Blue Moon

THIRTY-FIVE

The driver paused with his foot on the brake. The gate was open but there was no one watching it. Which was unusual. But the guy was keen to get in and display his prize, so he didn’t think too much about it. He just drove in and swooped around and reversed towards the roll-up door. The passenger climbed out and smacked a green mushroom button with his palm. The door moved up slowly, with the rattle of chains and the clatter of metal slats. The driver backed in under it. He shut down the motor and got out and joined the passenger at the rear of the car. They pulled their guns and stood well back.

The driver blipped the button on the key fob.

The trunk lid raised up, slow, damped, majestic.

They waited.

Nothing.

The smell of pine, but no whine of saws. The low corrugated shed was quiet. There was no one in it. Then from somewhere deep in the back they heard voices, dulled by walls and doors, but nevertheless loud and panicked and confused. And footsteps too, urgent, agitated, but going nowhere. Just milling around in place. As if something weird was going down in one of the inner offices.

They listened.

Maybe Dino’s office itself.

About the first eight guys into the room saw the exact same thing. Dino, behind his desk, collapsed in his chair, slack and puddled, with his head blown apart. And Jetmir, in a chair in front of the desk, with a Glock in his hand. Literally a smoking gun. They could see the haze and smell the burned powder. Three of the first eight were inner council guys, who had at least a partial clue as to what might have happened. The other five were low level men. They had no idea. They were locked in a mental loop that made no sense at all. Did not compute. Jetmir was the second most important man in the world. His word was law. He was unimpeachable. He was obeyed and admired and revered. Stories were told. He was top of the heap. He was a legend. But he had killed Dino. And Dino was the boss. The first most important man in the world. All a guy’s loyalty and fealty was owed to him alone. Such was their code. Like a blood oath. Like a medieval kingdom. A matter of absolute duty.

One of the five with no idea was a legbreaker from a town called Pogradec, on the shores of Lake Ohrid, whose sister had once been molested by a party official. Dino had restored the family’s honour. The legbreaker was a simple man. He was as faithful as a dog. He loved Dino like a father. He loved that he loved him. He loved the structure, and the hierarchy, and the rules, and the codes, and the iron certainty they gave his life. He loved it all, and he lived by it all. He pulled out his gun and shot Jetmir in the chest, three times, deafening in the crowded space, and then instantly he himself was shot down by two other guys simultaneously, one of them a bagman who seemed to be acting on pure autopilot alone, defending the new boss, even though the new boss had just shot the old boss, and the other shooter a member of the inner council, who had some inkling of what it was all about, and some hope of salvaging something from the wreckage. But a vain hope, because his second round was a through-and-through which killed a bagman standing behind the legbreaker, and the doorman crowding in behind the bagman fired back in a panic, pure reflex, and he hit the inner council guy in the head, so a second inner council guy shot the doorman in retaliation, and a foreman from the yard who had a beef with the council fired back at him, and missed, but hit the third council guy with a ricochet, pure accident, high on the arm, who howled and blasted back, multiple rounds, the muzzle of his Glock dancing and jerking uncontrolled, the rounds going everywhere, into the mass of more men crowding in, falling, slipping, sliding on the blood-slick floor, going down, until the councilman’s Glock clicked on empty, and a hissing, roaring version of silence came back, thrumming and buzzing in the air, but not complete, because right then and far away some other loud sound started up to pierce it.

The new sound was more gunshots. Just two rounds. Deliberate. Carefully spaced. A nine-millimetre handgun. Muffled by distance. Maybe all the way over at the front of the shed. Maybe near the roll-up door.

The driver and the passenger stood well back from the Chrysler’s trunk, with their guns still aimed right at it, in the same solid two-handed feet-apart stances they had used before, but with their necks twisted around, comically, almost as far as they would go. They were peering behind their left shoulders, at the far back corner of the shed, way in the distance, where a corridor led away to the administrative quarters. Where the commotion was.

Then the shooting started back there. Far away, muffled, thumping, contained. First came three solo rounds, a fast triple, thud thud thud, and then a hail of more all at once, and more, and more, and then finally the repeated thumping of a handgun being fired unaimed and in anger, until it ran out.

Then there was a second of silence.

The driver and the passenger turned back to the Chrysler.

Still nothing. The trunk lid, raised. No sign of the occupants.

They turned back to the corner.

Another second of silence.

Back to the Chrysler. Still nothing. No raised heads, no glances out. No signs of life at all. The driver and the passenger glanced at each other. Suddenly worried. Maybe there was exhaust gas in the trunk. Maybe there was a leak. A cracked pipe. Maybe the man and the woman had suffocated.

The driver and the passenger took a cautious step forward.

And another.

Still nothing.

They checked the far back corner again. Still silence. They took another step. To where they could see in the trunk. They glanced in, nervous. What they saw was all different. The man and the woman had changed positions. Originally he had gotten in at the back, and she had curled up in the space he left in front of him. Now he was in front, and she was behind him. Shielded by him. Originally he had gotten in with his head on the left, and now his head was on the right. Which meant he was lying on his left shoulder. Which meant his right arm was free to move. And he was moving it. Real fast. In his hand was a small steel automatic. It came to rest aimed at the driver’s head.

