by Lee Child
Neagley said, “They might still have surveillance going.”
“Which is exactly why we should drop by. If we can take one of them out now, that’s one less to worry about later.”
“Might be more than one.”
“Bring it on. The more the merrier.”
Sunset Boulevard ran right through Silver Lake, south of the reservoir. It was a very long road. Reacher found it and headed west. Six miles later he cruised past the motel without slowing. Neagley was twenty yards behind him in her Civic. He led her through a left turn and parked a block away. There were service alleys that gave them a roundabout route into the back of the motel. They walked through the alleys fifteen feet apart. No sense in making two people into a single target. Reacher went first, with his hand wrapped around the Glock in his pocket. He entered the motel lot slowly, from the rear, through a tight passage lined with trash receptacles. The lot looked innocent enough. Eight cars, five out-of-state plates, no blue Chryslers. Nobody in the shadows. He went to the right. He knew that fifteen feet behind him Neagley would go to the left. It was their default arrangement, established many years before. R for Reacher, L for her middle initial. He made a complete half-circuit of the building. There was nobody out of place. Nobody suspicious. Nobody in the lounge, nobody in the laundry room. Across the width of the lot he could see the clerk all alone in the office.
He stepped out to the sidewalk and checked the street. It was clear. Some activity, but nothing significant. Some cars, but none to worry about. He stepped back into the lot and waited for Neagley to complete her own half-circuit on the other side. She checked the sidewalk and checked the street and stepped back and checked the office. Nothing. She shook her head and they headed for O’Donnell’s room, by different routes, still fifteen feet apart, just in case.
O’Donnell’s lock was broken.
Or more accurately, O’Donnell’s lock was OK, but the door jamb was broken. The wood was splintered. Someone had used a wrecking bar or a tire iron to lever the door open. Reacher slid the Glock out of his pocket and waited on the hinge side of the door and Neagley joined him on the handle side. She nodded and he slammed the door open with his foot and she dropped to her knees and spun into the doorway with her gun out in front. Another old default arrangement. Whoever was on the hinge side opened the door, whoever was on the handle side entered low to minimize the target. Generally anyone hiding in a room with a gun would then aim high, at where he expected center mass to be.
But there was nobody hiding in the room.
It was completely empty. But it was completely trashed. Searched, and wrecked. All the New Age paperwork was gone, the reject Glock 17s were gone, the spare ammunition was gone, the AMT Hardballers were gone, Saropian’s Daewoo DP-51 was gone, the Maglites were gone. O’Donnell’s clothes were strewn all around. His thousand-dollar suit had been torn off the closet hanger and trampled. His bathroom stuff was all over the place.
Dixon’s room was the same. Empty, but trashed.
And Neagley’s.
And Reacher’s own. His folding toothbrush was on the floor, stepped on and crushed.
“Bastards,” he said.
They gave the whole place one more go-round, the motel itself, and then a one-block radius outside. Nobody there. Neagley said, “They’re all waiting for us in Highland Park.”
Reacher nodded. Between them they had two Glocks and sixty-eight rounds. Plus their recent purchases in the Prelude’s trunk.
Two against seven or more.
No time.
No element of surprise.
A fortified position with no way in.
A hopeless situation.
“We’re good to go,” Reacher said.
71
Waiting for dark was always a long and tedious process. Sometimes the earth seemed to spin fast, and sometimes it seemed to spin slow. This was slow. They were parked in a quiet street three blocks from New Age’s factory, opposite sides of the street, Neagley’s Civic facing west, Reacher’s Prelude facing east. They both had a view of the place. Things had changed behind the fence. The assembly workers’ cars were gone from the lot. In their place were six blue Chrysler 300Cs. Clearly, operations had been abandoned for the day. The decks had been cleared for the coming battle. Beyond the cars they could see the helicopter in the distance, a quarter-mile away. It was nothing more than a small white shape, but they figured they would be able to tell if it started up. And if it started up, all bets were off.
Reacher had both his phones set to vibrate. Neagley buzzed him twice, to pass the time. She was actually close enough to roll down her window and yell, but he guessed she didn’t want to attract attention.
The first time, she asked, “Have you been sleeping with Karla?”
