by Lee Child
They went quiet. The truck roared on.
“Reacher?” Holly said.
“What?” he said.
“Hold me,” she said.
“I am holding you,” he said.
He squeezed her gently, both arms, to make his point. She pressed closer.
“Reacher?” she said again.
“Yes?” he said.
“You want to kiss me again?” she said. “Makes me feel better.”
He turned his head and smiled at her in the dark.
“Doesn’t do me a whole lot of harm, either,” he said.
EIGHT HOURS AT maybe sixty-five or seventy miles an hour. Somewhere between five hundred and five hundred and fifty miles. That’s what they’d done. That was Reacher’s estimation. And it was beginning to give him a clue about where they were.
“We’re somewhere where they abolished the speed limit,” he said.
Holly stirred and yawned.
“What?” she said.
“We’ve been going fast,” he said. “Up to seventy miles an hour, probably, for hours. Loder is pretty thorough. He wouldn’t let Stevie drive this fast if there was any danger of getting pulled over for it. So we’re somewhere where they raised the limit, or abolished it altogether. Which states did that?”
She shrugged.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Mainly the western states, I think.”
Reacher nodded. Traced an arc on the map in his head.
“We didn’t go east,” he said. “We figured that already. So I figure we’re in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana. Maybe as far as Idaho, Utah, Nevada, or Arizona. Not in California yet.”
The truck slowed slightly, and they heard the engine note harden up. Then they heard the crunch as the driver came down out of fifth gear into fourth.
“Mountains,” Holly said.
It was more than a hill. More than an upgrade. It was a smooth, relentless climb. A highway through the mountains. Clearly engineered to help out the laboring traffic, but they were adding hundreds of feet, every mile they drove. Reacher felt the lurch as the truck pulled out to pass slower vehicles. Not many, but a few. It stayed in fourth gear, the guy’s foot hard down, hammering uphill, then relaxing, changing up to fifth, then down again, charging upward.
“We could run out of gas,” Holly said.
“It’s diesel, not gas,” Reacher said. “We used these things in the Army. Thirty-five-gallon tank. Diesel will do maybe twenty-five to the gallon, highway mileage. Best part of nine hundred miles, before they run out.”
“That could get us all the way out of the States,” she said.
THEY CRUISED ON. The truck roared through the mountains for hours, then it left the highway. Night had fallen. The bright holes in the roof had dimmed. Then they had disappeared. They had turned darker than the roof itself. Positive and negative. They felt the lurch as the truck pulled to the right, off the highway, and they felt the tires grabbing at the pavement as the truck hauled around a tight right. Then there was a confusing blur of turns and stops and starts. Bumpy downhill bends and tight uphill turns with the truck grinding in a low gear. Periods of cruising down gently winding roads, bad surfaces, good surfaces, gradients, gravel under the wheels, potholes in the road. Reacher could imagine the headlight beams flicking left and right and bouncing up and down.
The truck slowed almost to a stop. Turned a tight right. Pattered over some kind of a wooden bridge. Then it yawed and bumped its way along a rutted track. It was moving slowly, shuddering from side to side. It felt like they were driving up a dry riverbed. Some kind of a stony narrow track. It felt like this was the very last leg of the journey. It felt like they were very close to their destination. The urgency had gone out of the guy’s driving. It felt like the truck was nearly home.
But the final leg took a long time. The speed was low and the road was bad. Stones and small rocks were popping under the tires. The tires were squirming sideways across the loose surface. The truck ground on for forty minutes. Fifty minutes. Reacher got cold. He sat up and shook out his shirt. Put it on. An hour on the bumpy track. At this speed, maybe fifteen miles, maybe twenty.
