Blue Moon

“Intelligence, planning, execution. First we think like them. Which isn’t difficult. We studied them endlessly. Vantresca could tell you. They’re smart people, organized, bureaucratic, cautious, careful, scientific, and painfully rational.”

“So how can we win?”

“We can exploit the rational part of their natures,” Reacher said. “We can do something a rational person would never even consider. Something completely unhinged.”

Then the first intelligence report came back. Barton stepped in, and nodded a greeting, and headed to the counter. He got coffee, and walked over to the table. He sat down, but before he could say anything the second report arrived. Hogan and Vantresca, stepping in together. They came straight to the table. They jostled for space and squeezed themselves in. Five people at a four-top.

Barton said, “The front wall of the lobby is all glass. You go in a revolving door. The back wall of the lobby is the front face of the building’s core. There are five openings in it. A fire stair door, three elevators, and another fire stair door. Between you and them are security turnstiles and a security desk. Behind the security desk is what looks to me like a regular civilian rent-a-cop.”

“Is that all?” Reacher said.

“I guess it’s all that the building provides,” Barton said. “But there are also four men in suits and ties. I guess provided by someone else. Two of them were waiting just inside the revolving door. They asked my business. I said the dentist. They stepped aside and waved me forward, toward the security desk. Where the rent-a-cop asked my business all over again.”

Reacher looked at Hogan and Vantresca.

“Same for you?” he asked.

“Exactly the same,” Vantresca said. “It’s a pretty good upstream screen. Then it gets even better. The other two guys are on the other side of the security turnstiles. By the elevators. Which have been upgraded, with a new control panel. Like you see in really tall buildings with thousands of people. You punch in the floor you want, and the screen tells you which car to go wait for. Then the car takes you where you said. There are no buttons inside. It’s a very efficient system. But totally unnecessary for a building that small. Obviously there for a reason. Which is, the two guys won’t let you punch in your floor yourself. They have to do it for you. They ask where you’re going, you tell them, they press the buttons, they show you where to wait. Then you get in the elevator car, and you get out again when the doors open. No other option.”

“Were there cameras in the lobby?”

“There’s a little glass pip in the elevator panel. Almost certainly a fisheye lens, feeding straight upstairs.”

Reacher nodded.

He looked at Barton.

He asked, “How was the dentist?”

“The third floor was all small suites, all of them off a rectangular inner corridor that ran around the building core. The core was blank on three sides. I went up to four on the fire stairs, and it was the same. Five had two larger suites in back. I couldn’t get all the way around the core. I guess the blank face becomes a wall inside the suite.”

Hogan said, “We ran up to six and started from there. The suites get bigger the higher you go. It’s safe to assume nineteen is a whole-floor extravaganza. The elevators come up in the center. That’s all the architect gave them. I’m sure they built the rest out exactly the way they wanted it.”

“Starting with the cage,” Reacher said.

“Guaranteed,” Vantresca said. “It’s even simpler than we thought. Because the building is tall, but not large. There is only one service core, with only five structural openings per floor, and they’re all in a line. One cage could control them all. No need to weld anything shut. You could build a cage maybe six feet deep, maybe eight feet tall, starting from just before the first fire door, and running the whole width to just beyond the last. Every door opens into it. Elevators and fire stairs alike. It would be like a long rectangular reception area. Kind of shallow. You would have to wait there a minute, with armed men looking in at you through the wire. With more armed men on the gate to let you out. The mechanism might be electronic. Maybe there are two gates, like an airlock.”

“Floors and ceilings?”

“Concrete slab. No significant penetration. All the big-diameter risers run up and down inside the core, with the elevator shafts.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“OK what?”

“Cautious, careful, scientific, and rational. That’s what I told Abby.”

“Plus paranoid. You can bet they did the exact same things on eighteen and twenty. Which would make their buffer zones virtually impregnable.”

Reacher nodded.

“It’s a thing of beauty,” he said. “There’s no way in.”

“So how do we do it?”

“When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

“Where?”

“Hardware store.”

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