Bad Luck and Trouble

59

At that instant it became a race against time. When the warehouse door opened in Colorado, a door of a different kind would slam shut in LA. But there was still a lot to prepare. There was still a lot to discover. Including exact locations. Clearly New Age’s glass cube in East LA wasn’t the center of anything. For one thing, there was no helicopter there.

And they needed exact identities.

They needed to know who knew, and who flew.

“I want them all,” Reacher said.

“Including the dragon lady?” Neagley asked.

“Starting with the dragon lady. She lied to me.”

They needed equipment, clothing, communications, and alternative vehicles.

And training, Neagley thought.

“We’re old, we’re slow, and we’re rusty,” she said. “We’re a million miles from what we used to be.”

“We’re not too bad,” O’Donnell said.

“Time was when you’d have put a double tap through that guy’s eyes,” she said. “Not a lucky low shot to his leg.”

They sat in the lounge like four out-of-towners discussing how to spend their day. As far as ordnance went, they had two Hardballers and the Daewoo DP-51 from Vegas. Thirteen rounds each for the Hardballers, eleven for the Daewoo. Not nearly good enough. O’Donnell and Dixon and Neagley had personal cell phones registered to their real names and real addresses and Reacher had nothing. Not nearly good enough. They had a Hertz Ford 500 rented in Dixon’s real name and the captured Chrysler. Not nearly good enough. O’Donnell was in a thousand-dollar suit from his East Coast tailor and Neagley and Dixon had jeans, jackets, and evening wear. Not nearly good enough.

Neagley swore that budget was not a problem. But that didn’t help with the time factor. They needed four untraceable pay-as-you-go cell phones, four anonymous cars, and work clothes. That was a day’s shopping right there. Then they needed guns and ammunition. Best case, a free choice for each of them and a lot of spare rounds. Worst case, one more make-do handgun and a lot of spare rounds. That was another day’s shopping. Like most cities, LA had a thriving black market in untraceable weapons, but it would take time to penetrate.

Two days of material preparation.

Maybe two days of surveillance and research.

“We don’t have time to train,” Reacher said.

Azhari Mahmoud had time for a leisurely lunch. He took it in a sidewalk café in Laguna Beach. He was staying in a rented townhouse a short walk away. Safe enough. The lease was legitimate. The development had a large transient population. It wasn’t unusual to see U-Haul trucks parked overnight. Mahmoud’s was two streets away, in a lot, locked up and empty.

It wouldn’t be empty for long.

His contacts at New Age had insisted that Little Wing must not be used inside the United States. He had readily agreed. He had said he planned to use the weapon in Kashmir, on the border, against the Indian Air Force. He had lied, of course. He had been amazed that they had taken him for a Pakistani. He had been amazed that they cared what his intentions were. Maybe they were patriotic. Or maybe they had relatives who flew a lot, domestically.

But it had been politic to go along to get along. Hence the temporary inconvenience of the shipping container and the dockside location. But there was an easy remedy. Southern California was full of day laborers. Mahmoud calculated that loading the U-Haul would take them a little less than thirty minutes.

They figured the clothes and the phones would be easy. Any mall would have what they needed. Guns were guns, either obtainable in time or not. Dixon wanted a Glock 19. Neagley’s hands were bigger, so she nominated a Glock 17. O’Donnell was a Beretta guy, by choice. Reacher didn’t care. He wasn’t planning on shooting anybody. He was planning on using his bare hands. But he said he would take a Glock or a SIG or a Beretta or an H amp;K, or anything that used 9mm Parabellums. That way, all four of them would be using the same ammunition. More efficient.

Cars were more difficult still. It was hard to find a truly anonymous car. In the end O’Donnell suggested that the best bet would be rice rockets, small Japanese sedans and coupes tricked out with loud big-bore mufflers and lowered suspensions and cotton-reel tires and blue headlights. And black windows. Three-or four-year-old examples would be cheap, and they were everywhere on the street. Close to invisible, in southern California. And O’Donnell figured they were a very effective disguise, psychologically. They were so closely identified in the public mind with Latino gangbangers that nobody would think a white ex-soldier was inside behind the darkened glass.

They gave the cars and the phones priority over the guns. That way two or three of them could start the surveillance, at least. And if they were going to Radio Shack for the phones, they might as well duck into the Gap or a jeans store for clothes, too. After that, wired and blending in, they could separate and hit used-car lots until they found the wheels they needed.

All of which required cash money. Lots of it. Which required a visit to a teller’s window by Neagley. Reacher drove her in the captured Chrysler and waited outside a bank in Beverly Hills. Fifteen minutes later she came out with fifty thousand dollars in a brown sandwich bag. Ninety minutes later they had clothes and phones. The phones were straightforward talk-only pay-as-you-go cells, no camera function, no games, no calculators. They bought car chargers and earpieces to go with them. The clothes were soft gray denim shirts and pants and black canvas windbreakers bought from an off-brand store on Santa Monica Boulevard, two sets each for O’Donnell and Dixon and Neagley and one set for Reacher, plus gloves and watch caps and boots from a hiking store on Melrose.

They changed at the motel and spent ten minutes in the lounge storing one another’s numbers in their phones and learning how to set up conference calls. Then they headed north and west to Van Nuys Boulevard, looking for cars. All cities had at least one strip full of auto dealers, and LA had more than one. LA had many. But O’Donnell had heard that Van Nuys north of the Ventura Freeway was the best of them all. And he had heard right. It was a cornucopia. Unlimited choice, new or pre-owned, cheap or expensive, no awkward questions. Four hours after they arrived, most of Neagley’s automotive budget was gone and they owned four used Hondas. Two slammed Civics and two slammed Preludes, two silver and two white. All four were beat up and well on their way to being worn out. But they started and stopped and steered, and no one would give them a second glance.

Including the captured Chrysler, they had five cars to ferry back to Sunset, but only four drivers, so they had to make two trips. Then they took a Honda each and battled out to East LA for a swing past New Age’s glass cube. But traffic was slow and it was late in the day when they got there. The place was locked up and deserted. Nothing to see.

They planned via a four-way mobile conference call and went out for dinner in Pasadena. They found a burger bar on a busy street and sat at a table for four, two opposite two, shoulder to shoulder in their new gray denims. A uniform, of sorts. Nobody admitted it but Reacher knew they all felt good. Focused, energized, in motion, up against high stakes. They talked about the past. Escapades, capers, scandals, outrages. Years fell away and Reacher’s mind’s eye swapped the gray for green and Pasadena for Heidelberg or Manila or Seoul.

The old unit, back together.

Almost.

Back on Sunset two hours later, O’Donnell and Neagley volunteered to take first watch at New Age. They planned to get there before five the next morning. Reacher and Dixon were left with the task of buying guns. Before he went to bed, Reacher took the dead guy’s phone out of the captured Chrysler and redialed the number he had spoken to from Vegas. There was no answer. Just voice mail. Reacher didn’t leave a message.