Then they were there. The truck lurched up over a final heave and leveled out. Rolled forward another few yards and stopped. The engine noise died. It was replaced by an awesome silence. Reacher could hear nothing at all except a vast emptiness and the ticking of the muffler as it cooled. He could hear the two guys in front, sitting quiet and exhausted. Then they got out. He heard their doors open, and their seat springs bounce. He heard their feet on gravel. Their doors slammed, enormously loud metallic clangs in the stillness. He heard them crunch around to the rear. He could hear the sound of the keys swinging gently in the driver’s hand.
The key slid into the lock. The lock clicked back. The handle turned. The door swung open. Loder propped it back with the metal stay. Then he opened the other door. Propped it back. Gestured them out with the Glock. Reacher helped Holly along the ridged floor. He stepped down. The chain on his wrist clattered to the earth. He lifted Holly down beside him. They stood together, leaning back against the edge of the truck’s ridged metal floor. Looking out and around.
Holly had wanted to see the sky. She was standing there under the vastest sky Reacher had ever seen. It was a dark inky blue, almost black, and it was huge. It stretched up to an infinite height. It was as big as a planet. It was peppered with a hundred billion bright stars. They were far away, but they were unnaturally vivid. They dusted back to the far cold reaches of the universe. It was a gigantic night sky and it stretched on forever.
They were in a forest clearing. Reacher could smell a heavy scent of pines. It was a strong smell. Clean and fresh. There was a black mass of trees all around. They covered the jagged slopes of mountains. They were in a forest clearing, surrounded by mountainous wooded slopes. It was a big clearing, infinitely dark, silent. Reacher could see the faint black outlines of buildings off to his right. They were long, low huts. Some kind of wooden structures, crouching in the dark.
There were people on the edge of the clearing. Standing among the nearest trees. Reacher could see their vague shapes. Maybe fifty or sixty people. Just standing there, silent. They were in dark clothing. They had darkened faces. Their faces were smudged with night camouflage. He could see their eyes, white against the black trees. They were holding weapons. He could see rifles and machine guns. Slung casually over the shoulders of the silent, staring people. They had dogs. Several big dogs, on thick leather leashes.
There were children among the people. Reacher could make them out. Children, standing together in groups, silent, staring, big sleepy eyes. They were clustered behind the adults, still, their shoulders facing diagonally away in fear and perplexity. Sleepy children, woken up in the middle of the night to witness something.
Loder turned himself around in a slow circle and waved the silent staring people nearer. He moved his arm in a wide inclusive gesture, like a ringmaster in a circus.
“We got her,” he yelled into the silence. “The federal bitch is here.”
His voice boomed back off the distant mountains.
“Where the hell are we?” Holly asked him.
Loder turned back and smiled at her.
“Our place, bitch,” he said, quietly. “A place where your federal buddies can’t come get you.”
“Why not?” Holly asked him. “Where the hell are we?”
“That could be hard for you to understand,” Loder said.
“Why?” Holly said. “We’re somewhere, right? Somewhere in the States?”
Loder shook his head.
“No,” he said.
Holly looked blank.
“Canada?” she said.
The guy shook his head again.
“Not Canada, bitch,” he said.
Holly glanced around at the trees and the mountains. Glanced up at the vast night sky. Shuddered in the sudden chill.
“Well, this isn’t Mexico,” sh
e said.
The guy raised both arms in a descriptive little gesture.
“This is a brand-new country,” he said.
22
THE ATMOSPHERE IN the Chicago Field Office Wednesday evening was like a funeral, and in a way it was a funeral, because any realistic hope of getting Holly back had died. McGrath knew his best chance had been an early chance. The early chance was gone. If Holly was still alive, she was a prisoner somewhere on the North American continent, and he would not get even the chance to find out where until her kidnappers chose to call. And so far, approaching sixty hours after the snatch, they had not called.
He was at the head of the long table in the third-floor conference room. Smoking. The room was quiet. Milosevic was sitting to one side, back to the windows. The afternoon sun had inched its way around to evening and fallen away into darkness. The temperature in the room had risen and fallen with it, down to a balmy summer dusk. But the two men in there were chilled with anticlimax. They barely looked up as Brogan came in to join them. He was holding a sheaf of computer printouts. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked reasonably close to it.
