They chose immediately.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
I stepped back into the left-hand room and checked the view. The iron ladder rose right-to-left from my perspective. I would see the guy's head as he came up from below. Which was good. But my angle wasn't good. The street was narrow. Nine-millimetre Parabellums are handgun rounds. They are considered suitable for urban environments. They are much more likely than a rifle round to stick in the target and go no farther. Subsonic Parabellums, more likely still. But nothing is guaranteed. And there were innocent non-combatants across the street. Bedroom windows, slumbering children. Through- and-through bull's-eyes could reach them. Wild deflections could reach them. And ricochets, or fragments. Certainly out- and-out misses could reach them.
Collateral damage, just waiting to happen.
I crept through the room and flattened myself against the window wall. Glanced out. Nothing there. I extended my arm and flipped the window latch. Tried the handles. The window was stuck. I glanced out again. Nothing there. I stepped in front of the glass and grabbed the handles and heaved. The window moved and stuck and moved again and then shot up in the frame and slammed open so hard the pane cracked end to end.
I backed up against the wall again.
Listened hard.
Heard the dull muted clang of rubber soles on iron. A steady little rhythm. He was coming up fast, but he wasn't running. I let him come. I let him get all the way up. I let him get his head and shoulders in the room. Dark hair, dark skin. He was number fifteen on Springfield's list. I lined up parallel with the front wall of the building. He glanced left. He glanced right. He saw me. I pulled the trigger. A triple tap. He moved his head.
I missed. Maybe the first or the last of the three bullets tore his ear off but he stayed alive and conscious and fired back wildly and then ducked back outside. I heard him fall against the narrow iron walkway.
Now or never.
I went out after him. He was scrambling head first down the stairs. He made it back to the fourth floor and rolled on his back and raised his gun like it was a hundred-pound weight. I came down the ladder after him and leaned away from the building and stitched a triple tap into the centre of his face. His gun spun and clanged end over end two floors down and lodged ten feet above the sidewalk.
I breathed in.
I breathed out.
Six men down. Seven arrested. Four back home. Two in a locked ward.
Nineteen for nineteen.
The fourth floor window was open. The drapes were drawn back. A studio apartment. Derelict, but not demolished. Lila and Svetlana Hoth were standing together behind the kitchenette counter.
Twenty-nine rounds gone.
One left.
I heard Lila's voice in my head again: you must save the last bullet for yourself because you do not want to be taken alive, especially by the women.
I climbed over the sill and stepped into the room.
EIGHTY-ONE
THE APARTMENT WAS LAID OUT THE SAME AS THE RUINED place on the second floor. Living room at the front, then the kitchenette, then the bathroom, then the closet at the back. The walls were still up. The plaster was all still in place. There were two lights burning. There was a folded-up bed against the wall in the living room. Plus two hard chairs. Nothing else. The kitchenette had two parallel counters and one wall cupboard. A tiny space. Lila and Svetlana were crammed hip to hip in it. Svetlana on the left, Lila on the right. Svetlana was in a brown house dress. Lila was in black cargo pants and a white T-shirt. The shirt was cotton. The pants were made of rip-stop nylon. I guessed they would rustle as she moved. She looked as beautiful as ever. Long dark hair, bright blue eyes, perfect skin. A quizzical half-smile. It was a bizarre scene. Like a radical fashion photographer had posed his best model in a gritty urban setting.
I aimed the MP5. Black and wicked. It was hot. It stank of gunpowder and oil and smoke. I could smell it quite clearly.
I said, 'Put your hands on the counter.'
They complied. Four hands appeared. Two brown and gnarled, two paler and slim. They spread them like starfish, two blunt and square, two longer and more delicate.
I said, 'Step back and lean on them:
They complied. It made them more immobile. Safer. I said, 'You're not mother and daughter.'
Lila said, 'No, we're not.'
'So what are you?'
'Teacher and pupil.'
'Good. I wouldn't want to shoot a daughter in front of her mother. Or a mother in front of her daughter.'
'But you would shoot a pupil in front of her teacher?'
'Maybe the teacher first.'
'So do it.'
I stood still.
Lila said, 'If you mean it, this is where you do it.'
I watched their hands. Watched for tension, or effort, or moving tendons, or increased pressure on their fingertips. For signs they were about to go somewhere.
There were no such signs.
The phone vibrated in my pocket.
In the silent room it made a tiny sound. A whir, a hum, a grind. A rhythmic little pulse. It jumped and buzzed against my thigh.
I stared at Lila's hands. Flat. Still. Empty. No phone.
She said, 'Perhaps you should answer that:
I juggled the MP5's grip into my left hand and pulled out the phone. Restricted Call. I opened it and put it to my ear. Theresa Lee said, 'Reacher?'
I said, 'What?'
'Where the hell have you been? I've been trying to call you for twenty minutes.'
'I've been busy.'
'Where are you?'
'How did you get this number?'
'You called my cell, remember? Your number is in the call log.'
'Why is your number blocked?'
'Precinct switchboard. I'm on the landline now. Where the hell are you?'
'What's up?'
'Listen carefully. You have bad information. Homeland Security got back to us again. One of the Tajikistan party missed a connection in Istanbul. He came in through London and Washington instead. There are twenty men, not nineteen.'
Lila Hoth moved and the twentieth man stepped out of the bathroom.
EIGHTY-TWO
SCIENTISTS MEASURE TIME ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE picosecond. A trillionth of a regular second. They figure all kinds of things can happen in that small interval. Universes can be born, particles can accelerate, atoms can be split. What happened to me in the first few picoseconds was a whole bunch of different things. First, I dropped the phone, still open, still live. By the time it was down level with my shoulder whole lines of conversation with Lila were screaming in my head. On the same phone, minutes ago, from Madison Avenue. I had said, You're down to your last six guys. She had started to reply, and then she had stopped. She had been about to say, No, I've got seven, like earlier, when she had started to say, That's not close to me. The voiced dental fricative. But she had stopped herself. She had learned.
For once, she hadn't talked too much.
And I hadn't listened enough.
By the time the phone was down level with my waist I was focusing on the twentieth guy himself. He looked just like the previous four or five. He could have been their brother or their cousin, and probably was. Certainly he looked familiar. Small, sinewy, dark hair, lined skin, body language bridging wariness and aggression. He was dressed in a pair of dark knit sweatpants. A dark knit sweatshirt. He was right-handed. He was holding a silenced handgun. He was sweeping it through a long upward arc. He was aiming to bring it level. His finger was tightening on the trigger. He was going to shoot me in the chest.
I was holding the MP5 left-handed. The magazine was empty. The last round was already chambered. It had to count. I wanted to change hands. I didn't want to fire from my weaker side, under my weaker eye.
No choice. To change hands would take half a second. Five hundred billion picoseconds. Too long. The other guy's aim was nearly there. By the time the phone was down around my knees my right palm was slapping upward to meet the barrel. I was turning and straightening and tucking the grip back towards my chest. My right palm stopped and cradled the barrel and my left index finger squeezed the trigger with exaggerated calm. Lila was moving on my left. She was stepping out into the room. My finger completed its squeeze and the gun fired and my last round hit the twentieth guy in the face.