by Lee Child
‘But he hung up.’
Sorenson nodded. ‘He changed his mind. That can happen.’
Goodman said, ‘What about Karen Delfuenso’s daughter?’
‘You’ll have to tell her. You’d have to anyway. This is your county, and she’s your people.’
‘When should I tell her?’
‘When she wakes up.’
‘That’s going to be tough.’
‘It always is.’
‘Those guys will be long gone by the time you get to southeastern Iowa. It’s a long way away.’
‘I can drive faster than they did. No more roadblocks, and I don’t have to worry about tickets.’
‘Even so.’
‘Whatever, it’s better than staying here, doing nothing,’ Sorenson said.
Sorenson checked in with Dawson and Mitchell and told them what she was going to do. She didn’t offer them a ride. She expected them to follow in their own car. She thought big-deal counterterrorism agents would relish the chase. But they said they were going to stay put, right there in the wilds of Nebraska. Near the point of vulnerability. They said there was nothing to worry about in Iowa. No disrespect to that fine state, they said. But it wasn’t a prime terrorist target.
Sorenson said, ‘They could have a base camp there. Like a hideout.’
Mitchell said, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Not really.’
Dawson nodded. ‘We’ll call St Louis. Technically southeastern Iowa is their responsibility. They’ll get involved if they need to.’
Sorenson didn’t speak to Lester L. Lester, Jr, of the State Department. She just ignored him completely. She got a ride with Goodman back to the old pumping station, and she got back in her car, and she followed her GPS back to the Interstate, seventy miles an hour all the way, with her lights flashing and her cell phone charging.
A deceptive exit, Reacher thought again. Dark rural roads, and places that were shut when you got there. He had been wrong about the gas station, but in and of itself that didn’t make the motel any more likely to exist. Fifty-fifty was a reasonable outcome, where truth in advertising was concerned. He had seen plenty of abandoned motels on his travels. America was full of them. They were like little time capsules, for ever frozen in an earlier era, sometimes plain, sometimes adventurous in their design, always testament to the long sad decline in their owners’ energies and ambitions, always evidence of the way public taste had moved on. A week in a cabin near a buggy lake was no longer enough. Now it was cruises and Vegas and the Virgin Islands. Reacher had seen travel agents’ windows. He knew where vacationers went. He knew where they didn’t go. He saw no reason why a motel in the wilds of Iowa would have done any business in the last thirty years.
Which was a pity, because a stop for the night would have opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
King had turned left and right, left and right, endlessly south and east through the chequerboard darkness, a total of more than thirty miles since leaving the Shell station. At each turn a copy of the accommodations board had tempted them onward, the bland little arrows looking both firm and tentative, both promising and hopeless. McQueen didn’t look worried. He was awake and vigilant, and he seemed confident. He trusted the signs.
And it turned out he was right to. A mile later, for the second time that night, Reacher was proved wrong. He saw a dull glow in the mist, far ahead on the left, and he watched as it resolved itself into separate beige pearls of light, which turned out to be dim electric bulbs in bulkhead fixtures set knee-high on the walls of a long low motel building. The design of the place was standard. There was dark brown siding, and a lobby and an office at the north end, with a Coke machine and a porte cochère, and then the building continued south in a regular rhythm, window, door, window, door, for a total of twelve rooms. Each door had two white plastic lawn chairs next to it. The low-set bulkhead fixtures were to light a sidewalk that ran the length of the building. Two rooms had cars parked outside, one an old sedan, lacy with rust, and the other an immense pick-up truck painted in a motorcycle manufacturer’s colours. There was a third car parked tight against the office wall, a three-door import not much bigger than a golf cart. The night clerk’s ride, presumably.
Alan King slowed the Chevy and stopped and idled on the road twenty feet from the motel’s entrance. He surveyed the place, carefully, end to end, and he said, ‘Good enough?’
Don McQueen said, ‘Works for me.’
King didn’t seek Karen Delfuenso’s opinion. There was no big three-way democratic discussion. He just rolled onward and turned in on the far side of the porte cochère and came to a stop under it, facing north, with the rooms behind him. Inconvenient, in that he would have to back up or turn around after checking in, but inevitable, in that America drives on the right and takes circles counterclockwise.
There was a night light burning in the lobby. Reacher could see a reception counter, and a closed door behind it that no doubt led to an office. Probably the night guy was in there, asleep in a chair. There was a vase of flowers on the counter, probably fake.
Alan King said, ‘Mr Reacher, would you go make the inquiry about rooms?’
Reacher said, ‘Obviously there are rooms. There are twelve doors and two cars.’
‘Then would you kindly check us in?’
Reacher said, ‘I’m not the best guy to do that.’
‘Why not?’
Reacher thought: Because I don’t want to get out of the car. Not now. Because I no longer control the car key.
He said, ‘Because I don’t have a credit card.’
‘Really?’
‘Or ID. Apart from an old passport, that is. But it’s been expired for years, and some people don’t like that.’
‘You must have a driver’s licence, surely.’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you were just driving.’
‘Don’t tell the cops.’
