A Wanted Man (11 page)

“I can’t specify a ratio. It doesn’t happen that way. Most trace gets rubbed in over the first minute or two.”

“Yes or no? Real world?”

“Probably yes. The driver’s seat shows heavy use, the passenger’s seat doesn’t.”

“So how did the two guys get here? Wearing suits and no winter coats?”

“Ma’am, I have no idea,” the technician said, and walked back to the car.

“I have no idea either,” Goodman said. “My guys have seen no abandoned cars. That was one of the things I told them to look for.”

Sorenson said, “Obviously they didn’t abandon a car. If they had their own car, they wouldn’t have had to hijack a cocktail waitress. And we need to know where the fourth guy came from, too. And we need to figure out where he was while his pals were busy in the bunker.”

“He sounds distinctive.”

Sorenson nodded. “A gorilla with its face smashed in. Anyone should remember a guy like that.”

Then her phone rang, and she answered it, and Goodman saw her back go straight and her face change. She listened for thirty seconds, and she said, “OK,” and then she said it again, and then she said, “No, I’ll make sure it happens,” and then she clicked off.

A straight back, but she had said
OK
, not
Yes, sir
.

Not a superior from her FBI field office, therefore, or from D.C.

Goodman asked, “Who was that?”

Sorenson said, “That was a duty officer in a room in Langley, Virginia.”

“Langley?”

Sorenson nodded.

She said, “Now the CIA has got its nose in this thing too. I’m supposed to provide progress reports all through the night.”

Chapter 23

It was technically challenging to take out a guy in the
front passenger seat while driving at eighty miles an hour. It required simultaneous movement and stillness. The driver’s foot had to stay steady on the pedal, which meant his legs had to stay still. His torso had to stay still. Above all, his left shoulder had to stay still. Only his right arm could move, which would dictate a backhand scythe to the passenger’s head.

But it would be a relatively weak blow. It would be easy enough to fake a lazy cross-body scratch of the left shoulder, and then launch the right fist through a long half circle, like a backward right hook, but the top edge of the Chevy’s dash roll was fairly high, and the bottom edge of its mirror was fairly low, so the swing would have to be carefully aimed through the available gap, and then it would have to be kicked upward for the last part of its travel.

And Reacher’s arms were long, which meant he would have to keep his elbow tucked in to stop his knuckles fouling against the windshield glass. Which would dictate an upward kick
and
a snap of the elbow in the final inches, which together would be very hard to calibrate in order to avoid an action-and-reaction jerk to the left shoulder. And any movement of the left shoulder would be a very bad idea at that point. A minor slalom at eighty miles an hour on a straight wide road would be easily recoverable in theory, but there was no
point in announcing hostile intent and then spending the next five seconds with both hands on the wheel fighting a skid. That would give the initiative straight back to the passenger, no question about it.

So all in all it would be better to settle for a light tap, not a heavy blow, which meant the exact choice of target would be important, which meant the larynx would come top of the list. An open hand held horizontally, like a karate chop, and a light smack in the throat. That would get the job done. Disabling, but not fatal. Except that Alan King was asleep, with his face turned away and his chin tucked down to his chest. His throat was concealed. He would have to be woken up first. Maybe a poke in the shoulder. He would straighten up, he would face forward, he would blink and yawn and stare.

Easy enough. Poke, scratch, swing,
pop
. Technically challenging, but entirely possible. Alan King could be handled.

But Don McQueen couldn’t. Science had never found a way to take out a guy sitting directly behind a driver. Not while that driver was doing eighty miles an hour. No way. Just not feasible. No kind of four-dimensional planning could achieve it.

Reacher drove on, at eighty miles an hour. He checked the mirror. No traffic behind him. McQueen was asleep. He checked again a minute later. Delfuenso was staring at him. He learned the road a mile ahead and looked back in the mirror. He nodded, as if to say:
Go ahead. Begin transmission
.

She began.

Forward nine.

I.

Forward eight, forward one, back five, forward five.

