One Shot

ahead. But because there was a woman in a state of undress in a nearby room. Vladimir was unreliable, in certain situations. Chenko was glad he was there to supervise. If he hadn’t been, the plan would have derailed for sure.
    Sandy walked into the living room after an hour, looking, as the Americans would say, like a million dollars. She was wearing a filmy black blouse that was nearly transparent. Underneath it was a black bra that molded her breasts into twin mounds of implausible roundness. She had on tight black pants that ended just below the knee. Pedal pushers? Capri pants? Chenko wasn’t sure of the name. She was wearing black high-heeled shoes. With her pale skin and her red hair and her green eyes she looked like a picture in a magazine.
    Pity,
Chenko thought.
    “My money?” Sandy asked.
    “Afterward,” Chenko said. “When we bring you back.”
    “Let me see it.”
    “It’s in the car.”
    “So let’s go look at it,” Sandy said.
    They walked in single file. Chenko led the way. Sandy came next. Vladimir brought up the rear. They walked under the highway. The car was right there ahead of them. It was cold and misted-over. There was no money in it. None at all. Chenko knew that. So he stopped six feet short and turned around. Nodded to Vladimir.
    “Now,” he said.
    Vladimir reached forward with his right hand and put it on Sandy’s right shoulder from behind. He used it to turn her upper body sideways and then he crashed his left fist into her right temple, a little above and in front of her ear. It was a colossal blow. Explosive. Her head snapped violently sideways and around, and her legs gave way and she fell to the ground vertically like an empty suit of clothes slipping off a hanger.
    Chenko squatted down next to her. Waited a moment for the body to settle and then felt the neck for a pulse. There wasn’t one.
    “You broke her neck,” he said.
    Vladimir nodded.
    “It’s about placement,” he said. “The main vector is mostly sideways, obviously, but you try for a little rotation, too. So it’s not so much a break. It’s more like a wrenching action. Like a hangman’s noose.”
    “Is your hand OK?”
    “It will be tender tomorrow.”
    “Good work.”
    “I try my best.”
    They unlocked the car and raised the rear armrest and laid the body across the back seat. There was just enough space, side to side. She had been a small girl. Not tall. Then they got in the front together and drove off. They looped well to the east and came up on the Metropole Palace from behind. They avoided the bay where the garbage was piled and found a side alley. They stopped outside a fire exit. Vladimir slid out and opened the rear door. Pulled the body out by the shoulders and left it where it fell. Then he got back in. Chenko drove on and paused after five yards and turned in his seat. The body was lying in a heap against the alley’s far wall. Directly opposite the fire door. It looked like a plausible scenario. She had fled the soldier’s room in shame and panic, chosen not to wait for the elevator, and run down the fire stairs and out into the night. Maybe she had stumbled at that point and aggravated an injury already done to her. Maybe she had tripped and fallen against the wall, and the shock had dislodged an already-wrenched vertebra.
    Chenko turned back and faced front and drove on, not fast, not slow, not drawing attention, not standing out, eight miles north and west, all the way back to the Zec’s house.

CHAPTER 8
    Reacher woke himself up at seven in the morning and went out to check for a tail and to look for a drugstore. He walked a zigzag half-mile and saw nobody behind him. He found a drugstore two blocks east of the motor court and bought black coffee in a cardboard cup, a pack of throwaway razors, a can of shaving foam, and a new tube of toothpaste. He carried his purchases back by a roundabout route and put his clothes back under the mattress and sat on the bed and drank the coffee. Then he showered and shaved, using his full twenty-two- minute routine. He washed his hair twice. Then he dressed again and went out for breakfast to the only place he could find, which was the drive-through he had seen the day before. It had a small counter inside. He had more coffee and an English muffin filled with a round piece of ham and something that might have once been egg, first dried and powdered and then reconstituted. His threshold of culinary acceptability was very low, but right