by Lee Child
They crunched onward, slipping and sliding occasionally, forming up in single file where the footstep trail narrowed around obstacles. Reacher had a high pile of ploughed snow between himself and the roadway. After most steps his left foot came down on its lower slope. It was like limping. He kept his eyes on the oncoming traffic. There wasn’t much. A few pick-up trucks, a few old-model SUVs, a few salt-caked cars. Nothing to worry about. Then Lowell drove by in his squad car, and slowed in surprise, and waved. Janet Salter waved back. Lowell speeded up again. Then came nothing for a spell, and then came a big dark sedan, heading north towards them. A Ford Crown Victoria. Navy blue. Easy to be sure in the bright clear light. Chief Holland’s car. The guy stopped the width of a traffic lane away and rolled down his window. He ignored Reacher completely. Looked straight at Janet Salter, some kind of concern in his face. She stopped and faced him. She said, ‘I’m out for a walk. That’s all. Nothing to worry about. Mr Peterson is doing a fine job.’
Holland said, ‘You heading home now?’
‘We’re on our way.’
‘Can I offer you a ride?’
‘Thank you, but I would rather walk. A measure of fresh air and exercise was the point of this little adventure.’
‘OK.’
‘But please join us back at the house, for coffee, if you like.’
‘OK,’ Holland said again.
He checked his mirrors and U-turned across the width of the road. Frozen ruts splintered under his wheels. He got lined up in the southbound lane but didn’t race on ahead. He kept pace instead, crawling slowly, holding a lateral line with himself on the left behind the wheel, then his empty passenger seat, then the berm of ploughed snow, then Reacher, then Janet Salter. His front tyres were made of hard winter compound, and they crunched and scrabbled slowly. He had chains on the back. Each link rotated into position and made its own distinct sound. He put his flashing lights on, to warn the traffic behind him of his low speed. He had strobes concealed in the rear parcel shelf, matched by more behind the radiator grille. Reacher guessed they would do the job. From a distance the unmarked car would look like a regular police cruiser.
Janet Salter said, ‘This is ridiculous.’
Reacher said, ‘He’s just doing his job.’
‘I don’t like the attention.’
‘You’re important to him.’
‘Only because he can use me.’
‘You’re a prominent citizen. You’re the kind of person a chief of police worries about.’
Janet Salter said, ‘The only prominent citizens in this town are the prison staff. Believe me. That’s how it works now.’
They walked on, with the idling car crunching slowly alongside them. Where there were no buildings on their right the wind blew in hard and strong and uninterrupted, a mass of frozen air whistling relentlessly over the flat land, with nothing in its path to roil it up or make it turbulent. It was still carrying tiny spicules of ice. They came in horizontal and pattered against the side of Reacher’s hood. They could have been airborne for hundreds of miles, maybe all the way from the Rocky Mountains.
Janet Salter asked, ‘Are you cold?’
Reacher smiled, as much as his numb face would let him.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘This is nothing.’
They got back in the house and peeled off layers and endured the pain of thawing. Reacher’s ears burned and his nose and chin prickled and itched. Peterson and the two women cops had to have been feeling the same, but they showed no signs of distress. Probably a matter of local South Dakota pride. Chief Holland was entirely OK. He had been riding in a heated car, out of the wind. But still he gave a theatrical shiver as soon as he stepped into the hallway. Relief, Reacher figured, now that Janet Salter’s exposure was over and they had gotten away with it.
The two women cops took up their established positions. Janet Salter went to work with her percolator. Reacher and Peterson and Holland watched her from the hallway. Then the phone rang. Janet Salter asked someone to pick it up. Peterson got it. He listened for a second and held the receiver out to Reacher.
‘For you,’ he said. ‘It’s the woman from the 110th MP.’
Reacher took the phone. Peterson and Holland trooped into the kitchen and left him alone. Instinctive politeness. Reacher put the phone to his ear and the voice from Virginia said, ‘I called a guy in the air force.’
‘And?’
‘We’re getting there. Slowly, but not because it’s a secret. Quite the opposite. Because the place was abandoned and forgotten years ago. It fell off the active list when God’s dog was still a puppy. Nobody can remember a thing about it.’
