TWENTY-SEVEN

REACHER BLEW STRAIGHT PAST THE BILLBOARD AND THEN SLOWED and checked ahead. In his experience most places reserved the main drag for profit-and-loss businesses. Municipal enterprises like cops and county offices would be a block or two over. Maybe more. Something to do with tax revenues. A town couldn't charge as much for a lot on a back street.

He slowed a little more and passed the first building. It was on the left. It was an aluminium coach diner, as advertised on the billboard, as mentioned by Dorothy the housekeeper. It was the place where the county cops got their morning coffee and doughnuts. And their afternoon snacks, apparently. There was a black-and-white Dodge police cruiser parked outside. Plus two working pick-up trucks, both of them farm vehicles, both of them dented and dirty. Next up in terms of infrastructure was a gas station across the street, Texaco, with three service bays attached. Then came a long sequence of miscellaneous enterprises, on the left and the right, a hardware store, a liquor store, a bank, tyre bays, a John Deere dealership, a grocery, a pharmacy. The street was broad and muddy and had diagonal parking on both sides.

Reacher drove all the way through town. At the end of it was a genuine crossroads, signposted left to an ethanol plant and right to a hospital and straight ahead to I-80, another sixty miles farther on. He U-turned shoulder-to-shoulder and came back again, north on the main drag. There were three side streets on the right, and three on the left. They all had names that sounded like people. Maybe original Nebraska settlers, or famous football players, or coaches, or champion corn growers. He made the first right, on a street named McNally, and saw the Marriott hotel up ahead. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, which was awkward. The old files would be in the police station or a county storeroom, and either way the file clerks would be quitting at five. He had one hour. That was all. Access alone might take thirty minutes to arrange, and there was probably plenty of paper, which would take much more than the other thirty to read. He was going to have to wait for the morning.

Or, maybe not.

Worth a try.

He rolled ahead and took a look at the hotel on the way. He wasn't sure what the difference was between a regular Marriott and a Courtyard Marriott. Maybe one was high-rise and the other was low-rise. This was a low-rise, just two storeys, H-shaped, a lobby flanked by two modest wings of bedrooms. There was a parking lot out front with marked spaces for about twenty cars, only two of them occupied. Same again at the rear of the building. Twenty spaces, only two of them occupied. Plenty of vacancies. Wintertime, in the middle of nowhere.

He made a left and came back north again, parallel to the main drag, three blocks over. He saw the second restaurant. It was a rib shack. It boasted a dry rub recipe direct from Kansas. He turned left again just beyond it and came back to the main street and pulled in at the diner. The cop car was still there. Still parked. The diner wasn't busy. Reacher could see in through the windows. Two cops, three civilians, a waitress, and a cook behind a hatch.

Reacher locked the Cadillac and walked in. The cops were face to face in a booth, each of them wide and bulky, each of them taking up most of a two-person bench. One of them was about Reacher's age, and one of them was younger. They had grey uniforms, with badges and insignia, and nameplates. The older cop was called Hoag. Reacher walked past him and stopped and pantomimed a big double take and said, 'You're Hoag, right? I don't believe it.'

The cop said, 'Excuse me?'

'I remember you from Desert Storm. Don't I? The Gulf, in 1991? Am I right?'

The cop said, 'I'm sorry, my friend, but you'll have to help me out here. There's been a lot of water over the dam since 1991.'

Reacher offered his hand. He said, 'Reacher, 110th MP.'

The cop wiped his hand on his pants and shook. He said, 'I'm not sure I was ever in contact with you guys.'

'Really? I could have sworn. Saudi, maybe? Just before? During Desert Shield?'

'I was in Germany just before.'

'I don't think it was Germany. But I remember the name. And the face, kind of. Did you have a brother in the Gulf? Or a cousin or something?'

'A cousin, sure.'

'Looks just like you?'

'Back then, I guess. A little.'

'There you go. Nice guy, right?'

'Nice enough.'

'And a fine soldier, as I recall.'

'He came home with a Bronze Star.'

'I knew it. VII Corps, right?'

'Second Armored Cavalry.'

'Third Squadron?'