‘Unlicensed driving is a felony.’
‘Probably just a misdemeanour.’
‘Have you ever had a licence?’
‘Not a civilian licence, no.’
‘Have you ever even passed a test?’
‘I guess so. Probably. In the army, possibly.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I remember learning. I don’t remember a test, as such.’
McQueen said, ‘I’ll come with you. I have a credit card.’
Which worked for Reacher. He didn’t want to be out of the car alone, but equally he didn’t want either King or McQueen to select the rooms alone. He wanted some influence over who went where. He opened his door. McQueen opened his door. They got out together, McQueen ten feet from the lobby, Reacher on the far side of the car. McQueen waited. Reacher looped around the trunk. He paused, gestured, right-handed, open palm: Go ahead. After you. A precaution, not politeness. He didn’t want to walk in front of a man with a gun. Not that he thought there was a serious danger of getting shot. Not then and there. Not with a night clerk and at least two motel guests within earshot.
McQueen went ahead down a decorative path made of broken paving stones jigsawed together. Reacher followed. McQueen pulled the lobby door. Reacher stepped up and held it and gestured again: After you.
McQueen went in. Reacher followed. The lobby had a vinyl floor and four gaudy wicker armchairs grouped around a low table. There was a higher table with push-top coffee flasks and stacks of paper cups. There was a rack on the wall with compartments for small folded brochures describing local tourist attractions. It was mostly empty.
The reception counter butted up against the side wall on the right. It ended six feet short of the wall on the left, near the table with the coffee. There was low TV sound behind the office door, and a rim of soft light all around it. McQueen bellied up to the counter on the right, and Reacher came to a stop alongside him, on the left.
‘Hello?’ McQueen called.
No response.
McQueen tapped his knuckles on th
e counter.
‘Hello?’ he called again.
No response.
‘Service industries,’ McQueen said, quietly. ‘Can’t beat them.’
He knocked on the counter again, a little louder.
‘Hello?’ he said, also a little louder.
No response.
He glanced left at Reacher and said, ‘You better go knock on his door.’
Which would put Reacher in front of the gun for the first time, but there was no natural way to refuse. The route around to the door was to the left, and Reacher was on the left. Simple as that. Choreography. Geometry. Inevitable.
So Reacher looped around, between the end of the counter and the table with the coffee, and he stepped into the narrow well behind the counter. He glanced back out through the lobby window. The Chevy was still there, under the porte cochère. It hadn’t moved. It was idling patiently, just waiting, with white exhaust pooling at the rear.
But McQueen had left his car door open.
Which was the first warning bell.
The second was the sound of feet on vinyl.
A fast one-two shuffle.
Exactly like the sound of a man stepping back and turning sideways.
The third warning bell was a fast composite rustle of skin and cotton and wool and metal.
Exactly like the sound of something heavy coming out of a pocket.
Reacher turned back and faced McQueen and saw nothing beyond the muzzle of a small stainless steel handgun pointing at the centre of his face.
TWENTY-NINE
THE GUN WAS a Smith & Wesson 2213. The smallest automatic in Smith & Wesson’s extensive range. Three-inch barrel, .22 Long Rifle rimfires, eight in the magazine. Dainty, but a serious weapon. McQueen had been very fast with it. Phenomenally fast. Like a magician. Like a conjuror. First it wasn’t there, and then it was.
Just like that.
Reacher stood very still.
The gun was maybe eight feet away. Behind it McQueen’s long right arm was locked straight and raised slightly above the horizontal. He was standing sideways on. His head was turned. One eye was closed.
His finger was white on the trigger.
Not good.
The .22 Long Rifle was one of the world’s oldest rounds, and by far the most common. Annual production every year since 1887 had exceeded two billion units. For a reason. It was cheap, it was quiet, and its recoil was gentle. And it was effective. Out of a rifle it was good against rats and squirrels at 450 feet, and against dogs and foxes at 250, and against full-grown coyotes at 150.
Against a human head at eight feet it would be devastating. Even out of a short-barrelled handgun.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Reacher couldn’t see the Chevy any more. McQueen was in the way. Which was not such a bad thing. At least Delfuenso would not have to watch it happen.
Which was a mercy.
But then: look on the bright side of life.
That was Reacher’s innate credo.
As in: there were four basic ways of missing with a short-barrelled handgun. Even at eight feet, even against a head-sized target. They were: missing high, missing low, missing left, and missing right.
Missing high was always the most likely.
All guns kick upward as they fire. Action, reaction, a basic law of physics. Inevitably new shooters with machine guns stitched a vertical line that rose for ever. A classic fault. Ninety per cent of training was about holding the muzzle down. Suppressors helped, because of the extra weight.
There was no reason to believe McQueen was a new shooter.
But if he was going to miss, he was going to miss high.
Laws of physics.
Four things happened at once: Reacher let out a sudden loud inarticulate bellow, and McQueen startled and rocked back a step, and Reacher dropped vertically towards the floor, and McQueen pulled the trigger.
And missed.
