17 A Wanted Man

response.
    McQueen tapped his knuckles on the counter.
    ‘Hello?’ he called again.
    No response.
    ‘Service industries,’ McQueen said, quietly. ‘Can’t beat them.’
    He knocked on the counter again, a little louder.
    ‘Hello?’ he said, also a little louder.
    No response.
    He glanced left at Reacher and said, ‘You better go knock on his door.’
    Which would put Reacher in front of the gun for the first time, but there was no natural way to refuse. The route around to the door was to the left, and Reacher was on the left. Simple as that. Choreography. Geometry. Inevitable.
    So Reacher looped around, between the end of the counter and the table with the coffee, and he stepped into the narrow well behind the counter. He glanced back out through the lobby window. The Chevy was still there, under the porte cochère. It hadn’t moved. It was idling patiently, just waiting, with white exhaust pooling at the rear.
    But McQueen had left his car door open.
    Which was the first warning bell.
    The second was the sound of feet on vinyl.
    A fast one-two shuffle.
    Exactly like the sound of a man stepping back and turning sideways.
    The third warning bell was a fast composite rustle of skin and cotton and wool and metal.
    Exactly like the sound of something heavy coming out of a pocket.
    Reacher turned back and faced McQueen and saw nothing beyond the muzzle of a small stainless steel handgun pointing at the centre of his face.

TWENTY-NINE
    THE GUN WAS a Smith & Wesson 2213. The smallest automatic in Smith & Wesson’s extensive range. Three-inch barrel, .22 Long Rifle rimfires, eight in the magazine. Dainty, but a serious weapon. McQueen had been very fast with it. Phenomenally fast. Like a magician. Like a conjuror. First it wasn’t there, and then it was.
    Just like that.
    Reacher stood very still.
    The gun was maybe eight feet away. Behind it McQueen’s long right arm was locked straight and raised slightly above the horizontal. He was standing sideways on. His head was turned. One eye was closed.
    His finger was white on the trigger.
    Not good.
    The .22 Long Rifle was one of the world’s oldest rounds, and by far the most common. Annual production every year since 1887 had exceeded two billion units. For a reason. It was cheap, it was quiet, and its recoil was gentle. And it was effective. Out of a rifle it was good against rats and squirrels at 450 feet, and against dogs and foxes at 250, and against full-grown coyotes at 150.
    Against a human head at eight feet it would be devastating. Even out of a short-barrelled handgun.
    Not good.
    Not good at all.
    Reacher couldn’t see the Chevy any more. McQueen was in the way. Which was not such a bad thing. At least Delfuenso would not have to watch it happen.
    Which was a mercy.
    But then: look on the bright side of life.
    That was Reacher’s innate credo.
    As in: there were four basic ways of missing with a short-barrelled handgun. Even at eight feet, even against a head-sized target. They were: missing high, missing low, missing left, and missing right.
    Missing high was always the most likely.
    All guns kick upward as they fire. Action, reaction, a basic law of physics. Inevitably new shooters with machine guns stitched a vertical line that rose for ever. A classic fault. Ninety per cent of training was about holding the muzzle down. Suppressors helped, because of the extra weight.
    There was no reason to believe McQueen was a new shooter.
    But if he was going to miss, he was going to miss high.
    Laws of physics.
    Four things happened at once: Reacher let out a sudden loud inarticulate bellow, and McQueen startled and rocked back a step, and Reacher dropped vertically towards the floor, and McQueen pulled the trigger.
    And missed.
    Missed high, partly because Reacher’s head was no longer where it had been before. Gravity had done its work. Reacher heard the roar of the shot, quieter than some, but still deafening in a closed room, and simultaneously he heard the wallboard explode above and behind his head, and then he hit the floor, knees first, then his hip, then his side, sprawling, down low behind the counter, out of sight. He had no plan. At that point he was in a strict one-step-at-a-time mode. Stay alive, and see what the next split second brings. As he fell he was aware of a vague intention to hurl the whole counter up and out, straight at McQueen, if it wasn’t bolted to the floor, or else roll backward through the door into the inner office,