One Shot

lighters I could hit them from here.”
    “OK, so listen up,” Reacher whispered. “This is how we’re going to do it. I’m going to get to my starting position. Then we’re all going to wait for Franklin to get back and put the comms net on the air. Then I’m going to make a move. If I don’t feel good I’m going to call in fire on those cameras. I say the word, I want you to take them out. Two shots,
bang, bang.
That’ll slow them down, maybe ten or twenty seconds.”
    “Negative,” Cash said. “I won’t direct live rounds into a wooden structure we know contains a noncombatant hostage.”
    “She’ll be in the basement,” Reacher said.
    “Or the attic.”
    “You’d be firing at the eaves.”
    “Exactly. She’s in the attic, she hears gunfire, she hits the deck, that’s exactly where I’m aiming. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”
    “Spare me,” Reacher said. “Take the risk.”
    “Negative. Won’t do it.”
    “Christ, Gunny, you are one uptight Marine, you know that?”
    Cash didn’t speak. Reacher stepped forward again and peered around the corner of the fence. Took a long hard look and pulled back.
    “OK,” he said. “New plan. Just watch the west windows. You see muzzle flash, you put suppressing fire into the room it’s coming out of. We can assume the hostage won’t be in the same room as the sniper.”
    Cash said nothing.
    “Will you do that at least?” Reacher asked.
    “You might be in the house already.”
    “I’ll take my chances. Voluntary assumption of risk, OK? Helen can witness my consent. She’s a lawyer.”
    Cash said nothing.
    “No wonder you came in third,” Reacher said. “You need to lighten up.”
    “OK,” Cash said. “I see hostile gunfire, I’ll return it.”
    “Hostile is about the only kind you’re going to see, don’t you think? Since you only gave me a damn knife?”
    “Army,” Cash said. “Always bitching about something.”
    “What do I do?” Helen asked.
    “New plan,” Reacher said. He touched the fence with his palm. “Keep low, follow the fence around the corner, stop opposite the house. Stay down. They won’t pick you up there. It’s too far. Listen to your phone. If I need a distraction I’ll ask you to run a little ways toward the house and then back again. A zigzag, or a circle. Out and back. Real fast. Just enough to put a blip on their screen. No danger. By the time they move a rifle around, you’ll be back at the fence.”
    She nodded. Didn’t speak.
    “And me?” Ann Yanni asked.
    “You stay with Cash. You’re the ethics police. He gets cold feet about helping me out, you kick his ass, OK?”
    Nobody spoke.
    “All set?” Reacher asked.
    “Set,” they said, one after the other.
    Reacher walked away into the darkness on the other side of the road.

    He kept on walking, off the blacktop, across the shoulder, across the stony margin of the field, onward, right into the field, all the way into the middle of the soaking crop. He waited until the irrigation boom rolled slowly around and caught up with him. Then he turned ninety degrees and walked south with it, directly underneath it, keeping pace, letting the ceaseless water rain down and soak his hair and his skin and his clothes. The boom pulled away as it followed its circular path and Reacher kept straight on at a tangent and walked into the next field. Waited once again for the boom to find him and then walked on under it, matching its speed, raising his arms high and wide to catch as much drenching as he could. Then that boom swung away and left him and he walked on to find the next one. And the next, and the next. When at last he was opposite the driveway entrance he simply walked in a circle, under the last boom, waiting for his cell phone to vibrate, like a man caught in a monsoon.

    ______

    Cash’s cell phone vibrated against his hip and he pulled it out and clicked it on. Heard Franklin’s voice, quiet and cautious in his ear.
    “Check in, please,” it said.
    Cash heard Helen say: “Here.”
    Yanni said, “Here,” from three feet behind him.
    Cash said, “Here.”
    Then he heard Reacher say: “Here.”
    Franklin said, “OK, you’re all loud and clear, and the ball is in your court.”
    Cash heard Reacher say: “Gunny, check the house.”
    Cash lifted the rifle and swept left to right. “No change.”
    Reacher said: “I’m on my way.”
    Then there was nothing but silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A whole minute. Two