by Lee Child
Turner said, “OK. But we’ll buy a phone, so we don’t have to keep on stopping. In fact we’ll buy two phones. One each. Pre-paid, for cash. And a street map.”
Which they did about a mile later, by coming off the freeway into a dense retail strip anchored by a chain pharmacy, which carried pre-paid cell phones, and maps, and whose registers accepted cash along with every other form of payment known to man. They put the map in the car, and stored each other’s numbers in their phones, and then Reacher leaned on the Range Rover’s warm flank and dialed Edmonds’ cell.
She said, “I made the application at start of business today.”
“And?”
“So far there have been no motions to deny.”
“How soon would you expect them?”
“Instantly. Or sooner.”
“So that’s good.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So how long?”
“Later today, or early tomorrow.”
“Got a pen?”
“And paper.”
“I want you to check Peter Paul Lozano and Ronald David Baldacci with HRC.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want you to check.”
“Relevant to anything in particular?”
“To being on the right side of history.”
“I heard something you should know.”
“As in?”
“Detective Podolski found your clothes in the landfill. They’ve been tested.”
“And?”
“The blood didn’t match.”
“Should I hold my breath waiting for an apology from Major Sullivan?”
“She’s coming around. She was very touched you left her an IOU.”
“Is the Metro PD dropping out now?”
“No. You fled after a lawful police challenge.”
“That’s not allowed anymore?”
“I’ll do my best with Lozano and Baldacci.”
“Thank you,” Reacher said.
And then they got back on the freeway and headed north, just one of ten thousand moving vehicles winking in the sun.
Romeo called Juliet and said, “I spoke to the gentleman known as Cool Al directly, on a pretext, and he tells us they’re in a twenty-year-old black Range Rover.”
Juliet said, “That’s good to know.”
“Not the fastest car on the planet. Not that any would be fast enough. I put our boys on a helicopter. Orange County to Burbank. They’ll be in position at least an hour ahead of time.”
“Who paid for it?”
“Not the army,” Romeo said. “Don’t worry.”
“Did you cancel Baldacci’s credit card? Lozano’s, too, I suppose.”
“I can’t. Those are personal cards. They have to do it themselves, as soon as they get out of the hospital. Until then we’ll have to reimburse them, as always.”
“This thing is costing us a fortune.”
“Little acorns, my friend.”
“Not so little.”
“Nearly over. Then it’s back to business as usual.”
Reacher kept on dodging the eaters, and the drinkers, and the shavers, and the hair stylists, and the makeup artists, and the nail filers, and the file filers, and the readers, and the texters, and the surfers, and the screamers, and the criers, and he made it as far as East Los Angeles, where he took the Santa Ana Freeway, up to the 101 in Echo Park. Then it was a long slow grind, northwest through the hills, past names he still found glamorous, like Santa Monica Boulevard, and Sunset Boulevard, and the Hollywood Bowl. And then his telephone rang. He answered it and said, “I’m driving one-handed on the 101 with the Hollywood sign on my right, and I’m talking on my phone. Finally I feel like I belong.”
Edmonds said, “Got a pen and paper?”
“No.”
“Then listen carefully. Peter Paul Lozano and Ronald David Baldacci are active duty soldiers currently long-term deployed with a logistics battalion out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They’re assigned to a company trained for the infiltration and exfiltration of sensitive items into and out of Afghanistan, which at the moment, of course, is all exfiltration, because of the drawdown, which is also keeping them very busy. Their fitness reports are currently above average. That’s all I know.”
Which information Reacher relayed to Turner, after hanging up, and Turner said, “There you go. Stuff that should be making it home isn’t.”
Reacher said nothing.
“You don’t agree?”
He said, “I’m just trying to picture it. All these sensitive items, coming out of caves or wherever, and most of them getting loaded up for Fayetteville, but some of them getting dumped in the back of ratty old pick-up trucks with weird license plates, which then immediately drive off into the mountains. Maybe the trucks were full of cash on the inward journey. Maybe it’s a cash-on-delivery business. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“More or less.”
“Me too. A fishbowl. A lot of stress and uncertainty. And visibility. And risk of betrayal. That’s where they learn who to count on. Because everything is against them, even the roads. How sensitive are these things? Are they OK in the back of a ratty old pick-up truck with a weird license plate?”
“What’s your point?”
“All the action is in Afghanistan. But our guys are at Fort Bragg.”
“Maybe they’re just back from Afghanistan.”
“I don’t think so,” Reacher said. “I noticed the first minute I saw the first two. I figured neither one of them had been in the Middle East recently. They had no sunburn, no squint lines, and no stress and strain in their eyes. They’re homebodies. But they’re also the A team. So why keep your A team in North Carolina when all your action is in Afghanistan?”
“Typically these people have an A team on each end.”
“But there is only one end. Stuff comes out of the caves and goes straight into the ratty old pick-up trucks with the weird license plates. It never gets anywhere near Fort Bragg or North Carolina.”
