Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,93

That was for damn sure. Reacher took the gas cap off the shattered car and dropped the last sheet of burning paper down the filler neck.

Then they hustled. Thirty yards to the scooped-out curb, seventy more to the first corner, and then they were gone.

* * *

—

Abby’s phone was full of missed calls from Vantresca. He said he was waiting across the street from the propped-up building with the heavy black net. He said he had been waiting there a long time. He said he didn’t know what to do next. Abby called him back. Between them they worked out a new rendezvous. He would drive in one direction, and they would walk in the other direction, and they would spot each other somewhere along the way. Before they set out again Reacher looked back the way they had come. Half a mile away there was a thread of smoke in the sky. The next time he checked it was a pillar of smoke, a mile away. Then it was a distant boiling black mass with flames dancing at the base. They heard fire truck sirens, booming and barking, more and more of them, until the faraway sound was a continuous bass wail. They heard police car sirens echoing through the east side streets.

Then Vantresca showed up in a black car. It was wide and squat and muscular. It had a chrome hood ornament, in the shape of a big cat leaping. A jaguar, presumably, for a Jaguar. It was small inside. Vantresca was driving. Hogan was next to him in the front. Barton was in the back. Only one place left. Abby had to sit in Reacher’s lap. Which was OK with him.

Hogan said, “Something is on fire over there.”

“Your fault,” Reacher said.

“How?”

“You pointed out that if the Ukrainians go down, the Albanians would take over the city. I didn’t want that to happen. It felt like it would be a win-lose.”

“So what’s on fire?”

“The Albanian HQ. It’s in the back of a lumber yard. It should burn for days.”

Hogan said nothing.

Barton said, “Someone else will take over.”

“Maybe not,” Reacher said. “The new commissioner will have a clean slate. Maybe it’s easier to stop new people coming in than it is to get old people out.”

Vantresca said, “What next?”

“We need to find the Ukrainian nerve center.”

“Sure, but how?”

“I guess we need to know exactly what it does. That might tell us what to look for. To some extent form follows function. For instance, if it was a drug lab, it would need exhaust fans, and gas and water, and so on and so forth.”

“I don’t know what it does,” Vantresca said.

“Call the journalist,” Reacher said. “The woman you helped. She might know. At least she might know what they’re into. If necessary we could work it out backward, about what kind of place they would need.”

“She won’t talk to me. She was terrified.”

“Give me her number,” Reacher said. “I’ll call her.”

“Why would she talk to you?”

“I have a nicer personality. People talk to me all the time. Sometimes I can’t stop them.”

“I would have to go to my office.”

“Go to the Shevicks’ first,” Reacher said. “I have something for them. Right now they need reassurance.”

Chapter 37

Gregory pieced the story together from early word he got three separate ways, from a cop on his payroll, and a guy in the fire department who owed him money, and a secret snitch he had behind a bar on the east side. Right away he called a meeting of his inner council. They gathered together, in the office in back of the taxi dispatcher.

“Dino is dead,” Gregory said. “Jetmir is dead. Their entire inner council is dead. Their top twenty are gone, just like that. Maybe more. They are no longer an effective force. Nor will they ever be, ever again. They have no leadership prospects. Their most senior survivor is an old bruiser named Hoxha. And he was spared only because he was in the hospital. Because he can’t talk. Some leader he would make.”

Someone asked, “How did it happen?”

“The Russians, obviously,” Gregory said. “Shock and awe east of Center, clearing half the field, preempting a possible defensive alliance, before turning their full might on us alone.”

“Good strategy.”

“But badly executed,” Gregory said. “They were clumsy at the lumber yard. Every cop and every firefighter in the city is over there. The east side will be no use to anyone for months to come. Too much scrutiny. Bribes only go so