by Jude Hardin
“Hello?”
He pressed the phone against his ear and returned to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later, Benny stepped back inside and said, “I think I’ll take that beer now.”
JR walked into the living room and handed Benny an aluminum can that was dripping with condensation. Benny popped the top and took a long pull.
“That’s good,” he said. “Good and cold. Just the way I like it.”
“Cheers,” JR said, pulling back the tab on a fresh one for himself. “We’re all set for tomorrow.”
“He called?”
“Yes he did. They’re going to meet us at a place called Perk-U-Now.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a coffee shop in DC. Not far from the bus depot.”
“We’re going to do this at a coffee shop?”
JR shook his head. “Of course we’re not going to do this at a coffee shop. Are you crazy? We can’t take her into a public place. Everybody’s going to recognize her and call the cops. We’ll be locked up before we get a mile down the road.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Yeah. So they’re going to give us half the money at this Perk-U-Now place. You’re going to take the briefcase full of hundreds and get on a bus, and I’m going to climb into a limo and give the driver directions to find our lady friend.”
“Where’s she going to be?”
“You don’t need to know that, Benny. All you have to do is pick up a briefcase and get on a bus. That’s it. One simple little task, and you will be one wealthy individual. You’ll have it made, my friend. You can’t even imagine how made you’re going to have it by this time tomorrow.”
“I want to ride in the limo.”
“What?”
“I’ve never been inside a limousine. How about you get on the bus and I tell the chauffer how to find Felisa?”
“No, Benny. Remember what I told you? I’m the boss, and we’re going to do things my way. You can buy your own limo when we get done with this if you want to. But we have to stick to the plan. You’re going to get on the bus, and I’m going to get in the limo. Okay?”
“I guess so. What’s going to happen then?”
“We’ve been through all this before, Benny. We’re going to meet at the private airstrip I told you about, remember?”
“The bus is going to take me there?”
“It’ll take you close. Walking distance. Just a few blocks.”
“How will I know which bus to get on?”
JR pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “I already bought you a ticket,” he said. “All you have to do is walk over to the depot and ask the person at the counter to point you in the right direction. Everything’s taken care of. Nothing can go wrong.”
“You’re a genius,” Benny said, turning the sweaty can up and draining the last of the cheap beer.
He took the bus ticket out of the envelope and looked it over, but he was standing too far away for Felisa to make out the destination.
She kept straining to see, hoping he would move closer.
Because knowledge is power.
It was something else her father always said.
24
Annex 1 had been moved. That much was obvious.
What wasn’t so obvious was how Colt was going to get the information he needed on Jack Reacher now. The information that might help him get out of hot water with The Circle. The information that might save his life.
“They must have stored the files somewhere else temporarily,” Diana said. “They must be keeping everything at a different location while they spruce the place up a bit. Paint and spackle and all that, and they’re probably going to update the security console and the video monitors as well. About time, really. Some of the stuff they were using was from the seventies.”
“Shouldn’t we start thinking about making our exit?” Colt said.
“In a minute. I want to look at something first.”
She knelt beside the unconscious guard and started going through his pockets. She found his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license.
“What are you doing?” Colt said.
“I just wanted to get an address on this guy. We might need to pay him a visit.”
“Why?”
“Because he might know where the files are being stored.”
“You think he’s going to tell us?”
“He might, under the right circumstances.”
She slid the driver’s license back into the wallet and the wallet back into the pocket.
“Can I push the button this time?” Colt said.
“Huh?”
“The button to make the elevator go back up.”
“You’re such a little boy sometimes.”
They walked to the elevator. Colt pulled the lever, and the gate expanded, locking into the steel frame with an echoing click. He pushed the button with the upward arrow printed on it and away they went.
Going up wasn’t quite as nauseating as going down, but Colt still didn’t enjoy it very much. He wondered if the cables and pulleys were from the 1970s, like some of the other equipment Diana had mentioned. They were jerky and squeaky and he kept expecting them to break. He exhaled a sigh of relief when the elevator finally made it to the top.
“Here we are,” he said.
The gate opened and they got out and walked over to the ladder and climbed back up to the stall in the women’s restroom.
Diana secured the hatch on the crab pot.
“We’re going to have to crawl under the door,” she said. “And of course that will break the laser field and set off the silent alarm.”
“Great.”
“Don’t look at me like that. The guard in the lobby was supposed to be unconscious, and it takes at least a couple of minutes for the full team to arrive. We would have been okay if the drug had—”
“But it didn’t.”
“No, but have you ever known me not to have a backup plan?”
Diana reached into her backpack and pulled out a stainless steel canister about the size of a soda can.
“What’s in there?” Colt said. “Some kind of fogger that will knock everyone in the room out while we calmly exit the building in our gas masks?”
“No. It’s a frog.”
“A frog?”
“We need to work fast. Just follow my lead.”
