Worth Dying For (32 page)

FIFTY-EIGHT

T
HE
.338
HIT HIGH
,
A FOOT ABOVE
J
ONAS
D
UNCAN
’
S CENTRE
mass, halfway between his lower lip and the point of his chin. The bullet drove through the roots of his front incisors, through the soft tissue of his mouth and his throat, through his third vertebra, through his spinal cord, through the fat on the back of his neck, and onward into the corner of Jacob Duncan’s house. Jonas went down vertically, claimed by gravity, his stiff fireplug body suddenly loose and malleable, and he ended up sprawled in a grotesque tangle of limbs, face up, eyes open, the last of his brain’s oxygenated blood leaking from his wound, and then he died.

Reacher shot the rifle’s bolt and the spent shell case clanged against the Yukon’s hood and rolled down its contour and fell to the ground. Reacher picked up the cell phone and said, ‘Jonas is down.’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘We heard the shot.’

‘Any activity?’

‘Not yet.’

Reacher kept the phone against his ear. Jonas’s house was burning nicely. The whole front wall was on fire, and there were flames inside, throwing orange light and shadows all around, curling flat and angry against the ceilings, gleaming wetly behind intact panes of glass, spilling out through the broken windows and leaping up and merging into the general conflagration. Smoke was still blowing south, and heat too, towards the southernmost building.

Dorothy Coe’s voice came back: ‘Jasper is out. He has a weapon. A long gun. He sees us. He’s looking right at us.’

Reacher asked, ‘How far back are you?’

‘About six hundred yards.’

‘Stand your ground. If he fires, he’ll miss.’

‘We think it’s a shotgun.’

‘Even better. The round won’t even reach you.’

‘He’s running. He’s past Jonas’s house. He’s heading for Jacob’s.’

Reacher saw him, flitting right to left across the narrow gap between Jonas’s house and Jacob’s, a short wide man very similar to his brother. On the phone Dorothy Coe said, ‘He’s gone inside. We see him in Jacob’s kitchen. Through the window. Jacob and Seth are in there too.’

Reacher waited. The fire in Jonas’s house was burning out of control. In front of it the white Tahoe was a blackened wreck inside a ball of flame. Glass was punching out of the house’s windows ahead of flames that followed horizontally like arms and fists before boiling upward. The roof was alight. Then there was a loud sound and the air inside the house seemed to shudder and cough and a hot blue shimmer gasped out through the ground floor, like an expelled breath, clearly visible, like a force, and it rose slowly upward, one second, two, three, and then the flames came back even stronger behind it.

Dorothy Coe said, ‘Something just blew up in Jonas’s kitchen. The propane tank, maybe. The back wall is burning hard.’

Reacher waited.

Then the ground floor itself burned through and there was another cough and shudder as the flaming timbers tumbled through to the basement. The left-hand gable tilted inward and the right-hand gable fell outward, across the gap to Jasper’s house. Sparks showered all around and thermals caught them and sent them shooting a hundred feet in the air. Jonas’s right-hand wall collapsed into the gap and piled high against Jasper’s left-hand wall, and gales of new air hit fresh unburned surfaces and vivid new flames leapt up.

Reacher said, ‘This is going very well.’

Then Jonas’s second floor fell in with an explosion of sparks and his left-hand wall came unmoored and folded slowly and neatly in half, the top part falling inward into the fire and the bottom part angling outward and propping itself against Jacob’s house. Burning timbers and bright red embers spilled and settled and sucked oxygen towards them and huge new flames started licking upward and outward and sideways. Even the weeds in the gravel were on fire.

Reacher said, ‘I think we’re three for three. I think we got them all.’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘Jasper is out again. He’s heading for his truck.’

