FORTY-SEVEN

JACOB WAS FIRST UP THE CELLAR STAIRS. HIS FIRST THOUGHT WAS that a football player was checking in, but the floors in their houses were typical of old-style construction in rural America, built of boards cut from the hearts of old pines, thick and dense and heavy, capable of transmitting noise but not detail. So it was not possible to say who was in the house by sound alone. He saw no one in the hallway, but when he got to the kitchen he found a man in there, standing still, small and wiry, dark and dead-eyed, rumpled, not very clean, wearing a buttoned shirt without a tie, holding a knife in his left hand and a gun in his right. The knife was held low, but the gun was pointing straight at the centre of Jacob's chest.

Jacob stood still.

The man put his knife on the kitchen table and raised his forefinger to his lips.

Jacob made no sound.

Behind him his son and his brothers crowded into the kitchen, too soon to be stopped. The man moved the muzzle of his gun, left and right, back and forth. The four Duncans lined up, shoulder to shoulder. The man turned his wrist and moved the muzzle down and up, down and up, patting the air with it. No one moved.

The man said, 'Get on your knees.'

Jacob asked, 'Who are you?'

The man said, 'You killed my friend.'

'I didn't.'

'One of you Duncans did.'

'We didn't. We don't even know who you are.'

'Get on your knees.'

'Who are you?'

The little man picked up his knife again and asked, 'Which one of you is Seth?'

Seth Duncan paused a beat and then raised his good hand, like a kid in class.

The little man said, 'You killed my friend and you put his body in the trunk of your Cadillac.'

Jacob said, 'No, Reacher stole that car this afternoon. It was him.'

'Reacher doesn't exist.'

'He does. He broke my son's nose. And his hand.'

The gun didn't move, but the little man turned his head and looked at Seth. The aluminium splint, the swollen fingers. Jacob said, 'We haven't left here all day. But Reacher was at the Marriott. This afternoon, and this evening. We know that. He left the Cadillac there.'

'Where is he now?'

'We're not sure. Close by, we think.'

'How did he get back?'

'Perhaps he took your rental car. Did your friend have the key?'

The little man didn't answer.

Jacob asked, 'Who are you?'

'I represent Mahmeini.'

'We don't know who that is.'

'He buys your merchandise from Safir.'

'We don't know anyone of that name either. We sell to an Italian gentleman in Las Vegas, name of Mr Rossi, and after that we have no further interest.'

'You're trying to cut everyone out.'

'We're not. We're trying to get our shipment home, that's all.'

'Where is it?'

'On its way. But we can't bring it in until Reacher is down.'

'Why not?'

'You know why not. This kind of business can't be done in public. You should be helping us, not pointing guns at us.'

The little man didn't answer.

Jacob said, 'Put the gun away, and let's all sit down and talk. We're all on the same side here.'

The little man kept the gun straight and level and said, 'Safir's men are dead too.'

'Reacher,' Jacob said. 'He's on the loose.'

'What about Rossi's boys?'

'We haven't seen them recently.'

'Really?'

'I swear.'

The little man was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, 'OK. Things change. Life moves on, for all of us. From now on you will sell direct to Mahmeini.'

Jacob Duncan said, 'Our arrangement is with Mr Rossi.'

The little man said, 'Not any more.'

Jacob Duncan didn't answer.

Cassano and Mancini opted to try Jacob Duncan's place first. A logical choice, given that Jacob was clearly the head of the family. They backed off the fence a couple of paces and walked parallel with it to a spot opposite Jacob's kitchen window. The bar of yellow light coming out of it laid a bright rectangle on the gravel, but it fell six feet short of the base of the fence. They climbed the fence and skirted the rectangle, quietly across the gravel, Cassano to the right, Mancini to the left, and then they flattened themselves against the back wall of the house and peered in.

No one there.

Mancini eased open the door and Cassano went in ahead of him. The house was silent. No sound at all. No one awake, no one asleep. Cassano and Mancini had searched plenty of places, plenty of times, and they knew what to listen for.

They slipped back out to the yard and retraced their steps. They climbed back into the field and walked north in the dark and lined up again opposite Jasper's window. They climbed the fence and skirted the light. They flattened themselves against the wall and peered inside.

Not what they expected.

Not even close.

There was only one Iranian, not two. There was no happy conversation. No smiles. No bourbon toasts. Instead, Mahmeini's man was standing there with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, and all four Duncans were cowering away from him. The glass in the window was wavy and thin in places, and Jacob Duncan's urgent voice was faintly audible.

Jacob Duncan was saying, 'We have been in business a long time, sir, based on trust and loyalty, and we can't change things now. Our arrangement is with Mr Rossi, and Mr Rossi alone. Perhaps he can sell direct to you, in the future, now that Mr Safir seems to be out of the picture. Perhaps that might be of advantage. But that's all we can offer, not that such a thing is even ours to offer.'

The little man said, 'Mahmeini won't take half a pie when the whole thing is on the table.'

'But it isn't on the table. I repeat, we deal with Mr Rossi only.'

'Do you really?' the little man asked. He changed his position and stood sideways, and raised his arm level with his shoulder, and closed one eye, and tracked the gun slowly and mechanically back and forth, left and right along the line of men, like a great battleship turret traversing, pausing first on Seth, then on Jasper, then on Jonas, then on Jacob, and then back again, to Jonas, to Jasper, to Seth, and then back again once more. Finally the gun came to rest aimed square at Jonas. Right between his eyes. The little man's finger whitened on the trigger.

