Bad Luck and Trouble

76

Reacher ran straight for the helicopter. It was sixty yards away, large and white and luminous in the city’s nighttime glow. Neagley jogged at his side, patiently. Reacher was no kind of a sprinter. He was slow and heavy. And he had stuff bouncing around in his pockets. Any college athlete would have done the sixty yards in six or seven seconds. Neagley would have done it in eight. Reacher took closer to fifteen. But he got there in the end. He got there just as the main building’s door burst open and light and men spilled out. He dodged left and kept the chopper between him and them. Neagley crowded in at his elbow. Three guys were heading for the parking lot, fast and urgent. Parker and Lennox. And Lamaison. They were all hurrying. For every yard they covered, Reacher and Neagley moved a corresponding inch around the Bell, clockwise, touching its belly lightly with their fingertips, using its bulk as a shield. It was cold and dewed over with night mist, like a car parked on the street. It felt slimy. It smelled of oil and kerosene.

Thirty yards away three Chryslers started up. Three V-8 engines, suddenly loud in the stillness. Three transmissions slammed into gear. Three pairs of headlights flicked on. They were unbelievably bright in the darkness. They were crisp, focused, hard-edged, and superwhite. Then they got worse. One by one they switched to high beam. New lenses lit up. Huge cones of dazzling light swayed and bounced as the cars began to move. Reacher and Neagley slid around the Bell’s long pointed nose and hugged the other flank. The cars separated like a shell burst and accelerated and headed off in random changing directions.

Within ten seconds they had found all four dead guys.

The cars slewed to a stop at the two sites fifty yards apart. One car where Neagley had been, two where Reacher had been. Their lights went still and threw long grotesque quadruple shadows off the four humped shapes. Three distant figures ran around, flashing instantly from extreme brightness into total darkness as they moved through the beams.

“We can’t stay here,” Neagley said. “They’re going to come back this way and light us up like we’re on stage at the Hollywood Bowl.”

“How long have we got?”

“They’re going to check the fence pretty thoroughly. Four minutes, maybe.”

“Start counting,” Reacher said. He pushed off the helicopter’s flank and ran for the main building. Forty yards, ten seconds. The door had been left ajar. Lights had been left on. Reacher paused. Then he walked straight in, very quietly, with his hand on his Glock in his pocket. Saw nobody inside. The place seemed to be deserted. There were small walled-off offices on the right and a big open-plan work area on the left, behind a floor-to-ceiling plate glass screen. The work area had long laboratory benches and bright lights and complex extraction ducts on the ceiling to control dust and a grounded metal grid on the floor to control static electricity. A sliding door in the screen was open. The air coming out smelled of warm silicon boards. Like a brand-new TV.

The offices on the right were little more than eight-by-eight cubicles with head-high walls and doors. One was labeled Edward Dean. The development engineer. Now the quality control guy. The next door was labeled Margaret Berenson. The dragon lady. A remote facility, Reacher guessed, for when she had to deal with Human Resources issues without dragging assembly personnel all the way south to the glass cube in East LA. The next door was Tony Swan’s. Same principle. Two centers, two offices.

The next door was Allen Lamaison’s.

It was standing open.

Reacher took a breath. Took his Glock out of his pocket. Stepped into the doorway. Stood still. Saw an eight-by-eight cube, desk, chair, fabric walls, phones, file cabinets, stacks of papers, memos.

Nothing unusual or out of place.

Except for Curtis Mauney behind the desk.

And a suitcase standing against a wall.

Neagley stepped into the room.

“Sixty seconds gone,” she said.

Mauney just sat there at the desk, immobile. Some kind of blank resignation on his face, like a man with a bad diagnosis waiting for a second opinion he knows will be no better. His hands were empty. They were curled together on the desktop like mating crabs.

“Lamaison was my partner,” he said, like an excuse.

Reacher nodded.

“Loyalty,” he said. “It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

The suitcase was a dark gray hard-shell Samsonite, set neatly against the wall beside the end of the desk. Not the biggest thing Reacher had ever seen. Nothing like the giants some people wrestle through the airport. But it wasn’t small, either. It wasn’t a carry-on. It had plastic stick-on initials in shallow recesses next to the latches. The initials said: AM.

