by Lee Child
The barman said, “I don’t want to be rude, sir, but really, if two of you had been in here tonight, someone would have called Homeland Security already. Don’t you think?”
Mahmeini’s man said nothing.
“Just saying,” the barman said. “This is Nebraska. There are military installations here.”
Mahmeini’s man asked, “Then was someone else just here?”
“This is a bar, my friend. People are in and out all night long. That’s kind of the point of the place.”
The barman turned back to his current customer. Interaction over. Mahmeini’s man turned and scanned the room, one more time. Then he gave it up and moved away, between the tables, back to the door. He stepped into the lot and took out his phone. No signal. He stood still for a second and glanced north at where the red lights had gone, and then he climbed back into the taxi. He closed the door against a yowling hinge and said, “Thank you for waiting.”
The driver looked back over his shoulder and asked, “Where to now?”
Mahmeini’s man said, “Let me think about that for a minute.”
Reacher kept the Malibu at a steady sixty. A mile a minute. Hypnotic. Power line poles flashed past, the tires sang, the motor hummed. Reacher took the fresh bottle of water from the cup holder and opened it and drank from it one-handed. He switched his headlights to bright. Nothing to see ahead of him. A straight road, then mist, then darkness. He checked the mirror. Nothing to see behind him. He checked the dials and the gauges. All good.
Eleanor Duncan checked her watch. It was a small Rolex, a present from Seth, but probably real. She had counted ahead an hour and six minutes from when she had hung up the phone, and she had forty-five minutes still to go. She stepped out of the living room into the hallway, and stepped out of the hallway into her husband’s den. It was a small square space. She had no idea of its original purpose. Maybe a gun room. Now it was set up as a home office, but with an emphasis on gentlemanly style, not clerical function. There was a club chair made of leather. The desk was yew. It had a light with a green glass shade. There were bookshelves. There was a rug. The air in the room smelled like Seth.
There was a shallow glass bowl on the desk. From Murano, near Venice, in Italy. It was green. A souvenir. It had paper clips in it. And her car keys, just sitting there, two small serrated lances with big black heads. For her Mazda Miata. A tiny red two-seat convertible. A fun car. Carefree. Like the old British MGs and Lotuses used to be, but reliable.
She took one of the keys.
She stepped back to the hallway. Eleven miles. She thought she knew what Reacher had in mind. So she opened the coat closet and took out a silk headscarf. Pure white. She folded it into a triangle and tied it over her hair. She checked the mirror. Just like an old-fashioned movie star. Or an old-fashioned movie star after a knockout round with an old-fashioned heavyweight champion.
She left by the back door and walked through the cold to the garage, Seth’s empty bay to the right, hers in the middle, the doors all open. She got in her car and unlatched the clips above the windshield and dropped the top. She started up and backed out and turned and waited in the driveway, the motor running, the heater warming, her heart beating hard. She checked her watch. Twenty-nine minutes to go.
Reacher cruised onward, sixty miles an hour, three more minutes, and then he slowed down and put his lights back on bright. He watched the right shoulder. The old abandoned roadhouse loomed up at him, right on cue, pinned and stark in his headlight beams. The bad roof, the beer signs on the walls behind the mud, the bruised earth all around where cars had once parked. He pulled off the road and into the lot. Loose stones popped and crunched and slithered under his tires. He drove a full circuit.
The building was long and low and plain, like a barn cut off at the knees. Rectangular, except for two separate square bump-outs added at the back, one at each end of the structure, the first for restrooms, probably, and the second for a kitchen. Efficient, in terms of plumbing lines. Between the bump-outs was a shallow U-shaped space, like a bay, empty apart from a little windblown trash, enclosed on three sides, open only to the dark empty fields to the east. It was maybe thirty feet long and twelve feet deep.
Perfect, for later.
