Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,91
all by itself. But still he laid out the others, in a fan shape by his right knee. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Partly to test the gun and partly to get the party started he put a round into the pyramid of chemical drums. Second level up, which would be center mass on a standing man. There was a crack and a boom and a clang, and thick brown liquid gurgled out of the hole in the drum, which appeared more or less where he intended it to. The Glock worked OK.
A guy on the right craned up and fired a round from behind a stack of boards, then ducked back down again. The round hit the car. Maybe the driver’s door. Poor shooting. Snatched and panicky. A guy on the left tried to do better. He leaned out and aimed. He was static and exposed for half a second. Mistake. Reacher hit him in the chest, and again in the head, after he was down, just to be sure. Three rounds gone. Seven guys left. They had all backed off a yard. Maybe rethinking their whole approach. There was a certain amount of low conversation. Plenty of whispered to and fro. Some kind of plan being made. Reacher wondered how good it would be. Probably not very. The obvious play was to split up, into two squads, and send one out a back entrance, and around the building, and back in through the roll-up door. Which would give Reacher a two-front problem. It was what he would have done. But the remaining seven guys seemed to have no leader. Their command structure seemed to have collapsed. Maybe some kind of a coup. Or a failed coup. A palace revolution. He had heard the muffled shooting when they arrived. First doubly muffled by the trunk lid, then more distinct after it was raised. It was clear a whole bunch of people were getting it in the head. Far away in the back offices, where the bigwigs lived.
The plan turned out to be a conventional infantry assault based on fire and movement. In other words some would shoot and some would run, and then those who had run would drop down and shoot, and those who had shot would jump up and run. Like leapfrog, with bullets. But not many. They were low on ammunition. Which took the sting out. Covering fire was supposed to be heavy enough to distract or suppress or intimidate or bewilder. Or at least to preoccupy. But Reacher was able to more or less ignore it. Ten thousand generations were screaming at him to take cover, but the front part of his brain was fighting back with the new stuff, math and geometry and probabilities, calculating how likely it was that seven random guys could hit a target as small as a man’s eyes and the top of his head, at range, with handguns, while agitated, and the covering fire was weak enough that the ancient reflexes lost the argument, and were boxed up and put away, leaving the modern man to do his lethal work undisturbed. It was like shooting ducks in a carnival sideshow. The guys on the right laid down the fire, and two guys from the left stood up and charged.
Reacher hit the first.
He hit the second.
They thumped on the concrete, which seemed to spark some kind of over-literal obedience to the part of the plan about getting up when the other side dropped down, because immediately two guys on the right jumped up and ran, completely premature and uncovered.
Reacher hit the first.
He hit the second.
They went down, sliding, sprawling, coming to rest.
Three guys left.
Like a carnival sideshow.
Then it wasn’t. Then it was something Reacher had never seen before. It was something he never wanted to see again. Afterward he was grateful Abby had her head ducked down and her eyes screwed shut. There was a long, long moment of ominous silence, and then all three remaining guys jumped up simultaneously, firing wild, roaring, screaming, heads thrown back, eyes bulging, insane, primitive, like berserkers from an ancient legend, like dervishes from an ancient myth. They charged the car, still roaring, still screaming, still firing wild, like a mad epic gesture, like cavalry charging tanks, three crazy men heading for certain death, knowing it, wanting it, needing it, seeking it, demanding it.
Reacher hit the first.
He hit the second.
He hit the third.
The long low shed went quiet.
Reacher unwound