6
SIX-THIRTY ON REACHER’S watch, the motion inside
the truck changed. Six hours and four minutes they’d cruised
steadily, maybe fifty-five or sixty miles an hour, while the heat
peaked and fell away. He’d sat, hot and rocking and bouncing in the
dark with the wheel well between him and Holly Johnson, ticking off
the distance against a map inside his head. He figured they’d been
taken maybe three hundred and ninety miles. But he didn’t know
which direction they were headed. If they were going east, they
would be right through Indiana and just about out of Ohio by now,
maybe just entering Pennsylvania or West Virginia. South, they
would be out of Illinois, into Missouri or Kentucky, maybe even
into Tennessee if he’d underestimated their speed. West, they’d be
hauling their way across Iowa. They might have looped around the
bottom of the lake and headed north up through Michigan. Or
straight out northwest, in which case they could be up near
Minneapolis.
But they’d gotten somewhere, because the truck was
slowing. Then there was a lurch to the right, like a pull off a
highway. There was gear noise and thumping over broken pavement.
Cornering forces slammed them around. Holly’s crutch slid and
rattled side to side across the ridged metal floor. The truck
whined up grades and down slopes, paused at invisible road
junctions, accelerated, braked hard, turned a tight left, and then
drove slowly down a straight lumpy surface for a quarter
hour.
“Farming country somewhere,” Reacher said.
“Obviously,” Holly said. “But where?”
Reacher just shrugged at her in the gloom. The
truck slowed almost to a stop and turned a tight right. The road
surface got worse. The truck bounced forward maybe a hundred and
fifty yards and stopped. There was the sound of the passenger door
opening up in front. The engine was still running. The passenger
door slammed shut. Reacher heard a big door opening and the truck
moved slowly forward. The engine noise boomed against metal walls.
Reacher heard the door noise again and the engine noise echoed
louder. Then it shut down and died away into stillness.
“We’re in some sort of a barn,” Reacher said. “With
the door closed.”
Holly nodded impatiently.
“I know that,” she said. “A cow barn. I can smell
it.” Reacher could hear muffled conversation outside the truck.
Footsteps walking around to the rear doors. A key going into the
lock. The handle turning. A blinding flood of light as the door
opened. Reacher blinked against the sudden electric brightness and
stared out across Holly at three men, two Glocks and a
shotgun.
“Out,” the leader said.
They struggled out, handcuffed together. Not easy.
They were stiff and sore and cramped from bracing themselves
against the wheel well for six solid hours. Holly’s knee had gone
altogether. Reacher started back for her crutch.
“Leave it there, asshole,” the leader said.
The guy sounded tired and irritable. Reacher gave
him a steady look and shrugged. Holly stiffened and tried her
weight on her leg. Gasped in pain and gave it up. Glanced
impersonally at Reacher like he was some kind of a tree and
stretched around with her free left hand to hold on tight around
his neck. It was the only way she could stay upright.
“Excuse me, please,” she muttered.
The leader gestured with his Glock over to his
left. They were in a large cow barn. No cows, but they hadn’t been
long absent, judging by the odor. The truck was parked in a wide
central aisle. Either side were cow stalls, roomy, made up from
galvanized steel piping efficiently welded together. Reacher
twisted and held Holly’s waist and the two of them hopped and
staggered over to the stall the guy with the Glock was pointing at.
Holly seized a railing and held on, embarrassed.
“Excuse me,” she muttered again.
Reacher nodded and waited. The driver with the
shotgun covered them and the leader walked away. He heaved the big
door open and stepped through. Reacher caught a glimpse of
darkening sky. Cloudy. No clue at all to their location.
The leader was gone five minutes. There was silence
in the barn. The other two guys stood still, weapons out and ready.
The jumpy guy with the Glock was staring at Reacher’s face. The
driver with the shotgun was staring at Holly’s breasts. Smiling a
half-smile. Nobody spoke. Then the leader stepped back in. He was
carrying a second pair of handcuffs and two lengths of heavy
chain.
“You’re making a big mistake here,” Holly said to
him. “I’m an FBI agent.”
“I know that, bitch,” the guy said. “Now be
quiet.”
“You’re committing a serious crime,” Holly
said.
“I know that, bitch,” the guy said again. “And I
told you to be quiet. Another word out of you, I’ll shoot this guy
in the head. Then you can spend the night with a corpse chained to
your wrist, OK?”
