Ли Чайлд - The Sentinel

Plus ça change … as his mother used to say. The more things change …

The moment Reacher stepped through the gap where the tall wooden door used to be he knew seventy-five minutes weren’t enough. Not this time. He’d hit the one in ten. The ambushers were already there. He couldn’t see them. Yet. Or hear them. Or smell them. But he knew. Eyes were on him. He could feel them. He could feel a chill on his neck. Some kind of primal response to being watched. A warning mechanism hardwired into his lizard brain, as finely tuned as his ancestors’ had been millions of years ago. Then, forests. Now, a factory. Either way, evading predators. Not getting eaten. Not getting shot. Living to fight another day.

Plus ça change …

Reacher kept moving. Same speed. Same direction. He didn’t want whoever was watching to know he was aware of their presence. Not until he knew exactly where they were. And how many there were. He strained his ears. Heard nothing. Scanned the rubble and the weeds covering the ground. Checked the long line of smashed windows. The gaping holes in the roof. Looking for movement. Shadow. Shape. Shine.

He saw nothing.

Reacher took another step. Something made a sound behind him. Metal shifting against stone. But not someone looking to shoot him. They could have done that already. A decoy? Reacher scanned the ground in front. Behind. Both sides. He increased the radius. Looking for signs of disturbance. A place for someone to hide. To spring out of when his attention was drawn away. To get in close, quickly, and neutralize his advantage in strength and size.

He saw nothing.

‘It’s just you and me, Major.’ It was a woman’s voice. Behind him. Calm and confident. ‘And there’s no need to worry. No need to do anything either of us will regret in the morning. I just want to talk.’

Reacher turned around. The woman he’d last seen driving the Toyota was standing next to a sheet of corrugated iron against the wall. She must have eased her way out from behind it. She was dressed all in black, with a small tactical backpack slung over one shoulder and her hair tied back in a ponytail. There was a gun in her hand. A Glock 19. Reacher approved of her choice. It was compact. Easy to conceal. And reliable. The chances of a misfire were slim to none. Her hand seemed steady. He was a sizeable target. They were fifteen feet apart. If he rushed her she would have fifteen chances to hit him, assuming the magazine was full. Sixteen if she had one already in the chamber. More than one chance per foot. Not odds Reacher liked.

‘I’ve never been much of a conversationalist,’ he said.

‘Then just listen. I know a lot about you. Enough to believe I can trust you. I need to even those scales. And I need to do it quickly. So I’m going to tell you one story from my past. My father was a Stanford man. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps but I had other ideas. I wanted to study in England so I applied to college there. One of the old ones. It doesn’t matter which. But because I was foreign I had to jump through a couple extra hoops. One was writing a special essay. There was no word limit. No time limit. And no choice of subject. The title they gave me was What is a risk? You know what I wrote?’

Reacher said nothing.

‘Four words. This is a risk . It worked. I got in. And I wasn’t lying. It was a risk. The biggest one I’d taken at that time. Now I’m going to take a bigger one. The biggest I’ve ever taken.’

She slipped the backpack off her shoulder and lobbed it underarm, straight at Reacher. It landed at his feet and kicked a small cloud of dust up over his shoes.

‘Pick it up,’ she said. ‘Open it.’

The pack was made of black ballistic nylon. It wasn’t new. One of the shoulder straps was starting to fray and the bottom corners were scuffed. A tried and tested piece of equipment. The best kind. It had a small pocket on the right-hand side. An identical pocket on the left. Both were empty. There was a triple row of MOLLE webbing across the front, with nothing attached. And one internal compartment. Reacher unzipped it and looked inside. There were three spare magazines for the Glock. A set of car keys. For the Toyota, Reacher assumed. A hairbrush with two elastic ponytail holders wrapped around the handle. And a book.

‘See the Bible?’ she said. ‘Take it out.’

Reacher set the pack down and fished out the book. It was a King James hardcover edition. It had a dark red cardboard front. A dark red cardboard back. Gold printing on the front. Gold printing on the spine. It was scuffed and worn as if she carried it everywhere. The leaves were yellow and dark as if the victim of some spillage, long ago. Maybe some kind of fruit drink. Certainly something sticky, because the pages were gummed up solid.

‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘Dig your fingernails in. Pull. It will open.’

‘I don’t need to.’ Reacher slipped the book back into the pack. ‘I’ve seen one just like it before. You’re with the FBI?’

‘Special Agent Fisher,’ she said. ‘Margaret. You can call me Mags. If you help me.’

‘What kind of help do you need? The same kind Toni Garza gave you? Did you know enough to trust her, too? And did she trust you in return?’

‘Who’s Toni Garza?’

Reacher said nothing.

‘I’m serious,’ Fisher said. ‘I don’t know who Toni Garza is. I have an entirely different problem.’

‘Toni Garza was a journalist. She’s dead. Murdered by the people you’re working for. In a very nasty way.’

‘I can believe that,’ Fisher said, after a moment. ‘I’m working for some very nasty people. But I didn’t kill her. My cell didn’t kill her. I don’t know anything about her. But I do know this. If you don’t help me, more people like her will get hurt. Maybe murdered. Also in a very nasty way.’

Reacher said nothing.

‘The cell I’ve infiltrated was sent here to bag someone named Rusty Rutherford. But I guess you know that since you stumbled into the op and royally screwed it up.’

‘I’m not helping you capture Rutherford. Even if you convince me about Garza.’

Fisher held up her hand. ‘I’m not asking you to. All I need from you is information. Rutherford was to be taken because he has something a certain foreign power is desperate to get its hands on. He either has this thing in his possession or he knows where it is. If I can get to it first, before they go after Rutherford again, that’s the best way to keep him out of further danger.’

‘Which foreign power are we talking about?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘If you want my help you’re going to have to turn your cards all the way up.’

Fisher sighed. ‘Russia.’

‘OK. And what is the thing they want?’

‘I don’t know. Not exactly. All the cell was told is that it’s an item. An object. Something physical. It contains data or records of some kind so it could be a paper file or a photograph. But I think it’s most likely to be computer related, given the job Rutherford just lost.’

‘What kind of records?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Something that reveals a name or an identity. Or that would enable us to deduce one.’

‘Of an agent?’

Fisher nodded.

‘Theirs or ours?’

‘Theirs.’

‘An active agent?’

‘Very active. And that’s a situation that needs to be corrected.’

‘Why is there an agent in a sleepy town like this?’

Fisher shook her head. ‘The information is here. Not the agent. He’s somewhere else. Or she.’

‘Where?’

‘Repeat a word of this and I’ll kill you. I’ll probably have to kill myself, too. Have you heard of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory?’