by Diane Capri
Trevor had organized an air taxi from Syracuse because he wanted to observe the process Lange had used. The last time anyone had seen Lange alive was deplaning in Manchester almost two years ago. The air field was the perfect place to start the hunt.
“Park inside the fence. Level with the runway,” Trevor said. Owen performed as instructed. Trevor checked his watch and lowered his window.
Ten minutes later, he heard the distant roar of a propeller plane. He raised binoculars to his eyes and waited. In the distance, he saw what he knew to be a twin engine Cessna bouncing in the wind.
“Flash your headlights twice,” Trevor said. It was the pre-arranged signal.
Owen reached for the switch, flipped it off and on.
The plane came in low and landed. It rolled toward the Suburban and stopped. The pilot didn’t shut down the engines. No reason to. He had no passengers embarking and the grassy air strip had no amenities to visit. Nowhere to get coffee or wash up.
The pilot turned the plane around in a half circle, the engine noise loud enough to wake the dead, and then revved up and sped down the runway in the opposite direction.
Trevor watched until the plane lifted into the air and checked his watch again. From the time Trevor had seen the Cessna in the distance until it was airborne on its way home, thirty-four minutes had elapsed.
He figured ten minutes, max, for Lange to collect and store his gear in the Mercedes that had arrived to meet him. Meaning a total of forty-four minutes.
“Stay here,” he instructed. He got out of the Suburban and used the binoculars to search the area around the open field. He saw no homes or businesses, no vehicles of any kind, and no evidence that anyone might have been close enough to see Lange’s arrival back then, either.
Of course, that was almost two years ago. And from what Trevor had been able to piece together, Lange had arrived in the early dawn when even fewer people were likely to be in the area. But Trevor was willing to bet no one had seen Lange or the plane he rode in on.
He had a good grasp of the situation now. He nodded approval of Lange’s likely successful efforts to be discreet. The situation might be salvageable still.
He checked his watch again, made a mental note of the time, and returned to the Suburban. “Let’s go.”
Owen slid the transmission into gear and pulled out of the gate. He turned left and then right navigating the back roads toward Laconia. The interstate would have been faster, but Trevor was calling the shots. He’d said Lange would have taken the back roads, leaving no room for discussion.
They’d traveled about twenty miles when Trevor directed Owen to stop at a decrepit mail box store near Concord. It was privately owned and not at all prosperous. The place had been selected by Trevor’s associates in South Africa.
“Park around back and leave the motor running,” he said. Again, Owen did as he was told without comment.
Trevor handed Oscar three packing slips. “Collect these three packages inside. Don’t talk to anyone.”
Oscar took the packing slips, trudged through the snow to the entrance and disappeared inside. He returned a few minutes later, breathing heavily, arms laden with three large boxes, and stored them in the back of the Suburban.
Once Oscar was settled inside the cabin again, Trevor said, “Drive another ten miles north, toward Laconia. There’s a rest stop. Pull over there.”
Owen nodded and followed directions.
The rest stop was deserted, but the parking lot had been cleared of snow recently enough. Trevor pointed toward the far end of the lot. “Park there and turn the ignition off.”
Owen complied. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Oscar relaxed in the seat behind him. If Oscar was feeling tense, he’d have shown it. One thing Oscar couldn’t do was mask his emotions.
“Let’s get those packages opened,” Trevor said as he got out of the SUV.
He looked for surveillance cameras and, as expected, didn’t see any. His intel had been perfect so far. No reason to suspect otherwise.
He closed the door and walked around to the back of the SUV. Owen and Oscar joined him there.
Trevor gestured toward the three boxes. Owen and Oscar pulled them closer. Trevor pulled a knife from his pocket and slit the tape seals on all three. He tapped one box and nodded toward Oscar, the second one was for Owen. Trevor kept the third box for himself.
Oscar’s box contained a steel briefcase. Inside the briefcase were expensive handguns and extra ammunition.
Owen’s box was longer and narrower and heavier. It held a long gun case. He unzipped the case to admire the two rifles, two scopes, and enough ammunition to take out an entire village.
All of the weapons and assorted paraphernalia were untraceable. They had been acquired and shipped overnight. Trevor’s networking operation was illegal but effective and never failed. He had set it up himself long ago specifically to handle such things.
Trevor’s box was the shape of a large cube and had arrived via the same route. He slid the knife blade along the tape seal slowly, careful to avoid any damage to the contents. He opened the cardboard flaps and lifted a black, long range quadcopter drone from the box. He set it down carefully before he unpacked two chargers and three fully charged batteries. The serial numbers and all identifying marks had been removed from each item, as he’d instructed.
Trevor had significant experience with drones and cameras. He’d used this particular drone before. It was good enough to suit his needs, and not so rare or specialized or expensive that it would encourage too many questions from bystanders. The drone boasted seven kilometers of operating range. Which was about four and a half miles, give or take. Each fully charged battery would last twenty-seven minutes. He didn’t expect to need anything more powerful.