H, A, V, E,
have
.

Forward one. A.

Forward three, forward eight, forward nine, forward twelve, forward four.

C, H, I, L, D,
child
.

I have a child
.

Reacher nodded, and lifted the small stuffed animal out of the center console, as if to say:
I understand
. The toy’s fur was stiff with
dried saliva. Its shape was distorted by the clamp of a tiny jaw. He put it back. Delfuenso’s eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away.

Reacher leaned over and poked Alan King in the shoulder.

King stirred, and woke up, and straightened, and faced forward, and blinked and yawned and stared.

He said, “What?”

Reacher said, “The gas gauge is through the first little bit. I need you to tell me when to stop.”

The deputy came back
from the convenience store and told Goodman there were no bloody coats or knives in the trash cans. Sorenson called the head technician back from the Mazda again and said, “I need to know about the victim.”

“Can’t help you there,” the guy said. “There was no ID and the autopsy won’t be until tomorrow.”

“I need your impressions.”

“I’m a scientist. I was out sick the day they taught Clairvoyance 101.”

“You could make some educated guesses.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I’m getting hassle through two separate back channels.”

“Who?”

“First the State Department, and now the CIA.”

“They’re not separate. The State Department is the political wing of the CIA.”

“And we’re the FBI, and we’re the good guys here, and we can’t afford to look slow or incompetent. Or unimaginative. So I’d like some impressions from you. Or informed opinion, or whatever else they taught you to call it in Cover Your Ass 101.”

“What kind of informed opinion?”

“Age?”

“Forty-something, possibly,” the guy said.

“Nationality?”

“He was American, probably,” the guy said.

“Because?”

“His dental work looks American. His clothing is mostly American.”

“Mostly?”

“I think his shirt is foreign. But his underwear is American. And most people stick to underwear from their country of origin.”

“Do they?”

“As a general rule. It’s a comfort issue, literally and metaphorically. And an intimacy issue. It’s a big step, putting on foreign underwear. Like betrayal, or emigration.”

“That’s science?”

“Psychology is a science.”

“Where is the shirt from?”

“Hard to say. There’s no label in it.”

“But it looks foreign?”

“Well, basically all cotton clothing is foreign now. Almost all of it comes from somewhere in Asia. But quality and cut and color and pattern all tend to be market-specific.”

“Which market?”

“The fabric is thin, the color is cream rather than white, the collar points are long and narrow, the design of the checks is purely graphic rather than imitative of a traditional weave. I would say the shirt was bought in Pakistan, or possibly the Middle East.”

Chapter 24

Alan King jacked himself upright and craned to his left
. He took a good long look at the fuel gauge. He said, “I think we’ll be OK for a spell more. Let me know when it hits the three-quarter mark.”

“Won’t be long,” Reacher said. “It seems to be going down awful fast.”

“That’s because you’re driving awful fast.”

“No faster than Mr. McQueen was.”

“Then maybe the fault has corrected itself. Maybe it was only intermittent.”

“We don’t want to run out of gas. Not out here. It’s pretty lonely. Can’t count on getting help. The cops are all back at that roadblock.”

“Give it another thirty minutes,” King said. “Then perhaps we’ll start to think about it.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“Tell me about that thing with the letter A.”

“Later.”

“No, now.”

“I said later. What part of that is hard to understand?”

“You don’t like to be pushed around, do you, Mr. Reacher?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been pushed around. If it ever happens, you’ll be the first to find out whether I like it or not.”

King turned his head away and gazed forward into the darkness for a full minute more, completely silent, and then he slid down in his seat and tucked his chin back down and closed his eyes again. Reacher checked the mirror. McQueen was still out cold. Delfuenso was still awake.

And she was blinking again.

Backward seven, forward eight, forward five, backward two. T-H-E-Y,
they
.

Forward eight, forward one, backward five, forward five.

H-A-V-E,
have
.

Forward seven, backward six, backward thirteen, backward eight.

G-U-N-S,
guns
.

They have guns
.

