by Lee Child
“Yes.”
“And third, if I see those two out-of-towners again, they’ll be going home in a bucket. Is that clear? Got all that?”
“Yes.”
“You got a cell phone?”
“Yes,” the guy said.
“Give it to me.”
The guy dug in a pocket and came back with a phone, black and tiny in his giant red paw. He handed it over and Reacher pulled it apart. He had seen cell phones dropped on sidewalks, and he knew what was in there. A battery, and a SIM card. He pulled off the cover and clipped out the battery and tossed it twenty feet in one direction, and he took out the SIM card and threw the rest of the phone twenty feet in the other direction. He balanced the SIM card on his palm and held it out, a tiny silicon wafer with gold tracks on it.
“Eat it,” he said.
The guy said, “What?”
“Eat it. That’s your forfeit. For being a useless tub of lard.”
The guy paused a second and then he took it, delicately, finger and thumb, and he opened his mouth and placed it on his tongue. He closed his mouth and worked up some saliva and swallowed.
“Show me,” Reacher said.
The guy opened his mouth again and stuck out his tongue. Like a kid at the clinic. The card was gone.
“Now sit down,” Reacher said.
“What?”
“Like you were before.”
“I thought you wanted me to head for the Duncans’ place.”
“I do,” Reacher said. “But not yet. Not while I’m still in the neighborhood.”
The guy sat down, a little worried, facing south, his legs straight out and his hands on his knees and his upper body curled forward a little.
“Arms behind you,” Reacher said. “Lean back on your hands.”
“Why?”
Enemy ordnance.
“Just do it,” Reacher said.
The guy got his arms behind him and put his weight on his hands. Reacher stepped behind him and crashed the sole of his boot through the guy’s right elbow. The guy went down flat and shrieked and rolled and whimpered. Then he sat up again and cradled his broken arm and stared at Reacher accusingly. Reacher stepped around behind him again and kicked him hard in the back of the head. The guy toppled slowly, forward at first, and then he twisted sideways as his gut got in the way of further progress. He sprawled out and landed softly on one shoulder and lay still, like a large letter L on a dirty brown page. Reacher turned away and slogged on north, toward the two wooden buildings on the horizon.
Chapter 22
The Canadian semitruck with the Duncans’ shipment aboard was making good time, heading due east on Route 3 in British Columbia, driving mostly parallel to the die-straight international border, with Alberta up ahead. Route 3 was a lonely road, mountainous, with steep grades and tight turns. Not ideal for a large vehicle. Most drivers took Route 1, which looped north out of Vancouver before turning east later. A better road, all things considered. Route 3 was quiet by comparison. It had long stretches of nothing but asphalt ribbon and wild scenery. And very little traffic. And occasional gravel turnouts, for rest and recuperation.
One of the gravel turn-outs was located a mile or so before Waterton Lakes National Park. In U.S. terms it was directly above the Washington-Idaho state line, about halfway between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, about a hundred miles north of both. The turn-out had an amazing view. Endless forest to the south, the snowy bulk of the Rockies to the east, magnificent lakes to the north. The semitruck driver pulled off and parked there, but not for the view. He parked there because it was a prearranged location, and because a white panel van was waiting there for him. The Duncans had been in business a long time, because of luck and caution, and one of their cautionary principles was to transfer their cargo between vehicles as soon as possible after import. Shipping containers could be tracked. Indeed, they were designed to be tracked, by the BIC code. Better not to risk a delayed alert from a suspicious Customs agent. Better to move the goods within hours, into something anonymous and forgettable and untraceable, and white panel vans were the most anonymous and forgettable and untraceable vehicles on earth.
The semitruck parked and the panel van K-turned on the gravel and backed up to it and stopped rear-to-rear with it. Both drivers got out. They didn’t speak. They just stepped out into the roadway and craned their necks and checked what was coming, one east, one west. Nothing was coming, which was not unusual for Route 3, so they jogged back to their vehicles and got to work. The van driver opened his rear doors, and the truck driver climbed up on his flatbed and cut the plastic security seal and smacked the bolts and levers out of their brackets and opened the container’s doors.
