Personal(91)

The house had two levels only. No habitable attic, and no basement. There were bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs, plus a separate self-contained guest suite, which had bedrooms and bathrooms all its own, plus a living room attached. Downstairs had a kitchen, and a breakfast room, and a dining room, and many other rooms, variously labelled as living rooms, or nooks, or parlours, or libraries, or studies, or offices. At first sight the floor plan looked intimate, even cosy, until you remembered how big it all was. The nooks were as big as anyone else’s living rooms. And half as tall again, presumably. Like museum halls, at night. Not vast, but not human scaled, either, and badly lit, and echoing.

Casey Nice said, ‘Do you see a way in?’

I said, ‘We don’t have an armoured vehicle. Therefore we’re pretty much limited to the doors and the windows.’

‘Which will be wired for alarms.’

‘Which will be redundant. They won’t need a bell on the roof to tell them we’re there.’

‘Which is where, exactly? In a house with four remaining guards and two world-class killers? Who collectively outnumber us three to one? In a structure much easier to defend than attack?’

‘Assuming those questions were rhetorical, I think that’s a fair summary.’

‘How long would it take to build a giant subwoofer?’

‘I should have bought cigarette lighters, when I bought that shopping bag.’

She said, ‘Seriously. I spent time at Fort Benning. They’d tell us we need to rethink this thing from zero minus about a hundred hours.’

‘Who would?’

‘The instructors.’

‘Who all lived long enough to become instructors by improvising every single step of the way. They know plans are useless.’

‘Reacher, we have to have a plan.’

I said, ‘Let’s take a look at the aerial photographs.’

The aerial photographs were in one sense amazing, in that they were all pin sharp, rock solid, high definition colour images, whether taken from a satellite many miles above the earth, or a silent drone too high to be seen, or a lurching helicopter a thousand feet up. In another sense they were useless, because they showed us no more than we had seen for ourselves through the night-vision binoculars. The same nothing, but from a different angle. There was a note against the helicopter shots saying the house had not been the primary focus of the mission. The focus was supposed to have been a meeting over drinks in the garden. Those pictures were included, for reference, and showed nothing but three men throwing their arms up over their heads. But by accident the coverage of the house was the best of the three. We could see all four walls pretty well. Doors, windows, points of strength and weakness. Of which there was more strength than weakness, overall. It was not an easy target, even before worrying about who or what was inside.

I said, ‘We’ll figure something out. We have plenty of time. We have to deal with Joey first anyway.’

She said, ‘Do you have a plan for that, at least?’

‘What I did last time worked pretty well. Imagine if we had been out there in that parking lot. Behind the little supermarket. In the shadows. We couldn’t have missed.’

‘You want to do that again?’

‘I don’t want to. Feel free to come up with alternative ideas.’

‘Would it even work again?’

‘Good point. Probably not with a guy the same level as before. Joey might smell a rat. We’re going to have to invoke his elaborate courtesies. We need to find someone he can’t stay away from.’

‘Like who?’

‘Old Charlie White would be favourite. But I imagine he’s taking extra precautions. So I guess we should look at either Tommy Miller or Billy Thompson. Which might spark some kind of infighting, possibly. Some kind of internecine conflict, over the spoils. In which case maybe all three of the others would show up at the scene, just to keep an eye on each other. In which case we could give the Romford Boys a real serious leadership vacuum.’

‘Joey has to be the priority.’

‘He will be. But if there are targets of opportunity after he’s down, we should be prepared to react accordingly.’

‘I should clear it with General O’Day.’

‘Go right ahead. But first text Bennett and ask him what kind of security Miller and Thompson use. As in, the same as Joey, or better, or worse? And explain why we’re asking.’

She found her phone, and her thumbs started dancing. I heard the sound of her first text leaving, a comic noise, like a cartoon character slipping on a banana skin, and then she continued typing, on and on. The update for O’Day, I was sure. Full and complete compliance. O’Day had that kind of effect on people. I started thinking about bulletproof glass again, and I asked her, ‘Did you tell O’Day we were headed for Wallace Court this morning?’