Lee Child - Nothing to Lose

Reacher said, “Raphael was a Marine.”

Maria nodded. Said nothing.

Reacher said, “He had been to Iraq twice. He didn’t want to go back a third time. So nearly four weeks ago he went on the run. He headed up to LA. Maybe he had friends there. Did he call you?”

Maria said nothing.

Vaughan said, “You’re not in trouble, Maria. Nobody’s going to get you for anything.”

Maria said, “He called most days.”

Reacher asked, “How was he?”

“Scared. Scared to death. Scared of being AWOL, scared of going back.”

“What happened in Iraq?”

“To him? Not much, really. But he saw things. He said the people we were supposed to be helping were killing us, and we were killing the people we were supposed to be helping. Everybody was killing everybody else. In bad ways. It was driving him crazy.”

“So he ran. And he called most days.”

Maria nodded.

Reacher said, “But then he didn’t call, for two or three days. Is that right?”

“He lost his cell phone. He was moving a lot. To stay safe. Then he got a new phone.”

“How did he sound on the new phone?”

“Still scared. Very worried. Even worse.”

“Then what?”

“He called to say he had found some people. Or some people had found him. They were going to get him to Canada. Through a place called Despair, in Colorado. He said I should come here, to Hope, and wait for his call. Then I should join him in Canada.”

“Did he call from Despair?”

“No.”

“Why did you go to the MPs?”

“To ask if they had found him and arrested him. I was worried. But they said they had never heard of him. They were army, he was Marine Corps.”

“And so you came back here to wait some more.”

Maria nodded.

Reacher said, “It wasn’t exactly like that. He was arrested in LA. The Marines caught up with him. He didn’t lose his phone. He was in jail for two or three days.”

“He didn’t tell me that.”

“He wasn’t allowed to.”

“Did he break out again?”

Reacher shook his head. “My guess is he made a deal. The Marine Corps offered him a choice. Five years in Leavenworth, or go undercover to bust the escape line that ran from California all the way to Canada. Names, addresses, descriptions, techniques, routes, all that kind of stuff. He agreed, and they drove him back to LA and turned him loose. That’s why the MPs didn’t respond. They found out what was going on and were told to stonewall you.”

“So where is Raphael now? Why doesn’t he call?”

Reacher said, “My father was a Marine. Marines have a code. Did Raphael tell you about it?”

Maria said, “Unit, corps, God, country.”

Reacher nodded. “It’s a list of their loyalties, in priority order. Raphael’s primary loyalty was to his unit. His company, in fact. Really just a handful of guys. Guys like him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think he agreed to the deal but couldn’t carry it through. He couldn’t betray guys just like him. I think he rode up to Despair but didn’t call in to the Marines. I think he hung around on the edge of town and stayed out of sight, because he was conflicted. He didn’t want to know who was involved, because he was afraid he might have to give them away later. He hung out for days, agonizing. He got thirsty and hungry. He started hallucinating and decided to walk over to Hope, and find you, and get out some other way.”

“So where is he?”

“He didn’t make it, Maria. He collapsed halfway. He died.”

“But where is his body?”

“The people in Despair took care of it.”

“I see.”

Then for the second time in an hour Reacher watched a woman cry. Vaughan held her and Reacher said, “He was a good man, Maria. He was just a kid who couldn’t take any more. And in the end he didn’t betray what he believed in.” He said those things over and over again, in different orders, and with different emphases, but they didn’t help.

Maria was all cried out after twenty minutes and Vaughan led her back inside. Then she joined Reacher again and they walked away together. She asked, “How did you know?”

Reacher said, “No other rational explanation.”

“Did he really do what you said? Agonized and then sacrificed himself?”

“Marines are good at self-sacrifice. On the other hand maybe he double-crossed the Corps from the get-go. Maybe he planned all along to head straight to Hope and grab Maria and disappear.”

“It doesn’t take four days to walk from Despair to Hope.”

“No,” Reacher said. “It doesn’t.”

“So he probably did the right thing.”

“I hope that was Maria’s impression.”

“Do you think he told them about the people in California?”

“I don’t know.”

“This will carry on if he didn’t.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It could get out of hand.”

“You could make a couple of calls. They’re in the hotel register in Despair, name and address. You could check and see who they are, and whether they’re still around, or whether they’ve disappeared into federal custody.”

“I’m sorry about what I said before.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

They walked on, and then Reacher said, “And you weren’t wrong, when you did what you did the night before last. Otherwise whoever killed David killed you too. You want to give them that? Because I don’t. I want you to have a life.”

“That sounds like the beginnings of a farewell speech.”

“Does it?”

“Why stay? The Pentagon is washing its dirty linen in private, which isn’t a crime. And we seem to have decided this other thing isn’t a crime either.”

“There’s one more thing on my mind,” Reacher said.

Reacher and Vaughan walked back to the diner, where Reacher ate for the first time since the burger he had scored in the Fort Shaw mess the night before. He topped up his caffeine level with four mugs of coffee and when he had finished he said, “We need to go see those MPs. Now you’ve established contact we might get away with a face-to-face meeting.”

Vaughan said, “We’re going to drive through Despair again?”

Reacher shook his head. “Let’s take your truck and go cross-country.”

They peeled the paper barcodes off the new glass and Vaughan fetched paper towels and Windex from her kitchen and they wiped the wax and the handprints off the screen. Then they set off, early in the afternoon. Vaughan took the wheel. They drove five miles west on Hope’s road and risked another nine on Despair’s. The air was clear and the mountains were visible ahead, first invitingly close and then impossibly distant. Three miles before Despair’s first vacant lot they slowed and bumped down off the road, onto the scrub, and started a long loop to the north. They kept the town on their left, on a three-mile radius. It was just a blur in the distance. Not possible to tell if it was guarded by mobs or sentries, or abandoned altogether.

It was slow going across the open land. Undergrowth scraped along the underside and low bushes slapped at their flanks. The ladder and the wrecking bar in the load bed bounced and rattled. The flashlight rolled from side to side. Occasionally they found dry washes and followed them through looping meanders at a higher speed. Then it was back to picking their way around table rocks bigger than the Chevy itself and keeping the sun centered on the top rail of the windshield. Four times they drove into natural corrals and had to back up and start over. After an hour the town fell away behind them and the plant showed up ahead on the left. The wall glowed white in the sun. The parking lot looked empty. No cars. There was no smoke rising from the plant. No sparks, no noise. No activity at all.