Reacher shot the driver through the forehead, and re-aimed right and shot the passenger through the left eye. With the Ukrainian H&K from his boot. From when he rebalanced the load in his pockets, before they walked out of the Shevicks’ development. Two on the left, two on the right, and one in his sock. Always a good idea.

He raised up an inch and peered out cautiously. He saw a long low corrugated shed, full of the smell of raw softwood, but empty of people. No one there at all. Presumably an HQ of some kind. Maybe the lumber yard they had seen before. Once while driving, once on foot. A cover operation. The dull metal looked the same. Like the electrical warehouse and the plumbing depot.

He sat up and took a better look. Still no people. Still no one there. He rolled out and got to his feet. He helped Abby out after him. She looked at the dead guys sprawled on the floor. Not pretty. One had one eye, and the other had three.

She looked around the empty shed.

‘Where are we?’ she said.

But he didn’t get a chance to tell her what he figured, because right then two new things happened. A bunch of guys ran in from somewhere and swarmed towards the far back corner of the shed, where there was some kind of an archway, that seemed to lead through to other rooms beyond. And simultaneously a bunch of guys ran out in the other direction, through the archway from the other rooms, to the main floor of the shed. They were wild-looking characters. Guns out, white in the face, all hopped up and trembling from some kind of mad adrenalin. The two groups collided. There was crazy shouting and there were yelled questions and blurted incoherent answers, all in a foreign language Reacher assumed was Albanian. Then one guy pushed another guy in the chest, and the other guy pushed back, and someone fired his gun, and the first guy went down, and someone else touched the muzzle of his gun to the shooter’s temple and pulled the trigger, point blank, like a punishment, like an execution, and the shooter’s head blew up, whereupon the whole situation looked like turning into chaos fast, except someone shouted loud and pointed urgently, all the way down the long diagonal distance, and everyone else shut up and turned to look.

A small slender woman and a big ugly man.

Once Reacher had read a paperback book he found on a bus, about how people like to second guess themselves for hours or days, whereas really they know the truth in the blink of an eye. He liked the book because it agreed with him. He had learned to trust his first flash of instinct. Therefore he knew at that point all bets were off. No questions would be asked. We want to know who you are. Not any more. Now they were in the grip of some kind of crazy turmoil and bloodlust. There would be no more bonus points for still able to talk. That offer was way past its best-by date.

So even before the pointing guy’s shout died to an echo Reacher fired three rounds into the mass of distant figures. Three down for sure. Couldn’t miss. The rest scattered like roaches. Reacher ducked back and caught Abby by the elbow and pulled her behind the car. Behind the rear flank. He glanced sideways, out the roll-up door. He recognized the gate, and the scooped-out kerb, and the street. He knew where he was.

The gate was open.

He whispered, ‘Scoot along and get in the passenger door. Then scoot over and drive us out of here. It’s a straight shot. Put your foot down and don’t even look. Keep crouched down in your seat.’

Abby said, ‘What time of day is it?’

‘This doesn’t count. People pay money for this kind of thing.’

‘Where they get spattered with paint, not bullets.’

‘So this is more authentic. They would pay more.’

Abby crouched her way along the flank of the car, and reached up to the handle from below, and slipped her fingers in the bottom seam, and eased the door open, just wide enough to get in, twisting, slithering low, her belly pressed to the seat.

‘The key’s not in,’ she whispered.

One of the distant figures fired a single round. It passed a foot over the trunk lid, two feet over Reacher’s head. The crack of the shot slurred to a boom, as the metal roof vibrated like a giant drum skin.

Abby whispered, ‘They took the key with them. Think about it. They must have opened the trunk remotely.’

‘Fabulous,’ Reacher said. ‘I guess I’ll have to go get it.’

He dropped his cheek to the concrete and looked down the length of the shed from under the car. He saw five guys on the ground. Two from the initial internal dispute, and three from his first three rounds. Two of those were still, and one was moving. But only a little. No great vigour or enthusiasm. He would have nothing much to contribute for a day or two. There were nine guys still vertical, crouched behind whatever cover they had been able to find. Which wasn’t much. There was a pyramid of chemical drums. Preservative, maybe. There were low stacks of lumber, but not many. Inventory was sparse. It was a cover operation. No serious business intent.

Reacher rolled on his back and smacked the magazine out of the H&K and counted the rounds remaining. Two left, plus one in the chamber, for a total of three. Not encouraging. He put the mag back in the gun and rolled on his side and squirmed along the flank of the car until he was back at the trunk. The driver and the passenger lay about five feet away. One eye and three eyes. Their heads lay in pools of blood. The driver was closer, which was good, because he had seemed to be the take-charge guy. The senior figure. He would have the key. In his suit coat pocket, probably. On the left. Because he was right-handed. He would have held his gun in his right and blipped the fob with his left.

