Then he began to slow. Because the blank view ahead of him seemed to be solidifying. Just a sense. There was some kind of substance there. Still invisible. Not a small distant farmhouse, presumably. Something bulkier. Maybe a giant barn. Sheet metal, or corrugated tin. Painted black. Blacker than the night itself.
On his left Delfuenso was slowing too. She was sensing the same thing. And on his right Sorenson was altering course a little. Her line was drifting closer to his. Delfuenso was edging in, too. There was something ahead of them, and instinct was telling them not to face it alone.
Reacher walked on, staring ahead. Seeing nothing. His vision was as good as anyone else's. He had never worn eyeglasses. He could read in dim light. And in the black of night the human eye was supposed to be able to see a candle flame a mile away. Maybe more. And initial adaptation to the dark was supposed to happen within four seconds. The iris was supposed to open wide. To the max. And then retinal chemistry was supposed to kick in over the next few minutes. Like turning up a volume knob. But Reacher could see nothing ahead. It was like he was blind. Except that in this case seeing nothing felt like a version of seeing something. There was something there.
A breeze came up and flapped his pants. The air felt suddenly cold. Ahead on his right Sorenson was waiting for him. And Delfuenso was cutting in towards him. They were abandoning their separation. They were making one big target. Bad tactics. They met up a minute later. They regrouped. All three of them together, way out in the field, like they had been at the beginning, behind Lacey's loading dock.
'This is weird,' Sorenson whispered. 'There's a big shape out there.'
'What shape?' Reacher asked. Maybe her eyes were better than his.
'Like a big patch of nothing. Like a hole in the air.'
'That's what I'm seeing,' Reacher said. 'A big patch of nothing.'
'But a low patch of nothing,' Delfuenso said. The breeze blew again and she shivered. She said, 'Start high. Look at the sky. Then move down. You can see an edge. Where one kind of nothing changes to another kind of nothing.'
Reacher looked at the sky. Ahead of them in the north and the west it was padded with thick black cloud. No light at all. Way behind them in the southeast was a patch of thinner grey. Sullen moonlight, through a fissure. Not much. But there was wind up there. The thinner clouds were moving. Maybe the fissure would open wider. Or maybe it would close up altogether.
He faced front again and started high and moved his gaze down. Looking for Delfuenso's edge. Looking hard. But not seeing it. There was no other kind of nothing. It was all the same kind of nothing to him.
He asked, 'How low?'
'Above the horizon, but not by much.'
'I can't even see the horizon.'
'I'm not imagining it.'
'I'm sure you're not. We'll have to get closer. You up for that?'
'Yes,' Delfuenso said.
Sorenson nodded, blonde hair moving in the dark.
They walked on, staying close. Ten yards. Twenty yards.
Staring ahead.
Seeing nothing.
Thirty yards.
And then they saw it. Maybe the greater proximity did the trick, or maybe the wind moved the cloud and threw a couple of extra moonbeams down to earth. Or maybe both.
It wasn't a farm.
SIXTY-EIGHT
IT LOOKED LIKE a capsized battleship. Like a hull, upside down and beached. It was black, and hard, and strangely rounded in places. It was long and low. It was deep. It was maybe hundreds of feet from side to side, and hundreds of feet from front to back. It was maybe forty feet tall. It was about the size of the Lacey's supermarket. But far more substantial. Lacey's was a cheap and cynical commercial structure. Lacey's looked like it would blow away in a storm. And plenty of similar establishments had.
But this thing out in the field looked bombproof. Something about the way it was hunched down in the earth suggested concrete many feet thick. The radiused haunches where walls met roofs suggested immense strength. Its corners were rounded. There were no doors or windows. There seemed to be a waist-high railing all around the edge of the roof. Tubular steel.
They walked closer. Forty yards later they had a better view. Reacher glanced back. Behind them the wind was nibbling at the fissure in the clouds. The moon was coming out. Which was both good and bad. He wanted a little more light, but not too much more. Too much more could be a problem.
He faced front again and started to see detail up ahead. The building wasn't black. Not exclusively. It was also dark brown and dark green. Dull flat non-reflective paint, thickly applied in giant random slashes and spikes and daggers.
Camouflage.
A U.S. Army pattern, dating back to the 1960s, to the best of Reacher's recollection.
Delfuenso whispered, 'What is it?'
'Not sure,' Reacher said. 'An abandoned military installation, obviously. The fence is gone. Some farmer got a hundred extra acres. I don't know what it was originally. It's blastproof, clearly. Could have been for storage of air-defence missiles, possibly. Or it could have been an ammunition factory. In which case the concrete is protecting the outside from the inside, not the other way around. I would have to see the main doors to know more. Missile storage needs big doors, for the transporters. An ammunition factory would have smaller doors.'
'Abandoned when?'
'That's a very old camouflage pattern. So the place hasn't been painted in fifty years. It was abandoned after Vietnam, maybe. Which might make it more likely it was an ammunition factory. We didn't need so many bullets or shells after that. But we cut back a little on missiles too. So it could be either.'
'Why is it still here?'
'These places can't be demolished. How would you do it? They were built to take on a lot more than a wrecking ball.'
'How do people get a place like this?'
'Maybe they bought it. The DoD is happy to take what it can get. Or maybe they're squatting. No one checks on places like this. Not any more. No manpower. There are too many of them. Your granddad's tax dollars at work.'
'It's huge.'
'I know it is. You want to revise your personnel estimate? You could get more than forty people in there. You could get four hundred.'
'You could get four thousand in there.'
'Didn't McQueen give you a figure?'
'A terrorist headcount is a moving target. He never saw everyone at once. I'm still betting on a couple of dozen, tops.'
'They must be rattling around in there.'
'How do we do this?'
'Very carefully.'
'Where do we start?'
Reacher glanced at her. And then at Sorenson. The guy in the field knew he was watched over by people who would react instantly if he ran into trouble. But instantly was a big word. They were very close to four hours into a mission launched because eight hours had seemed ludicrously long. Was four hours an instant? Not even close.
So was eight hours so much worse?
He said, 'The smart money is on very careful surveillance. We need to study that place from all four sides.'
Delfuenso said, 'That would take hours.'
'So be it.'
'You mean we should wait for Quantico.'
'It's an option.'
'But not a good one,' Delfuenso said. 'Especially not for Don McQueen.'
'I agree.'
'So the dumb money is on attacking without adequate preparation. Is that our choice?'
'Call it half-assed preparation.'
'To be honest, in what way are we even minimally prepared?'
'We're tooled up,' Reacher said. 'We're awake, and they might not be.'
Sorenson said, 'If we don't do something now, there's no point doing anything at all. That's our situation, right? And that's a military kind of problem, isn't it? Did you train for this stuff?'
'I trained for all kinds of things. Usually by starting with a little history. Back in the day the Soviets had some pretty big missiles. That thing in front of us was built to stand up to one. We have three handguns.'