At that moment the black Chrysler pulled in at the lumber yard gate, with Reacher and Abby in the trunk.
Chapter 35
The driver paused with his foot on the brake. The gate was open but there was no one watching it. Which was unusual. But the guy was keen to get in and display his prize, so he didn’t think too much about it. He just drove in and swooped around and reversed toward the roll-up door. The passenger climbed out and smacked a green mushroom button with his palm. The door moved up slowly, with the rattle of chains and the clatter of metal slats. The driver backed in under it. He shut down the motor and got out and joined the passenger at the rear of the car. They pulled their guns and stood well back.
The driver blipped the button on the key fob.
The trunk lid raised up, slow, damped, majestic.
They waited.
Nothing.
The smell of pine, but no whine of saws. The low corrugated shed was quiet. There was no one in it. Then from somewhere deep in the back they heard voices, dulled by walls and doors, but nevertheless loud and panicked and confused. And footsteps too, urgent, agitated, but going nowhere. Just milling around in place. As if something weird was going down in one of the inner offices.
They listened.
Maybe Dino’s office itself.
* * *
—
About the first eight guys into the room saw the exact same thing. Dino, behind his desk, collapsed in his chair, slack and puddled, with his head blown apart. And Jetmir, in a chair in front of the desk, with a Glock in his hand. Literally a smoking gun. They could see the haze and smell the burned powder. Three of the first eight were inner council guys, who had at least a partial clue as to what might have happened. The other five were low level men. They had no idea. They were locked in a mental loop that made no sense at all. Did not compute. Jetmir was the second-most important man in the world. His word was law. He was unimpeachable. He was obeyed and admired and revered. Stories were told. He was top of the heap. He was a legend. But he had killed Dino. And Dino was the boss. The first-most important man in the world. All a guy’s loyalty and fealty was owed to him alone. Such was their code. Like a blood oath. Like a medieval kingdom. A matter of absolute duty.
One of the five with no idea was a legbreaker from a town called Pogradec, on the shores of Lake Ohrid, whose sister had once been molested by a party official. Dino had restored the family’s honor. The legbreaker was a simple man. He was as faithful as a dog. He loved Dino like a father. He loved that he loved him. He loved the structure, and the hierarchy, and the rules, and the codes, and the iron certainty they gave his life. He loved it all, and he lived by it all. He pulled out his gun and shot Jetmir in the chest, three times, deafening in the crowded space, and then instantly he himself was shot down by two other guys simultaneously, one of them a bagman who seemed to be acting on pure autopilot alone, defending the new boss, even though the new boss had just shot the old boss, and the other shooter a member of the inner council, who had some inkling of what it was all about, and some hope of salvaging something from the wreckage. But a vain hope, because his second round was a through-and-through, which killed a bagman standing behind the legbreaker, and the doorman crowding in behind the bagman fired back in a panic, pure reflex, and he hit the inner council guy in the head, so a second inner council guy shot the doorman in retaliation, and a foreman from the yard who had a beef with the council fired back at him, and missed, but hit the third council guy with a ricochet, pure accident, high on the arm, who howled and blasted back, multiple rounds, the muzzle of his Glock dancing and jerking uncontrolled, the rounds going everywhere, into the mass of more men crowding in, falling, slipping, sliding on the blood-slick floor, going down, until the councilman’s Glock clicked on empty, and a hissing, roaring version of silence came back, thrumming and buzzing in the air, but not complete, because right then and far away some other loud sound started up to pierce it.
The new sound was more gunshots. Just two rounds. Deliberate. Carefully spaced. A nine-millimeter handgun. Muffled by distance. Maybe all the way over at the front of the shed. Maybe near the roll-up door.
* * *
—
The driver and the passenger stood well back from the Chrysler’s trunk, with their guns still aimed right at it, in the same solid two-handed feet-apart stances they had used before, but with their necks twisted around, comically, almost as far as they would go. They were peering behind their left shoulders, at the far back corner of the shed, way in the distance, where a corridor led away to the administrative quarters. Where the commotion was.
Then the shooting started back there. Far away, muffled, thumping, contained. First came three solo rounds, a fast triple, thud thud thud, and then a hail of more all at once, and more, and more, and then finally the repeated thumping of a handgun being fired unaimed and in anger, until it ran out.
Then there was a second of silence.
The driver and the passenger turned back to the Chrysler.
Still nothing. The trunk lid, raised. No sign of the occupants.
They turned back to the corner.
Another second of silence.
Back to the Chrysler. Still nothing. No raised heads, no glances out. No signs of life at all. The driver and the passenger glanced at each other. Suddenly worried. Maybe there was exhaust gas in the trunk. Maybe there was a leak. A cracked pipe. Maybe the man and the woman had suffocated.
The driver and the passenger took a cautious step forward.
And another.
Still nothing.
They checked the far back corner again. Still silence. They took another step. To where they could see in the trunk. They glanced in, nervous. What they saw was all different. The man and the woman had changed positions. Originally he had gotten in at the back, and she had curled up in the space he left in front of him. Now he was in front, and she was behind him. Shielded by him. Originally he had gotten in with his head on the left, and now his head was on the right. Which meant he was lying on his left shoulder. Which meant his right arm was free to move. And he was moving it. Real fast. In his hand was a small steel automatic. It came to rest aimed at the driver’s head.
* * *
—
Reacher shot the driver through the forehead, and re-aimed right and shot the passenger through the left eye. With the Ukrainian H&K from his boot. From when he rebalanced the load in his pockets, before they walked out of the Shevicks’ development. Two on the left, two on the right, and one in his sock. Always a good idea.
He raised up an inch and peered out cautiously. He saw a long low corrugated shed, full of the smell of raw softwood, but empty of people. No one there at all. Presumably an HQ of some kind. Maybe the lumber yard they had seen before. Once while driving, once on foot. A cover operation. The dull metal looked the same. Like the electrical warehouse and the plumbing depot.