‘Not even what it was?’
‘All the details are archived. All my guy has seen so far is a report about how hard it was to build. The design was compromised several times during construction because of the kind of terrain they found. Some kind of schist. You know what that is?’
‘Bedrock, I guess,’ Reacher said. ‘Probably hard, if it caused difficulties.’
‘It proves they were excavating underground.’
‘That’s for sure. Not a bad result, for the first two hours.’
‘One hour,’ the voice said. ‘I took a nap first.’
‘You’re a bad person.’
‘Last time I checked, you’re not my boss.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I got a hit on a Florida cop called Kapler. Miami PD, born there thirty-six years ago, upped and quit two years ago for no apparent reason. No health issues, not in debt. I’ll get more when I’m in the Miami PD records.’
‘You can do that with Google?’
‘No, I’m using a few other resources. I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks,’ Reacher said. ‘Anything else?’
There was a pause. ‘My guy isn’t talking.’
‘From Fort Hood?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Back on post, in a cell.’
‘Did he live on-post or off-post?’
‘Off.’
‘So he’s looking at Texas law for the homicide or the Uniform Code for the treason. That’s a rock and a hard place. Either way he’s going to fry. He doesn’t have an incentive to talk.’
‘What would you do?’
‘What’s your goal?’
‘The non-state actors. Who he’s talking to, and how, and why.’
‘The why is easy. He probably served in Iraq or Afghanistan and got seduced by all the humanitarian bullshit and made friends and got played like a fish. The how will be cell phone or e-mail or an encrypted web site. The who will be very interesting, I agree.’
‘So how do I get him to talk?’
‘Order him to. You outrank him. He’s trained to obey.’
‘That won’t be enough. It never is.’
‘Are his parents still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Siblings?’
‘A younger brother, training with the navy SEALs.’
‘That’s good. That’s close to perfect, in fact. You need to bring your boy north, and sit him down, and offer him a deal.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You can, in terms of publicity. Tell him he’s going to fry, no question, but for what is up to him. Domestic violence by returning officers is up what, a thousand per cent? Nobody condones it, but most folks kind of understand it. So tell him if he cooperates, that’s all the world will know about him. But tell him if he doesn’t cooperate, then you’ll do the treason thing out in the open. His parents will be ashamed and mortified, his brother will have to quit the SEALs, his old high school will disown him.’
‘Will that work?’
‘All he’s got left is his name. He’s Fourth Infantry. That stuff matters over there.’
No reply.
‘Believe me,’ Reacher said. ‘Let him get out with honour.’
‘Domestic violence is honourable?’
‘Compared to the alternative
.’
‘OK, I’ll give it a try.’
‘Don’t forget about me,’ Reacher said. ‘I need to know what the air force built here. The scope, purpose and architecture, same as I always did. As soon as possible.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Are you married?’
She hung up without answering.
All six people that were awake and in the house had coffee. Janet Salter herself, Holland, Peterson, Reacher, and the two women cops. Maybe they joined in because they needed to get warm. They all got halfway through their first cup, and then Holland’s cell phone rang. He balanced his mug and opened the phone one-handed and listened for a minute. Then he closed the phone again and stuffed it back in his pocket.
‘Highway Patrol,’ he said. ‘The bikers are leaving. Right now. Thirty-six pick-up trucks just hit the highway.’
Five to one in the afternoon.
Fifteen hours to go.
TWENTY-FIVE
REACHER RODE BACK TO THE STATION HOUSE WITH HOLLAND and got the story on the way. The Highway Patrol was out in force on the highway to check that there were no remaining weather problems. One of their number had been parked on the eastbound shoulder. He had been watching the traffic coming and going, but then in the left corner of his eye had seen a long fast convoy heading down the snowy ribbon that led from the construction camp. It was quite a sight. Between thirty and forty pick-up trucks driving nose to tail, each one with three people in the cab and a tarp-covered motorbike and piles of boxes strapped down in the load bed. They had slowed and turned and then streamed and snaked and swooped around the cloverleaf and merged on to the highway and accelerated west. Like a train, the officer had said. Like the Northern Pacific itself. The convoy looked a quarter-mile long and was taking twenty whole seconds to pass any given point.
