“That’s a Bell 222?” Reacher asked.
“Unmistakable,” Neagley said.
“So is this the place?”
“Hard to say.”
Next to the helipad was an orange windsock on a tall pole. It was hanging limp in the warm dry air. There was a small parking lot full of thirteen cars. Nothing expensive. No blue Chryslers.
“What would assembly workers drive?” Reacher asked.
“Cars like those,” Neagley said.
Reacher drove on, past one place, past another. The third place in line was very similar to the first. A serious fence, four blank buildings with gray metal siding, a parking lot full of cheap cars, a helipad, a parked Bell 222, white. No names, no markings, no signs.
Reacher said, “We need the exact address.”
“We don’t have time. The Dunes is a long way from here.”
“But Pasadena isn’t.”
They made the short hop east on York Boulevard and the 110. Pulled up outside the inn in Pasadena fifteen minutes later. Five minutes after that they were in Margaret Berenson’s room. They told her what they needed. They didn’t tell her why. They wanted to preserve an illusion of competence, for her sake.
Berenson told them the first place they had seen was the place they wanted.
Fifteen minutes later they cruised past the first place again. The fence was appalling. Brutal. A main battle tank might have breached it. A car almost certainly wouldn’t. Not a Honda Prelude. Not even a big lump like the Chrysler. Not even a heavy truck. It was a question of the wire’s resilience. The outer strands would stretch like guitar strings before they broke, dissipating the force of impact, slowing the vehicle, robbing its momentum. Then the inner coils would compress. Like a sponge. Like a spring. The vehicle would tangle and slow and stall. No way through on wheels. And no way through on foot. An individual with a bolt cutter would bleed to death before he was a quarter of the way in. And there was no way over the top, either. The concertinas were too broad and too loosely coiled to allow scaling by ladder.
Reacher drove all the way around the block. The whole facility occupied a couple of acres. It was roughly square, about a hundred yards on a side. Four buildings, one large, three small. Dried brown grass and cinder footpaths between them. The fence was four hundred yards long in total and had no weak spots. And only one gate. It was a wide steel assembly that slid sideways on wheels. Welded to its top rail was more concertina wire. Flanking it was a guard hut.
“Pentagon requirement,” Neagley said. “Has to be.”
There was a guard in the hut. An old guy, gray hair. Gray uniform. A belt around his hips, a gun in the belt. A simple job. The right pass and the right paperwork, he would hit a button and the gate would roll back. No pass and no paperwork, he wouldn’t and it wouldn’t. There was a lightbulb above the guy’s head. It would be lit after dark. It would throw a soft yellow halo for twenty feet all around.
“No way through,” Reacher said.
“Are they even in there?”
“Must be. It’s like a private jail. Safer than stashing them anywhere else. And it’s where they put the others.”
“How did it go down?”
“Mauney arrested them in the hospital lot. Maybe he had help from Lamaison’s guys. Crowded place, total surprise, what were they going to do?”
Reacher drove on. The Prelude was an unremarkable car, but he didn’t want it to be seen too many times in the same place. He turned a corner and parked a quarter of a mile away. Didn’t speak. Because he had nothing to say.
Neagley’s phone rang again. Her personal cell. She answered. Listened. Clicked off. Closed her eyes.
“My Pentagon guy,” she said. “The missiles just rolled out the gate in Colorado.”
70
If Mahmoud has got the missiles, then this thing is bigger than we are. We have to suck it up and move on. Reacher looked at Neagley. She opened her eyes and stared right back.
“How much do they weigh?” Reacher asked.
“Weigh?”
“As in weight. Pounds and ounces.”
“I don’t know. They’re new. I never saw one.”
“Guess.”
“Heavier than a Stinger. Because they do more. But still man-portable. Crated, with launch tubes and spare parts and manuals, say fifty pounds each.”
“That’s sixteen and a quarter tons.”
“A semi,” Neagley said.
“Average speed on the interstates, fifty miles an hour?”
“Probably.”
“North on I-25 to I-80, then west to Nevada, that’s about nine hundred miles. So we’ve got eighteen hours. Call it twenty-four, because the driver will take a rest period.”
“They’re not going to Nevada,” Neagley said. “Nevada is bullshit, because they’re going to use these things, not destroy them.”
“Wherever. Anywhere significant is eighteen hours from Denver.”
Neagley shook her head. “This is insane. We can’t wait twenty-four hours. Or eighteen. You said it yourself, there could be ten thousand KIAs.”
“But not yet.”
“We can’t wait,” Neagley said again. “Easier to stop the truck on the way out of Denver. It could be headed anywhere. It could be headed to New York. JFK, or LaGuardia. Or Chicago. You want to think about Little Wing deployed at O’Hare?”
“Not really.”
“Every minute we delay makes that truck harder to find.”
“Moral dilemma,” Reacher said. “Two people we know, or ten thousand we don’t.”
“We have to tell someone.”
Reacher said nothing.
“We have to, Reacher.”
“They might not listen. They didn’t listen about September eleventh.”
“You’re clutching at straws. They’ve changed. We have to tell someone.”
