The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

“Of course I have. But it’s a big place. They can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Does he have a cell phone?”

  “Switched off.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Nearly an hour.”

  “What would you want him to do?”

  “Authorize a request for a search party, of course. Every minute counts now. And we have lots of people over there. The 1st Infantry Division. And Special Forces. And helicopters, and drones, and satellites, and all kinds of aerial surveillance.”

  “But you don’t even know where your guys are supposed to be, or what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  The duty officer nodded and jabbed his thumb at the ceiling. At the upstairs offices. He said, “The mission is in Major Turner’s computer. Which is now Colonel Morgan’s computer. Which is password-protected.”

  “Do the radio checks go into Bagram?”

  The guy nodded again. “Most of them are routine data. Bagram sends us the transcript. But if there’s anything urgent, then they’re patched through to us, right here in this office. On a secure phone line.”

  “What was it the last time they transmitted? Routine, or urgent?”

  “Routine.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “Call Bagram and get an estimate of their range, from that last time.”

  “Will Bagram even know their range?”

  “Those radio guys can usually tell. By the sound, and the signal strength. By a gut feeling, sometimes. It’s their job. Ask for their best guess, to the nearest five miles.”

  The guy picked up a phone, and Reacher walked back to Leach at the reception desk in the lobby. He said, “Get on the line for the next ten minutes and hit up everyone you know at the Pentagon. Full court press, to locate Morgan.”

  Leach picked up her phone.

  Reacher waited.

  Ten minutes later Leach had nothing. Not altogether surprising. The Pentagon had more than seventeen miles of corridors and nearly four million square feet of office space, all occupied by more than thirty thousand people on any given workday. Trying to find a random individual was like trying to find a needle in the world’s most secretive haystack. Reacher walked back to 103 and the duty officer said, “The Bagram radio room figures our guys were about two hundred and twenty miles out. Maybe two hundred and thirty.”

  “That’s a start,” Reacher said.

  “Not really. We don’t know what direction.”

  “If in doubt, take a wild-ass guess. That was always my operating principle.”

  “Afghanistan is a big country.”

  “I know it is,” Reacher said. “And it’s unpleasant all over, from what I hear. But where is it worst?”

  “The mountains. The border with Pakistan. Pashtun tribal areas. The northeast, basically. No one’s idea of fun.”

  Reacher nodded. “Which is the kind of place the 110th gets sent. So get on the horn to the base commander and ask him to order up an air search, starting two hundred and twenty-five miles northeast of Bagram.”

  “That could be completely the wrong direction.”

  “Like I said, it’s a wild-ass guess. You got something better?”

  “They won’t do it anyway. Not on my say-so. A thing like this would need a major or better.”

  “So take Morgan’s name in vain.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  Reacher listened. All quiet. No one coming. The duty officer waited, his hand curled into a fist, halfway between his lap and his phone.

  You’re back in the army, major.

  You’ll retain your former rank.

  You’re assigned to this unit.

  “Use my name,” Reacher said.

  Chapter 12

  The duty officer made the call, and then the military machine took over, distant and invisible and industrious, on the other side of the world, nine time zones and nearly eight thousand miles away, planning, briefing, readying, arming, and fueling. The old stone building in Rock Creek went quiet.

  Reacher asked, “How many other people do you have in the field?”

  The duty officer said, “Globally? Fourteen.”

  “Nearest?”

  “Right now, Fort Hood in Texas. Cleaning up after Major Turner’s thing down there.”

  “How many in hazardous situations?”

  “That’s a moving target, isn’t it? Eight or ten, maybe.”

  “Has Morgan gone AWOL before?”

  “This is only his third day.”

  “What was Major Turner like as a commander?”

  “She was fairly new. She only had a few weeks.”

  “First impression?”

  “Excellent.”

  “Is this Afghanistan thing hers, or did she inherit it?”

  “It’s hers,” the duty officer said. “It’s the second thing she did when she got here, after Fort Hood.”

