other things.”

“Kate’s alive?” Groom said.

Reacher nodded. “Jade too.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere in the States, I guess.”

“So why is Taylor here?”

“He wants a showdown with Lane on his own turf.”

“He’s going to get one.”

Reacher shook his head. “I’m here to tell you that’s a bad idea. He’s on a farm, and it’s surrounded by ditches too deep to drive through. So you’d be going in on foot. And he’s got a lot of help there. He’s got eight of his old SAS buddies with him, and his brother-in-law was a kind of Green Beret for the Brits, and he’s brought in six of his guys, too. They’ve got Claymores on a hundred-yard perimeter and heavy machine guns in every window. They’ve got night vision and grenade launchers.”

“They can’t possibly use them. Not here. This is England, not Lebanon.”

“He’s prepared to use them. Believe it. But actually he won’t have to. Because four of the SAS guys are snipers. They’ve got PSG1s. Heckler and Koch sniper rifles, from the black market in Belgium. They’ll drop you all three hundred yards out. With their eyes shut. Seven rounds, game over. They’re miles from anywhere. Nobody will hear. And if they do, they won’t care. This is the back of beyond. Farm country. Somebody’s always shooting something. Foxes, road signs, burglars, each other.”

The room went quiet. Kowalski picked up his drink and sipped. Then Burke did, and then Groom. Kowalski was left-handed. Burke and Groom were right-handed. Reacher said, “So your best play is to just forget it and go home now. Lane is going to die. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s no reason why you should die with him. This isn’t your fight. This is all about Lane’s ego. It’s between him and Kate and Taylor. Don’t get yourselves killed for that kind of bullshit.”

Burke said, “We can’t just walk away.”

“You walked away in Africa,” Reacher said. “You left Hobart and Knight behind, to save the unit. So now you should leave Lane behind, to save yourselves. You can’t win here. Taylor’s good. You know that. And his buddies are just as good. You’re outnumbered more than two to one. Which is totally upside down. You know that, too. A situation like this, you need to outnumber the defenders. You’re going to get your asses kicked.”

Nobody spoke.

“You should go home,” Reacher said again. “Hook up somewhere else. Maybe start up on your own.”

Groom asked, “Are you with Taylor?”

Reacher nodded. “And I’m good with a rifle. Back in the day, I won the Marine sniper trophy. I showed up in army green and I beat all of you miserable jarheads hands down. So maybe I’ll grab one of the PSGs. Maybe I’ll drop you all six hundred yards out, just for the fun of it. Or eight hundred, or a thousand.”

Silence in the room. No sound at all, except the shift and crackle of logs in the fire. Reacher looked straight at Kowalski.

“Five, seven, one, three,” he lied. “That’s the combination for Lane’s closet door. There’s still more than nine million dollars behind it. In cash. You should go get it, right now.”

No response.

“Walk away,” Reacher said. “Live to fight another day.”

“They stole all that money,” Burke said.

“Alimony. Easier than asking for it straight up. Asking for alimony is what got Anne Lane killed. Kate found that out.”

“That was a kidnap.”

Reacher shook his head. “Knight offed her. For Lane, because Anne wanted out. That’s why you all abandoned Knight in Africa. Lane was covering his ass. He sacrificed Hobart too, because he was in the same OP.”

“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 & 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 planned attack, too. Dawn the day after tomorrow was almost certainly a clumsy and hasty camouflaging of the truth, which therefore in reality would be simply dawn tomorrow. But the shopping list had probably been right. Night vision was a no-brainer for nighttime surveillance and MP5Ks were pretty much what a guy like Lane would want for a subsequent fast and mobile assault. Light, accurate, reliable, familiar, available.

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.