by Lee Child
“Two guys showed up. At my house. Two days ago. His people. Tough guys.”
“Where was Brett?”
“I had to tell him I was expecting them.”
“Were you?”
“More or less.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I’m dealing with it.”
“Not very well, son. Apparently. What did they do?”
“They said they were there to deliver a message from their boss. An expression of displeasure. I said I understood. I explained. I apologized. They said that wasn’t good enough. They said they had been told to leave marks. I said they couldn’t. I said I have to be out and about. I have a business to run. So they hit Eleanor instead. To make their point.”
“Just like that?”
“They asked first. They made me agree. They made her agree, too. They made me hold her. They took turns. I told her sorry afterward. She said, what’s the difference? Them then or me later? Because she knew I was agitated.”
“And then what?”
“I asked for another week. They gave me forty-eight hours.”
“So they came back again? Tonight?”
“Yes. They did it all over again.”
“So who was the guy in the restaurant? One of them?”
“No, he wasn’t one of them. I told you, I never saw him before.”
Jonas Duncan said, “He was a passerby. Like we figured. From what he said at the time, to the boy. A passerby full of the wrong end of the stick on this occasion.”
Jacob said, “Well, at least he’s out of our hair.”
Then they heard faint sounds outside. Tires on gravel. A vehicle, on their driveway. It came slow, whining in a low gear. It seemed to stop halfway. The engine kept on running. There was a pause, and then a ragged thump, dull, percussive, somehow mixed with the sound of breath expelled, and then another pause, and another sound. Then the vehicle drove away, faster this time, with acceleration and gear changes, and the world went quiet again.
Jonas Duncan was first out the door. From fifty yards he could see strange humped shapes in the moonlight. From twenty he saw what they were. From five he saw what condition they were in. He said, “Not out of our hair. Not exactly. Not yet.”
Jacob Duncan said, “Who the hell is this guy?”
Seth Duncan and his uncle Jasper didn’t speak.
Reacher parked the pick-up truck next to the wrecked Subaru and found the motel owner waiting at his door. Mr. Vincent. His hair looked black in the light.
“Changing the locks?” Reacher asked him.
The guy said, “I hope I won’t have to.”
“But?”
“I can’t let you stay here.”
Reacher said, “I paid thirty dollars.”
“I’ll refund it, of course.”
“That’s not the point. A deal is a deal. I didn’t damage anything.”
Vincent said nothing.
Reacher said, “They already know I’m here. Where else could I be?”
“It was OK before.”
“Before what?”
“Before they told me not to let you stay here. Ignorance of the law is no offense. But I can’t defy them now. Not after they informed me.”
“When did they inform you?”
“Two minutes ago. By phone.”
“You always do what they tell you?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
“Dumb question, I suppose,” Reacher said.
“I’d lose everything I’ve worked for. And my family before me. All those years.”
“Since 1969?” Reacher asked.
“How did you know that?”
“Just a lucky guess. The moon landing and all. The Apollo program.”
“Do you remember 1969?”
“Vaguely.”
“I loved it. So many things were going on. I don’t know what happened afterward. It really seemed like the start of a new era.”
“It was,” Reacher said. “Just not the era you expected.”
“I’m sorry about this.”
“You going to offer to drive me down to the Interstate now?”
“I can’t do that either. We’re not supposed to help you in any way at all.”
“ ‘We’?”
“Any of us. They’re putting the word out.”
“Well, I seem to have inherited a truck,” Reacher said. “I can drive myself.”
“Don’t,” Vincent said. “They’ll report it stolen. The county police will stop you. You won’t get halfway there.”
“The Duncans control the cops too?”
“No, not really. But a stolen truck is a stolen truck, isn’t it?”
“They want me to stay here?”
“They do now. You started a war. They want to finish it.”
Chapter 12
Reacher stood in the cold between the truck and the motel cabin and looked all around. There was nothing much to see. The blue glow of the neon reached only as far as the dead Subaru, and then it faded away. Overhead was a moon and a billion chilly stars.
Reacher said, “You still got coffee in the pot?”
Vincent said, “I can’t serve you.”
“I won’t rat you out.”
“They might be watching.”
“They’re driving two guys sixty miles to the hospital.”
“Not all of them.”
“This is the last place they’ll look. They told you to move me on. They’ll assume you obeyed.”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s make a deal,” Reacher said. “I’ll move on, to spare you the embarrassment. You can keep the thirty bucks, because this isn’t your fault. In return I want a cup of coffee and some answers.”
The lounge was dark, except for a lone work light behind the bar. No more soft reds and pinks. Just a harsh fluorescent tube, with a pronounced flicker and a green color cast and a noisy component. The music was off and the room was silent, apart from the buzz of the light and the rush of air in the heating system. Vincent filled the Bunn machine with water and spooned ground coffee from a can the size of a drum into a paper filter the size of a hat. He set it going and Reacher listened to the water gulping and hissing and watched the precious brown liquid streaming down into the flask.
Reacher said, “Start at the beginning.”