“Seventy seconds gone,” Neagley said.

Mauney asked, “What are you going to do?”

“With you?” Reacher asked. “Nothing yet. Relax.”

Neagley aimed her gun at Mauney’s face and Reacher stepped up beside the desk and knelt down and laid the suitcase flat on the carpet. Tried the latches. They were locked. He put his Glock on the floor and jammed the tips of his index fingers under the tips of the latches and braced his thumbs and bunched his shoulders and heaved. Reacher, against two thin pressed-metal tongues. No contest. The locks broke instantly.

He lifted the lid.

“Eighty seconds gone,” Neagley said.

“Payday,” Reacher said.

The case was full of fancy engraved paper certificates and letters from foreign banks and small suede drawstring bags that felt heavy in his hand.

“Sixty-five million dollars,” Neagley said, over his shoulder.

“At a guess,” Reacher said.

“Ninety seconds gone,” Neagley said.

Reacher turned his head and looked at Mauney and asked, “How much of this is yours?”

“Some of it,” Mauney said. “Not much, I guess.”

Reacher made neat creases and folded the paperwork and handed it to Neagley. He followed it with the drawstring bags. Neagley slid everything into her pockets. Reacher left the suitcase where it was, flat on the floor, empty, the lid up like a clam. He picked up his gun and stood and turned back to Mauney.

“Wrong,” he said. “None of it is yours.”

“Two minutes gone,” Neagley said.

“Your friends are here,” Mauney said.

“I know,” Reacher said.

“Lamaison was my partner.”

“You told me that already.”

“I’m just saying.”

“So do they know you here?”

“I’ve been here before,” Mauney said. “Many times.”

“Pick up the phone.”

“Or?”

“I’ll shoot you in the head.”

“You will anyway.”

“I should,” Reacher said. “You gave up six of my friends.”

Mauney nodded.

“I knew how this would end,” he said. “When we didn’t get you at the hospital.”

“LA traffic,” Reacher said. “It can bite you in the ass.”

“Two minutes fifteen,” Neagley said.

Mauney asked, “Are we making a deal here?”

“Pick up the phone.”

“And what?”

“Tell the gate guard to open up exactly one minute from now.”

Mauney hesitated. Reacher put the Glock’s muzzle against Mauney’s temple. Mauney picked up the phone. Dialed. Reacher listened hard and heard ring tones from the earpiece and the Chryslers idling a hundred yards away on the open ground and a muted bell forty yards away in the guard shack.

The call was answered. Mauney said, “This is Mauney. Open the gate one minute from now.” Then he hung up. Reacher turned to Neagley.

“Am I your CO?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You are.”

“Then listen up,” he said. “When the gate opens we head for our cars and we get out of here as fast as we possibly can.”

“And then?” she asked.

“We come back later.”

“In time?”

Reacher nodded. “We’ll make it in time if we’re fast right now. They’re already in their cars. So we have to really go for it. You’re a lot faster than me, so I’ll be behind you. But don’t wait for me. Don’t even look back. We can’t afford to lose a yard, either one of us.”

“Understood,” she said. “Three minutes gone.”

Reacher grabbed Mauney’s collar and hauled him to his feet. Dragged him out from behind the desk, out of the office, down the hallway, into the open area. Over to the main doorway. And then a yard outside, into the night. The smell of wet ash was strong. The three Chryslers were moving again in the distance. They were turning tight circles on the open ground and their headlights were sweeping random patterns against the fence like searchlights in a prison movie.

“Wait for the starting gun,” Reacher said to Neagley.

He watched the gate. Saw the guard move in his booth, saw the concertina wire sway, heard the tortured screech of wheels on a metal rail. Saw the gate start to move. He put the Glock to Mauney’s temple and pulled the trigger. Mauney’s skull exploded and Neagley and Reacher took off at full speed, like sprinters out of their blocks.

Neagley was ahead after half a step. Reacher stopped dead and watched her go. She flew through the pool of light from the guard hut and dodged like a running back around the end of the moving gate. She raced out to the street. Then she was lost to sight.

Reacher turned and ran in the opposite direction. Fifteen seconds later he was back where he had started, behind the Bell’s long nose.