“When?” Reacher said, buying time.
“On this trip.”
“Twice,” Reacher said. “That’s all.”
“I’m glad.”
“Thank you.”
“You both always wanted to.”
The second time she called was fifteen minutes later.
“You made a will?” she asked.
“No point,” Reacher said. “Now they broke my toothbrush, I don’t own anything.”
“How does that feel?”
“Bad. I liked that toothbrush. It’s been with me a long time.”
“No, I mean the rest of it.”
“It feels OK. I don’t see that Karla or Dave are really any happier than me.”
“Right now they’re not, for sure.”
“They know we’re coming.”
“All of us going down together will really cheer them up.”
“Better than going down alone,” Reacher said.
A big white semi labored west on I-70 in Colorado, heading for the state of Utah. It was less than half-full, a little over sixteen tons in a rig designed for a forty-ton payload. So it was running light, but it was running slow, because of the mountains. It would stay slow until the turn south on I-15. Then it would run a little easier, all the way down to California. Its driver had budgeted an average fifty miles an hour for the whole trip. Eighteen hours maximum, door-to-door. He wasn’t going to take a rest period. How could he? He was a man on a mission, with no time for frivolities.
Azhari Mahmoud checked his map for the third time. He figured he needed three hours. Or maybe more. He had to cross just about the whole of Los Angeles, south to north. He wasn’t expecting it to be easy. The U-Haul was slow and a pig to drive, and he was sure that the traffic was going to be awful. He decided to give himself four hours. If he arrived early, he could wait. No harm in that. He set his alarm and lay down on the bed and tried to will himself to sleep.
Reacher stared straight ahead at the eastern horizon, trying to judge the light. The tint on the windshield didn’t help. It was overly optimistic, optically. It made the sky look darker than it really was. He buzzed his window down and leaned out. In reality, not good. There was still at least an hour of daylight left. Then maybe an hour of dusk. Then full dark. He buzzed the window up and settled back and rested. Forced his heartbeat down and slowed his breathing and relaxed.
He stayed relaxed until Allen Lamaison called him.
72
Lamaison called Reacher on his Radio Shack pay-as-you-go, not on Saropian’s cell from Vegas. The caller ID showed he was using Karla Dixon’s phone at his end. Openly provocative. There was a lot of smug satisfaction in his voice.
“Reacher?” he said. “We need to talk.”
“So talk,” Reacher said.
“You’re useless.”
“You think?”
“You’ve lost every round so far.”
“Except Saropian.”
“True,” Lamaison said. “And I’m very unhappy about that.”
“But you better get used to it. Because you’re going to lose another six, and then you and I are going to go around and around.”
“No,” Lamaison said. “That’s not going to happen. We�
�re going to make a deal.”
“Dream on.”
“The terms are excellent. Want to hear them?”
“You better be quick. I’m downtown right now. I’ve got an appointment with the FBI. I’m going to tell them all about Little Wing.”
“Tell them what?” Lamaison said. “There’s nothing to tell. We had some defective units that were destroyed. It says so, in black and white, on Pentagon-approved paperwork.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Anyway, you’re nowhere near the FBI,” Lamaison said. “You’re working out how to rescue your friends.”
“You think?”
“You wouldn’t trust their safety to the FBI.”
“You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit.”
“You wouldn’t be here at all if you didn’t give a shit. Tony Swan and Calvin Franz and Manuel Orozco and Jorge Sanchez told us all about it. Before they died. Apparently we’re not supposed to mess with the special investigators.”
“That was just a slogan. It was old then, and it’s really old now.”
“They still put a lot of stock in it. So do Ms. Dixon and Mr. O’Donnell. Their faith in you is quite touching. So let’s talk about our deal. You can save your friends a world of hurt.”
“How?”
“You and Ms. Neagley come in now, we’ll hold you all for a week. Until the heat dies down. Then we’ll let you go. All four of you.”
“Or?”
“We’ll break O’Donnell’s arms and legs and use his switchblade all over Dixon. After having a little guy time with her first. Then we’ll put them both in the helicopter.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Don’t worry about Little Wing,” Lamaison said. “That’s a done deal. Can’t be stopped now. They’re going to Kashmir anyway. You ever been there? It’s a dump. A real shit hole. Bunch of towel heads fighting one another. Why should you care?”
