"Pulled off the highway," Reacher said. "Middle of nowhere."
This is a big mistake, Reacher," Holly said.
He shrugged and took her hand and helped her into a sitting position, back against the bulkhead. Then he slid forward and put himself between her and the rear doors. He heard the three guys getting out of the cab. Doors slammed. He heard their footsteps crunching over the gravel. Two coming down the right flank, one down the left. He heard the key sliding into the lock. The handle turned.
The left-hand rear door opened two inches. First thing into the truck was the muzzle of the shotgun. Beyond it, Reacher saw a meaningless sliver of sky. Bright blue, small white clouds. Could have been anywhere in the hemisphere. Second thing into the truck was a Clock 17. Then a wrist. The cuff of a cotton shirt. The Clock was rock-steady. Loder.
This better be good, b.i.t.c.h," he called.
Hostile. A lot of tension in the voice.
"We need to talk," Readier called back.
The second Clock appeared in the narrow gap. Shaking slightly.
Talk about what, a.s.shole?" Loder called.
Readier listened to the stress in the guy"s voice and watched the second Clock trembling through its random zigzags.
This isn"t going to work, guys," he said. "Whoever told you to do this, he isn"t thinking straight. Maybe it felt like some kind of a smart move, but it"s all wrong. It isn"t going to achieve anything.
It"s just going to get you guys in a s.h.i.tload of trouble."
There was silence at the rear of the truck. Just for a second. But long enough to tell Readier that Holly was right. Long enough to know he"d made a bad mistake. The steady Clock snapped back out of sight.
The shotgun jerked, like it had just changed ownership. Reacher flung himself forward and smashed Holly down flat on the mattress. The shotgun barrel tipped upward. Reacher heard the small click of the trigger a tiny fraction before an enormous explosion. The shotgun fired into the roof. A huge blast. A hundred tiny holes appeared in the metal. A hundred tiny points of blue light. Spent shot rattled and bounced down and ricocheted around the truck like hail. Then the sound of the gun faded into the hum of temporary deafness.
Reacher felt the slam of the door. The sliver of daylight cut off. He felt the rock of the vehicle as the three men climbed back into the cab. He felt the shake as the rough diesel caught. Then a forward lurch and a yaw to the left as the truck pulled back onto the highway.
First thing Reacher heard as his hearing came back was a quiet keening as the air whistled out through the hundred pellet holes in the roof.
It grew louder as the miles rolled by. A hundred high-pitched whistles, all grouped together a couple of semitones apart, fighting and warbling like some kind of demented birdsong.
"Insane, right?" Holly said.
"Me or them?" he said.
He nodded an apology. She nodded back and struggled up to a sitting position. Used both hands to straighten her knee. The holes in the roof were letting light through. Enough light that Reacher could see her face clearly. He could interpret her expression. He could see the flicker of pain. Like a blind coming down in her eyes, then snapping back up. He knelt and swept the spent pellets off the mattress. They rattled across the metal floor.
"Now you"ve got to get out," she said. "You"ll get yourself killed soon."
The highlights in her hair flashed under the random bright illumination.
"I mean it," she said. "Qualified or not, I can"t let you stay."
"I know you can"t," he said.
He used his discarded shirt to sweep the pellets into a pile near the doors. Then he straightened the mattresses and lay back down. Rocked gently with the motion. Stared at the holes in the sheet metal above him. They were like a map of some distant galaxy.
"My father will do what it takes to get me back," Holly said.
Talking was harder than it had been before. The drone of the motor and the rumble of the road were complicated by the high-pitched whistle from the roof. A full spectrum of noise. Holly lay down next to Reacher. She put her head next to his. Her hair fanned out and brushed his cheek and fell to his neck. She squirmed her hips and straightened her leg. There was still s.p.a.ce between their bodies. The decorous V shape was still there. But the angle was a little tighter than it had been before.
"But what can he do?" Reacher said. Talk me through it."
"They"re going to make some kind of demand," she said. "You know, do this or do that, or we hurt your girl."
She spoke slowly and there was a tremor in her voice. Reacher let his hand drop into the s.p.a.ce between them and found hers. He took it and squeezed gently.
"Doesn"t make any sense," he said. "Think about it. What does your father do? He implements long-term policy, and he"s responsible for short-term readiness. Congress and the president and the defense secretary thrash out the long-term policy, right? So if the joint chairman tried to stand in their way, they"d just replace him.
Especially if they know he"s under this kind of pressure, right?"
"What about short-term readiness?" she said.
"Same sort of a thing," Reacher said. "He"s only chairman of a committee. There"s the individual chiefs of staff in there too.
Army, inv navy, air force, Marines. If they"re all singing a different song from what your father is reporting upwards, that"s not going to stay a secret for long, is it? They"ll just replace him. Take him out of the equation altogether."
Holly turned her head. Looked straight at him.
