Vladimir leaned forward and said, "There it is again." He put his fingertip on the screen, as if touch might tell him something. Sokolov glanced across. Sokolov had spent many more hours with the screens than Vladimir. Primarily surveillance had been his job. His, and Raskin's.
"That's no fox," he said. "It's way too big."
He watched for five more seconds. The image was weaving left and right at the very limit of the camera's range. Recognizable size, recognizable shape, inexplicable motion. He stood up and walked to the door. Braced his hands on the frame and leaned out into the hallway.
"Chenko!" he called. "North!"
Behind his back on the West screen a shape as big as his thumb grew larger. It looked like a painting-by-numbers figure done in fluorescent colors. Lime green on the outside, then a band of chrome yellow, with a core of hot red.
Chenko walked through an empty bedroom and opened the window as high as it would go. Then he backed away into the darkness. That way he was invisible from below and invulnerable except to a shot taken from the third story of an adjacent building, and there were no adjacent buildings. He switched on his night scope and raised his rifle. Quartered the open ground two hundred yards out, up and down, left and right.
He saw a woman.
She was running crazily, barefoot, darting left and right, out and back, like she was dancing or playing a phantom game of soccer. Chenko thought: What? He squeezed the slack out of his trigger and tried to anticipate her next pirouette. Tried to guess where her chest would be a third of a second after he fired. He waited. Then she stopped moving. She stood completely still, facing the house, arms out wide like a target.
Chenko pulled the trigger.
Then he understood. He stepped back to the hallway.
"Decoy!" he screamed. "Decoy!"
Cash saw the muzzle flash and called, "Shot fired," and jumped his scope to the north window. The lower pane was raised, the upper pane was fixed. No point in putting a round through the opening. The upward trajectory would guarantee a miss. So he fired at the glass. He figured if he could get a hail of jagged shards going, then that might ruin somebody's night.
Sokolov was watching the crazy heat image on Vladimir's screen when he heard Chenko's shot and his shouted warning. He glanced back at the door and turned to the South monitor. Nothing there. Then he heard return fire and shattering glass upstairs. He pushed back from the table and stepped to the door.
"Are you OK?" he called.
"Decoy," Chenko called back. "Has to be."
Sokolov turned and checked all four screens, very carefully.
"No," he called. "Negative. Definitely nothing incoming."
Reacher touched the front wall of the house. Old plank siding, painted many times. He was ten feet south of the driveway, ten feet south of the front door, near a window that looked into a dark empty room. The window was a tall rectangle with a lower pane that slid upward behind the upper pane. Maybe the upper pane slid down over the lower pane, too. Reacher didn't know the name for the style. He had rarely lived in houses and had never owned one. Sash? Double-hung? He wasn't sure. The house was much older than it had looked from a distance. Maybe a hundred years. Hundred-year-old house, hundred-year-old window. But did the window still have a hundred-year-old catch? He pressed his cheek against the lower pane and squinted upward.
He couldn't see. Too dark.
Then he heard the shooting. Two rounds, one close, one not, shattering glass.
Then he heard Cash in his ear: "Helen? You OK?"
He heard no reply.
Cash asked again: "Helen? Helen?"
No reply.
Reacher put the phone in his pocket. Worked the blade of his knife up into the gap where the bottom of the upper casement overlapped the top of the lower casement. He moved the blade right to left, slowly, carefully, feeling for a catch. He found one, dead-center. Tapped it gently. It felt like a heavy brass tongue. It would pivot through ninety degrees, in and out of a socket.
But which way?
He pushed it right to left. Solid. He pulled the knife out and worked it back in an inch left of center. Slid it back until he found the tongue again. Pushed it left to right.
It moved.
He pushed it hard, and knocked it right out of its socket.
Easy.
He lifted the lower pane high and rolled over the sill into the room.
Cash eased forward and swung his rifle through ninety degrees until it was sighted due east along the fence. He stared through the scope. Saw nothing. He moved back into cover. Raised his phone.
"Helen?" he whispered.
No response.
Reacher moved through the empty room to the door. It was closed. He put his ear against it. Listened hard. Heard nothing. He turned the handle slowly, carefully. Opened the door very slowly. Leaned out. Checked the hallway.
Empty.
There was light from an open doorway fifteen feet ahead on his left. He paused. Lifted one foot at a time and wiped the soles of his shoes on his pants. Wiped his palms. He took a single step. Tested the floor. No sound. He moved ahead slowly, silently. Boat shoes. Good for something. He kept close to the wall, where the floor would be strongest. He stopped a yard shy of the lighted doorway. Took a breath. Moved on.
Stopped in the doorway.
He was looking at two guys from behind. They were seated side by side with their backs to him at a long table. Staring at TV monitors. At ghostly green images of darkness. On the left, Vladimir. On the right, a guy he hadn't seen before. Sokolov? Must be. To Sokolov's right, a yard away from him, a handgun rested on the very end of the table. A Smith amp; Wesson Model 60. The first stainless steel revolver produced anywhere in the world. Two-and-a-half-inch barrel. A five-shooter.
Reacher took a long silent step into the room. Paused. Held his breath. Reversed the knife in his hand. Held the blade an inch from its end between the ball of his thumb and the knuckle of his first finger. Raised his arm. Cocked it behind his head. Snapped it forward.
Threw the knife.
It buried itself two inches deep in the back of Sokolov's neck.
Vladimir glanced right, toward the sound. Reacher was already moving. Vladimir glanced back. Saw him. Pushed himself away from the table and half-rose. Reacher watched him calculate the distance between himself and the gun. Saw him decide to go for it. Reacher stepped into his charge and ducked under his swinging left hook and buried his shoulder in his chest and wrapped both arms around his back and jacked him bodily off his feet. Just lifted him up and turned him away from the table.
And then squeezed.
Best route to a silent kill against a guy as big as Vladimir was simply to crush him to death. No hitting, no shooting, no banging around. As long as his arms and his legs couldn't connect with anything solid there would be no noise. No shouting, no screaming. Just a long labored barely-audible tubercular sound as the last breath he had taken came back out, never to be replaced.
Reacher held Vladimir a foot off the ground and squeezed with all his strength. He crushed Vladimir's chest in a bear hug so vicious and sustained and powerful that no human could have survived it. Vladimir wasn't expecting it. He thought this was some kind of a preamble. Not the main event. When he figured it out, he went crazy with panic. He rained desperate blows down on Reacher's back and flailed with his feet at his shins. Stupid, Reacher thought. You're just burning oxygen. And you ain't getting more, pal. Better believe it. He tightened his grip. Crushed harder. And harder. And then harder, in a remorseless subliminal rhythm that said: More, and More, and More. His teeth ground together. His heart pounded. His muscles swelled as big and hard as river rocks and started burning. He could feel Vladimir's rib cage moving, clicking, separating, cracking, crushing. And his last living breath leaking out of his starving lungs.