Vincent said, “The beginning is a long time ago.”
“It always is.”
“They’re an old family.”
“They always are.”
“The first one I knew was old man Duncan. He was a farmer, from a long line of farmers. I guess the first one came here on a land grant. Maybe after the Civil War. They grew corn and beans and built up a big acreage. The old man inherited it all. He had three sons, Jacob, Jasper, and Jonas. It was an open secret that the boys hated farming. But they kept the place going until the old man died. So as not to break his heart. Then they sold up. They went into the trucking business. Much less work. They split up their place and sold it off to their neighbors. Which made sense all around. What was a big spread back in the days of horses and mules wasn’t so big anymore, with tractors and all, and economies of scale. Land prices were high back then, but the boys sweetened the deals. They gave discounts, if their neighbors signed up to use Duncan Transportation to haul away their harvests. Which again made sense all around. Everyone was getting what they wanted. Everyone was happy.”
“Until?”
“Things went sour kind of slowly. There was a dispute with one of the neighbors. Ancient history now. This was twenty-five years ago, probably. But it was an acrimonious situation. It festered all one summer, and then that guy didn’t get his crop hauled away. The Duncans just wouldn’t do it. It rotted on the ground. The guy didn’t get paid that year.”
“He couldn’t find someone else to haul it?”
“By then the Duncans had the county all sewn up. Not worth it for some other outfit to come all the way here just for one load.”
“The guy couldn’t haul it himself?”
“They had all sold their trucks. No need for them, as far as they could see, because of the contracts, and they needed the money for mortgages anyway.”
“The guy could have rented. One time only.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten out of his gate. The fine print said only a Duncan truck could haul anything off a farm. No way to contest it, not in court, and definitely not on the ground, because the football players were on the scene by then. The first generation. They must be old men themselves by now.”
“Total control,” Reacher said.
Vincent nodded.
“And very simple,” he said. “You can work all year, but you need your harvest trucked away, or it’s the same thing as sitting on your butt and growing nothing. Farmers live season to season. They can’t afford to lose a whole crop. The Duncans found the perfect pinch point. Whether by accident or design, I don’t really know. But as soon as they realized what they had, they sure started enjoying it.”
“How?”
“Nothing real bad. People pay a little over the odds, and they mind their manners. That’s about all, really.”
“You too, right?”
Vincent nodded again. “This place needed some fixing, ten years ago. The Duncans loaned me the money, interest-free, if I signed up with them for my deliveries.”
“And you’re still paying.”
“We’re all still paying.”
“Why sit still and take it?”
“You want a revolution? That’s not going to happen. People have got to eat. And the Duncans are smart. No one thing is really that bad. You understand?”
“Like a frog in warm water,” Reacher said. “That’s how the doctor’s wife described it to me.”
“That’s how we all describe it.”
“You still get boiled to death in the end.”
“Long time coming.” Vincent turned away and filled a mug with coffee. Another NASA logo. He pushed it across the bar. He said, “My mother was related to Neil Armstrong. The first man on the moon. Fifteenth cousin or something.”
Reacher sniffed the steam and tried the coffee. It was excellent. It was fresh, hot, and strong. Vincent said, “President Nixon had a speech prepared, you know, just in case they got stuck up there. In case they couldn’t lift off the surface. Can you imagine? Just sitting there, looking up at Earth in the sky, waiting for the air to run out?”
Reacher said, “Aren’t there laws? Monopolies, or restraint of trade or something?”
Vincent said, “Going to a lawyer is the same thing as going bankrupt. A lawsuit takes what? Two, three years? Two or three years without your crop getting hauled is suicide. And have you ever worked on a farm? Or run a motel? Believe me, at the end of the day you don’t feel like cracking the law books. You feel like getting some sleep.”
Reacher said, “Wrecking the doctor’s car wasn’t a small thing.”
Vincent said, “I agree. It was worse than usual. We’re all a little unsettled by that.”
“ ‘All’?”
“We all talk to each other. There’s a phone tree. You know, for when something happens. We share information.”
“And what are people saying?”
“The feeling is maybe the doctor deserved it. He was way out of line.”
“For treating his patient?”
“She wasn’t sick. It was an intervention.”
“I think you’re all sick,” Reacher said. “I think you’re all a bunch of spineless cowards. How hard would it be to do something? One guy on his own, I agree, that’s difficult. But if everyone banded together and called another trucker, they’d come. Why wouldn’t they? If there’s enough business here for the Duncans, there’s enough for someone else.”
“The Duncans might sue.”
“Let them. Then they’ve got three years of legal bills and no income. The shoe would be on the other foot.”
“I don’t think another trucker would take the business. They carve things up. They don’t poach, in a place like this.”
“You could try.”
Vincent didn’t answer.
“Whatever,” Reacher said. “I really don’t care who gets an ear of corn hauled away, or how, or if, or when. Or a bushel of beans. Or a peck or a quart or however the hell you measure beans. You can sort it out for yourselves. Or not. It’s up to you. I’m on my way to Virginia.”