"Are you sure?" she said. "Suppose these guys are working for Iraq or something? Suppose Saddam wants Kuwait again. But he doesn"t want another Desert Storm. So he has me kidnaped, and my father says sorry, can"t be done, for all kinds of invented reasons?"
Reacher shrugged.
The answer"s right there in the words you used," he said. The reasons would be invented. Fact is, we could do Desert Storm again, if we had to. No problem. Everybody knows that. So if your father started denying it, everybody would know he was bulls.h.i.tting, and everybody would know why. They"d just sideline him. The military is a tough place, Holly, no room for sentiment. If that"s the strategy these guys are pursuing, they"re wasting their time. It can"t work."
She was quiet for a long moment.
Then maybe this is about revenge," she said slowly. "Maybe somebody is punishing him for something in the past. Maybe I"m going to Iraq.
Maybe they want to make him apologize for Desert Storm. Or Panama, or Grenada, or lots of things."
Reacher lay on his back and rocked with the motion. He could feel slight breaths of air stirring, because of the holes in the roof. He realized the truck was now a lot cooler, because of the new ventilation. Or because of his new mood.
Too arcane," he said. "You"d have to be a pretty acute a.n.a.lyst to blame the joint chairman for all that stuff. There"s a string of more obvious targets. Higher-profile people, right? The president, the defense secretary, foreign service people, field generals. If Baghdad was looking for a public humiliation they"d pick somebody their people could identify, not some paper-shuffler from the Pentagon."
"So what the h.e.l.l is this about?" Holly said.
Reacher shrugged again.
"Ultimately, nothing," he said. They haven"t thought it through properly. That"s what makes them so dangerous. They"re competent, but they"re stupid."
The truck droned on another six hours. Another three hundred and fifty miles, according to Reacher"s guess. The inside temperature had cooled, but Reacher wasn"t trying to estimate their direction by the temperature anymore. The pellet holes in the roof had upset that calculation. He was relying on dead reckoning instead. A total of eight hundred miles from Chicago he figured, and not in an easterly direction. That left a big spread of possibilities. He trawled clockwise round the map in his head. Could be in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. Could be in Texas, Oklahoma, the southwest corner of Kansas. Probably no further west than that. Reacher"s mental map had brown shading there, showing the eastern slopes of the mountains, and the truck wasn"t laboring up any grades. Could be in Nebraska or South Dakota. Maybe he was going to pa.s.s right by Mount Rushmore, second time in his life. Could have kept on past Minneapolis, into North Dakota. Eight hundred miles from Chicago, anywhere along a giant arc drawn across the continent.
The light coming in through the pellet holes had been gone for hours when the truck slowed and steered right. Up a ramp. Holly stirred and turned her head. Looked straight at Reacher. Questions in her eyes.
Reacher shrugged back and waited. The truck paused and swung a right.
Cruised down a straight road, then hung a left, a right, and carried on straight, slower. Reacher sat up and found his shirt. Shrugged himself into it. Holly sat up.
"Another hideout," she said. This is a well planned operation, Reacher."
This time it was a horse farm. The truck b.u.mped down a long track and turned. Backed up. Reacher heard one of the guys getting out. His door slammed. The truck lurched backward into another building.
Reacher heard the exhaust noise beat against the walls. Holly smelled horse smell. The engine died. The other two guys got out. Reacher heard the three of them grouping at the rear of the truck. Their key slid into the lock. The door cracked open. The shotgun poked in through the gap. This time, not pointing upward. Pointing level.
"Out," Loder called. The b.i.t.c.h first. On its own."
Holly froze. Then she shrugged at Reacher and slid across the mattresses. The door snapped wide open and two pairs of hands IftQ seized her and dragged her out. The driver moved into view, aiming the shotgun straight in at Reacher. His finger was tight on the trigger.
"Do something, a.s.shole," he said. "Please, just give me a d.a.m.n excuse."
Reacher stared at him. Waited five long minutes. Then the shotgun jabbed forward. A Clock appeared next to it. Loder gestured. Reacher moved slowly forward toward the two muzzles. Loder leaned in and snapped a handcuff onto his wrist. Looped the chain into the free half and locked it. Used the chain to drag him out of the truck by the arm.
They were in a horse barn. It was a wooden structure. Much smaller than the cow barn at their previous location. Much older. It came from a different generation of agriculture. There were two rows of stalls flanking an aisle. The floor was some kind of cobbled stone.
Green with moss.
The central aisle was wide enough for horses, but not wide enough for the truck. It was backed just inside the door. Reacher saw a frame of sky around the rear of the vehicle. A big, dark sky. Could have been anywhere. He was led like a horse down the cobbled aisle. Loder was holding the chain. Stevie was walking sideways next to Reacher. His Glock was jammed high up against Reacher"s temple. The driver was following, with the shotgun pressed hard into Reacher"s kidney. It b.u.mped with every step. They stopped at the end stall, farthest from the door. Holly was chained up in the s.p.a.ce opposite. She was wearing a handcuff, right wrist, chain looped through the spare half into an iron ring bolted into the back wall of the stall.