Diana got down on the floor and belly-crawled under the door to the stall, and then Colt did the same. When they got to the other side, Diana unscrewed the top of the canister and tapped the lip on the floor until the shiny green amphibian slid out.
It was a frog.
A real frog.
“It’s not moving,” Colt said.
“Don’t worry. In a few seconds it’ll be jumping all over the place. When the security team comes, they’ll think the frog set off the alarm. They’ll never know we were here.”
“Clever.”
“Yeah. By the way, I’m going to need to handcuff you again.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Whatever. Come on. We don’t have much time.”
Colt put his hands behind his back, took a deep breath while Diana slapped on the cuffs. They exited the restroom and headed back toward the lobby.
Sergeant Walker had left his post and was staggering around over by the gift shop. Semi-automatic pistol drawn, wild-eyed and barely able to stand, he turned and looked their way and said, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
“It’s me,” Diana said. “United States Deputy Marshal Rhonda Webb.”
“Huh?”
“I had a meeting with Senator Blancroft, remember? Here’s my ID.”
Another mosquito bite.
Walker took two steps forward. “On the floor,” he shouted, a thread of drool oozing from the corner of his mouth. “Facedown with your hands behind your back.”
“My hands are already behind my back,” Colt said. “See?”
Colt turned around and showed S
ergeant Walker the handcuffs. He figured that he and Diana had about sixty more seconds before the response team came storming in.
“On the floor,” Walker said again.
Slurred speech, eyes rolling back in his head. He was on the way out. Diana said something about how hot it had been lately, and she kept talking until the pistol slipped from his hand and his knees went slack and he crumpled to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here,” Diana said.
“Think you could let me loose now, marshal?”
Diana unlocked the cuffs and they walked past the unattended security desk and out the door.
25
When they got back to the hotel in Rock Creek, Colt poured a shot of bourbon into one of the little plastic courtesy cups on the tray by the ice bucket, knocked it back in a single gulp and said, “Want one?”
“No thanks.”
“I’m going to go get some ice.”
“Okay.”
Colt left the room, walked all the way to the end of the hall, turned into the little alcove where they kept the machine, which was out of order.
For a second he wondered if the side panel that the sign was taped to was really a portal to another secret government document library, Annex 16 or something, but he quickly dismissed the thought and climbed the stairs to the third floor and filled his bucket.
When he got back to the room, Diana was sitting at the desk with her cell phone pressed to her head. Not saying anything, just listening. She clicked off and set the phone down beside the complimentary stationery pad and ball point pen and stared off into space while Colt fixed himself another drink, one with ice this time.
“You okay?” Colt said.
“I have to go. I have another assignment, Priority One.”
“What kind of assignment?”
Ignoring the question, she unzipped her backpack, picked up the phone, and dropped it in. “You’re not going to be able to access the Annex One documents on Reacher, so you’re going to have to go about this another way.”
“What other way?”
“I would suggest finding the guys who robbed Mac’s Diner and taking it from there. The two gunmen who actually walked into the place. If Reacher was involved—”
“I thought we were going to try to press that guard,” Colt said. “The one on the lower level. The one whose address you memorized.”
“Aren’t you listening? I have to go. I’m not going to be able to help you anymore.”
“So give me the guy’s address. I’ll go there by myself.”
Diana nodded. “Okay. You can try that if you want to. But it’s probably a dead end, and you don’t have any time to waste.”
She told Colt the guard’s name and address, and then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a brown letter-sized envelope.
“What’s that?” Colt said.
“It’s five hundred dollars. You can rent a car with your fake ID. And you should find a different place to stay.”
She handed him the envelope.
“They’ll unlock my accounts as soon as all this is cleared up,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”
“Sure.”
Colt took a sip of his drink. “So, you going to tell me about this urgent new assignment or not?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s an L and E.”
L and E.
Locate and Eliminate.
“On who?” Colt said. “Jack Reacher?”
Diana shook her head. “No, Nicholas. It’s you. I’m supposed to find you and kill you.”
26
Colt didn’t sleep very well. He’d wanted to get at least a couple of hours, needed it in order to function in any sort of coherent way, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate. He dozed for a few minutes here and there, but mostly he tossed and turned and thought about everything that had happened over the past few days. The reenactment of the robbery and kidnapping, the conversations with Kurt Valinger, the secret cabin in the woods, the operative sent to retrieve him and take him back to HQ, the helicopter pilot he’d shot in the leg. So much had changed over such a short period of time. And now Diana had been ordered to assassinate him. He considered her a friend, but he knew that her loyalty to The Circle would trump any sort of bond that he and she had developed from working together.
She would give him a twelve hour head start, she said. That was the best she could do. When it happened, it would happen from a distance, and there would be no warning. No conversation, no goodbye. Colt thought he saw a tear in her eye when she left the hotel room, but maybe it was only his imagination. At any rate, he had half a day to find a way out of this, or he was going to die. Diana Dawkins wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger when the time came. He knew that she would not.
