A hard man, but intelligent.
His photograph was stapled to the inside cover of the file. It was a colour picture, a little faded by the intervening years. His hair was short and unruly. He had bright blue eyes, a little hooded. His gaze was direct and unflinching. He had two noticeable scars. One was at the corner of his left eye. The other was on his upper lip. His face looked like it had been chipped out of rock by a sculptor who had ability but not much time. All flat hard planes. He had a neck. Thick, for sure, but it was there. His shoulders were broad. His arms were long, and his hands were large.
His mouth was set in a wry smile that was halfway between patient and exasperated. Like he knew he had to get his picture taken, but like he had just gotten through telling the photographer the guy had three more seconds before his camera got rammed down his throat.
Jack-none-Reacher.
Altogether Susan felt that he would be interesting to know, possibly rewarding as a friend, certainly dangerous as an enemy.
She picked up her phone and dialled her guy in the air force. Asked him if there was news. There wasn't. She asked when it would come through. Her guy said soon. She said soon wasn't soon enough.
Her guy said, 'Trying to impress someone?'
She said, 'No,' and hung up.
The last page of Reacher's file was a standard cross-reference index that listed related mentions in other files. There were seventy-three citations. They were all classified, which was no big deal. Virtually all military paper was classified. The first seventy-two citations were dated at various points during his thirteen years of service and were classified at a level which would make them awkward for her to get hold of. Operational reports, obviously. The seventy-third citation was classified at a lower level, but it was ancient. Dated way back. So far back, in fact, that Jack-none-Reacher would have been just six years old at the time. A little boy. Which was strange. A contemporary report about family issues would be in the Marine Corps archives, not army. Because of his father.
So why was the army holding paper on a six-year-old kid?
She e-mailed the Human Resources Command for a one-time password that would grant her temporary access to the record.
The process for leaving the prison involved all the same moves in reverse, with the addition of a thorough physical inspection of the departing vehicle. Peterson stopped in the first locked cage and two guards came out with flashlights and one checked the trunk and the other checked the back seat. Then they swapped responsibilities and did it all over again. The centre gate opened and Peterson rolled forward into the second cage. A third guard checked their IDs and waved them away.
Peterson asked, 'What do you think?'
Reacher asked, 'About what?'
'Their security.'
'Adequate.'
'Is that all?'
'That's all it needs to be.'
'I think it's pretty good.'
'Human nature will get them in the end. They're only a year or so into it. All it will take is for two guards to get lazy at the same time. Bound to happen sooner or later. It always does.'
'Pessimist.'
'Realist.'
Peterson smiled and his car rolled on through the snow towards town.
Seventeen hundred miles south a small convoy of three black Range Rovers rolled through the heat towards Plato's compound. The trucks were all less than a month old, they all had blacked-out windows, and they were all the Sport model, which was really a rebodied Land Rover LR3 with a supercharged Jaguar engine under the hood. Fine trucks for rough but unchallenging roads, which were what Plato's part of the Michoacan was all about. Each truck was carrying two men, for a total of six. All of them were local thirty-somethings with twenty years' experience, all of them were dressed in dark suits, and all of them were heavily armed.
And all of them had worked for Plato before.
Which meant that all of them were a little afraid.
The three cars made the last turn and started the last dusty mile to the gate. All three drivers knew they were already being tracked with binoculars. They had passed the point of no return. They held a steady fifty and maintained a tight formation and then slowed far enough out to be unthreatening. People said Plato's gatemen had anti-tank missiles. Or rocket-propelled grenades, at the very least. Plus surface-to-air missiles for government helicopters. Maybe true, maybe not, but no one was in the mood to find out for sure.
The three cars stopped well short of the gate and the six men climbed out from behind their black windows and stood still in the early-evening heat. No one approached them. They knew that they were being identified at a distance. Beyond that there would be no intervention. They knew that their good behaviour was guaranteed not by a physical search, but by the fact that they all had sisters and mothers and grandmothers and female cousins all within easy reach. Watching a relative's skin being peeled off her face was not pleasant. Living with her afterwards was worse.
A gasoline engine started and a gear engaged and the gate was driven back. A minute later the last of the cars was inside the compound and the gear reversed and the gate closed again.
Peterson let Reacher out at Janet Salter's house. It was his new default destination, night and day. He crunched up the driveway and the woman cop from the hallway let him in. Janet Salter was in the library, in her usual chair, in a pool of light, reading. The other woman cop was at the window, with her back to the room. Situation normal. All quiet.
Janet Salter held up her book and said, 'I'm reading Sherlock Holmes.'
Reacher said, 'The dog that didn't bark in the night?'
'Exactly.'
'I already thought about that. Your neighbour lives upwind. Doesn't mean no one was here, just because her dog didn't get a sniff.'
'There's a companion volume you should see, in the parlour,' Janet Salter said. She put her book down and got up out of her chair. Reacher followed her to the front room. She closed the door. Didn't show him a book. Instead she asked, 'Are the bikers really gone?'
Reacher said, 'Yes.'
'Are they coming back?'
'I don't think so.'
'So am I safe now?'
'Not really.'
'Why did Chief Holland let them go?'
'Small town rules,' Reacher said.
'Which now mean that if I go ahead and testify as planned, only one man will, as you put it, get nailed.'
'That's true.'
'Which absolutely wasn't the deal. The idea was to nail them all. Now they'll just become some other town's problem.'
'And then the next, and the next.'
'It isn't right.'
'It's how things work.'
'I mean it isn't right to put me at so much risk for so little reward.'
'You want to pull out?'
'Yes, I think I do.'
Five minutes to six in the evening.
Ten hours to go.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
JANET SALTER SAT DOWN IN A PARLOUR CHAIR. REACHER CHECKED the view from the window. Nothing there. Just the cop in his car, a good one, his head moving left, moving right, checking the mirror.
Reacher said, 'I think it's too late to make a practical difference.'
Janet Salter asked, 'Why?'
'You could talk to Holland right now, but Holland can't talk to the prosecutor before tomorrow, and the prosecutor can't file the papers until maybe the next day, and the news might take another day to filter through. But the bad guys are in a hurry. That place makes money for them. They can't afford any downtime.'
Janet Salter said, 'So I'm in, and I can't get out?'
'Hang tough,' Reacher said. 'You'll be OK.'
'I wouldn't have been OK last night, except for you. And you won't be here for ever.'
'I won't need to be,' Reacher said. 'The bad guys won't wait for ever.'
***
Janet Salter went to make dinner. She said cooking relaxed her. The night watch cops got up and came downstairs. The house felt safe. Dark and cold outside, bright and warm inside. Pots and pans on the stove top fogged the kitchen windows, so Reacher prowled between the library and the parlour and the hallway. He saw nothing from the windows except snow and ice and moving shadows. The wind was still blowing. Not ideal conditions for careful surveillance, but Reacher felt the situation was acceptable. Seven cops on the case, with himself as backup. Safe enough.