The two guys with the guns fanned out in a loose arc and Loder shoved Reacher into his stall. Opened the cuff with the key. Looped the chain through the iron ring bolted into the timber on the back wall, looped it again, twice, and relocked it into the cuff. He pulled at it and shook it to confirm it was secure.
"Mattresses," Reacher said. "Bring us the mattresses out of the truck."
Loder shook his head, but the driver smiled and nodded.
"OK," he said. "Good idea, a.s.shole."
He stepped up inside and dragged the queen-size out. Struggled with it all the way down the aisle and flopped it into Holly"s stall. Kicked it straight.
Tin The b.i.t.c.h gets one," he said. "You don"t."
He started laughing and the other two joined in. They strolled away down the aisle. The driver pulled the truck forward out of the barn and the heavy doors creaked shut behind it. Reacher heard a heavy crossbeam slamming down into its retaining brackets on the outside and the rattle of another chain and a padlock. He glanced across at Holly.
Then he looked down at the damp stone floor.
Reacher was squatted down, jammed into the far angle of the stall"s wooden walls. He was waiting for the three guys to come back with dinner. They arrived after an hour. With one Clock and the shotgun.
And one metal mess tin. Stevie walked in with it. The driver took it from him and handed it to Holly. He stood there leering at her for a second and then turned to face Reacher. Pointed the shotgun at him.
"b.i.t.c.h eats," he said. "You don"t."
Reacher didn"t get up. He just shrugged through the gloom.
That"s a loss I can just about survive," he said.
n.o.body replied to that. They just strolled back out. Pushed the heavy wooden doors shut. Dropped the crossbeam into place and chained it up.
Reacher listened to their footsteps fade away and turned to Holly.
"What is it?" he asked.
She shrugged across the distance at him.
"Some sort of a thin stew," she said. "Or a thick soup, I guess. One or the other. You want some?"
They give you a fork?" he asked.
"No, a spoon," she said.
"s.h.i.t," he said. "Can"t do anything with a d.a.m.n spoon."
"You want some?" she asked again.
"Can you reach?" he said.
She spent some time eating, then she stretched out. One arm tight against the chain, the other pushing the mess tin across the floor.
Then she swiveled and used her good foot to slide the tin farther across the stone. Reacher slid forward, feet first, as far as his chain would let him go. He figured if he could stretch far enough, he could hook his foot around the tin and drag it in toward him. But it was hopeless. He was six-five, and his arms were about the longest the army tailors had ever seen, but even so he came up four feet short.
He and Holly were stretched out in a perfect straight line, as near together as their chains would let them get, but the mess tin was still way out of his reach. "Forget it," he said. "Get it back while you can." She hooked her own foot around the tin and pulled it back.
"Sorry," she said. "You"re going to be hungry." "I"ll survive," he said. "Probably awful, anyway." "Right," she said. "It"s s.h.i.t.
Tastes like dog food." Reacher stared through the dark at her. He was suddenly worried.
Holly lay down apologetically on her mattress and calmly went to sleep, but Reacher stayed awake. Not because of the stone floor. It was cold and damp, and hard. The cobblestones were wickedly lumpy. But that was not the reason. He was waiting for something. He was ticking off the minutes in his head, and he was waiting. His guess was it would be about three hours, maybe four. Way into the small hours, when resistance is low and patience runs out.
A long wait. The thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-first night of his life, way down there in the bottom third of the scale, lying awake and waiting for something to happen. Something bad. Something he maybe had no chance of preventing. It was coming. He was certain of that. He"d seen the signs. He lay and waited for it, ticking off the minutes. Three hours, maybe four.
It happened after three hours and thirty-four minutes. The nameless driver came back into the barn. Wide awake and alone. Reacher heard his soft footsteps on the track outside. He heard the rattle of the padlock and the chain. He heard him lift the heavy crossbar out of its brackets. The barn door opened. A bar of bright moonlight fell across the floor. The driver stepped through it. Reacher saw a flash of his pink pig"s face. The guy hurried down the aisle. No weapon in his hand.
"I"m watching you," Reacher said, quietly. "You back off, or you"re a dead man."
The guy stopped opposite. He wasn"t a complete moron. He stayed well out of range. His bright eyes traveled up from the handcuff on Reacher"s wrist, along the chain, and rested on the iron ring in the wall. Then he smiled.
"You watch if you want to," he said. "I don"t mind an audience. And you might learn something."
Holly stirred and woke up. Raised her head and glanced around, blinking in the dark.
"What"s going on?" she said.
The driver turned to her. Reacher couldn"t see his face. It was turned away. But he could see Holly"s.
"We"re going to have us a little fun, b.i.t.c.h," the driver said. "Just you and me, with your a.s.shole friend here watching and learning."
He put his hands down to his waist and unbuckled his belt. Holly stared at him. Started to sit up.