“You got something?” McGrath asked him.
Brogan nodded purposefully and sat down. Sorted the printouts into four separate handfuls and held them up, each one in turn.
“Quantico,” he said. “They’ve got something. And the crime database in D.C. They’ve got three somethings. And I had an idea.”
He spread his papers out and looked up.
“Listen to this,” he said. “Graphic granite, interlocking crystals, cherts, gneisses, schists, shale, foliated metamorphics, quartzites, quartz crystals, red-bed sandstones, Triassic red sand, acidic volcanics, pink feldspar, green chlorite, ironstone, grit, sand, and silt. You know what all that stuff is?”
McGrath and Milosevic shrugged and shook their heads.
“Geology,” Brogan said. “The people down in Quantico looked at the pickup. Geologists, from the Materials Analysis Unit. They looked at the shit thrown up under the wheel arches. They figured out what the stuff is, and they figured out where that pickup has been. Little tiny pieces of rock and sediment stuck to the metal. Like a sort of a geological fingerprint.”
“OK, so where has it been?” McGrath asked.
“Started out in California,” Brogan said. “Citrus grower called Dutch Borken bought it, ten years ago, in Mojave. The manufacturer traced that for us. That part is nothing to do with geology. Then the scientists say it was in Montana for a couple of years. Then they drove it over here, northern route, through North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.”
“They sure about this?” McGrath said.
“Like a trucker’s logbook,” Brogan said. “Except written with shit on the underneath, not with a pen on paper.”
“So who is this Dutch Borken?” McGrath asked. “Is he involved?”
Brogan shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Dutch Borken is dead.”
“When?” McGrath asked.
“Couple of years ago,” Brogan said. “He borrowed money, farming went all to hell, the bank foreclosed, he stuck a twelve-bore in his mouth and blew the top of his head all over California.”
“So?” McGrath said.
“His son stole the pickup,” Brogan said. “Technically, it was the bank’s property, right? The son took off in it, never been seen again. The bank reported it, and the local cops looked for it, couldn’t find it. It’s not licensed. DMV knows nothing about it. Cops gave up on it, because who cares about a ratty old pickup? But my guess is this Borken boy stole it and moved to Montana. The pickup was definitely in Montana two years, scientists are dead sure about that.”
“We got anything on this Borken boy?” McGrath asked him.
Brogan nodded. Held up another sheaf of paper.
“We got a shitload on him,” he said. “He’s all over our database like ants at a picnic. His name is Beau Borken. Thirty-five years old, six feet in height and four hundred pounds in weight. Big guy, right? Extreme right-winger, paranoid tendencies. Now a militia leader. Balls-out fanatic. Links to other militias all over the damn place. Prime suspect in a robbery up in the north of California. Armored car carrying twenty million in bearer bonds was hit. The driver was killed. They figured militia involvement, because the bad guys were wearing bits and pieces of military uniforms. Borken’s outfit looked good for it. But they couldn’t make it stick. Files are unclear as to why not. And also, what’s good for us is before all that, Beau Borken was one of the alibis Peter Wayne Bell used to get off the rape bust. So he’s a documented associate of somebody we can place on the scene.”
Milosevic looked up.
“And he’s based in Montana?” he said.
Brogan nodded.
“We can pinpoint the exact region, more or less,” he said. “The scientific guys at Quantico are pretty hot for a couple of particular valleys, northwest corner of Montana.”
“They can be that specific?” Milosevic said.
Brogan nodded again.