He waited until she nodded silently. Then the
driver with the shotgun took up position behind them and the leader
unlocked their cuff and freed their wrists. He looped one of the
chains around the stall railing and locked the ends into the spare
half of the cuff dangling from Reacher’s left arm. Pulled it and
rattled it to check it was secure. Then he dragged Holly two stalls
away and used the new cuffs and the second length of chain to lock
her to the railing, twenty feet from Reacher. Her knee gave way and
she fell heavily with a gasp of pain onto the dirty straw. The
leader ignored her. Just walked back to where Reacher was chained
up. Stood right in front of him.
“So who the hell are you, asshole?” he said.
Reacher didn’t reply. He knew the keys to both
cuffs were in this guy’s pocket. He knew it would take him about a
second and a half to snap his neck with the loop of chain hanging
off his wrist. But the other two guys were out of reach. One Glock,
one shotgun, too far away to grab before he’d unlocked himself, too
near to get a chance to do that. He was dealing with a reasonably
efficient set of opponents. So he just shrugged and looked at the
straw at his feet. It was clogged with dung.
“I asked you a damn question,” the guy said.
Reacher looked at him. In the corner of his eye, he
saw the jumpy guy ratchet his Glock upward a degree or two.
“I asked you a question, asshole,” the leader said
again, quietly.
The jumpy guy’s Glock was jutting forward. Then it
was straight out, shoulder-high. Aimed right at Reacher’s head. The
muzzle was trembling through a small jerky circle, but probably not
trembling enough to make the guy miss. Not from that sort of a
close distance. Reacher looked from one guy to the other. The guy
with the shotgun tore his attention away from Holly’s breasts. He
raised the weapon to his hip. Pointed it in Reacher’s direction. It
was an Ithaca 37. Twelve-bore. The five-shot version with the
pistol grip and no shoulder stock. The guy racked a round into the
chamber. The crunch-crunch of the mechanism was loud in the barn.
It echoed off the metal walls. Died into silence. Reacher saw the
trigger move through the first eighth-inch of its short
travel.
“Name?” the leader asked.
The shotgun trigger tightened another eighth. If it
fired on that trajectory, Reacher was going to lose both his legs
and most of his stomach.
“Name?” the leader asked for the second time.
It was a twelve-bore, wouldn’t kill him outright,
but he’d bleed to death in the dirty straw. Femoral artery gone,
about a minute, maybe a minute and a half. In those circumstances,
no real reason to make a big deal out of giving this guy a
name.
“Jack Reacher,” he said.
The leader nodded in satisfaction, like he’d
achieved a victory.
“You know this bitch?” he asked.
Reacher glanced across at Holly.
“Better than I know some people,” he said. “I just
spent six hours handcuffed to her.”
“You some kind of a wise guy, asshole?” the leader
asked.
Reacher shook his head.
“Innocent passerby,” he said. “I never saw her
before.”
“You with the Bureau?” the guy asked.
Reacher shook his head again.
“I’m a doorman,” he said. “Club back in
Chicago.”
“You sure, asshole?” the guy said.
Reacher nodded.
“I’m sure,” he said. “I’m a wise enough guy that I
can recall what I do for a living, one day to the next.”
There was silence for a long moment. Tension. Then
the jumpy guy with the Glock came out of his shooting stance. The
driver with the shotgun swung his weapon down toward the straw on
the floor. He turned his head and went back to staring at Holly’s
breasts. The leader nodded at Reacher.
“OK, asshole,” he said. “You behave yourself, you
stay alive for now. Same for the bitch. Nothing’s going to happen
to anybody. Not just yet.”
The three men regrouped in the center aisle and
walked out of the barn. Before they locked the door, Reacher saw
the sky again, briefly. Darker. Still cloudy. No stars. No clues.
He tested the chain. It was securely fastened to the handcuff at
one end and the railing at the other. Maybe seven feet long. He
could hear Holly doing the same experiment. Tightening her chain
and scoping out the radius it gave her to move through.
“Would you mind looking away?” she called
across.
“Why?” he called back.
There was a short silence. Then a sigh. Part
embarrassed, part exasperated.
“Do you really need to ask?” she called. “We were
in that truck six hours, and it didn’t have a bathroom, did
it?”
“You going in the next stall?” he asked.
“Obviously,” she said.
“OK,” he said. “You go right and I’ll go left. I
won’t look if you won’t.”
