by Lee Child
Reacher took up station on the west side of the junction, standing on the shoulder close to the traffic lane. East-west drivers would have to pause at the stop sign opposite, and they would get a good look at him twenty yards ahead. But there were no east-west drivers. Not for the first ten minutes. Then the first fifteen, then the first twenty. A lone car came north, trailing the U-Haul by twenty miles, but it didn’t turn off. It just blasted onward. An SUV came south, and slowed, ready to turn, but it turned east, away from Hope. Its lights grew small and faint and then they disappeared.
It was cold. There was a wind coming out of the east, and it was moving rain clouds into the sky. Reacher turned his collar up and crossed his arms over his chest and trapped his hands under his biceps for warmth. Cloudy diffused streaks of pink and purple lit up the far horizon. A new day, empty, innocent, as yet unsullied. Maybe a good day. Maybe a bad day. Maybe the last day. The end is near, Thurman’s church had promised. Maybe a meteorite the size of a moon was hurtling closer. Maybe governments had suppressed the news. Maybe rebels were right then forcing the locks on an old Ukrainian silo. Maybe in a research lab somewhere a flask had cracked or a glove had torn or a mask had leaked.
Or maybe not. Reacher stamped his feet and ducked his face into his shoulder. His nose was cold. When he looked up again he saw headlights in the east. Bright, widely spaced, far enough away that they seemed to be static. A large vehicle. A truck. Possibly a semi trailer. Coming straight toward him, with the new dawn behind it.
Four possibilities. One, it would arrive at the junction and turn right and head north. Two, it would arrive at the junction and turn left and head south. Three, it would pause at the stop sign and then continue west without picking him up. Four, it would pause and cross the main drag and then pause again to let him climb aboard.
Chances of a happy ending, twenty-five percent. Or less, if it was a corporate vehicle with a no-passenger policy because of insurance hassles.
Reacher waited.
When the truck was a quarter-mile away he saw that it was a big rigid panel van, painted white. When it was three hundred yards away he saw that it had a refrigerator unit mounted on top. Fresh food delivery, which would have reduced the odds of a happy outcome if it hadn’t been for the stop signs. Food drivers usually didn’t like to stop. They had schedules to keep, and stopping a big truck and then getting it back up to speed could rob a guy of measurable minutes. But the stop signs meant he had to slow anyway.
Reacher waited.
He heard the guy lift off two hundred yards short of the junction. Heard the hiss of brakes. He raised his hand high, thumb extended. I need a ride. Then he raised both arms and waved. The distress semaphore. I really need a ride.
The truck stopped at the line on the east side of the junction. Neither one of its direction indicators was flashing. A good sign. There was no traffic north or south, so it moved on again immediately, diesel roaring, gears grinding, heading west across the main drag, straight toward Reacher. It accelerated. The driver looked down. The truck kept on moving.
Then it slowed again.
The air brakes hissed loud and the springs squealed and the truck came to a stop with the cab forty feet west of the junction and the rear fender a yard out of the north-south traffic lane. Reacher turned and jogged back and climbed up on the step. The window came down and the driver peered out from seven feet south. He was a short, wiry man, incongruously small in the huge cab. He said, “It’s going to rain.”
Reacher said, “That’s the least of my problems. My car broke down.”
The guy at the wheel said, “My first stop is Hope.”
Reacher said, “You’re the supermarket guy. From Topeka.”
“I left there at four this morning. You want to ride along?”
“Hope is where I’m headed.”
“So quit stalling and climb aboard.”
Dawn chased the truck all the way west, and overtook it inside thirty minutes. The world lit up cloudy and pale gold and the supermarket guy killed his headlights and sat back and relaxed. He drove the same way Thurman had flown his plane, with small efficient movements and his hands held low. Reacher asked him if he often carried passengers and he said that about one morning in five he found someone looking for a ride. Reacher said he had met a couple of women who had ridden with him.
“Tourists,” the guy said.
“More than that,” Reacher said.
“You think?”
“I know.”
“How much?”
“All of it.”
“How?”
“I figured it out.”
The guy nodded at the wheel.
