by Jude Hardin
“I’ve been kidnapped. I need help.”
The man was holding a phone, but it was one of those black rotary-dial things Felisa had seen sometimes in old movies and television shows. There was a frayed cord dangling from one end.
He picked up the handset. “Operator, this is an emergency. Please send the police right away to—”
Before the old guy could give the imaginary operator an address, the mean one gently took the handset from him and hung up the phone.
He was still wearing his ski mask, and he looked especially menacing under the jaundiced glow of the ancient streetlight. “She’s with me,” he said. “I’ll take care of her.”
The old man nodded and walked back into his house.
“Please,” Felisa said, hot tears streaming down her face. “I just want to go home.”
The mean one leaned over and picked her up and started carrying her back toward the only bungalow with lights on.
“That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Home.”
12
The building that Erin the waitress had mentioned—the one where military people worked—was the headquarters for the 110th Special Investigations Unit. Military Police. Jack Reacher’s old unit. Colt knew about it from the briefing session. If he was going to stick to the plan and try to dig up some dirt on Reacher, he figured it was as good a place to start as any.
But first he needed to find a place to stay for the night.
He followed the directions Erin had given him and made it to the hotel just after one o’clock in the morning. The night clerk was sitting behind the counter reading a paperback novel.
“Good book?” Colt said.
The guy jumped. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”
Colt set the briefcase on the floor. “How much for a room tonight?”
The clerk rose from his chair and typed something into his computer. He was tall and skinny with a pointy chin and big ears. Colt guessed him to be in his seventies.
“Thirty-nine ninety-five,” he said. “Plus tax.”
“I’ll be paying with cash.”
“It’s still the same price, sir. There’s really nothing I can—”
“Do you have weekly rates?”
“One-twenty for the week.”
“All right.”
Colt jotted a fake name on the check-in card, signed it at the bottom and initialed the box by the no smoking policy. The clerk entered the transaction into his computer.
“Room two-oh-eight. Out the door, up the stairs, and to the left.”
“Thanks.”
Colt picked up his briefcase, walked out the door and up the stairs and to the left. The room was pretty standard. Nothing fancy, but clean. He had shelter for a week now, but his funds had dwindled to forty-eight dollars and some change. He saw a lot of peanut butter and canned tuna in his future. He needed to find a way to make some money, but right now all he could think about was closing his eyes for a while.
He set the briefcase and the revolver on the dresser, emptied his pockets and peeled his clothes off and took a shower. He pulled the sheets back, turned the lights off and climbed into bed naked.
The clock on the nightstand said 1:52.
The next time he looked at it, it said 7:05.
He put his dirty clothes back on and went downstairs for the free continental breakfast. Bagels, cream cheese, coffee, cold cereal. He ate as much as he could and drank some coffee and then started walking toward the headquarters for the 110th. It was about two miles from the hotel. The walk took almost an hour.
Colt had decided to hide his .38 in a bush about half a mile from the gated entrance, thinking it might cause him all kinds of trouble, feeling confident he would be okay without it once he got inside.
He waited for a couple of cars to go through the gate, stepped up and stood there while the duty soldier standing outside the guard shack wrote something on a clipboard. Bony fingers and a buzzed haircut and a face you might expect to see behind the drive-thru window at a fast food place. Camouflaged fatigues with the name Davis stitched over the right breast pocket.
“Can I help you, sir?” he said.
“I’m looking for a female officer named Sullivan. JAG Corps.”
“Did you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Could you tell me the nature of your business with Major Sullivan?”
“I’m a private investigator. I have reason to believe that one of her clients was recently involved in a robbery. I just wanted to see if she could vouch for his whereabouts at the time the incident took place.”
“Could I see your identification, please?”
Colt handed him the Derek Ray Green driver’s license and PI license.
“It won’t take long,” Colt said. “I just need to ask her a few questions.”
“Yes, sir. Just a moment, please.”
Davis opened the door to the shack and walked inside. Colt could see him through the rectangular window beside the door. He picked up a phone and punched in a number and talked to someone for a couple of minutes. It was a clear morning and the sun was bright and hot. Colt used one of his shirtsleeves to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
“Major Sullivan isn’t here today,” Davis said, walking back out to the oval concrete pad that separated the entrance from the exit. “But her assistant can talk to you for a few minutes if you want. Sergeant Olmsted. She’s on the third floor of the main building. Room three-twelve.”
“Okay. That’ll be fine.”
“I’m going to write you a temporary pass. You’ll be entering the building through that door over there, the one on the far left. There’s a guard stationed in the lobby with a metal detector. Just so you’ll know what to expect.”
“Okay.”
Colt had figured security would be tight. He was glad he’d hidden the revolver. The PI license included a concealed weapons permit, but he didn’t want to make anyone at the facility nervous about his presence. He didn’t want any more attention drawn to himself than absolutely necessary.
