Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (34 page)

His eyes quickly scanned the scene through the glass doors—Left! Right! Back left again!

Two men stood in the room, and two females crouched down tight together—Raggie and Mrs. Rowley. One of the men had no right arm, and something was wrong with his ears. No, his ears were missing. He was unarmed. No problem. The other man—Grant—had the same Beretta M9 from before, but this time, it had a long suppressor on the end of it. Both men faced the direction of the kitchen.

Where were Lane and Graine?
Cameron wondered, and then he thought,
The kitchen.

In the old westerns that Cameron’s mom had made him watch as a kid, the good guy would’ve duked it out with the bad guy—or, in this case, the bad guy’s main henchman.

Not Cameron’s style.

The girls were clear enough for a kill shot.

A bullet fires fast. Out of a Heckler and Koch MP5, it travels out of the barrel at a speed of eleven hundred feet per second, but a second isn’t the shortest measurement of time.

Cameron liked numbers, always had, and he knew a lot about them. He wasn’t good with physics—he only knew the basics that everyone knew. Not that he didn’t find physics interesting. One thing he did know about physics was a thing called
Plankc time
, which was the measurement of
Plankc units
. It had something to do with measuring the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. The thing that was important about it—right then in that moment—was that light speed could be measured in the smallest known measurement of a second, known as an attosecond.

An attosecond equaled to ten to the negative eighteenth power. The way Cameron had always thought of it was that an attosecond was to a second what a regular old second was to thirty-two billion years. Very, very short and fast!

Cameron couldn’t move at the speed of light, but it sure as hell felt like he was. He switched the fire selector to three-round burst and squeezed the trigger in a period of time that felt to him like an attosecond.

Three bullets exploded from the gun, and a cloud of fire and smoke burst from the muzzle. The bullets shattered the glass and rocketed across ninety-nine feet of space. They ripped three 9mm holes into Grant’s back and head. A fine red spray puffed out from the other side of him along with parts of his lungs and facial muscles and teeth, staining the Rowley’s white carpet and splattering a white wall.

Raggie and her mother screamed, and the African guy with no ears spun around to stare at Cameron. Aside from Shepard back in Red Rain Indian Reservation, Cameron couldn’t remember the last time he had seen someone so scarred.

Chang said, “Who’re you?”

“Shut up!” Cameron said and burst through the shattered glass like a one-man SWAT team. He said, “On the ground! Now!”

Chang wasn’t the kind of guy to be intimidated—not after the things that he had seen and done—but one look at Cameron’s face, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Cameron heard a dog bark and saw a big dog covered in curly white hair, a mix of God knew what. It ran down the stairs and barked at the guy on the ground. The dog didn’t even look at him. It seemed to be interested only in restraining the guy on the ground.

Cameron flicked the gun up and pointed it toward the opposite hallway that led through a dining room and into the kitchen.

Raggie said, “There’s two more!”

“I know,” said Cameron. “Grab your mom, and get the hell outta here! Go through the backyard!”

Raggie stood bravely and led her mother by the hand out through the shattered glass of the French doors. Max stayed behind for another second, watching the guy on the ground and growling loudly. Then he darted out the door and chased after them.

Cameron stayed until he was sure they were out and away from harm, and then he looked at Chang and said, “If you move, I’ll kill you in a way you’ve never seen. Whatever did that shit to your face will seem like heaven compared to what I’ll do!”

The guy with no ears looked up at him, and Cameron knew he wouldn’t move. The guy had a fear in his eyes that Cameron had seen before. It was the kind of look you couldn’t fake. Cameron thought about shooting the guy just to be safe, but he’d already wasted enough time. Besides, with those shots fired, the neighboring Secret Service agents would be by soon enough. They’d find him and take care of him.

