Lee Child - The Midnight Line

If she took over.

If she did it.

Nothing yet.

Still nothing. Maybe it was a long combination. Like a computer. All kinds of characters, upper case, lower case. Numbers and symbols.

Nothing.

Then a colossal gunshot explosion, and a brutal bang as a bullet hit a beam overhead.

Everyone froze.

Up ahead she stepped out and said, “Stay where you are.”

Like he would have.

Behind them he stepped out and said, “Nobody move.”

Like she would have.

They glanced his way. He had the Smith aimed low, at their waists. He had learned that angle worried people. Some kind of an old animal instinct.

Up ahead she shook her head. They were turned around. The next lines were his.

He used his MP voice.

He said, “Remove all cell phones and firearms from pockets, holsters, and other places of concealment. Place them on the floor at your feet. Do not get cute with me. In a moment I will search you. If I find a further firearm I will shoot you through the back of the knee with it. If I find a cell phone I will shoot you through the back of the knee with my own firearm. These are promises as solemn as government debt. Please take a moment to think about it. We’re not cops or federal agents. This is purely private business. For you, just a temporary nuisance. So weigh it up. You can walk the rest of your life, or you can use a wheelchair. Figure out what works best for you.”

Eleven guys, eleven phones, twelve guns. The guard had a small .38 on his ankle. Mackenzie stepped out to collect them. She was pointing the empty Springfield. She looked like an afternoon movie. The beautiful queen of the underworld. They all stared. Reacher told them to kick their guns and their phones toward her. She picked them all up, one by one, and she put them in a bag she found in the panel van. It had a cheerful logo, in greens and blues, like the grass and the sky.

Reacher and Sanderson herded all eleven guys into bay number five. A tight fit. Like on the stairs, getting out of the ball game. Trapped between two slab-sided trucks. Reacher and Sanderson stood off at forty-five-degree angles, face on, guns leveled. Not operationally necessary. Either one of them would have been effective. But two had a calming effect. It kept unwise thoughts to a minimum. And therefore casualties. It was a humanitarian deployment of resources. The modern army.

At first he thought it was working. The eleven guys were unusually subdued. They were stunned, quiet, defeated, somehow shaken. Somehow demoralized.

Somehow sickened.

Then he realized.

Sanderson’s hood was still peeled back.

Behind them in the corner of his eye he saw Bramall reverse the Toyota through the same door the van had used, and maneuver it backward straight in line with the panel van, the tailgate close to the van’s rear doors. He saw Mackenzie start shoveling boxes across, from one vehicle to the other. White and crisp and shiny. Lots of them. Bramall lent a hand. They worked hard together. Box after box. Space became an issue. He saw them tossing bags out of the trunk, over into the back seat.

He stepped back a pace and looked left and right along the row of vehicles. He liked the look of the Dodge Durango best. It was a regular shape. It looked like it would have familiar controls.

He pointed at it.

He said, “Whose is that?”

Some guy shuffled.

Reacher said, “Are the keys in it?”

The guy nodded.

“Gas?”

The guy nodded.

“Good to go here,” Bramall called out, from behind.

“OK,” Reacher said. “We know what we’re doing. By the numbers now. One, two, three, and out of here.”

Step one was Mackenzie visiting every vehicle except the Durango, including the guard’s old car outside, and adding all the keys to her bag. Most of the cars were old enough to hot-wire, but the pharmaceutical van was a brand new Mercedes, with a chip in the key. It was going nowhere. Which was good. The Boy Detective needed to see it, sitting there stranded, inert, caught out and shamefaced. It explained everything, all by itself. It was the master clue.

Step two was Mackenzie and Bramall getting in the Toyota and driving away.

Which they did.

Step three was Reacher coming close and central, with the Smith aimed two-handed, low, at their waists, or lower, and then Sanderson backing off, step by cautious step, toward the Durango, feeling one-handed behind her for the handle, getting in, starting up. She backed out of the angled slot, and then couldn’t go forward because of the panel van in the way, so she reversed all the way out through the front door.

And was gone.

Reacher waited. On his own. Eleven guys penned up. He felt them stir. A flicker of anger. At themselves, at first. Eleven to one. Ridiculous. What were they, pussies? Which was a bad kind of thing to think. They were going to make trouble for themselves. He had seen it before. Sooner or later he would have to shoot one of them in the leg. To get their attention. It would be their own fault.

Behind him in the corner of his eye he saw Sanderson back the Durango in through the same door the panel van had used. Now she was on the right side of it, and facing in the right direction. Ten yards from him. He heard the transmission clunk. From reverse back to drive. Engine idling. Foot on the brake. Ready to go.

He backed away, raising his aim a little as he went, but not much, randomly scouting side to side, to the guy on the left, to the guy on the right. Then back to center mass, getting further away, step by backward step, hearing the Durango’s passenger door squeal open behind him, no doubt Sanderson leaning across inside. He got there and backed into the seat, still with the Smith held level, but the guys had given up. No weapons, no phones, no transportation. They were already thinking ahead, about how to get the hell out before the hammer came down.

“Go,” Reacher said.

Sanderson hit the gas, and she jinked the wheel twice, first right, then left, and she met the start of the westbound ramp doing about sixty miles an hour.

Chapter 47

Sanderson eased off a beat, to let a guy one lane over get well out of the way, and then she merged on the highway, and crept back to sixty. Four and a half minutes to the rest area. The car felt rough and noisy. Not up to Bramall’s standards. But possibly better than her ancient Bronco.

She said, “How much did we get?”

The thing that mattered most.

“More than two weeks’ worth,” he said. “That’s for damn sure. You owe me the story now.”

“I did all the hard work.”

“Doesn’t matter. You said you would tell me the story if we won tonight. No difference who did the work.”

“When I’ve seen it,” she said. “When I’ve seen more than two weeks’ worth.”

“It’s way more.”

“I want to bathe in it.”

“You should. You did well tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you still doing well?”

“Did you see the way those guys looked at my sister?”

“Yes,” Reacher said.

“Did you see the way they looked at me?”

“Yes,” Reacher said. “I saw.”

“That’s how I’m doing.”

They pulled off again, just a short hop, into the rest area. They rolled past the gas and the diesel, and the fast food, and the highway patrol, and the highway department weighbridge. All the way to the chain motel. Where Bramall had scouted two main advantages. It had private parking in back, so the Toyota would be hidden from casual view. And it was so absurdly close to the scene of the crime that no one would think to look there. They were in South Dakota. There was infinite space all around. Every instinct would be to search the far end of a radius that was growing by sixty miles every hour. No one would look close to home.