Ready for her close up. She stood still for a second. The light from the street was behind her. Petite and gamine, neat and slender, hipshot, dressed all in black, holding a Glock 17. Performance art. A figure from a nightmare.
Then she leaned forward and sprayed the little glass pip with a hiss of rattle-can paint. Flat black, from the hardware store. By which time Barton was already starting the same thing on the front wall of glass, but with white, for an effect like the vacant retail unit. The four men in suits were huddled together, with Reacher and Vantresca pointing guns at them, and Hogan preparing to make them secure, with long cable ties, from the hardware store.
The rent-a-cop at the security desk was looking on nervously.
Reacher called out to him, “Do you work for these people?”
The guy called back, “No sir, I most definitely do not.”
“But nevertheless you hold a position. You have responsibilities, at least toward the owner of this building. Perhaps you swore an oath. If we let you go, you’re pretty much obliged to call the cops. You look like a man of principle. Therefore best if we tie you up, too. Maybe even a blindfold. We’ll leave you on the floor behind your desk. You can deny everything afterward. Would that be agreeable?”
“Probably best,” the guy said.
“First come lock the door for us.”
The guy stood up.
Which was when the plan went wrong. When the so-far easy execution ran off the rails. Although, afterward, in periods of honest reflection, Reacher found he thought of it as the moment when the plan went right. He wanted it. Secretly he had hoped for it. Hence the crosscut saws.
Something completely unhinged.
Hogan bent down to zip-tie the first guy’s ankle. Either the guy straight-up panicked, or he got hit by some kind of last-chance desperation, or both, or maybe he was hoping to start up some kind of insurrection, but for whatever reason, suddenly he bolted forward, straight at Vantresca, wild emotions in his eyes, wild energy in his actions. He more or less ran himself onto the muzzle of Vantresca’s gun.
Vantresca did everything right. In the corner of his eye he saw that Hogan was rolling away, like a good Marine should, to avoid the charging guy’s feet, to avoid friendly fire. He saw that there was no one behind. No danger from a through-and-through. He knew they were in a concrete building. No danger of a through-the-wall random calamity. Not even much noise, given the proximity shot. The guy’s chest cavity would act as a giant suppressor.
Vantresca pulled the trigger.
There was no insurrection.
The other three guys stayed where they were.
The rent-a-cop said, “Oh, shit.”
“We’ll get to you in a minute,” Reacher said. “First lock the door.”
—
On the nineteenth floor, someone noticed the lobby screen was dark. No one knew how long it had been that way. At first it was taken to be a technical fault. But then someone else felt the blankness was not completely uniform. Not zero volts across the board. Something else. So they rolled back the hard drive and saw a young woman spraying an aerosol can. After first posing with a gun. After first rushing in through the revolving door, with four other figures. All in different street clothes, but all equipped with identical mission-specific satchels. A black-ops unit, led by a woman. This was America.
Of course the first thing they did was call down to the lobby. Just in case. Four separate cell numbers. Four no answers. As feared, because as expected. The same everywhere, the last two hours. They even tried the building’s rent-a-cop. They had the number. The landline, on his silly desk.
No answer.
Completely isolated. No information at all. Now not even from the lobby. No idea what was happening. Cut off from the world. Nothing on the news. Nothing on the rumor sites. No weird deployments. No press secretaries waiting on standby.
They tried all the numbers again.
No answer.
Then the elevator rumbled. The center shaft.
The car arrived, with a hiss of air.
The doors opened, smooth and swish.
On the back wall of the car someone had spray painted the Ukrainian word for loser. Under its dripping Cyrillic was one of their own guys, from the lobby, black suit and tie, sitting splayed out, arms and legs at an angle. He had been shot in the chest.
His head had been cut off.
His head was propped up between his legs.
The doors closed, smooth and swish.
The elevator rumbled.
The car went back down.
Completely isolated. No contact. Everyone without a specific task to attend to gathered in the elevator lobby. Outside the cage. Close to the wire. Staring in. Positioning themselves as if laying bets. Some opposite the center elevator. As if expecting it to return, with its gruesome tableau. Others chose the first elevator, or the third. Some outliers watched the fire stairs. There were all kinds of theories.
They waited.
Nothing happened.
People changed places at the wire. As if the delay was subtly altering the odds. As if it was making one scenario slightly more likely than another. Or less unlikely.
They waited.
They tried three sample numbers. One more time. First Gregory’s, then Danilo’s, then the watch leader’s, down in the lobby. With no real hope.
With no answer.
They waited. They changed position at the wire.
They listened.
The elevator rumbled. This time the left-hand shaft.
The car arrived, with a hiss of air.
The doors opened, smooth and swish.
On the floor of the car was another of their guys. From the lobby. Black suit and tie. Lying on his side. Hogtied, with his wrists and his ankles zipped together behind him. Gagged with a black rag wound around his head. Squirming, thrashing, appealing with his eyes, desperately, mouthing the gag, as if screaming, please come get me, please come get me, and then nodding urgently, as if beckoning, as if to say, yes, yes, it’s safe, please come get me, and then flopping his body, desperately, as if trying to reach the threshold.
The doors closed on him, smooth and swish.
The car went down again.
At first no one spoke.
Then someone said, “We should have saved him.”
Someone else said, “How could we?”
“We should have been quicker. Somehow he escaped down there. We should have helped him.”
“There was no time.”
The guy who had spoken first looked all around. First from where he was to the gate, and then at the keypad, and then from the gate to the left-hand elevator, on the inside. He timed it out in his mind. The doors open. The doors close. No. Not enough time. Especially with a what-the-hell split second of freeze at the very beginning.
Just not possible.
“Pity,” he said. “He escaped and we sent him back down.”
“Escaped how?”
“Maybe they trussed him up ready to cut his head off, but somehow he rolled away into the elevator, and he came up here, and he wanted us to save him. He was six feet away.”
No one spoke.
The guy said, “Listen.”
The elevator rumbled.
The left-hand shaft again.
Coming back up.
The guy said, “Open the gate.”
“Not allowed.”
“We got to get there this time. Open the gate.”
No one spoke.
The elevator rumbled.
Someone else said, “Yeah, open the damn gate. We can’t send the poor bastard down again a second time.”
Completely isolated. No orders, no leadership.