Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [120]
One asked, “Well?”
Three hours before daylight. Boredom, irritation, exasperation, humiliation.
The other said, “Let’s do it.”
He propped the gun across his knees and held the flashlight in place. The other guy juggled the roll of tape, making sticky tearing noises, winding it around and around, like he was binding broken ribs with a bandage, until the whole assembly was fat and mummified. He ducked his head and bit off a nine-inch tail and pressed it down securely, and then he squeezed everything hard between his palms, and smoothed the edges of the tape with his fingers. The first guy lifted the gun off his knees and swung it left and right and up and down. The flashlight stayed solidly in place, its beam moving faithfully with the muzzle.
“OK,” he said. “Cool. We’re good to go. The light is like a laser sight. Can’t miss.”
The other guy said, “Remember, aim low. If you see him, jerk the barrel down and fire at his feet.”
“If he doesn’t surrender first.”
“Exactly. First choice is to immobilize him. But if he moves, shoot him.”
“Where will he be?”
“Could be anywhere. Probably out of sight at the bottom of the stairs. Or hiding behind the water heater. It’s big enough.”
They followed the light out to the hallway and stopped near the basement door. The guy with the gun said, “You open it and step back and then get behind me. I’ll go down slowly and I’ll move the light around as much as I can. Tell me if you see him. We need to talk each other through this.”
“OK,” the other guy said. He put his hand on the knob. “We sure about this?”
“I’m ready.”
“OK, on three. Your count.”
The guy with the gun said, “One.”
Then “Two.”
The other guy said, “Wait. He could be right behind the door.”
“At the top of the stairs?”
“Just waiting to jump out at us before we’re ready.”
“You think? That would mean he’s been waiting there a whole hour.”
“Sometimes they wait all day.”
“Snipers do. This guy wasn’t a sniper.”
“But it’s possible.”
“He’s probably behind the water heater.”
“But he might not be.”
“I could fire through the door.”
“If he isn’t there, that would alert him.”
“He’ll be alerted anyway, as soon as he sees the flashlight beam coming down.”
“The door has a steel core. You heard what Seth said.”
The guy with the gun asked, “So what do we do?”
The other guy said, “We could wait for daylight.”
Boredom, irritation, exasperation, humiliation.
The guy with the gun said, “No.”
“OK, so I’ll open up real fast, and you fire one round immediately, right where his feet are. Or where they would be. Just in case. Don’t wait and see. Just pull the trigger, whatever, right away.”
“OK. But then we’ll have to go down real fast.”
“We will. He’ll be in shock. I bet that gun is pretty loud. Ready?”
“I’m ready.” The guy with the gun estimated the arc of the swinging door and shuffled a foot closer and braced himself, the stock to his shoulder, one eye closed, his finger tight on the trigger.
The other guy said, “Aim low.”
The oval of light settled on the bottom quarter of the door.
“On three. Your count.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
The first guy turned the knob and flung the door wide open and the second guy fired instantly, with a long tongue of flame and a huge roaring 12-gauge boom.
Chapter 48
Reacher had studied the electrical panel and had decided to cut all the circuits at once, because of human nature. He was pretty sure that the football players would turn out to be less-than-perfect sentries. Practically all sentries were less than perfect. It was any army’s most persistent problem. Boredom set in, and attention wandered, and discipline eroded. Military history was littered with catastrophes caused by poor sentry performance. And football players weren’t even military. Reacher figured the two in the house above him would stay on the ball for about ten or fifteen minutes, and then they would get lazy. Maybe they would make coffee or turn on the television, and relax, and get comfortable. So he gave them half an hour to settle in, and then he cut all the power at once, to be sure