by Lee Child
Reacher said, “The stone building.”
“That’s not ours.”
“None of this is yours.”
“I mean, we’re not using it.”
“You shouldn’t be using anything.”
“Squatters’ rights. It’s an abandoned facility. We know the law.”
Reacher said nothing. Just stepped left and skirted the crowd. They all stood still and let him by. No move to block him. A policy decision. He glanced at the corner hut. It was a plain, utilitarian structure. Maybe fifty feet long, its blank slab siding pierced only by two small square windows. It had a door in its narrow end. All around it the snow had been cleared away meticulously. Directly behind it was the stone building. There was no snow around it, either. Just clear, swept paths.
Reacher turned around.
He said, “If you’re not using it, why clear the snow?”
The same guy came out of the crowd again.
He said, “For the satisfaction of a job well done.”
The stone building was a strange little thing. It could have been copied from the plans for a small but fairly ornate and old-fashioned suburban house. It had all kinds of details and moldings and curlicues and gables and rain gutters and eaves. Like a Gothic folly a rich man might put in his garden for guests.
But there were crucial differences, too. Where a guesthouse in a garden would have windows, the stone building had recesses only. Like an optical illusion. The right size and shape, but not filled with glass. Filled instead by unbroken expanses of stone, the same neat mortared blocks as the rest of the walls. There was a portico, but the front door under it made no attempt at illusion. It was just a meaty steel slab, completely plain. It had huge hinges. It would open outward, not inward. Like a blast door. A pressure wave outside would hold it shut, not burst it open. It had a handle and a keyhole. Reacher tried the handle. It didn’t move. The keyhole was large. Smaller than the hole for a church key, bigger than the hole for a house key. The steel around it was rimed with frost. Reacher rubbed it away with his gloved thumb, and saw no nicks or scratches in the metal. The lock was not in regular use. No key had been inserted and withdrawn, day in and day out.
He asked, “You know what this place is?”
The guy who had followed him said, “Don’t you?”
“Of course I do. But I need to know how our security is holding up.”
The guy said, “We heard things.”
“From who?”
“The construction guys that were here before.”
“What things?”
“About atomic bombs.”
“They said there were nuclear weapons in here?”
“No. They said it was a clinic.”
“What kind of a clinic?”
“They said if we had been attacked in winter, in a city, like New York or Chicago, people would have been in coats and gloves, so only their faces would have been burned. You know, miles from the center. Closer in, you would have been vaporized. But if you survived, you could come here and get a new face.”
“Like plastic surgery?”
“No, like prosthetics. Like masks. They said that’s what’s in there, thousands and thousands of plastic faces.”
Reacher walked on around the strange little structure. It was the same on all four sides. Heavy stone, fake windows, details, moldings. A bizarre parody. Entertaining, but not instructive without getting inside. Which wasn’t going to happen.
He walked away. Then on a sudden whim he stopped at the nearest hut. The first in the back row, which was in line with the second in the front row. The crowd had followed him in a long untidy straggle that looped all the way back to where he had started. Like a thin question mark, curling through the gaps and the passages. Steam hung above it. Nearest to him was the guy who had done all the talking. He was about six feet away.
Reacher pushed the hut’s door. It swung halfway open.
The guy close to him said, “That’s not yours.”
“It’s bolted down on army concrete. That’s good enough for me.”
“You got no warrant.”
Reacher didn’t answer. He was all done talking. It was too cold. His face was numb and his teeth were hurting. He just pushed the door all the way open and took a look inside.
The hut was dark. And warm. There was a paraffin stove going. Reacher could smell the sweet wet kerosene. There were twelve cots in the room, six to a side, and a boxed-in section at the far end that might have been a bathroom. Plain gray blankets on the cots, cardboard shipping cartons filled with folded clothes, burlap drapes at the small square windows.
There was a young woman sitting on the farthest cot on the right. No coat, because of the heat. No hat. She was maybe eighteen or twenty. She looked a little sullen and grimy, but behind that she was pretty. Long fair hair, strong vivid features. Tall, and slender. For a second Reacher thought he had seen her before. But he hadn’t. She was a type, that was all. Like Kim Peterson. A South Dakotan. Wherever this bunch was from, they had picked up local recruits.
Reacher backed out and pulled the door shut behind him. Turned to the guy six feet away and said, “Want to show me the other huts?”
“Whatever.” No reluctance. The guy just started his limbs moving inside his heavy clothing and trudged on down the paths and pushed open one door after another. Fourteen of the fifteen huts were the same. Rows of cots, crude drapes, paraffin stoves, shipping boxes, gray blankets, folded clothes. No benches, no work tables, no glass vessels, no gas rings, no laboratory equipment of any kind. No people, either. The girl in the first hut was the only one not outside and working. Maybe she was sick.
