by Child, Lee
‘They saw us buy these flights.’
‘They saw Vega and Kehoe buy these flights. But we’re not Vega and Kehoe any more. From now on we’re Lozano and Baldacci, at least when it comes to credit cards. We’ll use theirs. How’s that for a message?’
‘They can track credit cards.’
‘I know.’
‘You want them to find us, don’t you?’
‘Easier than us finding them. But I agree with you about Hertz and Avis. We don’t want to make it too easy. We need to give them a sense of achievement.’
‘First we have to make it through the airport. Which could be full of MPs. Because Warrant Officer Espin isn’t the dumbest bunny ever born. He must know where you’re going. And he’s got the personnel. He could have a guy in every airport within a hundred miles of LA. All day and all night. And the FBI could be there too. Their Pittsburgh people don’t need to be geniuses to figure out where we were going.’
‘We’ll keep our eyes open.’
The glide path was long and gentle, and the landing was smooth, and the inward taxi felt fast and nimble. Then a tiny bell sounded and a light went out and about ninety-seven people leapt to their feet. Reacher stayed in his seat, because it was no less comfortable than standing under a six-foot ceiling. And the guys three and four rows ahead stayed sitting too, because there was no way known to science for an adult male human to get out of an airline seat in coach without using leverage from his hands and his arms.
The plane emptied from the front, with people flowing out in layers, like sand in an hourglass. They grabbed their suitcases and their coats from where they had stowed them, and they funnelled away, and the next row slid out to replace them, and the next. The old white-haired guy with the cane and the young movie intern had to struggle out past their immobile centre-seat neighbours. Then the next rows cleared, and the two guys were left sitting all alone in a sea of emptied space. Reacher took his turn down the aisle, head bent and hunched, and he paused three rows ahead and hauled the left-hand guy to his feet by the front of his shirt. It seemed the least he could do. He paused again a row later and did the same with the right-hand guy. Then he moved on, down the aisle, through the galley, out the door, through warm air and kerosene stink, and into the Long Beach airport.
FORTY-SEVEN
AIRPORTS ARE FULL of solo loiterers, which makes spotting surveillance almost impossible. Because everyone is a suspect. A guy sitting around doing nothing behind a rumpled newspaper? Rare on the street, but pretty much compulsory in the airport. There could have been fifty undercover MPs and fifty FBI agents inside the first thirty feet alone.
But no one showed any interest in them. No one looked at them, no one approached them, and no one followed them. So they walked away fast, straight to the taxi line, and they got in the back of a beat-up sedan, and they asked the driver for off-airport car rental, but not Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, or anyone else with an illuminated sign. The driver didn’t ask supplementary questions. Didn’t seek detailed specifications. He just took off, like he knew where he was going. His brother-in-law’s, probably, or whichever guy gave him the best finder’s fee.
In which case the brother-in-law or the top-dollar hustler must have been named Al, and he must have been a cool guy, because the cab pulled up in front of a vacant lot filled with about twenty parked cars and backed by a wooden shed, which had Cool Al’s Auto Rental painted on its roof, inexpertly, by hand, in thin paint, with a wide brush.
‘Perfect,’ Reacher said.
Peter Paul Lozano took care of the cab fare, via a bill peeled off his quarter-inch stack of twenties, and then Reacher and Turner wandered through the lot. Clearly Cool Al had positioned his business in what he must have figured was a sweet spot halfway between the Rent-a-Wreck idea and the four-year-old Lamborghini approach. The lot was filled with vehicles that had started out prestigious, and had probably stayed prestigious for a good long time, but which were now well into a long and sad decline. There were Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers and BMWs and Jaguars, all of them last-but-three body styles, all of them scuffed and dented and a little dull.
‘Will they work?’ Turner asked.
‘Don’t know,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m the last guy to ask about cars. Let’s see what Cool Al has to say on the subject.’
Which was, translated and paraphrased, ‘They’ve lasted this long, so why should they stop now?’ Which struck Reacher as both logical and optimistic. Cool Al himself was a guy of about sixty or sixty-five, with a full head of grey hair, and a big belly, and a yellow shirt. He was at a desk that took up half the space in his shed, which was hot and smelled of dusty wood and creosote.
He said, ‘Go on, pick a car, any car.’
‘A Range Rover,’ Turner said. ‘I’ve never been in one before.’
‘You’ll love it.’
‘I hope so.’
Reacher did the deal, at the giant desk, with licences from Vega and Baldacci, and a made-up cell number, and one of Baldacci’s credit cards, and a scrawled signature that could have been pretty much anything. In return Cool Al handed over a key and waved a wide arm towards the right side of the lot and said, ‘The black one.’
The black one turned out to be sun-hazed down to a steely dark purple, and its window tints were lifting and bubbling, and its seats were cracked and sagging. It was from the 1990s, Turner thought. No longer a premium vehicle. But it started, and it turned right, and it rolled down the road. Turner said, ‘It’s lasted this long. Why should it stop now?’
It stopped a mile later, but on command, for breakfast at the first diner they saw, which was a family-run place on Long Beach Boulevard. It had all the good stuff, including a long-delayed omelette for Turner. She called Sergeant Leach from the payphone and told her to take care. Reacher watched the parking lot, and saw no one. No pursuit, no surveillance, no interest at all. So they got back on the road and headed north and west, looking for a 710 on-ramp, Reacher driving for the first time. The stately old boat suited him well. Its window tints were reassuring. They were nearly opaque. And the mechanical parts seemed up to their task. The car floated along, as if the road surface was just a vague rumour, somewhere far, far away.