  * * *

  Reacher had never been to Bagram, or anywhere else in Afghanistan, but he knew how it would work. Some things never change. No one liked sitting around doing nothing, and no one liked their own people in trouble. Especially not in the tribal areas, which were brutal and primitive in ways too drastic to contemplate. So the search mission would be undertaken very willingly. But it would carry significant danger. Combat air support would be needed, and overwhelming air-to-ground firepower would be required. Lots of moving parts. Therefore mission planning would take some time. Two hours minimum, Reacher figured, to get all the ducks in a row. Then two hours of flight time. There would be no early resolution.

  Reacher spent some of the wait time walking. Back to his motel, and past it, and then left and right on the long blocks to the ragged strip mall ahead of the Greek restaurant, which he ignored, because he wasn’t hungry. He ignored the picture framing shop, because he had no pictures in need of framing, and he ignored the gun shop, because he didn’t want to buy a gun, and he ignored the walk-in dentist, because his teeth felt fine. He stopped in at the hardware store, and bought a pair of dark khaki canvas work pants, and a blue canvas work shirt, and a brown field coat padded with some kind of trade-marked miracle insulation layer. Then he stopped in at the no-name pharmacy and bought dollar socks and boxers and two white T-shirts, which he figured he would wear one on top of the other, under the work shirt, because the T-shirt fabric looked thin, and the weather showed no signs of warming up. He added a three-pack of disposable razors, the smallest available, and an aerosol can of shaving foam, the smallest available, and two packs of gum, and a plastic comb.

  He carried his purchases back to the motel, two long blocks, and he let himself into his room. It had been serviced in his absence. The bed had been made and the meager bathroom supplies had been replaced. Fresh towels, dry but still thin, and new wrapped soap, still small, and a new tiny bottle of shampoo, still chemically identical to dishwashing liquid. He stripped in the chill and crammed his old clothes in the trash buckets, half in the bathroom and half in the bedroom, because the buckets were small, and then he shaved very carefully, and then he took his second shower of the day.

  He started the heater under the window in the bedroom and dried himself with a hand towel in its hot raucous blast, to save the larger towel for a future occasion. He dressed in his new clothes and put his old boots back on and combed his hair. He checked the result in the bathroom mirror and was satisfied with what he saw. He was at least clean and tidy, which was about as good as it ever got.

  She’ll be out and about before long.

  Reacher walked back to the 110th HQ. His four upper-body layers plus the miracle insulation did their job. He stayed warm enough. The HQ gates were open. The day guy was in the sentry hutch. Morgan’s car was back in the lot. The plain sedan. Reacher had seen it the night before, with Morgan himself at the wheel, all prim and upright. Reacher detoured across toward it and laid his palm on the hood. Which was warm. Almost hot. Morgan had just gotten back.

  Which explained Leach’s state of mind. She was silent and uptight at t
he reception desk in the lobby. Behind her the duty officer was inert in the ground-floor corridor, all pale in the face, just standing there. Reacher didn’t wait to be told. He turned and headed up the old stone stairs. Third office on the left. He knocked and entered. Morgan was at the desk, thin lipped and furious, practically quivering with rage.

  Reacher said, “Good of you to drop by, colonel.”

  Morgan said, “What you just did will cost the Pentagon more than thirty million dollars.”

  “Money well spent.”

  “It will be a court martial all its own.”

  “Possibly,” Reacher said. “But yours, not mine. I don’t know where you’ve served before, colonel, but this isn’t amateur hour anymore. Not here. Not with this unit. You had two men you knew to be in danger, and you absented yourself for two whole hours. You left no word about where you were going, and your phone was switched off. That’s completely unacceptable.”

  “Those men are in no danger. They’re poking around with some trivial inquiry.”

  “They missed two consecutive radio checks.”

  “Probably goofing off, like the rest of this damn unit.”

