Lee Child - Never Go Back

The second guy got off the phone. He put the instrument down and looked straight at the exit lane. He scanned it, front to back, and back to front, starting with Turner and finishing with Turner. He came out of the shack and stepped to her window.

He said, ‘Sorry for the delay.’

He glanced at the fanned IDs, and stepped back and glanced at the trunk, and closed it for them, and hit the button on the side of the shack, and the barrier went up, and Turner rolled forward.

And breathed out.

Reacher said, ‘One more. And good things come in threes.’

‘You really believe that?’

‘No, not really. The chances of three yes-or-no propositions working out right are about twelve in a hundred.’

Up ahead the third guard shack looked to be an exact repeat of the second. The same queue of the same three cars, a matching queue on the entrance side, two guys on duty, one of them outside ducking back and forth, and one of them inside on the phone.

Listening intently.

Turner said, ‘These phone calls have to be important, right? I mean, these guys have got better things to do right now. There’s a whole bunch of senior officers getting delayed here. And some of them must be Marines. They don’t like that kind of stuff.’

‘And we do?’

‘Not like the Marines don’t. We’re not always on standby to save the world.’

‘My dad was a Marine.’

‘Did he save the world?’

‘He wasn’t a very senior officer.’

‘I wish I knew who was on the phone.’

Reacher thought back to when he had been a captain. How long would he have waited for another captain to finish up his business? Not too long, probably. But maybe Edmonds was a nicer person. More patient. Or maybe she felt out of her depth, in a guardhouse environment. Although she was a lawyer. She must have seen plenty of guardhouses. Unless she was mostly a desk person. A paperwork lawyer. Which she might have been. She was assigned to HRC, after all. That had to mean something. How much of HRC’s work was done in the cells?

He said, ‘This is a big base. Those calls aren’t necessarily coming from the guardhouse.’

‘What else would be so important?’

‘Maybe they have to clear the way for a general. Or maybe they’re ordering pizza delivery. Or telling their girlfriends they’ll be home soon.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Turner said. ‘One of the above. Or all of them.’

In the opposite lane the barrier went up and a car drove in. The guy on the outside ducked across to the exit lane and checked ID, and checked a trunk, and raised the barrier, and a car drove out. Turner rolled forward one place. The inside guy was still on the phone.

Still listening hard.

Turner said, ‘They don’t even need a phone call. I’m not wearing my tapes or my tags. They were taken away from me. I look exactly like an escaping prisoner.’

‘Or a Special Forces hardass. Undercover and anonymous. Look on the bright side. Just don’t let them see your boots.’

Another car drove in, and another car drove out. Turner rolled forward to the head of the line. She popped the trunk, and fanned the IDs, and buzzed her window down. The inside guy was still on the phone. The outside guy was occupied in the other lane. Up ahead beyond the last barrier the dragons’ teeth stopped and the exit road widened out and became just a regular Virginia street.

There was an Arlington County police cruiser parked on it.

Turner said, ‘Still want me to bust out?’

‘Only if we have to,’ Reacher said.

The outside guy finished up checking and raised the entrance barrier. The inside guy finished up listening and put the phone down. He came out and bent down and looked at the IDs in Turner’s hand. Not just a glance. His eyes flicked from the photos to the faces. Reacher looked away and stared ahead through the windshield. He stayed low in his seat and tried to look middle-aged and medium-sized. The guy at the window stepped back to the trunk. More than a glance. And then he put his palm on the lid and eased it back down and gently latched it shut.

Then he stepped away to the side of the shack.

And hit the exit button.

The barrier rose up high, and Turner nudged the gas, and the car rolled forward, under the barrier, and past the last of the dragons’ teeth, and out into the neat suburban street, all wide and prosperous and tree-lined, and then onward, past the parked Arlington cruiser, and away.

Reacher thought: Captain Tracy Edmonds must be one hell of a patient woman .

TWENTY-ONE

SUSAN TURNER SEEMED to know the local roads. She made a left and a right and skirted the northern edge of the cemetery, and then she turned again and drove partway down its eastern flank. She said, ‘I assume we’re heading for Union Station. To dump the car and make them think we took a train.’

‘Works for me,’ Reacher said.

‘How do you want to get there?’

‘What’s the dumbest route?’

‘At this time of day?’ she said. ‘Surface streets, I guess. Constitution Avenue, for sure. We’d be slow and visible, all the way.’

‘Then that’s what we’ll do. They’ll expect something different.’

So Turner got in position and lined up to cross the river. Traffic was bad. It was rush hour in the civilian world, too. Nose to tail, like a moving parking lot. She drummed her fingers on the wheel, and watched her mirror, looking to jink from lane to lane, trying to find a tiny advantage.

‘Relax,’ Reacher said. ‘Rush hour is definitely our friend now. There’s no chance of pursuit.’

‘Unless they use a helicopter.’

‘Which they won’t. Not here. They’d be too worried about crashing and killing a Congressman. Which would do their budget no good at all.’

They crept on to the bridge, slowly, and they moved out over the water, and they left Arlington County behind. Turner said, ‘Talking of budgets, I have no money. They took all my stuff and put it in a plastic bag.’

‘Me too. But I borrowed thirty bucks from my lawyer.’

‘Why would she lend you money?’

‘She doesn’t know she did. Not yet. But she’ll find out soon enough. I left her an IOU.’

‘We’re going to need more than thirty bucks. I need street clothes, for a start.’

‘And I need boot laces,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll have to find an ATM.’

‘We don’t have cards.’

‘There’s more than one kind of ATM.’

They came off the bridge, slowly, stopping and starting, into the District of Columbia itself. Metro PD territory. And immediately Reacher saw two Metro cruisers up ahead. They were parked nose to nose on the kerb behind the Lincoln Memorial. Their motors were running, and they had about a dozen radio antennas between them. Each car held one cop, all warm and comfortable. A standard security measure, Reacher hoped. Turner changed lanes and rolled past them on the blind side of a stalled line of nose-to-tail traffic. They didn’t react at all.

They drove onward, through the gathering dark, slow and halting, anonymous among a glacial pack of fifty thousand vehicles crowding the same few miles of streets. They went north on 23rd, the same block Reacher had walked the day before, and then they made the right on to Constitution Avenue, which ran on ahead of them, seemingly for ever, straight and long, an unending river of red tail lights.

Turner said, ‘Tell me about the two guys from last night.’

Reacher said, ‘I came in on the bus and went straight to Rock Creek. I was going to ask you out to dinner. But you weren’t there, obviously. And the guy who was sitting in for you told me about some bullshit assault charge lodged against my file. Some gangbanger we had looked at all of sixteen years ago. I wasn’t impressed, so he pulled some Title 10 thing and recalled me to service.’