Turner said, ‘What are you going to do if you see them?’
Reacher said, ‘Who?’
‘Your daughter and her mother.’
‘You mean what am I going to say?’
‘No, I mean from a distance, the very first time you lay eyes on them.’
‘I don’t see how I would recognize them.’
‘Suppose you did.’
‘Then I’m going to look for the trap.’
‘Correct,’ Turner said. ‘They’re bait, until proven otherwise. The MPs and the FBI will be there for sure. It’s a known destination. Every single person you see could be undercover. So proceed accordingly.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Between here and North Hollywood the danger doubles with every mile. We’re heading straight for the centre of the inferno.’
‘Is this a pre-action briefing?’
‘I’m your CO. I’m obliged to give one.’
‘You’re preaching to the choir.’
‘You might recognize them, you know.’
‘Daughters don’t necessarily resemble their fathers.’
‘I meant you might remember the mother.’
Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘I have some very bad news.’
Romeo said, ‘Does it relate in any way to Baldacci using his credit card at a car rental called Cool Al’s?’
‘What kind of Al’s?’
‘It’s a West Coast thing. What happened?’
‘Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets.’
‘On the plane?’
‘He broke Lozano’s fingers and Baldacci’s arms and no one noticed.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Apparently it is.
One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It’s a blatant humiliation. And now he’s renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?’
Reacher thought he was a bad driver. At first he had meant it as a safety-first subterfuge, rightly assuming it would remind him to concentrate, but then he had learned it was true. His spatial awareness and his reaction times were all based on a human scale, not a highway scale. They were up close and personal. Animal, not machine. Maybe Turner was right. Maybe he was feral. Not that he was a terrible driver. Just worse than the average driver. But not worse than the average I-710 driver, on that particular morning, on the section known as the Long Beach Freeway. People were eating, and drinking, and shaving, and brushing their hair, and applying make-up, and filing nails, and filing papers, and reading, and texting, and surfing, and holding long conversations on cell phones, some of which were ending in screams, and some of which were ending in tears. In the midst of it all Reacher tried to hold his speed and his line, while watching the drift and the wobble up ahead, and calculating which way he should swerve if he had to.
He said, ‘We should stop and call Captain Edmonds. I want to know if she can get what we need.’
‘Keep it on the back burner,’ Turner said.
‘I would if I could. But they won’t let us. Their other two guys might have been on that flight to Orange County. Or else on the next Long Beach departure. Either way they’re only an hour or two behind us.’
‘Knowing what Edmonds can or can’t get won’t help us with them.’
‘It’s tactically crucial,’ Reacher said. ‘Like in the field manual. We have to assess whether they need to retain unimpaired cognitive function for future interrogation.’
‘That’s not in the field manual.’
‘Maybe they cleaned it up.’
‘You mean if Edmonds has failed, you’ll keep the two guys alive so you can beat it out of them?’
‘I wouldn’t beat it out of them. I would ask them nicely, like I did with the Big Dog. But if I know I don’t need to ask them anything, then I can let nature take its course beforehand.’
‘What course will that be?’
‘The future’s not ours to see. But something uncomplicated, probably.’
‘Reacher, you’re on the way to see your daughter.’
‘And I’d like to live long enough to get there. We can’t do a front burner and a back burner thing. Not on this. We have to do two front burners. Ma’am. Respectfully submitted.’
Turner said, ‘OK. But we’ll buy a phone, so we don’t have to keep on stopping. In fact we’ll buy two phones. One each. Prepaid, for cash. And a street map.’
Which they did about a mile later, by coming off the freeway into a dense retail strip anchored by a chain pharmacy, which carried pre-paid cell phones and maps, and whose registers accepted cash along with every other form of payment known to man. They put the map in the car, and stored each other’s numbers in their phones, and then Reacher leaned on the Range Rover’s warm flank and dialled Edmonds’ cell.
She said, ‘I made the application at start of business today.’
‘And?’
‘So far there have been no motions to deny.’
‘How soon would you expect them?’
‘Instantly. Or sooner.’
‘So that’s good.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘So how long?’
‘Later today, or early tomorrow.’
‘Got a pen?’
‘And paper.’
‘I want you to check Peter Paul Lozano and Ronald David Baldacci with HRC.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I want you to check.’
‘Relevant to anything in particular?’
‘To being on the right side of history.’
‘I heard something you should know.’
‘As in?’
‘Detective Podolski found your clothes in the landfill. They’ve been tested.’
‘And?’
‘The blood didn’t match.’
‘Should I hold my breath waiting for an apology from Major Sullivan?’
‘She’s coming around. She was very touched you left her an IOU.’
‘Is the Metro PD dropping out now?’
‘No. You fled after a lawful police challenge.’
‘That’s not allowed any more?’
‘I’ll do my best with Lozano and Baldacci.’
‘Thank you,’ Reacher said.
And then they got back on the freeway and headed north, just one of ten thousand moving vehicles winking in the sun.
Romeo called Juliet and said, ‘I spoke to the gentleman known as Cool Al directly, on a pretext, and he tells us they’re in a twenty-year-old black Range Rover.’
Juliet said, ‘That’s good to know.’
‘Not the fastest car on the planet. Not that any would be fast enough. I put our boys on a helicopter. Orange County to Burbank. They’ll be in position at least an hour ahead of time.’
‘Who paid for it?’
‘Not the army,’ Romeo said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Did you cancel Baldacci’s credit card? Lozano’s, too, I suppose.’
‘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 fi
rst 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.’