Reacher came back around to the south gable wall and parked thirty feet from it, out of sight from the north, facing the road at a slight diagonal angle, like a cop on speed trap duty. He killed the lights and kept the motor running. He got out into the cold and looped around the hood and walked to the corner of the building. He leaned on the old boards. They felt thin and veined, frozen by a hundred winters, baked by a hundred summers. They smelled of dust and age. He watched the darkness in the north, where he knew the road must be.
He waited.
Chapter 35
Reacher waited twenty long minutes, and then he saw light in the north. Very faint, maybe five or six miles away, really just a high hemispherical glow in the mist, trembling a little, bouncing, weakening and strengthening and weakening again. A moving bubble of light. Very white. Almost blue. A car, coming south toward him, pretty fast.
Eleanor Duncan, presumably, right on time.
Reacher waited.
Two minutes later she was two miles closer, and the high hemispherical glow was bigger, and stronger, still bouncing, still trembling, but now it had a strange asynchronous pulse inside it, the bouncing now going two ways at once, the strengthening and the weakening now random and out of phase.
There were two cars on the road, not one.
Reacher smiled. The sentry. The football player, posted to the south. A college graduate. Not a dumb guy. He knew his five buddies had been sent home to bed because absolutely nothing was going to happen. He knew he had been posted as a precaution only, just for the sake of it. He knew he was facing a long night of boredom, staring into the dark, no chance of glory. So what’s a guy going to do, when Eleanor Duncan suddenly blasts past him from behind, in her little red sports car? He’s going to see major brownie points on the table, that’s what. He’s going to give up on the blank hours ahead, and he’s going to pull out and follow her, and he’s going to dream of a promotion to the inner circle, and he’s going to imagine a scene and he’s going to rehearse a speech, because he’s going to pull Seth Duncan aside tomorrow, first thing in the morning, very discreetly, like an old friend or a trusted aide, and he’s going to whisper Yes, sir, I followed her all the way and I can show you exactly where she went. Then he’s going to add No, sir, I told no one else, but I thought you should know. Then he’s going to hop and shuffle in a modest and self-deprecating way and he’s going to say, Well, yes, sir, I thought it was much more important than sentry duty, and I’m glad you agree I did the right thing.
Reacher smiled again.
Human nature.
Reacher waited.
Two more minutes, and the traveling bubble of light was another two miles closer, now much flatter and more elongated. Two cars, with some little distance between them. Predator and prey, some hundreds of yards apart. There was no red glow in the bubble. The football player’s headlights were falling short of the Mazda’s paint. The guy was maybe a quarter of a mile back, following the Mazda’s taillights, no doubt thinking he was doing a hell of a job of staying inconspicuous. Maybe not such a smart guy. The Mazda had a mirror, and halogen headlights on a Nebraska winter night were probably visible from outer space.
Reacher moved.
He pushed off the corner of the building and looped around the Malibu’s hood and got in the driver’s seat. He locked the selector in first gear and put his left foot hard on the brake and his right foot on the gas. He goosed the pedal until the transmission was straining against the brake and the whole car was wound up tight and ready to launch. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the headlight switch.
He waited.
Sixty seconds.
Ninety seconds.
Then the Mazda flashed past, right to left, instantaneously, a tiny dar
k shape chasing a huge pool of bright light, its top down, a woman in a headscarf at the wheel, all chased in turn by tire roar and engine noise and the red flare of taillights. Then it was gone. Reacher counted one and flicked his headlights on and took his foot off the brake and stamped on the gas and shot forward and braked hard and stopped again sideways across the crown of the road. He wrenched open the door and spilled out and danced back toward the Malibu’s trunk, toward the shoulder he had just left. Two hundred yards to his right a big SUV was starting a panic stop. Its headlights flared yellow against the Malibu’s paint and then they nosedived into the blacktop as the truck’s front suspension crushed under the force of violent braking. Huge tires howled and the truck lost its line and slewed to its right and went into a four-wheel slide and its near-side wheels tucked under and its high center of gravity tipped over and its far-side wheels came up in the air. Then they crashed back to earth and the rear end fishtailed violently a full ninety degrees and the truck snapped around and came to rest parallel with the Malibu, less than ten feet away, stalled out and silent, the scream of stressed rubber dying away, thin drifts of moving blue smoke following it and catching it and stopping and rising all around it and billowing away into the cold night air.