Missed high, partly because Reacher’s head was no longer where it had been before. Gravity had done its work. Reacher heard the roar of the shot, quieter than some, but still deafening in a closed room, and simultaneously he heard the wallboard explode above and behind his head, and then he hit the floor, knees first, then his hip, then his side, sprawling, down low behind the counter, out of sight. He had no plan. At that point he was in a strict one-step-at-a-time mode. Stay alive, and see what the next split second brings. As he fell he was aware of a vague intention to hurl the whole counter up and out, straight at McQueen, if it wasn’t bolted to the floor, or else roll backward through the door into the inner office, where there had to be a window, which would be closed against the weather, but he could plunge through it elbows first, because cuts and bruises were better than a bullet in the head.
Fight or flight.
But neither thing was necessary.
The blast of the shot peaked and started to die and Reacher heard the scrape and scrabble of feet on vinyl and he grabbed the end of the counter low down near the floor and jerked himself overhand to his right, one powerful instantaneous stroke, and he got his head out in the gap, and he saw McQueen more or less falling out through the lobby door, and then sprinting back along the neat little path, and hurling himself back into the car, and the car howling away with spinning wheels and blue tyre smoke. Reacher scrambled up to his knees and got there in time to see McQueen slam his door and the car rock through a wild 180 turn, back on to the road, facing south again, and then it accelerated away, hard, nose high, tail low, wheels spinning and scrabbling for grip and pouring smoke. The last thing Reacher saw through the haze was a brief flash of white in the Chevy’s rear window, which was Karen Delfuenso’s pale face, turning back in horror, her mouth wide open.
Reacher stayed on his knees. Silence came back. White gypsum powder drifted down on him, slowly, weightless, like talc, on his shoulders, in his hair. Tyre smoke hung in the night air under the porte cochère, and it rolled slowly forward in a ghostly dissipating cloud, which followed the trajectory of the 180 turn, like a description, like an explanation, like proof, and then it disappeared completely, like it had never been there at all.
Then the office door opened a crack and a short fat man stuck his head out and looked around and said, ‘Just so you know, I already called the cops on you.’
Julia Sorenson heard her phone ping over the noise of her speeding car and she opened her e-mail and found an audio attachment from the emergency operator in D.C. Her phone cradle was hooked up to her car’s stereo system, which was the base Ford option and therefore nothing fancy, but it was plenty loud and clear. She turned the volume up and hit Play and heard a short fifteen-second recording, of two voices on the telephone, one in the Hoover Building and the other allegedly in Iowa.
This is the FBI. What is the nature of your emergency?
I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.
What is the nature of your information?
Just connect me, now.
Sir, what is your name?
Then there was a short pause, just a beat really, and then: Connect me now or you’ll lose your job.
Then there was another short pause, then dead air, then a new dial tone.
Then nothing.
She played it again, and listened exclusively to the caller, not the operator.
I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.
Just connect me, now.
Connect me now or you’ll lose your job.
Six seconds. Twenty-three words, spoken with urgency but also with a certain weird patience. A very nasal intonation, full of breath sounds, entirely consistent with a badly broken nose, the M sounds shading towards B sounds, information more like inforbation, and Omaha more like Obaha.
She played it again, zeroing in.
Probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.
Or you’ll lose your job.
Clearly the strange urgent-but-patient blend mean
t the guy was accustomed to making important operational calls, or issuing instructions of some kind, and that he knew even alert and intelligent listeners needed a chance to get from zero to sixty. But he wasn’t just a businessman. Even a high-level guy used to trading millions on the phone would get a little more freaked about calling an FBI emergency line in the middle of the night. This guy sounded like it was routine to him. The your in your field office meant he wasn’t actually FBI himself, at least not currently, but he seemed to know how things worked, and in a sense the your sounded like he considered himself a peer, or a part of the same world. Your field office, my field office.
The probably was intriguing. It was measured, and considered, and intelligent. As if the guy was in reality almost a hundred per cent certain he wanted Omaha, but didn’t want to derail the process with an initial assumption that could conceivably prove faulty later on. Or as if he wanted to recruit the emergency operator as a kind of partner, to let the operator own some component of the ultimate decision, to oil the wheels, to speed things along.
Her gut feeling told her again: this was a guy accustomed to making important operational calls. He had very sound bureaucratic instincts.
As in: or you’ll lose your job. Preceded by the very short pause for thought. This was a guy who knew exactly what to say. Who had gone through duty officers before. Who had maybe even been a duty officer once upon a time.
So what was he doing driving a car full of two murderers and a hostage?
And why did he make the call and then hang up prematurely?
She got no further with those questions, because right then her phone rang with a live call, the plain electronic tone blasting loud and deep and sonorous through dashboard speakers and door speakers and a subwoofer under the rear parcel shelf. She dropped the volume a notch and touched Accept. It was her duty officer on the line, at her field office in Omaha. The guy who hadn’t picked up in time.
He said, ‘I have the SAC holding for you.’
Sorenson slowed down to eighty. She checked the road ahead and checked her mirrors. She said, ‘Put him on.’
There was a static click, loud and emphatic through the sound system. Then a voice said, ‘Sorenson?’