“You’re Reacher,” he said. There was blood in his mouth.

“Correct,” I said back.

“You’ve got no chance,” he said.

“You think?”

He nodded. “We’ve got shoot-to-kill orders.”

“On me?”

He nodded again.

“Who has?”

“Everybody.”

“Xavier’s orders?”

He nodded again. Put the back of his hand up under his nose.

“People going to obey those orders?” I asked.

“For sure.”

“Are you?”

“I guess not.”

“Promise?”

“I guess so.”

“OK,” I said.

I paused for a moment and thought about asking him some more questions. He might be reluctant. But I figured I could slap him around some and get all the answers he had to give. But in the end I figured those answers didn’t matter very much. Made no practical difference to me if there were ten or twelve or fifteen hostiles in the house, or what they were armed with. Shoot to kill. Them or me. So I just stepped away and was trying to decide what to do with the guy when he made my mind up for me by reneging on his promise. He came up off the floor and made a dive for the handgun on the sofa. I caught him with a wild left in the throat. It was a solid punch, and a lucky one. But not for him. It crushed his larynx. He went down on the floor again and suffocated. It was reasonably quick. About a minute and a half. There was nothing I could do for him. I’m not a doctor.

I stood completely still for a minute. Then I put my shirt back on and climbed back out of the window and retrieved the shotguns and my jacket and my coat and climbed back in and crossed the room and looked out of the back window at the house.

“Shit,” I said, and looked away.

The Cadillac was parked on the carriage circle. Eliot hadn’t gotten away. Nor had Elizabeth, or Richard, or the cook. That put three noncombatants into the mix. And the presence of noncombatants makes any assault a hundred times harder. And this one was hard enough to begin with.

I looked again. Next to the Cadillac was a black Lincoln Town Car. Next to the Town Car were two dark blue Suburbans. There was no catering truck. Maybe it was around the side, next to the kitchen door. Maybe it was coming later. Or maybe it wasn’t coming at all. Maybe there was no banquet. Maybe I had screwed up completely and misinterpreted the whole situation.

I stared through the harsh lights on the wall into the gloom around the house. I couldn’t see a guard on the front door. But then, it was cold and wet and anybody with any sense would be inside the hallway looking out through the glass. I couldn’t see anybody in Duke’s window, either. But it was standing open, exactly the way I had left it. Presumably the NSV was still hanging there on its chain.

I looked at the vehicles again. The Town Car could have brought four people in. The Suburbans could have brought seven each. Eighteen people, maximum. Maybe fifteen or sixteen principals and two or three guards. Alternatively, maybe only three drivers came. Maybe I was completely wrong.

Only one way to find out.

And this was the hardest part. I had to get through the lights. I debated finding the switch and turning them off. But that would be an instant early warning to the people in the house. Five seconds after they went off they would be on the phone asking the gate guard what had happened. And the gate guard couldn’t answer, because the gate guard was dead. Whereupon I would have fifteen or more people swarming straight at me in the gloom. Easy enough to avoid most of them. But the trick would be to know who to avoid, and who to grab. Because I was pretty sure if I let Quinn get behind me tonight I would never see him again.

So I had to do it with the lights blazing. Two possibilities. One was to run straight toward the house. That would minimize the time I spent actually illuminated. But it would involve rapid motion, and rapid motion catches the eye. The other possibility would be to traverse the wall all the way to the ocean. Sixty yards, slowly. It would be agony. But it was probably the better option.

Because the lights were mounted on the wall, trained away from it. There would be a dark tunnel between the wall itself and the rear edge of the beams. It would be a slim triangle. I could crawl along it, right down at the base of the structure. Slowly. Through the NSV’s field of fire.

I eased the rear door open. There were no lights on the gatehouse itself. They started twenty feet to my right, where the gatehouse wall became the perimeter wall. I stepped halfway out and crouched down. Turned ninety degrees right and looked for my tunnel. It was there. It was less than three feet deep at ground level. It narrowed to nothing at head height. And it wasn’t very dark. There was scatter coming back off the ground and there were occasional misaligned beams and there was glow coming out of the rear of the lamps themselves. My tunnel was maybe halfway between pitch dark and brilliantly lit.

I shuffled forward on my knees and reached back and closed the door behind me. Put a Persuader in each hand and dropped to my stomach and pressed my right shoulder hard against the base of the wall. Then I waited. Just long enough for anybody who thought they’d seen the door move to lose interest. Then I started crawling. Slowly.

I got maybe ten feet. Then I stopped again. Fast. I heard a vehicle out on the road. Not a sedan. Something bigger than that. Maybe another Suburban. I reversed direction. Dug my toes in and crawled backward to the doorway. Knelt up and opened the door and slid inside the gatehouse and stood up. Put the Persuaders on a chair and took the Beretta out of my pocket. I could hear a big-inch V-8 idling on the other side of the gate.

Decisions. Whoever was out there was expecting the gate guard’s services. And a buck got ten whoever was out there would know I wasn’t the real gate guard. So I figured I would have to give up on the crawling. I figured I would have to go noisy. Shoot them, take their vehicle, make it down to the house real fast before the NSV gunner could draw a bead. Then take my chances in the ensuing chaos.

I stepped to the back door again. Clicked the Beretta’s safety off and took a breath. I had the initial advantage. I already knew exactly what I was going to do. Everybody else would have to react first. And that would take them a second too long.

Then I remembered the camera on the gatepost. The video monitor. I could see exactly what I was faced with. I could count heads. Forewarned is forearmed. I stepped across to check. The picture was gray and milky. It showed a white panel van. Writing on the side. Keast amp; Maden Catering. I breathed out. No reason why they should know the gate man. I put the Beretta back in my pocket. Stripped off my coat and jacket. Pulled the denim thing off the gate man’s body and slipped it on. It was tight, and there was blood on it. But it was reasonably convincing. I stepped out the door. Kept my back to the house and tried to make myself look two inches shorter. Walked to the gate. Butted the latch upward with my fist, the same way Paulie used to. Hauled it open. The white truck drove up level with me. The passenger buzzed his window down. He was wearing a tux. The guy at the wheel was in a tux. More noncombatants.

“Where to?” the passenger asked.

“Around the house to the right,” I said. “Kitchen door’s all the way at the back.”

The window went back up. The truck drove past me. I waved. Closed the gate again. Stepped back into the lodge and watched the truck from the window. It headed straight for the house and then swung right at the carriage circle. Its headlight beams washed over the Cadillac and the Town Car and the two Suburbans and I caught a flare from its brake lights and then it disappeared from view.

I waited two minutes. Willed it to get darker. Then I changed back into my own coat and jacket and retrieved the Persuaders from the chair. Eased the door open and crawled out and closed it behind me and dropped to my stomach. Pressed my shoulder to the base of the wall and started the slow crawl all over again. I kept my face turned away from the house. There was grit underneath me and I could feel small stones sharp against my elbows and my knees. But mostly I could feel a tingle in my back. It was facing a weapon that could fire twelve half-inch bullets every second. There was probably some tough guy right behind it with his hands resting lightly on the handles. I was hoping he would miss with the first burst. I figured he probably would. I figured he would fire the first burst way low or way high. Whereupon I would be up and running zigzags into the darkness before he lined up for a better try.