“Wives and girlfriends,” he said. “Looking to be close by while their husbands and boyfriends pass through the state.”
“Understandable,” Reacher said. “It’s a tense time for them.”
“So you know what their husbands and boyfriends are?”
“Yes,” Reacher said. “I do.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Not my business.”
“You’re not going to tell anyone?”
“There’s a cop called Vaughan,” Reacher said. “I’m going to have to tell her. She has a right to know. She’s involved, two ways around.”
“I know her. She’s not going to be happy.”
Reacher said, “Maybe she will be, maybe she won’t be.”
“I’m not involved,” the guy said. “I’m just a fellow traveler.”
“You are involved,” Reacher said. “We’re all involved.”
Then he checked his borrowed cell phone again. No signal.
There was nothing on the radio, either. The supermarket guy hit a button that scanned the whole AM spectrum from end to end, and he came up with nothing. Just static. A giant continent, mostly empty. The truck hammered on, bouncing and swaying on the rough surface. Reacher asked, “Where does Despair get its food?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “And I don’t care.”
“Ever been there?”
“Once. Just to take a look. And once was enough.”
“Why do people stay there?”
“I don’t know. Inertia, maybe.”
“Are there jobs elsewhere?”
“Plenty. They could head west to Halfway. Lots of jobs there. Or Denver. That place is expanding, for sure. Hell, they could come east to Topeka. We’re growing like crazy. Nice houses, great schools, good wages, right there for the taking. This is the land of opportunity.”
Reacher nodded and checked his cell phone again. No signal.
They made it to Hope just before ten in the morning. The place looked calm and quiet and unchanged. Clouds were massing overhead and it was cold. Reacher got out on First Street and stood for a moment. His cell phone showed good signal. But he didn’t dial. He walked down to Fifth and turned east. From fifty yards away he saw that there was nothing parked on the curb outside Vaughan’s house. No cruiser, no black Crown Vic. Nothing at all. He walked on, to get an angle and check the driveway.
The old blue Chevy pick-up was in the driveway. It was parked nose-in, tight to the garage door. It had glass in its windows again. The glass was still labeled with paper barcodes and it was crisp and clear except where it was smeared in places with wax and handprints. It looked very new against the faded old paint. The ladder and the wrecking bar and the flashlight were in the load bed. Reacher walked up the stepping-stone path to the door and rang the bell. He heard it sound inside the house. The neighborhood was still and silent. He stood on the step for thirty long seconds and then the door opened.
Vaughan looked out at him and said, “Hello.”
62
Vaughan was dressed in the same black clothes she had worn the night before. She looked still and calm and composed. And a little distant. A little preoccupied. Reacher said, “I was worried about you.”
Vaughan said, “Were you?”
“I tried to call you twice. Here, and in the car. Where were
you?”
“Here and there. You better come in.”
The kitchen looked just the same as before. Neat, clean, decorated, three chairs at the table. There was a glass of water on the counter and coffee in the machine.
Reacher said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get right back.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You want coffee?”
“After you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Like hell.”
“OK, we shouldn’t have done what we did the night before last.”
“Which part?”
“You know which part. You took advantage. I started to feel bad about it. So when you didn’t come back with the plane I switched off my phone and my radio and drove out to Colorado Springs and told David all about it.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Vaughan shrugged. “They let me in. They were very nice about it, actually. They treated me very well.”
“And what did David say?”
“That’s cruel.”
Reacher shook his head. “It isn’t cruel. It’s a simple question.”
“What’s your point?”
“That David no longer exists. Not as you knew him. Not in any meaningful sense. And that you’ve got a choice to make. And it’s not a new choice. There have been mass casualties from the Civil War onward. There have been tens of thousands of men in David’s position over more than a century. And therefore there have been tens of thousands of women in your position.”
“And?”
“They all made a choice.”
“David still exists.”
“In your memory. Not in the world.”
“He’s not dead.”
“He’s not alive, either.”
Vaughan said nothing. Just turned away and took a fine china mug from a cupboard and filled it with coffee from the machine. She handed the mug to Reacher and asked, “What was in Thurman’s little box?”
