Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,86

at least. Jetmir went cold. Suddenly he thought perhaps it was already too late. Then he recovered and thought perhaps it was not. He simply didn’t know. In which case, better safe than sorry. An ancient instinct. Ten thousand generations of his own slipped his hand under his coat, one, and came back with his gun, two, and shot Dino in the face, three. From a yard away, across the desk. Dino’s head kicked back an inch and blood and brain slop and bone fragments slapped the wall behind him. The nine-mil round was loud in the small wood room. Colossally loud. Like a bomb. After it there was hissing silence for a long second, and then people burst in. All kinds of people. Made men from nearby offices, guys from the inner council, lumber yard workers covered in dust, doormen, bagmen, legbreakers, all of them shouting and running and pulling guns, like in a movie, when the president goes down. Confusion, madness, mayhem, panic.

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