“Then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re selling it in America, not Afghanistan. That would need an A team at Bragg, to siphon it off.”
“But I don’t think that’s happening either,” Reacher said. “Because small arms is all they could sell, realistically. We’d notice anything heavier. And to sell enough small arms to make the money they seem to be making would flood the market. And the market isn’t flooded. Or you would have heard about it. Someone would have dropped a dime if there was a torrent of military stuff for sale. Domestic manufacturers, probably, getting squeezed out. The message would have gotten to your desk eventually. That’s what the 110th is for.”
“So what are they doing?”
“I have no idea.”
Reacher remembered all the pertinent data from Candice Dayton’s affidavit, including her lawyer’s name, and his office address. Turner had found the right block on the street map, and her left thumbnail was resting on it, and her right index finger was tracing their progress, and her two hands were getting very close together. They crossed the Ventura Freeway, and she said, “Keep on going until Victory Boulevard. It should be signposted for the Burbank airport. Then we’ll drop down from the north. I imagine most of their focus will be to the south. We’ll be on their blind side.”
Victory Boulevard turned out to be the next exit. Then they made a right on Lankershim, and tracked back south and east, exactly parallel with the freeway they had left minutes before.
“Now pull over,” Turner said. “From here on in we go super-cautious.”
Chapter 48
Reacher parked in the mouth of a cross street, and they gazed south together, at the blocks north of the Ventura Freeway, which were a bustling A–Z catalog of American commercial activity, from medium size on down through small and all the way to super-tiny, with retail enterprises, and wholesale enterprises, and service enterprises, some of them durable, some of them wildly optimistic, some of them up-and
-coming, some of them fading fast, some of them familiar and ubiquitous. A visitor from outer space would conclude that acrylic nails were just as important as eight-by-four boards.
Turner still had the map open, and she said, “He’s on Vineland Avenue, two blocks north of the freeway. So make a left on Burbank Boulevard, and then Vineland is a right, and then it’s a straight shot. No one knows this car, but we can’t afford to drive by more than two times.”
So Reacher set off again, and made the turns, and drove Vineland like anyone else, not slow and peering, not fast and aggressive, just another anonymous vehicle rolling through the sunny morning. Turner said, “He’s coming up, on the right side, next block. I see a parking lot out front.”
Which Reacher saw, too. But it was a shared lot, not the lawyer’s own. Because the right side of the block was all one long low building, with a shake roof and a covered walkway in front, with the exterior walls painted what Reacher thought of as a unique Valley shade of beige, like flesh-colored makeup from the movies. The building was divided along its length, into six separate enterprises, including a wig shop, and a crystal shop, and a geriatric supplier, and a coffee shop, and a Se Habla Espanol tax preparer, with Candice Dayton’s lawyer more or less right in the center of the row, between the magic crystals and the electric wheelchairs. The parking lot was about eight slots deep, and it ran the whole width of the building’s facade, serving all the stores together. Reacher guessed any customer was entitled to park in any spot.
The lot was about half full, with most of the cars at first glance entirely legitimate, most of them clean and bright under the relentless sun, some of them parked at bad angles, as if their drivers had ducked inside just long enough for a simple errand. Reacher had given much thought to what kind of a car two people could live in, and he had concluded that an old-fashioned wagon or a modern SUV would be the minimum requirement, with a fold-flat rear bench and enough unimpeded length between the front seats and the tailgate to fit a mattress. Black glass to the sides and the rear would be an advantage. An old Buick Roadmaster or a new Chevy Suburban would fit the bill, except that anyone planning to live in a new Chevy Suburban would surely see an advantage in selling it and buying an old Buick Roadmaster, and keeping the change. So mostly he scanned for old wagons, maybe dusty, maybe on soft tires, settled somehow, as if parked for a long time.
But he saw no such vehicles. Most were entirely normal, and three or four of them were new enough and bland enough to be airport rentals, which is what Espin and the 75th MP would be using, and two or three of them were weird enough to be FBI seizures, reissued for use as unmarked stake-out cars. Shadows and the glare of the sun and window tints made it hard to be sure whether any were occupied, or not.
They drove on, same speed, same trajectory, and they got on the freeway again, because Reacher felt a sudden U-turn or other atypical choice of direction would stand out, and they drove around the same long slow rectangle, and they came down Lankershim for the second time, and they parked in the mouth of the same cross street again, feeling comfortably remote and invisible from the south.
“Want to see it again?” Turner asked.
“Don’t need to,” Reacher said.
“So what next?”
“They could be anywhere. We don’t know what they look like, or what car they’ve got. So there’s no point driving around. We need to get a precise location from the lawyer. If the lawyer even knows, day to day.”
“Sure, but how?”
“I could call, or I could get Edmonds to call for me, but the lawyer is going to say all correspondence should come to the office, and all meetings should be held at the office. He can’t afford to give her location to a party as involved as I’m supposed to be. He would have to assume any contact I had would end up either creepy or violent. Basic professional responsibility. He could get sued for millions of dollars.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what guys do, when they have nothing better going on.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m going to call a hooker.”