“Break those shipping boxes down and get rid of them. I’m going to test this.” Trevor flew the drone around the parking lot for twenty minutes, getting the feel for its idiosyncrasies. It handled well enough. The images captured by the camera weren’t good enough for a feature film at the multiplex, but would suffice for his purposes.
Owen and Oscar made quick work of the boxes. They stuffed three batches of the now flat cardboard into three different trash barrels at the opposite side of the parking lot. Owen used a disposable lighter to start the fires and they watched the cardboard burn to ashes.
Oscar lifted two of the barrels and dumped the ashes into the third barrel. He carried the third barrel to the top of a hill behind the comfort station and scattered the ashes in the wind. He watched until the swirling gray and black ash dissipated into the trees and then he put the barrel back where he’d found it.
When Owen and Oscar returned to the Suburban, Trevor had placed the drone on the carpet in the back of the vehicle. He opened the silver briefcase and removed three handguns. All three were loaded. He handed one to Owen and one to Oscar, along with extra ammunition.
Trevor collected the third pistol and extra ammunition for himself. “Let’s go”
Owen closed the hatch on the Suburban and all three men settled again into the same places in the vehicle’s cabin, like school children with assigned seats.
When they were on the road again, Trevor glanced at his watch. The stop cost them half an hour. But the weapons and the drone would prove to be worth the delay.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Saturday, February 26
12:00 p.m.
Laconia, New Hampshire
Smithers parked outside a busy family restaurant bustling with kids. He said, “This place is a madhouse, but the food is great.”
“Sounds perfect to me,” Kim replied. Not because she was particularly hungry. She wasn’t. But a busy place full of screaming kids and probably half the patrons using their phones and the internet presented greater problems for the Boss and anyone else who wanted to spy on her. Simply put, she might get away with briefing Smithers in a place like this. It was a damn sight more likely than discussing things with him in the vehicle.
Smithers soon caught up with her. He reached the front door before she did and pulled it open, waiting for her to pass through first. Some women might have objected to the courtesy, but Mrs. Otto’s daughter wasn’t one of them.
“Thanks,” she said, once she was inside and managed to stop her teeth from chattering. She stood behind a sign that said Please Wait to be Seated.
“You’re welcome,” Smithers replied. He unzipped his coat and pulled off his gloves. “We have more than our share of cold weather in New York. But I can honestly say I’ve never been colder than I’ve been here on this case.”
She simply nodded because there was no way he’d be able to hear her reply. She could barely think over the cacophony of kids in various stages of shouting, screaming, laughing, pounding silverware, and just generally being kids. Combined with the parents making futile efforts to quiet them and the restaurant staff raising their own voices above the din to take food orders and the like, the noise was a palpable force.
Kim glanced around the place. She’d been right about patrons using phones and tablets, too. This must have been the busiest place in Laconia right at the moment. Which suited Kim’s needs perfectly. She needed to download and read Gaspar’s files on the four Reachers. The longer she could keep that information from both casual and determined spies, the better.
A harried woman dressed in a blue uniform with a checked apron noticed them from across the room and hustled over. She grabbed menus and placemats and waved them to follow her along the aisle between crowded booths.
The combination of spilled syrup and juices, slushy snow tracked in, and whatever else the diners had dropped, adhered Kim’s boots to the tile floor with every step.
They fought the crowds deep into the restaurant and around a corner to a table where it was marginally quieter. The harried hostess laid paper placemats, flatware rolled in a napkin, and menus on the table.
“Someone will be here to take your order shortly,” she promised before she hustled away.
Kim worked quickly and efficiently. She set up her laptop and a new encrypted hot spot with an untraceable internet protocol address. While she downloaded the encrypted files Gaspar had placed in her secure server, Smithers walked over to a serving station nearby. He poured coffee into two brown plastic mugs and brought them back to the table.
“Thanks.” She nodded, sipped, and kept her eyes on the screen. The files downloaded swiftly and she disconnected.
Kim trusted no one except Gaspar. She’d developed and honed her healthy sense of skepticism over the course of the Reacher assignment and it had kept her alive. Her work was under the radar. She’d learned the hard way that she was better off keeping her secrets buried.
The Boss could easily trace her laptop, of course. She was betting that he was too busy doing other things at the moment. She’d delete the files as soon as she read them, along with all traces of the download. Which would be enough to keep the intel away from the Boss as long as he had no reason to suspect they ever existed.
“Are you going to clue me in here, Otto?” Smithers asked after a few minutes. The grumpy tone had returned to his voice. She didn’t really blame him. She hated being kept in the dark and it made sense that Smithers wouldn’t love it, either. But it wasn’t her call. Never had been.
“Yeah. Just hang on until I read through this.”
Gaspar had included maps to the homes and offices of all four of the Reachers listed in the ragged local phone book pamphlet she’d found in her room at the Laconia Inn. The first thing he’d noted was that the pamphlet was at least five years old. Maybe more.
He’d done more digging to update the data. And he’d sent short dossiers on each subject. Gaspar had always been her secret weapon on this assignment because he understood the way Reacher thought. Both men were army vets with similar backgrounds and training. She’d relied on him for Reacher’s perspective when much of what Reacher did seemed unfathomable.
