The Jack Reacher Cases_A Man Made For Killing

by Dan Ames

  She got out of the truck and walked into the middle of Rag City.

  Pauling remembered the basic layout, and soon made her way to the structure that was meant to resemble an apartment building in the middle of Baghdad.

  She stepped from the street up to the sidewalk, but she forgot about how much higher it was than in real life and stumbled. She fell to one knee and the cement wall where her head had been exploded, raining chunks of rock and dust down onto her.

  She rolled forward and dove inside the building as another rifle shot tore up dirt in the street where she’d just been.

  Inside the building, behind the wall, more shots punched through the cement.

  It was a big rifle, Pauling realized. Maybe a high-powered sniper rifle like a Barrett. The kind that chambered a .50 caliber bullet.

  In a flash, Pauling realized what a horrible situation she was in. Trapped inside a building at night with most likely a Special Ops sniper targeting her.

  And she had no weapon.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  She was well and truly screwed.

  Pauling knew firsthand the kind of equipment Special Ops snipers employed. Night vision goggles. Infrared. Scopes that could see the hair on a gnat’s ass from a thousand yards.

  She was in a world of trouble and cursed herself for not being better prepared.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  Make a plan.

  The first thing she did was to get lower on the ground. Even the best scopes and night vision couldn't see through cement walls like the ones that were surrounding her.

  It was her guess that the sniper had already started to move to a new location, maybe even coming into the building. If that happened and she was here, there was almost no way out.

  So she had to move.

  Pauling belly crawled across the floor toward the back of the room hoping there was some sort of backdoor and that the sniper wasn't going to be coming in that way.

  Would she even be able to hear him?

  Those guys moved in total silence. Still, she knew that the ground outside consisted at least partly of gravel and dirt. Which made for at least a slight possibility that the shooter might make some noise.

  So she stayed still and listened.

  Nothing.

  And then, she heard the softest whisper of sound. Not a footstep. Certainly not on gravel.

  It had sounded like fabric.

  The quiet whisper of fabric on fabric. It had come from the front of the building.

  Pauling raised herself up on her hands and knees and crawled toward the barely discernible window of darkness in the rear corner of the building that she hoped and prayed was a doorway.

  She made her way to it.

  Pauling continued forward and then one of her hands went past the floor and she fell out of the building. She landed on the ground and it was solid packed dirt. Luckily there was no sound as she slid all the way out of the building onto the ground outside and crawled so she wouldn’t be visible through the doorway.

  If the shooter came in the front and looked, even with infrared, he would not be able to see her body as long as she stayed low, so Pauling again belly crawled along the exterior of the building foundation, grateful there were no loose stones.

  And then she was away from the building and into a stand of ice plants. Pauling got to her feet and began to run, hunched over, slowly, as she could barely see anything in front of her. Certainly nothing beyond arm’s length.

  Forward was the only thing she knew, away from the building and the shooter.

  Her face hit stone and pain slapped her in the face. Pauling felt blood trickle from her nose into her mouth and the taste was both coppery and dusty.

  She felt with her hands and eventually came to the edge of the structure. She leaned around, feeling foolish because she couldn’t see anything anyway–

  Cement exploded just above her head accompanied by the sound of a shot.

  She turned again and ran. With no idea where she was going she raced at full speed. It was a terrifying run. All the shooter had to do was get around that building and if he had a night scope could easily put a round right between her shoulder blades. She tensed as she ran, waiting for the blow–

  Suddenly, she was airborne and falling.

  Too late, Pauling realized she’d run right over the edge of the cliff and something viciously struck her on the shoulder and she rolled. A stabbing pain pierced her side along the hip and she rolled again, bounced, felt branches scratch at her face and her knees scraped rock.

  Finally, she came to a stop.

  Her body screamed in agony, blood was wet on her face and she wondered how far she’d fallen.

  If the sniper stayed on the edge with his night scope he would be able to pick her off easily. Pauling knew she needed to get under some sort of cover. And then she heard the faint sound of waves crashing and she instantly recognized her location.

  She had stood at this very edge with Gabe and she remembered the large rock outcropping near the ocean.

  Her mind raced back to that night with Gabe, which had been moonlit. Now, it was pitch black.

  Pauling scrambled ahead, certain that any minute a bullet was going to crash into her and blow her body apart.

  Her feet hit water and she remembered the crevice of rock that opened up onto the beach, with deep ledges on either side.

  The water was ice-cold but at least she wasn't visible. Pauling forced her way through the water and around the edge until she was under a little ledge. At least now she was out of the water and hidden, but she was cold and hurt.

  Instinctively, Pauling appreciated that there was no way the sniper could get into the water and to her without making a sound.

  No one was that good.

  The thought of the shooter entering her sanctuary motivated her to feel around until she found a good, fist-sized rock.

  If her attacker came into the water she would hear and clobber him on the head. Not the most sophisticated of strategies and with little chance of success, but it was all she could come up with.

