Ten seconds later the lights came back on, and the television picture jumped back to life, and the excited announcers started up again, and the heating system clicked and caught and hummed and whirred. Reacher screwed his eyes shut against the sudden dazzle and then forced them open to narrow slits and looked down. The two guys on the floor were battered and bleeding. One was out cold, and the other was dazed. Reacher fixed that with another kick to the head, and then he looked around and saw the roll of duct tape on the sofa. Five minutes later both guys were trussed up like chickens and bound together back to back by their necks and their waists and their ankles. Together they were far too heavy to move, so Reacher left them right where they were, on the hallway floor, hiding the ruined patch of parquet where he had fired into the ground.
Job done, he thought.
Job done, Jacob Duncan thought. Seth's Cadillac had been retrieved from the road, and both dead Iranians had been stripped to the skin and their clothes had been dumped in the kitchen woodstove. Their bodies had been hauled to the door and left in the yard for later disposal. Then the kitchen wall and the floor had been wiped clean, and the broken glass had been swept up, and the busted window had been patched with tape and wax paper, and Seth's hand had been taken care of, and then Jasper had dragged extra chairs in from another room, and now all six men were sitting close together around the table, the four Duncans plus Cassano and Mancini, all of them tight and collegial and elbow to elbow. The Knob Creek had been brought out, and toasts had been drunk, to each other, and to success, and to future partnership.
Jacob Duncan had leaned back and drunk with considerable private satisfaction and personal triumph, because he felt fully vindicated. He had glimpsed Cassano at the window, had seen the aimed.45, and had talked a little longer and louder than was strictly necessary, proclaiming his undying loyalty to Rossi, cementing the relationship beyond a reasonable doubt, all the while keeping his nerve and waiting for Cassano to shoot, which he had eventually. Quick thinking, courage under pressure, and a perfect result. Doubled profits stretched ahead in perpetuity. Reacher was locked safely underground, with two good men on guard. And the shipment was on its way, which was the most wonderful thing of all, because as always a small portion of it would be retained for the family's personal use. A kind of benign shrinkage. It made the whole crazy operation worthwhile.
Jacob raised his glass and said, 'Here's to us,' because life was good.
Reacher found a paring knife in a kitchen drawer and cut the decapitated remains of the flashlight off the shotgun barrel. Laymen misunderstood gunpowder. A charge powerful enough to propel a heavy projectile through the air at hundreds of miles an hour did so by creating a shaped bubble of exploding gas energetic enough to destroy anything it met on its way out of the barrel. Which was why military flashlights were made of metal and mounted with the lens behind the muzzle, not in front of it. He tossed the shattered plastic in the trash, and then he looked around the kitchen and asked, 'Where's my coat?'
The doctor's wife said, 'In the closet. When we came back in I took all the coats and hung them up. I kind of scooped yours up along the way. I thought I should hide it. I thought you might have useful stuff in it.'
Reacher glanced into the hallway. 'Those guys didn't search my pockets?'
'No.'
'I should kick them in the head again. It might raise their IQ.'
The doctor's wife told him to sit down in a chair. He did, and she examined him carefully, and said, 'Your nose looks really terrible.'
'I know,' Reacher said. He could see it between his eyes, purple and swollen, out of focus, an unexpected presence. He had never seen his own nose before, except in a mirror.
'My husband should take a look at it.'
'Nothing he can do.'
'It needs to be set.'
'I already did that.'
'No, seriously.'
'Believe me, it's as set as it's ever going to get. But you could clean the cuts, if you like. With that stuff you used before.'
Dorothy Coe helped her. They started with warm water, to sponge the crusted blood off his face. Then they got to work with the cotton balls and the thin astringent liquid. The skin had split in big U-shaped gashes. The open edges stung like crazy. The doctor's wife was thorough. It was not a fun five minutes. But finally the job was done, and Dorothy Coe rinsed his face with more water, and then patted it dry with a paper towel.
The doctor's wife asked, 'Do you have a headache?'
'A little bit,' Reacher said.
'Do you know what day it is?'
'Yes.'
'Who's the president?'
'Of what?'
'The Nebraska Corn Growers.'
'I have no idea.'
'I should bandage your face.'
'No need,' Reacher said. 'Just lend me a pair of scissors.'
'What for?'
'You'll see.'
She found scissors and he found the roll of duct tape. He cut a neat eight-inch length and laid it glue-side up on the table. Then he cut a two-inch length and trimmed it to the shape of a triangle. He stuck the triangle glue-side to glue-side in the centre of the eight-inch length, and then he picked the whole thing up and smoothed it into place across his face, hard and tight, a broad silver slash that ran from one cheekbone to the other, right under his eyes. He said, 'This is the finest field dressing in the world. The Marines once flew me from the Lebanon to Germany with nothing but duct tape keeping my lower intestine in.'
'It's not sterile.'
'It's close enough.'
'It can't be very comfortable.'
'But I can see past it. That's the main thing.'
Dorothy Coe said, 'It looks like war paint.'
'That's another point in its favour.'
The doctor came in and stared for a second. But he didn't comment. Instead he asked, 'What happens next?'
FORTY-NINE
THEY WENT BACK TO THE DINING ROOM AND SAT IN THE DARK, SO they could watch the road. There were three more Cornhuskers out there somewhere, and it was possible they would come in and out on rotation, swapping duties, spelling each other. Like shift work. Reacher hoped they all showed up sooner or later. He kept the duct tape and the Remington close by.
The doctor said, 'We haven't heard any news.'
Reacher nodded. 'Because you weren't allowed to use the phone. But it rang, and so you think something new has happened.'
'We think three new things have happened. Because it rang three times.'
'Best guess?'
'The gang war. Three men left, three phone calls. Maybe they're all dead now.'
'They can't all be dead. The winner must still be alive, at least. Murder-suicide isn't normally a feature of gang fights.'
'OK, then maybe it's two dead. Maybe the man in the Cadillac got the Italians.'
Reacher shook his head. 'More likely the other way around. The man in the Cadillac will get picked off very easily. Because he's alone, and because he's new up here. This terrain is very weird. It takes some getting used to. The Italians have been here longer than him. In fact they've been here longer than me, and I feel like I've been here for ever.'
The doctor's wife said, 'I don't see how this is a gang war at all. Why would a criminal in Las Vegas or wherever just step aside because two of his men got hurt in Nebraska?'
Reacher said, 'The two at the motel got more than hurt.'
'You know what I mean.'
'Think about it,' Reacher said. 'Suppose the big guy is at home in Vegas, taking it easy by the pool, smoking a cigar, and his supplier calls him up and says he's cutting him out of the chain. What does the big guy do? He sends his boys over, that's what. But his boys just got beat. So he's bankrupt now. He's fresh out of threats. He's powerless. It's over for him.'
'He must have more boys.'