by Lee Child
Reacher picked up Peter King’s Beretta from the floor. He put it in McQueen’s right hand. McQueen said, “That Colt on your shoulder would be better. These corridors are pretty long.”
Reacher said, “It only has five rounds left in it. I’m planning to use it as a club.” He started on McQueen’s left wrist, plucking, cutting, fibers popping under the strain. McQueen said, “You could reload it.”
Reacher said, “No time. We don’t want to be caught with our pants down.”
“How many in your Glock?”
“Thirteen.”
“Unlucky.”
“True.” Reacher stopped sawing and swapped out the magazine for the full one he had taken from Bale, in the motel room in Kansas, about a million years ago. Click, click, hand to hand, not a blur like the showboats could do it, but no more than a second and a half. He started sawing again. The voices were still loud in the corridor.
Reacher said, “Do you have an accurate headcount?”
McQueen said, “Twenty-four tonight, not including me.”
“Six left, then.”
“Is that all? Jesus.”
“I’ve been here at least twenty minutes.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Just a guy, hitching rides.”
“Well, good work, whoever you are.”
“Did you have a private room, when you were here?”
“No, those were for Peter King and the big boss.”
“I thought Peter King was the big boss.”
“No, King was number two.”
“So who’s the big boss?”
“I don’t know. I never met him.”
“Where is he now?”
“I have no idea.”
The door opened. McQueen fired from his chair. A dark shape fell backward. Reacher stepped across and kicked the door shut again. He said, “Five left.”
McQueen said, “How would you do it?”
“If I was them? I’d open every door in the corridor and put a guy in the first five rooms with blue spots. They’d see us before we saw them. We couldn’t go anywhere at all.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Are they smart enough?”
“I don’t know,” McQueen said. “They’re plenty smart in some ways.”
“I’m certainly getting that feeling.”
“How? You know what this is all about?”
Reacher said, “I think I’ve figured most of it out.”
“So you understand we absolutely need to capture this building intact, right?”
“Speak for yourself. All I absolutely need to do is get to Virginia.”
“What’s in Virginia?”
“Many things. It’s an important state. Twelfth largest in terms of population, and thirteenth in terms of GDP.”
McQueen’s left hand came free. Reacher gave him the Colt and crouched down and started work on his ankles, from behind.
The ankle ropes went slower. The tough fibers were doing the work the hardware store guy should have done with his buffing wheel. The key was getting smooth. Not good. So Reacher adapted his technique. He used the last of the burr on the tang to tug up part of the knot, and he used the key from the FBI’s motel in Kansas as a spike to force the knot apart. A different approach, and slower, but it got the job done a small fraction at a time. Five minutes later McQueen was three-quarters free, and five minutes after that he was out of the chair completely. He was trailing bracelets of severed rope from his wrists. He had the Colt submachine gun in his left hand and Peter King’s Beretta in his right. Good to go. They were about two hundred feet from the first mechanized door, and three hundred feet from the second. Three hundred feet from the sweet night air. Three hundred feet from safety.
“Ready?” Reacher said.
McQueen nodded.
Reacher opened the door to the corridor.
Chapter 79
The escape went bad immediately. The three hundred feet might as well have been three thousand miles. The five survivors had done the smart thing. All the room doors were standing open, along the whole length of the corridor, to the left and the right. Whichever way Reacher and McQueen went they risked getting fired on from inside as they passed. Or not. It was unpredictable. It was a lottery. Five hostiles, thirty-nine doors, not counting the one they were coming out of. Standard infantry tactics would have been to roll grenades into every room, at an angle, as they approached, or to blast through one plywood wall after another with anti-tank weapons. But they had no grenades, and no anti-tank weapons. They had two handguns and an almost-empty submachine gun. Problem.
Reacher said, “We need a diversion.”
McQueen said, “What kind?”
“We could set the place on fire.”
“We absolutely cannot do that. We need to preserve the paperwork.”
“I don’t have any matches, anyway. We’d have to try to get to the kitchen and use the stove. In which case we might as well try to get all the way out.”
“We should go sideways. There’s a clear run through the third chamber.”
“Pick a door,” Reacher said. He couldn’t see the blue spots. All the doors were folded back into the rooms. He knew there were six doors with blue spots. Built like rooms, used like lobbies. There were five bad guys. Therefore one way through was clear. A sixteen percent chance. Sixteen point six, recurring forever, to be totally accurate.
“Back to back?” McQueen asked.
“Who leads?” Reacher said.
“Doesn’t really matter.”
“It might,” Reacher said. He wasn’t pinning much hope on a sixteen percent chance. They were likely to run into someone in whichever lateral lobby they chose. One of the five. The resulting gunfire would alert the other four. If they gave chase, then the backward-facing guy would have to do most of the hard work. But if the four survivors did the smart thing and made lateral loops of their own, one by one, like outflanking maneuvers, then the forward-facing guy would take most of the load.
“You lead,” Reacher said.