They backed up and headed north again, and they found a hamburger restaurant, where they drank coffee and where Reacher studied certain entries in a Yellow Pages borrowed from the owner, and then they got back on the road again, as far as a motel they saw next to one of the Burbank airport’s long-term parking lots. They didn’t check in. They stayed in the car, and Reacher dialed a number he had memorized. The call was answered by a woman with a foreign accent. She sounded middle-aged, and sleepy.
Reacher asked her, “Who’s your top-rated American girl?”
The foreign woman said, “Emily.”
“How much?”
“A thousand an hour.”
“Is she available now?”
“Of course.”
“Does she take credit cards?”
“Yes, but then she’s twelve hundred an hour.”
Reacher said nothing.
The foreign woman said, “She can be with you in less than thirty minutes, and she’s worth every penny. How would you like her to dress?”
“Like a grade school teacher,” Reacher said. “About a year out of college.”
“Girl next door? That’s always a popular look.”
Reacher gave his name as Pete Lozano, and he gave the name and the address of the motel behind him.
“Is that next to the airport parking lot?” the foreign woman asked.
“Yes,” Reacher said.
“We use it a lot. Emily will have no trouble finding it.”
Reacher clicked off the call, and they got comfortable, and they waited, not talking, doing nothing at all but looking ahead through the windshield.
After ten minutes Turner said, “You OK?”
Reacher said, “Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I’m sitting here staring at fourteen-year-old girls. I feel like a pervert.”
“Recognize any?”
“Not yet.”
Altogether they waited more than thirty-five minutes, and then Reacher’s phone rang. Not the foreign woman calling back with an excuse for Emily’s lateness, but Captain Edmonds calling back with what she announced as front-page news. Reacher tilted the phone and Turner put her head close to listen. Edmonds said, “I got the full jacket on A.M. 3435. It came through five minutes ago. Not without a little hustle on my part, I might add.”
Reacher said, “And?”
“No, really, you’re most welcome, major. Absolutely my pleasure. I don’t mind risking my entire career by entering in where JAG captains should fear to tread.”
“OK, thank you. I should have said that first. I’m sorry.”
“Some things you need to understand. We’ve been in Afghanistan more than ten years now, and in that context 3435 is a relatively low number. Currently we’re well over a hundred thousand. Which means the data on this man were created some time ago. About seven years ago, I think, as far as I can tell. And there have been no significant updates. Nothing beyond the routine minimum. Because this is a fairly ordinary guy. Boring, even. At first glance he’s a meaningless peasant.”
“What’s his name?”
“Emal Gholam Zadran. He’s now forty-two years old, and he’s the youngest of five Zadran brothers, all of them still alive. He seems to be the black sheep of the family, widely regarded as disreputable. The elder brothers are all fine upstanding poppy growers, working the family farm, like their ancestors did for a thousand years before them, very traditional, small time and modest. But young Emal didn’t want to settle for that. He tried his hand at a number of things, and failed at them all. His brothers forgave him, and took him back, and as far as anyone knows he lives near them in the hills, does absolutely nothing productive, and keeps himself to himself.”
“What was he written up for seven years ago?”
“One of the things he tried out, and failed at.”
“Which was?”
&n
bsp; “Nothing was proven, or we’d have shot him.”
“What wasn’t proven?”
“The story is he set up as an entrepreneur. He was buying hand grenades from the 10th Mountain Division and selling them to the Taliban.”
“How much did he get for them?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“Not proven?”
“They tried their best.”
“Why didn’t they shoot him anyway?”
“Reacher, you’re talking to an army lawyer here. Nothing was proven, and we’re the United States of America.”
“Suppose I wasn’t talking to an army lawyer.”
“Then I would say nothing was proven, and right then we were probably kissing Afghan butt and hoping they would set up a civilian government of their own at some point in the not-too-distant future, so we could get the hell out of there, and in that atmosphere shooting indigenous individuals against which nothing had been proven, even by our own hair-trigger military justice system, would have been regarded as severely counterproductive. Otherwise I’m sure they would have shot him anyway.”
“You’re pretty smart,” Reacher said. “For an army lawyer.”
And then he clicked off, because he was watching a kid who had gotten out of a cab and was walking into the motel driveway. She was luminous. She was young and blonde, and fresh and energetic, and somehow earnest, as if she was determined to use all the many years ahead doing nothing but good in the world. She looked like a grade school teacher, about a year out of college.
Chapter 49
The kid walked past the motel office, and then she stopped, as if she didn’t know where to go. She had a name but no room number. Turner buzzed her window down and called out, “Are you Emily?”
Which was something she and Reacher had rehearsed. No question it was weird to be approached in a motel parking lot by a woman in a car, ahead of what was clearly going to be a bizarre threesome. But a similar approach by a man would have been weirder still. So Turner got to ask the question, which the kid answered by saying, “Yes, I’m Emily.”