The Hard Way

“Wouldn’t be right. We’ll have to abort it first. I should have told Perez to find a coat hanger. But I didn’t. So we’ll find something else instead. There’s got to be something here. This is a farm after all.”
    Kate closed her eyes.
    “You’re going to die anyway,” Lane said, like the most reasonable man in the world.

----

    Reacher knew they were in a barn. They had to be. That was clear. Where else could they hide their truck? He knew there were five barns in total. He had seen them in the daylight, vaguely, in the distance. Three stood around a beaten earth yard, and two stood alone. All of them had vehicle ruts heading for big doors. Storage, he had guessed, for the backhoe, and tractors, and trailers, and balers, and all kinds of other farm machinery. Now in the dark the dirt under his feet felt dry and dusty, hard and stony. It wouldn’t show tire marks. No point in risking a flash of the Maglite beam.
    So which barn?
    He started with the nearest, hoping to get lucky. But he didn’t get lucky. The nearest barn was one of the two that stood alone. It was a wide wooden structure made of weathered boards. The whole thing had been blown slightly off-kilter by two hundred years of relentless winds. It leaned to the west, beaten down. Reacher put his ear on a crack between two boards and listened hard. Heard nothing inside. He put his eye on the crack and saw nothing. Just darkness. There was a smell of cold air and damp earth and decayed burlap.
    He moved on fifty yards to the second barn, hoping to get lucky. But he didn’t get lucky. The second barn was just as dark and quiet as the first. Musty and cold, nothing moving inside. A sharp nitrogen smell. Old fertilizer. He moved on through the blackness, slow and stealthy, toward the three barns grouped around the yard. They were a hundred yards away. He got a quarter of the way there.
    Then he stopped dead.
    Because in the corner of his eye he saw light to his left and behind him. Light and movement, in the house. The kitchen window. A flashlight beam, in the room. Fast shadows jumping and leaping across the inside of the glass.

----

    Lane turned to Gregory and said, “Find some baling wire.”
    “Before we do the kid?” Gregory asked.
    “Why not? It can be like a preview for her. She’s going to get the same thing anyway as soon as Perez gets back with the potato peeler. I told her mother years ago what would happen if she cheated on me. And I always try to keep my word.”
    “A man ought to,” Gregory said.
    “We need an operating table,” Lane said. “Find something flat. And turn the truck’s lights on. I need to be able to see what I’m doing.”
    “You’re sick,” Jackson said. “You need help.”
    “Help?” Lane said. “No, I don’t think so. It was always a one-person procedure, as I understand. Old women, usually, in back alleys, I believe.”

----

    Reacher moved fast and quiet to the back door of the house. Pressed himself tight against the wall on the far side. Waited. He could feel the rough stones against his back. He could hear a voice through the door. Very faintly, one side of a two-way conversation. A slight Hispanic accent. Perez, on the phone. Reacher reversed his rifle in his hands. Gripped the forestock in front of the carrying handle and took a practice swing.
    Then he waited. Alone in the dark.

----

    Gregory found an old door, rustic, made from lapped boards and Z-braced on the back. He pulled it out from a stack of discarded lumber and stood it upright.
    “That’s perfect,” Lane called to him.

----

    Perez stepped out into the night and turned to close the door behind him and Reacher swung, arms extended, hips twisting, driving forward off the back foot, wrists snapping. No good. Late. A foul ball for sure, left field, upper deck, off the façade, maybe out into the street. But Perez’s head was not a baseball. And the G-36 was not a bat. It was an eight-pound yard of steel. The sight block caught Perez in the temple and punched a shard of bone sideways through his left eye socket and on through the bridge of his nose and halfway through his right eye socket. Then it stopped when the top edge of the stock crushed his ear flat against the side of his skull. So, not a perfect swing. A millisecond earlier and two inches farther back a blow like that would have taken the top of the guy’s head off like opening a soft-boiled egg. Late as it was, it just plowed a deep messy lateral trench