Reacher said nothing.
Lamaison said, “Do we have a deal?”
“No.”
“You should reconsider. Dixon won’t enjoy what we’ve got in mind.”
“Why would I trust you? I’ll walk in and you’ll shoot me in the head.”
“I agree, it’s a risk,” Lamaison said. “But I think you’ll take it. Because you’re responsible for your people’s situation. You let them down. You’re their leader, and you screwed up. I’ve heard a lot about you. In fact I’m sick of hearing your name. You’ll do what it takes to help them.”
“Where are you?” Reacher asked.
“I’m sure you know.”
Reacher glanced ahead through the windshield. Factored in the effect of the window tint and tried to judge the light.
“We’re two hours away,” he said, with a little tension in his voice.
“Where are you?”
“We’re south of Palmdale.”
“Why?”
“We were going to visit with Dean. To piece it all together, the same way Swan did.”
“Turn around,” Lamaison said. “Right now. For Ms. Dixon’s sake. I bet she’s a screamer. My guys will be all over her. I’ll put her on the phone and let you listen.”
Reacher paused.
“Two hours,” he said. “We’ll talk again.”
He clicked off and dialed Neagley.
“We go in sixty minutes,” he said.
Then he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
Sixty minutes later the sky in the east was a dark navy blue, almost black. Visibility was fading fast. Years before, a pedantic schoolteacher in the Pacific somewhere had explained to Reacher that first comes twilight, and then comes dusk, and then comes night. She had insisted that twilight and dusk were not the same thing. If he needed a generic word for evening darkness, he was to use gloaming.
Gloaming was what he had right then. Plenty of it, but not quite as much as he would have liked.
He dialed Neagley and clicked off after one ring. Her window dropped and she waved. A small pale hand in the darkness. He started his car and eased away from the curb. No lights. He headed east toward the arriving night and made a right and three blocks later he was skirting New Age’s fence, clockwise, along the back line of their property. He made another right and came down the side of their lot and coasted to a stop against the curb about two-thirds of the way down. If New Age’s place was a clock, he was stopped on the four. If it was a compass, he was a little ways south of east.
He got out and stood still and listened. Heard nothing. Saw nothing. Highland Park was a populated area, but New Age’s place was part of a commercial zone. The work day was over. People were gone. The streets were dark and quiet.
He opened the Prelude’s trunk. Used his fist to smash the courtesy light. Used his thumbnail to slit the plastic around the Evian bottles. He took one out and unscrewed the top and took a long drink. Then he poured the rest of the water away in the gutter. Stood the empty bottle upright in the trunk. He repeated the process eleven more times. Ended up with a neat line of twelve empty one-liter bottles.
Then he took out the gas can.
Five gallons, U.S. liquid measure, which added up to close to nineteen liters. He filled the bottles, very carefully. The benzene fragrance of unleaded gasoline came up at him. He liked it. It was one of the world’s great smells. When the twelfth bottle was full he put the can on the ground. Seven liters still in it. Almost two gallons.
He tore open the bag of polishing rags.
They were foot-square pieces of white cotton jersey. Like undershirts. He rolled them tight, like cigars, and eased them down into the necks of the bottles. Half-in, half-out. The gasoline soaked upward, pale and colorless.
Molotov cocktails. A crude but effective weapon, invented by Fascists during the Spanish Civil War, named by Finns during their struggle against the Red Army in 1939, as a taunt toward the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. I never knew a tank could burn so long, a Finnish veteran had once recalled.
Tanks, buildings, it was all the same to Reacher.
He rolled a thirteenth rag and laid it on the ground. Dripped gas from the can on it until it was soaked. He found the box of wooden kitchen matches and jammed them in his pocket. Lifted the twelve bottles of gas out of the trunk, one by one, carefully, and stood them upright on the road six feet behind the Prelude’s rear bumper. Then he picked up the thirteenth rag and closed the trunk lid and trapped the rag in it, three-quarters out. In the darkness it looked like the car had a tiny white tail. Like a silver lamb.
Showtime, he thought.