Reacher watched over the front sight of his rifle. He saw Jasper run for the line of cars. Saw him slide into a white pickup. Saw him start it up and back it out. It stopped and turned and aimed straight for the driveway. It blew through a shower of sparks, right past Jonas’s body, and headed straight towards the two-lane. Straight towards Reacher. Straight towards the parked black truck. It braked hard and stopped short just behind it, and Jasper scrambled out. He opened the black truck’s passenger door and ducked inside.

Then a second later he ducked out again.

No key.

The key was in Reacher’s pocket.

Reacher put the phone on the Yukon’s hood.

Jasper Duncan stood still, momentarily unsure. Distance, maybe forty yards. Which was really no distance at all.

Reacher shot him through the head and he went straight down the same way his brother had before him, leaving a small pink cloud in the air above him, made of pulverized blood and bone, which drifted an inch and then disappeared in the breeze.

Reacher picked up the phone and said, ‘Jasper is down.’

Then he dropped the empty gun on the road behind him and climbed inside the Yukon. Lack of replacement ammunition meant that phase one was over, and that phase two was about to begin.

FIFTY-NINE

R
EACHER DROVE THE
Y
UKONA HUNDRED YARDS BEYOND THE
mouth of the driveway, and then he turned right, on to the open dirt. Lumps and stones squirmed and pattered under his tyres. He drove a wide circle until he was level with the compound itself and then he stopped, facing the houses, the engine idling, his foot on the brake. From his new angle he saw that Jacob’s south wall was so far untouched by the fire, but judging by the backdrop of smoke and flame the north end of the house was burning. Ahead and far to the left he could see Dorothy Coe’s truck, waiting six hundred yards west in the fields, similarly nose-in and pent-up and expectant, like a gundog panting and crouching.

He raised the phone to his ear and said, ‘I’m end-on now. What do you see?’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘Jonas’s house is about gone. All that’s left is the chimney, really. The bricks are glowing red. And Jasper’s house is on its way. His propane just blew up.’

‘How about Jacob’s?’

‘It’s burning north to south. Pretty fierce. Has to be getting hot in there.’

‘Stand by, then. It won’t be long now.’

It was less than a minute. Dorothy Coe said, ‘They’re out,’ and a second later Reacher saw Jacob and Seth Duncan spill around the back corner of the house. They ran ducked down and bent over, zigzagging, afraid of the rifle they thought was still out there. They made it to one of the remaining pick-up trucks and Reacher saw them open the doors from a crouch and then climb in and hunker down low. Behind them the north end of Jacob’s house swelled and bellied and came down, quite slowly and gracefully, with sparks shooting up and out like fireworks, with burning timbers tumbling and spreading like lava from a volcano, reaching almost to the boundary fence, a vertical mass made horizontal, and then the south end of the house fell slowly backward and collapsed into the fire, leaving only the chimney upright.

Reacher asked, ‘How does it look?’

Dorothy Coe answered, ‘Just like you said it would.’

Reacher saw Jacob Duncan at the wheel of the pick-up, shorter and broader than Seth in the passenger seat. Seth still had his splint taped to his face. The truck backed up ten yards, almost into the fire behind it, and then it drove forward and hit the fence, butting against it, trying to break through. The pick-up’s front bumper bent out of shape and the hood crumpled a little, and the fence shuddered and rattled, but it held. Deep holes for the posts, sturdy timbers, strong rails. A big production. The law of unintended consequences.

Jacob Duncan tried again. He backed up, much less than ten yards this time because the fire was spreading behind him, and then he shot forward once more. The truck hit the fence and he and Seth bounced around in the cab like rag dolls, but the fence held. Reacher saw Jacob glance backward again. There was no space for a longer run-up. The fire and the mean allocation of land did not permit it.

Jacob changed his tactics. He manoeuvred until the nose of the truck was exactly halfway between two posts, and then he came in slow, in a low gear, pushing the grille into the rails, firming up the contact, then easing down on the gas, pushing harder and harder, hoping that sustained pressure would achieve what a sharp blow had not.

