Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

“Turn south,” he said. “And climb.”

“Climbing eats fuel,” the pilot said.

“We need a better angle.”

The Bell climbed, slowly, a couple of hundred feet. The pilot dropped the nose and turned a wide circle, like he was hosing the horizon with an imaginary searchlight.

They saw nothing.

There was no cell coverage.

“Higher,” Reacher said.

“Can’t do it,” the pilot said. “Look at the dial.”

Reacher found the fuel gauge. The needle was riding the end stop. Officially the tanks were empty. He closed his eyes again and pictured the map. Berenson had said Dean had complained about the commute from hell. To Highland Park he had only two choices. Either Route 138 on the east flank of Mount San Antonio, or Route 2, to the west, past the Mount Wilson Observatory. Route 2 was probably smaller and twistier. And it joined the 210 at Glendale. Which probably made it more hellish than the eastern approach. No reason to choose it unless it was a total no-brainer. Which meant Dean was starting from somewhere due south of Palmdale, not east of south. Reacher looked straight ahead and waited until the distant grid of lights slid back into view.

“Now pull a one-eighty and head back,” he said.

“We’re out of fuel.”

“Just do it.”

The craft turned in its own length. Dipped its nose and clattered onward.

Sixty seconds later they found Neagley.

A mile in front and four hundred feet down they saw a cone of blue light turning and pulsing like a beacon. It looked like Neagley had the Civic on maximum lock and was driving a thirty-foot circle and flashing between dipped and brights as she went. The effect was spectacular. The beams swept and leapt and threw moving shadows and cleared a couple of hundred feet where there were no obstructions. Like a lighthouse on a rocky shore. There were small buttes and mesas and gullies, thrown into dramatic relief. To the north, low buildings. Power lines to the east. To the west the fractured land fell away into a shallow arroyo maybe forty feet wide and twenty deep.

“Land there,” Reacher said. “In the ditch. And keep the wheels up.”

The pilot said, “Why?”

“Because that’s the way I want it.”

The pilot drifted west a little and dropped a couple of hundred feet and turned to line up with the arroyo. Then he took the Bell down like an elevator. A siren went off to warn that he was landing with the undercarriage up. He ignored it and kept on going. He slowed twenty feet off the ground and eased on down and pancaked gently on the arroyo’s rocky bed. Stones crunched and metal grated and the floor tipped a foot from horizontal. Out the windows Reacher could see Neagley’s lights coming toward them through a sandstorm kicked up by the rotor wash.

Then the fuel ran out.

The engines died and the rotor shuddered to a stop.

The cabin went quiet.

Reacher was first out the door. He batted his way through clouds of warm dust and sent Dixon and O’Donnell ahead to meet with Neagley and then turned back to the Bell. He opened the cockpit door and looked in at the pilot. The guy was still strapped to his seat. He was flicking the face of the fuel gauge with his fingernail.

“Nice landing,” Reacher said. “You’re a good pilot.”

The guy said, “Thanks.”

“That thing with the rotation,” Reacher said. “The way it kept the door open up there. Smart move.”

“Basic aerodynamics.”

“But then, you had plenty of practice.”

The pilot said nothing.

“Four times,” Reacher said. “That I know about, at least.”

The pilot said nothing.

“Those men were my friends,” Reacher said.

“Lamaison told me I had to do it.”

“Or?”

“I would lose my job.”

“That’s all? You let them throw four live human beings out of your helicopter to save your job?”

“I’m paid to follow instructions.”

“You ever heard about a trial at Nuremberg? That excuse really doesn’t cut it anymore.”

The pilot said, “It was wrong, I know.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“What choice did I have?”

“Lots of choices,” Reacher said. Then he smiled. The pilot relaxed a little. Reacher shook his head like he was bemused by it all and leaned in and patted the guy on the cheek. Left his hand there, far side of the guy’s face, a friendly gesture. He worked his thumb up toward the guy’s eye socket, pressed his index finger on the guy’s temple, worked his other three fingers behind the guy’s ear, into his hair. Then he broke the guy’s neck, one-handed, with a single convulsive twist. Then he bounced the guy’s head around, front to back, side to side, to make sure the spinal cord was properly severed. He didn’t want the guy to wake up a paraplegic. He didn’t want the guy to wake up at all.

He walked away and left him there, still strapped in his seat. Turned back after fifty feet and checked. A helicopter in a ditch, slightly tilted, wheels up, tanks empty. A crash. The pilot still on board, impact injuries, an unfortunate accident. Not perfect, but reasonable .

Neagley had parked a hundred feet from the arroyo, which was about half the distance to Edward Dean’s front door. Her lights were still on bright. When Reacher got to the car he turned and looked back and checked again. The Bell was hidden pretty well. The crown of the rotor was visible, but only just. The blades themselves drooped out of sight under their own weight. The dust was settling. Neagley and Dixon and O’Donnell were standing together in a tight group of three.

“We OK?” Reacher asked.

Dixon and O’Donnell nodded. Neagley didn’t.

“You mad with me?” Reacher asked her.

“Not really,” she said. “I would have been if you’d screwed up.”

“I needed you to work out where the missiles were headed.”

“You already knew.”

“I wanted a second opinion. And the address.”

“Well, here we are. No missiles.”

“They’re still in transit.”

“We hope.”

“Let’s go see Mr. Dean.”

They piled into the tiny Civic and Neagley drove the hundred feet to Dean’s door. Dean opened up on the first knock. Clearly he had been rousted by the helicopter drone and the flashing lights. He didn’t look much like a rocket scientist. More like a coach at a third-rate high school. He was tall and loose-limbed and had a shock of sandy hair. He was maybe forty years old. He was barefoot and dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Night attire. It was close to midnight.

“Who are you people?” he asked.

Reacher explained who they were, and why they were there.

Dean had no idea what he was talking about.

Reacher had been expecting some kind of a denial. Lamaison had warned Berenson to stay quiet, and clearly he would have done the same or more with Dean. But Dean’s denial seemed genuine. The guy was puzzled, not evasive.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Reacher said. “We know what you did with the electronics packs, and we know why you had to do it.”

Suddenly there was something in Dean’s face. Just like with Margaret Berenson.

Reacher said, “We know about the threat against your daughter.”

“What threat?”

“Where is she?”

“Away. Her mother, too.”

“School’s not out.”

“An urgent family matter.”

Reacher nodded. “You sent them away. That was smart. “

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Reacher said, “Lamaison is dead.”

There was a flash of hope in Dean’s eyes, just for a split second, hard to see in the darkness.

“I threw him out of the helicopter,” Reacher said.

Dean said nothing.