He struck a match and held it against the rag trapped in the trunk lid until the rag was burning bright. Then he flicked the match away and picked up the first Molotov cocktail. Lit its wick off the burning rag and stepped back and hurled it high in the air, over the fence. It tumbled through a lazy blazing arc and burst against the base of the main building’s end wall. Gas exploded and flared and then settled into a small burning pool.
He threw the second bomb. Same procedure. He lit the wick off the burning rag, stepped back, and threw hard. The bottle sailed through the same arc and hit the same place and burst. There was a brief white-hot flare and then the pool of flames settled and spread wider. They started to lick upward against the siding.
He threw the third bomb directly into the fire. And the fourth. He aimed the fifth a little to the left. It started a brand-new fire. He followed it with the six and the seventh. His shoulder started to ache from the effort of the giant throws. The grass all around the building’s end wall started to burn. Smoke started to drift. He threw the eighth bottle into the gap between the two fires. It fell short and burst and set fire to the grass about eight feet out. Now there was a large irregular patch of flames, maybe ten feet wide, maybe eight feet deep. Maybe four feet high, red and orange and green with chemical acceleration.
He threw the ninth bottle harder, and farther to the left. It exploded near the building’s door. The tenth bottle followed it. It didn’t b
urst. It rolled and leaked and burning gasoline welled out and flames raced and crackled through the dry grass. He paused and picked his spot and used the eleventh bottle to fill the gap on the building’s corner. The twelfth and last bottle followed it. He heaved it hard and it hit the siding high up and burst into flames and burning gas spattered the whole end wall.
He opened the trunk lid and knocked the burning rag out and stamped on it. Then he stepped to the fence and peered through. The grass at the base of the building’s end wall and all along the front wall as far as the door was burning fiercely. Flames were leaping high and smoke was pouring upward. The building itself was built of metal and was resisting. But it would be getting warm inside.
Soon be getting warmer, Reacher thought.
He screwed the lid on the gas can and wound up and hurled it like a discus thrower. It soared up over the fence and spun and wobbled through the air and landed dead center in the flames. Thin red flammable plastic, two gallons of gas inside. There was a split second’s pause and then the can exploded in a huge white fireball. For a time it looked like the whole place was on fire. And when the fireball eventually died the flames left behind were twice as high as before and the paint on the siding was starting to burn.
Reacher got back in the Prelude and started up and pulled a ragged U-turn and headed back the way he had come. The muffler burbled. He hoped Dixon and O’Donnell could hear it, wherever they were. Three blocks later he was back where he started. He pulled in behind Neagley’s Civic and killed his motor and sat still and watched out his window. He could see the glow in the distance, far to his left. Clouds of billowing smoke, drifting, up-lit by bright leaping flames below. A decent blaze, getting worse by the minute.
Impressive.
He raised an imaginary glass to Comrade Molotov.
Then he leaned back in his seat and waited for the fire department to show up.
73
The fire department showed up inside four minutes. Clearly New Age had an alarm system hard-wired straight into the precinct house. A Pentagon requirement, Reacher guessed, like the guard shack at the gate. Far to his right in the distance he heard the faint bass bark of sirens and saw blue lights flashing on the horizon. He saw Neagley start her car and put it in gear. He started his own. And then he waited. The sirens grew louder. They changed to a manic continuous shriek, once, then again, at busy intersections. Then they died back to random barking. The blue lights got brighter. The trucks were two blocks away. Headlight beams were bright in the gloom. Neagley eased off the curb. Reacher followed her. She drove ahead and waited on the stop line. Reacher was right behind her. The fire trucks were a block away, bearing down, coming on fast, honking and flashing. Neagley swooped out and made the left, right in front of the convoy. Reacher followed her, tires chirping, just yards in front of the leading truck. Its siren blared at him angrily. Neagley drove a couple of hundred yards. One block. Two. Onto New Age’s block. She followed the fence along the front of the property. Reacher was behind her all the way. The sirens behind him were yelping furiously. Then Neagley pulled over, like a good citizen. Reacher tucked in behind her. The trucks lurched left and roared past them both. Then more or less immediately they braked hard and turned and headed for New Age’s gate. There were three of them. A whole engine company. A priority client.