“We will,” Reacher said. “But not yet.”
“Karla and Dave will have a better chance with a couple of SWAT teams on their side.”
“You’re kidding. They’ll wind up as collateral damage in a heartbeat.”
Neagley said, “We can’t even get through the fence. Dixon will die, O’Donnell will die, ten thousand other people will die, and we’ll die.”
“You want to live forever?”
“I don’t want to die today. Do you?”
“I really don’t care one way or the other.”
“Seriously?”
“I never have. Why would I?”
“You are psychotic.”
“Look on the bright side.”
“Which is what?”
“Maybe none of the bad stuff will happen.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe we’ll win. You and me.”
“Here? Maybe. But later? Dream on. We have no idea where that truck is going.”
“We can find out later.”
“You think?”
“It’s what we’re good at.”
“Good enough to gamble ten thousand lives against two?”
“I hope so,” Reacher said.
He drove a mile south and parked again on a curving side street outside a custom Harley motorcycle shop. He could see New Age’s helicopter in the far distance.
He asked, “What is their security going to be like?”
“Normally?” Neagley said. “Motion detectors on the fence and big locks on all the doors and a guy in the sentry hut twenty-four hours a day. That’s all they need, normally. But today isn’t going to be normal. You can forget about that. They know we’re still out here. The whole of New Age security is going to be in there, locked and loaded.”
“Seven men.”
“Seven we know about. Maybe more.”
“Maybe.”
“And they’re going to be inside the fence. We’re going to be outside the fence.”
“Let me worry about the fence.”
“There’s no way through it.”
“Doesn’t need to be. There’s a gate
. What time does it get full dark?”
“Say nine o’clock, to be safe.”
“They won’t fly before dark. We’ve got seven hours. Seven out of our twenty-four.”
“We never had twenty-four.”
“You elected me CO. We’ve got what I say we’ve got.”
“They could have shot them both already.”
“They didn’t shoot Franz or Orozco or Swan. They’re worried about ballistics.”
“This is insane.”
“I’m not going to lose another two,” Reacher said.
They drove around New Age’s block one more time, fast and unobtrusive, and fixed the geography in their minds. The gate was in the center of the front face of the square. The main building was front and center behind it at the end of a short driveway. In back of that the three outbuildings were scattered. One was close to the helipad. One was a little farther away. The last was standing on its own, maybe thirty yards from anything else. All four buildings were set on concrete pads. They had gray galvanized siding. No signs, no labels. It was a severe, practical establishment. There were no trees. No landscaping. Just uneven brown grass and hard dirt paths and a parking lot.
“Where are the Chryslers?” Reacher asked.
“Out,” Neagley said. “Looking for us.”
They headed back to the hospital in Glendale. Neagley collected her car from the lot. They stopped in at a supermarket. Bought a pack of wooden kitchen matches. And two cases of Evian water. Twelve one-liter bottles, nested together in packs of six and shrink-wrapped in plastic. They stopped again down the street at an auto parts store. Bought a red plastic five-gallon gasoline can and a bag of polishing rags.
Then they stopped at a gas station and filled the cars and the can.
They headed southwest out of Glendale and ended up in Silver Lake. Reacher called Neagley on the phone and said, “We should drop by the motel now.”
Neagley said, “They might still have surveillance going.”
“Which is exactly why we should drop by. If we can take one of them out now, that’s one less to worry about later.”
“Might be more than one.”
“Bring it on. The more the merrier.”
Sunset Boulevard ran right through Silver Lake, south of the reservoir. It was a very long road. Reacher found it and headed west. Six miles later he cruised past the motel without slowing. Neagley was twenty yards behind him in her Civic. He led her through a left turn and parked a block away. There were service alleys that gave them a roundabout route into the back of the motel. They walked through the alleys fifteen feet apart. No sense in making two people into a single target. Reacher went first, with his hand wrapped around the Glock in his pocket. He entered the motel lot slowly, from the rear, through a tight passage lined with trash receptacles. The lot looked innocent enough. Eight cars, five out-of-state plates, no blue Chryslers. Nobody in the shadows. He went to the right. He knew that fifteen feet behind him Neagley would go to the left. It was their default arrangement, established many years before. R for Reacher, L for her middle initial. He made a complete half-circuit of the building. There was nobody out of place. Nobody suspicious. Nobody in the lounge, nobody in the laundry room. Across the width of the lot he could see the clerk all alone in the office.
He stepped out to the sidewalk and checked the street. It was clear. Some activity, but nothing significant. Some cars, but none to worry about. He stepped back into the lot and waited for Neagley to complete her own half-circuit on the other side. She checked the sidewalk and checked the street and stepped back and checked the office. Nothing. She shook her head and they headed for O’Donnell’s room, by different routes, still fifteen feet apart, just in case.
O’Donnell’s lock was broken.