'That's the one.'

'I knew it,' Reacher said again. An old, old process, exploited by fortune tellers everywhere. Steer a guy through an endless series of yes-no, right-wrong questions, and in no time at all a convincing illusion of intimacy built itself up. A simple psychological trick, sharpened by listening carefully to answers, feeling the way, and playing the odds. Most people who wore name tags every day forgot they had them on, at least initially. And a lot of heartland cops were ex-military. Way more than the average. And even if they weren't, most of them had big families. Lots of brothers and cousins. Virtually certain that at least one of them would have been in the army. And Desert Storm had been the main engagement for that whole generation, and VII Corps had been by far its largest component, and a Bronze Star winner from the Second Armored Cavalry was almost certainly from the Third Squadron, which had been the tip of the spear. An algorithm. Playing the odds. No-brainers all the way.

Reacher asked, 'So what's your cousin doing now?'

'Tony? He's back in Lincoln. He got out before the second go-round, thank God. He's working for the railroad. Two kids, one in junior high and one in college.'

'That's terrific. You see him much?'

'Now and then.'

'Be sure to remember me to him, OK? Jack Reacher, 110th MP. One desert rat to another.'

'So what are you doing now? He's bound to ask.'

'Me? Oh, the same old, same old.'

'What, you're still in?'

'No, I mean I was an investigator, and I'm still an investigator. But private now. My own man, not Uncle Sam's.'

'Here in Nebraska?'

'Just temporarily,' Reacher said. Then he paused. 'You know what? Maybe you could help me out. If you don't mind me asking.'

'What do you need?'

'You guys going on duty or going off?'

'We're coming on. We got the night shift ahead of us.'

'Mind if I sit down?'

The cop called Hoag scooted over, all swishing vinyl and creaking leather. Reacher perched on the part of the bench he had vacated. It was warm. He said, 'I knew this other guy, name of McNally. Another Second Armored guy, as a matter of fact. Turns out he has a friend of a friend who has an aunt in this county. She's a farmer. Her daughter disappeared twenty-five years ago. Eight years old, never seen again. The woman never really got over it. Your department handled it, with the FBI as the icing on the cake. McNally's friend of a friend thinks the FBI screwed up. So McNally hired me to review the paperwork.'

'Twenty-five years ago?' Hoag said. 'Before my time.'

'Right,' Reacher said. 'I guess we were both in basic back then.'

'And the kid was never seen again? That means it's an open case. Cold, but open. Which means the paperwork should still exist. And someone should remember it.'

'That's exactly what McNally was hoping.'

'And he's looking to screw the FBI? Not us?'

'The story is you guys did a fine job.'

'And what did the FBI do wrong?'

'They didn't find the kid.'

'What good will all this do?'

'I don't know,' Reacher said. 'You tell me. You know how it is with people. It might put some minds at rest, I guess.'

'OK,' Hoag said. 'I'll put the word out at the station house. Someone will get you in, first thing tomorrow morning.'

'Any chance of doing something tonight? If I could get this done by midnight, it would cut McNally's bill by one day. He doesn't have much money.'

'You turning down a bigger pay cheque?'

'One veteran to another. You know how it is. Plus I've got business elsewhere. I need to get to Virginia as soon as I can.'

Hoag checked his watch. Twenty minutes past four. He said, 'All that old stuff is in the basement under the county clerk's office. You can't be in there after five o'clock.'

'Any way of getting it out?'

'Oh, man, that's asking a lot.'

'I don't need court exhibits. I don't want the physical evidence, assuming there is any. I just want the paperwork.'

'I could get my ass kicked real bad.'

'I just want to read it. Where's the harm in that? In and out in one night, who's even going to know?'

'There's probably a lot of it. Boxes and boxes.'

'I'll help with the grunt work.'

'McNally was Second Armored? Same as Tony?'

Reacher nodded. 'But Second Squadron, not Third. Not quite in Tony's class.'

'Where are you staying?'

'The Marriott. Where else?'