McQueen stepped out into the corridor. Reacher stepped out behind him, walking backward, and they moved together, slow and quiet and cautious, back to back, almost touching, but not quite. From that point on it was all about trust. Reacher desperately wanted to glance back over his shoulder, and he knew McQueen felt the same, but neither man did. Each was responsible for a hundred and eighty degrees, no more, no less. They made it twenty feet, to the next pair of doors, one on the left and one on the right, and McQueen slowed and took a breath. Both doors were open.
No blue spots.
Nobody in the rooms.
Onward.
Another twenty feet. Another pair of doors. One on the left, one on the right.
Smarter than smart.
The bad guys had people in both rooms.
Reacher and McQueen pivoted ninety degrees, instantly, Reacher firing right, McQueen firing left, and way up at the far end of the corridor a third guy stepped out and way down at the bottom end a fourth guy stepped out and Reacher and McQueen were caught in a literal crossfire, with incoming rounds from all four points of the compass. Reacher hit the guy in the room ahead of him and the guy went down and McQueen bundled in after Reacher and slammed the door. They stood there together, stooped and panting, with the dead guy on the floor between them.
“You hit?” Reacher asked.
“No,” McQueen said.
That was the good news. The rest of the news was all bad. Ahead of them was a blastproof concrete wall probably ten feet thick. To their left and their right and behind them were plywood partitions just half an inch thick. And outside of a thin cheap door with no lock were four hostiles who knew exactly where they were.
Reacher said, “They don’t even need to come in. They can fire through the walls. Or the door.”
“I know,” McQueen said.
And they did. Immediately. The first round came through the door. It punched out an ugly
scab of wood that spun sideways and missed McQueen by an inch. The second round came through the wall. The plywood was tougher. But not much. The bullet came right through, but it had shattered into fragments. One of them nicked Reacher on the back of his hand. No big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but the cut started a fat trickle of blood. He stepped close to the splintered hole and put the Glock’s muzzle hard on it and fired back, twice, at different angles. McQueen did the same thing at the door. Reacher heard feet wheeling away.
Temporary relief, but ultimately only a stalemate.
Reacher stepped to the side wall and raised his boot high and kicked it, the same way a firefighter kicks down a door. The wall cracked and gave a little. He figured they could kick their way through eventually. But there was no point. They were on the wrong side of the corridor for the old lateral doors. All the blue spots were on the opposite side. And slow and noisy progress from one rat trap to another would gain them absolutely nothing.
Not good.
And then it got worse.
The building filled with a faint diesel roar. The outer door, opening, at the far end of the hundred-foot entrance tunnel. Reacher pictured the seal breaking, the big diesels rumbling, the two halves of the door grinding back along their tracks, the gap between them widening slowly and unstoppably. Far too soon for Quantico. They were still in the air, surely. Over Missouri by that point, hopefully, maybe even on approach to Whiteman, maybe even right then lowering the landing gear, but Whiteman was all of sixty miles away, and they still had complex preparations and transfers to make.
So, not the cavalry.
More bad guys.
He said, “They’re bringing in reinforcements.”
McQueen nodded, and said nothing.
Reacher said, “How many, do you think?”
“Could be dozens. Hundreds, even. There’s a network. Everything’s a co-production now.”
Reacher said, “OK.”
“I’m very sorry,” McQueen said. “Thank you for everything you tried to do.”
They shook hands, mute and awkward in the miserable plywood room, McQueen still trailing frayed cords from his wrists, Reacher’s hand bloody from his cut.
The diesel noise started up again. The outer door closing, to allow the inner door to open, the ancient fail-safe circuits still obedient.
McQueen said, “I assume they’ll lead them straight here.”
Reacher nodded. “So at least let’s not wait for them. Let’s make them work for it.”
“The third chamber is the place to be. They’ll be a little less willing to shoot in there.”
Reacher nodded again. The flatbed trailers, the giant yellow flasks. The radiation symbols. He said, “Don’t stop for me. No matter what. Better that one of us gets out than neither.”
McQueen said, “Likewise.”
“I’ll go first. I’ll go left and through. You go right.”
“You want the Colt back?”
“You keep it. It drifts left and down. Remember that.” Reacher cannibalized his part-gone magazines and put a full load in his Glock. One in the chamber, seventeen in the box. Some of the brass ended up smeared with his blood. Which seemed appropriate. Some old guy once said the meaning of life is that it ends. Which was inescapably true. No one lives forever. In his head Reacher had always known he would die. Every human does. But in his heart he had never really imagined it. Never imagined the time and the place and the details and the particulars.
He smiled.
He said, “On three?”
McQueen nodded.
He said, “One.”
The diesels sounded louder. The inner door, opening.
McQueen said, “Two.”
Reacher stepped over to the splintered threshold.
McQueen said, “Three.”