Another round came in and smacked the end wall, a foot high. The crack of the shot, the boom of the roof, the metallic echo, then silence again. Then footsteps. Scuffed, hasty, tentative. Someone was moving up. Moving closer. Reacher checked the view again, under the car. The nine live guys were gesturing and waving and pointing. Hand signals. They were coordinating an advance. They were aiming to leapfrog forward, one at a time, two at a time, from one spot to the next. In the lead was a wide guy who looked a little like Gezim Hoxha. Same kind of age, same kind of build. He was tensing up ready, aiming to spin off the chemical drums and make it to a stack of boards wrapped in plastic, maybe fifteen feet further on. The others would fill in behind him. Their likely rate of advance was rapid. They faced no structural impediments.

Time to slow them down.

Only one sure way.

Reacher straightened his arm under the car and aimed very carefully. Like a classic one-handed shooting position, except rotated ninety degrees, because he was lying on his side on the floor. He waited until the guy’s back leg braced for action, and then he fired, leading the target by an inch or two, and the guy stepped right into the bullet. It caught him high in the chest, left side. Which was fine. All kinds of vital stuff in that area. Arteries, nerves, veins. The guy went down and the advance stalled. The back eight hunkered down like turtles. Only one sure way, which was to make an example of the point man, right in front of their eyes.

Two rounds left. Not encouraging.

Reacher squirmed around and rolled over on his front and elbowed-and-toed to where his head was level with the back bumper. The nearest part of the driver was his right foot. Reacher lay flat and stretched out his arm. He was about a yard short. But his plan was made. Better to drag the guy behind the car first, and go through his pockets second. Safer that way. Reacher took a breath and slid out fast and grabbed the driver’s ankle and hauled on it hard. He was back behind cover in a second. The driver’s head left a snail trail of blood on the concrete. Reacher’s brief display of himself triggered a furious volley of four fast rounds from the hunkered-down positions, but they were all late and they all missed.

Reacher stayed in a crouch and dragged the driver another yard. He rolled him over. Then two simultaneous processes unspooled in parallel. Reacher started searching for the car key, and the eight live Albanians started thinking about what he was doing and why he was doing it. And evidently they weren’t dumb. They figured it out pretty fast. About the same time Reacher got his hand in the driver’s left-hand coat pocket, the Albanians started firing at the car. It was a big target. Sixteen feet long, five feet high. They shredded it. First all the driver’s side windows shattered, and rounds punched and clanged through the sheet metal, and then the whole car slumped down on the left as the tyres were shot out, and green oily fluid dripped down underneath. Reacher crawled back to where Abby was half in and half out of the passenger seat. He dragged her out and closed her door and pushed her along to where the front wheel was, behind the engine block, which was the safest spot. Relatively speaking. Under the circumstances. The noise was deafening. Rounds came through the busted far side windows and shattered the near side windows. Pebbles of glass rained down. Rounds clanked and smacked into the bodywork. From closer and closer. They were advancing again.

Reacher had two rounds left.

Not encouraging.

He glanced out the roll-up door. Bright morning sunshine. The gate, open. The street, empty. Maybe thirty yards to the scooped-out kerb. Maybe seventy more to the first corner. Ten seconds for an athlete. At least twenty for him. Maybe more. With eight guys chasing right behind him. Not good. Except maybe less than twenty seconds for Abby. She might be faster. She might be a small target receding into the distance ahead of a much slower and larger target. She might be OK. If she would agree to run on ahead. Which he knew she wouldn’t. There would be an argument. They would miss what would likely be a one-time opportunity. Inevitable. Human nature. Mostly bullshit, but sometimes it rang a bell.

The gate was open.

Human nature. The driver had pulled in during what had obviously been an uproar. Yet he had gone right ahead and popped the trunk. Because he was eager. He couldn’t wait. He wanted the praise and the plaudits. He wanted to be man of the hour. In other words he had sacrificed appropriate tactical caution in favour of his ego. He had been rushed and careless. Reacher remembered peeling off his jacket. He remembered dropping it on the street. He remembered the guns in the pockets bumping and clanking on the blacktop. The two Ukrainian H&Ks, and the two Albanian Glocks. All loaded. Probably more than forty rounds between them.

What would a rushed and careless guy do with a jacket dropped on the street?

Reacher crawled back to the rear passenger door and opened it the same way Abby had opened the front, craning up to the handle, pulling on the bottom edge, easing it wide. A waterfall of glass pebbles fell out. Tufts of upholstery stuffing drifted in the air.

His jacket was dumped on the back seat.

He pulled it towards him. It felt heavy. Partly from window fragments all over it, weighing it down, but mostly because of the metal in the pockets. It was all still there. Two H&Ks, two Glocks. He leaned his back on the rear wheel and checked them over. The H&K that he knew for sure worked had a round chambered and six more in the magazine. The other H&K had a round chambered and a full magazine. Likewise both Glocks. A total of fifty-two rounds, all of them fat little nine-millimetre Parabellums, winking in the smoky light. Against eight opponents, all of which would be low on ammunition by that point, after disabling the Chrysler with such reckless enthusiasm.

More encouraging.

He hooked a finger through all four trigger guards and crawled back to Abby.