“But?”
“Little Wing is revolutionary. Like most great ideas, it starts with a very simple premise. It completely ignores its target on the way up. It does all its work on the way down.”
“I see,” Reacher said.
Bond nodded. “Going up, it’s just a dumb rocket. Very, very fast. It reaches about eighty thousand feet and then it slows and stops and topples. Starts to fall back down again. Then the electronics switch on and it starts hunting its target. It has boosters to maneuver with, and control surfaces, and because gravity is doing most of the work, the maneuvering can be incredibly precise.”
“It falls on its prey from above,” Reacher said. “Like a hawk.”
Bond nodded again.
“At unbelievable speed,” she said. “Way supersonic. It can’t miss. And it can’t be stopped. Airborne missile defense radar always looks downward. Decoy flares always launch downward. The way things have been until now, planes are very vulnerable from above. They could afford to be. Because very little came at them from above. But it’s different now. That’s why this is so sensitive. We’ve got about a two-year window in which our surface-to-air capability will be completely unbeatable. For about two years anyone using Little Wing will be able to shoot down anything that flies. Maybe longer. It depends how fast people are with new countermeasures.”
Reacher said, “The speed will make countermeasures difficult.”
“Almost impossible,” Bond said. “Human reaction times will be too slow. So defenses will have to be automated. Which means we’ll have to trust computers to tell the difference between a bird a hundred yards up and Little Wing a mile up and a satellite fifty miles up. Potentially it will be chaos. Civilian airlines will want protection, obviously, because of terrorism worries. But the skies above civilian airports are thick with stacked planes. False deployment would be the norm, not the exception. So they’d have to turn off their protection for takeoff and landing, which makes them totally vulnerable just when they can’t afford to be.”
“A can of worms,” Dixon said.
“But a theoretical can of worms,” O’Donnell said. “We understand Little Wing isn’t working very well.”
“This can go no further,” Bond said.
“We already agreed.”
“Because these are commercial secrets now.”
“Much more important than defense secrets.”
“The prototypes were fine,” Bond said. “The beta testing was excellent. But they ran into problems with production.”
“Rockets or electronics or both?”
“Electronics,” Bond said. “The rocket technology is more than forty years old. They can do the rocket production in their sleep. That happens up in Denver, Colorado. It’s the electronics packs that are giving them the problems. Down here in LA. They haven’t even started mass production yet. They’re still doing bench assembly. Now even that is screwed up.”
Reacher nodded and said nothing. He stared out the window for a moment and then took a stack of napkins out of the dispenser and fanned them out and then butted them back together into a neat pile. Weighted them down with the sugar container. The restaurant had pretty much emptied out. There were two guys alone in separate booths at the far end of the room. Landscape workers, tired and hunched. Apart from them, no business. Outside on the street the afternoon light was fading. The red and yellow neon from the restaurant’s huge sign was becoming comparatively brighter and brighter. Some passing cars on the boulevard already had their headlights on.
“So Little Wing is the same old same old, really,” O’Donnell said, in the silence. “A Pentagon pipe dream that does nothing but burn dollars.”
Diana Bond said, “It wasn’t supposed to be like that.”
“It never is.”
“It’s not a total failure. Some of the units work.”
“They said the same thing about the M16 rifle. Which was a real comfort when you were out on patrol with one.”
“But the M16 was perfected eventually. Little Wing will be, too. And it will be worth waiting for. You know which is the world’s best-protected airplane?”
Dixon said, “Air Force One, probably. Politicians’ asses always come first.”
Bond said, “Little Wing could take it out without breaking a sweat.”
“Bring it on,” O’Donnell said. “Easier than voting.”
“You should read the Patriot Act. You could be arrested for even thinking that.”
“Jails aren’t big enough,” O’Donnell said.
Their waitress came back and hovered. Clearly she was hoping for something more lucrative from such a big table than five bottomless cups of coffee. Dixon and Neagley took the hint and ordered ice cream sundaes. Diana Bond passed. O’Donnell ordered a hamburger. The waitress stood and looked pointedly at Reacher. He wasn’t seeing her. He was still playing with his pile of napkins. Weighting it down with the sugar canister, lifting the sugar off, putting it back.
“Sir?” the waitress said.
Reacher looked up.
“Apple pie,” he said. “With ice cream. And more coffee.”
The waitress went away and Reacher went back to his pile of napkins. Diana Bond retrieved her purse from the floor and made a big show of dusting it off.
“I should get back,” she said.
“OK,” Reacher said. “Thank you very much for coming.”
55
Diana Bond left for the long drive back to Edwards and Reacher neatened his stack of napkins and placed the sugar container back on top of it, exactly centered. The desserts arrived and more coffee was poured and O’Donnell’s burger was served. Reacher got halfway through his pie and then he stopped eating. He sat in silence for a moment, staring out the window again. Then he moved suddenly and pointed at the sugar container and looked straight at Neagley and asked, “You know what that is?”
“Sugar,” she said.
“No, it’s a paperweight,” he said.
