So, not just a coup, but a message too, brazenly and artfully and subtly delivered. A message that said: We can do anything we want. We can reach out and touch anyone, anywhere, any time, and you won't even begin to understand how we did it. And in case subtlety didn't impress, they had reached out and burned Safir's guys to death in the motel lot, in a brutal demonstration of range and power. Rossi's boys hadn't done that. Rossi's boys were probably already dead themselves, somewhere else, somehow else, maybe dismembered or bled out or even crucified. Or buried alive. Rossi's spokesman had used those very words, on the subject of the Duncans' tastes.
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 on to 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 towards 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.
FORTY-SIX
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 programme. The sound was low but distinct, grumbling richly and urgently through the big loudspeakers. The room lights were off, and bright colours 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 centre of the space. His partner in the living room swivelled 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 on it. He called, 'Turn it back on, asshole.'
No response.
Pitch black throughout the house. Not even a glimmer, anywhere.
'Turn the power back on, Reacher.'
No response.
Cold, and silence.
The guy from the living room found his way out to the hallway. 'Maybe he isn't awake. Maybe it's a real outage.'
His partner asked, 'Got a flashlight, doctor?'
The doctor said, 'In the garage.'
'Go get it.'
'I can't see.'
'Do your best, OK?'
The doctor shuffled down the hallway, hesitantly, fingers brushing the wall, colliding with the first guy, sensing the second guy's hulking presence and avoiding it, making it to the kitchen, stumbling against a chair with a hollow rattle of wood, hitting the edge of the table with his thighs. The world of the blind. Not easy. He trailed his fingers along the countertops, passing the sink, passing the stove, making it to the mud room lobby in back. He turned ninety degrees with his hands out in front of him and found the door to the garage. He groped for the knob and opened the door and stepped down into the chill space beyond. He found the workbench and reached up and traced his fingers over the items clipped neatly above it. A hammer, good for hitting. Screwdrivers, good for stabbing. Wrenches, stone cold to the touch. He found the flashlight's plastic barrel and pulled it out from its clip. He thumbed the switch and a weak yellow beam jumped out. He rapped the head against his palm and the beam sparked a little brighter. He turned and found a football player standing right next to him. The one from the living room.
The football player smiled and took the flashlight out of his hand and held it under his chin and made a face, like a Halloween lantern. He said, 'Good work, doc,' and turned away and used the beam up and down and side to side to paint his way back into the house. The doctor followed, using the same lit memories a second later. The football player said, 'Go back in the dining room now,' and shone the beam ahead, showing the doctor the way. The doctor went back to the table and the football player said, 'All of you stay right where you are, and don't move a muscle,' and then he closed the door on them.
His partner said, 'So what now?'
The guy with the flashlight said, 'We need to know if Reacher is awake or asleep.'
'We hit him pretty hard.'
'Best guess?'
'What's yours?'
The guy with the flashlight didn't answer. He stepped back down the hallway to the basement door. He pounded on it with the flat of his hand. He called, 'Reacher, turn the power back on, or something bad is going to happen up here.'
No response.
Silence.
The guy with the flashlight hit the door again and said, 'I'm not kidding, Reacher. Turn the damn power back on.'
No response.
Silence.
The other guy asked again, 'So what now?'
The guy with the flashlight said, 'Go get the doctor's wife.' He aimed the beam at the dining room door and his partner went in and came back out holding the doctor's wife by the elbow. The guy with the flashlight said, 'Scream.'
She said, 'What?'
'Scream, or I'll make you.'
She paused a beat and blinked in the light of the beam, and then she screamed, long and high and loud. Then she stopped and dead silence came back and the guy with the flashlight hammered on the basement door again and called, 'You hear that, asshole?'