by Jude Hardin
“Why is that important?”
“It’s probably not. Just FYI. Chang doesn’t have any business with Reacher as far as we know. But it’s a small town and we’re not sure why she’s there.”
“Do we have any photographs of Michelle Chang?” I said.
“Yes. They’re in the detail package on the cell phone you were issued in the ID Store, along with all the other information you’ll need. Your jet is fueled and ready, and the pilot should have a revised flight plan by now. You’ll be landing at an airstrip not far from Mother’s Rest in about forty-five minutes. From the airstrip it’s a thirty-minute drive to the motel.”
“Then what?”
“There’s a grain elevator about a quarter of a mile northeast of the motel. You’re going to go to the top of it and wait for instructions. There’s a little observation booth up there, so you won’t have to worry about being seen. You’ll find an infrared video camera with a telescopic lens and a computer and a portable toilet and a cooler full of food and water. You might be up there for a while, and it might be a little hot inside the booth, so make sure you stay hydrated. With the video camera you’ll be able to see the door to Reacher’s room from a window that faces south. You’re to call me immediately if anyone comes or goes.”
“What if the people who own the grain elevator—”
“Not an issue,” Diana said. “The Circle owns it, along with ten thousand acres of farmland.”
“We’re in the wheat business now?”
“We’re in all kinds of businesses. You know that. Anyway, we’re shutting the facility down for an emergency inspection.”
“And I’m supposed to be the inspector?”
“Right. All of the people in upper management are operatives. The other employees are not. So keep that in mind. You’ll have to talk to a security guard when you get there, and he will probably insist on calling the Administrator on Duty. But that’s okay. The Administrator on Duty is one of us. We haven’t been able to get in touch with him yet, but we’ll keep trying. At any rate, he won’t give you any trouble, and you shouldn’t have to deal with anyone else while you’re there. The nightshift was sent home about ten minutes ago, and calls are being placed to the day people right now. Everyone’s going to get a little paid vacation until we’re finished using the observation booth.”
I started to ask her why it was so important for me to leave immediately, to show up for an inspection in the middle of the night, but then I realized that I already knew the answer to that question. Reacher never stayed in one place for very long, usually not more than a day or two. Sometimes only a few hours. It would be too risky to wait until later in the morning to set up shop at the grain elevator. Reacher might be on a train to somewhere else by then.
“When am I going to get to see my family?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Why is it so easy to find Jack Reacher and so hard to find Sergio Del Chivo?”
“Del Chivo lives in another country, for one thing. We’re doing the best we can. Let’s try to focus on the assignment right now, okay? I’ll talk to The Director again as soon as we wrap this up.”
I didn’t feel like focusing on the assignment.
But I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to just watch Reacher from the ground?” I said. “Why do I have to go to the top of a grain elevator?”
“Because you might have to do more than just watch him.”
“What are you saying?”
Diana closed her laptop. She stood and grabbed her coffee cup and started walking toward the door.
“I think you know what I’m saying,” she said. “Let’s go. I’ll drive you to your plane.”
2
The plane landed a little before three a.m. No control tower, no terminal, no runway lights or anything like that, just a long strip of asphalt and a whole lot of darkness. The pilot taxied to the end of the strip, made a tight little U-turn so he would be ready to take off in the opposite direction. He climbed out of the cockpit and opened the hatch and unfolded the ladder for me.
I stepped down to the pavement.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
He pulled the ladder back inside and closed the hatch. There was a silver two-door coupe parked on a dirt path that ran along one side of the runway. I walked over there and opened the driver’s side door and slid in behind the steering wheel. The key was already in the ignition. I started the car and switched on the headlights and used the onboard navigation system to get out to the highway. I drove through twenty miles of nothingness before I finally came to a sign that said WELCOME TO MOTHER’S REST.
During the flight, I’d spent some time studying my assignment detail package, which included a street map and a crash course on agricultural processing and storage facilities, so I had a pretty good idea of the layout of the town and the nature of the job I would be pretending to perform.
I needed to get to the grain elevator right away, but first I wanted to get a look at the motel where Reacher was staying. I wanted to see it from ground level. I crossed a set of train tracks and steered into the parking lot, planning to take a few pictures. Reference points to help me zero in with the telephoto lens once I got up to the observation booth.
Reacher was in room 106, near one of the stairwells that led to the second floor. I drove around to that side of the building.
Then I saw the guy in the plastic chair.
He was sitting outside the motel office. Just sitting there. Like he was watching TV or something. He saw me coming, started to get out of the chair, sat back down when I gunned it over to the exit side of the lot. My windows were tinted, so he never saw my face, but he took a long look at the car as I turned back out onto the highway and headed back toward the tracks.
