Lee Child: Night School

Reacher stepped back to the car and said, “Sergeant Neagley and I will walk from here.”

–

The messenger walked through baggage claim and out to the meet-and-greet concourse. She sidestepped hugs and balloons and made it to the street. Which was somewhat underground. The departures level was above it. She had been told she would find the two she was looking for at the left-hand end of the covered section. Near a corral full of small three-wheeled carts.

She saw them as she approached, exactly as described. Small men, wiry, bearded, dark haired and dark skinned. They had overalls unbuttoned to the waist, with undershirts beneath, and ear defenders around their necks, and elbow protectors around their elbows, and knee protectors around their knees, and see-through ID panels around their biceps, all items firmly held in place with thick elastic straps. The IDs were from the airport. The bearers worked for a freight forwarding company known to have excellent relationships with the cargo divisions of many Middle Eastern sovereign airlines.

The messenger said, “The Mercedes-Benz was named for a customer’s daughter.”

The guy on the left said, “You’re a woman.”

“This is a serious business. What better disguise?”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Do you?”

“You’re supposed to tell us.”

“Then you better trust me. We’re going to take a cab to the old docks. A man is going to give us a long-wheelbase panel van. You’re going to drive the van back to the airport and load it on the plane. Do you understand?”

The two guys nodded. Pretty much what they expected. They were airplane loaders with badges that could get them through any airport gate. Horses for courses. They didn’t expect to get called out to the hospital to do brain surgery.

–

Reacher and Neagley took opposite sidewalks, and checked doors, and peered around corners. They tried to see what they saw like a slow-motion version of Wiley himself, scouting from his car, pausing at the end of every block, feeling, choosing, left or right or straight ahead, whichever felt best, and safest, and secret, and secluded.

By that point they were deep in the heart of the middle third. And by a happy circumstance the best-feeling places all had the same phone number. Crisp, laminated notices. Fairly recent. Wiley would have liked them. They would have given him confidence. They spoke of a small real estate enterprise. Reliable. Professional. And he would be one tenant among many. He wouldn’t stand out.

“I’ve seen that same number for thirty square blocks,” Neagley said. “This guy bought a big chunk of land.”

“Maybe he wants to put up an apartment building.”

They moved on, pausing at the end of every block, feeling, choosing, left or right or straight ahead. Reacher stopped on a corner. He glanced left. He saw a pair of double doors. Solid. Dark green. Weathered, but not rotted. A phone number. The left-hand door had sagged ajar a foot or so. Open padlocks hung askew on bolts and a hasp. The right-hand door was propped all the way wide. A small warehouse. Dark inside, against the bright daylight.

Reacher walked closer.

There was a sound inside. Fast wheezing breaths, bubbling and gurgling, each one ending in a tiny gasp or yelp. The sound of a guy breathing hard with broken ribs and blood in his throat. Reacher took his Colt out of his pocket. He clicked the safety. He put his finger on the trigger. He kept close to the wall, and tried to see in through the crack of the hinge. A big dark mass.

He followed the angle of the left-hand door, and flattened his back against the last part of it. Neagley waited a yard away. She would replace him when he moved.

He listened to the breathing.

Wheezing, bubbling, yelping.

He moved off the door and peered around its edge.

He saw a two-truck space. One half was full, and one half was empty. The full half had an old delivery truck, dusty and settled on softening tires. The word Möbel was painted on its side. Which was German for furniture. Its rear door was up. Inside was an empty wooden crate. Maybe twelve feet by six by six, made of old timber as hard and bronzed as metal.

The empty half of the space had a guy on the floor.

He was lying in a spreading lake of blood.

The hair, the brow, the cheek bones, the deep-set eyes.

It was Horace Wiley.

Wiley’s blade of a nose was busted, and one of his arms, Reacher thought, from the way he was holding it. His other hand was pressed hard against his stomach. Bright red blood was pulsing out between his fingers. He was staring blankly at the far horizon, with wide-open tragedy in his eyes. More shock and misery than Reacher had ever seen before. More abject crushing disappointment, more pain, more betrayal, more open-mouthed incredulity at the unlikely ways the world can crush a person.

Reacher stepped closer.

He said, “What happened?”

Wiley gasped and bubbled and his voice came out low and halting.

He said, “They stole my van. Stabbed me. Bust my arm.”

“Who did?”

“Germans.”

“How?”

“I was waiting here. Two guys came. Stabbed me and stole my van.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Guys who were coming for the van. Part of the deal.”

“When?”

“I need a doctor, man. I’m going to die.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Reacher said. “Treason gets the death penalty.”

“It hurts bad.”

“Good,” Reacher said.

Then he heard a car. He looked around the open door. It was Griezman and Sinclair, in the department Mercedes.

–

Sinclair knelt down next to Wiley, talking, listening, promising a doctor in exchange for cooperation, already debriefing a mile a minute. Neagley looked at the empty crate in the furniture truck. She caught Reacher’s eye and pointed to the receptacle for the secret file. Thin plywood, with a half-moon shape scooped out for fingers. The part the apprentice had made, eleven times over. Then Reacher went with Griezman, all the way back to the iron bridge, to see what the traffic cop had snared. One panel van, presumably. But no. When they got there the traffic cop swore nothing had passed by. No vans, no cars, no people, no nothing.

–

Reacher and Griezman drove back to the warehouse. They got out of the car and heard nothing at all. Sinclair and Neagley were standing in the gloom, still and silent. The lake of blood on the floor was bigger. But it was no longer increasing.

Wiley had bled out.

He was dead.

Griezman said, “Nothing crossed the bridge.”

Silence.

Then Reacher heard another car.

He stepped out a pace. A taxi. Three passengers. A woman, her head ducked down, shoveling money out of her purse. Paying the fare. And two men, climbing out, small and wiry, dark and bearded, wearing work clothes and protective equipment, looking around, seeing Reacher, looking him right in the eye, and nodding a cautious greeting. As if they expected to see him there. Which they did, he guessed. Generically. They knew a man was going to give them a panel van. They had come to drive it away. Part of the deal.

Reacher put his hand on his gun in his pocket and stepped all the way out to the sunlight. The woman was stuffing her purse back in her bag. The taxi was driving away. The woman looked up. She saw Reacher and looked momentarily confused. Reacher was not the guy she was expecting to see. She was in her early twenties, with jet black hair and olive skin. She was very good looking. She could have been Turkish or Italian.

She was the messenger.

The two guys with her were waiting patiently, stoic and unexcited, like laborers ahead of routine tasks. They were airport workers, Reacher thought. He remembered telling Sinclair that Wiley had chosen Hamburg because it was a port. The second largest in Europe. The gateway to the world. Maybe once. But the plan had changed. Now he guessed they planned to drive the truck into the belly of a cargo plane. Maybe fly it to Aden, which was a port of a different kind. On the coast of Yemen. Where ten tramp steamers would be waiting to complete the deliveries, after weeks at sea. Straight to New York or D.C. or London or LA or San Francisco. All the world’s great cities had ports nearby. He remembered Neagley saying the radius of the lethal blast was a mile, and the radius of the fireball was two. Ten times over. Ten million dead, and then complete collapse. The next hundred years in the dark ages.