by Lee Child
It was a black SUV, with a blue license plate.
Illinois.
She dialed her phone.
She said, “Expedite a request for an out-of-state plate.”
In reply she got a burst of static and a verbal OK.
She read out the number. She kept the phone to her ear, and parked next to the black SUV. It was a Toyota. She got out and checked it over. It was dusty. It had done some miles out west. It was hard to see inside, because the windows were high and she was short. But it looked like folk were traveling. There were bags in the trunk. But why park there?
She looked ahead at the trees and concluded a person could walk through them. But what for? Illicit activity was safe enough in the last row of the parking lot. No one needed to hide out in the woods. There was nothing on the other side, until eventually the trees thinned out and the regular median started up again. Technically a person could walk from there to the next rest area with grass under his feet all the way. Or was there a highway department maintenance depot in the way? She couldn’t remember. There was one somewhere. They were the kind of places you never really paid attention to.
There was static in her ear, and a voice on her phone.
It said, “Illinois DMV lists that plate as a black Toyota Land Cruiser, registered to Terrence Bramall, at a Chicago business address. He describes himself as a private detective.”
Sanderson walked to her starting position, and Reacher went with her. He wanted to know she was still chewing. Or if not, whether that was a good thing or bad. She was still chewing. Doing OK. He hoped she wasn’t peaking too early. She had the Ruger Standard. The .22. Two rounds in it. It was all she would take. Bramall had the Colt .45. Three rounds in it. Mackenzie had the empty Springfield. Better than nothing. Like the man said, ninety percent of everything was striking a pose.
Reacher said, “Get the story ready for me.”
Sanderson said, “A hundred things could go wrong.”
“Not a hundred,” he said. “Couple dozen, maybe.”
“The arrest warrant was bullshit. I want you to know that, whatever. They were trying to shut him up.”
“You want me to know part of the story, but not all of it?”
“I want you to know that part at least.”
“What was he trying to say?”
“Something he shouldn’t.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Stay on the ball and tell me the rest later. You doing OK?”
“So far.”
“Good until when?”
“What time is it now?”
“Close to ten-thirty.”
She did the math in her head, and she didn’t answer.
Reacher walked back to his own starting position. But before he got there Bramall walked up with his phone, which was glowing green, with what was apparently a call in progress with the West Point Superintendent’s Office.
“For you,” Bramall said.
Reacher took the phone.
He said, “General.”
The supe said, “Major.”
“We’re currently maneuvering. Success or failure within two hours from now.”
“Do I want to know the details?”
“Probably not.”
“What are your chances?”
“Uncertain. It’s a rules of engagement issue.”
“She got more scruples than you?”
“She could hardly have fewer. But there are things I won’t do. And we have civilians with us.”
“Welcome to the modern army. You could come back and take a class.”
“She told me Porterfield’s arrest warrant was bullshit.”
“What was your reaction to that?”
“She would say that, wouldn’t she.”
“Mine too. But she appears to be right. My friends to the south got into the file, and there’s nothing in it. It has to be phony. No one knows the guy who swore it out. We looked him up, and the only match on the name was a guy in the press office in a Marine Corps medical battalion.”
“The way she talks, I think she feels Porterfield had some kind of a just cause going on. In which case there must be a lot of files. He was an unemployed veteran who had to change a dressing every day. If a guy like that gets a bug up his ass he tells everyone about it. He writes letters to the newspaper and calls his congressman every day. And then the White House and the talk shows and every law enforcement agency he can think of. His name must crop up everywhere. I want to know. She might never tell me.”
“How is she doing?”
“Pretty good, all things considered.”
“Is her attitude OK?”
“In what way?”
“Are you free to talk?”
“Sure,” Reacher said.
“Why I wanted to call. We found a sideways reference to a document in a medical ethics case. An army psychiatrist had published a paper. The charge was he had failed to adequately conceal the identity of his subject. The paper was about a woman officer who had been grievously wounded in the face. During an on-site inspection she wasn’t required to attend. She was standing in for another officer. Purely as a personal favor. The operation was nothing to do with her. She was there because some other asshole had another appointment. Which upon investigation turned out to be extremely unworthy. The guy killed himself when the questions started. Turned out he was getting jacked off by some Afghan whore, while the most beautiful woman in the army was getting maimed. The paper was about her psychological struggle to see herself as wounded in the line of duty.”