One minute later the cargo was transferred, all 1,260 pounds of it, and another minute after that the white van had K-turned again and was heading east, and the semitruck was trailing behind it for a spell, its driver intending to turn north on 95 and then loop back west on Route 1, a better road, back to Vancouver for his next job, which was likely to be legitimate, and therefore better for his blood pressure but worse for his wallet.
In Las Vegas the Lebanese man named Safir selected his two best guys and dispatched them to babysit the Italian man named Rossi. An unwise decision, as it turned out. Its unwisdom was made clear within the hour. Safir’s phone rang and he answered it, and found himself talking to an Iranian man named Mahmeini. Mahmeini was Safir’s customer, but there was no transactional equality in their business relationship. Mahmeini was Safir’s customer in the same way a king might have been a boot maker’s customer. Much more powerful, imperious, superior, dismissive, and likely to be lethally angry if the boots were defective.
Or late.
Mahmeini said, “I should have received my items a week ago.”
Safir couldn’t speak. His mouth was dry.
Mahmeini said, “Please look at it from my point of view. Those items are already allocated, to certain people in certain places, for certain date-specific uses. If they are not delivered in time, I’ll take a loss.”
“I’ll make good,” Safir said.
“I know you will. That’s the purpose of my call. We have much to discuss. Because my loss won’t be a onetime thing. It will be ongoing. My reputation will be ruined. Why would my contacts ever trust me again? I’ll lose their business forever. Which means you’ll have to compensate me forever. In effect I will own you for the rest of your life. Do you see my point?”
All Safir could say was “I believe the shipment is actually on its way, as of right now.”
“A week late.”
“I’m suffering too. And I’m trying to do something about it. I made my contact send two of his men up there. And then I sent two of my men over to him, to make sure he concentrates.”
“Men?” Mahmeini said. “You employ men? Or boys?”
“They’re good people.”
“You’re about to find out what men are. I’m sending two of mine. To you. To make sure you concentrate.”
Then the phone went dead, and Safir was left sitting there, awaiting the arrival of two Iranian tough guys in an office that had, just an hour ago, been stripped of the better half of its security.
Reacher made it to the two wooden buildings without further trouble, which was no big surprise to him. Six remaining football players and two out-of-towners made a total of just eight warm bodies, and he guessed the out-of-towners would be riding together, which made a total of just seven roving vehicles loose in a county that must have covered many hundreds of square miles. One random encounter had been fortuitous in the extreme. Two would be incalculably unlikely.
The old barn was still locked and listing, and the pick-up truck was still hidden in the smaller shelter. Undiscovered and undisturbed, as far as Reacher could tell. It was cold and inert. The air in the shelter was dry, and it smelled of dust and mouse droppings. The countryside all around was empty and silent.
Reacher opened up the tool locker in the pick-up’s load bed and took a look at the
contents. The biggest thing left in there was an adjustable wrench about a foot long. Some kind of polished steel alloy. It weighed about a pound and a half. Made in the U.S.A. Not the greatest weapon in the world, but better than nothing. Reacher put it in his coat pocket and rooted around for more. He came up with two screwdrivers, one a stubby Phillips cross-head design with a rubber handle, and one a long slender thing with a regular blade for a regular slotted screw. He put them in his other pocket and closed the locker and climbed in the cab. He started up and backed out and then he followed the deep tractor ruts all the way east to the road, where he turned north and headed for the motel.
Safir’s two tough guys arrived in Rossi’s office carrying guns in shoulder holsters and black nylon bags in their hands. They unpacked the bags on Rossi’s desk, right in front of him. The first bag carried just one item, and the second bag carried two items. From the first bag came a belt sander, already loaded with a fresh loop of coarse-grain abrasive. From the second bag came a propane blowtorch and a roll of duct tape.
