by Lee Child
“I was a military cop. We got some medical training.”
“I’m cold.”
“Shock,” Reacher said. “And it’s snowing.”
She turned her upper body toward him. Implied consent. He put his fingertips on her collar bone, through her blouse. The bone was as delicate as a pencil. It was snapped halfway along its length. A clean break. Not compound.
She asked, “Is it bad?”
“It’s good,” Reacher said. “It did its job. A collar bone is like a circuit breaker. It breaks so that your shoulder and your neck stay OK. It heals fast and easy.”
“I need to go to the hospital.”
Reacher nodded. “We’ll get you there.”
He moved on. There was a sprained wrist in row four, and a broken wrist in row five. Plus a total of thirteen cuts, many minor contusions, and a lot of shock reaction.
The temperature was dropping like a stone.
Reacher could see the flares out the rear side windows. They were still burning, three distinct crimson puffballs glowing in the swirling snow. No headlights coming. None at all. No traffic. He walked up the aisle, head bent, and found the driver. The guy was in his seat, holding an open cell phone in his right hand, staring through the windshield, drumming his left-hand fingertips on the wheel.
He said, “We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“I called 911. The Highway Patrol is all either sixty miles north of here or sixty miles east. There are two big storms coming in. One from Canada, one off the Lakes. There’s all kinds of mayhem. All the tow trucks went with them. They’ve got hundred-car pile-ups. This highway is closed behind us. And up ahead.”
No traffic.
“Where are we?”
“South Dakota.”
“I know that.”
“Then you know what I mean. If we’re not in Sioux Falls or Rapid City, we’re in the middle of nowhere. And we’re not in Sioux Falls or Rapid City.”
“We have to be somewhere.”
“GPS shows a town nearby. Name of Bolton. Maybe twenty miles. But it’s small. Just a dot on the map.”
“Can you get a replacement bus?”
“I’m out of Seattle. I could get one maybe four days after the snow stops.”
“Does the town of Bolton have a police department?”
“I’m waiting on a call.”
“Maybe they have tow trucks.”
“I’m sure they do. At least one. Maybe at the corner gas station, good for hauling broken-down half-ton pick-up trucks. Not so good for vehicles this size.”
“Maybe they have farm tractors.”
“They’d need about eight of them. And some serious chains.”
“Maybe they have a school bus. We could transfer.”
“The Highway Patrol won’t abandon us. They’ll get here.”
Reacher asked, “What’s your name?”
“Jay Knox.”
“You need to think ahead, Mr. Knox. The Highway Patrol is an hour away under the best of circumstances. Two hours, in this weather. Three hours, given what they’re likely dealing with. So we need to get a jump. Because an hour from now this bus is going to be an icebox. Two hours from now these wrinklies are going to be dropping like flies. Maybe sooner.”
“So what gets your vote?”
Reacher was about to answer when Knox’s cell phone rang. The guy answered it and his face lightened a little. Then it fell again. He said, “Thanks,” and closed the phone. He looked at Reacher and said, “Apparently the town of Bolton has a police department. They’re sending a guy. But they’ve got problems of their own and it will take some time.”
“How much time?”
“At least an hour.”
“What kind of problems?”
“They didn’t say.”
“You’re going to have to start the engine.”
“They’ve got coats.”
“Not good enough.”
“I’m worried about a fire.”
“Diesel fuel is a lot less volatile than gasoline.”
“What are you, an expert?”
“I was in the army. Trucks and Humvees were all diesel. For a reason.” Reacher glanced back down the aisle. “Got a flashlight? Got an extinguisher?”
“Why?”
“I’ll check the underbody. If it looks all clear I’ll knock twice on the floor. You start up, if anything goes on fire I’ll put it out and knock again and you can shut it down.”
“I don’t know.”
“Best we can do. And we have to do something.”
Knox was quiet for a spell and then he shrugged and opened up a couple more compartments and came out with a silver Maglite and an extinguisher bottle. Reacher took them and waited for the door to open and climbed out into the spectral crimson world of the flares. Down into the ditch again. This time he trudged counterclockwise around the front of the bus because the oblique angle put more of the left side above the blacktop than the right. Crawling around in the freezing ditch was not an attractive prospect. Crawling around on the shoulder was marginally better.
He found the fuel filler door and sat down in the snow and then swiveled around and lay on his back and wriggled into position with his head under the side of the bus. He switched the flashlight on. Found the fat tube running from the filler mouth to the tank. It looked intact. The tank itself was a huge squared-off cylinder. It was a little dented and scraped from the impact. But nothing was leaking out of it. The fuel line running back toward the engine compartment looked OK. Snow soaked through Reacher’s jacket and his shirt and freezing damp hit his skin.
He shivered.
He used the butt end of the Maglite and banged twice on a frame spar.
He heard relays clicking and a fuel pump start up. It wheezed and whined. He checked the tank. Checked the line, as far as the flashlight beam would let him. He kicked against the snow and pushed himself farther under the bus.
No leaks.
The starter motor turned over.
The engine started. It clattered and rattled and settled to a hammer-heavy beat.
No leaks.
No fire.
No fumes.