“It’s not that easy,” Vincent said. “Not here. People have been scared so long they can’t even remember what it’s like not to be scared anymore.”
Reacher said nothing.
Vincent asked, “What are you going to do?”
Reacher said, “That depends on the Duncans. Plan A is to hitch a ride out of here. But if they want a war, then plan B is to win it. I’ll keep on dumping football players on their driveway until they got none left. Then I’ll walk on up and pay them a visit. Their choice.”
“Stick to plan A. Just go. That’s my advice.”
“Show me some traffic and I might.”
“I need something from you.”
“Like what?”
“Your room key. I’m sorry.”
Reacher dug it out of his pocket and placed it on the bar. A big brass item, marked with a figure six.
Vincent said, “Where are you going to sleep tonight?”
“Better that you don’t know,” Reacher said. “The Duncans might ask you. And you’d tell them, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d have to,” Vincent said.
There was no more conversation. Reacher finished his coffee and walked out of the lounge, back to the truck. The winch cable had bent the light bar on the roof, so that from the front the whole thing looked a little cross-eyed. But the key turned and the engine started. Reacher drove out of the motel lot. If in doubt, turn left, was his motto. So he headed south, rolling slow, lights off, letting his eyes adjust to the nighttime gloom, looking for a direction to follow.
Chapter 13
The road was a narrow straight ribbon, with dark empty fields to the right, and dark empty fields to the left. There was enough moonlight and enough starlight to make out shapes, but there weren’t many shapes to make out. There was an occasional tree here and there, but mostly the land had been plowed flat all the way to the horizon. Then three miles out Reacher saw two buildings far to the west, one large, one small, both standing alone in a field. Even at a distance and even in the dark he could tell both buildings were old and made of wood. They were no longer quite square, no longer quite upright, as if the earth was sucking them back down into itself, an inch at a time, a corner at a time.
Reacher slowed and turned into a track that was nothing more than a pair of deep parallel ruts put there by the passage of tractor tires. There was a raised hump of grass between them. The grass was frozen solid, like wire. The pick-up truck lurched and bounced and pattered. Small stones scrabbled under the wheels and skittered away. The track ran straight, then turned, then turned again, following the checkerboard pattern of the fields. The ground was bone hard. No dust came up. The two old buildings got nearer, and larger. One was a barn. The other was a smaller structure. They were about a hundred yards apart. Maybe a hundred and twenty. They were both fringed with dormant vegetation, where errant seeds had blown against their sides, and then fallen and taken root. In the winter the vegetation was nothing more than dry tangled sticks. In the summer it might be a riot of colorful vines.
Reacher looked at the barn first. It stood alone, surrounded by worn-out blacktop. It was built of timbers that looked as hard as iron, but it was rotting and leaning. The door was a slider big enough to admit some serious farm machinery. But the tilt of the building had jammed it in its tracks. The lower right-hand corner was wedged deep in the earth. The iron wheel on the rail above it had lifted off its seat. There was a judas hole in the slider. A small regular door, inset. It was locked. There were no windows.
Reacher got back in the truck and headed for the
smaller shed. It was three-sided, open at the narrow end that faced away from the barn. The tractor ruts ran all the way inside. It was for storage of some kind. Or it had been, once upon a time, long ago. It was about twice as long and a little wider than the truck.
Perfect.
Reacher drove in, all the way, and stopped with the hood of the truck under a kind of mezzanine half-loft built like a shelf under the peak of the roof. He shut the engine down and climbed out and walked back the way he had come, out of the shed, then twenty yards more. He turned and checked. The truck was completely hidden.
He smiled.
He thought: Time for bed.
He set out walking.
He walked in the tractor ruts. The ground under his feet was uneven and hard, and progress was slower than it would have been on the grassy hump in the center of the track, but even frozen grass can bruise and show footsteps, and Reacher always preferred to leave no trail. He made it back to the road and turned north and walked where the centerline would have been, if anyone had ever painted one. The night was still and quiet, the air frigid, the stars still bright overhead. Nothing else was moving. Up ahead there was no blue glow. The motel’s lights had been turned off for the night.
He walked three fast road miles, less than an hour, and came up on the crossroads from the south. He stopped a hundred yards out and checked. On his left, the abandoned mall foundation. Beyond it, the abandoned gas station. On his right, nothing, and beyond that, the motel, dark and silent, just shapes and shadows.
No parked cars.
No parked trucks.
No watchers.
No ambush.
Reacher moved on. He came up on the motel from the rear, at the end of the curl of cabins, behind the smallest of them. All was quiet. He stayed off the gravel and minced along the silver timbers to his bathroom window. It was still open. The screen was still in the bathtub. He sat on the sill and ducked his head and swiveled his legs up and slid inside. He closed the window against the cold and turned and looked around.
His towels were where he had left them after his shower. Vincent hadn’t made up the room. Reacher guessed that was tomorrow’s task. No great urgency. No one was expecting a sudden demand for accommodation. Not in the wilds of Nebraska, not in the depths of winter.