Reacher pulled the Iranian’s Glock from his pocket and stormed the driver’s door and wrenched it open and danced back and pointed the gun. In general he was not a big fan of dramatic arrests, but he knew from long experience what worked and what didn’t with shocked and unpredictable subjects, so he screamed GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR as loud as he could, which was plenty loud, and the guy behind the wheel more or less tumbled out, and then Reacher was on him, forcing him down, flipping him, jamming him facedown into the blacktop, his knee in the small of the guy’s back, the Glock’s muzzle hard in the back of the guy’s neck, all the time screaming STAY DOWN STAY DOWN STAY DOWN, all the while watching the sky over his shoulder for more lights.
There were no more lights. No one else was coming. No backup. The guy hadn’t called it in. He was planning a solo enterprise. All the glory for himself. As expected.
Reacher smiled.
Human nature.
The scene went quiet. Nothing to hear, except the Malibu’s patient idle. Nothing to see, except four high beams stabbing the far shoulder. The air was full of the smell of burned rubber and hot brakes, and gas, and oil. The Cornhusker lay completely still. Hard not to, with 250 pounds on his back, and a gun to his head, and television images of SWAT arrests in his mind. Maybe real images. Country boys get arrested from time to time, the same as anyone else. And things had happened fast, all dark and noise and blur and panic, enough that maybe the guy hadn’t really seen Reacher’s face yet, or recognized his description from the Duncans’ warnings. Maybe the guy hadn’t put two and two together. Maybe he was waiting it out like a civilian, waiting to explain to a cop that he was innocent, like people do. Which gave Reacher a minor problem. He was about to transition away from what the guy might have taken to be a legitimate law enforcement takedown, straight to what the guy was going to know for sure was a wholly illegitimate kidnap attempt. And the guy was big. Six-six or a little more, two-ninety or a little more. He had on a large red football jacket and baggy jeans. His feet were the size of boats.
Reacher said, “Tell me your name.”
The guy’s chin and his lips and his nose were all jammed hard down on the blacktop. He said, “John,” like a gasp, like a grunt, just a soft expulsion of breath, quiet and indistinct.
“Not Brett?” Reacher asked.
“No.”
“That’s good.” Reacher shifted his weight, turned the guy’s head, jammed the Glock in his ear, saw the whites of his eyes. “Do you know who I am?”
The guy on the ground said, “I do now.”
“You know the two things you really need to understand?”
“What are they?”
“Whoever you think you are, I’m tougher than you, and I’m more ruthless than you. You have absolutely no idea. I’m worse than your worst nightmare. Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Really believe it? Like you believe in Mom and apple pie?”
“Yes.”
“You know what I did to your buddies?”
“Yes.”
“What did I do?”
“You finished them.”
“Correct. But here’s the thing, John. I’m prepared to work with you, to save your life. We can do this, if we try. But if you step half an inch out of line, I’ll kill you and walk away and I’ll never think about you again and I’ll sleep like a baby the whole rest of my life. We clear on that?”
“Yes.”
“So you want to try?”
“Yes.”
“Are you thinking about some stupid move? Are you quarterbacking it right now? You planning to wait until my attention wanders?”
“No.”
“Good answer, John. Because my attention never wanders. You ever seen someone get shot?”
“No.”
“It’s not like the movies, John. Big chunks of disgusting stuff come flying out. Even a flesh wound, you never really recover. Not a hundred percent. You get infections. You’re weak and hurting, forever.”
“OK.”
“So stand up now.” Reacher got up out of his crouch and moved away, pointing the gun, aiming it two-handed at arm’s length for theatrical effect, tracking the guy’s head, a big pale target. First the guy went fetal for a second, and then he gathered himself and got his hands under him and jacked himself to his knees. Reacher said, “See the yellow car? You’re going to go stand next to the driver’s door.”