Reacher nodded in the mirror, and drove on.

The scene behind the
cocktail lounge stayed quiet for five more minutes. The lab guys took a long sequence of close-up photographs inside the Mazda, using strobes. The car’s misty glass lit up from within with irregular flashes, like a thunderstorm viewed from a great distance, or a battle on the other side of a hill. Goodman’s deputies searched the ground and found nothing of significance. Sorenson interrogated federal and state databases by phone, looking for large men with recent facial injuries. She came up empty.

Then came the sounds of a whispering V-8 engine and tires on crushed stone, and the dip and bounce of headlight beams in the mist, and a dark sedan nosed its way north toward them. It was a navy blue Crown Vic, identical to Sorenson’s own, same specification, same needle antennas on the back deck, but with Missouri plates. It came to a stop at a respectful distance and two men got out. They were wearing dark suits. They stood in the lee of their open doors and struggled into heavy down parkas. Then they closed their doors and moved closer, scanning the scene as they walked, noticing and dismissing the county deputies, noticing and dismissing Sheriff Goodman, noticing and dismissing the crime scene technicians, before
settling their attention on Sorenson. They stopped six feet from her and pulled IDs from their pockets.

The same IDs as hers.

FBI.

The agent on the right said, “We’re from Counterterrorism, central region, out of Kansas City.”

Sorenson said, “I didn’t call you.”

“Your field office’s duty log triggered an automatic alert.”

“Why?”

“Because the crime scene location is sensitive.”

“Is it? It’s an abandoned pumping station.”

“No, it’s an open and uncapped well head with direct vertical access to the largest groundwater reserves in the United States.”

“It’s a dry hole.”

The agent nodded. “But only because the water table fell below the bottom of the bore. Dry or not, if you poured something down that pipe, it would find its way into the aquifer. That’s inevitable. Gravity alone would make sure of it. Like dripping ink on a sponge.”

“Poured what?”

“There’s a number of things we wouldn’t want to go down there.”

“But it would be a drop in a bucket. Literally. A very tiny drop and a very big bucket. I mean, there’s a lot down there. They use two and a half trillion gallons every year. And even one of those big road tankers is, what, five thousand gallons? That’s nothing in comparison.”

The guy nodded again. “But terrorism is an asymmetrical business. As a matter of fact, you’re right. Five thousand gallons of poisonous chemicals or viruses or germs or whatever wouldn’t do much harm. Not scientifically. But can you see a way of convincing people of that? There’d be mass panic. There’d be a mass stampede out of here. Total chaos throughout a large part of the nation. And that’s exactly what terrorists like. Plus we’d have severe disruption to agriculture, for years. And there are military installations here.”

“Are you serious? That’s chemical and biological warfare.”

“We’re completely serious.”

“So why hasn’t that pipe been capped?”

“There are ten thousand holes like that one. We’re working as fast as we can.”

Sorenson said, “This is a homicide. I don’t see a terrorist angle.”

“Really? Did you get a call from State? About the victim?”

“Yes.”

“And CIA?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s some kind of overseas issue here. Don’t you think?”

Sorenson heard her technician’s voice in her head:
I would say the shirt was bought in Pakistan, or possibly the Middle East
.

She said, “So are you taking over from me?”

The agent on the right shook his head and said, “No, it’s still your case. But we’re going to be looking over your shoulder. Night and day. Just until we’re sure. Nothing personal. We hope you don’t mind.”

Reacher heard McQueen
wake up behind him. He looked in the mirror and saw the guy staring out his window, at the empty traffic lanes alongside him. Then he saw him look the other way, beyond Delfuenso, at the shoulder of the road.

They passed an exit sign. They passed three blue boards, one of them blank. Gas and accommodations, but no food. There were no lights on the horizon. No welcoming glow. A deceptive exit, in Reacher’s opinion. Fifteen or twenty miles of dark rural roads, and then places that would be shut when they finally got there.

“Take this one,” McQueen said.

“What?” Reacher said.