Lee Child - Persuader

“Safe environment.”

“Not really. You could take a kid out of a college, easy as anything. No guards means no danger. I think the bodyguard thing for the trip home was just some kind of a sop to the fact that the kid is paranoid. I think it was purely an indulgence. I don’t think old man Beck can have thought it was really necessary, or he would have provided security at school as well. Or kept him out of school altogether.”

“So?”

“So I think there was some kind of a done deal somewhere in the past. As a result of the original kidnap, maybe. Something that guaranteed some kind of stability. Hence no bodyguards in the dorm. Hence Beck’s resentment, like somebody had suddenly broken an agreement.”

“You think?”

I nodded at the wheel. “He was surprised, and puzzled, and annoyed. His big question was who?”

“Obvious question.”

“But this was a how-dare-they kind of a question. There was attitude in it. Like somebody was out of line. It wasn’t just an inquiry. It was an expression of annoyance at somebody.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I described the truck. I described your guys.”

She smiled. “Safe enough.”

I shook my head. “He’s got a guy called Duke. First name unknown. Ex-cop. His head of security. I saw him this morning. He’d been up all night. He looked tired and he hadn’t showered. His suit coat was all creased, low down at the back.”

“So?”

“Means he was driving all night. I think he went down there to get a look at the Toyota. To check the rear license plate. Where did you stash it?”

“We let the state cops take it. To keep the plausibility going. We couldn’t take it back to the DEA garage. It’ll be in a compound somewhere.”

“Where will the plate lead?”

“ Hartford, Connecticut,” she said. “We busted a small-time Ecstasy ring.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

I drove on. The highway was getting busier.

“Our first mistake,” I said. “Beck’s going to check it out. And then he’s going to be wondering why some small-time Ecstasy dealers from Connecticut are trying to snatch his son. And then he’s going to be wondering how some small-time Ecstasy dealers from Connecticut can be trying to snatch his son a week after they all got hauled off to jail.”

“Shit,” Duffy said.

“It gets worse,” I said. “I think Duke got a look at the Lincoln, too. It’s got a caved-in front and no window glass left, but it hasn’t got any bullet holes in it. And it doesn’t look like a real grenade went off inside. That Lincoln is living proof this whole thing was phony baloney.”

“No,” she said. “The Lincoln is hidden. It didn’t go with the Toyota.”

“Are you sure? Because the first thing Beck asked me this morning was chapter and verse about the Uzis. It was like he was asking me to damn myself right out of my own mouth. Two Uzi Micros, twenty-round mags, forty shots fired, and not a single mark on the car?”

“No,” she said again. “No way. The Lincoln is hidden.”

“Where?”

“It’s in Boston. It’s in our garage, but as far as any paperwork goes it’s in the county morgue building. It’s supposed to be a crime scene. The bodyguards are supposed to be plastered all over the inside. We aimed for plausibility. We thought this thing through.”

“Except for the Toyota ’s plate.”

She looked deflated. “But the Lincoln is OK. It’s a hundred miles away from the Toyota. This guy Duke would have to drive all night.”

“I think he did drive all night. And why was Beck so uptight about the Uzis?”

She went still.

“We have to abort,” she said. “Because of the Toyota. Not because of the Lincoln. The Lincoln ’s OK.”

I checked my watch. Checked the road ahead. The van roared on. We would be coming up on Eliot sometime soon. I calculated time and distance.

“We have to abort,” she said again.

“What about your agent?”

“Getting you killed won’t help her.”

I thought about Quinn.

“We’ll discuss it later,” I said. “Right now we stay in business.”

We passed Eliot after eight more minutes. His Taurus was sitting rock-steady in the inside lane, holding a modest fifty. I pulled ahead of him and matched his speed and he fell in behind. We skirted all the way around Boston and pulled into the first rest area we saw south of the city. The world was a lot busier down there. I sat still with Duffy at my side and watched the ramp for seventy-two seconds and saw four cars follow me in. None of their drivers paid me any attention. A couple of them had passengers. They all did normal rest-stop things like standing and yawning by their open doors and looking around and then heading over to the bathrooms and the fast food.

“Where’s the next truck?” Duffy asked.

“In a lot in New London,” I said.

“Keys?”

“In it.”

“So there will be people there, too. Nobody leaves a truck alone with the keys in it. They’ll be waiting for you. We don’t know what they’ve been told to do. We should consider termination.”

“I won’t walk into a trap,” I said. “Not my style. And the next truck might have something better in it.”

“OK,” she said. “We’ll check it in New Hampshire. If you get that far.”

“You could lend me your Glock.”

I saw her reach up and touch it under her arm. “How long for?”

“As long as I need it.”

“What happened to the Colts?”

“They took them.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t give up my service weapon.”

“You’re already way off the books.”

She paused.

“Shit,” she said. She took the Glock out of her holster and passed it to me. It was warm from the heat of her body. I held it in my palm and savored the feeling. She dug in her purse and came out with two spare magazines. I put them in one pocket and the gun in the other.

“Thanks,” I said.

“See you in New Hampshire,” she said. “We’ll check the truck. And then we’ll decide.”

“OK,” I said, although I had already decided. Eliot walked over and took the transmitter out of his pocket. Duffy got out of his way and he stuck it back under her seat. Then they went off together, back to the government Taurus. I waited a plausible amount of time and got back on the road.

I found New London without any problem. It was a messy old place. I had never been there before. Never had a reason to go. It’s a Navy town. I think they build submarines there. Or somewhere nearby. Groton, maybe. The directions Beck had given me brought me off the highway early and threaded me through failing industrial areas. There was plenty of old brick, damp and smoke-stained and rotten. I pulled into the side of the road about a mile short of where I guessed the lot would be. Then I made a right and a left and tried to circle around it. I parked at a busted meter and checked Duffy’s gun. It was a Glock 19. It was maybe a year old. It was fully loaded. The spare magazines were full, too. I got out of the truck. I heard booming foghorns way out in the Sound. A ferry was heading in. The wind was scraping trash along the street. A hooker stepped out of a doorway and smiled at me. It’s a Navy town. She couldn’t smell an army MP the way her sisters could elsewhere.

I turned a corner and got a pretty good partial view of the lot I was headed for. The land sloped down toward the sea and I had some elevation. I could see the truck waiting for me. It was the twin of the one I was in. Same age, same type. Same color. It was sitting there all alone. It was in the exact center of the lot, which was just an empty square made of crushed brick and weeds. Some old building had been bulldozed two decades ago and nothing had been built to replace it.