Nothing to Lose

53

Vaughan drove. She insisted on it. It was her watch commander’s car. Reacher was happy to let her. She was a better driver than him. Much better. Her panic one-eighty had impressed him. Backward to forward, at full speed. He doubted if he could have done it. He figured if he had been driving the mob would have caught them and torn them apart.

“Won’t they be there again?” Vaughan asked.

“Possible,” he said. “But I doubt it. It’s late, on the second night. And I told Thurman I wouldn’t be back. I don’t think it will be like yesterday.”

“Why would Thurman believe you?”

“He’s religious. He’s accustomed to believing things that comfort him.”

“We should have planned to take the long way around.”

“I’m glad we didn’t. It would have taken four hours. It wouldn’t have left time for dinner.”

She smiled and they took off, north to First Street, west toward Despair. There was thick cloud in the sky. No moon. No stars. Pitch black. Perfect. They thumped over the line and a mile before the top of the rise Reacher said, “It’s time to go stealthy. Turn all the lights off.”

Vaughan clicked the headlights off and the world went dark and she braked hard.

“I can’t see anything,” she said.

“Use the video camera,” he said. “Use the night vision.”

“What?”

“Like a video game,” he said. “Watch the computer screen, not the windshield.”

“Will that work?”

“It’s how tank drivers do it.”

She tapped keys and the laptop screen lit up and then stabilized into a pale green picture of the landscape ahead. Green scrub on either side, vivid boulders, a bright ribbon of road spearing into the distance. She took her foot off the brake and crawled forward, her head turned, staring at the thermal image, not the reality. At first she steered uncertainly, her hand-eye coordination disrupted. She drifted left and right and overcorrected. Then she settled in and got the hang of the new technique. She did a quarter-mile perfectly straight, and then she sped up and did the next quarter a little faster, somewhere between twenty and thirty.

“It’s killing me not to glance ahead,” she said. “It’s so automatic.”

“This is good,” Reacher said. “Stay slow.” He figured that at twenty or thirty there would be almost no engine noise. Just a low purr, and a soft burble from the pipes. There would be surface noise at any speed, from the tires on the grit, but that would get better closer to town. He leaned left and put his head on her shoulder and watched the screen. The landscape reeled itself in, silent and green and ghostly. The camera had no human reactions. It was just a dumb unblinking eye. It didn’t glance left or right or up or down or change focus. They came over the rise and the screen filled with blank cold sky for a second and then the nose of the car dipped down again and they saw the next nine miles laid out in front of them. Green scrub, scattered rocks glowing lighter, the ribbon of road, a tiny flare of heat on the horizon where the embers of the police station were still warm.

Reacher glanced ahead through the windshield a couple of times, but without headlights there was nothing to see. Nothing at all. Just darkness. Which meant that anyone waiting far ahead in the distance wasn’t seeing anything either. Not yet anyway. He recalled walking back to Hope, stepping over the line, not seeing Vaughan’s cruiser at all. And that was a newer car, shinier, with white doors and polished reflectors in the light bar on the roof. He hadn’t seen it. But she had seen him.I saw you half a mile away, she had said.A little green speck. He had seen himself on the screen afterward, a luminous sliver in the dark, getting bigger, coming closer.

Very fancy,he had said.

Homeland Security money,she had replied.Got to spend it on something.

He stared at the screen, watching for little green specks. The car prowled onward, slow and steady, like a black submarine loose in deep water. Two miles. Four. Still nothing ahead. Six miles. Eight. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, except the idling motor and the squelching tires and Vaughan’s tense breathing as she gripped the wheel and squinted sideways at the laptop screen.

“We must be getting close,” she whispered.

He nodded, on her shoulder. The screen showed buildings maybe a mile ahead. The gas station hut, slightly warmer than its surroundings. The dry goods store, with daytime heat trapped in its brick walls. A background glow from the downtown blocks. A pale blur in the air a little ways south and west, above where the police station had been.

No little green specks.

He said, “This is where they were yesterday.”

She said, “So where are they now?”