The Circle’s grain elevator was only a couple of blocks from the motel. It was huge. It rose up through the misty night like some sort of industrialized castle, steel and concrete and trusses and pipes, everything fenced off and dimly illuminated by yellowish bulbs on high poles. There were six concrete silos, and next to those there was a shiny silver metal one that was much larger in diameter. All snuggled together like a six-pack of tallboys next to a coffee can. I guessed the structure to be about ten stories tall.
I drove up to the entrance, opened my window, reached for the keypad mounted there on a steel post. There was an electric gate on wheels, and it opened automatically as soon as I punched in the code. I drove in and parked by the security shack. A light came on and a guard gripping a pistol with both hands walked out.
“Keep your hands on that steering wheel,” he shouted.
I kept my hands on the steering wheel.
“I’m here for the inspection,” I said.
“Mr. Bryant?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here so early? Your escort won’t be here until nine.”
“I thought I would get a jump on collecting some samples. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Got some ID?”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Go ahead and get it. Slowly.”
I pulled out my wallet and showed him my driver’s license and my Department of Labor identification card. He looked everything over, slid the pistol into its holster and snapped the safety strap over it.
“I’m not sure how long all this is going to take,” I said.
“Before you do anything, I’m going to have to call the man who’s in charge of the facility. I need to make sure it’s all right for you to be here by yourself.”
I looked at my watch, pretending to be annoyed with his insistence on following proper procedure.
“Do what you need to do,” I said.
I waited in the car while he went inside and made his call. He was gone for about ten minutes. I was starting to get concerned, but then he opened the door to the shack and motioned for me to come on in. I grab
bed my carry-on bag, climbed out of the car and joined him inside.
“Coffee?” he said.
“No thanks.”
He poured himself a cup. It was very black and it smelled burnt. I figured he might have made it at the beginning of his shift.
Next to the coffee setup there was a suggestion box bolted to the wall, an aluminum cube with a slot in the top and a padlock. I knew it was a suggestion box because someone had taped a piece of paper over it that said SUGGESTION BOX. It seemed like a strange place to put such a thing, there in the security office, as if maybe the shift supervisors or department managers or whoever took care of it didn’t really want any suggestions.
“I don’t know what the point of having an Administrator on Duty is if he won’t answer his phone,” the guard said. “I must have called ten times before he finally picked up.”
“Sorry to be such a bother,” I said.
He dumped some creamer and sugar into his cup and stirred everything together with a plastic spoon. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want some. I told him I was sure. He took a sip and then walked over to the steel desk in the corner.
“I’m going to give you a radio to use while you’re here,” he said. “Just give me a call if you need anything.”
“I have a cell phone.”
“Those things don’t work out here. You’d have to drive almost a hundred miles to get a signal.”
With The Circle’s dedicated and encrypted satellite feed, the phone in my pocket would send and receive voice and text and data anywhere on the planet. But of course I didn’t tell him that. He walked back over to where I was standing and handed me a site map and a walkie-talkie in a case that clipped onto my belt. He wanted me to call in for a radio check every hour on the hour. I told him that I would.
“I’d like to go ahead and get started,” I said, turning back toward the door.
“Sure,” he said.
He followed me outside.
“I’ll be going up on the catwalk,” I said. “So if you could just show me to the service elevator—”
“It’s been down for a few days. The maintenance guys are still waiting on parts. I figured that was one of the reasons why you came.”
“So I guess I’m supposed to climb that ladder bolted to the trusses over there.”
“Unless you got a hot air balloon or something.”
He laughed, but I didn’t think it was all that funny.
3
I’d never been fond of heights, so the prospect of climbing a hundred-foot ladder in less than optimal lighting conditions wasn’t appealing at all.
But it seemed I had no choice.
Diana Dawkins had failed to mention that the service elevator was inoperable, that it had been for several days. Maybe she didn’t know about the problem, or maybe she was back at headquarters having a good chuckle at my expense. Either way, I planned to express my displeasure about the situation next time I talked to her.
I walked over to the ladder. I put my foot on the first rung, gazed up, felt a little dizzy and a little nauseated.
Something going very fast whizzed by overhead. A military jet, I supposed. It was very high in the sky. Just a white dot. It must have broken the sound barrier as it passed. I heard the sonic boom, and I felt it in my chest.
I extended the strap on my carry-on bag, looped it over my head so that it rested on the opposite shoulder. I didn’t want it to slip off and fall to the ground. If it did, I would have to retrieve it, and I didn’t want to have to do this more than once.
I took a deep breath and started climbing. I didn’t look up or down. I stared straight ahead, through the rungs on the ladder and the braces on the trusses, trying to focus on the blank concrete a few feet in front of me, trying to think of anything but how high I was going.
