Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He kept his eyes on the windshield. She drove on, as fast as the Jeep would go. The engine was growling loud. A gruff old straight-six, drinking gasoline at the rate of a pint every minute.

  “Use two-wheel drive,” he said. “More economical.”

  She wrestled with the drivetrain lever and wrenched it forward. The front end of the car went quiet. The steering stopped fighting her. She drove on. Another half mile. Then a mile. She glanced down at the dash again.

  “We’re running on fumes,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said for the third time.

  Another mile. The engine stumbled and coughed once and ran ragged for a second and then picked up again. Air in the fuel line, he thought, or sludge dredged up from the bottom of the tank.

  “Reacher, we’re out of gas,” Alice said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Why not?”

  Another mile.

  “That’s why not,” he said suddenly.

  The right edge of the headlight beam washed over the ragged gravel shoulder and lit up a steel-blue Ford Crown Victoria. It had four VHF antennas on the back and no wheel covers. It was just sitting there, inert and abandoned, facing north.

  “We’ll use that,” he said. “It’ll have most of a tank. They were well organized.”

  She braked hard and pulled in behind it. “This is theirs? Why is it here?”

  “Walker left it here.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s pretty obvious. They came down from Pecos in two cars, this and the Lincoln. They dumped the Lincoln here and used the Ford the rest of the way. Then Walker ran away from the mesa, put the pick-up back in the barn, drove the Ford back up here, retrieved his Lincoln and came back down in it for our benefit. To make us think it was his first visit, if we happened to be still alive and looking.”

  “What about the keys?”

  “They’ll be in it. Walker wasn’t in the right frame of mind to worry about Hertz losing a rental car.”

  Alice jumped out and checked. Gave a thumbs-up. The keys were in it. Reacher followed her with the maps. They left the Greers’ Jeep with the doors standing open and the motor idling through the last of its gas. They got into the Crown Vic and he racked his seat back and she pulled hers forward. She fired it up and they were on the road again within thirty seconds, already doing sixty miles an hour.

  “It’s three-quarters full,” she said. “And it drives much better.”

  He nodded. It felt low and fast and smooth. Exactly like a big sedan should.

  “I’m sitting where Al Eugene sat,” he said.

  She glanced at him. He smiled.

  “Go faster,” he said. “Nobody will stop you. We look just like a squad car.”

  She accelerated to seventy-five, then eighty. He found the dome light and clicked it on and returned to the maps.

  “O.K., where were we?” he said.

  “The McDonald Observatory,” she said. “You didn’t like it.”

  He nodded. “It was too far out.”

  He tilted the map to catch the light. Stared hard at it. Concentrate, Reacher. Make it work. If you can.

  “What’s at Balmorhea State Recreation Area?” he asked.

  It was still southwest of Pecos, but only thirty miles out.

  The right sort of distance.

  “It’s a desert oasis,” she said. “Like a huge lake, very clear. You can swim and scuba dive there.”

  But not the right sort of place.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  He checked northeast, up to thirty miles out.

  “What about Monahans Sandhills?”

  “Four thousand acres of sand dunes. Looks like the Sahara.”

  “That’s it? And people go there?”

  “It’s very impressive.”

  He went quiet and checked the map all over again.

  “What about Fort Stockton?” he asked.

  “It’s just a town,” she said. “No different than Pecos, really.”

  Then she glanced across at him. “But Old Fort Stockton is worth seeing, I guess.”

  He looked at the map. Old Fort Stockton was marked as a historic ruin, north of the town itself. Nearer Pecos. He measured the distance. Maybe forty-five miles.

  Possible.

  “What is it exactly?” he asked.

  “Heritage site,” she said. “An old military fort. The Buffalo Soldiers were there. Confederates had torn the place down. The Buffaloes rebuilt it. Eighteen sixty-seven, I think.”

  He checked again. The ruins were southeast of Pecos, accessible from Route 285, which looked like a decent road. Probably a fast road. Probably a typical road. He closed his eyes. Alice raced on. The Crown Vic was very quiet. It was warm and comfortable. He wanted to go to sleep. He was very tired. Wet spray from the tires hissed against the underside.

  “I like the Old Fort Stockton area,” he said.

  “You think they were there?”

  He was quiet again, another whole mile.

  “Not there,” he said. “But nearby. Think about it, from their point of view.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m not like them.”

  “So pretend,” he said. “What were they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They were professionals. Quiet and unobtrusive. Like chameleons. Instinctively good at camouflage. Good at not being noticed. Put yourself in their shoes, Alice.”

  “I can’t,” she said again.

  “Think like them. Imagine. Get into it. Who are they? I saw them and thought they were a sales team. Rusty Greer thought they were social workers. Apparently Al Eugene thought they were FBI agents. So think like them. Be them. Your strength is you look very normal and very ordinary. You’re white, and you look very middle-class, and you’ve got this Crown Victoria, which when it’s not all tricked up with radio antennas looks like an ordinary family sedan. The FBI con helped, but basically you looked harmless enough that Al Eugene felt safe to stop for you, but also somehow commanding enough that he also had to. Wanted to. So you’re ordinary, but you’re respectable and plausible. And businesslike.”