Tools of the trade.
And therefore an unmistakable message, to a guy in Rossi’s world. In Rossi’s world victims were taped naked to chairs, and belt sanders were fired up and applied to tender areas like knees or elbows or chests. Or faces, even. Then blowtorches were sparked to life for a little extra fun.
Nobody spoke.
Rossi dialed his phone. Three rings, and Roberto Cassano answered, in Nebraska. Rossi said, “What the hell is happening up there? This thing really can’t wait.”
Cassano said, “We’re chasing shadows.”
“Chase them harder.”
“What’s the point? Who knows whether this guy has anything to do with anything? You told us you figure he’s an excuse. So whatever happens to him isn’t going to make the shipment show up any faster.”
“Have you ever told a lie?”
“Not to you, boss.”
“To anyone else?”
“Sure.”
“Then you know how it goes. You arrange things to make sure you don’t get caught out. And I think that’s what those Duncan bastards are going to do. They’re going to hold the shipment somewhere until the guy gets caught. To make it look like they were telling the truth all along. Like cause and effect. So whether we want to or not, we’re going to have to play their game their way. So find this asshole, will you? And fast. This thing can’t wait.”
Rossi clicked off the call. One of the Lebanese guys had been unrolling the belt sander’s cord. Now he bent down and plugged it in. He flicked the switch, just a blip, just a second, and the machine started and whirred and stopped.
A test.
A message.
Reacher drove to the motel and parked next to the doctor’s wrecked Subaru. It was still there, outside cabin six. He got out and squatted down front and rear and used the smaller screwdriver from his pocket to take the plates off the pick-up truck. Then he took the plates off the Subaru and put them on the pick-up. He tossed the pick-up’s plates into the load bed and put the screwdriver back in his pocket and headed for the lounge.
Vincent was in there, behind the bar, wiping it with a rag. He had a black eye and a thick lip and a swelling the size of a mouse’s back on his cheek. One of the mirrors behind him was broken. Pieces of glass the shape of lightning bolts had fallen out. Old wallboard was exposed, taped and yellowing, earthbound and prosaic. The room’s cheerful illusion was diminished.
Reacher said, “I’m sorry I got you in trouble.”
Vincent asked, “Did you spend the night here?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
Reacher checked himself in the broken mirror. One ear was scabbing over where he had scraped it on the rock. His face had scratches from the thorns. His hands, too, and his back, where his coat and shirt and sweater had ridden up. He asked, “Did those guys have a list of places they were looking?”
Vincent said, “I imagine they’ll go house to house.”
“What are they driving?”
“A rental.”
“Color?”
“It was something dark. Dark blue, maybe? A Chevrolet, I think.”
“Did they say who they were?”
“Just that they were representing the Duncans. That’s how they put it. I’m sorry I told them about Dorothy.”
“She did OK,” Reacher said. “Don’t worry about it. She’s had bigger troubles in her life.”
“I know.”
“You think the Duncans killed her kid?”
“I would like to. It would fit with what we think we know about them.”
“But?”
“There was no evidence. Absolutely none at all. And it was a very thorough investigation. Lots of different agencies. Very professional. I doubt if they missed anything.”
“So it was just a coincidence?”
“It must have been.”
Reacher said nothing.
Vincent asked, “What are you going to do now?”
“A couple of things,” Reacher said. “Maybe three. Then I’m out of here. I’m going to Virginia.”
He walked back out to the lot and climbed into the pick-up truck. He fired it up and took off, out to the road, toward the doctor’s house.