There was a long pause. The younger cop looked on. Hoag was well aware of his scrutiny. Reacher watched the dynamic unfold. Hoag cycled through proper civil caution to a kind of nostalgic old-school can-do soldier-to-soldier recklessness. He looked at Reacher and said, 'OK, I know a guy. We'll get this done. But it's better that you're not there. So go wait for us. We'll deliver.'

So Reacher drove back to the Courtyard Marriott and put the Cadillac way in the rear, behind the building itself, where it couldn't be seen from the front. Safer that way, in case Seth Duncan couldn't be stopped from getting on the horn and spreading the word. Then he walked back and waited at the lobby desk for the clerk to finish on the phone. He seemed to be taking a couple of bookings from someone. When he was done Reacher bought a night in a ground floor room, which turned out to be way in the back of the H, very quiet and very adequate, very clean and very well equipped, all green and tan colours and brass accents and pale wood. Then forty minutes later Hoag and his partner showed up in a borrowed K-9 van loaded with eleven cardboard cartons of files. Five minutes after that, all eleven cartons were in Reacher's room.

And five minutes after that, but sixty miles to the north, the doctor left the motel lounge. He had talked with Vincent a bit, just shooting the shit, but mostly he had drunk three triples of Jim Beam. Nine measures of bourbon, in a little more than an hour. And it was cloudy and going dark, which meant that his glance up and down the road didn't reveal what it would have if the sun had been brighter. He climbed into the pick-up truck and started the motor and backed out from his place of concealment. He swung the wheel and crossed the lot and turned right on the two-lane.

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE SIX REMAINING CORNHUSKERS HAD SPLIT UP AND WERE operating solo. Two were parked north on the two-lane, two were parked south, one was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southeast, and the sixth was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southwest.

The doctor ran into the two to the north.

Almost literally. His plan was to dump the truck as soon as he found some neutral no-man's-land and then walk home cross-country. He was getting his bearings and looking around as he drove, staring left and right, the bourbon making him slow and numb. His gaze came back to the traffic lane and he saw he was about one second away from colliding head-on with another truck parked half on and half off the shoulder. It was just sitting there, facing the wrong way, with its lights off. Eyes to brain to hands, everything buffered by the bourbon fog, a split second of delay, a wrench of the wheel, and suddenly he was heading diagonally for another truck parked on the other shoulder, thirty yards farther on. He stamped on the brake and all four wheels locked up and he skidded and came to a stop more or less sideways.

The second truck pulled out and blocked the road ahead of him.

The first truck pulled out and blocked the road behind him.

In Las Vegas Mahmeini dialled his phone. His main guy answered, eight blocks away, in Safir's office. Mahmeini said, 'Change of plan. You two are going to Nebraska, right now. Use the company plane. The pilot will have the details.'

His guy said, 'OK.'

Mahmeini said, 'It's a two-part mission. First, find this stranger everybody is talking about and take him out. Second, get close to the Duncans. Build up some trust. Then take out Safir's guys, and Rossi's too, so that from this point onward we're bypassing two links in the chain. In future we can deal direct. Much more profit that way. Much more control, too.'

His guy said, 'OK.'

The doctor sat still behind the wheel, shaking with shock and fear and adrenalin. The Cornhuskers climbed out of their vehicles. Big guys. Red jackets. They walked towards the doctor's stalled truck, taking it slow and easy, one from the left, one from the right. They stood for a second, one each side of the pick-up's cab, still and quiet in the afternoon gloom. Then the first guy opened the passenger door, and the second guy opened the driver's door. The guy at the passenger door stood ready to block an escape, and the guy at the driver's door reached inside and hauled the doctor out by the collar of his coat. The doctor went down like a dead weight, straight to the blacktop, and the guy hauled him up again and hit him hard in the gut and then turned him around and hit him twice more, low in the back, right over his kidneys. The doctor fell to his knees and puked bourbon on the road.

The guy who had been waiting at the passenger door walked back to his vehicle and parked it where it had been before. Then he put the doctor's truck right behind it. He rejoined his buddy and between them they wrestled the doctor up into the cab of the first guy's truck. Then they drove away, one on the right, one on the left, with the doctor jammed between them on the three-person bench, shaking and shivering, his chin on his chest.