He fought the cold and gave it another minute and used the time to check other things. The big tires looked OK. Some of the front suspension members were a little banged up. The floor of the luggage hold was dented here and there. Some small tubes and hoses were crushed and torn and split. Some Seattle insurer was about to get a fair-sized bill. That was clear.
He scrabbled out and stood up and brushed off. His clothes were soaked. Snow swirled all around him. Fat, heavy flakes. There were already two fresh inches on the ground. His footsteps from four minutes ago were already dusted white. He followed them back to the ditch and floundered around to the door. Knox was waiting for him. The door opened and he climbed aboard. Blowing snow howled in after him. He shivered. The door closed.
The engine stopped.
Knox sat down in his seat and hit the starter button. Way at the back of the bus Reacher heard the starter motor turning, churning, straining, wheezing, over and over again.
Nothing happened.
Knox asked, “What did you see down there?”
“Damage,” Reacher said. “Lots of things all banged up.”
“Crushed tubes?”
“Some.”
Knox nodded. “The fuel line is pinched off. We just used up what was left in the pipe, and now no more is getting through. Plus the brakes could be shot. Maybe it’s just as well the engine won’t run.”
“Call the Bolton PD again,” Reacher said. “This is serious.”
Knox dialed and Reacher headed back toward the passengers. He hauled coats off the overhead racks and told the old folks to put them on. Plus hats and gloves and scarves and mufflers and anything else they had.
He had nothing. Just what he stood up in, and what he stood up in was soaked and freezing. His body heat was leaching away. He was shivering, just a little, bu
t continuously. Small crawling thrills, all over his skin. Be careful what you wish for. A life without baggage had many advantages. But crucial disadvantages, too.
He headed back to Knox’s seat. The door was leaking air. The bus was colder at the front than the back. He said, “Well?”
Knox said, “They’re sending a car as soon as possible.”
“A car won’t do it.”
“I told them that. I described the problem. They said they’ll work something out.”
“You seen storms like this before?”
“This is not a storm. The storm is sixty miles away. This is the edge.”
Reacher shivered. “Is it coming our way?”
“No question.”
“How fast?”
“Don’t ask.”
Reacher left him there and walked down the aisle, all the way past the last of the seats. He sat on the floor outside the toilet, with his back pressed hard against the rear bulkhead, hoping to feel some residual heat coming in from the cooling engine.
He waited.
Five minutes to five in the afternoon.
Fifty-nine hours to go.
Chapter 3
Forty-five minutes later the lawyer got home. A long, slow trip. His driveway was unplowed and he worried for a moment that his garage door would be frozen shut. But he hit the remote and the half-horsepower motor on the ceiling inside did its job and the door rose up in its track and he drove in. Then the door wouldn’t shut after him, because the clumps of snow his tires had pushed in triggered the door’s child safety feature. So he fussed with his overshoes once more and took a shovel and pushed the snow back out again. The door closed. The lawyer took off his overshoes again and stood for a moment at the mud room door, composing himself, cleansing himself, taking a mental shower. Twenty minutes to six. He walked through to the warmth of his kitchen and he greeted his family, as if it was just another day.
By twenty minutes to six the inside of the bus was dark and icy and Reacher was hugging himself hard and shivering violently. Ahead of him the twenty old people and Knox the driver were all doing pretty much the same thing. The windows on the windward side of the bus were all black with stuck snow. The windows on the leeward side showed a gray panorama. A blizzard, blowing in from the north and the east, driven hard and relentlessly by the winter wind, hitting the aerodynamic interruption of the dead vehicle, boiling over it and under it and around it and swirling into the vacuum behind it, huge weightless flakes dancing randomly up and down and left and right.
Then: faint lights in the gray panorama.
White lights, and red, and blue, pale luminous spheres snapping and popping and moving through the gloom. The faint patter of snow chains in the eerie padded silence. A cop car, coming toward them on the wrong side of the divided highway, nosing slow and cautious through the weather.
A long minute later a cop was inside the bus. He had come through the ditch and in through the door, but he had just gotten out of a heated car and he was wearing winter boots and waterproof pants and gloves and a parka and a plastic rain shield over a fur hat with ear flaps, so he was in pretty good shape. He was tall and lean and had lined blue eyes in a face that had seen plenty of summer sun and winter wind. He said his name was Andrew Peterson and that he was second-in-command over at the Bolton PD. He took off his gloves and moved through the aisle, shaking hands and introducing himself by name and rank over and over again, to each individual and each couple, in a manner designed to appear guileless and frank and enthusiastic, like a good old country boy just plain delighted to help out in an emergency. But Reacher was watching those lined blue eyes and thinking that his front was false. Reacher was thinking that Peterson was actually a fairly shrewd man with more things on his mind than a simple road rescue.
That impression was reinforced when Peterson started asking questions. Who were they all? Where were they from? Where had they started today? Where were they headed tonight? Did they have hotel reservations up ahead? Easy answers for Knox and the twenty old folks, a tour group, from Seattle, hustling from one scheduled stop at the Dakotaland Museum to the next at Mount Rushmore, and yes, they had confirmed reservations at a tourist motel near the monument, thirteen rooms, for the four married couples, plus four pairs who were sharing, plus four individuals who had paid a singles supplement, plus one for Knox himself.