Since Gaspar retired from the FBI, she missed his constant presence. The loss was mitigated by the new job he’d transitioned to because he had full access to all sorts of intel that she simply couldn’t access any other way. He’d promised to help her see this assignment through, and she’d promised to hold him to it.
Kim read through Gaspar’s reports quickly. There were five names on his list, one more than the four listed in the pamphlet.
Only one was a viable subject for a personal interview today. The others were out of range.
Gaspar hadn’t been able to identify the first, “Old Man Reacher,” on short notice. The phone number was out of service. Without a first name, available databases were unable to locate him. Gaspar promised to keep looking.
The second, William Reacher, had retired to Arizona four or five years back. His biographical data was neither interesting nor relevant to Jack Reacher.
Things started to get interesting with the third name, Mark Reacher. He grew up near Laconia but no longer lived at the pamphlet’s listed address. He’d moved to Boston from here. After that, he worked as a hedge fund manager in Europe. Exact location currently unknown.
Fourth was David Reacher, Mark Reacher’s older brother. David’s dossier was slightly longer than the others. Kim scanned it for highlights. A local college professor until declining health made working impossible, he’d recently lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. He was cremated earlier this month.
Which meant she’d struck out. The pamphlet had seemed like a solid lead, but four out of the four potential interview subjects were not available.
But Gaspar’s files contained a fifth name. One that seemed promising.
David Reacher’s wife, Margaret. She still lived in Laconia with their son, Jake, who had recently graduated from Dartmouth. Margaret was a professor at the local college, too. And Jake had been accepted into law school starting in the fall. Harvard, no less.
The waitress finally showed up at their table, looking harried and exhausted. Smithers ordered the breakfast special by pointing to the sticky picture on the menu, and added a pot of coffee.
Kim glanced up from the laptop. She hadn’t opened the menu, so she said, “Make it two, please.”
The waitress made a couple of check marks on a notepad before she moved off toward the kitchen.
After a few minutes of silence, Smithers asked, “You gonna tell me what’s so interesting in those files?”
Kim cocked her head and studied Smithers’s annoyed expression. “Turns out there’s a woman to interview for the background check I’m doing on Reacher. Her name is Margaret Reacher. Do you know her?”
Could she trust him? Should she? He wasn’t her partner. He had no idea what her real assignment was or how it had changed since they’d worked together last. She wasn’t authorized to read him in on the file or on her work.
Smithers had proved reliable when she and Gaspar worked on the Green Paint Killer case on his home turf. She’d relied on him then and he hadn’t let her down. But she’d had Gaspar then, too.
Before she had to make a final decision, the waitress returned with their food. She plopped the plates down in front of them and dashed over to the serving station to fill up a plastic coffee pot and collect a small basket containing a variety of jams and butters. After she dropped those off at the table, she rushed away again without another word.
“That poor woman must be dead on her feet at the end of her shift every day,” Kim said.
Smithers nodded as he tucked into the hot food.
The breakfast special turned out to be more fried food than she normally ate in a year. Fried eggs, fried ham, and fried potatoes. A slice of toast was the only thing that hadn’t been fried. The rest was swimming in grease.
Kim picked up her fork and moved the
eggs aside carefully to avoid breaking the yolks. Eggs prepared over easy were the worst. All that yellow stuff on the plate, congealing around everything else, was revolting. She lifted a bite of ham to her mouth and chewed while she waited.
Smithers seemed to understand she’d tell him nothing more in response to his inquiry about Gaspar’s files. He didn’t push her, but the scowl on his face meant he didn’t like it, either. She wondered what he was holding back from her and whether his intel was something she needed to know.
His phone vibrated in his pocket a few minutes later. He answered, “Yeah…I see…okay. Send me what you’ve got so far. I’ll follow up.”
“Something turn up on the motel fire?” She asked by way of changing the subject when he hung up.
His case wasn’t classified. Dozens of people were working on the motel fire. No one was making an effort to contain the results of that investigation. He had no reason to keep information from her. Which didn’t mean he was being transparent, either.
Kim’s case was different. He wasn’t supposed to know anything about it beyond her cover story. She should keep it that way. At least for now. Controlling the flow of intel was the smart thing to do, even though she didn’t feel good about it.
He nodded. “Yeah. The lab isolated the identification number on one of the torched vehicles. The Honda. The forensics guys chased it down.”
“And?”
He shoveled a few more bites into his mouth, making her wait before he relented. “Turns out it came from Canada.”
“You think the owner might be one of those nine bodies you found out there?” Kim asked.
“Maybe. You know how this goes. There are several possibilities and we just have to run each one down until we get a hit. The car could have been stolen. Or sold. Or a dozen other alternatives. First we’ve got to find out who owned the vehicle. We’re looking at that now. But identifying the Honda is more than we had before. Progress.” Smithers finished eating as he talked. He pushed his plate away and refilled his coffee.