  “O.K.”

  “But now you’ve got a kid with you. So what are you now?”

  “What?”

  “Now you’re a normal, ordinary, respectable, plausible middle-class family.”

  “But there were three of them.”

  He was quiet a beat. Kept his eyes closed.

  “One of the men was an uncle,” he said. “You’re a middle-class family, on vacation together in your sedan. But you’re not a loud Disneyland type of family. You’re not in shorts and brightly colored T-shirts. You look quiet, maybe a little earnest. Maybe a little nerdy. Or maybe a little studious. Maybe you look like a school principal’s family. Or an accountant’s. You’re obviously from out of state, so you’re traveling. Where to? Ask yourself the same question they must have asked themselves. Where will you blend in? Where’s the safest place around here? Where would an earnest, studious, middle-class family go, with their six-and-a-half-year-old daughter? Where’s a proper, enlightening, educational kind of a place to take her? Even though she’s way too young and doesn’t care? Even though people laugh behind your back at how politically correct and cloyingly diligent you are?”

  “Old Fort Stockton,” Alice said.

  “Exactly. You show the kid the glorious history of the African-American soldiers, even though you’d have a heart attack if she grew up and wanted to date one. But you’re driving a Ford, not a BMW or a Cadillac. You’re sensible. Which means not rich, basically. Careful about your expenditure. You resent overpaying for something. Motels, just as much as cars. So you drive in from the north and you stay at a place far enough out to be reasonable. Not the dumps in the middle of nowhere. But on the first distant fringes of the Fort Stockton tourist area. Where the value is good.”

  He open
ed his eyes.

  “That’s where you would stay, Alice,” he said.

  “It is?”

  He nodded. “A place where they get plenty of earnest, striving, not-rich middle-class families on vacation. The sort of place that gets recommended in boring AAA magazines. A place where you fit right in. A place with lots of people exactly like you. A place where you won’t stand out in anybody’s memory for a second. And a place where you’re only thirty, thirty-five minutes from Pecos by a fast road.”

  Alice shrugged and nodded all at the same time.

  “Good theory, I guess,” she said. “Good logic. Question is, were they following the same logic?”

  “I hope so,” Reacher said. “Because we don’t have time for a big search. I don’t think we have much time for anything. I’m getting a bad feeling. I think she’s in real danger now.”

  Alice said nothing.

  “Maybe the others were supposed to call in regularly,” he said. “Maybe this third guy is about to panic.”

  “So it’s a hell of a gamble.”

  He said nothing.

  “Do the math,” she said. “A forty-five-mile radius gives you a circle over six thousand square miles in area. And you want to pick one tiny pinpoint out of it?”

  He was quiet again, another mile.

  Roll the dice, Reacher.

  “I think they were pretty smart and careful,” he said. “And their priorities were pretty obvious. They were looking at the same maps we are. So I think that’s how they’d have done it.”

  “But are you sure?”

  He shrugged.

  “Can’t ever be sure,” he said. “But that’s how I’d have done it. That’s the trick, Alice. Think like them. Never fails.”

  “Never?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  The sleeping crossroads hamlet was dead ahead. The school, the gas station, the diner. Pecos straight on, Old Fort Stockton to the right.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He said nothing.

  “Well?” she asked again.

  He stared through the windshield.

  “Decision?” she said.

  He said nothing. She braked hard and skidded a yard on the soaked road and came to a complete halt right on the melted stop line.

  “Well?”

  Roll the damn dice, Reacher.

  “Make the turn,” he said.

  The driver decided to take a shower first. An excusable delay. He had time. The room was locked. The child was fast asleep. He stripped off his clothes and folded them neatly and placed them on his chair. Stepped into the bathroom. Pulled the shower curtain and set the water running.

  Then he unwrapped a new bar of soap. He liked motel soaps. He liked the crisp paper packets, and the smell when you opened them. It bloomed out at you, clean and strong. He sniffed the shampoo. It was in a tiny plastic bottle. It smelled of strawberries. He read the label. Conditioning Shampoo, it said. He leaned in and placed the soap in the porcelain receptacle and balanced the shampoo on the rim of the tub. Pushed the curtain aside with his forearm and stepped into the torrent.

  The road northeast out of Echo was narrow and winding and clung to a hilly ridge that followed the course of the Coyanosa Draw. Now the big Ford was no longer ideal. It felt oversized and soft and ungainly. The blacktop was running with water flowing right to left across its surface. Heavy rills were pushing mud and grit over it in fan-shaped patterns. Alice was struggling to maintain forty miles an hour. She wasn’t talking. Just hauling the wallowing sedan around an endless series of bends and looking pale under her tan. Like she was cold.

  “You O.K.?” he asked.

  “Are you?” she asked back.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You just killed two people. Then saw a third die and a house burn down.”

  He glanced away. Civilians.

  “Water under the bridge,” he said. “No use dwelling on it now.”

  “That’s a hell of an answer.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t stuff like that affect you at all?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to ask them any questions.”

