Lee Child - Never Go Back

EDMONDS’ FIRST CALL came in at two in the morning local time, which was five o’clock Eastern. Reacher and Turner both woke up. Reacher put the open phone between their pillows, and they rolled over forehead to forehead, so they could both hear. Edmonds said, ‘You asked me earlier, about Jason Kenneth Rickard, and a guy called Shrago. Got a pen?’

Reacher said, ‘No.’

‘Then listen carefully. They’re the same as the first two. They’re all deployed with the same company at Fort Bragg. Three teams to a squad, and they’re a team. What that means exactly, I don’t know. Possibly this is skilled work, and they learn to rely on each other.’

‘And to keep their mutual secrets,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell me about Shrago.’

‘Ezra-none-Shrago, staff sergeant and team leader. Thirty-six years old. Hungarian grandparents. He’s been in the unit since the start of the war. He was in and out of Afghanistan for five years, and since then he’s been based at home, exclusively.’

‘What’s up with his ears?’

‘He was captured.’

‘In North Carolina or Afghanistan?’

‘By the Taliban. He was gone three days.’

‘Why didn’t they cut his head off?’

‘Probably for the same reason we didn’t shoot Emal Zadran. They have politicians too.’

‘When was this?’

‘Five years ago. They gave him a permanent billet at home after that. And he hasn’t been back to Afghanistan since.’

Reacher closed the phone, and Turner said, ‘I don’t like that at all. Why would he sell arms to the people who cut his ears off?’

‘He doesn’t make the deals. He’s just a cog in a machine. They don’t care what he thinks. They want his muscle, not his opinions.’

‘We should offer him immunity. We could turn him on a dime.’

‘He beat Moorcroft half to death.’

‘I said offer, not give. We could stab him in the back afterwards.’

‘So call him, and make the pitch. He’s still on speed dial, in Rickard’s phone.’

Turner got up and found the right cell, and got back in bed and dialled, but the phone company told her the number she wanted was blocking her calls.

‘Efficient,’ she said. ‘They’re cleaning house as they go, minute by minute. No more Mr Rickard. Or Baldacci, or Lozano. All consigned to history.’

‘We’ll manage without Shrago’s input,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Maybe in a dream, about five minutes from now.’

She smiled, and said, ‘OK, goodnight again.’

Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago has located their car. It’s at a motel south of the Burbank airport.’

Romeo said, ‘But?’

‘Shrago feels it’s likely not in front of the right room, as a basic security measure. He’d have to check ten or a dozen, and he feels he won’t get away with that. One or two, maybe, but no more. And there’s no point in disabling the car, because they’d only rent another, on one of our own credit cards.’

‘Can’t he get to the girl?’

‘Not before she leaves the house again. It’s buttoned up tight.’

Romeo said, ‘There’s activity in the legal archive. A lone user, with JAG access, searching for something. Which is unusual, at this time of night.’

‘Captain Edmonds?’

‘No, she’s in the HRC system. She just took a good look at Rickard and Shrago, about an hour ago. They’re closing in.’

‘On Shrago, perhaps. But not on us. There’s no direct link.’

‘The link is through Zadran. It’s like a neon sign. So tell Shrago to get out of Burbank. Tell him to wait on the girl. Tell him we’re counting on him, and tell him this mess has to be cleaned up first thing in the morning, whatever it takes.’

Edmonds’ second call came at five in the morning local time, which was eight in the East. Reacher and Turner did the forehead-to-forehead thing again, and Edmonds said, ‘OK, here’s an update. Treadmill time is over, and office hours are yet to begin, so all I have is rumour and gossip, but in D.C. that’s usually more accurate than anything else.’

Reacher said, ‘And?’

‘I spoke to eight people either in or associated with the office of the Secretary.’

‘And?’

‘Rodriguez or Juan Rodriguez or Dog or Big Dog is ringing no bells. No one recognizes the name, no one is aware of an active case, no one has passed a message to Major Sullivan, and no one is aware of a senior officer doing so either.’

‘Interesting.’

‘But not definitive. Eight people is a small sample, and the feeling is a sixteen-year-old embarrassment wouldn’t be given much bandwidth. We’ll know more in an hour, when everyone is back in the office.’

‘Thank you, captain.’

‘Sleeping well?’

‘We’re in a motel that rents by the hour. We’re getting our money’s worth. Was Ezra Shrago offered counselling after the thing with his ears in Afghanistan?’

‘Psychiatric notes are eyes-only.’

‘But I’m sure you read them anyway.’

‘He was offered counselling, and he accepted, which was considered unusual. Most people seem to do it the army way, which is to bottle it up until they collapse with a nervous breakdown. But Shrago was a willing patient.’

‘And?’

‘As of three years after the incident he still retained strong feelings of anger, resentment, humiliation and hatred. The home deployment was pre-emptive, just as much as therapeutic. The feeling was he couldn’t be trusted among the native population. He was an atrocity waiting to happen. The notes say he hates the Taliban with a passion.’

Afterwards Turner said, ‘Now I really don’t like it. Why would he sell weapons to people he hates?’

‘He’s a cog,’ Reacher said again. ‘He lives in North Carolina. He hasn’t seen a raghead in five years. He gets paid a lot of money.’

‘But he’s participating.’

‘He’s disassociating. Out of sight, out of mind.’

Reacher left the phone where it was, between their pillows, and they went back to sleep.

But not for long. Edmonds called for a third time forty minutes later, at a quarter to six in the morning, local time. She said, ‘Just for fun I went back through the Fort Bragg deployments, because I wanted to see how long they had all served together as a quartet. Shrago was in at the beginning, as I said, and then came Rickard, and then Lozano, and then Baldacci was the last in, which was four years ago, and they’ve been together ever since. Which makes them the oldest team in the unit, by a big margin. They’ve had plenty of time to get to know each other.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘But that’s not the real point. The real point is, four years ago that unit had a temporary commander. The previous guy fell down dead with a heart attack. It was the temporary commander who put Shrago’s team together. And guess who he was?’

‘Morgan,’ Reacher said.

‘You got it in one. He was a major then. He got his promotion soon after that, for no very obvious reason. His file is pretty thin. You could read it as a cure for insomnia.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. But right now I sleep fine, apart from getting woken up by the phone.’

‘Likewise,’ Edmonds said.

Reacher asked, ‘Who sent Morgan to Bragg four years ago? Who tells a guy like that where to go?’

‘I’m working on that now.’

Reacher left the phone where it was, and they went back to sleep.

They got a final half-hour, and then the fourth call of the morning came in, at a quarter after six local time, and it came direct from Major Sullivan at JAG. She said, ‘I just spent three hours in the archive, and I’m afraid your theory is a little off the mark. The Big Dog’s claim was not litigated sixteen years ago, nor has it been at any time since.’