“The woman was Rose Sanderson?”
“It was while she was still in the hospital. She said the publicity upset her.”
“She hasn’t mentioned it,” Reacher said.
“It’s a factor,” the supe said. “She feels betrayed.”
At eleven o’clock the compound was still pitch dark and silent. Which Reacher expected. His theory allowed for maybe twenty minutes of furtive gathering, and then frantic action at midnight. And then nothing again. So he wasn’t worried. Not yet. Not unless he was completely wrong, and a bunch of guys was assembling somewhere else entirely, miles away, right then, slapping each another on the shoulder, opening their trunk lids and their tailgates wide, exposing hungry space inside.
Possible.
He waited.
Eleven-thirty was just the same. Pitch dark and silent. Still OK. Still consistent, still logical, still expected. But getting close. All the well known sayings. The crunch was coming. The money shot. The rubber was about to meet the road. For the first time in his life he paid close attention to what his body was doing. He felt stress building inside him, and he felt an automatic response, some kind of a primitive biological leftover, that converted it to focus and strength and aggression. He felt his scalp tingle, and an electric flow pass through his hands to his fingers. He felt his eyesight grow vivid. He felt himself get physically larger, and harder, and faster, and stronger.
He knew Sanderson would be feeling the same things. He wondered how they mixed with fentanyl. He hoped she was doing OK.
Then he saw headlights on the service road.
Chapter 46
The headlights were dim and yellow, which meant it was an old vehicle, and they were at a modest height and a regular width apart, which meant the old vehicle was normal size. Not a giant pick-up truck. Not a huge SUV. It drove up to the building and the wash from its lights on the siding showed it to be a sedan maybe twenty years old. Shaped like a slug. Dull paint, an indeterminate dark color. No hubcaps. A snapped-off antenna.
It backed up and parked neatly, out of the way, and a guy got out. He could have been fifty. Thick around the waist, hair plastered to his scalp with oil. He was wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a word on it. A brand name, perhaps. He walked over to the roll-up door, and did something with a key. Then he squatted like a weightlifter and hauled on the bottom lip, and the door came clattering up, getting faster, as if a counterbalance was kicking in.
The guy in the sweatshirt walked back to his car. He leaned in and got a clipboard from the passenger seat. It had a pen on a string. Some kind of a list. The guy walked back to the garage and took up station near the entrance.
There will be a guard at the door.
The guy took out a handgun and checked the chamber.
Eleven forty-one in the evening.
Four minutes later there were more headlights on the service road. Higher, wider and brighter than the guy’s old sedan. It was a Dodge Durango SUV. It drove toward the garage door. It stopped next to the guy. The window came down. Something was said. The guy checked his clipboard, and waved the truck inside. It parked at an angle, in a chalked-out bay.
A minute later a rusted Silverado drove up the road. No better condition than Stackley’s old thing. But no camper shell. It had a flat vinyl cover on the bed. Then an old black four-wheel-drive showed up. Both parked inside.
By five minutes to midnight nine of the ten chalk bays were occupied. Only number five was empty. The guy in the sweatshirt looked relaxed about it. Rules were rules. The other nine guys waiting next to their trucks looked happy about it. More to go around.
The guy in the sweatshirt checked his watch.
His phone rang.
He listened.
He called out, “Two minutes, guys. It’s nearly here.”
Two minutes later a white panel van came charging up the road, going fast, then braking hard. It stopped and waited. It had New Jersey plates. The guy in the sweatshirt gave it a sign, and then he ran inside the building. The van turned and drove along the outside of the garage, all the way, front to back. It turned again, tight and awkward, and nosed in through the rear door. The opposite way from everyone else. It stopped level with the truck in bay number one. The guard ran up inside and met it there. The driver got out.
Which all changed the plan. Afterward Reacher was mad he hadn’t read more into the chalk numbers on the floor. At first he thought they might represent geographical regions, or length of service. Some tradition or perk of the job. Or nothing at all. Maybe they were there just for the fun of it. You chalk some bays, you might as well chalk some numbers. To make it look professional.
But they were a priority order. Some kind of a status ladder. Maybe number one was the guy with the best volume. Like salesman of the week. Like a prize. Part of which was the right to a fast getaway. First served, first out of there. A decent incentive.
There were a dozen different mechanical ways to make that happen. All kinds of maneuvers. But by far the simplest was to bring the panel van in through the rear door.