At a few minutes past five, Colt finally gave up on getting any more sleep. He climbed out of bed and took a shower and got dressed. Not the jeans and the chambray shirt, but another set of clothes Diana had bought for him. Khaki shorts with side flap pockets and a short-sleeve shirt with tails long enough to conceal his holstered revolver. She knew what he liked.
He stuffed the bottle of bourbon and some socks and underwear into the briefcase, walked down to the office and checked out of the hotel and called a cab.
At one end of the lobby there was a desktop computer tucked away in a little alcove with a sign on the wall that said FOR GUESTS ONLY. Colt decided to use it while he waited for his taxi to arrive. He plugged in the flash drive Valinger had given him and started watching the security footage of the tall muscular man standing outside Mac’s Diner. He zoomed in, but everything was inconclusive, just as before. The image was too blurry to say for sure if the guy leaning on the van was Jack Reacher or not, and there was no way to tell for sure if he or someone else had written the word HELP on the windshield. All Colt really had to go on was what he’d gotten from Erin, the waitress he’d talked to at Mac’s. He knew that Jack Reacher had eaten there a while back, and he knew that one of the men forcing Felisa Cayenne behind the van at the end of the video was named Clark. He wondered if Clark was the guy’s first name, or his last name. It didn’t really matter. If it was his first name, there would be no practical way to look it up, and there were probably hundreds of men with that last name in the DC area. If not thousands.
“Hey, this computer is for registered guests only. Can’t you read?”
Same clerk as when Colt checked in. The tall skinny guy with a pointy chin and big ears.
“I was a guest until a few minutes ago,” Colt said. “And I paid for a whole week.”
“It doesn’t matter. You checked out, so you’re not a guest anymore. If we break the rules for one person, we have to—”
“All right. You win.”
Colt yanked the flash drive out of the USB port, walked outside and waited at the curb. It was still dark, but the morning traffic had started to pick up by the time the taxi arrived. Colt opened the door and climbed into the back seat.
“Where to?” the driver said.
“I need to go into DC.”
Colt gave him Shane Molfer’s address, the soldier who’d been guarding the empty shelves down in Annex 1.
“Sure. That’s no problem.”
“How far is that from here?” Colt said.
“Thirty miles or so. It’s going to be a hundred dollar fare, any way you slice it. Probably more with the traffic the way it is.”
Colt didn’t have much money, but he didn’t have much time, either. He didn’t want to pay a hundred bucks for a cab ride, but he figured it might take twice as long to get across town using public transportation. The money definitely wasn’t going to do him any good if he ran out of time.
“How far is the nearest rental car place?”
“There’s one here in Rock Creek, but it doesn’t open until eight. In fact, I don’t know of any that are open this early, unless you want to ride to the airport.”
“How long will that take
?”
“About forty-five minutes, but it’s a flat fee. Sixty bucks.”
“Do it,” Colt said.
The driver steered away from the curb and eased into traffic.
Colt leaned against the door and closed his eyes. If things didn’t turn out well for him, if he didn’t get the information he needed in time, he wondered if Juliet and Brittney would even be notified. He wondered if The Circle would tell them. Maybe, but it would undoubtedly be some altered version of the truth, a vaguely detailed fabrication where Colt died in the line of duty. They certainly couldn’t tell them that he was stalked and killed by one their own operatives, and that The Director himself had ordered the assassination. No, they would be handed a big fat lie about what a hero he was, and then they would be handed an urn full of ashes and a nice folded flag. It made Colt sick that he couldn’t at least see Juliet and Brittney before it ended. Hold them in his arms one last time. Tell them he loved them. Tell them goodbye.
He opened his eyes and closed them again and blackness engulfed him and he drifted off into a dream about Joe Crawford, his friend who had been murdered by a psychotic billionaire in the Okefenokee Swamp. In Colt’s dream, Joe was still alive, and both of them were much younger. Teenagers. It was summer, a clear night, and they were lying on their backs on the asphalt driveway at Joe’s parents’ house, staring up at the stars.
“I’m going to go there someday,” Joe said.
“Where?”
“Outer space. I’m going to be an astronaut.”
“Right. And I’m going to be a rock star.”
“By the year two thousand we’ll have expeditions to Mars. I was reading about it in a book the other day. It’ll be so cool. Just like Star Trek.”
“By the year two thousand we’ll be old,” Colt said. “Almost forty.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. Just seems like a long way away. I’ll be happy just to make it through tenth grade.”
Colt looked over, and Joe was still lying there beside him, but it wasn’t fifteen-year-old Joe, young and strong and full of hopes and aspirations for the future. It was rotting decaying Joe with worms crawling out of his eye sockets.
The cab hit a pothole, jarring Colt out of his nightmare.