He walked back over to Grant’s body. He knelt down and picked up the silenced M9 that Grant had dropped. He tucked it under his armpit and held it there as he looked the body over. Seeing another gun tucked into Grant’s waistband, he pulled it out and checked it, one-handed. There were no bullets. It looked to Cameron like Grant had taken it off of the dead cop in the coffee table and ejected the rounds.

He looked back at the guy with no ears.

He asked, “You responsible for this?”

The guy looked up slowly and shook his head.

Cameron asked, “Are you the guy in charge?”

The guy said nothing.

Cameron dropped the empty M9 and pointed the silenced one at the man with no ears. “Name?”

The African guy said, “Chang.”

“You’re the rebel? The one Rowley thinks died ten years ago? He told me they took you prisoner.”

Chang said, “Sowe spared me. Taught me things.”

Cameron said, “He do that to you?”

Chang nodded with his hands behind his head.

“You the guy behind all of this?” he asked again.

Chang said nothing.

Cameron looked at the dead cop and said, “You responsible for that?”

Chang said, “Consequences. Casualty of war.”

Cause and effect. One thing led to another.

Cameron was taught never to use a gun in the field that he’d never test-fired before. So he test-fired the silenced M9. He aimed it at Chang and squeezed the trigger four times—three bullets for the dead cop and an extra for himself. He ejected the magazine and fired the chambered round into Chang also, making it a total of five bullets—and one very dead African.

The gun worked just fine, but he didn’t need it. So he ejected the clip and pulled the slide to empty the chamber. He tossed the silenced M9 and turned toward the hall that led to the kitchen. He glanced up the back stairs and thought,
Two enemies left.
He hoped he’d find them both in the kitchen, but he knew there was a second staircase at the front of the house. He figured if one of them was missing from the kitchen, he’d most likely be upstairs.

He headed quickly down the hall in a crouch. He stopped at an open doorway and peeked in, his head behind the MP5, stock jammed hard into his shoulder. His eyes hit the far corner and then darted to the others. Nothing there. Just empty furniture and darkness. He scrambled the rest of the way to a corner near the kitchen, just inside the dining room.

He heard gunshots—two very loud ones that sounded like cannons firing and three muffled ones. The two shots were from a .357 Magnum. No question. The other three were from a gun with a silencer attached. Unmistakable. He wasn’t sure what type of gun it was, but he figured it was Lane’s M9. Then there were three more shots that sounded like they came from a SIG Sauer—definitely Graine’s gun.

Cameron tucked in tight and took a quick glance around the kitchen doorframe. He saw Li crouched behind an island. He didn’t see Lane or Graine.

Li looked at him and gestured to an open doorway at the far corner. That’s where they were—on the other side. Probably hugging the wall.

Graine was an old man, a has-been cop, and a traitor who had misled his friends for years. He may have been a special ops soldier at one time, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a has-been.

Lane was a different story. He was from the same unit as Graine, but he was younger and had personal motivation. He also had a skill set that had probably only gotten better with time. More than likely he’d been running bullshit missions back in Africa for whoever that guy in the living room was. And there was something about him that Cameron knew all too well. He was a guy who thought he was still in his prime and, in a way, he was probably right.

What would Lane do here?
he thought.

Simple—Lane knew Li wasn’t alone. They’d heard Cameron fire a three-round burst, and they had probably heard his voice. So Lane would instruct Graine, the weaker of the two, to stay behind and take care of Li while Lane headed to the second floor by way of the front staircase and then down the back stairs to flank Cameron from behind.

Cameron wished he knew some of those special ops hand signals that Li probably did. But he didn’t, so he did the best he could. He held his hand up and gave her the universal signal for stay put. And then he pointed up at the ceiling. She nodded. He wasn’t worried about her. She could handle herself.

Cameron leaped to his feet and ran in a crouch back the way he’d come, being careful to check every corner before turning it. He made his way back to the family room and stopped. The guy with no ears still lay face down on the floor, dead as a doornail. Cameron slumped back into the darkness of a far corner. He got down on one knee, pressed his back to the corner, and pointed the MP5 at the back staircase.