Up and up I went, trying to keep a tight grip, my heart pounding and my lungs burning and everything slippery with dew. I finally made it to the top of the ladder, didn’t look down until I found steady footing on the catwalk. I could see the entire town from up there. I could see the sign at the motel and the sign at the diner and the soft glow of the streetlights. I could see the fields, gray in the moonlight, stretching out to the edge of the horizon in every direction. There were some other grain elevators situated at various points on the compass from where I was standing, a dozen or more, whooshing and clanking and hissing and grinding, piercing the gloom in a cacophonous symphony of industrial sounds. I wondered how anyone in town ever got any sleep. I guessed they got used to the noise after a while, but I wasn’t sure that I ever could. Maybe they took some kind of pills. Maybe there was a store down there somewhere that specialized in them. Free earplugs when you buy two bottles.
And through the center of everything were the railroad tracks, running north and south. They were quiet at the moment, but I imagined they added another jarring dimension of din when the trains came through. All Mother’s Rest needed was a big international airport launching jumbo jets all day. I thought I might write that down and drop it in the suggestion box on my way out.
There were giant numbers painted on the tops of the silos. The big metal one was zero, and the others were numbered one through six. The observation booth was on top of silo 4, connected to the catwalk by a narrow bridge with steel cables for handrails.
The booth looked something like a boxcar on a train, only smaller. Maybe about half the size. Heavy steel walls painted dark red, and a flat roof where several antennas were mounted. I crossed the bridge and opened the door and walked inside. Light from the yellow bulbs on the posts filtered in through the windows, not enough to read by but enough to walk around without bumping into things. The interior walls were bare steel, dark gray and dull with patina. The air in the room smelled metallic and greasy, like a bucketful of lawnmower parts. Some kind of rough plywood had been cut into the space to serve as flooring. It was blackened with grime and splintered in places. There was an ice chest and a camera on a tripod and a laptop on a small table. Portable toilet in the corner, the kind they use in campers sometimes. There was a four-drawer metal file cabinet beside the commode, creating sort of a stall, and a curtain hanging from the ceiling that could be drawn for privacy. A ratty old desk chair had been rolled up next to the computer.
Diana was right about it being hot inside the booth. There didn’t seem to be any ventilation. It obviously wasn’t intended to be a space where anyone would stay for very long. I started sweating as soon as I closed the door. I took my nylon jacket off and unstrapped my shoulder holster and stuffed everything into my carry-on bag, and then I unbuttoned the first three buttons on my shirt and held a cold bottle of water from the cooler against my neck and chest for a few seconds. It didn’t help much. I uncapped the bottle and took a big drink, resigned to the fact that I was going to sweat profusely no matter what I did.
It was almost five o’clock, so I decided to go ahead and perform the first radio check. I pulled the walkie-talkie off the clip on my belt and keyed the TALK button.
“This is Bryant,” I said.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Just calling in for my radio check.”
“I read you loud and clear, sir.”
“Okay. Thanks. Over and out.”
I slid the radio back into its clip, walked over to the tripod and connected the camera to the laptop with a cable. I switched everything on, carried the tripod over to the south window and aimed the camera in the general direction of the motel. I zoomed in and focused on the guy sitting in the chair, using the laptop’s monitor screen as a viewfinder.
Earlier, when I drove through the motel parking lot, my thought was that the guy might be a guest with insomnia, or that maybe the night clerk had stepped outside for a cigarette or something. But that was over an hour ago, and he was still in the same spot. Just sitting there, doing nothing. I had no idea why. It was bothering me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t call over there and tell him to get back to his room or th
e lobby or wherever it was he belonged at five o’clock in the morning. I had no choice but to be patient and hope that he went away soon.
I adjusted the fine-tuning mechanism on the tripod until I saw the staircase, and then I zoomed in to the exterior façade of room 106.
Reacher’s Room.
The window was dark, so I figured he was in there sleeping. He could have been out somewhere, but I didn’t think so. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to check into the motel in the middle of the night if he hadn’t planned on getting some sleep.
My job was to watch the room and call Diana Dawkins if anyone came or went. Reacher was an early riser, and he usually liked to eat a big breakfast, so I figured he might be getting up in an hour or so and heading over to the diner. Which gave me an hour or so with absolutely nothing to do.
I sat there and stared at the monitor and thought about Juliet and Brittney and Jesse, my wife and my daughter and my son, hoping I would get to see them soon. Maybe after this assignment, I thought. Maybe then The Circle would allow us to be a family again.
I sat there and stared at the monitor and thought about how wonderful that would be.
4
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and answered the call. Diana Dawkins identified herself, using the codename specified in my detail package.
“I’m getting the satellite feed from your laptop,” she said. “Good work.”
“Yeah. Thanks a lot for letting me know about the service elevator.”
“What about it?”
“It’s not working,” I said. “I had to climb the ladder.”
There was a brief pause.
“Hold on,” she said. “I’m getting an echo.”
“An echo?”
Silence for a few seconds, and then she was back.
“The audio from your laptop was interfering with the audio from your phone. Anyway, sorry about the service elevator. I didn’t know. That’s going to make our next move a little more difficult, especially considering the time, but I think we’ll still be all right.”
