Worth Dying For

And: she had gone to the barn voluntarily, but she had not gone inside the barn voluntarily. Why would a child looking for flowers have gone inside a barn? Barns held no secrets for farm children. No mysteries. A kid interested in colours and nature and freshness would have felt no attraction for a dark and gloomy space full of decaying smells. Had the slider even worked twenty-five years ago? Could a kid have moved it? The building was a century old, and it had been rotting since the day it was finished. The slider was jammed now, and it might have been jammed then, and in any case it was heavy. Alternatively, could an eight-year-old kid have lifted a bike through the judas hole? A bike with big tyres and a sturdy frame and awkward pedals and handlebars?

No, someone had done it for her.

A fifth man.

Because the theory didn’t work without the existence of a fifth man. The barn was irrelevant without a fifth man. The flowers were meaningless without a fifth man. The Duncans were alibied, but Margaret Coe had disappeared even so. Therefore someone else had been there, either by chance or on purpose.

Or not.

Circular logic.

All the way right, or all the way wrong.

To be all the way wrong would be frustrating, but no big deal. To be all the way right meant the fifth man existed, and had to be considered. He would be bound to the Duncans, by a common purpose, by a terrible shared secret, always and for ever. His cooperation could be assumed. His loyalty and service were guaranteed, either by mutual interest or by coercion. In an emergency, he would help out.

Reacher looked at the barn, and the smaller shelter.

If the theory was right, the fifth man would be there.

If the fifth man was there, the theory was right.

Circular logic.

Reacher had seen the buildings twice before, once by night, and once by day. He was an observant man. He had made his living by noticing details. He was living because he noticed details. But there was nothing much to be seen from fifty yards. Just a side view of two old structures. Best move would be for the guy to be inside the barn, off centre, maybe six feet from the door, sitting easy in a lawn chair with a shotgun across his knees, just waiting for his target to step through in a bar of bright light. Second-best move would put the guy in the smaller shelter a hundred and twenty yards away, prone with a rifle on the mezzanine half-loft, his eye to a scope, watching through the ventilation louvres Reacher had noticed on both his previous visits. A harder shot, but maybe the guy thought of himself more as a rifleman than a close-quarters brawler. And maybe the inside of the barn was sacrosanct, never to be seen by an outsider, even one about to die. But in either case, the smaller shelter would have to be checked first, as a matter of simple logic.

Reacher headed left, straight for the long east wall of the smaller shelter, not fast, not slow, using an easy cadence halfway between a march and a stroll, which overall was quieter than either rushing or creeping. He stopped six feet out, where the dry brambles started, and thought about percentages. Chances were good the fifth man had served, or at least had been exposed to military culture through friends and relatives. A heartland state, big families, brothers and cousins. Probably not a specialist sniper, maybe not even an infantryman, but he might know the basics, foremost among which was that when a guy lay down and aimed forward, he got increasingly paranoid about what was happening behind him. Human nature. Irresistible. Which was why snipers operated in two-man teams, with spotters. Spotters were supposed to acquire targets and calculate range and windage, but their real value was as a second pair of eyes, and as a security blanket. All things being equal, a sniper’s performance depended on his breathing and his heart rate, and anything that helped quiet either one was invaluable.

So would the fifth man have brought a spotter of his own? A sixth man? Probably not, because there was already a sixth man away driving the grey van, so a spotter would be a seventh man, and seven was a large and unwieldy number for a local conspiracy. So the fifth man was most likely on his own, and therefore at the minimum he would have set up a physical early-warning system, either fresh gravel or broken glass scattered along the approaches, or possibly a tripwire at the shelter’s entrance, something noisy, something definitive, something to help him relax.

Reacher stepped back from the brambles and walked towards the entrance. He stopped a foot short of level, and listened hard, but he heard nothing at all. He breathed the air, hoping to detect the kind of faint chemical tang that would betray the presence of a parked vehicle, benzenes and cold hydrocarbons riding the earthier organic odours of dirt and old wood, but his broken nose was blocked with clots of blood and he had no sense of smell. None at all. So he just drew the sawn-off with his right hand and the Glock with his left and inched forward and peered right.

And saw a tripwire.

It was a length of thin electrical cable, low voltage, like something a hobbyist would buy at Radio Shack, insulated with black plastic, tied tight and shin-high across the open end of the structure. It was filmy with the part-dried remains of the morning dew, which meant it had been in place for at least two hours, since before dawn, which in turn meant the fifth man was a serious, cautious person, and patient, and committed, and fully invested. And it meant he had been contacted the day before, by the Duncans, maybe in the late afternoon, as a belt-and-suspenders back-up plan, which confirmed, finally, that the barn was indeed important.

Reacher smiled.

All the way right.

He stayed clear of the tangled vine and walked a silent exaggerated curve. He worked on the assumption that most people were right-handed, so he wanted to be on the guy’s left before he announced himself, because that would give the guy’s rifle a longer and more awkward traverse before it came to bear on target. He watched the ground and saw nothing noisy there. He saw a truck deep inside the shelter, parked halfway under the mezzanine floor. Its tailgate was open, the dirty white paint on its edge pale in the gloom. He approached within six inches of the wire and stood absolutely still, letting his eyes adjust. The inside of the shelter was dark, except for thin random bars of sunlight coming through gaps between warped boards. The truck was still and inert. It was a Chevy Silverado. Above it, a long step up from its crew-cab roof, was the loft, and there was a humped shape up there, butt and legs and back and elbows, all preceded by the soles of a pair of boots, all brightly backlit by daylight coming in through the ventilation louvres. The fifth man, prone with a rifle.

Reacher stepped over the tripwire, left foot, then right, high and careful, and eased into the shadows. He inched along the left-hand tyre track, where the earth was beaten smooth, like walking a tightrope, slow and cautious, holding his breath. He made it to the back of the truck. From there he could see the fifth man’s feet, but nothing more. He needed a better angle. He needed to be up in the truck’s load bed, which meant that a silent approach was no longer an option. The sheet metal would clang and the suspension would creak and from that point onward the morning would get very noisy very fast.

He took a deep breath, through his mouth, in and out.

FIFTY-FIVE

ELDRIDGE TYLER HEARD NOTHING AT ALL UNTIL A SUDDEN shattering cacophony erupted ten feet behind him and eight feet below. There was some kind of heavy metal implement beating on the side of his truck and then footsteps were thumping into the load bed and a loud nasal voice was screaming STAY STILL STAY STILL and then a shotgun fired into the roof above his back with a pulverizing blast in the closed space and the voice yelled STAY STILL STAY STILL again and the shotgun crunch-crunched ready for the next round and hot spent buckshot pattered down on him and wormy sawdust drifted off the damaged boards above him and settled all around him like fine khaki snow.