In Las Vegas Safir dialled his phone, and his guy answered, in Rossi's office, six blocks away. Safir said, 'New developments. I'm sending you two to Nebraska. I'll fax the details to the airport.'

His guy said, 'OK.'

Safir said, 'Rossi's guys will meet you at the hotel. Mahmeini is sending guys too. The six of you will work together until the stranger is down. In the meantime try and get something going with the Duncans. Build a relationship. Then take Rossi's guys out. That way we're one step closer to the motherlode. We can double our margin.'

His guy said, 'OK.'

'And if you get the chance, take Mahmeini's guys out too. I think I can get next to his customer. I mean, where else can he get stuff like this? We could maybe quadruple our margin.'

His guy said, 'OK, boss.'

The Cornhuskers drove south, five fast miles, and then they slowed and turned in on the Duncans' shared driveway. The doctor looked up at the change of speed and direction and moaned a strangled inarticulate sigh and closed his eyes and dropped his head again. The guy on his right smacked an elbow in his ribs. He said, 'You need to get that voice working better, my friend. Because you've got some explaining to do.'

They took it slow all the way up to the houses, formal and ceremonial, mission accomplished, and they parked out front and got out and hauled their prize out after them. They marched him to Jacob Duncan's door and knocked. A minute later Jacob Duncan opened it up and one of the Cornhuskers put his hand flat on the doctor's back and shoved him inside, and said, 'We found this guy using the truck we lost. He put his own damn plates on it.'

Jacob Duncan looked at the doctor for ten long seconds. He raised his hand and patted him gently on the cheek. Pale skin, damp and clammy, lumps and bruises. Then he bunched the front of the doctor's shirt in his fist and dragged him farther into the hallway. He turned and pushed him onward, through the dark depths of the house, towards the kitchen in back. Their prisoner, in the system.

Jacob Duncan turned back to the Cornhuskers.

'Good work, boys,' he said. 'Now go finish the job. Find Reacher. He's on foot again, clearly. If the doctor knows where he is, he's sure to tell us soon, and we'll let you know. But in the meantime, keep looking.'

Roberto Cassano was still in Jacob Duncan's kitchen. Angelo Mancini was still in there with him. They saw the sadsack doctor stumble in from the hallway, all drunk and raggedy and terrified, with Mancini's earlier handiwork still clearly visible all over his face. Then Cassano's phone rang. He checked the screen and saw that it was Rossi calling and he stepped out the back door and walked across the weedy gravel. He hit the button and raised the phone and Rossi said, 'Complications.'

Cassano said, 'Such as?'

'I had to calm things down at this end. It was getting out of control. I had to talk to people, change a few perceptions. Long story short, you're getting reinforcements. Two of Safir's guys, and two of Mahmeini's.'

'That should shorten the process.'

'Initially,' Rossi said. 'But then it's going to get very difficult. A buck gets ten they're coming with instructions to cut us out of the chain. Mahmeini is probably looking to cut Safir out too. So don't let any of them get close to the Duncans. Not for a minute. Don't let the Duncans make any new friends. And watch your step as soon as the stranger is down. You're going to have four guys gunning for you.'

'What do you want us to do?'

'I want you to stay alive. And in control.'

'Rules of engagement?'

'Put Safir's guys down for sure. That way we remove the link above us. We can sell direct to Mahmeini, at Safir's prices.'

'OK.'

'And put Mahmeini's guys down too, if you have to, for self-defence. But make sure to make it look like Safir's guys or the Duncans did it. I still need Mahmeini himself. There's no wiggle room there. I have no access to the ultimate buyer without him.'

'OK.'

'So leave right now. Pull back to the hotel and lie low. You'll meet the others there, probably very soon. Make contact and make a plan.'

'Who's in charge?'

'The Iranians will claim they are. But they can stick that where the sun don't shine. You know the people and the terrain. Keep on top of it and be very careful.'

'OK, boss,' Cassano said. And two minutes later he and Mancini were back in their rented blue Impala, heading south on the arrow-straight two-lane, sixty miles to go.

