Lee Child - Never Go Back

He said, ‘Colonel, I need to see your ID.’

The guy said, ‘Who are you?’

‘Defense Intelligence Agency. Purely routine, sir.’

Command presence. Much prized by the military. The guy stalled a second, and then he fished in an inside pocket and came out with his ID. Reacher stepped over and took it from him and looked hard at it. John James Temple . He raised his eyebrows, as if surprised, and he looked again, and then he slipped the ID into his shirt pocket, right next to Sullivan’s.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, colonel, but I need a minute of your time.’

He stepped back to the door and held it open. After you . The guy looked uncertain for a moment, and then he got up from the table, slowly. Reacher glanced over his shoulder at Turner and said, ‘You wait here, miss. We’ll be right back.’

The lawyer paused a beat and then shuffled out ahead of him. Reacher said, ‘Sir, to your right, please,’ and followed after him, also shuffling, literally, because of the loose boots. Which were the weak points. Lawyers weren’t necessarily the most physically observant of people, but they had brains and they were generally logical. And this phase of the plan was a low-speed proposition. No urgency. No rush. No panic. Practically slow-motion. This guy had time to think.

Which, evidently, he used.

About twenty feet short of the first vacant cell the guy stopped suddenly and turned around and looked down. Straight at Reacher’s boots. Instantly Reacher spun him face-front again and put him in the kind of arresting-a-senior-officer grip that any MP learns early in his career, about which there was nothing in the field manual, and which was not taught in any way except by hints and example. Reacher grabbed the guy’s right elbow from behind, in his left hand, and simultaneously squeezed it hard and pulled it downward and propelled it forward. As always the guy was left fighting the downward force so hard he forgot all about resisting the forward motion. He just stumbled onward, crabwise, twisted and bent, gasping a little, not really from pain, but from outraged dignity. Which Reacher was happy about. He didn’t want to hurt the guy. This was not his fault.

Reacher manoeuvred the guy to an open and empty cell, which he guessed might have been Turner’s, from the look of it, and pushed him inside, and closed the door on him, and bolted it.

Then he stood in the corridor, just a beat, and he breathed in, and he breathed out.

Good to go .

He shuffled back to the second conference room and stepped inside. Susan Turner was on her feet, between the table and the door. He held out his hand. He said, ‘I’m Jack Reacher.’

‘I know you are,’ she said. ‘I saw your photo. From your file. And I recognized your voice. From the phone.’

And he recognized hers. From the phone. Warm, slightly husky, a little breathy, a little intimate. Just as good as he remembered. Maybe even better, live and in person.

He said, ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’

She shook his hand. Her touch was warm, not hard, not soft. She said, ‘I’m very pleased to meet you too. But what exactly are you doing?’

He said, ‘You know what I’m doing. And why. At least, I hope you do. Because if you don’t, you’re not worth doing it for.’

‘I didn’t want you to get involved.’

‘Hence the thing about not visiting?’

‘I thought you might show up. Just possibly. If you did, I wanted you to turn tail and get the hell out, immediately. For your own sake.’

‘Didn’t work.’

‘What are our chances of getting out of here?’

‘We’ve been lucky so far.’ He fished in his shirt pocket and took out Sullivan’s ID. He checked the picture against Turner’s face. Same gender. Roughly the same hair colour. But that was about all. He gave her the ID. She said, ‘Who is she?’

‘My lawyer. One of my lawyers. I met her this morning.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘In a cell. Probably hammering on the door. We need to get going.’

‘And you’re taking my lawyer’s ID?’

Reacher patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got it right here.’

‘But you don’t look anything like him.’

‘That’s why you’re going to drive.’

‘Is it dark yet?’

‘Heading that way.’

‘So let’s go,’ she said.

They stepped out to the corridor and walked to the quarantine door. It was still held open an inch by Sullivan’s car key. Reacher pulled the door, and Turner scooped up the key, and they stepped into the small square lobby, and the door sucked shut behind them. The exit door was locked, with a small neat mechanism, no doubt expensive and highly secure. Reacher took out the clerk’s keys, and started trying them, one after the other. There were eight in total. The first was no good. Neither was the second. Nor the third. Nor the fourth.

But the fifth key did the trick. The lock snicked open. Reacher turned the handle and pulled the door. Cold air came in, from the outside. The afternoon light was fading.

Turner said, ‘What car are we looking for?’

‘Dark-green sedan.’

‘That helps,’ she said. ‘On a military base.’

Warm, husky, breathy, intimate.

They stepped out together. Reacher closed the door behind them, and locked it. He figured that might buy an extra minute. Ahead of them to the left was a small parking lot, about thirty yards away, across an expanse of blank blacktop. Seventeen cars in it. Mostly POVs. Only two plain sedans, neither one of them green. Beyond the lot a road curved away west. On the right the same road turned a corner and ran out of sight.

‘Best guess?’ Turner said.

‘If in doubt, turn left,’ Reacher said. ‘That was always my operating principle.’

They turned left, and found another lot hidden beyond the corner of the building. It was small, nothing more than a bumped-out strip with diagonal bays. Six cars in it, all of them nose-in. All of them identical dark-green sedans.

Turner said, ‘That’s better.’

She lined herself up equidistant from the six rear bumpers and pressed the button on the key fob.

Nothing happened.

She tried again. Nothing. She said, ‘Maybe the battery is out.’

‘In the car?’ Reacher said.

‘In the key,’ she said.

‘Then how did Sullivan get here?’

‘She stuck the key in the door. Like we used to, back in the day. We’ll have to try them one by one.’

‘We can’t do that. We’ll look like car thieves.’

‘We are car thieves.’

‘Maybe none of these is the right car,’ Reacher said. ‘I didn’t see the plate. It was dark this morning.’

‘We can’t wander about this base much longer.’

‘Maybe we should have turned right.’

They tracked back, as brisk and unobtrusive as they could be in boots without laces, past the rear door to the guardhouse again, and onward around the corner. It felt good to walk. Freedom, and fresh air. Reacher had always figured the best part of getting out of jail was the first thirty yards. And he liked having Turner next to him. She was nervous as a cat, but she was holding it together. She looked confident. They were just two people walking, like con artists everywhere: act like you’re supposed to be there .

There was another bumped-out bay around the east corner, six diagonal slots, symmetrical with the one they had already seen to the west. There were three cars in it. Only one of them was a sedan. And it was dark green. Turner hit the key fob button.

Nothing happened.

She stepped up close and tried the key in the door.

It didn’t fit.

She said, ‘Where does a lawyer who’s visiting the guardhouse come in? The front entrance, right? Is there a parking lot out front?’