The guy said, “OK,” and got to his feet, a little unsteady at first, then firmer, taller, squarer. Reacher said, “Feeling good now, John? Feeling brave? Getting ready? Going to rush over and get me?”
The guy said, “No.”
“Good answer, John. I’ll put a double tap in you before you move the first muscle. Believe me, I’ve done it before. I used to get paid to do it. I’m very good at it. So move over to the yellow car and stand next to the driver’s door.” Reacher tracked him all the way around the Malibu’s hood. The driver’s door was still open. Reacher had left it that way, for the sake of a speedy exit. The guy stood in its angle. Reacher aimed the gun across the roof of the car and opened the passenger door. The two men stood there, one on each side, both doors open like little wings.
Reacher said, “Now get in.”
The guy ducked and bent and slid into the seat. Reacher backed off a step and aimed the gun down inside the car, a low trajectory, straight at the guy’s hips and thighs. He said, “Don’t touch the wheel. Don’t touch the pedals. Don’t put your seat belt on.”
The guy sat still, with his hands in his lap.
Reacher said, “Now close your door.”
The guy closed his door.
Reacher asked, “Feeling heroic yet, John?”
The guy said, “No.”
“Good answer, my friend. We can do this. Just remember, the Chevrolet Malibu is an OK mid-range product, especially for Detroit, but it doesn’t accelerate for shit. Not like a bullet, anyway. This gun of mine is full of nine-millimeter Parabellums. They come out of the barrel doing nine hundred miles an hour. Think a four-cylinder GM motor can outrun that?”
“No.”
“Good, John,” Reacher said. “I’m glad to see all that education didn’t go to waste.”
Then he looked up across the roof of the car, and he saw light in the mist to the south. A high hemispherical glow, trembling a little, bouncing, weakening and strengthening and weakening again. Very white. Almost blue.
A car, coming north toward him, pretty fast.
Chapter 36
The oncoming car was about two miles away. Doing about sixty, Reacher figured. Sixty was about all the road was good for. Two minutes. He said, “Sit tight, John. Stop thinking. This is your time of maximum danger. I’m going to play
it very safe. I’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Don’t think I won’t.”
The guy sat still behind the Malibu’s wheel. Reacher watched across the roof of the car. The bubble of light in the south was still moving, still bouncing and trembling and strengthening and weakening, but coherently this time, naturally, in phase. Just one car. Now about a mile away. One minute.
Reacher waited. The glow resolved itself to a fierce source low down above the blacktop, then twin fierce sources spaced feet apart, both of them oval in shape, both of them low to the ground, both of them blue-white and intense. They kept on coming, flickering and floating and jittering ahead of a firm front suspension and fast go-kart steering, at first small because of the distance, and then small because they were small, because they were mounted low down on a small low car, because the car was a Mazda Miata, tiny, red in color, slowing now, coming to a stop, its headlights unbearably bright against the Malibu’s yellow paint.
Then Eleanor Duncan killed her lights and maneuvered around the Malibu’s trunk, half on the road and half on the shoulder, and came to a stop with her elbow on the door and her head turned toward Reacher. She asked, “Did I do it right?”
Reacher said, “You did it perfectly. The headscarf was a great touch.”
“I decided against sunglasses. Too much of a risk at night.”
“Probably.”
“But you took a risk. That’s for sure. You could have gotten creamed here.”
“He’s an athlete. And young. Good eyesight, good hand-eye coordination, lots of fast-twitch muscles. I figured I’d have time to jump clear.”
“Even so. He could have wrecked both vehicles. Then what would you have done?”
“Plan B was shoot him and ride back with you.”
She was quiet for a second. Then she said, “Need anything else?”
“No, thanks. Go on home now.”
“This guy will tell Seth, you know. About what I did.”