  “Is that all you’re sorry for?”

  He was quiet for a second.

  “Tell me about that house you’re renting,” he said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “My guess is it’s a short-term kind of a place, people in and out all the time, not very well maintained. My guess is it was kind of dirty when you moved in.”

  “So?”

  “Am I right?”

  She nodded at the wheel. “I spent the first week cleaning.”

  “Grease on the stove, sticky floors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bugs in the closets?”

  She nodded again.

  “Roaches in the kitchen?”

  “A colony,” she said. “Big ones.”

  “And you got rid of them?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “How?”

  “Poison.”

  “So tell me how you felt about that.”

  She glanced sideways. “You comparing those people to cockroaches?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I like cockroaches better. They’re just little packets of DNA scuttling around, doing what they have to do. Walker and his buddies didn’t have to do what they did. They had a choice. They could have been upstanding human beings. But they chose not to be. Then they chose to mess with me, which was the final straw, and they got what they got. So I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’m not even going to give it another thought. And if you do, I think you’re wrong.”

  She was quiet for another twisting mile.

  “You’re a hard man, Reacher,” she said.

  He was quiet in turn.

  “I think I’m a realistic man,” he said. “And a decent enough guy, all told.”

  “You may find normal people don’t agree.”

  He nodded.

  “A lot of you don’t,” he said.

  He stood in the warm water long enough to soak all over, and then he started on his hair. He lathered the shampoo into a rich halo and worked on his scalp with his fingertips. Then he rinsed his hands and soaped his face, his neck, behind his ears. He closed his eyes and let the water sluice down over his body. Used more shampoo on his chest where the hair was thick. Attended to his underarms and his back and his legs.

  Then he washed his hands and his forearms very thoroughly and carefully, like he was a surgeon preparing for a procedure.

  “How far now?” Alice asked.

  Reacher calculated from the map.

  “Twenty-five miles,” he said. “We cross I-10 and head north on 285 toward Pecos.”

  “But the ruins are on the other road. The one up to Monahans.”

  “Trust me, Alice. They stayed on 285. They wanted access.”

  She said nothing.

  “We need a plan,” Reacher said.

  “For taking this guy?” she said. “I wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “No, for later. For getting Carmen back.”

  “You’re awfully confident.”

  “No point going in expecting to lose.”

  She braked hard for a corner and the front end washed wide. Then the road straightened for a hundred yards and she accelerated like she was grateful for it.

  “Habeas corpus,” she said. “We’ll go to a federal judge and enter an emergency motion. Tell the whole story.”

  “Will that work?”

  “It’s exactly what habeas corpus is for. It’s been working for eight hundred years. No reason it won’t work this time.”

  “O.K.,” he said.

  “One thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll need testimony. So you’ll have to keep this one alive. If that’s not too much to ask.”

  He finished washing and just stood there in the warm stream of water. He let it flow over his body. He had a
new thought in his head. He would need money. The others weren’t coming back. The killing crew was history. He knew that. He was unemployed again. And he was unhappy about that. He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t good at going out and creating things for himself. Teamwork had suited him just fine. Now he was back on his own. He had some money stashed under his mattress at home, but it wasn’t a whole lot. He’d need more, and he’d need it pretty damn soon.

  He turned around in the stall and tilted his head back and let the water wash his hair flat against his scalp. So maybe he should take the kid with him back to L.A. Sell her there. He knew people. People who facilitated adoptions, or facilitated other stuff he wouldn’t want to inquire too closely about. She was what? Six and a half? And white? Worth a lot of money to somebody, especially with all that fair hair. Blue eyes would have added an extra couple of grand, but whatever, she was a cute little package as she was. She might fetch a decent price, from people he knew.

  But how to get her there? The Crown Vic was gone, but he could rent another car. Not like he hadn’t done that plenty of times before. He could call Pecos or Fort Stockton and get one brought down, first thing in the morning. He had no end of phony paperwork. But that would mean some delivery driver would see his face. And the kid’s. No, he could hide her in the woman’s empty room and bring the rental guy into his. But it was still a risk.

  Or, he could steal a car. Not like he hadn’t done that before, either, long ago, in his youth. He could steal one right out of the motel parking lot. He eased the shower curtain aside and leaned out for a second and checked his watch, which was resting on the vanity. Four-thirty in the morning. They could be on the road by five. Two hours minimum before some citizen came out of his room and found his car gone. They would be a hundred miles away by then. And he had spare plates. The California issue from the original LAX rental, and the Texas issue that had come off the Crown Vic.

  He got back under the shower and straightened the curtain again. His decision was made. If there was a white sedan out there, he would take it. Sedans were the most common shape in the Southwest, and white was the most common color, because of the sun. And he could keep the kid in the trunk. No problem. A Corolla would be best, maybe a couple of years old. Very generic. Easily confused with a Geo Prizm or a dozen other cheap imports. Even traffic cops had a hard time recognizing Corollas. He could drive it all the way home. He could sell it too, as well as the kid, make a little more money. He nodded to himself. Smiled and raised his arms to rinse again.