All true information, but not exactly necessary, under the circumstances.
Peterson made Knox show him the motel paperwork.
Then he turned to Reacher. Smiled and said, “Sir, I’m Andrew Peterson, from the Bolton PD, deputy chief. Would you mind telling me who you are?”
Plenty of heartland cops were ex-military, but Reacher didn’t think Peterson was. He wasn’t getting the vibe. He figured him for a guy who hadn’t traveled much, a straight-arrow kid who had done well in a local high school and who had stuck around afterward to serve his community. Expert in a casual way with all the local stuff, a little out of his depth with anything else, but determined to do his best with whatever came his way.
“Sir?” Peterson said again.
Reacher gave his name. Peterson asked him whether he was part of the group. Reacher said no. So Peterson asked him what he was doing on the bus. Reacher said he was heading west out of Minnesota, hoping to turn south before too long, hoping to find better weather.
“You don’t like our weather?”
“Not so far.”
“And you hitched a ride on a tour bus?”
“I paid.”
Peterson looked at Knox, and Knox nodded.
Peterson looked back at Reacher and asked, “Are you on vacation?”
Reacher said, “No.”
“Then what exactly is your situation?”
“My situation doesn’t matter. None of this matters. None of us expected to be where we are right now. This whole thing was entirely unpredictable. It was an accident. Therefore there’s no connection between us and whatever it is that’s on your mind. There can’t be.”
“Who says I have something on my mind?”
“I do.”
Peterson looked at Reacher, long and hard. “What happened with the bus?”
“Ice, I guess,” Reacher said. “I was asleep at the time.”
Peterson nodded. “There’s a bridge that doesn’t look like a bridge. But there are warning signs.”
Knox said, “A car coming the other way was sliding all over the place. I twitched.” His tone was slightly defensive. Peterson gave him a look full of sympathy and empty of judgment and nodded again. He said, “A twitch will usually do it. It’s happened to lots of people. Me included.”
Reacher said, “We need to get these people off this bus. They’re going to freeze to death. I am, too.”
Peterson was quiet for a long second. There’s no connection between us and whatever it is that’s on your mind. Then he nodded again, definitively, like his mind was made up, and he called out, “Listen up, folks. We’re going to get you to town, where we can look after you properly. The lady with the collar bone and the lady with the wrist will come with me in the car, and there will be alternative transportation right along for the rest of you.”
The step down into the ditch was too much for the injured women, so Peterson carried one and Reacher carried the other. The car was about ten yards away, but the snow was so thick by then that Reacher could barely see it, and when he turned back after Peterson had driven away he couldn’t see the bus at all. He felt completely alone in the white emptiness. The snow was in his face, in his eyes, in his ears, on his neck, swirling all around him, blinding him. He was very cold. He felt a split second of panic. If for some reason he got turned around and headed in the wrong direction, he wouldn’t know it. He would walk until he froze and died.
But he took a long step sideways and saw the crimson haloes of the flares. They were still burning valiantly. He used them to work out where the bus must be and headed for it. Came up against its leeward side and tracked arou
nd the front, back into the wind, through the ditch to the door. Knox let him in and they crouched together in the aisle and peered out into the darkness, waiting to see what kind of a ride had been sent for them.
Five to six in the evening.
Fifty-eight hours to go.
At six o’clock the fourteen criminal proposals finally made it to paper. The guy who had answered the lawyer’s call was plenty bright in a street-smart kind of way, but he had always figured that the best part of intelligence was to know your limitations, and his included a tendency to get a little hazy about detail when under pressure. And he was going to face some pressure now. That was for damn sure. Turning proposals into actions was going to require the sanction of some seriously cautious people.
So he wrote everything down, fourteen separate paragraphs, and then he unplugged a brand-new untraceable pay-as-you-go cell from its charger and started to dial.
The ride that had been sent for them was a school bus, but not exactly. Definitely a standard Blue Bird vehicle, normal size, normal shape, regular proportions, but gray, not yellow, with heavy metal mesh welded over the windows, and the words Department of Corrections stenciled along the flanks.
It looked almost new.
Knox said, “Better than nothing.”
Reacher said, “I’d go in a hearse if it had a heater.”
The prison vehicle K-turned across all three lanes and sawed back and forth for a while until it was lined up exactly parallel with the dead bus, with its entrance step about halfway down the dead bus’s length. Reacher saw why. The dead bus had an emergency exit, which was a window panel ready to pop out. Peterson had seen the ditch and the passengers and the panel, and had made a good decision and called ahead. Peterson was a reasonably smart guy.
Normally eighteen random seniors might have needed an amount of coaxing before stepping through an open hatch into a blizzard and the arms of a stranger, but the bitter cold had quieted their inhibitions. Knox helped them up top, and Reacher lifted them down. Easy work, apart from the cold and the snow. The lightest among the passengers was an old guy not more than ninety-five pounds. The heaviest was a woman closer to two hundred. The men all wanted to walk the short distance between the two vehicles. The women were happy to be carried.