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.
A third voice said, “Open the gate.”
The guy at the gate punched in the numbers. After its programmed delay, the lock clicked open. The panel swung back. Four guys stepped through. Guns out, cautious, up on their toes. The others stayed out, watching through the wire.
The elevator rumbled.
The car arrived, with a hiss of air.
The doors opened, smooth and swish.
Same guy on the floor. Black suit and tie. Hogtied the same, gagged the same, squirming, thrashing, pleading with his eyes, nodding desperately, beckoning, flopping around.
The four guys inside rushed forward, ready to lend a hand.
But it wasn’t the same guy. It was Vantresca. Average build. He fit the suit. He wasn’t hogtied. He was holding his hands behind his back, hiding two Glock 17s. Which he brought out and fired, four times, fast, aimed, deliberate.
At which point the right-hand elevator opened up, and Reacher stepped out, with Hogan, and Barton, and Abby. Four handguns. Hogan fired first. Must-win targets are any opponents within command and control distance of the gate had been Reacher’s briefing. Three rounds did the job. Meanwhile Reacher himself was clearing the fence, firing into the backs or half-backs of all those standing mesmerized by the sight of Vantresca shooting their buddies from the floor of his elevator car. Barton was covering one end of the lobby, and Abby was covering the other.
It was over fast. Hard not to be. As an exercise it was easy. The attackers had surprise on their side, and after that commanded a dense concentration of fire from the narrow corner of a rectangular battle space. The only friendly within the field of fire was inside a bulletproof concrete shaft all his own, and from there was able to provide effective enfilade fire. All of which made the victory routine. The prize was the gate. It was still standing open. Some kind of complicated lock, not currently engaged. Maybe electronic. There was a keypad on the post.
Reacher stepped through the gate, into the secret space beyond, followed by Hogan, and Abby, and Barton, with Vantresca bringing up the rear, in the borrowed suit, dusting it off after his showmanship on the elevator floor.
Chapter 49
The back part of Reacher’s brain was clattering away on some kind of a complicated computation, which involved dividing the total square footage of the nineteenth floor by the total number of KIA in its elevator lobby, which surely meant, after realistically allowing for officer-class accommodations for the important nerds, and densely-packed barracks-class accommodations for the enlisted ranks, that the herd was already substantially thinned. Had to be. There couldn’t be many more guys available. Not unless they had been sleeping three to a bed, or stacked on the floor. Simple math.
The front part of Reacher’s brain said nevermind. If I fail today, it’s my own fault. He pressed up face-first against a corridor wall, and peered one-eyed around a corner. He saw another corridor. Same width. Doors left and right. Offices, maybe. Or bedrooms. Bathrooms across the hall. Or storerooms. Or laboratories, or nerve centers, or hives or nests or burrows.
He moved on. Hogan followed. Then Abby. Then Barton and Vantresca. The first room on the left was some kind of a security post. Empty. Abandoned. A desk and a chair, unoccupied. Two flat screen televisions on the desk, one labeled Lobby, which was blacked out with paint, and one marked 19th Floor, which showed the view from a camera evidently mounted high on the wall opposite the elevator bank. The angle was downward. The view was of a lot of dead bodies on the floor. More than a dozen.
Told you so, said the back part of his brain.
He moved on. The first room on the right was also empty. It had a floor to ceiling window, facing north. The city lay spread out below. In the room were four armchairs, a buzzing refrigerator, and a coffee machine on a table. A ready room. Or a crew room. Convenient. Close to the elevators.
They moved on. They saw nothing. No people. No kind of technical equipment. Reacher had no real idea what it would look like. He was hung up on Abby’s original description. Like in the movies. The mad scientist in his lab, full of lit-up machines and crackling energy. To him a server was someone playing tennis, or bringing a drink. Vantresca figured the whole installation might be nothing more than half a dozen laptops. Cloud based, he called it. Hogan predicted a low room full of white laminate and chilly air.
They crept onward.
Saw nothing.
“Wait,” Reacher whispered. “We’re wasting time. This is not business as usual. I think they’ve gone straight to the endgame. I think the headless horseman brought every spare guy to the elevator cage. Only people working that exact minute stayed behind and survived. So now they’re hunkered down. It’s Custer’s Last Stand for them.”
“How many?” Hogan asked.
“I don’t care,” Reacher said. “As long as Trulenko is one of them.”
Abby said, “If it’s six laptops, it could be just a couple of guys.”
“Plus guards,” Reacher said. “As many as Moscow decreed should be in the room at all times. Or at least those of them who maintained discipline. Which might be a different number.”