by Lee Child
“OK,” Reacher said. “Now tell me about New Age’s bench assembly.”
“Is this the third question?”
“Yes.”
“What about their bench assembly?”
“Tell me what it is, basically. I never worked in the electronics business.”
“It’s assembly by hand,” Bond said. “Women in sterile rooms at laboratory benches in shower caps using magnifying glasses and soldering irons.”
“Slow,” Reacher said.
“Obviously. A dozen units a day instead of hundreds or thousands.”
“A dozen?”
“That’s all they’re averaging right now. Nine or ten or twelve or thirteen a day.”
“When did they start bench assembly?”
“Is this the fourth question?”
“Yes, it is.”
“They started bench assembly about seven months ago.”
“How did it go?”
“Is this the fifth question?”
“No, it’s a follow-up.”
“It went fine for the first three months. They hit their targets.”
“Six days a week, right?”
“Yes.”
“When did they hit problems?”
“About four months ago.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Is this the last question?”
“No, it’s another follow-up.”
“After assembly the units are tested. More and more of them weren’t working.”
“Who tests them?”
“They have a quality control director.”
“Independent?”
“No. He was the original development engineer. At this stage he’s the only one who can test them because he’s the only one who knows how they’re supposed to work.”
“What happens to the rejects?”
“They get destroyed.”
Reacher said nothing.
Diana Bond said, “Now I really have to go.”
“Last question,” Reacher said. “Did you cut their funding because of their problems? Did they fire people?”
“Of course not,” Bond said. “Are you nuts? That’s not how it works. We maintained their budget. They maintained their staff. We had to. They had to. We have to make this thing work.”
56
Diana Bond left for the second time and Reacher went back to his pie. The apples were cold and the crust was leathery and the ice cream had melted all over the plate. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t really tasting anything.
O’Donnell said, “We should celebrate.”
“Should we?” Reacher said.
“Of course we should. We know what happened now.”
“And that means we should celebrate?”
“Well, doesn’t it?”
“Lay it out for me and see for yourself.”
“OK, Swan wasn’t pursuing some private concern here. He was investigating his own company. He was checking why the success rate fell away so badly after the first three months. He was worried about insider involvement. Therefore he needed clerical help on the outside because of eavesdropping and random data monitoring in his office. Therefore he recruited Franz and Sanchez and Orozco. Who else would he trust?”
“And?”
“First they analyzed the production figures. Which were all those numbers we found. Seven months, six days a week. Then they ruled out sabotage. New Age had no rivals that stood to gain anything and the Pentagon wasn’t working against them behind the scenes.”
“So?”
“What else was there? They figured the quality control guy had falsely condemned six hundred and fifty working units and the firm was booking them in as destroyed but actually selling them out the back door for a hundred grand apiece to someone called Azhari Mahmoud, a.k.a. whoever. Hence the list of names and the note on Sanchez’s napkin.”
“And?”
“They confronted New Age prematurely and got killed for it. The firm cooked up a story to cover Swan’s disappearance and the dragon lady fed it to you.”
“So now we should celebrate?”
“We know what happened, Reacher. We always used to celebrate.”
Reacher said nothing.
“It’s a home run,” O’Donnell said. “Isn’t it? And you know what? It’s almost funny. You said we should talk to Swan’s old boss? Well, I think we already did. Who else could it have been on that cell phone? That was New Age’s Director of Security.”
“Probably.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“What did you say way back in that Beverly Hills hotel room?”
“I don’t know. Lots of things.”
“You said you wanted to piss on their ancestors’ graves.”
“And I will.”
“You won’t,” Reacher said. “And neither will I, or any of us. Which isn’t going to feel good. That’s why we can’t celebrate.”
“They’re right here in town. They’re sitting ducks.”
“They sold six hundred and fifty working electronics packs out the back door. Which has implications. Somebody wants the technology, they buy one pack and copy it. Somebody buys six hundred and fifty, it’s because they want the missiles themselves. And they don’t buy the electronics down here unless they’re also buying the rockets and the launch tubes up there in Colorado. That’s what we’ve got to face here. Some guy called Azhari Mahmoud now owns six hundred and fifty brand-new latest-generation SAMs. Whoever he is, we can guess what he wants them for. It’ll be some kind of a big, big deal. So we have to tell someone, folks.”
Nobody spoke.
“And a thin minute after we drop that dime, we’re buried up to our armpits in federal agents. We won’t be able to cross the street without permission, let alone go get these guys. We’ll have to sit back and watch them get lawyers and eat three squares a day for the next ten years while they run through all their appeals.”
Nobody spoke.
“So that’s why we can’t celebrate,” Reacher said. “They messed with the special investigators and we can’t lay a glove on them.”
57
Reacher didn’t sleep a wink that night. Not a second, not a minute. They messed with the special investigators and we can’t lay a glove on them. He tossed and turned and lay awake, hour after hour. His eyes were jammed wide open but images and fevered hallucinations flooded at him. Calvin Franz, walking, talking, laughing, full of drive and energy and sympathy and concern. Jorge Sanchez, the narrowed eyes, the hint of a smile, the gold tooth, the endless cynicism that was ultimately as reassuring as constant good humor. Tony Swan, short, wide, bulky, sincere, a thoroughly decent man. Manuel Orozco, the absurd tattoo, the fake accent, the jokes, the metallic clunk of the ever-present Zippo.