“So?”
“Who carries a gun with the chamber empty?”
“Someone trained that way.”
“Like a cop. Or an ex-cop. Ex-LAPD, maybe.”
“So?”
“The dragon lady at New Age lied to us. People take notes. They doodle. They work better with pencil and paper. There are no completely paperless environments.”
O’Donnell said, “Things might have changed since you last held a job.”
“The first time we talked she told us that Swan used his piece of the Berlin Wall as a paperweight. It’s kind of hard to use a paperweight in a completely paperless environment, isn’t it?”
O’Donnell said, “It could have been a figure of speech. Paperweight, souvenir, desk ornament, is there a difference?”
“First time we were there, we had to wait to get in the lot. Remember?”
Neagley nodded. “There was a truck coming out the gate.”
“What kind of a truck?”
“A photocopier truck. Repair or delivery.”
“Kind of hard to use a photocopier in a completely paperless environment, right?”
Neagley said nothing.
Reacher said, “If she lied about that, she could have lied about a whole bunch of stuff.”
Nobody spoke.
Reacher said, “New Age’s Director of Security is ex-LAPD. I bet most of his foot soldiers are, too. Safeties on, chambers empty. Basic training.”
Nobody spoke.
Reacher said, “Call Diana Bond again. Get her back here, right now.”
“She only just left,” Neagley said.
“Then she hasn’t got far. She can turn around. I’m sure her car has a steering wheel.”
“She won’t want to.”
“She’ll have to. Tell her if she doesn’t there’ll be a whole lot more than her boss’s name in the newspaper.”
It took a little more than thirty-five minutes for Diana Bond to get back. Slow traffic, inconvenient highway exits. They saw her car pull into the
lot. A minute later she was back at the table. Standing beside it, not sitting at it. Angry.
“We had a deal,” she said. “I talk to you one time, you leave me alone.”
“Six more questions,” Reacher said. “Then we leave you alone.”
“Go to hell.”
“This is important.”
“Not to me.”
“You came back. You could have kept on driving. You could have called the DIA. But you didn’t. So quit pretending. You’re going to answer.”
Silence in the room. No sound, except tires on the boulevard and a distant hum from the kitchen. A dishwasher, maybe.
“Six questions?” Bond said. “OK, but I’ll be counting carefully.”
“Sit down,” Reacher said. “Order dessert.”
“I don’t want dessert,” she said. “Not here.” But she sat down, in the same chair she had used before.
“First question,” Reacher said. “Does New Age have a rival? A competitor somewhere with similar technology?”
Diana Bond said, “No.”
“Nobody all bitter and frustrated because they were outbid?”
“No,” Bond said again. “New Age’s proposition was unique.”
“OK, second question. Does the government really want Little Wing to work?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t it?”
“Because governments can get nervous about developing new attack capabilities without having appropriate defense capabilities already in place.”
“That’s a concern I’ve never heard mentioned.”
“Really? Suppose Little Wing is captured and copied? The Pentagon knows how much damage it can do. Are we happy to face having the thing turned around against us?”
“It’s not an issue,” Bond said. “We would never do anything if we thought like that. The Manhattan Project would have been canceled, supersonic fighters, everything.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Now tell me about New Age’s bench assembly.”
“Is this the third question?”
“Yes.”
“What about their bench assembly?”
“Tell me what it is, basically. I never worked in the electronics business.”
“It’s assembly by hand,” Bond said. “Women in sterile rooms at laboratory benches in shower caps using magnifying glasses and soldering irons.”
“Slow,” Reacher said.
“Obviously. A dozen units a day instead of hundreds or thousands.”
“A dozen?”
“That’s all they’re averaging right now. Nine or ten or twelve or thirteen a day.”
“When did they start bench assembly?”
“Is this the fourth question?”
“Yes, it is.”
“They started bench assembly about seven months ago.”
“How did it go?”
“Is this the fifth question?”
“No, it’s a follow-up.”
“It went fine for the first three months. They hit their targets.”
“Six days a week, right?”
“Yes.”
“When did they hit problems?”
“About four months ago.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Is this the last question?”
“No, it’s another follow-up.”
“After assembly the units are tested. More and more of them weren’t working.”
“Who tests them?”
“They have a quality control director.”
“Independent?”
“No. He was the original development engineer. At this stage he’s the only one who can test them because he’s the only one who knows how they’re supposed to work.”
“What happens to the rejects?”
“They get destroyed.”
Reacher said nothing.
Diana Bond said, “Now I really have to go.”
“Last question,” Reacher said. “Did you cut their funding because of their problems? Did they fire people?”
“Of course not,” Bond said. “Are you nuts? That’s not how it works. We maintained their budget. They maintained their staff. We had to. They had to. We have to make this thing work.”
56
Diana Bond left for the second time and Reacher went back to his pie. The apples were cold and the crust was leathery and the ice cream had melted all over the plate. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t really tasting anything.
O’Donnell said, “We should celebrate.”
“Should we?” Reacher said.
