Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [115]
Mahmeini’s man felt completely alone. He was completely alone. He was the last survivor. He had no friends, no allies, no familiarity with the terrain. And no idea what to do next, except to lash out, to fight back, to seek revenge.
No desire to do anything else, either.
He stared through the darkness at the three Duncan houses. He closed the trunk lid on Asghar, reverently, with soft pressure from eight gentle fingertips, like a sad chord on a church organ. Then he walked along the dirt on the shoulder, back to the passenger door, and he leaned in and picked up his Glock from where it lay on the seat. He closed the door, and skirted the hood, and crossed the road, and stepped onto the dirt of someone’s fallow field, and walked a straight line, parallel with the Duncans’ fenced driveway, their three houses a hundred yards ahead of him, his gun in his right hand, his knife in his left.
Half a mile behind the Duncan houses, Roberto Cassano slowed and hauled the Chevrolet through a tight turn and let it coast onward toward the compound. A hundred yards out he brought it to a stop with the parking brake. He reached up and switched the dome light so it would stay off when the doors opened. He looked at Angelo Mancini next to him, and they both paused and then nodded and climbed out into the night. They drew their Colts and held them behind their backs, so that the moon glinting off the shiny steel would not be visible from the front. They walked forward together, shoulder to shoulder, a hundred yards to go.
Chapter 46
The doctor and his wife and Dorothy Coe were sitting quiet in the dining room, but the football player with the shotgun had moved out of the doorway and gone into the living room, where he was sprawled out full-length on the sofa, watching recorded NFL highlights in high definition on the doctor’s big new television set. His partner had moved off the basement door and was leaning comfortably on the hallway wall, watching the screen at an angle, from a distance. They were both absorbed in the program. The sound was low but distinct, grumbling richly and urgently through the big loudspeakers. The room lights were off, and bright colors from the screen were dancing and bouncing off the walls. Outside the window, the night was dark and still. The phone had rung three times, but no one had answered. Apart from that, all was peaceful. It could have been the day after Christmas, or late on a Thanksgiving afternoon.
Then all the power in the house went out.
The TV picture died abruptly and the sound faded away and the subliminal hum of the heating system disappeared. Silence clamped down, elemental and absolute, and the temperature seemed to drop, and the walls seemed to dissolve, as if there was no longer a difference between inside and out, as if the house’s tiny footprint had suddenly blended with the vast emptiness on which it stood.
The football player in the hallway pushed off the wall and stood still in the center of the space. His partner in the living room swiveled his feet to the floor and sat up straight. He said, “What happened?”
The other guy said, “I don’t know.”
“Doctor?”
The doctor got up from behind the dining table and fumbled his way to the door. He said, “The power went out.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Did you pay your bill?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Could be the whole area.”
The guy in the living room found his way to the window and peered into the blackness outside. He said, “How the hell would anyone know?”
The guy in the hallway asked, “Where are the circuit breakers?”
The doctor said, “In the basement.”
“Terrific. Reacher’s awake. And he’s playing games.” The guy crept through the dark to the basement door, feeling his way with his fingertips on the hallway wall. He identified the door by touch and pounded