The desk sergeant confirmed the news. Highway Patrol cruisers were calling in reports, one after the other. The convoy was now ten miles west of Bolton, and still moving fast. But not fast enough to get ticketed. They were holding to an easy sixty-five, driving straight and true, still steadfastly keeping their noses clean.
They used the office with the crime scene photographs. Four desks boxed together, four chairs. Holland and Peterson sat side by side, and Reacher sat facing Holland, with his back to the pictures of the dead guy dressed in black. He asked, ‘You happy to just let them go?’
Holland asked, ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘They were selling meth.’
‘This is a small town at heart,’ Holland said. ‘We operate under small town rules. If I see the back of a thing, that’s generally as good as solving it.’
Peterson said, ‘End of problem.’
‘Not really,’ Reacher said. ‘They cleaned up and got out because the real estate closing is about to happen. And a closing needs a good title. Janet Salter is the last little smudge on it. She’s in more danger now than she ever was. She’s the only thing standing between someone and a lot of money.’
‘Plato the Mexican.’
‘Whoever.’
‘We’re doing everything we can,’ Holland said. ‘We have seven officers in place, and they’re staying there. We’ll be OK.’
‘Unless the siren goes off again.’
‘You say it won’t.’
Reacher said, ‘An educated guess is still a guess. Just remember, this is the time to start worrying, not to stop.’
Holland said, ‘You see me relaxing, I hereby give you permission to kick my butt. We may have our problems, and we may not be the U.S. Army, but we’ve struggled along so far. You should remember that.’
Reacher nodded. ‘I know. I’m sorry. Not your fault. It’s the mayor’s fault. Who would sign off on a plan like that?’
‘Anyone would,’ Holland said. ‘Those are jobs that can’t be shipped overseas. Which is the name of the game right now.’
The room went quiet for a moment.
Peterson said, ‘The motels are all full.’
Reacher said, ‘I know that.’
‘So where is the bad guy sleeping?’
‘In his car. Or in the next county.’
‘Where is he eating?’
‘Same answer.’
‘So should we use roadblocks? There are only three ways in.’
‘No,’ Holland said. ‘False premise. We set up a static perimeter, he might be already behind us. We have to stay mobile.’ Then he went quiet again, as if he was running through a mental agenda and checking that all the items on it had been covered. Which they must have been, because his next move was to stand up and walk out of the room without another word. Reacher heard the slap of his boot soles against the linoleum and then the slam of a door. His office, presumably. Work to do.
Peterson said, ‘We should get lunch. You could come back to the house. You could be company for Kim. She would like that.’
‘Because she’s lonely?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you and I shouldn’t be the only human specimens she sees all day. Go pick her up and we’ll have lunch in town, the three of us.’
‘Hard to get a table.’
‘I’ll wait on line while you’re on the road.’
‘Where?’
‘The coffee shop where you found me yesterday. Across the square.’
Peterson said, ‘But,’ and then nothing more.
‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘I can see the police station from there. I can see when the bus is ready to leave.’
The walk across the square to the coffee shop was short, but it was straight into the wind. The blowing ice hurt for the first few steps, like tiny needles, but then Reacher’s face went numb and he didn’t feel them any more. The line for a table was out the door. Reacher took his place behind a woman and a child wrapped in comforters that were probably borrowed from their motel beds. A guy commits a federal crime in Florida or Arizona, ends up in prison in South Dakota, the family has to follow. For the first year or two, anyway. After that, maybe not. A lot to lose.
The line moved slowly but steadily and Reacher got level with the steamed window. Inside he could see vague shapes bustling about. Two waitresses. Steady wages, maybe not much in tips. Families of prisoners didn’t have much money. If they did, they weren’t families of prisoners. Or, worst case, their guy was in a Club Fed somewhere, doing woodwork for a year, or reading books.
