“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I can. And because of the girl.”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

“Unlikely,” Reacher said. “These are old men and idiots. I’ve survived worse.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“If I get in OK, I’ll be safe enough. Room-to-room isn’t hard. People get very scared with a prowler loose in the house. They hate it.”

“But you won’t get in OK. They’ll see you coming.”

Reacher dug in his left-hand pocket and came out with the shiny new quarter that had bothered him in the car. Handed it to her.

“For you,” he said.

She looked at it. “Something to remember you by?”

“Something to remember tonight by.”

Then he checked his watch. Stood up.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

CHAPTER 16

They stood for a moment in the shadows and the silence on the parking apron below Franklin’s lighted windows. Then Yanni went to get the Sheryl Crow CD from her Mustang. She gave it to Cash. Cash unlocked the Humvee and leaned inside and put it in the player. Then he gave the keys to Franklin. Franklin climbed into the driver’s seat. Cash got in next to him with his M24 across his knees. Reacher and Helen Rodin and Ann Yanni squeezed together in the back.

“Turn the heater up,” Reacher said.

Cash leaned to his left and dialed in maximum temperature. Franklin started the engine. Backed out into the street. Swung the wheel and took off west. Then he turned north. The engine was loud and the ride was rough. The heater kicked in and the fan blew hard. The interior grew warm, and then hot. They turned west, turned north, turned west, turned north, lining up with the grid that would run through the fields. The drive was a series of long droning cruises punctuated by sharp right-angle corners. Then they made the final turn. Franklin sat up straight behind the wheel and accelerated hard.

“This is it,” Yanni said. “Dead ahead, about three miles to go.”

“Start the music,” Reacher said. “Track eight.”

Cash hit the button.

Every day is a winding road.

“Louder,” Reacher said.

Cash turned it up. Franklin drove on, sixty miles an hour.

“Two miles,” Yanni called. Then: “One mile.”

Franklin drove on. Reacher stared out the window to his right. Watched the fields flash past in the darkness. Random scatter from the headlights lit them up. The irrigation booms were turning so slowly they looked stationary. Mist filled the air.

“High beams,” Reacher called.

Franklin flicked them on.

“Music all the way up,” Reacher called.

Cash twisted the knob to maximum.

EVERY DAY IS A WINDING ROAD.

“Half a mile,” Yanni yelled.

“Windows,” Reacher shouted.

Four thumbs hit four buttons and all four windows dropped an inch. Hot air and loud music sucked out into the night. Reacher stared right and saw the dark outline of the house flash past, isolated, distant, square, solid, substantial, dimly lit from inside. Flat land all around it. The limestone driveway, pale, very long, as straight as an arrow.

Franklin kept his foot hard down.

“Stop sign in four hundred yards,” Yanni yelled.

“Stand by,” Reacher shouted. “Showtime.”

“One hundred yards,” Yanni yelled.

“Doors,” Reacher shouted.

Three doors opened an inch. Franklin braked hard. Stopped dead on the line. Reacher and Yanni and Helen and Cash spilled out. Franklin didn’t hesitate. He took off again like it was just a normal dead-of-night stop sign. Reacher and Yanni and Cash and Helen dusted themselves down and stood close together on the crown of the road and stared north until the glow of the lights and the sound of the engine and the thump of the music were lost in the distance and the darkness.

Sokolov had picked up the Humvee’s heat signature on both the south and west monitors when it was still about half a mile shy of the house. Hard not to. A big powerful vehicle, traveling fast, trailing long plumes of hot air from open windows, what was to miss? On the screen it looked like a bottle rocket flying sideways. Then he heard it too, physically, through the walls. Big engine, loud music. Vladimir glanced his way.

“Passerby?” he asked.

“Let’s see,” Sokolov said.

It didn’t slow down. It hurtled straight past the house and kept on going north. On the screen it trailed heat like a reentry capsule. Through the walls they heard the music Doppler-shift like an ambulance’s siren as it went by.

“Passerby,” Sokolov said.

“Some asshole,” Vladimir said.

Upstairs on the third floor Chenko heard it, too. He stepped through an empty bedroom to a west-facing window and looked out. Saw a big black shape doing about sixty miles an hour, high-beam headlights, bright tail lights, music thumping and thudding so loud he could hear the door panels flexing from two hundred yards away. It roared past. Didn’t slow down. He opened the window and leaned out and craned his neck and watched the bubble of light track north into the distance. It went behind the skeletal tangle of machinery in the stone-crushing plant. But it was still visible as a moving glow in the air. After a quarter-mile the glow changed color. Red now, not white. Brake lights, flaring for the stop sign. The glow paused for a second. Then the red color died and the glow turned back to white and took off again, fast.

The Zec called up from the floor below: “Was that him?”

“No,” Chenko called back. “Just some rich kid out for a drive.”

Reacher led the way through the dark, four people single file on the edge of the blacktop with the gravel plant’s high wire fence on their left and huge circular fields across the road on their right. After the roar of the diesel and the thump of the music the silence felt absolute. There was nothing to hear except the hiss of irrigation water. Reacher raised his hand and stopped them where the fence turned a right angle and ran away east. The corner post was double-thickness and braced with angled spars. Grass and weeds from the shoulder were clumped up high. He stepped forward and checked the view. He was on a perfect diagonal from the northwest corner of the house. He had an equal forty-five-degree line of sight to the north facade and the west. Because of the diagonal the distance was about three hundred yards. Visibility was very poor. There was a glimmer of cloudy moonlight, but beyond that there was nothing at all.

He stepped back. Pointed at Cash, pointed at the base of the corner post.

“This is your position,” he whispered. “Check it out.”

Cash moved forward and knelt down in the weeds. Six feet away he was invisible. He switched on his night scope and raised his rifle. Tracked it slowly left and right, up and down.

“Three stories plus a basement,” he whispered. “High-pitched shingle roof, plank siding, many windows, one door visible to the west. No cover at all in any direction. They bulldozed everything flat, all around. Nothing’s growing. You’re going to look like a beetle on a bed- sheet out there.”

“Cameras?”

The rifle tracked a steady line from left to right. “Under the eaves. One on the north side, one on the west. We can assume the same on the sides we can’t see.”

“How big are they?”

“How big do you want them to be?”

“Big enough for you to hit.”

“Funny man. If they were spy cameras built into cigarette lighters I could hit them from here.”

“OK, so listen up,” Reacher whispered. “This is how we’re going to do it. I’m going to get to my starting position. Then we’re all going to wait for Franklin to get back and put the comms net on the air. Then I’m going to make a move. If I don’t feel good I’m going to call in fire on those cameras. I say the word, I want you to take them out. Two shots, bang, bang. That’ll slow them down, maybe ten or twenty seconds.”