Reacher was at the front door.
He had foreseen that the guard and the driver from the panel van would be side by side at the start of the process. The plan was, as soon as the driver opened the van, unsuspectingly, voluntarily, without having been beaten or coerced in any way at all, so that everyone’s conscience was entirely clear, then Reacher would fire a nine-millimeter round over their heads, into the booming space beyond, to freeze them, to claim possession of the panel van, whereupon Sanderson would announce her presence from behind, and they would all glance back and see a mysterious figure pointing a handgun, and any spark of early trouble would snuff out right then. Only an expert would spot the Ruger for a .22. Only an expert with X-ray vision would know it was nearly empty. He thought the plan would work. First the guard and the driver, and then the other guys. Two different categories of people. He felt the sequence was important.
He was at the wrong end of the garage.
Everything was turned around.
He was now Sanderson.
She was now him.
With adrenaline, and fight hormones, and fentanyl, or maybe half fentanyl and half withdrawal, and pain and discomfort, and the sweats and the shakes. Right then she would be watching the driver. Waiting for him to open up. A combination or a special key. Or maybe not. Maybe just a regular door. In which case it would all happen faster. The .22 was quiet for a firearm, but still a lot louder than anything else in life. In the echoing space a .22 would do the job just fine.
If she took over.
If she did it.
Nothing yet.
Still nothing. Maybe it was a long combination. Like a computer. All kinds of characters, upper case, lower case. Numbers and symbols.
Nothing.
Then a colossal gunshot explosion, and a brutal bang as a bullet hit a beam overhead.
Everyone froze.
Up ahead she stepped out and said, “Stay where you are.”
Like he would have.
Behind them he stepped out and said, “Nobody move.”
Like she would have.
They glanced his way. He had the Smith aimed low, at their waists. He had learned that angle worried people. Some kind of an old animal instinct.
Up ahead she shook her head. They were turned around. The next lines were his.
He used his MP voice.
He said, “Remove all cell phones and firearms from pockets, holsters, and other places of concealment. Place them on the floor at your feet. Do not get cute with me. In a moment I will search you. If I find a further firearm I will shoot you through the back of the knee with it. If I find a cell phone I will shoot you through the back of the knee with my own firearm. These are promises as solemn as government debt. Please take a moment to think about it. We’re not cops or federal agents. This is purely private business. For you, just a temporary nuisance. So weigh it up. You can walk the rest of your life, or you can use a wheelchair. Figure out what works best for you.”
Eleven guys, eleven phones, twelve guns. The guard had a small .38 on his ankle. Mackenzie stepped out to collect them. She was pointing the empty Springfield. She looked like an afternoon movie. The beautiful queen of the underworld. They all stared. Reacher told them to kick their guns and their phones toward her. She picked them all up, one by one, and she put them in a bag she found in the panel van. It had a cheerful logo, in greens and blues, like the grass and the sky.
Reacher and Sanderson herded all eleven guys into bay number five. A tight fit. Like on the stairs, getting out of the ball game. Trapped between two slab-sided trucks. Reacher and Sanderson stood off at forty-five degree angles, face on, guns leveled. Not operationally necessary. Either one of them would have been effective. But two had a calming effect. It kept unwise thoughts to a minimum. And therefore casualties. It was a humanitarian deployment of resources. The modern army.
At first he thought it was working. The eleven guys were unusually subdued. They were stunned, quiet, defeated, somehow shaken. Somehow demoralized.
Somehow sickened.
Then he realized.
Sanderson’s hood was still peeled back.
Behind them in the corner of his eye he saw Bramall reverse the Toyota through the same door the van had used, and maneuver it backward straight in line with the panel van, the tailgate close to the van’s rear doors. He saw Mackenzie start shoveling boxes across, from one vehicle to the other. White and crisp and shiny. Lots of them. Bramall lent a hand. They worked hard together. Box after box. Space became an issue. He saw them tossing bags out of the trunk, over into the back seat.
He stepped back a pace and looked left and right along the row of vehicles. He liked the look of the Dodge Durango best. It was a regular shape. It looked like it would have familiar controls.
He pointed at it.
He said, “Whose is that?”
Some guy shuffled.
Reacher said, “Are the keys in it?”
The guy nodded.
“Gas?”
The guy nodded.
�
��Good to go here,” Bramall called out, from behind.