“There must be paperwork,” Reacher said. “Some city department. Three floors, leased by an unknown corporation with a bland and forgettable name. Or we could talk to the supers. We could ask them about weird deliveries. Maybe scaffolding components, or a commercial dog run. Something like that. For the cage.”
“Which is going to be a problem,” Hogan said. “I don’t see how we get in.”
“We?”
“Sooner or later your luck will run out. You’ll need the Marines to rescue you. You army boys always do. Much more efficient if I prevent that necessity upfront, by supervising the operation from the get-go.”
“I’m in too,” Vantresca said. “Same reason, essentially.”
“Me as well,” Barton said.
Silence for a beat.
“Full disclosure,” Reacher said. “This will not be a walk in the park.”
No objections.
“What first?” Vantresca asked.
“You and Barton figure out which tower. And which three floors. The rest of us will go pay a visit to their main office. Behind the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bond operation.”
“Why?”
“Because some of the greatest mistakes in history are made by secret satellite operations cut off from the mothership. No command and control. No information, no orders, no leadership. No resupply. Complete isolation. That’s what I want for these guys. Quickest way to get it is just go right ahead and destroy the mothership. No need to pussyfoot around. The time for subtlety is long gone.”
“You really don’t like these people.”
“You didn’t speak well of them yourself.”
“They’ll have sentries all over the place.”
“Doubly so now,” Reacher said. “I’ve been calling Gregory on the phone and yanking his chain. No doubt he’s a big brave fellow, but even so, I bet he called in extra reinforcements. Just to be sure.”
“Then it was a dumb idea to yank his chain.”
“No, I want them all in one place. Well, all in two places. The mothership, and the satellite. Nowhere else. No loose ends. No waifs or strays. We could call it Situation D. Much more satisfactory. Massed targets are always more efficient than running after lone fugitives individually. That would take days, in a place like this. We would be chasing around all over town. Best avoided, surely. We’re in a hurry here. We should let them do some of the work for us.”
“You’re nuts, you know that?”
“Says the guy prepared to drive in a straight line at twenty-five miles an hour toward nuclear-tipped antitank artillery.”
“That was different.”
“How exactly?”
Vantresca said, “I guess I’m not sure.”
“Find the tower,” Reacher said. “Get the floor numbers.”
—
They used the moneylender’s Lincoln again. Commonplace, west of Center. And untouchable. Abby drove. Hogan sat next to her in the front. Reacher sprawled in the back. The streets were quiet. Not much traffic. No cops at all. The cops were east of Center, every single one of them. Guaranteed. By that point the fire department would be pulling crispy skeletons out of the wreckage. One after the other. A big sensation. Everyone would want to be there. Stories, for the grandchildren.
Abby stopped on a hydrant, four blocks directly behind the pawn shop, which was directly across the street from the taxi dispatcher. A straight line on a map. A simple linear progression.
“How far out will the sentries be posted?” Reacher asked.
“Not far,” Hogan said. “They have to cover the full 360. They can’t waste manpower. They’ll keep it tight. All four corners of the block their office is on. That would be my assessment. Maybe they’re even stopping traffic. But nothing more than that.”
“So they can see the front of the pawn shop and the front of the taxi dispatcher.”
“From both ends of the street. Probably two guys per corner.”
“But they can’t see the back of the pawn shop.”
“No,” Hogan said. “To go one street wider in every direction would cost them three times the manpower. Simple math. They can’t afford it.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Good to know. We’ll go in the back of the pawn shop. We should anyway. We should get Maria’s heirlooms back. They lowballed her, with eighty dollars. I didn’t like that. We should express our disapproval. Maybe their guilty consciences will prompt them to make a generous donation to a medical charity.”
They got out and left the car on the curb next to the fireplug. Reacher figured a parking ticket was the least of Gregory’s problems. They walked the first block. Then the second. Then they got cautious. Maybe no one was posted a block further out, but they could eyeball a block further out. That would be dead easy. They could raise their sight lines from time to time, to stare off into the distance. They could make out faces a block away, and speed, and intent, and body language. Accordingly Reacher kept close to the storefront windows, in the sharp afternoon shadows, widely separated from Abby, who followed twenty feet behind, and then Hogan, all of them strolling, randomly stopping, showing no link between them, in terms of lock step speed or direction or purpose.
Reacher turned left, into the mouth of the cross street. Out of sight. He waited. Abby joined him. Then Hogan. They formed up and walked on together, ten paces on the far sidewalk. Then they stopped again. Geographically speaking, the pawn shop’s rear exit would be ahead on the right. But there were many rear exits ahead on the right, and they were all the same, and they were all unmarked. There were twelve in total. Every establishment had one.
Reacher clicked back in his head to their earlier visit. The search and rescue mission in Abby’s old Toyota. A grimy pawn shop, across a narrow street from a taxi dispatcher and a bail bond operation, Maria coming out the door, Abby pulling over, Aaron winding down his window and calling out her name.
“I remember it as the middle of the block,” he said.
“Except twelve has no middle,” Abby said. “Twelve has six to the left and six to the right and nothing in the actual middle.”
“Because it’s an even number. The middle is a choice of two. The last of the first six or the first of the last six.”
Abby said, “I remember it as not the exact middle of the block.”
“Before the middle or after it?”
“Maybe after it. Maybe even two-thirds of the way along. I remember seeing her, and pulling over. I think it was after the middle of the block.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “We’ll start by taking a look at numbers seven, eight, and nine.”
The buildings were all joined together, and their rear façades were all the same, tall and mean and narrow, built of sullen hundred-year-old brick, pierced here and there randomly by barred windows, festooned all over with wires and cables, drooping and looping from one connection to another. Not always mechanically robust. The rear doors themselves were all the same. All stout identical hundred-year-old items, inward opening, made of wood, but at some point maybe fifty years previously someone had screwed sheets of metal over the lower halves, for durability. Maybe a new landlord, making improvements. The metal sheets showed half a century of wear and tear, from loading and unloading, shipping and receiving, kicking open, kicking shut, banging in and out with hand trucks and trolleys and dollies.
Reacher checked.
Less so on number eight than seven or nine.
In fact much less. In fact not bad at all, for fifty years.
Number eight. The exact definition of two-thirds the way along a block of twelve.
He said, “I think this is the one. Not much comes in or out of a pawn shop on a hand truck or a dolly. Only an occasional item. Like if Barton hocked his speaker cabinet. But most everything else comes in and out in a hand or a pocket.”
The door was locked from the inside. Not a fire exit. Not a bar, not a restaurant. A different regulation. The wood of the door was solid. The frame, maybe not so much. Softer lumber, infrequently painted, maybe a little rotted and spongy.