THE THREE MEN came back to the barn within an
hour with food. Some kind of a beef stew in a metal messtin, one
for each of them. Mostly rare steak chunks and a lot of hard
carrots. Whoever these guys were, cooking was not their major
talent. Reacher was clear on that. They handed out an enamel mug of
weak coffee, one for each of them. Then they got in the truck.
Started it up and backed it out of the barn. Turned the bright
lights off. Reacher caught a glimpse of dim emptiness outside. Then
they pulled the big door shut and locked it. Left their prisoners
in the dark and the quiet.
“Gas station,” Holly called from twenty feet away.
“They’re filling up for the rest of the ride. Can’t do it with us
inside. They figure we’d be banging on the side and shouting out
for help.”
Reacher nodded and finished his coffee. Sucked the
fork from the stew clean. Bent one of the prongs right out and put
a little kink into the end with pressure from his thumb-nail. It
made a little hook. He used it to pick the lock on his handcuff.
Took him eighteen seconds, beginning to end. He dropped the cuff
and the chain in the straw and walked over to Holly. Bent down and
unlocked her wrist. Twelve seconds. Helped her to her feet.
“Doorman, right?” she said.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s take a look around.”
“I can’t walk,” she said. “My crutch is in the damn
truck.”
Reacher nodded. She stayed in her stall, clinging
to the railing. He scouted around the big empty barn. It was a
sturdy metal structure, built throughout with the same flecked
galvanized metal as the stall railings. The big door was locked
from the outside. Probably a steel bar pad-locked into place. No
problem if he could get at the padlock, but he was inside and the
padlock was outside.
The walls met the floor with a right-angle flange
bolted firmly into the concrete. The walls themselves were
horizontal metal panels maybe thirty feet long, maybe four feet
tall. They were joined together with more right-angle flanges
bolted together. Each flange gave a lip about six inches deep. Like
a giant stepladder, with the treads four feet apart.
He climbed the wall, hauling himself quickly
upward, flange to flange, four feet at a time. The way out of the
barn was right there at the top of the wall, seven sections up,
twenty-eight feet off the ground. There was a ventilation slot
between the top of the wall and the overhanging slope of the metal
roof. About eighteen inches high. A person could roll horizontally
through the gap like an old-fashioned high jumper, hang down
outside and drop twenty feet to the ground below.
He could do that, but Holly Johnson couldn’t. She
couldn’t even walk over to the wall. She couldn’t climb it and she
sure as hell couldn’t hang down outside and drop twenty feet onto a
set of wrecked cruciate ligaments.
“Get going,” she called up to him. “Get out of
here, right now.”
He ignored her and peered out through the slot into
the darkness. The overhanging eaves gave him a low horizon. Empty
country as far as the eye could see. He climbed down and went up
the other three walls in turn. The second side gave out onto
country just as empty as the first. The third had a view of a
farmhouse. White shingles. Lights in two windows. The fourth side
of the barn looked straight up the farm track. About a hundred and
fifty yards to a featureless road. Emptiness beyond. In the far
distance, a single set of headlight beams. Flicking and bouncing.
Widely spaced. Growing larger. Getting nearer. The truck, coming
back.
“Can you see where we are?” Holly called up to
him.
“No idea,” Reacher called back. “Farming country
somewhere. Could be anywhere. Where do they have cows like this?
And fields and stuff?”
“Is it hilly out there?” Holly called. “Or
flat?”
“Can’t tell,” Reacher said. “Too dark. Maybe a
little hilly.”
“Could be Pennsylvania,” Holly said. “They have
hills and cows there.”
Reacher climbed down the fourth wall and walked
back to her stall.
“Get out of here, for Christ’s sake,” she said to
him. “Raise the alarm.”
He shook his head. He heard the diesel slowing to
turn into the track.
“That may not be the best option,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Who the hell gave you an option?” she said. “I’m
ordering you. You’re a civilian and I’m FBI and I’m ordering you to
get yourself to safety right now.”
Reacher just shrugged and stood there.
“I’m ordering you, OK?” Holly said again. “You
going to obey me?”
Reacher shook his head again.
“No,” he said.
She glared at him. Then the truck was back. They
heard the roar of the diesel and the groan of the springs on the
rough track outside. Reacher locked Holly’s cuff and ran back to
his stall. They heard the truck door slam and footsteps on the
concrete. Reacher chained his wrist to the railing and bent the
fork back into shape. When the barn door opened and the light came
on, he was sitting quietly on the straw.