CHAPTER 68

IN THE SOFT light of the flames from the hearth, Kate’s simple and vulnerable beauty was emphasized to the point of heartbreak. She said, “When Edward and I first started fighting he accused me of being unfaithful. Which wasn’t actually true back then. But he was in a rage. He said if he ever caught me sleeping around he would show me how much it hurt him by doing something to Jade that would hurt me even more. He went into the kind of detail I can’t repeat now. Not in front of her. But it was very frightening. It was so frightening that I persuaded myself not to take it seriously. But after hearing about Anne and Knight and Hobart I knew I had to take it seriously. By which time I really did have something to hide. So we ran. And here we are.”

“With Lane right behind you.”

“He deserves whatever he gets, Mr. Reacher. He’s truly a monster.”

Reacher turned to Jackson. “You’re not fixing the backhoe to dredge ditches, are you? It’s not raining and the ditches look fine anyway. And you wouldn’t take time out to do something like that. Not right now. Not under these circumstances. You’re fixing the backhoe to dig graves, aren’t you?”

“At least one grave,” Taylor said. “Maybe two or three, until the whole crew goes home and leaves us alone. You got a problem with that?”

We’ll find Taylor, Reacher had said, on the plane. Lane will take care of him, and then I’ll take care of Lane. Pauling had asked him, What about the others? Reacher had said: If I think the crew will fall apart with Lane gone, then I’ll leave the others alone and let it. But if one of them wants to step up and take over, I’ll do him, too. And so on and so forth, until the crew really does fall apart.

Pauling had said: Brutal.

Reacher had asked: Compared to what?

He looked straight at Taylor.

“No,” he answered. “I guess I don’t have a problem with that. Not really. No problem at all, in fact. I’m just not used to finding people on the same wavelength as me.”

“You keeping your million bucks?”

Reacher shook his head. “I was going to give it to Hobart.”

“That’s good,” Kate said. “That frees up some of our money for the others.”

Taylor said, “Ms. Pauling? What about you? Do you have a problem?”

Pauling said, “I ought to. I ought to have a huge problem. Once upon a time I swore an oath to uphold the law.”

“But?”

“I can’t get to Lane any other way. So no, I don’t have a problem.”

“So we’re in business,” Taylor said. “Welcome to the party.”

After they finished their tea Jackson took Reacher into a small mud room off the back of the kitchen and opened a double-door wall cupboard above a washing machine. In it were racked four Heckler amp; Koch G-36 automatic rifles. The G-36 was a very modern design that had showed up in service just before Reacher’s military career had ended. Therefore he wasn’t very familiar with it. It had a nineteen-inch barrel and an open folding stock and was basically fairly conventional apart from a huge superstructure that carried a bulky optical sight integrated into an oversized carrying handle. It was chambered for the standard 5.56mm NATO round and like most German weapons it looked very expensive and beautifully engineered.

Reacher asked, “Where did you get these from?”

“I bought them,” Jackson said. “From a bent quartermaster in Holland. Susan went over there and picked them up.”

“For this thing with Lane?”

Jackson nodded. “It’s been a heavy few weeks. Lots of planning.”

“Are they traceable?”

“The Dutch guy’s paperwork shows they were destroyed in a training accident.”

“Got ammunition?”

Jackson moved across the room and opened another cupboard, lower down. Behind a row of muddy Wellington boots Reacher could see the glint of black metal. A lot of it.

“Seventy magazines,” Jackson said. “Two thousand one hundred rounds.”

“That should do the trick.”

“We can’t use it. Not more than three or four rounds. Too noisy.”

“How close are the cops?”

“Not very. Norwich, I suppose, unless there happens to be a patrol car out. But people here have phones. Some of them even know how to use them.”

“You can turn the bird scarer off for a day.”

“Obviously. But I shouldn’t really be using that, either. An organic farm doesn’t need a bird scarer. No pesticides means plenty of insects for the birds to eat. They don’t go after the seed. Sooner or later people are going to realize that.”

“So the bird scarer is new, too?”

Jackson nodded. “Part of the planning. Set to start firing at dawn. That’s when we expect Lane to come.”

“If I had a sister and a brother-in-law I’d want them to be like you and Susan.”

“I go a long way back with Taylor. We were in Sierra Leone together. I’d do anything for him.”

“I never went to Africa.”

“Lucky you. We were fighting a bunch of rebels called the West Side Boys. I saw what they did to people. So I know what Hobart went through. Burkina Faso wasn’t far away.”

“You OK with all of this? You’ve got roots here, literally.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Take a vacation. All of you. I’ll stay.”

Jackson shook his head. “We’ll be OK. One round might do it. The G-36 is a pretty accurate piece.”

Jackson stayed in the mud room and closed and locked both cupboards. Reacher stepped back into the kitchen and sat down next to Taylor.

“Tell me about Gregory,” he said.

“What about him?”

“Is he going to stand by Lane? Or you?”

“Lane, I think.”

“Even though you served together?”

“Lane bought him. When he was in uniform Gregory always wanted an officer’s commission, but he never got it. It burned him up. And then Lane made him a kind of unofficial lieutenant. Status, at last. Meaningless bullshit, of course, but it’s the thought that counts. So I think Gregory will stick with him. Plus he’ll be offended that I didn’t share my secret. He seemed to think that two Brits abroad should share everything.”

“Does he know this area?”

Taylor shook his head. “He’s a Londoner, like me.”

“What about the others? Will any of them turn?”

“Not Kowalski,” Taylor said. “Not Perez. Turning would require some brain activity, and those two are room-temperature IQs at best. Probably not Addison, either. But Groom and Burke aren’t dumb. If they see the ship is sinking they’ll get off fast enough.”

“That’s not the same thing as turning.”

“None of them is going to come over to our side. You can forget about that. The best we can hope for is neutrality from Groom and Burke. And I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.”

“How good are they? All of them, as a whole?”

“They’re about as good as me. Which is to say they’re on a slippery slope. They used to be outstanding, but now they’re well on the way to average. Plenty of experience and ability, but they don’t train anymore. And training is important. Back in the day, training was ninety-nine percent of what we did.”

“Why did you join them?”

“The money,” Taylor said. “That’s why I joined them. Then I stayed with them because of Kate. I loved her from the first moment I saw her.”

“Did she love you back?”

“Eventually,” Taylor said.

“Not eventually,” Kate said, from her chair by the fire. “Truth is it was really pretty quick. One day I asked him why he had never had his teeth fixed and he told me that he had never even thought about it. I like that kind of self-respect and self-confidence in a man.”

“You see anything wrong with my teeth?” Taylor asked.

“Plenty,” Reacher said. “I’m surprised you can eat. Maybe that’s why you’re so small.”

Taylor said, “I am what I am.”

Exactly one hour after they came in and lit the fire they drew lots for the first round of look-out duty. Jackson and Pauling pulled the short straws. Jackson sat in the Land Rover at the back of the house and Pauling sat in the Mini at the front. That way each of them could cover a little more than one hundred eighty degrees. Across the flat land they could see a mile or more. Ninety seconds’ warning if Lane came in by road, a little more if he came in across the fields, which would be a slower approach.