  Pauling waited, keeping her mouth open as cold began to seep through her bones so her teeth wouldn’t chatter.

  After several minutes she thought she heard something. The sound of a boot, maybe something hitting water and then she heard a soft laugh.

  Pauling waited, but no one came after her. She lost track of time, put the rock down and folded her arms across her chest, trying to generate heat.

  She was going to stay here until daylight.

  If she didn't die of hypothermia first.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Blake studied the requests Nathan had sent to the investigator’s office regarding information on Paige’s death. They had released some initial findings and documents but not the autopsy results even though Nathan had specifically requested that. It appeared the official response had been that the state of the remains prevented any meaningful findings.

  But, like Pauling, Blake wondered if that meant they hadn’t found anything at all. Had they tried?

  Blake realized that hacking the server of law enforcement was not a great idea, even though he’d done it before. The challenge, naturally, was that law enforcement had the means to investigate hacks as a criminal violation. Companies had to first prove the hack on their own and then go to the authorities. Which was why hacking the authorities themselves was a much riskier proposition.

  However, the email correspondence between Nathan and the clerical branch did give him a window.

  It was much easier to hack into email than into confidential servers.

  So that's what he set about to do. Using the main email address he was able to reach the email server and after several hours of digging, Blake located an email from one of the investigators to another investigator with an attachment. It appeared the attachment might contain information from Paige’s autopsy.

  Blake got in and was able to download the attachment. He then sent the full do
cument to Pauling via his own encrypted system knowing full well that she was on an island controlled by the military who were no doubt monitoring electronic communications. Especially Pauling’s.

  He used a basic encryption code that he knew Pauling would understand right away and that would throw off at least a preliminary glance from anyone on San Clemente Island. It wouldn’t stand up to serious scrutiny, but he hoped it would go through as is.

  It did.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Pauling never felt as cold and tired as she did the minute she woke up.

  The sun had just started to peek into the crevice of rock where she had crawled, and the change in light had no doubt roused her.

  She stretched her limbs and they audibly creaked. Her face felt stiff and her lip seemed puffy. She remembered running into a wall.

  At least she was dry, although her feet still felt a little wet. Maybe that was why she was still so goddamned cold.

  Pauling climbed down from the ledge and realized that she could walk to the left out onto another lower shelf of rock that led to part of the beach.

  She started to walk out into the full sun but stopped. She peeked around the ledge first looking for any sign of a sniper or rifle and understood how foolish that was.

  Those guys could be two feet in front of you and you would never know it. But still, she scanned the horizon and saw nothing so she stepped out into the full sun, grateful for the warm at the same time bracing herself for a shot that never came.

  Pauling hiked along the water’s edge until she found a trail that led back up the cliff. She scrambled her way up and got to the edge and saw she was a quarter mile down from Rag City.

  She slowly worked her way around the rocky terrain until she came to the road and hoped there was a car but none appeared, so she walked on until she got back to the Nest. She opened the door, walked in and the first thing she heard was Janey who let out a little gasp.

  "Oh my God!" Janey whispered. “Pauling! Are you okay?”

  Pauling gave her a half-hearted thumbs up and walked past her, staggered back to her room and flopped on the bed, then rolled over and pulled the covers on top of her. She closed her eyes and within minutes was sound asleep.

  She had another dream that took place in the desert. This time, a gunman was chasing her and in the distance, she could see Paige, waving to her. Pauling ran, but just when she was about to reach her, a bullet hit her in the back and she fell face down in the desert. Her mouth was filled with grit-

  Pauling woke up, and her mouth was dry. She was sore all over and she briefly relived what had happened at Rag City. She remembered the shots, being chased and falling off the edge of the cliff.

  Pauling got up, went into the bathroom and looked at her face. No wonder Janey had reacted the way she did. Pauling looked just like what she was. A woman who’d been chased, shot at and had taken a few major tumbles.

  What a mess.

  She had scratches on her face and when she lifted her shirt saw a bruise the size of a baseball on the side of her hip.

  That's really what hurt the worst. But in retrospect, she was glad. If she’d landed on that rock just a little bit higher she would be looking at about three or four cracked ribs. Who knows, if she’d been really unlucky, maybe even a punctured lung.

  And then she probably would've died out there.

  Overall she was lucky.

  It just didn’t feel that way.

  Pauling had met her fair share of Special Ops soldiers. When they took a shot, they rarely missed. She dabbed her cuts with a warm washcloth and soap, wincing in pain as she scraped the dried blood from each wound.

  It was true, Special Ops guys were the best in the world. So why had the shooter missed? She thought about it. It was night. Pauling was running. Hiding. They wouldn’t have been easy shots to make.

  Another possibility arose in her mind.

  Maybe the shooter hadn’t wanted to kill her. Maybe his shots had gone exactly where he’d wanted them to. Near her. Just over her head.

