Lee Child - The Midnight Line

“How is she doing?”

“Pretty good, all things considered.”

“Is her attitude OK?”

“In what way?”

“Are you free to talk?”

“Sure,” Reacher said.

“Why I wanted to call. We found a sideways reference to a document in a medical ethics case. An army psychiatrist had published a paper. The charge was he had failed to adequately conceal the identity of his subject. The paper was about a woman officer who had been grievously wounded in the face. During an on-site inspection she wasn’t required to attend. She was standing in for another officer. Purely as a personal favor. The operation was nothing to do with her. She was there because some other asshole had another appointment. Which upon investigation turned out to be extremely unworthy. The guy killed himself when the questions started. Turned out he was getting jacked off by some Afghan whore, while the most beautiful woman in the army was getting maimed. The paper was about her psychological struggle to see herself as wounded in the line of duty.”

“The woman was Rose Sanderson?”

“It was while she was still in the hospital. She said the publicity upset her.”

“She hasn’t mentioned it,” Reacher said.

“It’s a factor,” the supe said. “She feels betrayed.”

—

At eleven o’clock the compound was still pitch dark and silent. Which Reacher expected. His theory allowed for maybe twenty minutes of furtive gathering, and then frantic action at midnight. And then nothing again. So he wasn’t worried. Not yet. Not unless he was completely wrong, and a bunch of guys was assembling somewhere else entirely, miles away, right then, slapping each another on the shoulder, opening their trunk lids and their tailgates wide, exposing hungry space inside.

Possible.

He waited.

Eleven-thirty was just the same. Pitch dark and silent. Still OK. Still consistent, still logical, still expected. But getting close. All the well-known sayings. The crunch was coming. The money shot. The rubber was about to meet the road. For the first time in his life he paid close attention to what his body was doing. He felt stress building inside him, and he felt an automatic response, some kind of a primitive biological leftover, that converted it to focus and strength and aggression. He felt his scalp tingle, and an electric flow pass through his hands to his fingers. He felt his eyesight grow vivid. He felt himself get physically larger, and harder, and faster, and stronger.

He knew Sanderson would be feeling the same things. He wondered how they mixed with fentanyl. He hoped she was doing OK.

Then he saw headlights on the service road.

Chapter 46

The headlights were dim and yellow, which meant it was an old vehicle, and they were at a modest height and a regular width apart, which meant the old vehicle was normal size. Not a giant pick-up truck. Not a huge SUV. It drove up to the building and the wash from its lights on the siding showed it to be a sedan maybe twenty years old. Shaped like a slug. Dull paint, an indeterminate dark color. No hubcaps. A snapped-off antenna.

It backed up and parked neatly, out of the way, and a guy got out. He could have been fifty. Thick around the waist, hair plastered to his scalp with oil. He was wearing blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a word on it. A brand name, perhaps. He walked over to the roll-up door, and did something with a key. Then he squatted like a weightlifter and hauled on the bottom lip, and the door came clattering up, getting faster, as if a counterbalance was kicking in.

The guy walked into the garage and a minute later there was a muted repeat of the same noise, as the far door clattered up. Inside on the left were ranks of huge yellow snowplows. On the right was empty space. Someone had chalked diagonal parking bays on the concrete floor. They were numbered one through ten. One was at the far end. Ten was at the near end.

The guy in the sweatshirt walked back to his car. He leaned in and got a clipboard from the passenger seat. It had a pen on a string. Some kind of a list. The guy walked back to the garage and took up station near the entrance.

There will be a guard at the door .

The guy took out a handgun and checked the chamber.

Eleven forty-one in the evening.

Four minutes later there were more headlights on the service road. Higher, wider, and brighter than the guy’s old sedan. It was a Dodge Durango SUV. It drove toward the garage door. It stopped next to the guy. The window came down. Something was said. The guy checked his clipboard, and waved the truck inside. It parked at an angle, in a chalked-out bay.

A minute later a rusted Silverado drove up the road. No better condition than Stackley’s old thing. But no camper shell. It had a flat vinyl cover on the bed. Then an old black four-wheel-drive showed up. Both parked inside.

By five minutes to midnight nine of the ten chalk bays were occupied. Only number five was empty. The guy in the sweatshirt looked relaxed about it. Rules were rules. The other nine guys waiting next to their trucks looked happy about it. More to go around.

The guy in the sweatshirt checked his watch.

His phone rang.

He listened.

He called out, “Two minutes, guys. It’s nearly here.”

Two minutes later a white panel van came charging up the road, going fast, then braking hard. It stopped and waited. It had New Jersey plates. The guy in the sweatshirt gave it a sign, and then he ran inside the building. The van turned and drove along the outside of the garage, all the way, front to back. It turned again, tight and awkward, and nosed in through the rear door. The opposite way from everyone else. It stopped level with the truck in bay number one. The guard ran up inside and met it there. The driver got out.

—

Which all changed the plan. Afterward Reacher was mad he hadn’t read more into the chalk numbers on the floor. At first he thought they might represent geographical regions, or length of service. Some tradition or perk of the job. Or nothing at all. Maybe they were there just for the fun of it. You chalk some bays, you might as well chalk some numbers. To make it look professional.

But they were a priority order. Some kind of a status ladder. Maybe number one was the guy with the best volume. Like salesman of the week. Like a prize. Part of which was the right to a fast getaway. First served, first out of there. A decent incentive.

There were a dozen different mechanical ways to make that happen. All kinds of maneuvers. But by far the simplest was to bring the panel van in through the rear door.

Reacher was at the front door.

He had foreseen that the guard and the driver from the panel van would be side by side at the start of the process. The plan was, as soon as the driver opened the van, unsuspectingly, voluntarily, without having been beaten or coerced in any way at all, so that everyone’s conscience was entirely clear, then Reacher would fire a nine-millimeter round over their heads, into the booming space beyond, to freeze them, to claim possession of the panel van, whereupon Sanderson would announce her presence from behind, and they would all glance back and see a mysterious figure pointing a handgun, and any spark of early trouble would snuff out right then. Only an expert would spot the Ruger for a .22. Only an expert with X-ray vision would know it was nearly empty. He thought the plan would work. First the guard and the driver, and then the other guys. Two different categories of people. He felt the sequence was important.

He was at the wrong end of the garage.

Everything was turned around.

He was now Sanderson.

She was now him.

With adrenaline, and fight hormones, and fentanyl, or maybe half fentanyl and half withdrawal, and pain and discomfort, and the sweats and the shakes. Right then she would be watching the driver. Waiting for him to open up. A combination or a special key. Or maybe not. Maybe just a regular door. In which case it would all happen faster. The .22 was quiet for a firearm, but still a lot louder than anything else in life. In the echoing space a .22 would do the job just fine.