Reacher burst out at full speed, through the door, through some kind of final mental barrier, into the corridor, ice cold and careless, in his mind already dead like his father and his mother and his brother, bargaining for nothing more at all except the chance to take someone with him, or two of them, or three, and a guy to his left heard the noise and stepped out of a room and Reacher shot him, a triple tap, chest, chest, head, and then he plunged onward, across the narrow space, into a blue-spot room, a guy right in front of him going down the same way, chest, chest, head, and then Reacher was through the ancient door, into another plywood room, which was empty, with gunfire behind him, and out into the center chamber’s corridor, a shape running toward him from the right, firing, and into the next blue-spot room, with footsteps behind him, and then it was all over, finally and utterly and completely and definitively, because of the taped plastic sheet over the old door ahead of him, and because the Glock jammed and wouldn’t fire anymore.
A tired spring in the magazine, maybe, or his blood on the shell casings, already sticky and all fouled up.
The world went very quiet.
He turned around, slowly, and he put his back on the plastic sheet. Two men had guns on him. One pale face, one dark. The odd ethnic mixture. They were shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. The last two survivors from the original headcount. Both for him. Which was OK. It meant McQueen was getting a clear run, at least for the moment.
Their guns were Smith & Wesson 2213s, stainless steel, the exact same thing as McQueen had used in the fat man’s motel lobby. Wadiah’s standard issue, apparently. Maybe a bulk purchase, at a discount price. Three-inch barrels, eight .22 Long Rifle rimfires in the magazines. But not aimed high this time. Not high at all. Aimed right at the center of his chest.
The white guy smiled.
The Arab smiled.
The white guy closed one eye and sighted down the three-inch barrel.
The Arab closed one eye.
Reacher kept both eyes open.
Their trigger fingers tightened.
No sound anywhere. Reacher willed McQueen to make it. Get to the garage. Hide in the sad old truck. Let the reinforcements move past you. Hit the button and close the door. Then run like hell.
Their trigger fingers tightened some more.
They tightened all the way.
Then: two shots. Very close and very loud. A ragged little volley. Like a loose double tap. The white guy fell to his knees. Then he pitched forward on his face. The Arab sprawled sideways. His face was all gone, replaced by a gaping exit wound. Shot in the back of the head.
And behind them both, suddenly revealed, still on her feet, a Glock 19 in her hand, was a small slender figure.
Karen Delfuenso.
Chapter 80
Delfuenso had driven Bale’s Crown Vic all the way inside and parked it in the garage. McQueen was already in the front passenger seat. Delfuenso said it was her that Reacher had seen on the two-lane, driving back and forth, with her bright lights on. At first she had meant it just as moral support, but later she had realized the backlight might be useful. Hence the triple trip. She had seen Reacher’s muzzle flash on the roof. She had buzzed her windows down and heard the shots. When the subsequent long delay became unbearable she had found her way inside.
Reacher said, “Thank you.”
She said, “You’re welcome.”
She got a first-aid kit out of the trunk. Bureau issue. She said every unmarked car had one. Standard practice. A matter of policy. She cleaned the cut on his hand and bound it up. Then they got in the car. She backed up and turned around and rolled through into the entrance tunnel. Reacher got out again and hit the red button. The inner door started to close, to allow the outer door to open. The ancient fail-safe circuits, still obedient. Then they came out of the tunnel into the sweet night air, and they bumped across the dirt, where the farmer’s grandson had torn out the DoD’s old approach road. They made it back to the two-lane, and turned right, and right again, and they parked sideways across three bays in Lacey’s front lot, exactly where they had started.
Reacher asked her, “Do you have an ETA for Quantico?”
She said, “There
was a delay. They’re still about three hours out.”
“Would you drive me back to the cloverleaf?”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Why?”
“I want to get to Virginia.”
“Quantico will want to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“They’ll need to know what you know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Is that going to be your official position?”
“It always is.”
“And what’s your unofficial position?”
“Same thing. I don’t know anything.”
“Bullshit,” McQueen said to her. “He told me he had it all worked out.”
“I don’t believe him,” Delfuenso said. “I don’t have it all worked out. Not yet. Not all of it, anyway. Obviously I saw the nuclear waste. So I assume they were planning a strike somewhere. Maybe soon. Maybe into Nebraska’s aquifers.”
“Not possible,” Reacher said. “Those trailers aren’t going anywhere. Not now, not soon, not ever. They haven’t moved for twenty years. Their tires are rotted and I bet their axles are rusted solid. It would take the Corps of Engineers a year just to get them out of the tunnel.”
“Why are they in there at all? That place wasn’t built to house that kind of stuff.”
“They had to put it somewhere. No one wants it in their own back yard. It was probably just temporary. But they never figured out a permanent solution. So I guess they just forgot about it. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“But why would Wadiah want it, if it can’t be moved? If it can’t be moved, it can’t be used.”
“They were never going to use it. It’s strictly window dressing. It’s purely for show.”
“What show?”
“I’m not saying another word,” Reacher said. “Quantico will say I’m not allowed to know. They’ll call me a security risk. They’ll try to keep me in that motel in Kansas for the rest of my life. Which would drive me crazy. Which would give everyone a problem.”