The mother and child squeezed their motel comforters in through the door. Reacher waited his turn on the sidewalk. He was pressed up against the building and out of the wind. Then a woman with three kids straggled out and Reacher ducked in. He waited at the register until a waitress glanced at him. He mouthed the word three and held up three fingers. The waitress nodded and swiped a rag across a table and beckoned him over. He dumped his coat on the back of a chair and peeled off his hat and gloves. He sat down and saw Peterson’s car stop outside on the kerb, a long black and white shape through the fog on the glass. He saw Peterson cross the sidewalk. His wife wasn’t with him. Peterson cut to the head of the line and stepped in through the door. No one complained. Peterson was in uniform.
Reacher stayed in his seat and Peterson shed his coat and sat down to an awkward silence that was broken only by the arrival of the waitress with an order pad in her hand. Not the kind of place that offered extra minutes for study of the menu. Peterson ordered a hamburger and water and Reacher got grilled cheese and coffee. Reacher was facing the window, and Peterson turned around to look at it, and then turned back with a satisfied smile.
‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘It’s all steamed up. But a bus is a pretty big thing. I’ll be able to make it out.’
‘You won’t leave.’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Kim didn’t want to come. She doesn’t care much for crowds, either.’
‘Crowds, or this kind of crowd?’
‘Both.’
They were two people at a table for four, and the line was still out the door, but nobody wanted to sit with t
hem. People came in, glanced over, maybe took half a step, and then stopped and looked away. The world was divided into two halves, people who liked cops and people who didn’t. The military had been exactly the same. Reacher had eaten next to empty chairs, many, many times.
Peterson asked, ‘What would you do, if you were me?’
‘About what?’
‘The department.’
‘It’s not yours.’
‘I’m next in line.’
‘I would start some serious training. Then I would renegotiate the deal with the prison. Their crisis plan is completely unsustainable.’
‘It worked OK last night, apart from the thing with Mrs Salter.’
‘That’s the point. That’s like saying it worked OK, except it didn’t. You have to plan for the contingencies.’
‘I’m not much of a politician.’
‘Please tell me there’s a review period built in.’
‘There is. But they’ll say it’s rare that our help is needed. And if we get through this month with Mrs Salter we won’t have any negatives to show them.’
There was no more conversation. Peterson kept quiet, and Reacher had nothing more to say. Without Kim there, the whole thing was a bust. But the food was OK. The coffee was fresh. No real alternative, given the turnover of customers. There were three flasks behind the counter and all three of them were constantly dripping and emptying. The sandwich was nicely fried, and Reacher was ready for the calories. Like throwing coal into a furnace. Being cold was like being on a diet. He understood why all the locals he met looked basically the same, all lean and fair and slender. Fair, because of their genetic inheritance. Lean and slender, because they were freezing their asses off for half the year.
First Reacher and then Peterson finished eating, and immediately they felt the covetous stares from the people lining up inside the door. So Reacher paid, and left a generous tip, which earned him a tired smile from the waitress. Then he and Peterson stepped out to the sidewalk, just in time to see a big yellow bus pull up in the police station lot.
Five to two in the afternoon.
Fourteen hours to go.
The bus was the same size and shape and style as the vehicle that had crashed two days earlier. Same amenities. It had blanked-out windows at the rear, where the washroom was. Same number of seats. Same kind of door. It had entered the lot from the north, so the door was facing away from the police station lobby. Reacher stood with Peterson in the square with the wind on his back and watched a thin line of wrapped-up old folks come out and walk around. There were all kinds of grateful farewells going on. The locals, shaking hands, getting hugged, giving out addresses and phone numbers. He saw the lady with the busted collar bone. She was in a coat with one empty sleeve. He saw the woman with the cracked wrist. She was cradling one hand and someone else was carrying her bag. Most of the others had their Band-Aids off. Their cuts were all healed up. The new driver was crouching down and slotting suitcases into the hold under the floor. The old folks were detouring around him one after the other and gripping the handrails carefully and climbing slowly up the step. Reacher saw them inside through the windows, white cotton-ball heads moving down the aisle, pausing, choosing their places, getting settled.