Davis handed him the day pass, and he walked over to the building and pushed his way through the glass door to the lobby. He made it past the guard with no problem, took the elevator to the third floor.
The door to room 312 was open. Olmsted was sitting at a desk tapping something into a computer keyboard. She stopped and looked up when Colt walked in.
“Mr. Green?” she said.
“Yes. Thank you for letting me come on up, sergeant.”
“What can I do for you today?”
There was a metal chair with a green vinyl seat cushion in front of the desk. Sergeant Olmsted gestured toward it, and Colt accepted the invitation.
“I’m interested in a man named Jack Reacher,” he said. “I think he was Major Sullivan’s client. Something about an assault charge.”
“Okay. I know Reacher. But I can’t discuss his case with you.”
“I’m not asking you to. Nine days ago, there was a robbery down the road at a place called Mac’s. Reacher’s one of the suspects.”
“Isn’t that a matter for the police?”
“A young lady was kidnapped,” Colt said. “The FBI’s on the case, but a friend, someone close to the woman who was abducted, wanted some extra manpower. That’s where I came in.”
“You’re talking about Felisa Cayenne.”
“Right.”
“Who hired you? The record label or the TV producers?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. I just need to know if anyone can provide Reacher with an alibi for that night.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I don’t know exactly where he is, for one thing. And I’ve heard he’s dangerous. They’re paying me pretty well, but not that well.”
Olmsted tapped some computer keys, sat there and waited for a minute.
Tapped some more keys, sat there and waited some more.
She clicked on something with her mouse, and then her eyes
tracked from one side of the monitor to the other as she read what was on the screen.
“I’m afraid we can’t help you, Mr. Green. Everything we have on Jack Reacher is marked Annex One.”
Colt knew about Annex 1. It was legendary among clandestine operatives. It was one of the few United States military installations that The Circle had failed to penetrate.
Fort Knox: no problem.
Area 51: piece of cake.
But Annex 1 was a different ballgame. Physical barriers, multiple layers of electronic security, guards armed with fully automatic weapons. It was practically impossible to break through. Like trying to dig an oil well with a soup spoon.
And of course The Circle couldn’t just waltz up and ask the army for access, because the army didn’t know that The Circle existed. And it needed to stay that way.
Colt knew about Annex 1, but he pretended not to.
“What’s that mean?” he said.
“It means the records we have on Reacher are on hard copy only, kept in a vault at an undisclosed location.”
The undisclosed location was a secret wing three hundred feet beneath the capitol building in DC. Only a handful of people outside the intelligence community knew it existed.
“That’s crazy,” Colt said. “Why would—”
“The Department of Defense wants the records of certain individuals to be kept out of the computer system, in case of a cyber-attack. For whatever reason, Jack Reacher is one of those individuals.”
Colt knew all this. According to some of the nation’s top computer analysts and security advisors, it was only a matter of time before hostile forces hacked into the military’s top secret databases. Encryption was one thing. Solid rock and twelve-inch steel walls were another. The most sensitive material never made it onto a hard disk. The most sensitive material was kept in Annex 1. Nobody who was unauthorized to touch those documents was ever going to touch them. Period. It just wasn’t going to happen.
Which was okay. The United States needed a place like that. What Colt couldn’t figure out was why the files on Jack Reacher were kept there.
He rose from the chair. “I appreciate your time, sergeant.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you. But Reacher’s a free man. For now, anyway. He’s out there somewhere. If you think he was involved in the robbery and kidnapping—”
“It was just a hunch, really. I don’t want to confront him in person. Like I said, they don’t pay me enough.”
“Well, have a nice day, Mr. Green.”
Colt took the elevator back down to the lobby, nodded to the guard on his way out. Maybe some of the files on Jack Reacher were kept in Annex 1, but not all of them. Colt had five hundred pages of stuff in a briefcase back at the hotel. But apparently that was just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently there was some history on Reacher that even The Circle didn’t know about, and Colt figured getting his hands on it might go a long way toward the organization granting him a pardon for his recent crimes. For leaving one operative bound with duct tape and another with a bullet in his leg. The Kurt Valinger thing would work itself out, eventually. When the toxicology reports came back negative, Colt would be exonerated. At least he hoped that was the way it played out.
Getting his hands on the Jack Reacher files might help, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Not while they were in Annex 1.
Colt started walking back toward the hotel. Maybe some of the other employees at Mac’s Diner had seen Reacher there as a customer. Maybe Reacher had been there more than once. Colt planned to go back and talk to some of the other waiters and waitresses. It was worth a try. He wasn’t especially worried about staying in Rock Creek for a few days. The Circle would be focusing on airports and interstates and debit card transactions. They would be monitoring the checkpoints at the Canadian and Mexican borders and the passenger lists for cruise ships. You’d have to be crazy to do what Colt had done, to assault a pair of fellow operatives and then stay in the area and go ahead with the assignment. Rock Creek was the last place The Circle would be looking for him.
