A Wanted Man

TWENTY-NINE

THE GUN WAS a Smith & Wesson 2213. The smallest automatic in Smith & Wesson’s extensive range. Three-inch barrel,.22 Long Rifle rimfires, eight in the magazine. Dainty, but a serious weapon. McQueen had been very fast with it. Phenomenally fast. Like a magician. Like a conjuror. First it wasn’t there, and then it was.

Just like that.

Reacher stood very still.

The gun was maybe eight feet away. Behind it McQueen’s long right arm was locked straight and raised slightly above the horizontal. He was standing sideways on. His head was turned. One eye was closed.

His finger was white on the trigger.

Not good.

The.22 Long Rifle was one of the world’s oldest rounds, and by far the most common. Annual production every year since 1887 had exceeded two billion units. For a reason. It was cheap, it was quiet, and its recoil was gentle. And it was effective. Out of a rifle it was good against rats and squirrels at 450 feet, and against dogs and foxes at 250, and against full-grown coyotes at 150.

Against a human head at eight feet it would be devastating. Even out of a short-barrelled handgun.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Reacher couldn’t see the Chevy any more. McQueen was in the way. Which was not such a bad thing. At least Delfuenso would not have to watch it happen.

Which was a mercy.

But then: look on the bright side of life.

That was Reacher’s innate credo.

As in: there were four basic ways of missing with a short-barrelled handgun. Even at eight feet, even against a head-sized target. They were: missing high, missing low, missing left, and missing right.

Missing high was always the most likely.

All guns kick upward as they fire. Action, reaction, a basic law of physics. Inevitably new shooters with machine guns stitched a vertical line that rose for ever. A classic fault. Ninety per cent of training was about holding the muzzle down. Suppressors helped, because of the extra weight.

There was no reason to believe McQueen was a new shooter.

But if he was going to miss, he was going to miss high.

Laws of physics.

Four things happened at once: Reacher let out a sudden loud inarticulate bellow, and McQueen startled and rocked back a step, and Reacher dropped vertically towards the floor, and McQueen pulled the trigger.

And missed.

Missed high, partly because Reacher’s head was no longer where it had been before. Gravity had done its work. Reacher heard the roar of the shot, quieter than some, but still deafening in a closed room, and simultaneously he heard the wallboard explode above and behind his head, and then he hit the floor, knees first, then his hip, then his side, sprawling, down low behind the counter, out of sight. He had no plan. At that point he was in a strict one-step-at-a-time mode. Stay alive, and see what the next split second brings. As he fell he was aware of a vague intention to hurl the whole counter up and out, straight at McQueen, if it wasn’t bolted to the floor, or else roll backward through the door into the inner office, where there had to be a window, which would be closed against the weather, but he could plunge through it elbows first, because cuts and bruises were better than a bullet in the head.

Fight or flight.

But neither thing was necessary.

The blast of the shot peaked and started to die and Reacher heard the scrape and scrabble of feet on vinyl and he grabbed the end of the counter low down near the floor and jerked himself overhand to his right, one powerful instantaneous stroke, and he got his head out in the gap, and he saw McQueen more or less falling out through the lobby door, and then sprinting back along the neat little path, and hurling himself back into the car, and the car howling away with spinning wheels and blue tyre smoke. Reacher scrambled up to his knees and got there in time to see McQueen slam his door and the car rock through a wild 180 turn, back on to the road, facing south again, and then it accelerated away, hard, nose high, tail low, wheels spinning and scrabbling for grip and pouring smoke. The last thing Reacher saw through the haze was a brief flash of white in the Chevy’s rear window, which was Karen Delfuenso’s pale face, turning back in horror, her mouth wide open.

Reacher stayed on his knees. Silence came back. White gypsum powder drifted down on him, slowly, weightless, like talc, on his shoulders, in his hair. Tyre smoke hung in the night air under the porte cochère, and it rolled slowly forward in a ghostly dissipating cloud, which followed the trajectory of the 180 turn, like a description, like an explanation, like proof, and then it disappeared completely, like it had never been there at all.

Then the office door opened a crack and a short fat man stuck his head out and looked around and said, ‘Just so you know, I already called the cops on you.’

Julia Sorenson heard her phone ping over the noise of her speeding car and she opened her e-mail and found an audio attachment from the emergency operator in D.C. Her phone cradle was hooked up to her car’s stereo system, which was the base Ford option and therefore nothing fancy, but it was plenty loud and clear. She turned the volume up and hit Play and heard a short fifteen-second recording, of two voices on the telephone, one in the Hoover Building and the other allegedly in Iowa.

This is the FBI. What is the nature of your emergency?

I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.

What is the nature of your information?

Just connect me, now.

Sir, what is your name?

Then there was a short pause, just a beat really, and then: Connect me now or you’ll lose your job.

Then there was another short pause, then dead air, then a new dial tone.

Then nothing.

She played it again, and listened exclusively to the caller, not the operator.

I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.

Just connect me, now.

Connect me now or you’ll lose your job.

Six seconds. Twenty-three words, spoken with urgency but also with a certain weird patience. A very nasal intonation, full of breath sounds, entirely consistent with a badly broken nose, the M sounds shading towards B sounds, information more like inforbation, and Omaha more like Obaha.

She played it again, zeroing in.

Probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska.

Or you’ll lose your job.