The white van was still on Route 3, still in Canada, still heading east, more than halfway across Alberta, with Saskatchewan up ahead. It had just skipped a right turn on Route 4, which led south to the border, where the modest Canadian blacktop ribbon changed to the full-blown majesty of U.S. Interstate 15, which ran all the way to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. The change of status in what had once been the same horse trail was emblematic of the two nations' sense of self, and as well as that it was taken to be a very dangerous road. It was an obvious artery, with two big prizes at the end of it, and so it was assumed to be monitored very carefully. Which was why the white van had passed up the chance of its speed and convenience and was still labouring east on the minor thoroughfare, towards a small town called Medicine Hat, where it intended to finally turn south and lose itself in the wild country around Pakowki Lake, before finding a nameless rutted track that ran deep into the woods, and all the way to America.

* * *

The Duncans made the doctor stand upright at the head of the table. They sat and looked at him and said nothing for a minute, Jacob and Seth on one side, Jasper and Jonas on the other. Finally Jacob asked, 'Was it an act of deliberate rebellion?'

The doctor didn't answer. His throat was swollen and painful from vomiting, and he didn't understand the question anyway.

Jacob asked, 'Or was it some imagined sense of entitlement?'

The doctor didn't answer.

'We need to know,' Jacob said. 'You must tell us. This is a fascinating subject. It needs to be thoroughly explored.'

The doctor said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'But perhaps your wife does,' Jacob said. 'Should we go pick her up and bring her here and ask her?'

'Leave her out of it.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Please. Please leave her alone.'

'She could entertain us. She used to, you know. We knew her long before you did. She came here half a dozen times. To this very house. She was happy to. Of course, we were paying her, which might have influenced her attitude. You should ask her, about what she used to do for money.'

'She babysat.'

'Is that what she says? I suppose she would, now.'

'That's what she did.'

'Ask her again sometime. Catch her in an unguarded moment. She was a girl of many talents, your wife, once upon a time. She might tell you all about it. You might enjoy it.'

'What do you want?'

Jacob Duncan said, 'We want to know the psychology behind what you did.'

'What did I do?'

'You put your licence plates on our truck.'

The doctor said nothing.

Jacob Duncan said, 'We want to know why. That's all. It's not much to ask. Was it just impertinence? Or was it a message? Were you retaliating for our having disabled your own vehicle? Were you claiming a right? Were you making a point? Were you scolding us for having gone too far?'

'I don't know,' the doctor said.

'Or did someone else change the plates?'

'I don't know who changed them.'

'But it wasn't you?'

'No.'

'Where did you find the truck?'

'At the motel. This afternoon. It was next to my car. With my plates on it.'

'Why didn't you change them back?'

'I don't know.'

'To drive with phoney plates is a criminal offence, isn't it? A misdemeanour at best. Should medical practitioners indulge in criminal behaviour?'

'I guess not.'

'But you did.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't apologize to us. We're not a court of law. Or a state board. But you should rehearse an excuse. You might lose your job. Then what would your wife do for money? She might have to return to her old ways. A comeback tour, of sorts. Not that we would have her back. I mean, who would? A raddled old bitch like that?'

The doctor said nothing.

'And you treated my daughter-in-law,' Jacob Duncan said. 'After being told not to.'

'I'm a doctor. I had to.'

'The Hippocratic oath?'

'Exactly.'

'Which says, first, do no harm.'

'I didn't do any harm.'

'Look at my son's face.'

The doctor looked.

'You did that,' Jacob said.

'I didn't.'

'You caused it to be done. Which is the same thing. You did harm.'

'That wasn't me.'

'So who was it?'

'I don't know.'

'I think you do. The word is out. Surely you've heard it? We know you people talk about us all the time. On the phone tree. Did you think it was a secret?'

'It was Reacher.'

'Finally,' Jacob said. 'We get to the point. You were his coconspirator.'

'I wasn't.'

'You asked him to drive you to my son's house.'

'I didn't. He made me go.'

'Whatever,' Jacob said. 'There's no use crying over spilt milk. But we have a question for you.'

'What is it?'

'Where is Reacher now?'