“I called them,” he said. “They said this sediment in the wheel arches was local to a particular type of a place. Something to do with very old rock getting scraped up by glaciers about a million years ago, lying there nearer the surface than it should be, all mixed up with the regular rock which is still pretty old, but newer than the old rock, you know what I mean? A particular type of a mixture? I asked them, how can you be so sure? They said they just recognize it, like I would recognize my mother fifty feet away on the sidewalk. They said it was from one of a couple of north-south glacial valleys, northwest corner of Montana, where the big old glaciers were rolling down from Canada. And there was some sort of crushed sandstone in there, very different, but it’s what the Forest Service use on the forest tracks up there.”
“OK,” McGrath said. “So our guys were in Montana for a couple of years. But have they necessarily gone back there?”
Brogan held up the third of his four piles of paper. Unfolded a map. And smiled for the first time since Monday.
“You bet your ass they have,” he said. “Look at the map. Direct route between Chicago and the far corner of Montana takes you through North Dakota, right? Some farmer up there was walking around this morning. And guess what he found in a ditch?”
“What?” McGrath asked.
“A dead guy,” Brogan said. “In a ditch, horse country, miles from anywhere. So naturally the farmer calls the cops, the cops print the corpse, the computer comes back with a name.”
“What name?” McGrath asked.
“Peter Wayne Bell,” Brogan said. “The guy who drove away with Holly.”
“He’s dead?” McGrath said. “How?”
“Don’t know how,” Brogan said. “Maybe some kind of a falling out? This guy Bell kept his brains in his jockey shorts. We know that, right? Maybe he went after Holly, maybe Holly aced him. But put a ruler on the map and take a look. They were all on their way back to Montana. That’s for damn sure. Has to be that way.”
“In what?” McGrath said. “Not in a white truck.”
“Yes in a white truck,” Brogan said.
“That Econoline was the only truck missing,” McGrath said.
Brogan shook his head. He held up the fourth set of papers.
“My new idea,” he said. “I checked if Rubin rented a truck.”
“Who?” McGrath said.
“Rubin is the dead dentist,” Brogan said. “I checked if he rented a truck.”
McGrath looked at him.
“Why should the damn dentist rent a truck?” he said.
“He didn’t,” Brogan said. “I figured maybe the guys rented the truck, with the dentist’s credit cards, after they captured him. It made a lot of sense. Why risk stealing a vehicle if you can rent one with a stolen wallet full of credit cards and driver’s licenses and stuff? So I called around. Sure enough, Chicago-You-Drive, some South Side outfit, they rented an Econoline to a Dr. Rubin, Monday morning, nine o’clock. I ask
them, did the photo on the license match the guy? They say they never look. As long as the credit card goes through the machine, they don’t care. I ask them, what color was the Econoline? They say all our trucks are white. I ask them, writing on the side? They say sure, Chicago-You-Drive, green letters, head height.”
McGrath nodded.
“I’m going to call Harland Webster,” he said. “I want to get sent to Montana.”
“GO TO NORTH Dakota first,” Webster said.
“Why?” McGrath asked him.
There was a pause on the line.
“One step at a time,” Webster said. “We need to check out this Peter Wayne Bell situation. So stop off in North Dakota first, OK?”
“You sure, chief?” McGrath said.
“Patient grunt work,” Webster said. “That’s what’s going to do it for us. Work the clues, right? It’s worked so far. Your boy Brogan did some good work. I like the sound of him.”
“So let’s go with it, chief,” McGrath said. “All the way to Montana, right?”
“No good rushing around until we know something,” Webster said back. “Like who and where and why. That’s what we need to know, Mack.”
“We know who and where,” he said. “This Beau Borken guy. In Montana. It’s clear enough, right?”
There was another pause on the line.
“Maybe,” Webster said. “But what about why?”
McGrath jammed the phone into his shoulder and lit up his next cigarette.
“No idea,” he said, reluctantly.
“We looked at the mug shots,” Webster said. “I sent them over to the Behavioral Science Unit. Shrinks looked them over.”
“And?” McGrath asked.
“I don’t know,” Webster said. “They’re a pretty smart bunch of people down there, but how much can you get from gazing at a damn photograph?”