She slowed a little and drifted onward. The screen held steady. Geography and architecture, nothing more. Nothing moving.

“Human nature,” Reacher said. “They got all pumped up yesterday and thought they’d gotten rid of us. They don’t have the stamina to do it all again.”

“There could be one or two out and about.”

“Possible.”

“They’ll call ahead and warn the plant.”

“That’s OK,” Reacher said. “We’re not going to the plant. Not yet anyway.”

They drifted on, slow and dark and silent. The vacant lot and the abandoned motor court barely showed up on the screen. Thermally they were just parts of the landscape. The gas station and the household goods store shone brighter. Beyond them the other blocks glowed mid-green. There were window-sized patches of brighter color, and heat was leaking from roofs with imperfect insulation. But there were no pinpoints of light. No little green specks. No crowds, no small groups of shuffling people, no lone sentries.

Not dead ahead anyway.

The camera’s fixed angle was useless against the cross-streets. It showed their mouths to a depth of about five feet. That was all. Reacher stared sideways into the darkness as they rolled past each opening. Saw nothing. No flashlights, no match flares, no lighter sparks, no cigarette coals glowing red. The tire noise had dropped away to almost nothing. Main Street was worn down to the tar. No more pebbles. Vaughan was holding her breath. Her foot was feather light on the pedal. The car rolled onward, a little faster than walking, a lot slower than running.

Two green specks stepped out ahead.

They were maybe a quarter of a mile away, at the west end of Main Street. Two figures, emerging from a cross-street. A foot patrol. Vaughan braked gently and came to a stop, halfway through town. Six blocks behind her, six ahead.

“Can they see us?” she whispered.

“I think they’re facing away,” Reacher said.

“Suppose they’re not?”

“They can’t see us.”

“There are probably more behind us.”

Reacher turned and stared through the rear window. Saw nothing. Just pitch black night. He said, “We can’t see them, they can’t see us. Laws of physics.”

The screen lit up with a white flare. Cone-shaped. Moving. Sweeping.

“Flashlight,” Reacher said.

“They’ll see us.”

“We’re too far away. And I think they’re shining it west.”

Then they weren’t. The screen showed the beam turning through a complete circle, flat and level, like a lighthouse. Its heat burned the screen dead white as it passed. Its light lit up the night mist like fog.

Vaughan asked, “Did they see us?”

Reacher watched the screen. Thought about the reflectors in the Crown Vic’s headlights. Polished metal, like cats’ eyes. He said, “Whoever they are, they’re not moving. I don’t think they have enough candlepower.”

“What do we do?”

“We wait.”

They waited two minutes, then three, then five. The idling engine whispered. The flashlight beam snapped off. The image on the laptop screen collapsed back to two narrow vertical specks, distant, green, barely moving. There was nothing to see through the rear window. Just empty darkness.

Vaughan said, “We can’t stay here.”

Reacher said, “We have to.”

The green specks moved, from the center of the screen to the left-hand edge. Slow, blurred, a ghost trail of luminescence following behind them. Then they disappeared, into a cross-street. The screen stabilized. Geography, and architecture.

“Foot patrol,” Reacher said. “Heading downtown. Maybe worried about fires.”

“Fires?” Vaughan said.

“Their police station burned down last night.”

“Did you have something to do with that?”

“Everything,” Reacher said.

“You’re a maniac.”

“Their problem. They’re messing with the wrong guy. We should get going.”

“Now?”

“Let’s get past them while their backs are turned.”

Vaughan feathered the gas and the car rolled forward. One block. Two. The screen held steady. Geography, and architecture. Nothing more. The tires were quiet on the battered surface.

“Faster,” Reacher said.

Vaughan sped up. Twenty miles an hour. Thirty. At forty the car set up a generalizedwhoosh from the engine and the exhaust and the tires and the air. It seemed painfully loud. But it generated no reaction. Reacher stared left and right into the downtown streets and saw nothing at all. Just black voids. Vaughan gripped the wheel and held her breath and stared at the laptop screen and ten seconds later they were through the town and in open country on the other side.

Four minutes after that, they were approaching the metal plant.