  “In Afghanistan? Doing what? Hitting the bars and the clubs? Checking out the whorehouses? Spending the day at the beach? Get real, you idiot. Radio silence out of Afghanistan is automatically bad news.”

  “It was my decision.”

  “You wouldn’t recognize a decision if it ran up and bit you in the ass.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that.”

  “Or what?”

  Morgan said nothing.

  Reacher asked, “Did you cancel the search?”

  Morgan didn’t answer.

  Reacher said, “And you haven’t told me we’re looking in the wrong place, either. Therefore I was right. Those guys are lost on the border in the tribal areas. You should have done this twenty-four hours ago. They’re in real trouble.”

  “You had no right to interfere.”

  “I’m back in the army, I’m assigned to this unit, and I hold the rank of major. Therefore I wasn’t interfering. I was doing my job, and I was doing it properly. Like I always used to. You should pay some attention and pick up some pointers, colonel. You’ve got maybe a dozen people in the field, exposed and vulnerable, and you should be thinking about nothing else, all day and all night. You should leave a precise contact number at all times, and you should have your cell switched on, and you should be prepared to answer it, no matter what else you’re doing.”

  Morgan said, “Have you finished?”

  “I’ve barely even started.”

  “You understand you’re under my command?”

  Reacher nodded. “Life is full of anomalies.”

  “Then listen up, major. Your orders have changed. From now on you are confined to your quarters. Go straight back to your motel and stay there until you hear from me again. Do not leave your room at any time for any reason. Do not attempt to communicate with anyone from this unit.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  Morgan said, “You are dismissed, major.”

  The duty officer was still in the ground-floor corridor. Leach was still behind the reception desk. Reacher came down the stairs and shrugged at them both. Part apologetic, part rueful, partly the universal military gesture: same old shit. Then he headed out the door and down the stone steps to the cold midday air. The sky was clearing. There was some bright blue up there.

  Reacher walked the rest of the hill and turned on the three-lane. A bus passed him by. Heading out, not in. Onward, and away. He walked on, down a slight dip, up a slight rise. He saw the motel ahead of him, on the right, maybe a hundred yards distant.

  He stopped.

  The car with the dented doors was in the motel lot.

  Chapter 13

  The car was easily recognizable, even at a distance. Make, model, shape, color, the slight deformation in the driver’s side sheet metal. It was alone in the lot, level with where Reacher guessed his room must be. He moved three paces forward, on a diagonal to the edge of the sidewalk, to improve his angle, and he saw four men coming out his door.

  Two of them were as easily identifiable as the car. They were the guys from the night before. One hundred percent certain. Shape, size, coloring. The other two men were new. Nothing special about the first of them. Tall, young, dumb. As bad as his two pals.

  The fourth man was different.

  He looked a little older than the others, and he was a little bigger than the others, which made him close to Reacher’s own size. Six-four, maybe, and two-forty. But all muscle. Huge thighs, small waist, huge chest, like an hourglass, like a cartoon drawing. Plus big knotted shoulders, and arms propped away from his sides by the sheer bulk of his pectorals and his triceps. Like a world champion male gymnast, except more than twice the size.

  But it was his head that was truly extraordinary. It was shaved, and it looked like it had been welded together from flat steel plates. Small eyes, and heavy brows, and sharp cheekbones, and tiny, gristly ears, like pasta shapes. He was straight-backed and powerful. Slavic, somehow. Like a poster boy out of an old Red Army recruiting advertisement. Like the ideal of Soviet manhood. He should have been holding a banner, one-handed, high and proud, his eyes fixed mistily on a golden future.

  The four men shuffled out and closed the door behind them. Reacher walked on, ninety yards away, then eighty. An Olympic sprinter could have closed the gap in about eight seconds, but Reacher was no kind of a sprinter, Olympic or otherwise. The four men stepped over to their car. Reacher walked on. The four men opened their doors and folded themselves inside, two in the back, two in the front. Reacher walked on. Seventy yards. Sixty. The car moved through the lot, and stopped nose-on to the three-lane, waiting for a gap in the traffic, waiting to turn. Reacher wanted it to turn toward him. Turn left, he thought. Please.