Or more accurately, O’Donnell’s lock was OK, but the door jamb was broken. The wood was splintered. Someone had used a wrecking bar or a tire iron to lever the door open. Reacher slid the Glock out of his pocket and waited on the hinge side of the door and Neagley joined him on the handle side. She nodded and he slammed the door open with his foot and she dropped to her knees and spun into the doorway with her gun out in front. Another old default arrangement. Whoever was on the hinge side opened the door, whoever was on the handle side entered low to minimize the target. Generally anyone hiding in a room with a gun would then aim high, at where he expected center mass to be.
But there was nobody hiding in the room.
It was completely empty. But it was completely trashed. Searched, and wrecked. All the New Age paperwork was gone, the reject Glock 17s were gone, the spare ammunition was gone, the AMT Hardballers were gone, Saropian’s Daewoo DP-51 was gone, the Maglites were gone. O’Donnell’s clothes were strewn all around. His thousand-dollar suit had been torn off the closet hanger and trampled. His bathroom stuff was all over the place.
Dixon’s room was the same. Empty, but trashed.
And Neagley’s.
And Reacher’s own. His folding toothbrush was on the floor, stepped on and crushed.
“Bastards,” he said.
They gave the whole place one more go-round, the motel itself, and then a one-block radius outside. Nobody there. Neagley said, “They’re all waiting for us in Highland Park.”
Reacher nodded. Between them they had two Glocks and sixty-eight rounds. Plus their recent purchases in the Prelude’s trunk.
Two against seven or more.
No time.
No element of surprise.
A fortified position with no way in.
A hopeless situation.
“We’re good to go,” Reacher said.
71
Waiting for dark was always a long and tedious process. Sometimes the earth seemed to spin fast, and sometimes it seemed to spin slow. This was slow. They were parked in a quiet street three blocks from New Age’s factory, opposite sides of the street, Neagley’s Civic facing west, Reacher’s Prelude facing east. They both had a view of the place. Things had changed behind the fence. The assembly workers’ cars were gone from the lot. In their place were six blue Chrysler 300Cs. Clearly, operations had been abandoned for the day. The decks had been cleared for the coming battle. Beyond the cars they could see the helicopter in the distance, a quarter-mile away. It was nothing more than a small white shape, but they figured they would be able to tell if it started up. And if it started up, all bets were off.
Reacher had both his phones set to vibrate. Neagley buzzed him twice, to pass the time. She was actually close enough to roll down her window and yell, but he guessed she didn’t want to attract attention.
The first time, she asked, “Have you been sleeping with Karla?”
“When?” Reacher said, buying time.
“On this trip.”
“Twice,” Reacher said. “That’s all.”
“I’m glad.”
“Thank you.”
“You both always wanted to.”
The second time she called was fifteen minutes later.
“You made a will?” she asked.
“No point,” Reacher said. “Now they broke my toothbrush, I don’t own anything.”
“How does that feel?”
“Bad. I liked that toothbrush. It’s been with me a long time.”
“No, I mean the rest of it.”
“It feels OK. I don’t see that Karla or Dave are really any happier than me.”
“Right now they’re not, for sure.”
“They know we’re coming.”
“All of us going down together will really cheer them up.”
“Better than going down alone,” Reacher said.
A big white semi labored west on I-70 in Colorado, heading for the state of Utah. It was less than half-full, a little over sixteen tons in a rig designed for a forty-ton payload. So it was running light, but it was running slow, because of the mountains. It would stay slow until the turn south on I-15. Then it would run a little easier, all the way down to California. Its driver had budgeted an ave
rage fifty miles an hour for the whole trip. Eighteen hours maximum, door-to-door. He wasn’t going to take a rest period. How could he? He was a man on a mission, with no time for frivolities.
Azhari Mahmoud checked his map for the third time. He figured he needed three hours. Or maybe more. He had to cross just about the whole of Los Angeles, south to north. He wasn’t expecting it to be easy. The U-Haul was slow and a pig to drive, and he was sure that the traffic was going to be awful. He decided to give himself four hours. If he arrived early, he could wait. No harm in that. He set his alarm and lay down on the bed and tried to will himself to sleep.
Reacher stared straight ahead at the eastern horizon, trying to judge the light. The tint on the windshield didn’t help. It was overly optimistic, optically. It made the sky look darker than it really was. He buzzed his window down and leaned out. In reality, not good. There was still at least an hour of daylight left. Then maybe an hour of dusk. Then full dark. He buzzed the window up and settled back and rested. Forced his heartbeat down and slowed his breathing and relaxed.
He stayed relaxed until Allen Lamaison called him.
72
Lamaison called Reacher on his Radio Shack pay-as-you-go, not on Saropian’s cell from Vegas. The caller ID showed he was using Karla Dixon’s phone at his end. Openly provocative. There was a lot of smug satisfaction in his voice.
“Reacher?” he said. “We need to talk.”
“So talk,” Reacher said.
“You’re useless.”
“You think?”
“You’ve lost every round so far.”
“Except Saropian.”
“True,” Lamaison said. “And I’m very unhappy about that.”
“But you better get used to it. Because you’re going to lose another six, and then you and I are going to go around and around.”
“No,” Lamaison said. “That’s not going to happen. We’re going to make a deal.”
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