The last hut in the back row was a kitchen. It had two domestic stoves shoved side by side for cooking, and plain deal tables pushed against the walls for use as work-surfaces, and crude shelves stacked with plates and bowls and mugs, and more shelves lined with a few meager supplies. Jars almost empty of flour and sugar and coffee, single boxes of cereal and pasta standing alone in spaces that could have taken dozens.
There was no laboratory equipment.
Reacher hunched down in his coat and came out between two huts. His car was still there, idling faithfully. Beyond it the plowed road narrowed into the distance, high, wide, and handsome. As flat as glass. Fifty summers, fifty winters, it hadn’t heaved or cracked at all. The voice from Virginia had asked: You know how big the defense budget was fifty years ago? They had poured maybe four hundred thousand yards of concrete, and then forgotten all about them.
“Have a nice day,” Reacher said, and headed for his car.
Five minutes to nine in the morning.
Nineteen hours to go.
Chapter 23
The drive back was the same as the drive out, except for a strange slow-motion near-collision at the first turn. Reacher had driven the wide plowed road fast and the next eight narrow snowbound miles slow, and then he had coasted and tried to work out a trajectory to get himself through the left turn and into the eastbound ruts on the old road that ran parallel with the highway. But at the same time a fuel tanker was trying to get out of those same ruts for a left turn of its own up toward the camp. It was a squat vehicle with a company name painted along its flank. Paraffin for the heaters, maybe, or gasoline for the pick-up trucks, or diesel for a generator. It changed down to a low gear and turned very early and came right across Reacher’s lane. He braked hard, hoping his chains would bite, but the Crown Vic’s onboard electronics wouldn’t allow the wheels to lock. The car rolled on with all kinds of thumping and banging coming from the brake pistons. The fuel truck kept on coming. Reacher yanked the wheel. The front tires lost their grip and skated. The Crown Vic’s front left corner missed the back of the truck by an inch. The truck roared on, low gear, walking pace, oblivious. Reacher watched it go in his mirror. He had ended up stationary at a right angle across the old road, with his front wheels in one of the eastbound ruts and his back wheels in one of the westbound. He had to rock between Drive
and Reverse and hit the gas hard to break free.
But after that it was plain sailing all the way.
* * *
The cop in the stake-out car at the end of Janet Salter’s street was Kapler. Better than Montgomery, from the day before. Kapler looked Reacher over very carefully and then backed up to let him by. Reacher parked nose to tail with the second stake-out car and hustled up the driveway. The day-watch cop in the hallway let him in. He asked, “All quiet?”
She said, “So far.”
“Is Mrs. Salter OK?”
“She’s fine.”
“Let me see her.” Just like Chief Holland the night before, and just as pointless. If anything bad had happened, the cops wouldn’t be sitting around doing nothing.
The day-watch woman said, “She’s in the library.”
Reacher found her there, in her usual chair. This time she was reading, an old book with no dust jacket and a title too small to read from a distance. Her gun was still in her pocket. Reacher could make out its shape. She looked up and said, “Kid gloves?”
He said, “Plastic. Less classy than kid. But nothing to complain about.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Plenty.”
He got back in the car and headed for the police station. Found Peterson in the squad room. Reacher said, “Holland was right. They weren’t coming over here. They were bluffing. Or someone was bluffing on their behalf. We have no idea who actually called here. Could have been the shooter himself, trying to create time and space, trying to point you in the wrong direction.”
“Well, whoever, they failed. And now we’re going to bust them all.”
“Then you better do it quickly. They’re about to move out.”
“They told you that?”
“Think back to that call from the DEA. Have you ever sold a house?”
“Once.”
“You cleaned it up, right? Made it look real good?”
“I painted the siding.”
“They’ve got the snow all plowed. Everything is immaculate. They’ve got their stuff in shipping boxes. They’ve run down their food supplies to nothing. Whoever owns the place is selling it out from under them.”
“When are they going?”
“Soon.”
“Did they give you any trouble?”
“Not really.”
“Did they believe you were from the army?”
“Not for a minute. But they’ve been told to keep their noses clean, as of right now. The place needs to be a controversy-free zone. Whoever owns the place doesn’t want the title damaged. So they didn’t give me a hard time.”
“Nobody owns that place. It’s all public land.”
“It makes a profit for somebody. Therefore somebody thinks he owns it. The bikers are his employees, that’s all. Worker bees. And now they’ve got their marching orders. They’re moving on to the next project.”
“Plato the Mexican.”
“Whoever.”
Peterson asked, “Did you find a lab?”
Reacher said, “I want to see the product from the restaurant parking lot.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way my mind works. One step at a time.”
Peterson shrugged and led the way back to the corridor, around a corner, to an evidence room. There was a half-width counter outside it, unoccupied. Peterson stepped past it and took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door.
“Wait there,” he said.
He went in and came out ten seconds later with a clear plastic evidence bag. It was big. Stapled to it was a chain-of-custody form with four separate dates and times and locations and signatures on it. Inside it was the package that Janet Salter had described. The brick of white powder, hard and smooth under the wax paper wrap. The picture stenciled on it, the crown, the headband, the three points, the three balls representing jewels.