  But the car turned right, and joined the traffic stream, and drove away into the distance, and was lost to sight.

  A minute later Reacher was at his door, unlocking it again, opening it up, and stepping inside. Nothing was disturbed. Nothing was torn up or tipped over or trashed. Therefore there had been no detailed search. Just a cursory poke around, looking for a first impression.

  Which was what?

  There was a wet tub, and a wet towel, and some old clothes stuffed in the trash cans, and some abandoned toiletries near the sink. Like he had just upped and quit. Which they had told him to, after all. You should get the hell out of town, right now. Every night we find you still here, we’re going to kick your ass.

  Maybe they thought he had heeded their warnings.

  Or maybe not.

  He left the room again and walked up to the motel office. The clerk was a squirrelly guy about forty, all bad skin and jutting bone, perched up on a high stool behind the counter. Reacher said, “You let four guys into my room.”

  The clerk sucked his teeth and nodded.

  Reacher said, “Army?”

  The guy nodded again.

  “Did you see ID?”

  “Didn’t need to. They had the look.”

  “You do a lot of business with the army?”

  “Enough.”

  “To never ask questions?”

  “You got it, chief. I’m sweetness and light all the way, with the army. Because a man’s got to eat. They do anything wrong?”

  “Not a thing,” Reacher said. “Did you hear any names?”

  “Only yours.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” the guy asked.

  “I could use a fresh towel,” Reacher said. “And more soap, I guess. And more shampoo. And you could empty my trash.”

  “Whatever you want,” the guy said. “I’m sweetness and light all the way, with the army.”

  Reacher walked back to his room. There was no chair. Which was not a breach of the Geneva Conventions, but confinement to quarters was going to be irksome for a large and restless man. Plus
it was only a motel, with no room service. And no dining room, and no greasy spoon cafe across the street, either. And no telephone, and therefore no delivery. So Reacher locked up again and walked away, to the Greek place two blocks distant. Technically a grievous breach of his orders, but win or lose, trivialities weren’t going to count for much, either one way or the other.

  He saw nothing on the walk, except another municipal bus, heading out, and a garbage truck, on its rounds. At the restaurant the hostess gave him a table on the other side of the room from his breakfast billet, and he got a different waitress. He ordered coffee, and a cheeseburger, and a slice of pie, and he enjoyed it all. He saw nothing on the walk back except another bus heading out, and another garbage truck on its rounds. He was back in his room less than an hour after leaving it. The squirrelly guy had been in with a new towel, and new soap, and new shampoo. The trash cans were empty. The room was as good as it was going to get. He lay down on the bed and crossed his ankles and put his hands behind his head and thought about taking a nap.

  But he didn’t get one. Within about a minute of his head hitting the pillow, three warrant officers from the 75th MP showed up to arrest him.

  Chapter 14

  They came in a car, and they were driving it fast. Reacher heard it on the road, and he heard it thump up into the lot, and he heard it slew around and jam to a stop outside. He heard three doors open, a ragged sequence of three separate sounds, all contained in the same second, and he heard three pairs of boots hit the ground, which meant three guys, not four, which meant they were not the guys from the car with the dented doors. There was a pause, with one set of footsteps receding fast, which he guessed was someone running around to cover the rear, which was a waste of time, because there was no bathroom window, but they didn’t know that, and better safe than sorry. Which told him he was dealing with a competent crew.

  He uncrossed his ankles and unlaced his hands from behind his head and sat up on the bed. He swiveled around and put his feet on the floor. Right on cue the hammering started on the door. Nothing like Major Sullivan’s polite little tap, tap, tappity tap from six o’clock in the morning. This was a full-on furious boom, boom, boom, by big strong guys trained to make a paralyzing first impression. Not his own favorite method. He had always felt self-conscious, making a lot of noise.