Friends all.
Friends unavenged.
Friends abandoned.
Then others swam into sight, as real as if they were hovering just below the ceiling. Angela Franz, clean, carefully dressed, eyes wide with panic. The boy Charlie, rocking in his little wooden chair. Milena, slipping like a ghost from the harsh Vegas sun into the darkness of the bar. Tammy Orozco on her sofa. Her three children, bewildered, roaming through their wrecked apartment, looking for their father. They appeared to Reacher as two girls and a boy, nine, seven, and five, even though he had never met them. Swan’s dog was there, a long swishing tail, a deep rumble of a bark. Even Swan’s mail box was there, blinding in the Santa Ana light.
Reacher gave it up at five in the morning and got dressed again and went out for a walk. He turned west on Sunset and stamped his way through a whole angry mile, hoping against hope that someone would bump him or jostle him or get in his way so that he could snap and snarl and yell and ease his frustration. But the sidewalks were deserted. Nobody walked in LA, especially not at five in the morning, and certainly nowhere near a giant stranger in an obvious rage. The boulevard was quiet, too. No traffic, except occasional anonymous thirdhand sedans bearing humble employees to work,
and a lone farting Harley carrying a fat gray-haired jerk in leathers. Reacher was offended by the noise and gave the guy the finger. The bike slowed and for a delicious moment Reacher thought the guy was going to stop and make an issue out of it. But, no luck. The guy took one look and twisted the throttle and took off again, fast.
Up ahead on the right Reacher saw a vacant corner lot fenced with wire. At a bus bench in the side street was a small crowd of day laborers, waiting for the sun, waiting for work, tiny brown men with tired stoic faces. They were drinking coffee from a mission cart set up outside some kind of a community center. Reacher headed in that direction and paid a hundred of his stolen dollars for a cup. He said it was a donation. The women behind the cart accepted it without a question. They had seen weirder, he guessed, in Hollywood.
The coffee was good. As good as Denny’s. He sipped it slowly and leaned back on the vacant lot’s fence. The wire gave slightly and supported his bulk like a trampoline. He floated there, not quite upright, coffee in his mouth, fog in his brain.
Then the fog cleared, and he started thinking.
About Neagley, principally, and her mysterious contact at the Pentagon.
He owes me, she had said. Bigger than you could imagine.
By the time he finished the coffee and tossed the empty cup he had a faint glimmer of new hope, and the outline of a new plan. Odds of success, about fifty-fifty. Better than roulette.
He was back at the motel by six in the morning. He couldn’t raise the others. No answer from their rooms. So he headed on down Sunset and found them in Denny’s, in the same booth Neagley had used at the very beginning. He slid into the remaining unoccupied seat and the waitress dealt him a paper place mat and clattered a knife and a fork and a mug after it. He ordered coffee, pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, and jelly.
“You’re hungry,” Dixon said.
“Starving,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“Walking.”
“Didn’t sleep?”
“Not even close.”
The waitress came back and filled his mug. He took a long sip. The others went quiet. They were picking at their food. They looked tired and dispirited. He guessed that none of them had slept well, or at all.
O’Donnell asked, “When do we drop the dime?”
Reacher said, “Maybe we don’t.”
Nobody spoke.
“Ground rules,” Reacher said. “We have to agree something from the start. If Mahmoud has got the missiles, then this thing is bigger than we are. We have to suck it up and move on. There’s too much at stake. Either he’s paramilitary and wants to turn the whole Middle East into a no-fly zone, or he’s a terrorist planning a day of action that’s going to make the Twin Towers look like a day at the beach. Either way around, we’re looking at hundreds or thousands of KIA. Maybe tens of thousands. Those kind of numbers trump any interest of ours. Agreed?”
Dixon and Neagley nodded and looked away.
O’Donnell said, “There’s no if about it. We have to assume Mahmoud has got the missiles.”
“No,” Reacher said. “We have to assume he’s got the electronics. We don’t know if he’s got the rockets and the launch tubes yet. It’s even money. Fifty-fifty. Either he collected the rockets first, or the electronics first. But he’s got to have both before we drop the dime.”
“How do we find out?”
“Neagley hits up her Pentagon guy. She calls in whatever markers she’s holding. He organizes some kind of audit out in Colorado. If anything is missing up there, then it’s game over for us. But if everything is still present and correct and accounted for, then it’s game on.”
Neagley checked her watch. Just after six in the west, just after nine in the east. The Pentagon would have been humming for an hour. She took out her phone and dialed.
58
Neagley’s buddy wasn’t dumb. He insisted on calling back from outside the building, and not on his own cell phone, either. And he was smart enough to realize that any pay phone within a mile radius of the Pentagon would be continuously monitored. So there was a whole hour’s delay while he got himself across the river and halfway across town to a phone on a wall outside a bodega on New York Avenue.