He waited. Seconds crept by slowly—and nothing. He waited longer. Still nothing. He barely blinked, moving his eyes from side to side and up and down, not keeping them trained on one single location for too long. Eyes had a tendency to blur when you stared at one thing for too long.

No one came.

He heard another two gunshots from the kitchen, and still he waited. The seconds ticked by. He counted them. The first shots from the SIG Sauer were one minute and ten seconds apart. And then the shots of the second set were spaced one minute and eleven seconds apart. The third set came, and there was one minute and nine seconds between. The spacing was intentional—an ambush.

He smiled and waited.

Finally, he heard a fourth set of two rounds fired at one minute and ten seconds from the last. Then he saw a foot creep down from the top of the staircase. He silently slid his back up the wall and steadied the MP5 in a rock solid stance. He breathed in and breathed out.

He saw the guy’s other foot come down on the second step from the top. He waited patiently as John Lane’s legs came fully into view and then his chest and then his face. John Lane crept down the stairs with his silenced Beretta M9 pointed out, ready to fire.

Cameron stood still in the darkness of the corner, waiting for Lane to either see him or reach the bottom. Lane never saw him. When his foot hit the floor after the last step, Cameron moved out of the corner—slowly. He stared down the iron sights of the MP5. Lane’s center mass filled the middle of his reticle.

Cameron whispered from the darkness. He said, “Lane.”

Lane twisted fast and pointed his M9, but he wasn’t fast enough.

A burst of bullets exploded from Cameron’s MP5, traveling one hundred and five feet, which at eleven hundred feet per second was one-twelfth of a second a piece. The three bullets ripped through the flesh and bone in Lane’s chest, and he flew backward onto the stairs in an explosion of red. He slumped down, and blood spurted from the wounds in his chest. His silenced M9 fell useless to the carpet.

Cameron stepped out of the darkness and over Grant’s corpse. He moved toward the staircase, his gun trained on Lane. He stopped, his right foot on top of the fallen M9.

He stared into Lane’s eyes—close and personal—for the first and last time.

Lane tried to speak, choking on the blood gurgling in his throat.

Cameron said, “Jack killed your brother. And I killed you. Guess it’s just a family thing.”

And in seconds, the life drained from Lane.

Cameron looked over at the dead guy with no ears and then back at Lane. Only one left. He stared at Lane, wondering how much he weighed. Holding the MP5 in his left hand, he reached down and grabbed Lane’s belt with his right. He deadlifted him straight up. He wasn’t a big guy, average size. Still, carrying dead weight like a suitcase wasn’t easy. But the adrenaline and the combat instincts in Cameron’s bones magnified his strength. He lifted Lane’s corpse up and hauled him up the stairs. Lane’s arms and legs hit the edges of the steps limply as Cameron climbed. Once at the top, he dropped the body on the second floor and dragged Lane through the hallway and around corners until he reached the back staircase. He didn’t go down them. He stopped at the top.

He called out, “Graine!”

Chapter 53

GRAINE WAITED LIKE HE HAD BEEN TOLD
and fired his gun every seventy seconds as instructed. He wasn’t trying to hit anything, not that he could see anyone anyway. They’d seen a flash of a small man with a gun—or maybe it was a woman. Whoever it was had hidden well.

Graine wasn’t as young as he used to be, and his usual thing was more a behind-the-scenes thing. He didn’t really like all of this exposure. This was Lane’s show, not his. And why should he keep sticking his neck out? Rowley may not have gone through with killing Asher, but the damage was done. It looked like he was going to tell everything and deal with the shame for the rest of his life. He’d probably go to prison as well for conspiracy or something like that. Even if his family lived, they’d never speak to him again. He’d very clearly chosen his country over his daughter’s life. Graine didn’t quite get all that patriot shit. Well, he understood it to a point, but sacrificing his own for this country? That was cold even by his standards.