Nothing to Lose

“Take the whole thing,” he said. “We’ll add up the quantities later.”

Vaughan jammed the file under her arm and pushed the drawer shut with her hip. Reacher moved the chair and opened the door and they stepped out together to the dark. Reacher stopped and used the flashlight and found the fallen screws and pushed them back into their holes with his thumb. They held loosely and made the lock look untouched. Then he followed Vaughan as she retraced their steps, past Operations, past Thurman’s digs, past the security office. She waited for him and they dodged around the China Lines container together and headed out into open space.

Then Reacher stopped again.

Turned around.

“Flashlight,” he said.

Vaughan gave up the flashlight and he switched it on and played the beam across the side of the container. It loomed up, huge and unreal in the sudden light, high on its trailer like it was suspended in midair. It was forty feet long, corrugated, boxy, metal. Completely standard in every way. It hadCHINA LINES painted on it in large letters, dirty white, and a vertical row of Chinese characters, plus a series of ID numbers and codes stenciled low in one corner.

Plus a word, handwritten in capitals, in chalk.

The chalk was faded, as if it had been applied long ago at the other end of a voyage of many thousands of miles.

The word looked likeCARS.

Reacher stepped closer. The business end of the container had a double door, secured in the usual way with four foot-long levers that drove four sturdy bolts that ran the whole height of the container and socketed home in the box sections top and bottom. The levers were all in the closed position. Three were merely slotted into their brackets, but the fourth was secured with a padlock and guaranteed by a tell-tale plastic tag.

Reacher said, “This is an incoming delivery.”

Vaughan said, “I guess. It’s facing inward.”

“I want to see what’s inside.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

“There are cars inside. Every junkyard has cars.”

He nodded in the dark. “I’ve seen them come in. From neighboring states, tied down on open flat-beds. Not locked in closed containers.”

Vaughan was quiet for a beat. “You think this is army stuff from Iraq?”

“It’s possible.”

“I don’t want to see. It might be Humvees. They’re basically cars. You said so yourself.”

He nodded again. “They are basically cars. But no one ever calls them cars. Certainly not the people who loaded this thing.”

“If it’s from Iraq.”

“Yes, if.”

“I don’t want to see.”

“I do.”

“We need to get going. It’s late. Or early.”

“I’ll be quick,” he said. “Don’t watch, if you don’t want to.”

She stepped away, far enough into the darkness that he couldn’t see her anymore. He held the flashlight in his teeth and stretched up tall and jammed the tongue of the wrecking bar through the padlock’s hoop. Countedone two and onthree he jerked down with all his strength.

No result.

Working way above his head was reducing his leverage. He got his toes on the ledge where the box was reinforced at the bottom and grabbed the vertical bolt and hauled himself up to where he could tackle the problem face-to-face. He got the wrecking bar back in place and tried again.One, two, jerk.

No result.

Case-hardened steel, cold rolled, thick and heavy. A fine padlock. He wished he had bought a three-foot bar. Or a six-foot pry bar. He thought about finding some chain and hooking a Tahoe up to it. The keys were probably in. But the chain would break before the padlock. He mused on it and let the frustration build. Then he jammed the wrecking bar home for a third try.One. Two. Onthree he jerked downward with all the force in his frame and jumped off his ledge so that his whole bodyweight reinforced the blow. A two-fisted punch, backed up by two hundred and fifty pounds of moving mass.

The padlock broke.

He ended up sprawled in the dirt. Curved fragments of metal hit him in the head and the shoulder. The wrecking bar clanged off the ledge and caught him in the foot. He didn’t care. He climbed back up and broke the tag and smacked the levers out of their slots and opened the doors. Metal squealed. He lit up the flashlight and took a look inside.

Cars.

The restlessness of a long sea voyage had shifted them neatly to the right side of the container. There were four of them, two piled on two, longitudinally. Strange makes, strange models. Dusty, sandblasted, pastel colors.

They were grievously damaged. They were opened like cans, ripped, peeled, smashed, twisted. They had holes through their sheet metal the size of telephone poles.

They had pale rectangular license plates covered with neat Arabic numbers. Off-white backgrounds, delicate backward hooks and curls, black diamond-shaped dots.

Reacher turned in the doorway and called into the darkness, “No Humvees.” He heard light footsteps and Vaughan appeared in the gloom. He leaned down and took her hand and pulled her up. She stood with him and followed the flashlight beam as he played it around.

“From Iraq?” she asked.