Vincent didn't automatically think the five men were there for him. There could be other reasons. His lot was the only stopping place for miles. Plenty of drivers used it, for all kinds of purposes, passers-by checking their maps, taking off their coats, getting things from the trunk, sometimes just stretching their legs. It was private property, no question, properly deeded, but it was used almost like a public facility, like a regular roadside turnout.
He watched. The five men were talking. His windows were ordinary commercial items, chosen by his parents in 1969. They were screened on the inside and opened outward, with little winding handles. Vincent thought about opening the one he was standing behind. Just a crack. It was almost an obligation. He might hear what the five men were saying. He might get valuable information, for the phone tree. Everyone was expected to contribute. That was how the system worked. So he started to turn the handle, slowly, a little at a time. At first it went easily. But then it went stiff. The casement was stuck to the insulating strip. Paint and grime and long disuse. He used finger and thumb, and tried to ease some steady pressure into it. He wanted to pop it loose gently. He didn't want to make a loud plastic sound. The five men were still talking. Or rather, the man from the Cadillac was talking, and the other four were listening.
* * *
Mahmeini's man was saying, 'I let my partner out a mile back. He's going to work behind the lines. He's more use to me that way. Pincer movements are always best.'
Roberto Cassano said, 'Is he going to coordinate with the rest of us?'
'Of course he is. What else would he do? We're a team, aren't we?'
'You should have kept him around. We need to make a plan first.'
'For this? We don't need to make a plan. It's just flushing a guy out. How hard can it be? You said it yourself, the locals will help.'
'They're all asleep.'
'We'll wake them up. With a bit of luck we'll get it done before morning.'
'And then what?'
'Then we'll spend the day leaning on the Duncans. We all need that delivery, and since we all had to drag ourselves up here, we might as well all spend our time on what's important.'
'So where do we start?'
'You tell me. You've spent time here.'
'The doctor,' Cassano said. 'He's the weakest link.'
Mahmeini's man said, 'So where's the doctor?'
'South and west of here.'
'OK, go talk to him. I'll go somewhere else.'
'Why?'
'Because if you know he's the weakest link, then so does Reacher. Dollars to doughnuts, he ain't there. So you go waste your time, and I'll go do some work.'
Vincent gave up on cracking the window. He could tell there was no way it would open without a ripping sound, and drawing attention right then would not be a good idea. And the impromptu conference in his lot was breaking up anyway. The small rumpled man slid back into Seth Duncan's Cadillac and the big black car crunched through a wide arc over the gravel. Its headlight beams swept across Vincent's window. He ducked just in time. Then the Cadillac turned left on the two-lane and took off south.
The other four men stayed right where they were. They watched until the Cadillac's tail lights were lost to sight, and then they turned back and started talking again, face to face in pairs, each one of them with his right hand in his right-hand coat pocket, for some strange reason, all four of them symmetrical, like a formal tableau.
Roberto Cassano watched the Cadillac go and said, 'He doesn't have a partner. There's nobody working behind the lines. What lines, anyway? It's all bullshit.'
Safir's main man said, 'Of course he has a partner. We all saw him, right there in your room.'
'He's gone. He ran out. He took whatever car they rented. That guy is on his own now. He stole that Cadillac from the lot. We saw it there earlier.'
No reply.
Cassano said, 'Unless one of you had a hand in it. Or both of you.'
'What are you saying?'
'We're all grown-ups here,' Cassano said. 'We know how the world works. So let's not pretend we don't. Mahmeini told his guys to take the rest of us out, and Safir told you guys to take the rest of us out, and Rossi sure as hell told us to take the rest of you out. I'm being honest here. Mahmeini and Safir and Rossi are all the same. They all want the whole pie. We all know that.'
Safir's guy said, 'We didn't do anything. We figured you did. We were talking about it all the way up here. It was obvious that Cadillac isn't a rental.'
'We didn't do anything to the guy. We were going to wait for later.'
'Us too.'
'You sure?'
'Yes.'
'Swear?'
'You swear first.'
Cassano said, 'On my mother's grave.'
Safir's guy said, 'On mine too. So what happened?'
'He ran out. Must have. Maybe chicken. Or short on discipline. Maybe Mahmeini isn't what we think he is. Which raises possibilities.'
Nobody spoke.
Cassano said, 'We have a vote here, don't you think? The four of us? We could take out Mahmeini's other boy, and leave each other alone. That way Rossi and Safir end up with fifty per cent more pie each. They could live with that. And we sure as hell could.'
'Like a truce?'
'Truces are temporary. Call it an alliance. That's permanent.' Nobody spoke. Safir's guys glanced at each other. Not a difficult decision. A two-front war, or a one-front war? History was positively littered with examples of smart people choosing the latter over the former.
Vincent was still watching out the window. He saw quiet conversation, low tones, some major tension there, then some easing, the body language relaxing, some speculative looks, some tentative smiles. Then all four men took their hands out of their pockets and shook, four separate ways, wrists crossing, some pats on the back, some slaps on the shoulder. Four new friends, all suddenly getting along just great.
There was a little more talk after that, all of it fast and breezy, like simple obvious steps were being planned and confirmed, and then there were more pats on the back and slaps on the shoulder, all shuffling mobile catch you later kind of stuff, and then the two big dark-skinned men climbed back into their red Ford. They closed their doors and got set to go and then the Italian who had done all the talking suddenly remembered something and turned back and tapped on the driver's glass.
The window came down.
The Italian had a gun in his hand.
The Italian leaned in and there were two bright flashes, one hard after the other, like orange camera strobes right there inside the car, behind the glass, all six windows lighting up, and two loud explosions, then a pause, then two more, two more bright flashes, two more loud explosions, evenly spaced, carefully placed.
Then the Italian stepped away and Vincent saw the two dark-skinned men all slumped down in their seats, somehow suddenly much smaller, deflated, diminished, smeared with dark matter, their heads lolling down on their chests, their heads altered and misshapen, parts of their heads actually missing.
Vincent fell to the floor under the inside sill of his window and vomited in his throat. Then he ran for the phone.
Angelo Mancini opened the red Ford's trunk and found two nylon roll-aboard suitcases, which more or less confirmed a personal theory of his. Real men carried their bags. They didn't wheel them around like women. He unzipped one of the bags and rooted around and came up with a bunch of shirts on wire hangers, all folded together concertina-style. He took one and tore it off the hanger and crushed the hanger flat and opened the Ford's filler neck and used the hanger to poke the shirt down into the tube, one sleeve in, the body all bunched up, the other sleeve trailing out. He lit the trailing cuff with a paper match from a book he had taken from the diner near the Marriott. Then he walked away and got in the blue Chevrolet's passenger seat and Roberto Cassano drove him away.