Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,49
his own. Completely. Because of the phony choice. The guy was right. And because of the question about the capo. No doubt a scary figure, capable of terrible retributions. And because of the happy conclusion to the cover story. The pat on the head and the gold star. The wrong thing to say to frustrated, ambitious people. It got them thinking. Pats on the head and gold stars were great, but better still was promotion and status, and after eight long years best of all would be finally getting out of sitting in cars watching doors. They wanted to move up the ladder. Which they knew would take more than following a girl to an address. They would need a greater achievement.
Capturing Aaron Shevick would qualify. Which was who they thought he was, obviously. They had gotten texts, the same as everyone. The description and the photograph. They hadn’t asked who he was. Most people would. They would say, who the hell are you? What do you want? But these guys had shown no curiosity at all. Because they already knew. He was a guy they got texts about. Therefore important. Therefore a prize. Therefore crazy ideas.
His own fault.
Don’t do it, he thought.
Out loud he said, “Don’t do it.”
The driver said, “Do what?”
“Anything stupid.”
They paused a beat. He guessed they would start by telling him something true. Too hard to coordinate a lie with silent glances. It would be like a teaser. It would be something that required a couple seconds of thought, and then the careful formulation of a follow-up question. All to make him momentarily preoccupied. To give them time to jump him. The guy with the neck would corkscrew over from the front and land with his chest on Reacher’s left arm, and his hips on Reacher’s right arm, whereupon the driver would come over the top and attack his undefended head. With his cell phone, edge on, if he had any sense, and no inhibitions about smashing up a precision piece of electronics. Which most people were willing to do, in Reacher’s experience, when their lives depended on it.
Don’t do it, he thought.
Out loud he said, “Where would you look for Max Trulenko?”
The driver said, “Where he works, of course.”
Reacher put a momentarily blank look on his face, but inside he was thinking of nothing, and formulating no follow-up questions. He was just waiting. Time passed in quarter-second beats, like a racing heart, at first nothing, then still nothing, then the guy with the neck launching, hard and clumsy, his arms spearing out ahead of him, his feet thrusting, his back arching, aiming to get most of his bulk beyond the point of no return, so that even if he landed on the seat back gravity would do the rest of his work for him, dumping him into Reacher’s lap, in an undignified but equally effective manner.
He didn’t get to the point of no return.
Reacher jammed the gun against the seat back and shot the guy through the upholstery. Then he repelled the falling corpse with his elbow. Like a double tap. One, two, gunshot, elbow. The shot was loud, but not terrible. The interior of the thick Lincoln seat squab had acted like a huge suppressor. All kinds of wool and horsehair in there. All kinds of cotton batting. Natural absorption. One minor problem. Some of it had caught on fire. Plus the driver was leaning forward, leaning down, feeling under the dashboard near his shins. Then coming back up and twisting around. In his hand was a tiny pocket gun. Maybe Russian. Secured out of sight with hook and loop tape. Reacher shot him through his own seat back. It caught on fire, too. A nine-millimeter round. The muzzle hard against the padding, a massive explosion of superheated gases. Maybe never taken into account, during Lincoln’s design process.
Reacher opened the door and slid out to the sidewalk. He put the guns in his pocket. Fresh air blew inside the car and the tiny fires perked up. Not just smoldering. There were actual flames. Small, like a lady’s fingernail, dancing inside the seats.
Abby said, “What happened?”
She was standing near her own car, very still, on the sidewalk, looking in through the Lincoln’s windshield.
Reacher said, “They showed extraordinary loyalty to an organization that doesn’t seem to treat them very well.”
“You shot them?”
“Self-defense.”
“How?”
“They blinked first.”
“Are they dead?”
“We might need to give them another minute. Depends how fast they’re bleeding.”
She said, “This has never happened