  They weren’t intended to kill.

  Maybe he’d just wanted to scare her.

  When she was done cleaning herself she took a hot shower and got dressed. She took several Tylenol and washed them down with tap water. Immediately, Pauling felt a lot better. Still not one hundred percent, but seriously improved.

  She thought about reporting the crime, but what would she say? The first question asked would be about what exactly she was doing in Rag City.

  Would they really buy a mysterious message about a rendezvous?

  Something told her the military guys wouldn't really care. They would chalk it up to a birdie making a big deal out of nothing. Probably scared by nearby gunfire that had nothing to do with her.

  Pauling went out to the kitchen, thankful that no one was there. She poured herself a big cup of lukewarm coffee and went back to her room. She opened up her laptop and checked her email.

  Only one message.

  From Blake.

  Pauling opened the attachment and began to read the autopsy on Paige. There was the usual preliminary information but about halfway through the report, the examiner noted several marks that he couldn’t attribute to shark bites.

  He simply labeled them indeterminate.

  She wasn't trained to read autopsies but it did seem to her that there were a lot of marks on Paige’s body labeled as inconclusive. If Paige had truly drowned and all the damage been done by sharks, shouldn't every mark on her body be labeled as such?

  Pauling made the immediate decision and she fired off multiple emails, one to Blake and another to Nathan's attorney stating in no uncertain terms that Paige’s remains should be immediately exhumed and sent off to a pathologist she had worked with in Washington, DC.

  He was retired now but he had been the best in the business. In the email to Nathan, Pauling stressed that he needed to move heaven and earth to get the remains exhumed immediately and overnighted to the pathologist. She wasn't satisfied with the autopsy.

  And she knew Nathan wouldn't be either.

  Pauling picked up the satellite phone and called Nathan.

  “Pauling,” he said when he answered.

  “How secure is this line?” she asked. Pauling didn’t want to waste a lot of time speaking in code.

  “Fairly secure,” he said. “But one can never be too careful.”

  She sighed. She then told him what had happened but avoided using names as much as possible.

  “I never had any doubt,” he said when she finished giving him the details.

  “I know you didn’t,” Pauling replied. “I feel I’m still a long way from finding out exactly what happened, but what I do know is that we’re a lot closer than we were a week ago.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” he said. “I knew you were the right person for the job. Call me the minute you hear from the examiner. Those inconclusive marks are going to be the key.”

  “Of course. We’ll talk about Jack Reacher when I get back,” she added.

  “Have you been working with him?” he asked. His tone sounded very hollow.

  “No,” she replied. “No sign of him. In fact, no one’s ever heard of him.”

  “Do you want other backup?” Nathan asked. “You’ve got snipers shooting at you for Christ’s sake. What if I sent in another person undercover who could act as your bodyguard?”

  She could tell by the tone of his voice that he knew it was a bad idea and that it was really a token offer.

  “No, I’ll just have to be more careful. Besides, if another new volunteer showed up here, I’m sure no one would do any more talking. Then it’s a full-on, blatant investigation. At least now I’ve got some doubt on my side.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Keep me posted.”

  They disconnected and Pauling thought about those inconclusive marks on Paige’s body.

  She wondered why the investigators hadn't been surprised by the autopsy results either.


  Maybe they hadn't wanted to be.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The next day Pauling checked the bulletin board to see who was working where in the field. She saw that Ted was operating in the south field, one of the few places she had yet to visit. Pauling put on her walking shoes, got a big bottled water from the fridge and set out. Her body was still stiff and sore, especially her hip, but walking under the sun she soon felt much better. Her face wasn’t showing any lingering effects of its meeting with a cement wall.

  It took her nearly an hour and a half of hard walking to get to the observation post.

  Pauling wondered how she was going to handle Ted, since the last time they’d chatted he’d practically taken off her head.

  She stood at the observation post, opened the box containing field notes, and began to flip through them. As she expected, they meant virtually nothing to her and she saw that Paige hadn’t written anything.

  Suddenly she heard voices coming from the trail and she assumed it was Gabe and Ted.

  Ted emerged from the field first and behind him was a man as young as Ted but whom Pauling had never seen before.

  Both men stopped in their tracks. Deer in the headlights. Pauling noticed Ted’s hair was especially messy and the young man's shirt was pulled out of his jeans.

  Before they’d spotted her they both had a relaxed happy look on their faces and Pauling knew instantly what they'd been doing.

  Suddenly it all made sense to Pauling.

  Ted's surprising anger with her over pursuing the investigation. He’d attacked her with vigor and now she

  knew why.

  He’d had a very dangerous secret to protect.

  Pauling knew that homosexuals in the military were really not welcome. Officially, policies had begun to change but unofficially, gay men in the military was still an uncomfortable subject for a whole lot of people. While Ted wasn’t in the armed services, it appeared his companion was. So Ted was no doubt protecting him.

  "What you doing out here?" Ted said.