Lee CHILD - Better off Dead

I said, “It doesn’t matter which of us talks to him. Or if neither of us does. The outcome will be the same. The guy’s either on Dendoncker’s payroll or he’s not. He’s well disposed to us, or he’s not. We may need to persuade him, or threaten him, or bribe him. In any case there’s no guarantee of a result. Even if he agrees to help, can we trust him? What if he changes his mind later? What if he gets cold feet? And say he does stay away, how will Dendoncker behave? Will he poke the body? My body. Prod it? Stab it? Chop part of it off? Shoot it?”

Fenton didn’t reply.

“And Dendoncker’s unlikely to come alone. How many guys will he bring? What weapons will they have? Who else will be in the building?”

Fenton shrugged.

“And if we do snatch him, what about afterward? We’ll need time to encourage him to confess. Where would we go? How long would it take? Where’s the nearest police station, when we’re done?”

“I get the point.” Fenton crossed her arms. “But it could still work.”

“It could. Nothing’s impossible. I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance of success. No more. With a high risk of collateral damage.”

“I’ll take those odds.”

“I won’t. Not when there are alternatives.”

“There’s no alternative. We must go ahead. OK. We’ll swap roles. I’ll tell them I’m sick. I’ll play the part of Mickey at the rendezvous. I’ll pretend to get shot. Let them take me to the morgue. I’ll deal with Dendoncker myself when he shows up.”

“That won’t work. If you’re sick they’ll send others in your place. Who will kill you, for real, unless you kill them first. Neither of which would help.”

“OK. So you go to the rendezvous, too. Lurk around in the dark until everyone shows up. Then shoot me with a blank before anyone else has the chance. They won’t care who fired as long as I’m dead. Or they think I am.”

“What happens when they check your pulse?”

Fenton was silent.

“Or if they give you a tap to the head, to make sure you’re dead?”

Fenton opened her mouth, then closed it again without speaking.

I said, “Why not get Dendoncker thrown in jail? There’s a federal agent I know. You can trust him. You could work with him. Stay undercover. Provide intel. Isn’t that what you trained for?”

“That would take too long. We have to do it tonight. I’ll find a way. With or without you.”

“Why is this so urgent? The best way to honor Michael is to take the time to do it right. What about the vetting guys, for example. Who cleared Dendoncker for entry to the States? They must have plenty of muscle. And if they made a mistake, they’ll want to put it right. To avoid embarrassment, if nothing else.”

“This isn’t just about Michael. It never was.”

“No? Then who else is it about?”

“I don’t know names. Innocent people.”

“The vets in Dendoncker’s crew?”

“No. Random strangers.”

“Who? What kind of strangers?”

Fenton took a breath. “Reacher, there’s something I didn’t tell you. I know what Dendoncker’s doing with those planes. What he’s going to transport in them. Bombs.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because Michael was making them.”

Fenton pushed the bags of fake blood aside and sat on the bed. She put her head in her hands. She rested her elbows on her knees. She was completely still for over a minute. Then she straightened up.

“I didn’t lie to you, Reacher. I just didn’t tell the whole truth.”

“You better tell it now. If you want me to reconsider.”

“OK. Rewind to when I left the army. I went into law enforcement. I joined the FBI. Became a Special Agent. Evidence processing was my specialty. I worked out of a couple of field offices, did well, and got assigned to TEDAC as a result. Do you know anything about it?”

“Not much.”

“It’s the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center. Think of it as bringing forensics to the battlefield. It began during the second Gulf War. Our troops were taking a hammering. Someone got the idea of collecting evidence and sending it to Quantico. A team was put together to analyze everything that came in. They came up with ways to spot IEDs. To defend against them. Defuse them. Eventually they were able to identify the bomb makers. Sometimes right down to an individual. Sometimes to a factory. The recovered components tell a story. So do the techniques that are used. Even the way a wire is twisted can be significant. The team was so successful it expanded and moved to a new base in Alabama. Its scope expanded, too. Now it has a whole world mission, with no constraints on time. Information is shared with partners. Arrests have been made all over the globe with TEDAC’s help. London. Berlin. Addis Ababa. All in the last few weeks. Evidence is being brought in from more places, and from further back in time. Material from Lockerbie, Scotland, is on its way, I heard. And Yemen. And some already arrived from Beirut, that big barracks bomb, all the way back in the eighties.”

There was another weird echo from the past. I’d thought plenty over the years about the guy whose jawbone wound up in my abdomen. And the other Marines who died that day. But I hadn’t dwelled too much on the physical evidence. I knew it was examined thoroughly at the time. Picked over and combed through by experts, with all the best tools and techniques available back then. I figured once all the clues and leads had been sniffed out anything left would have been disposed of. Cleaned up. Thrown away. Preferably set on fire. I never imagined it getting brought back to the States, so long after all the bodies.

She said, “There’s an initiative to facilitate this kind of work. It’s called ICEP. The International Collection and Engagement Program. I was part of it. Specialists are sent to partner countries to help with training. That includes Afghanistan. Because of my background, I got sent there. To a scene that hadn’t been cleared properly. It plays into a classic AQ tactic. They hide a bunch of devices. Some obvious. Some, not so much. The rest is history. For my foot, anyway.”

“That’s why you moved to work in a lab?”

“Right. But I didn’t leave the Bureau. I couldn’t work in the field anymore so they let me retrain. I’m a bio recovery technician now. Or I was. I pulled prints, but mostly from older devices. I recovered hairs, and anything that could yield DNA. It was uneventful, dull, but sometimes very satisfying. Like a month ago. We had a case involving a guy who used to work for a Kuwait oil company. A lead came in claiming that he was an AQI sympathizer. Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Bureau set up a sting operation and they got him on tape boasting to an undercover agent about how he used to build bombs in a basement in Abu Ghraib. They cross-referenced dates and places, pulled a bunch of evidence that hadn’t been processed yet, and guess what? I pulled his print from a fragment of a roadside bomb. Gold star for me. Life in prison for him. I was happy with that result. Unlike my last case. An unexploded bomb came in. That’s the holy grail to us. Everything is intact. It’s a feast of evidence. This was no different. There were a bunch of standout things. First, it was found within the United States, not brought here from somewhere else. Second, it had a GPS chip in it, which we figure was to let the terrorists know when their target was near so they could detonate. But as a backup. Because the third thing was, it also had a transponder.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“OK. It’s like this. There are two parts. One sends out a radio signal. The other bounces back a reply. One was in the bomb. The other would be carried by the target. Presumably without his or her knowledge. I think it was supposed to be the primary trigger.”