Then the fun began.
Neagley told him what she wanted. He gave her all kinds of reasons why it wasn’t possible. She started calling in her markers, one by one. The guy owed her a lot of heavy-duty favors. That was clear. Reacher felt a certain amount of sympathy for him. If your balls were in a vise, better that it wasn’t Neagley’s hand on the lever. The guy caved and agreed within ten minutes. Then it became a logistical discussion. How should the job be done, by whom, what should be considered proof positive. Neagley suggested Army CID should roll up unannounced and match the books with physical inventory. Her guy agreed, and asked for a week. Neagley gave him four hours.
Reacher spent the four hours asleep. Once the plan was settled and the decision was made he relaxed to the point where he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He went back to his room and lay down on the bed. A maid came in after an hour. He sent her away again and went back to sleep. Next thing he knew Dixon was at his door. She told him that Neagley was waiting in the lounge, with news.
Neagley’s news was neither good nor bad. It was somewhere in between. New Age had no physical plant in Colorado. Just an office. They contracted out their raw missile production, to one of the established aerospace manufacturers in Denver. That manufacturer had a number of Little Wing assemblies available for inspection. An Army CID officer had seen them all and counted them all, and his final tally was precisely what the books said it should be. Everything was present, correct, and accounted for. No problem. Except that exactly six hundred and fifty of the units were currently stored in a separate secure warehouse, crated up and awaiting transport to a facility in Nevada, where they were due to be decommissioned and destroyed.
“Why?” O’Donnell asked.
“Current production is specified as Mark Two,” Neagley said. “They’re junking what’s left of the Mark Ones.”
“Which just happens to be exactly six hundred and fifty units.”
“You got it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The Mark Twos have a small fluorescent arrow painted on them. To make loading easier in the dark.”
“That’s all?”
“You got it.”
“It’s a scam.”
“Of course it’s a scam. It’s a way of making the paperwork look legal when Mahmoud’s people drive them through the factory gate.”
Reacher nodded. A gate guard would fight to the death to prevent the unauthorized removal of ordnance. But if he saw paperwork with a reason on it, he would pass the load through with a smile and a cheery wave. Even if the reason was the absence of a small painted arrow on something that cost more than he made in a year. Reacher had seen the Pentagon junk stuff for less.
He asked, “How do the electronics packs fit on?”
“In,” Neagley said. “Not on. There’s an access port in the side. You unscrew it and plug the pack in. Then there’s some testing and calibration.”
“Could I do it?”
“I doubt it. You’d need training. In the field it’s going to be a specialist’s job.”
“So Mahmoud couldn’t do it, either. Or his people.”
“We have to assume they’ve got a guy. They wouldn’t spend sixty-five million dollars without being shown how to put the things together.”
“Can we nix that transport order?”
“Not without raising an alarm. Which would be the same thing as dropping the dime.”
“You still got any markers left on your guy?”
“A couple.”
“Tell him to have someone call you the second those units roll out.”
“And until then?”
“Until then Mahmoud doesn’t have the missiles. Until then we have complete freedom of action.”
59
At that instant it became a race against time. When the warehouse door opened in Colorado, a door of a different kind would slam shut in LA. But there was still a lot to prepare. There was still a lot to discover. Including exact locations. Clearly New Age’s glass cube in East LA wasn’t the center of anything. For one thing, there was no helicopter there.
And they needed exact identities.
They needed to know who knew, and who flew.
“I want them all,” Reacher said.
“Including the dragon lady?” Neagley asked.
“Starting with the dragon lady. She lied to me.”
They needed equipment, clothing, communications, and alternative vehicles.
And training, Neagley thought.
“We’re old, we’re slow, and we’re rusty,” she said. “We’re a million miles from what we used to be.”
“We’re not too bad,” O’Donnell said.
“Time was when you’d have put a double tap through that guy’s eyes,” she said. “Not a lucky low shot to his leg.”
They sat in the lounge like four out-of-towners discussing how to spend their day. As far as ordnance went, they had two Hardballers and the Daewoo DP-51 from Vegas. Thirteen rounds each for the Hardballers, eleven for the Daewoo. Not nearly good enough. O’Donnell and Dixon and Neagley had personal cell phones registered to their real names and real addresses and Reacher had nothing. Not nearly good enough. They had a Hertz Ford 500 rented in Dixon’s real name and the captured Chrysler. Not nearly good enough. O’Donnell was in a thousand-dollar suit from his East Coast tailor and Neagley and Dixon had jeans, jackets, and evening wear. Not nearly good enough.
Neagley swore that budget was not a problem. But that didn’t help with the time factor. They needed four untraceable pay-as-you-go cell phones, four anonymous cars, and work clothes. That was a day’s shopping right there. Then they needed guns and ammunition. Best case, a free choice for each of them and a lot of spare rounds. Worst case, one more make-do handgun and a lot of spare rounds. That was another day’s shopping. Like most cities, LA had a thriving black market in untraceable weapons, but it would take time to penetrate.