“Of course we should. We know what happened now.”
“And that means we should celebrate?”
“Well, doesn’t it?”
“Lay it out for me and see for yourself.”
“OK, Swan wasn’t pursuing some private concern here. He was investigating his own company. He was checking why the success rate fell away so badly after the first three months. He was worried about insider involvement. Therefore he needed clerical help on the outside because of eavesdropping and random data monitoring in his office. Therefore he recruited Franz and Sanchez and Orozco. Who else would he trust?”
“And?”
“First they analyzed the production figures. Which were all those numbers we found. Seven months, six days a week. Then they ruled out sabotage. New Age had no rivals that stood to gain anything and the Pentagon wasn’t working against them behind the scenes.”
“So?”
“What else was there? They figured the quality control guy had falsely condemned six hundred and fifty working units and the firm was booking them in as destroyed but actually selling them out the back door for a hundred grand apiece to someone called Azhari Mahmoud, a.k.a. whoever. Hence the list of names and the note on Sanchez’s napkin.”
“And?”
“They confronted New Age prematurely and got killed for it. The firm cooked up a story to cover Swan’s disappearance and the dragon lady fed it to you.”
“So now we should celebrate?”
“We know what happened, Reacher. We always used to celebrate.”
Reacher said nothing.
“It’s a home run,” O’Donnell said. “Isn’t it? And you know what? It’s almost funny. You said we should talk to Swan’s old boss? Well, I think we already did. Who else could it have been on that cell phone? That was New Age’s Director of Security.”
“Probably.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“What did you say way back in that Beverly Hills hotel room?”
“I don’t know. Lots of things.”
“You said you wanted to piss on their ancestors’ graves.”
“And I will.”
“You won’t,” Reacher said. “And neither will I, or any of us. Which isn’t going to feel good. That’s why we can’t celebrate.”
“They’re right here in town. They’re sitting ducks.”
“They sold six hundred and fifty working electronics packs out the back door. Which has implications. Somebody wants the technology, they buy one pack and copy it. Somebody buys six hundred and fifty, it’s because they want the missiles themselves. And they don’t buy the electronics down here unless they’re also buying the rockets and the launch tubes up there in Colorado. That’s what we’ve got to face here. Some guy called Azhari Mahmoud now owns six hundred and fifty brand-new latest-generation SAMs. Whoever he is, we can guess what he wants them for. It’ll be some kind of a big, big deal. So we have to tell someone, folks.”
Nobody spoke.
“And a thin minute after we drop that dime, we’re buried up to our armpits in federal agents. We won’t be able to cross the street without permission, let alone go get these guys. We’ll have to sit back and watch them get lawyers and eat three squares a day for the next ten years while they run through all their appeals.”
Nobody spoke.
“So that’s why we can’t celebrate,” Reacher said. “They messed with the special investigators and we can’t lay a glove on them.”
57
Reacher didn’t sleep a wink that night. Not a second, not a minute. They messed with the special investigators and we can’t lay a glove on them. He tossed and turned and lay awake, hour after hour. His eyes were jammed wide open but images and fevered hallucinations flooded at him. Calvin Franz, walking, talking, laughing, full of drive and energy and sympathy and concern. Jorge Sanchez, the narrowed eyes, the hint of a smile, the gold tooth, the endless cynicism that was ultimately as reassuring as constant good humor. Tony Swan, short, wide, bulky, sincere, a thoroughly decent man. Manuel Orozco, the absurd tattoo, the fake accent, the jokes, the metallic clunk of the ever-present Zippo.
Friends all.
Friends unavenged.
Friends abandoned.
Then others swam into sight, as real as if they were hovering just below the ceiling. Angela Franz, clean, carefully dressed, eyes wide with panic. The boy Charlie, rocking in his little wooden chair. Milena, slipping like a ghost from the harsh Vegas sun into the darkness of the bar. Tammy Orozco on her sofa. Her three children, bewildered, roaming through their wrecked apartment, looking for their father. They appeared to Reacher as two girls and a boy, nine, seven, and five, even though he had never met them. Swan’s dog was there, a long swishing tail, a deep rumble of a bark. Even Swan’s mail box was there, blinding in the Santa Ana light.
Reacher gave it up at five in the morning and got dressed again and went out for a walk. He turned west on Sunset and stamped his way through a whole angry mile, hoping against hope that someone would bump him or jostle him or get in his way so that he could snap and snarl and yell and ease his frustration. But the sidewalks were deserted. Nobody walked in LA, especially not at five in the morning, and certainly nowhere near a giant stranger in an obvious rage. The boulevard was quiet, too. No traffic, except occasional anonymous thirdhand sedans bearing humble employees to work, and a lone farting Harley carrying a fat gray-haired jerk in leathers. Reacher was offended by the noise and gave the guy the finger. The bike slowed and for a delicious moment Reacher thought the guy was going to stop and make an issue out of it. But, no luck. The guy took one look and twisted the throttle and took off again, fast.
Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16] Page 436