Reacher asked, “Did you test it?”
“Of course,” Peterson said. “It’s meth. No question. Just short of a kilo, very high purity, almost clinical. Good stuff, if you like that kind of thing.”
“Two hundred grand’s worth, right there.”
“A million on the streets of Chicago, after they cut it and retail it.”
“Any idea what the picture means?”
“No. They always put some kind of logo on. This is a brand-conscious market.”
“You got the money in there too, that the Chicago guy paid?”
“Of course.”
“Can I see it?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“I just like looking at stuff like that.”
So Peterson ducked back in and came back out with another evidence bag. Same size. Same kind of form stapled to it. Full of bricks of bills, all banded together.
“OK?” Peterson asked.
“How long would it take you to earn that much?”
“After taxes? I don’t want to think about it.”
“Is that really wax paper on the dope?”
“No, it’s some kind of cellophane or glassine. It’s a little yellowed because it’s old stock. But it’s proper pharmaceutical quality. This is a very high-end operation.”
“OK.”
“So did you find their lab?”
“No.”
“Did you see the stone building?”
“Only from the outside.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, but I know what it isn’t.”
Reacher headed for the squad room. For the desk in the back corner. He picked up the phone, dialed nine for a line, and then the number he remembered.
“Yes?”
“Amanda, please.”
A click. A purr. The voice. It sounded tired. A little frustrated. It said, “I could be in Afghanistan right now. In fact if you don’t stop calling me I might just put in for a transfer.”
Reacher said, “The food might be better. Can’t beat a goat’s eyeballs in yogurt.”
“You ever been there?”
“No, but I met someone who had.”
“I’ve got no news for you.”
“I know. You can’t see the money hitting the Department of the Army.”
“I tried and failed.”
“You didn’t. The money never went to the army.”
“Why not?”
“Garbage in, garbage out.”
“What does that mean?”
“We started with a false assumption. They told me about an army facility. A small stone building with a two-mile road. I just went out there. It’s not a road. It’s a runway. It’s an Air Force place, not army.”
Chapter 24
The voice from Virginia said, “Well, that changes things a little.”
Reacher said, “There’s another local rumor about prosthetic faces.”
“Yes, I saw a note about that. There’s a file. Apparently the Pentagon got some calls from local folks in South Dakota. County and state government. But it’s bullshit. The plastic face places were always nearer the metro areas. Why put one out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Why have them at all? If everyone is burned the same, why would anyone care?”
No reply.
Reacher asked, “Do you know anyone in the Air Force?”
“Not for secrets.”
“Might not be a secret. Could be entirely routine. We’re back at square one, as far as assumptions are concerned.”
“OK, I’ll make some calls. But first I’m going to take a nap.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead. This is urgent. The runway is plowed. Two whole miles. Nobody does that for fun. Therefore someone or something is due to show up. And I saw a fuel tanker. Maybe for the return trip. Maybe someone’s planning on some heavy lifting.”
Silence for a beat. “Anything else?”
He asked, “Are you married?”
She asked, “Are you?”
“No.”
“Were you ever?”
&nb
sp; “No.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
She hung up.
Five minutes to ten in the morning.
Eighteen hours to go.
Peterson was two desks away, hanging up on a call of his own. He said, “The DEA is blowing me off. Their guy wasn’t interested.”
Reacher asked, “Why not?”
“He said there’s no lab out there.”
“How does he know?”
“They have satellites and thermal imaging. They’ve reviewed the data and can’t see any heat. Therefore as far as they’re concerned it’s just a real estate deal. Until proven otherwise.”
“The lab is underground.”
“The DEA says not. Their imaging can see into basements. They say there’s nothing down there.”
“They’re wrong.”
“You didn’t see a lab.”
“They have meth, they must have a lab.”
“We don’t know that there’s anything under the ground at all. Not for sure.”
“We do,” Reacher said. “Nobody builds a two-mile runway for nothing. That’s long enough to land any kind of plane. Any kind of bomber, any kind of transport. And nobody lands bombers or transports next to a building smaller than a house. You were right. The building is a stair head. Which means there’s something under it. Probably very big and very deep.”
“But what exactly?”
Reacher pointed at his phone. “You’ll know when I know.”
* * *
A half-hour later Peterson got a call to say that the highway had reopened. The weather radar was showing nothing incoming from the west except supercooled air, and all across the state the snowplows and the salt spreaders had finished their work, and the Highway Patrol had conferred with the Department of Transportation, and traffic was flowing again. Then Jay Knox called to say he had been told the replacement bus was about three hours out. So Peterson lit up the phone tree and set up a two o’clock rendezvous for the passengers in the police station lobby. All twenty of them. The ladies with the broken bones were fit to travel. A two o’clock departure would get the group to Mount Rushmore a little less than two days late. Not bad, all in all, for South Dakota in the winter.