“About what?”
“It’s what we say in the army when we’re going to beat someone to death.”
“Got it.”
Then time unspooled in a way that afterward Reacher thought was partly inevitable, even preordained, partly driven by culture, partly by peer pressure, by blind obedience, by hopeless lack of alternatives. Hard to comprehend. But it helped him understand the pile of bodies in the doorway in back of the lumber yard. They kept on coming. First a solid guy, taking in the scene, going for his gun. Reacher let him get it out. Allowed him to make his intent crystal clear. Then he shot him center mass. A single round. Then a second guy barreled in, pumped up with some kind of ludicrous I-can-do-better bravado. But he couldn’t. Reacher dropped him and he fell right on top of the first guy. Which is how the pile started. It deterred no one. They kept on adding to it. One after the other. We’ll have all the same people ahead of us. Except in reverse order. Hogan was absolutely right. First came the senior figures from the offices, then the smart muscle from inside the building, then finally the dumb muscle from out on the street corners, all of them driven, all of them relentless, all of them doomed. At first Reacher thought of their sacrifice in medieval terms, but then he revised his estimate backward, all the way to the dawn of time, a hundred thousand generations, to the pure insane grip of the tribe, and the absolute terror of being without it.
It had kept them alive then. But not now. Eventually there were no more footsteps. Reacher gave it another minute. Just to be sure. The sound of his endless firing died away to angry, hissing silence.
Then he turned to face Danilo.
Chapter 46
Danilo was a small man by Reacher’s standards, maybe five-ten, and wiry rather than heavy. Hogan had stripped him of his suit coat and emptied his shoulder holster. As a result he looked naked and vulnerable. Already defeated. Hogan had him standing next to the desk inside the inner office. The desk was a massive thing made of toffee-colored wood. The fallen bookcase was propped on it. It was huge. It must have weighed a ton. Books and ornaments had spilled out all over the place. From his new angle Reacher could see Gregory on the floor. He was folded into a Z shape. Kind of compressed. Otherwise a healthy individual. Tall, hard, and solid. But dead. Pity.
Reacher hooked his left forefinger under the knot of Danilo’s tie and maneuvered him out into clear space. He turned him around and squared him up. Shoulders back, chin out.
He stood back.
He said, “Tell me about your porn sites on the internet.”
“Our what?” Danilo said.
Reacher slapped him. Open handed, but a colossal blow all the same. It knocked Danilo right off his feet. He did half of a sideways somersault and landed crumpled where the wall met the floor.
“Get up,” Reacher said.
Danilo got up, slow and shaky, hands and knees first, palming his way up the wall.
“Try again,” Reacher said.
“They’re a sideline,” Danilo said.
“Where are they?”
Danilo hesitated.
Reacher hit him again. The other side. Open handed. Even harder than before. Danilo went down again, cartwheeling sideways, banging his head on the other wall.
“Get up,” Reacher said again.
Danilo got up again. Slow and shaky, hands and knees, hauling himself up the wall.
“Where are they?” Reacher asked again.
“Nowhere,” Danilo said. “Everywhere. It’s the internet. There are bits and pieces on servers all over the planet.”
“Controlled from where?”
Danilo watched Reacher’s right hand. He had figured out the sequence. Not difficult. Right, left, right. He didn’t want to answer, but he was going to.
He said the word. Not a hive or a burrow, but a nest, way up high. Then he clamped his lips. Now he was between a rock and a hard place. He couldn’t reveal the location. It was their biggest and best-kept secret. Instead he continued to stare at Reacher’s right hand.
Reacher said, “We already know where it is. You got nothing left to trade.”
Danilo didn’t answer. Then a cell phone rang. Distant and muffled. From the far doorway. In a pocket, somewhere in the pile of corpses. It pealed six times, and stopped. Then another rang. Equally distant, equally muffled. Then two more.
The sound of the mothership not answering.
Danilo said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Reacher said.
“Things I did.”
“But you did them. Can’t change that.”
Danilo didn’t answer.
Abby said, “Yes.”
Hogan said, “Yes.”
Reacher shot Danilo in the forehead with the H&K P7 Hogan had taken from him. German police issue. Identical to all the others. Maybe even sequential serial numbers. A bulk order, from some bent German copper. Danilo went down, with what was left of his head in his own office, and the rest of him in Gregory’s. Reacher looked left and right. We’ll be taking them out from the top to the bottom. Much more efficient. Job done. They were laid out like a corporate chart. Gregory, Danilo, the heap of senior deputies. Cell phones ringing everywhere.
* * *
—
They left the same way they arrived, through the emergency exit corridor. They walked through the vacant store. Twist, pull, go, back to the street. The guys from the corners were still where they had fallen. No one would dream of calling the cops about dead bodies near a black Town Car on a back street on the west side of the city. Such a thing was obviously someone else’s private business.
“Where next?” Abby asked.
“You OK?” Reacher asked back.
“Doing well. Where next?”
Reacher glanced at the downtown skyline. Six towers. Three office buildings, three hotels.
He said, “I should go say goodbye to the Shevicks. I might not get another chance.”
“Why not?”
“The lumber yard won’t burn forever. Sooner or later the cops will be back west of Center. No more grand a week. They’ll be mad at somebody. Questions will be asked. Always better not to be around for a thing like that.”
“You’re going to leave?”
“Come with me.”
She didn’t answer.
He said, “Call Vantresca and tell him to meet us.”
They left the Lincoln where it was. Insurance, of sorts. Like a road sign. Not Don’t Walk, but Don’t Ask. The sun was out. No clouds in the sky. Middle of the afternoon. They strolled back the way they had driven. They rode up to the Shevicks’ room. Maria looked at them through the peephole, and let them in. Barton and Vantresca were already there.