Nothing to Lose

Reacher nodded. Stuck his arm out the window, waved the driver onward, and peeled the bubble light off the roof. The truck lurched as the gears caught and it pulled across the rumble strip and got straight in the traffic lane and lumbered slowly away, first gear, then second, then third. The laptop screen showed a vivid plume of hot exhaust that swelled and swirled into a lime-green cloud before cooling and dissipating and falling away into blackness.

Vaughan asked, “What did we just see?”

“A truck on its way to Canada.”

“That’s all?”

“You saw what I saw.”

“Is this part of your theory?”

“Pretty much all of it.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Later.”

“Than what?”

“When it’s safely across the border.”

“Why then?”

“Because I don’t want to put you in a difficult position.”

“Why would it?”

“Because you’re a cop.”

“Now you’re trying to keepme out of trouble?”

Reacher said, “I’m trying to keep everybody out of trouble.”

They turned around and drove back to where the old road forked. They bumped down off the new blacktop and this time they kept on going, between the two ruined farms, all the way to Halfway township. First stop was the coffee shop, for a late breakfast. Second stop was a Holiday Inn, where they rented a bland beige room and showered and made love and went to sleep. They woke up at four, and did all the same things in reverse order, like a film run backward. They made love again, showered again, checked out of the hotel, and headed back to the coffee shop for an early dinner. By five-thirty they were on the road again, heading east, back toward Despair.

Vaughan drove. The setting sun was behind her, bright in her mirror. It put a glowing rectangle of light on her face. The truck route was reasonably busy in both directions. The metal plant ahead was still sucking stuff in and spitting it out again. Reacher watched the license plates. He saw representatives from all of Colorado’s neighboring states, plus a container truck from New Jersey, heading outward, presumably empty, and a flat-bed semi from Idaho heading inward, groaning under a load of rusted steel sheet.

He thought:license plates.

He said, “I was in the Gulf the first time around.”

Vaughan nodded. “You wore the same BDUs every day for eight months. In the heat. Which is a delightful image. I felt bad enough putting these clothes back on.”

“We spent most of the time in Saudi and Kuwait, of course. But there were a few covert trips into Iraq itself.”

“And?”

“I remember their license plates being silver. But the ones we saw last night in the container were off-white.”

“Maybe they changed them since then.”

“Maybe. But maybe they didn’t. Maybe they had other things to worry about.”

“You think those weren’t Iraqi cars?”

“I think Iran uses off-white plates.”

“So what are you saying? We’re fighting in Iran and nobody knows? That’s not possible.”

“We were fighting in Cambodia in the seventies and nobody knew. But I think it’s more likely there’s a bunch of Iranians heading west to Iraq to join in the fun every day. Maybe like commuting to a job. Maybe we’re stopping them at the border crossings. With artillery.”

“That’s very dangerous.”

“For the passengers, for sure.”

“For the world,” Vaughan said.

They passed the MP base just before six-fifteen. Neat, quiet, still, six parked Humvees, four guys in the guard shack. All in order, and recently resupplied.

For what?

They slowed for the last five miles and tried to time it right. Traffic had died away to nothing. The plant was closed. The lights were off. Presumably the last stragglers were heading home, to the east. Presumably the Tahoes were parked for the night. Vaughan made the left onto Despair’s old road and then found the ruts in the gathering gloom and followed them like she had the night before, through the throat of the figure 8 and all the way to the spot behind the airplane barn. She parked there and went to pull the key but Reacher put his hand on her wrist and said, “I have to do this part alone.”

Vaughan said, “Why?”

“Because this has to be face-to-face. And the whole deal here is that you’re permanent and I’m not. You’re a cop from the next town, with a lot of years ahead of you. You can’t go trespassing and breaking and entering all over the neighborhood.”

“I already have.”

“But nobody knew. Which made it OK. This time it won’t be OK.”

“You’re shutting me out?”

“Wait on the road. Any hassle, take off for home. I’ll make my own way back.”

He left the ladder and the wrecking bar and the flashlight where they were, in the car. But he took the captured switchblades with him. He put one in each pocket, just in case.

Then he hiked the fifty yards through the scrub and climbed the fieldstone wall.

58

It was still too light to make any sense out of hiding. Reacher just leaned against the barn’s board wall, near the front corner, outside, on the blind side, away from the house. He could smell the plane. Cold metal, oil, unburned hydrocarbons from the tanks. The clock in his head showed one minute before seven in the evening.