It didn’t. The rails bent, and they bowed, and they trembled, but they held. Then the pick-up’s rear tyres lost traction and spun and howled in the dirt and the fence pushed back and the truck eased off six inches.

The doors opened up again and Jacob and Seth spilled out and hustled over and tried the Cadillac instead. A heavier car, better torque, better power. But worse tyres, built for quiet and comfort out on the open road, not for traction over loose surfaces. Seth drove, hardly backing up at all for fear of putting his gas tank right in the flames behind him. Then he rolled four feet forward and the chrome grille hit the rails and the tyres spun almost immediately.

Game over.

‘Here they come,’ Reacher said.

Behind them the last vestigial support under the blazing structure gave way and the burning pile settled slowly and gently into a lower and wider shape, blowing gales of sparks and gases outward. Big curled flames danced free, burning the air itself, twisting and splitting and then vanishing. Heat distorted the air and gouts of fire hurled themselves a hundred feet up. Jacob and Seth shrank back and shielded their faces with their arms and ducked away.

They climbed the fence.

They dropped into the field.

They ran.

SIXTY

J
ACOB AND
S
ETH
D
UNCAN
RAN THIRTY YARDS
,
A STRAIGHT LINE AWAY
from the fire, pure animal instinct, and then they stopped and glanced back and spun in place, alone and insignificant in the empty acres. They saw the parked Yukon as if for the first time, and they stared at it in confusion, because it was one of theirs, driven by one of their own damn boys, and the guy wasn’t coming to help them. Then they saw Dorothy Coe’s truck far off in another direction and they glanced back at the Yukon and they understood. They looked at each other one last time, and they ran again, in different directions, Jacob one way, and Seth another.

Reacher raised his phone.

He said, ‘If I’m nine o’clock on a dial and you’re twelve, then Jacob is heading for ten and Seth is heading for seven. Seth is mine. Jacob is yours.’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘Understood.’

Reacher took his foot off the brake and steered one-handed, following a lazy clockwise curve, heading first north and then east, bumping across the washboard surface, feeling the heat of the fires on the glass next to his face. Ahead of him Seth was stumbling through the dirt, heading for the road, still seventy yards short of getting there. Reacher saw something in his right hand, and then he heard Dorothy Coe’s voice on the phone: ‘Jacob has a gun.’

Reacher asked, ‘What kind?’

‘A handgun. A revolver, I think. We can’t see. We’re bouncing around too much.’

‘Slow down and take a good look.’

Ten long seconds later: ‘We think it’s a regular six-shooter.’

‘Has he fired it yet?’

‘No.’

‘OK, back off, but keep him in sight. He’s got nowhere to go. Let him get tired.’

‘Understood.’

Reacher laid the phone on the seat next to him and followed Seth south, staying thirty yards back. The guy was really hustling. His arms were pumping. Reacher had no scope, but he was prepared to bet the thing in Seth’s right hand was a revolver too, probably half of a matched pair his father had shared.

Reacher steered and accelerated and pushed on to within twenty yards. Seth was racing hard, knees pumping, arms pumping, his head thrown back. The thing in his hand was definitely a gun. The barrel was short, no longer than a finger. The two-lane road was forty yards away. Reacher had no idea why Seth wanted to get there. No point in it. The road was just a blacktop ribbon with no traffic on it and nothing but more dirt beyond. Maybe it was a generational thing. Maybe the youngest Duncan thought municipal infrastructure was going to save him. Or maybe he was heading home. Maybe he had more weapons in the house. He was going in roughly the right direction. In which case he was either terminally desperate or the world’s biggest optimist. He had more than two miles to go, and he was being chased by a motor vehicle.

Reacher stayed twenty yards back and watched. Way behind his left shoulder a last propane tank cooked off with a dull thump. The Yukon’s mirror filled with sparks. Up ahead, Seth kept on running.