“You saw the box?”
“I was over the wall ten seconds after you. Did you really think I was going to wait in the car?”
“I didn’t see you.”
“That was the plan. But I saw you. I saw the whole thing. Fly with me tonight? He ditched you somewhere, didn’t he?”
Reacher nodded. “Fort Shaw, Oklahoma. An army base.”
“You fell for it.”
“I sure did.”
“You’re not as smart as you think.”
“I never claimed to be smart.”
“What was in the box?”
“A plastic jar.”
“What was in the jar?”
“Soot,” Reacher said. “People, after a fire. They scrape it off the metal.”
Vaughan sat down at her table.
“That’s terrible,” she said.
“Worse than terrible,” Reacher said. “Complicated.”
“How?”
Reacher sat down opposite her.
“You can breathe easy,” he said. “There are no wrecked Humvees at the plant. They go someplace else.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Humvees don’t burn like that. Mostly they bust open and people spill out.”
Vaughan nodded. “David wasn’t burned.”
Reacher said, “Only tanks burn like that. No way out of a burning tank. Soot is all that’s left.”
“I see.”
Reacher said nothing.
“But how is that complicated?” she asked.
“It’s the first in a series of conclusions. Like a logical chain reaction. We’re using main battle tanks over there. Which isn’t a huge surprise, I guess. But we’re losing some, which is a huge surprise. We always expected to lose a few, to the Soviets. But we sure as hell didn’t expect to lose any to a bunch of ragtag terrorists with improvised explosive devices. In less than four years they’ve figured out how to make shaped charges good enough to take out main battle tanks belonging to the U.S. Army. That doesn’t help our PR very much. I’m real glad the Cold War is over. The Red Army would be helpless with laughter. No wonder the Pentagon ships the wrecks in sealed containers to a secret location.”
Vaughan got up and walked over to her counter and picked up her glass of water. She emptied it in the sink and refilled it from a bottle in her refrigerator. Took a sip.
“I got a call this morning,” she said. “From the state lab. My tap water sample was very close to five parts per billion TCE. Borderline acceptable, but it’s going to get a lot worse if Thurman keeps on using as much of the stuff as he uses now.”
“He might stop,” Reacher said.
“Why would he?”
“That’s the final conclusion in the chain. We’re not there yet. And it’s only tentative.”
“So what was the second conclusion?”
“What does Thurman do with the wrecked tanks?”
“He recycles the steel.”
“Why would the Pentagon deploy MPs to guard recycled steel?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Pentagon wouldn’t. Nobody cares about steel. The MPs are there to guard something else.”
“Like what?”
“Only one possibility. A main battle tank’s front and side armor includes a thick layer of depleted uranium. It’s a byproduct from enriching natural uranium for nuclear reactors. It’s an incredibly strong and dense metal. Absolutely ideal for armor plate. So the second conclusion is that Thurman is a uranium specialist. And that’s what the MPs are there for. Because depleted uranium is toxic and somewhat radioactive. It’s the kind of thing you want to keep track of.”
“How toxic? How radioactive?”
“Tank crews don’t get sick from sitting behind it. But after a blast or an explosion, if it turns to dust or fragments or vapor, you can get very sick from breathing it, or by being hit by shrapnel made of it. That’s why they bring the wrecks back to the States. And that’s what the MPs are worried about, even here. Terrorists could steal it and break it up into small jagged pieces and pack them into an explosive device. It would make a perfect dirty bomb.”
“It’s heavy.”
“Incredibly.”
“They’d need a truck to steal it. Like you said.”
“A big truck.”
Reacher sipped his coffee and Vaughan sipped her water and said, “They’re cutting it up at the plant. With hammers and torches. That must make dust and fragments and vapor. No wonder everyone looks sick.”
Reacher nodded.
“The deputy died from it,” he said. “All those symptoms? Hair loss, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, blisters, sores, dehydration, organ failure? That wasn’t old age or TCE. It was radiation poisoning.”
“Are you sure?”
Reacher nodded again. “Very sure. Because he told me so. From his deathbed he said The, and then he stopped, and then he started again. He