Clearly the strange urgent-but-patient blend meant the guy was accustomed to making important operational calls, or issuing instructions of some kind, and that he knew even alert and intelligent listeners needed a chance to get from zero to sixty. But he wasn’t just a businessman. Even a high-level guy used to trading millions on the phone would get a little more freaked about calling an FBI emergency line in the middle of the night. This guy sounded like it was routine to him. The your in your field office meant he wasn’t actually FBI himself, at least not currently, but he seemed to know how things worked, and in a sense the your sounded like he considered himself a peer, or a part of the same world. Your field office, my field office.

The probably was intriguing. It was measured, and considered, and intelligent. As if the guy was in reality almost a hundred per cent certain he wanted Omaha, but didn’t want to derail the process with an initial assumption that could conceivably prove faulty later on. Or as if he wanted to recruit the emergency operator as a kind of partner, to let the operator own some component of the ultimate decision, to oil the wheels, to speed things along.

Her gut feeling told her again: this was a guy accustomed to making important operational calls. He had very sound bureaucratic instincts.

As in: or you’ll lose your job. Preceded by the very short pause for thought. This was a guy who knew exactly what to say. Who had gone through duty officers before. Who had maybe even been a duty officer once upon a time.

So what was he doing driving a car full of two murderers and a hostage?

And why did he make the call and then hang up prematurely?

She got no further with those questions, because right then her phone rang with a live call, the plain electronic tone blasting loud and deep and sonorous through dashboard speakers and door speakers and a subwoofer under the rear parcel shelf. She dropped the volume a notch and touched Accept. It was her duty officer on the line, at her field office in Omaha. The guy who hadn’t picked up in time.

He said, ‘I have the SAC holding for you.’

Sorenson slowed down to eighty. She checked the road ahead and checked her mirrors. She said, ‘Put him on.’

There was a static click, loud and emphatic through the sound system. Then a voice said, ‘Sorenson?’

Sorenson said, ‘Yes, sir.’

Her special agent in charge. Her supervisor. Her boss. A man called Perry, fifty-four years old, a Bureau lifer, ambitious, first name Anthony, called Tony to his face, called Stony behind his back, because of the mineral lump where his heart should have been.

He said, ‘I called the gas station in Iowa.’

‘You did, sir?’

‘I’m awake. I might as well do something useful.’

‘And?’

‘They don’t have video.’

‘But?’

‘The night clerk seems like a smart enough kid. He came through with a pretty coherent story.’

‘Which was?’

‘The car was a dark blue Chevy Impala. He didn’t get the plate. Four people in it, three men and a woman. Initially one man and the woman stayed in the car. A second man pumped the gas. First point of interest, he used a credit card we just found out is phony.’

‘Was it related to the card used at the Denver airport?’

‘We don’t think so. Different source, almost certainly. The second point of interest is the car took only three-point-something gallons, which the kid behind the register thought was strange. The average sale at that location is closer to eleven gallons, unless someone’s filling a can for a lawnmower.’

‘So they either part-filled the car, which might mean they’re close to home, or they topped it off, which means they’d stopped before.’

‘We’re checking if the same card has been used anywhere else tonight. No results yet. But anyway, while the gas business was happening the third man entered the store alone and waited until the door closed and then asked for the pay phone.’

‘This was the driver, sir?’

‘Yes. The kid described him as gigantic, with a busted nose, all raw and crusted with blood. The kid admits at first he was a little scared. The guy looked like something out of a slasher movie. Like a wild man. His clothes were dirty and his hair was a mess. But he spoke normally and ultimately he seemed pleasant enough. So the kid pointed him to the phone, which is out of sight near the restrooms. So the kid has no direct knowledge of whether the guy actually used the phone or not. Then the guy who had stayed in the car came in to use the toilet. The slasher movie guy came out and got coffee all around and then the other guy came out and they left together. The car drove away in an orderly fashion and headed south.’

‘Atmosphere? Anything squirrelly?’

‘Nothing to report. It was the middle of the night, so they all looked a little tired and vague, but there were no bad words, no apparent tension, and no real hurry either, as far as I understand it.’

‘Did you listen to the emergency line recording, sir?’

‘Yes, I was copied on it, obviously.’

‘Did anything stand out for you?’

‘The word probably. It makes no sense. If he’s one of them he knows where the crime was committed. In which case he would have said he had information for Omaha, Nebraska, period.’

‘You think he’s not one of them?’

‘I think he’s low-level muscle. He drives, and he fetches coffee. He doesn’t know the details.’

Bullshit, Stony, Sorenson thought. He doesn’t sound low-level to me. He sounds smarter than you, for instance.

She said, ‘Thank you, sir. That’s very useful.’

‘Keep in touch,’ the SAC said, and clicked off.

Sorenson drove on for a mile, thinking, and then she eased back up to ninety miles an hour and went back to e-mail. She turned the sound system’s volume up high and played the recording one more time.

Just connect me, now.

The big guy’s first sentence had been reasonable, patient, and explanatory. I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska. A scene-setter. A preamble. But it hadn’t gotten the desired results. The emergency operator hadn’t jumped right to it. So the big guy had gotten impatient. Just connect me, now. Urgent, breathy, frustrated. Some slight wonder and incomprehension in his voice. Some slight emphasis on the last word. Now. A little desperate. As if to say: I have completed the first step of the ritual dance, and I really, really don’t have time for the second, and I really, really can’t understand why you don’t understand that.

Not a change of heart. The big guy had hung up because he was out of time. Because the other guy had come in to use the bathroom.

The big guy was one of them. But he was a traitor.