Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

“Mauney arrested them in the hospital lot. Maybe he had help from Lamaison’s guys. Crowded place, total surprise, what were they going to do?”

Reacher drove on. The Prelude was an unremarkable car, but he didn’t want it to be seen too many times in the same place. He turned a corner and parked a quarter of a mile away. Didn’t speak. Because he had nothing to say.

Neagley’s phone rang again. Her personal cell. She answered. Listened. Clicked off. Closed her eyes.

“My Pentagon guy,” she said. “The missiles just rolled out the gate in Colorado.”

If Mahmoud has got the missiles, then this thing is bigger than we are. We have to suck it up and move on . Reacher looked at Neagley. She opened her eyes and stared right back.

“How much do they weigh?” Reacher asked.

“Weigh?”

“As in weight. Pounds and ounces.”

“I don’t know. They’re new. I never saw one.”

“Guess.”

“Heavier than a Stinger. Because they do more. But still man-portable. Crated, with launch tubes and spare parts and manuals, say fifty pounds each.”

“That’s sixteen and a quarter tons.”

“A semi,” Neagley said.

“Average speed on the interstates, fifty miles an hour?”

“Probably.”

“North on I-25 to I-80, then west to Nevada, that’s about nine hundred miles. So we’ve got eighteen hours. Call it twenty-four, because the driver will take a rest period.”

“They’re not going to Nevada,” Neagley said. “ Nevada is bullshit, because they’re going to use these things, not destroy them.”

“Wherever. Anywhere significant is eighteen hours from Denver.”

Neagley shook her head. “This is insane. We can’t wait twenty-four hours. Or eighteen. You said it yourself, there could be ten thousand KIAs.”

“But not yet.”

“We can’t wait,” Neagley said again. “Easier to stop the truck on the way out of Denver. It could be headed anywhere. It could be headed to New York. JFK, or LaGuardia. Or Chicago. You want to think about Little Wing deployed at O’Hare?”

“Not really.”

“Every minute we delay makes that truck harder to find.”

“Moral dilemma,” Reacher said. “Two people we know, or ten thousand we don’t.”

“We have to tell someone.”

Reacher said nothing.

“We have to, Reacher.”

“They might not listen. They didn’t listen about September eleventh.”

“You’re clutching at straws. They’ve changed. We have to tell someone.”

“We will,” Reacher said. “But not yet.”

“Karla and Dave will have a better chance with a couple of SWAT teams on their side.”

“You’re kidding. They’ll wind up as collateral damage in a heartbeat.”

Neagley said, “We can’t even get through the fence. Dixon will die, O’Donnell will die, ten thousand other people will die, and we’ll die.”

“You want to live forever?”

“I don’t want to die today. Do you?”

“I really don’t care one way or the other.”

“Seriously?”

“I never have. Why would I?”

“You are psychotic.”

“Look on the bright side.”

“Which is what?”

“Maybe none of the bad stuff will happen.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe we’ll win. You and me.”

“Here? Maybe. But later? Dream on. We have no idea where that truck is going.”

“We can find out later.”

“You think?”

“It’s what we’re good at.”

“Good enough to gamble ten thousand lives against two?”

“I hope so,” Reacher said.

He drove a mile south and parked again on a curving side street outside a custom Harley motorcycle shop. He could see New Age’s helicopter in the far distance.

He asked, “What is their security going to be like?”

“Normally?” Neagley said. “Motion detectors on the fence and big locks on all the doors and a guy in the sentry hut twenty-four hours a day. That’s all they need, normally. But today isn’t going to be normal. You can forget about that. They know we’re still out here. The whole of New Age security is going to be in there, locked and loaded.”

“Seven men.”

“Seven we know about. Maybe more.”

“Maybe.”

“And they’re going to be inside the fence. We’re going to be outside the fence.”

“Let me worry about the fence.”

“There’s no way through it.”

“Doesn’t need to be. There’s a gate. What time does it get full dark?”

“Say nine o’clock, to be safe.”

“They won’t fly before dark. We’ve got seven hours. Seven out of our twenty-four.”

“We never had twenty-four.”

“You elected me CO. We’ve got what I say we’ve got.”

“They could have shot them both already.”

“They didn’t shoot Franz or Orozco or Swan. They’re worried about ballistics.”

“This is insane.”

“I’m not going to lose another two,” Reacher said.

They drove around New Age’s block one more time, fast and unobtrusive, and fixed the geography in their minds. The gate was in the center of the front face of the square. The main building was front and center behind it at the end of a short driveway. In back of that the three outbuildings were scattered. One was close to the helipad. One was a little farther away. The last was standing on its own, maybe thirty yards from anything else. All four buildings were set on concrete pads. They had gray galvanized siding. No signs, no labels. It was a severe, practical establishment. There were no trees. No landscaping. Just uneven brown grass and hard dirt paths and a parking lot.

“Where are the Chryslers?” Reacher asked.

“Out,” Neagley said. “Looking for us.”

They headed back to the hospital in Glendale. Neagley collected her car from the lot. They stopped in at a supermarket. Bought a pack of wooden kitchen matches. And two cases of Evian water. Twelve one-liter bottles, nested together in packs of six and shrink-wrapped in plastic. They stopped again down the street at an auto parts store. Bought a red plastic five-gallon gasoline can and a bag of polishing rags.

Then they stopped at a gas station and filled the cars and the can.

They headed southwest out of Glendale and ended up in Silver Lake. Reacher called Neagley on the phone and said, “We should drop by the motel now.”

Neagley said, “They might still have surveillance going.”

“Which is exactly why we should drop by. If we can take one of them out now, that’s one less to worry about later.”

“Might be more than one.”

“Bring it on. The more the merrier.”

Sunset Boulevard ran right through Silver Lake, south of the reservoir. It was a very long road. Reacher found it and headed west. Six miles later he cruised past the motel without slowing. Neagley was twenty yards behind him in her Civic. He led her through a left turn and parked a block away. There were service alleys that gave them a roundabout route into the back of the motel. They walked through the alleys fifteen feet apart. No sense in making two people into a single target. Reacher went first, with his hand wrapped around the Glock in his pocket. He entered the motel lot slowly, from the rear, through a tight passage lined with trash receptacles. The lot looked innocent enough. Eight cars, five out-of-state plates, no blue Chryslers. Nobody in the shadows. He went to the right. He knew that fifteen feet behind him Neagley would go to the left. It was their default arrangement, established many years before. R for Reacher, L for her middle initial. He made a complete half-circuit of the building. There was nobody out of place. Nobody suspicious. Nobody in the lounge, nobody in the laundry room. Across the width of the lot he could see the clerk all alone in the office.