Lee Child - Nothing to Lose

“And?”

“They all made a choice.”

“David still exists.”

“In your memory. Not in the world.”

“He’s not dead.”

“He’s not alive, either.”

Vaughan said nothing. Just turned away and took a fine china mug from a cupboard and filled it with coffee from the machine. She handed the mug to Reacher and asked, “What was in Thurman’s little box?”

“You saw the box?”

“I was over the wall ten seconds after you. Did you really think I was going to wait in the car?”

“I didn’t see you.”

“That was the plan. But I saw you. I saw the whole thing. Fly with me tonight? He ditched you somewhere, didn’t he?”

Reacher nodded. “Fort Shaw, Oklahoma. An army base.”

“You fell for it.”

“I sure did.”

“You’re not as smart as you think.”

“I never claimed to be smart.”

“What was in the box?”

“A plastic jar.”

“What was in the jar?”

“Soot,” Reacher said. “People, after a fire. They scrape it off the metal.”

Vaughan sat down at her table.

“That’s terrible,” she said.

“Worse than terrible,” Reacher said. “Complicated.”

“How?”

Reacher sat down opposite her.

“You can breathe easy,” he said. “There are no wrecked Humvees at the plant. They go someplace else.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Humvees don’t burn like that. Mostly they bust open and people spill out.”

Vaughan nodded. “David wasn’t burned.”

Reacher said, “Only tanks burn like that. No way out of a burning tank. Soot is all that’s left.”

“I see.”

Reacher said nothing.

“But how is that complicated?” she asked.

“It’s the first in a series of conclusions. Like a logical chain reaction. We’re using main battle tanks over there. Which isn’t a huge surprise, I guess. But we’re losing some, which is a huge surprise. We always expected to lose a few, to the Soviets. But we sure as hell didn’t expect to lose any to a bunch of ragtag terrorists with improvised explosive devices. In less than four years they’ve figured out how to make shaped charges good enough to take out main battle tanks belonging to the U.S. Army. That doesn’t help our PR very much. I’m real glad the Cold War is over. The Red Army would be helpless with laughter. No wonder the Pentagon ships the wrecks in sealed containers to a secret location.”

Vaughan got up and walked over to her counter and picked up her glass of water. She emptied it in the sink and refilled it from a bottle in her refrigerator. Took a sip.

“I got a call this morning,” she said. “From the state lab. My tap water sample was very close to five parts per billion TCE. Borderline acceptable, but it’s going to get a lot worse if Thurman keeps on using as much of the stuff as he uses now.”

“He might stop,” Reacher said.

“Why would he?”

“That’s the final conclusion in the chain. We’re not there yet. And it’s only tentative.”

“So what was the second conclusion?”

“What does Thurman do with the wrecked tanks?”

“He recycles the steel.”

“Why would the Pentagon deploy MPs to guard recycled steel?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Pentagon wouldn’t. Nobody cares about steel. The MPs are there to guard something else.”

“Like what?”

“Only one possibility. A main battle tank’s front and side armor includes a thick layer of depleted uranium. It’s a byproduct from enriching natural uranium for nuclear reactors. It’s an incredibly strong and dense metal. Absolutely ideal for armor plate. So the second conclusion is that Thurman is a uranium specialist. And that’s what the MPs are there for. Because depleted uranium is toxic and somewhat radioactive. It’s the kind of thing you want to keep track of.”

“How toxic? How radioactive?”

“Tank crews don’t get sick from sitting behind it. But after a blast or an explosion, if it turns to dust or fragments or vapor, you can get very sick from breathing it, or by being hit by shrapnel made of it. That’s why they bring the wrecks back to the States. And that’s what the MPs are worried about, even here. Terrorists could steal it and break it up into small jagged pieces and pack them into an explosive device. It would make a perfect dirty bomb.”

“It’s heavy.”

“Incredibly.”

“They’d need a truck to steal it. Like you said.”

“A big truck.”

Reacher sipped his coffee and Vaughan sipped her water and said, “They’re cutting it up at the plant. With hammers and torches. That must make dust and fragments and vapor. No wonder everyone looks sick.”

Reacher nodded.

“The deputy died from it,” he said. “All those symptoms? Hair loss, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, blisters, sores, dehydration, organ failure? That wasn’t old age or TCE. It was radiation poisoning.”

“Are you sure?”

Reacher nodded again. “Very sure. Because he told me so. From his deathbed he said The, and then he stopped, and then he started again. He said, You did this to me. I thought it was a new sentence. I thought he was accusing me. But it was really all the same sentence. He was pausing for breath, that’s all. He was saying, The U did this to me. Like some kind of a plea, or an explanation, or maybe a warning. He was using the chemical symbol for uranium. Metal-workers’ slang, I guess. He was saying, The uranium did this to me. ”

Vaughan said, “The air at the plant must be thick with it. And we were right there.”

Reacher said, “Remember the way the wall glowed? On the infrared camera? It wasn’t hot. It was radioactive.”

Vaughan sipped her bottled water and stared into space, adjusting to a new situation that was in some ways better than she had imagined, and in some ways worse. She asked, “Why do you say there are no Humvees there?”

Reacher said, “Because the Pentagon specializes. Like I told you. It always has, and it always will. The plant in Despair is about uranium recycling. That’s all. Humvees go somewhere else. Somewhere cheaper. Because they’re easy. They’re just cars.”

“They send cars to Despair, too. We saw them. In the container. From Iraq or Iran.”

Reacher nodded.

“Exactly,” he said. “Which is the third conclusion. They sent those cars to Despair for a reason.”

“Which was what?”

“Only one logical possibility. Depleted uranium isn’t just for armor. They make artillery shells and tank shells out of it, too. Because it’s incredibly hard and dense.”

“So?”

“So the third conclusion is that those cars were hit with ammunition made from depleted uranium. They’re tainted, so they have to be processed appropriately. And they have to be hidden away. Because we’re using tanks and DU shells against thin-skinned civilian vehicles. That’s overkill. That’s very bad PR. Thurman said there are some things any government feels it politic to conceal, and he was right.”

“What the hell is happening over there?”

Reacher said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Vaughan raised her glass halfway and stopped. She looked at it like she was having second thoughts about ingesting anything and put it back down on the table. She said, “Tell me what you know about dirty bombs.”

“They’re the same as clean bombs,” Reacher said. “Except they’re dirty. A bomb detonates and creates a massive spherical pressure wave that knocks things over and pulps anything soft, like people, and small fragments of the casing are flung outward on the wave like bullets, which does further damage. That effect can be enhanced by packing extra shrapnel inside the casing around the explosive charge, like nails or ball bearings. A dirty bomb uses contaminated metal for the extra shrapnel, usually radioactive waste.”