Those were his thoughts as a black Dodge Charger with tinted windows made a U-turn and slowly headed back toward him.
13
The mean one didn’t tie Felisa up when they got back to the house. He didn’t hit her or kick her or even scold her. He returned her to the chair where she’d been sitting before and gave her a clean pillowcase to put over her head.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It won’t be long now.”
“What won’t be long now?”
“You’ll see.”
Benny was on the sofa holding a white towel to his face. Felisa had noticed him before donning the hood. The towel had blood on it. The mean one had given him a good beating, she guessed. If only he had helped her escape, things would be better for him now instead of worse. If only he had taken her up on her offer.
“I’ll be back in about twenty minutes,” the mean one said. “If she tries anything—and I do mean anything—I want you to shoot her this time. Understand?”
“Yes,” Benny said. “I understand.”
The front door squeaked open and then slammed shut.
14
Colt reached for his gun, but it wasn’t there. It was still under a bush half a mile up the road. The black Charger was about a hundred feet in the opposite direction and heading straight toward him, creeping along at about ten miles an hour.
There was a grungy little hole-in-the-wall tavern not far from the entrance to the 110th. It was on a gravel lot and there was a sign on wheels out front that said HAPPY HOUR 4-7. Colt had noticed it from the sidewalk as he made his way toward the gate earlier. He darted that way now, running as fast as he could, weaving through parked cars and motorcycles, hurdling the steel cable that separated a cluster of picnic tables from the parking area.
The Charger suddenly came to life, hemi growling and tires squealing as it fishtailed into the lot.
Colt scooted through the little beer garden, opened the screen door and walked inside. There were two men sitting at the bar and one standing behind it, all of them very hairy and tattooed.
“Is there a restroom in here?” Colt said.
The bartender seemed annoyed by the question. He pointed toward a wall on the other side of the pool tables. Colt trotted over there and shoved his way into the ladies’ room and bolted the door behind him.
He’d counted on it being vacant.
It was.
He’d counted on it having one toilet and a wash basin and a trash can.
It did.
He’d counted on a window big enough to climb out of.
No dice.
There was a window, but it was about the size of a dictionary. Colt was a skinny guy, but not that skinny. The opening was just way too small. You couldn’t have squeezed a Thanksgiving turkey through it.
A thin plywood wall separated the men’s restroom from the women’s. Colt heard footsteps, and then he heard the door to the men’s room swing open. He hadn’t taken the time to look, but he figured there was one urinal in there along with one toilet stall. In a pinch, three beer-filled dudes could use the facility at the same time. One at the urinal, one at the toilet, and one at the sink.
Colt hadn’t chosen the men’s room to hide in because he doubted there was a lock on the door. As a general rule, men didn’t value their privacy as much as women did. Especially drunken men.
The plan had been to give the operative driving the Charger time to park and walk inside, then climb out the window and flatten a tire or two and hightail it to the bush where his gun was hidden.
But the window was too small.
Colt was about to make a run for it back through the tavern when someone banged on the door.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Colt said, trying to sound as female as possible.
“Could you hurry, please? I need to go really bad.”
She sounded familiar. Maybe it was the same operative Valinger had pos
ted outside his door last night. Colt was trapped now. He didn’t know what to do.
The woman standing outside the door probably wouldn’t shoot him here, he thought. Not in such a public place. She probably wouldn’t even have her gun drawn. She probably had some kind of story cooked up to coax him into the car. She would tell him that everything was okay, that she just needed to bring him in. The Director was concerned about his safety, she would say. Something like that. She might even say that Valinger died of natural causes, that the autopsy had confirmed it. And the guys back at the cabin? They’re okay too. No worries. Whatever it took to put Colt’s mind at ease until she got down the road a few miles and whipped out a pistol and drilled a forty caliber bullet into his brain.
Colt knew that his chances were slim, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He reached down and started wrapping toilet paper around his right hand and wrist. He used all of it, the whole roll. He climbed up on the toilet seat and gave the little window one solid punch. It shattered, most of the glass falling outside to the ground.
Most of it.
But a few shards remained in the frame and Colt pulled one of them free from the track with his wrapped hand and he unbolted the door and slung it open and started slashing the air where he thought the operative would be standing.
But she had moved.
He looked across the room and saw her sitting at the bar next to one of the hairy tattooed fellows. She had a drink in her hand and the guy was talking to her and she was laughing hysterically.
It was Diana Dawkins, and she seemed to be having a great time.
15
Something very bad was going to happen tonight. Felisa could feel it.
The mean one seemed to be in a good mood. He was happy about something. Looking forward to something. It was strange, and Felisa didn’t like it.
She decided to give Benny one more try while the mean one was out of the house, thinking it might be her last chance to make it out of this alive.
“Have you thought about what I told you?” she said.
“What did you tell me?”
“You know, about the money.”