Then he stopped running and whirled around and planted his feet and aimed his revolver two-handed, eye-high, with his aluminium mask right behind it. His chest was heaving and all four of his limbs were trembling and despite the two-handed grip the muzzle was jerking through a circle roughly the size of a basketball. Reacher slowed and changed gear and backed up and stood thirty yards off. He felt safe enough. He had a big V-8 engine block between himself and the gun, and anyway the chances of a panting untrained man even hitting the truck itself with a short-barrelled handgun at ninety feet were slight. The chances of a successful head shot through a windshield were less than zero. The chances of putting the round in the right zip code were debatable.

Seth fired, three times, well spaced, with a jerky trigger action and plenty of muzzle climb and no lateral control at all. Reacher didn’t even blink. He just watched the three muzzle flashes with professional interest and tried to identify the gun, but he couldn’t at thirty yards. Too far away. He knew there were seven- and eight-shot revolvers in the world, but they weren’t common, so he assumed it was a six-shooter and that therefore there were now three rounds left in it. Beside him the phone squawked with concern and he picked it up and Dorothy Coe asked, ‘Are you OK? We heard shots fired.’

‘I’m good,’ Reacher said. ‘Are you OK? He’s as likely to hit you as me. Wherever you are.’

‘We’re good.’

‘Where’s Jacob?’

‘Still heading south and west. He’s slowing down.’

‘Stay on him,’ Reacher said. He put the phone back on the seat. He kept his Glock in his pocket. The problem with being a right-handed man in a left-hand-drive truck was that he would have to bust out the windshield to fire, which used to be easy enough back in the days of pebbly safety glass, but modern automotive windshields were tough, because they were laminated with strong plastic layers, and anyway his heavy wrench was in the burned-out Tahoe, probably all melted back to ore.

Seth rested, bending forward from the waist, his head coming down almost to his shins, and he forced air into his lungs, and he panted once, then twice, and he straightened up and held his breath and aimed the gun again, this time with much more concentration and much better control. Now the muzzle was moving through a circle the size of a baseball. Reacher turned the wheel and stamped on the gas and took off to his right, in a fast tight circle, and then he feinted to come back on his original line but wrenched the wheel the other way and rocked the truck through a figure eight. Seth fired once into empty space and then aimed again and fired again. A round smacked into the top of the Yukon’s windshield surround, on the passenger side, six feet from Reacher’s head.

One round left, Reacher thought.

But there were no rounds left. Reacher saw Seth thrashing at the trigger and he saw the gun’s wheel turning and turning to no effect at all. Either the gun was a six-shooter that hadn’t been fully loaded, or it was a five-shooter. Maybe a Smith 60, Reacher thought. Eventually Seth gave up on it and looked around desperately and then just hurled the empty gun at the Yukon. Finally, a decent aim. The guy would have been better off throwing rocks. The gun hit the windshield dead in front of Reacher’s face. Reacher flinched and ducked involuntarily. The gun bounced off the glass and fell away. Then Seth turned and ran again, and the rest of it was easy.

Reacher stamped on the gas and accelerated and lined up carefully and hit Seth from behind doing close to forty miles an hour. A car might have scooped him up and tossed him in the air and sent him cartwheeling backward over the hood and the roof, but the Yukon wasn’t a car. It was a big truck with a high blunt nose. It was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. It caught Seth flat on his back, everywhere from his knees to his shoulders, like a two-ton bludgeon, and Reacher felt the impact and Seth’s head whipped away out of view, instantaneously, like it had been sucked down by amazing gravity, and the truck bucked once, like there was something passing under the rear left wheel, and then the going got as smooth as the dirt would let it.

Reacher slowed and steered a wide circle and came back to check if any further attention was required. But it wasn’t. No question about it. Reacher had seen plenty of dead people, and Seth Duncan was more dead than most of them.

Reacher took the phone off the passenger seat and said, ‘Seth is down,’ and then he lined up again and drove away fast, south and west across the field.