Then simultaneously the window and the little man's head exploded, and the crowded room filled with powdered glass and smoke and the massive barking roar of a.45 gunshot, and blood and bone and brain slapped and spattered against the far wall, and the little man fell to the floor, and first Mancini and then Cassano stepped in from the yard.

After less than an hour the two football players were thoroughly bored with sitting in the dark. And not just bored, either, but unsettled and a little anxious, too, and irritated, and exasperated, and humiliated, because they were very aware that they were being beaten on a minute-to-minute basis, and being beaten on any basis did not come easy to them. They were not submissive people. They never came second. They were the big dogs, and being denied heat and light and NFL highlights was both insulting and totally inappropriate.

One said, 'We have a shotgun, damn it.'

The other said, 'It's a big basement. He could be anywhere.'

'We have a flashlight.'

'Pretty weak.'

'Maybe he's still unconscious. It could be an actual fault, and we're sitting here like idiots.'

'He has to be awake by now.'

'So what if he is? He's one guy, and we have a shotgun and a flashlight.'

'He was a soldier.'

'That doesn't give him magic powers.'

'How would we do it?'

'We could tape the flashlight to the shotgun barrel. Go down, single file, like they do in the movies. We'd see him before he sees us.'

'We're not supposed to kill him. Seth wants to do that himself, later.'

'We could aim low. Wound him in the legs.'

'Or make him surrender. That would be better. And he'd have to, wouldn't he? With the shotgun and all? We could tape him up, with the tape we use for the flashlight. Then he couldn't mess with the power again. We should have done that in the first place.'

'We don't have any tape, for either thing.'

'Let's look in the garage. If we find some tape, we'll think about doing it.'

They found some tape. They followed the flashlight beam through the hallway, through the kitchen, through the mud room, all the way to the garage, and right there on the workbench was a fat new roll of silver duct tape, still wrapped up, fresh from the store. They carried it back with them, not really sure if they were pleased or not. But they had promised themselves in a way, so they pulled off the plastic wrap and picked at the end of the tape and unwound a short length. They tried the flashlight against the shotgun barrel, working in the dim light of reflections off the walls. The flashlight fit pretty well, ahead of the forestock, and underslung because of the front sight above the muzzle, and jutting out a little because of its length. The plastic lens was about an inch in front of the gun. Satisfactory. But to get it secure they were going to have to wrap tape right over the thumb switch, which was a point of no return, of sorts. If they were going to do that, then they were going to have to act. No point in leaving the light burning and running the battery down all for nothing.

One asked, 'Well?'

Three hours before daylight. Boredom, irritation, exasperation, humiliation.

The other said, 'Let's do it.'

He propped the gun across his knees and held the flashlight in place. The first guy juggled the roll of tape, making sticky tearing noises, winding it around and around, like he was binding broken ribs with a bandage, until the whole assembly was fat and mummified. He ducked his head and bit off a nine-inch tail and pressed it down securely, and then he squeezed everything hard between his palms, and smoothed the edges of the tape with his fingers. The other guy lifted the gun off his knees and swung it left and right and up and down. The flashlight stayed solidly in place, its beam moving faithfully with the muzzle.

'OK,' he said. 'Cool. We're good to go. The light is like a laser sight. Can't miss.'

The first guy said, 'Remember, aim low. If you see him, jerk the barrel down and fire at his feet.'

'If he doesn't surrender first.'

'Exactly. First choice is to immobilize him. But if he moves, shoot him.'

'Where will he be?'

'Could be anywhere. Probably out of sight at the bottom of the stairs. Or hiding behind the water heater. It's big enough.'

They followed the light out to the hallway and stopped near the basement door. The guy with the gun said, 'You open it and step back and then get behind me. I'll go down slowly and I'll move the light around as much as I can. Tell me if you see him. We need to talk each other through this.'

'OK,' the first guy said. He put his hand on the knob. 'We sure about this?'

'I'm ready.'

'OK, on three. Your count.'

The guy with the gun said, 'One.'

Then, 'Two.'

The first guy said, 'Wait. He could be right behind the door.'

'At the top of the stairs?'

'Just waiting to jump out at us before we're ready.'

'You think? That would mean he's been waiting there a whole hour.'

'Sometimes they wait all day.'

'Snipers do. This guy wasn't a sniper.'

'But it's possible.'

'He's probably behind the water heater.'

'But he might not be.'

'I could fire through the door.'

'If he isn't there, that would alert him.'

'He'll be alerted anyway, as soon as he sees the flashlight beam coming down.'

'The door has a steel core. You heard what Seth said.'

The guy with the gun asked, 'So what do we do?'

The first guy said, 'We could wait for daylight.'

Boredom, irritation, exasperation, humiliation.

The guy with the gun said, 'No.'

'OK, so I'll open up real fast, and you fire one round immediately, right where his feet are. Or where they would be. Just in case. Don't wait and see. Just pull the trigger, whatever, right away.'

'OK. But then we'll have to go down real fast.'

'We will. He'll be in shock. I bet that gun is pretty loud. Ready?'

'I'm ready.' The guy with the gun estimated the arc of the swinging door and shuffled a foot closer and braced himself, the stock to his shoulder, one eye closed, his finger tight on the trigger.

The first guy said, 'Aim low.'

The oval of light settled on the bottom quarter of the door.

'On three. Your count.'

'One.'

'Two.'

'Three.'

The first guy turned the knob and flung the door wide open and the second guy fired instantly, with a long tongue of flame and a huge roaring twelve-gauge boom.