Page 68 of The Secret

Another woman, almost identical, was at five o’clock. She wason her back, immobile, eyes blank, with a diagonal swathe of blood cutting across her white blouse from her neck to her hip. A bullet had torn a jagged hole at the tip of the stain, dead in the center of her chest. She also had a pistol in her hand. An identical Sig Sauer.

Reacher straightened up and came out from behind the cabinet. He kept his gun angled down, covering the bodies, just in case. He stepped forward and kicked away their weapons. Then he crouched to check Stamoran’s carotid. There was no pulse. He waited until he was certain then he got back to his feet.

“Stop!” Kasluga yelled out. “Where are you going? Leave those others. Help Charles. You’ve got to save him.”

Reacher said nothing. He moved across to the first of the women and leaned down to press his fingers against her neck. He couldn’t feel even the faintest flutter of blood flowing in her artery. She was dead, too. That was no great surprise. He straightened, ready to pivot around and examine the second woman. Then he heard a hard metallic click,close behind him.

Kasluga yelled, “Watch—”

White-hot pain exploded in the back of both Reacher’s legs. It felt like a thousand volts had been blasted into his joints and ligaments. His legs buckled and he dropped forward. One knee crashed into the hard concrete floor. The other slammed into the dead woman’s sternum. A part-formed thought flashed through his mind—Odd, that doesn’t feel like bone—then he twisted around sharply from the waist so he could look back. He was suddenly angry. Someone had landed a blow from behind. He should not have allowed that to happen. He couldn’t remember the last time he had. And he wasn’t going to let it happen again. That was for damn sure.

He raised his gun as he spun around, searching for a target to fire at, and at the same time he pushed up from the ground with his left hand. He got halfway onto his feet and caught sight of someone. Thesecond woman. She was alive. She was standing up. He saw a glint of metal against a rough black background peeping through the tear in her shirt. It was the remains of a bullet, mushroomed against Kevlar. The blood on her clothes must have come from someone else. One of the dead agents, probably. She must have been hit after she killed them, but only wounded. Because she was wearing a vest. So was her lookalike. That’s what he’d felt under his knee. Good against a shot to the chest. No help at all against a hit to the head.

The woman was holding something in her right hand. It was slender. Made of metal with a ridged grip and a matte black coating. It was two feet long with joints every six inches, and its diameter stepped down slightly at each one. So it was telescopic. Easy to carry and conceal. Easy to extend. All it would take was the flick of the wrist. And it had a rounded tip, half an inch in diameter, which would concentrate the force of impact. Destructive against glass or wood or metal. Devastating against flesh and bone. A hit on the chest would fracture some ribs. A blow to the neck could be fatal. Or to the side of the head.

The woman brought the baton slashing down. She was aiming for Reacher’s right wrist. Looking to shatter the joint. Trying to make him drop his gun. Reacher twisted faster. He hauled his arm out of the woman’s range. Just. The round metal tip cut through the air. It was close enough for Reacher to feel its draft on his skin. It scythed all the way down to the ground, kicking up a faint blue spark. Reacher grabbed the woman’s wrist with his left hand. He squeezed. His fingers dug into her skin, mashing the tendons and ligaments until she screamed. Her grip slackened and the baton clattered to the concrete. Reacher kicked it away. The woman jabbed at his face with her free hand. Her first two fingers were spread wide. She was trying to gouge his eyes. At the same time her right knee was jerking up, aiming for his groin.

Reacher lowered his shoulder twelve inches and launched himself forward. He slammed into the woman’s chest. It was a heavy contact. The woman was thrown back like she’d been hit by a dump truck. She landed on the ground and slid away in a thin cloud of dust.

Reacher said, “Roll over. Face down. Hands behind your head.”

The woman coughed but she didn’t move.

Reacher raised his gun. “I’m trying to think of a reason not to shoot you but I’ve got to admit, I’m coming up empty.”

The woman rolled over.

Reacher said, “Who are you?”

“My name is Veronica Sanson.” She jerked her head toward the other woman’s body. “That’s—” She brought her right arm up and clamped it over her face so that her eyes were buried in the crook of her elbow. She didn’t move for a moment. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t make any kind of sound. Then she raised her arm and dropped it back down at her side. Her eyes were red. She blinked away a tear and said, “That’s my sister, Roberta. Our father was Morgan Sanson.”

Roberta and Veronica, Reacher thought. Robbie and Ronnie. Two of the four kids taken to Israel by Mrs. Sanson after her husband’s death. He said, “You were in the Israel Defense Forces?”

Veronica nodded. “Combat Intelligence Collection Corps.”

“Your sister, as well?”

Veronica nodded again. “We came to avenge our father. But listen, please. I was a captain. Same rank as you. So I’m asking as a courtesy from a fellow officer, let me stand up. Explain our circumstances. Maybe we can—”

“Oh my God!” Susan Kasluga’s eyes were wide and her face was suddenly deathly pale. “Where is it? What did you do with it? Howlong till it goes off? You—army person—you’ve got to do something.”

Reacher said, “What are you talking about?”

“The crazy sisters. They made a bomb. An improvised thing. A grenade, a bowl, gasoline, an elastic band. They used it to force me to give up Charles’s name. It could blow up any second. It’ll kill us all.”

Reacher did not like what he was hearing. He had seen photographs from Vietnam. Guerrillas would sneak up to parked US Army jeeps and drop grenades wrapped with elastic bands into their fuel tanks. It turned the vehicles into moving time bombs. The results were not pretty. Even less pretty if anyone was on board or close by when the elastic finally gave way. He looked at Veronica and said, “Is this true?”

Veronica lifted her chin. “Roberta invented it. She called it The Grenade of—”

“Where is it?”

“I’ll show you. On one condition.”

“There’s no time for bargaining. Get it now.”

“If it goes off now, you two are dead. There’s no escape for you. But down here? I might survive. I’m happy to roll the dice. Are you?”

“And if I shoot you in the head? How do you like those odds?”

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