Nothing to Lose

“The same thing we do with the wrecks towed off I-70. We recycle them. Steel is a wonderful thing, Mr. Reacher. It goes around and around. Peugeots and Toyotas from the Gulf might once have been Fords and Chevrolets from Detroit, and they in turn might once have been Rolls-Royces from England or Holdens from Australia. Or bicycles or refrigerators. Some steel is new, of course, but surprisingly little of it. Recycling is where the action is.”

“And the bottom line.”

“Naturally.”

“So why don’t you buy yourself a better plane?”

“You don’t like this one?”

“Not much,” Reacher said.

They flew on. There was nothing but darkness ahead, relieved occasionally by tiny clusters of yellow light far below. Hamlets, farms, gas stations. At one point Reacher saw brighter lights in the distance to the left and the right. Lamar, probably, and La Junta. Small towns, made larger by comparison with the emptiness all around them. Sometimes cars were visible on roads, tiny cones of blue light crawling slowly.

Reacher asked, “How is Underwood doing? The deputy?”

Thurman paused a moment. Then he said, “He passed on.”

“In the hospital?”

“Before we could get him there.”

“Will there be an autopsy?”

“He has no next of kin to request one.”

“Did you call the coroner?”

“No need. He was old, he got sick, he died.”

“He was about forty.”

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It’s in store for all of us.”

“You don’t sound very concerned.”

“A good Christian has nothing to fear in death. And I own a town, Mr. Reacher. I see births and deaths all the time. One door closes, another opens.”

Thurman leaned back, his gut between him and the stick, his hands held low. The engine held fast on a mid-range roar and the whole plane shivered with vibration and bucked occasionally on rough air. The latitude number counted down slowly, and the longitude number slower still. Reacher closed his eyes. Flight time to the state line would be about seventy or eighty minutes. He figured they weren’t going to land in Colorado itself. There wasn’t much left of it. Just empty grassland. He figured they were going to Oklahoma, or Texas.

They flew on. The air got steadily worse. Reacher opened his eyes. Downdrafts dropped them into troughs like a stone. Then updrafts hurled them back up again. They were sideswiped by gusts of wind. Not like in a big commercial Boeing. No juddering vibration and bouncing wings. No implacable forward motion. Just violent physical displacement, like a pinball caught between bumpers. There was no storm outside. No rain, no lightning. No thunderheads. Just roiling evening thermals coming up off the plains in giant waves, invisible, compressing, decompressing, making solid walls and empty voids. Thurman held the stick loosely and let the plane buck and dive. Reacher moved in his seat and smoothed the harness straps over his shoulders.

Thurman said, “Youare afraid of flying.”

“Flying is fine,” Reacher said. “Crashing is another story.”

“An old joke.”

“For a reason.”

Thurman started jerking the stick and hammering the rudder. The plane rose and fell sharply and smashed from side to side. At first Reacher thought they were seeking smoother air. Then he realized Thurman was deliberately making things worse. He was diving where the downdrafts were sucking anyway and climbing with the updrafts. He was turning into the side winds and taking them like roundhouse punches. The plane was hammering all over the sky. It was being tossed around like the insignificant piece of junk it was.

Thurman said, “This is why you need to get your life in order. The end could come at any time. Maybe sooner than you expect.”

Reacher said nothing.

Thurman said, “I could end it for you now. I could roll and stall and power dive. Two thousand feet, we’d hit the deck at three hundred miles an hour. The wings would come off first. The crater would be ten feet deep.”

Reacher said, “Go right ahead.”

“You mean that?”

“I dare you.”

An updraft hit and the plane was thrown upward and then the decompression wave came in and the lift under the wings dropped away to a negative value and the plane fell again. Thurman dropped the nose and hit the throttle and the engine screamed and the Piper tilted into a forty-five-degree power dive. The artificial horizon on the dash lit up red and a warning siren sounded. It was barely audible over the scream of the engine and the battering airflow. Then Thurman pulled out of the dive. He jerked the nose up. The airframe groaned as the main spar stressed and the plane curved level and then rose again through air that was momentarily calmer.

Reacher said, “Chicken.”

Thurman said, “I have nothing to fear.”

“So why pull out?”

“When I die, I’m going to a better place.”

“I thought the big guy got to make that decision, not you.”

“I’ve been a faithful servant.”

“So go for it. Go to a better place, right now. I dare you.”

Reacher said nothing. Thurman flew on, straight and level, through air that was calming down. Two thousand feet, a hundred and twenty-five knots, south of southeast.