Lee Child - Never Go Back

‘I can’t. Those are personal cards. They have to do it themselves, as soon as they get out of the hospital. Until then we’ll have to reimburse them, as always.’

‘This thing is costing us a fortune.’

‘Little acorns, my friend.’

‘Not so little.’

‘Nearly over. Then it’s back to business as usual.’

Reacher kept on dodging the eaters, and the drinkers, and the shavers, and the hair stylists, and the make-up artists, and the nail filers, and the file filers, and the readers, and the texters, and the surfers, and the screamers, and the criers, and he made it as far as East Los Angeles, where he took the Santa Ana Freeway, up to the 101 in Echo Park. Then it was a long slow grind, northwest through the hills, past names he still found glamorous, like Santa Monica Boulevard, and Sunset Boulevard, and the Hollywood Bowl. And then his telephone rang. He answered it and said, ‘I’m driving one-handed on the 101 with the Hollywood sign on my right, and I’m talking on my phone. Finally I feel like I belong.’

Edmonds said, ‘Got a pen and paper?’

‘No.’

‘Then listen carefully. Peter Paul Lozano and Ronald David Baldacci are active duty soldiers currently long-term deployed with a logistics battalion out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They’re assigned to a company trained for the infiltration and exfiltration of sensitive items into and out of Afghanistan, which at the moment, of course, is all exfiltration, because of the drawdown, which is also keeping them very busy. Their fitness reports are currently above average. That’s all I know.’

Which information Reacher relayed to Turner, after hanging up, and Turner said, ‘There you go. Stuff that should be making it home isn’t.’

Reacher said nothing.

‘You don’t agree?’

He said, ‘I’m just trying to picture it. All these sensitive items, coming out of caves or wherever, and most of them getting loaded up for Fayetteville, but some of them getting dumped in the back of ratty old pick-up trucks with weird licence plates, which then immediately drive off into the mountains. Maybe the trucks were full of cash on the inward journey. Maybe it’s a cash-on-delivery business. Is that what you’re thinking?’

‘More or less.’

‘Me too. A fishbowl. A lot of stress and uncertainty. And visibility. And risk of betrayal. That’s where they learn who to count on. Because everything is against them, even the roads. How sensitive are these things? Are they OK in the back of a ratty old pick-up truck with a weird licence plate?’

‘What’s your point?’

‘All the action is in Afghanistan. But our guys are at Fort Bragg.’

‘Maybe they’re just back from Afghanistan.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Reacher said. ‘I noticed the first minute I saw the first two. I figured neither one of them had been in the Middle East recently. They had no sunburn, no squint lines, and no stress and strain in their eyes. They’re homebodies. But they’re also the A team. So why keep your A team in North Carolina when all your action is in Afghanistan?’

‘Typically these people have an A team on each end.’

‘But there is only one end. Stuff comes out of the caves and goes straight into the ratty old pick-up trucks with the weird licence plates. It never gets anywhere near Fort Bragg or North Carolina.’

‘Then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re selling it in America, not Afghanistan. That would need an A team at Bragg, to siphon it off.’

‘But I don’t think that’s happening either,’ Reacher said. ‘Because small arms is all they could sell, realistically. We’d notice anything heavier. And to sell enough small arms to make the money they seem to be making would flood the market. And the market isn’t flooded. Or you would have heard about it. Someone would have dropped a dime if there was a torrent of military stuff for sale. Domestic manufacturers, probably, getting squeezed out. The message would have gotten to your desk eventually. That’s what the 110th is for.’

‘So what are they doing?’

‘I have no idea.’

Reacher remembered all the pertinent data from Candice Dayton’s affidavit, including her lawyer’s name, and his office address. Turner had found the right block on the street map, and her left thumbnail was resting on it, and her right index finger was tracing their progress, and her two hands were getting very close together. They crossed the Ventura Freeway, and she said, ‘Keep on going until Victory Boulevard. It should be signposted for the Burbank airport. Then we’ll drop down from the north. I imagine most of their focus will be to the south. We’ll be on their blind side.’

Victory Boulevard turned out to be the next exit. Then they made a right on Lankershim, and tracked back south and east, exactly parallel with the freeway they had left minutes before.

‘Now pull over,’ Turner said. ‘From here on in we go supercautious.’

FORTY-EIGHT

REACHER PARKED IN the mouth of a cross street, and they gazed south together, at the blocks north of the Ventura Freeway, which were a bustling A–Z catalogue of American commercial activity, from medium size on down through small and all the way to super-tiny, with retail enterprises, and wholesale enterprises, and service enterprises, some of them durable, some of them wildly optimistic, some of them up-and-coming, some of them fading fast, some of them familiar and ubiquitous. A visitor from outer space would conclude that acrylic nails were just as important as eight-by-four boards.

Turner still had the map open, and she said, ‘He’s on Vineland Avenue, two blocks north of the freeway. So make a left on Burbank Boulevard, and then Vineland is a right, and then it’s a straight shot. No one knows this car, but we can’t afford to drive by more than two times.’

So Reacher set off again, and made the turns, and drove Vineland like anyone else, not slow and peering, not fast and aggressive, just another anonymous vehicle rolling through the sunny morning. Turner said, ‘He’s coming up, on the right side, next block. I see a parking lot out front.’

Which Reacher saw, too. But it was a shared lot, not the lawyer’s own. Because the right side of the block was all one long low building, with a shake roof and a covered walkway in front, with the exterior walls painted what Reacher thought of as a unique Valley shade of beige, like flesh-coloured make-up from the movies. The building was divided along its length, into six separate enterprises, including a wig shop, and a crystal shop, and a geriatric supplier, and a coffee shop, and a Se Habla Español tax preparer, with Candice Dayton’s lawyer more or less right in the centre of the row, between the magic crystals and the electric wheelchairs. The parking lot was about eight slots deep, and it ran the whole width of the building’s facade, serving all the stores together. Reacher guessed any customer was entitled to park in any spot.

The lot was about half full, with most of the cars at first glance entirely legitimate, most of them clean and bright under the relentless sun, some of them parked at bad angles, as if their drivers had ducked inside just long enough for a simple errand. Reacher had given much thought to what kind of a car two people could live in, and he had concluded that an old-fashioned wagon or a modern SUV would be the minimum requirement, with a fold-flat rear bench and enough unimpeded length between the front seats and the tailgate to fit a mattress. Black glass to the sides and the rear would be an advantage. An old Buick Roadmaster or a new Chevy Suburban would fit the bill, except that anyone planning to live in a new Chevy Suburban would surely see an advantage in selling it and buying an old Buick Roadmaster, and keeping the change. So mostly he scanned for old wagons, maybe dusty, maybe on soft tyres, settled somehow, as if parked for a long time.