Chapter 23
Mahmeini’s two tough guys arrived in Safir’s Las Vegas office about an hour after Safir’s own two tough guys had left it. Mahmeini’s men were not physically impressive. No straining shirt collars, no bulging muscles. They were small and wiry, dark and dead-eyed, rumpled, and not very clean. Safir was Lebanese and he knew plenty of Iranians. Most of them were the nicest people in the world, especially when they lived somewhere else. But some of them were the worst. These two had brought nothing with them. No bags, no tools, no equipment. They didn’t need any. Safir knew they would have guns under their arms and knives in their pockets. It was the knives he was worried about. Guns were fast. Knives were slow. And these two Iranians could be very slow with knives. And very inventive. Safir knew that for a fact. He had seen one of their victims, out in the desert. A little decomposed, but even so the cops had taken longer than they should even to determine the sex of the corpse. Which was no surprise. There had been no external evidence of gender. None at all.
Safir dialed his phone. Three rings, and one of his guys answered, six blocks away. Safir said, “Give me a progress report.”
His guy said, “It’s all messed up.”
“Evidently. But I need more than that.”
“OK, it turns out Rossi’s contacts are a bunch of Nebraska people called Duncan. They’re all in an uproar over some guy poking around. Nothing to do with anything, probably, but Rossi thinks the Duncans are going to stall until the guy is down, to save face, because they’ve been claiming the guy is the cause of the delay. Which Rossi thinks is most likely bullshit, but the whole thing has gone completely circular. Rossi thinks nothing is going to happen now until the guy is captured. He’s got boys up there, working on it.”
“How hard?”
“As hard as they can, I guess.”
“Tell Rossi to tell them to work harder. Much, much harder. And make sure he knows I’m serious, OK? Tell him I’ve got people in my office too, and if I’m going to get hurt over this, then he’s going to get hurt first, and twice as bad.”
Reacher remembered the way to the doctor’s house from the night before. In daylight the roads looked different. More open, less secret. More exposed. They were just narrow ribbons of blacktop, built up a little higher than the surrounding dirt, unprotected by hedgerows, unshaded by trees. The morning mist had risen up and was now a layer of low cloud at about five hundred feet. The whole sky was like a flat lit panel, casting baleful illumination everywhere. No glare, no shadows.
But Reacher arrived OK. The plain ranch house, the couple of flat acres, the post-and-rail fence. In the daylight the house looked raw and new. There was a satellite dish on the roof. There were no cars in th
e driveway. No dark blue Chevrolet. No neighbors, either. The nearest house might have been a mile away. On three sides there was nothing beyond the doctor’s fence except dirt, tired and hibernating, waiting for plowing and seeding in the spring. On the fourth side was the road, and then more dirt, flat and featureless all the way to the horizon. The doctor and his wife were not gardeners. That was clear. Their lot was all grass, from the base of the fence posts to the foundation of the house. No bushes, no evergreens, no flowerbeds.
Reacher parked on the driveway and walked to the door. It had a spy hole. A little glass lens, like a fat drop of water. Common in a city. Unusual in a rural area. He rang the bell. There was a long delay. He guessed he wasn’t the first visitor of the day. More likely the third. Hence the reluctance on the part of the doctor and his wife to open up. But open up they did, eventually. The spy hole darkened and then lightened again and the door swung back slowly and Reacher saw the woman he had met the night before, standing there in the hallway, looking a little surprised but plenty relieved.
“You,” she said.
“Yes, me,” Reacher said. “Not them.”
“Thank God.”
“When were they here?”
“This morning.”
“What happened?”
The woman didn’t answer. She just stepped back. A mute invitation. Reacher stepped in and walked down the hallway and found out pretty much what had happened when he came face-to-face with the doctor. The guy was a little damaged, in much the same way that Victor was, over at the motel. Bruising around the eyes, swellings, blood in the nostrils, splits in the lips. Loose teeth too, probably, judging by the way the guy was pursing his mouth and moving his tongue, as if he was pressing them home, or counting how many were left. Four blows, Reacher figured, each one hard but subtly different in placement. Expert blows.
Reacher asked, “Do you know who they are?”
The doctor said, “No. They’re not from around here.” His words were thick and indistinct and hard to decipher. Loose teeth, split lips. And a hangover, presumably. “They said they were representing the Duncans. Not working for them. So they’re not hired hands. We don’t know who they are or what their connection is.”