Make Me

Chapter 54

The biggest chunk of the money had gone for the helicopters. Two air limousines, touting for corporate business out of Kansas City. Like Town Cars in the sky. No chance of getting them to land. Not on unapproved sites. No chance of them letting anyone rappel out on ropes. Their insurance wouldn’t permit it. But they were happy to fly there and back empty. They were happy to add a little drama. For a video shoot, they were told. They got the exact GPS coordinates direct from Google. Timing was the tricky part. So the cameras could roll. But they had computers in the cockpits. It might be possible.

The second-biggest chunk of the money was carried by Westwood. Enough to impress. His cockpit computer was a rented Ford’s speedometer and his wristwatch. High school, not postgrad. If a car needs to travel fifteen miles in fifteen minutes, how fast must it go? All tied to the train, of course. He found an AM station with traffic-and-weather-together, which said the railroad was on or close. To schedule, presumably. He could do no better.

Meanwhile Reacher and Chang were in the FedEx truck. They had called the depot in Oklahoma City and said they had a super-rush urgent overnight package for a place called Mother’s Rest. They were told the latest time they could bring it. They came five minutes before. They found the night driver smoking in the alley. He said Mother’s Rest was on his regular route. He agreed official bank-banded bricks of hundred dollar bills were wonderful things. Especially with a little psychology thrown in. Take as many as you want. Whatever you think is fair. All we want to do is ride in the back. And arrive at train time exactly. Which the guy said he could do. No problem. With his eyes shut. It was his regular route. They could ride up front if they wanted, and then hop in the back when they were getting close by.

And then hop out again, hopefully unnoticed, behind the Cadillac driver’s store, amid all the helicopter mayhem and the train panic and the Westwood confusion. If the timing worked. Which it had, apparently. There had been plenty of mayhem. That was for damn sure. And no one in the store. Which was a bonus in the short term. But a burden in the long term. It was one more thing for later.

Which began with whichever Moynahan it was Reacher had kicked in the balls. They saw the guy limping along a cross street, heading in the direction of the diner or the store. Or the motel, conceivably. He went down easy, hog-tied tight with five of the cable zips from the hardware store, and gagged with one of the rags from the same source, and dumped in the abandoned CPA’s office next door to FedEx, which had not been furnished with much of a lock.

Then came the guy’s brother or cousin or whatever he was, wearing a ridiculous leather hat, looking for something. He went down too, just as easy, five cable ties, one rag, and a berth on the CPA’s floor, right next to his relative. Then came the spare parts guy. From the irrigation store. Looking for the first two. This time there was no conversation about football. Just the ties, a rag, the floor.

Regular folk kept well out the way. They stayed indoors. Some kind of an ancient instinct, presumably. Maybe because of the sub-machineguns. They looked alien. Like movie props. Nothing to do but hide. The 911 service was the same thing as disconnected. The cops were a long way away. And it was hot anyway. More comfortable inside, with the AC.

The Cadillac driver walked right into it. He thought his store was still his. Ties, rag, floor. They had to go further to find the dry goods owner. They got him coming out the back of his building, holding a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Ties, rag, floor.

Then the well ran dry, when the crew-cab screamed away from behind the diner.

Leaving Westwood all alone.

Who said, “They agreed to the gasoline engine.”

Reacher nodded. “They’ll keep the con going to the end. Whatever it is.”

“I assume the farm is where they went.”

“Where else is there?”

“Are we ready?”

“We’ve done what we can.”

“I’ll get us there.”

“I know you will.”

“And that’s where you’ll ditch me, right?”

Chang said, “We won’t ditch you. Unless you want to be ditched.”

“I don’t.”

Reacher said, “I wish I could send you ahead. Instead of me. You’re a grown-up. I don’t care what happens to you. Come if you want. Stay with us all the way. But stay with us on my left-hand side.”

“Why that?”

“I’m right-handed. I like freedom of movement.”

“Understood. Let’s go.”

In the normal way of business it would have been called a test drive. An unfamiliar piece of equipment, driven briefly and experimentally by an intending purchaser. Except that Reacher was not an intending purchaser. He rarely purchased anything, and nothing that wasn’t consumable, and certainly not farm equipment. The salesman knew. And Reacher wasn’t driving it, either, because he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. He got over the first problem with the sub-machinegun, and the second with Westwood, who had once learned how to drive such a thing because science editors sometimes got sucked into judging science projects, which sometimes led to hands-on involvement in neighborhood do-gooder bullshit, which often meant shoveling some kind of actual shit, and mechanically was always the best way to handle that.

It was a New Holland backhoe, from the farm equipment dealer north of the wagon train trail. Westwood chugged it back through the plaza and onward past the motel. If not a test drive, at least a courtesy loan. Without the courtesy part. But a loan nonetheless. Reacher had no intention of keeping it. On the back it had a claw arm and a digging shovel, very narrow, with two aggressive teeth. An entrenching tool. On the front the bucket was broad and tall, but shallow. More like a bulldozer blade. It was clearly a versatile machine. All kinds of things could be bolted on. It was brand-new, brightly painted, and completely clean. It had a new-backhoe smell. The cab was just about wide enough for three, but there was only one seat. Westwood was in it, because he had to be. There were all kinds of levers and pedals. Chang was standing sideways on Westwood’s left, and Reacher was jammed in sideways on his right. The engine was roaring. The thing was built for hard work and short back-and-forth distances, between hole and pile, but there were road-going gears in there too. Westwood had it wound up to about thirty miles an hour when they left the plaza.

Not into the mouth of the private driveway.

Into the wheat.

Westwood had the front bucket set a couple of feet off the ground, with the bottom edge jutting forward. Like a metal chin. It smashed the wheat down, like a blunt scythe, and thick golden clouds of dust and fragments filled the air, like an ongoing linear explosion, and stalky debris thrashed the underside, and on the edges of the furrow the wheat swayed back in waves and brushed the windows. The land was flat in a global sense but where the rubber met the dirt it was uneven and lumpy. The backhoe was pitching fore-and-aft like a boat, and bouncing on its tires. They were soft, and they bulged and floundered on every bump. Westwood was hammering up and down in his seat. Reacher and Chang were hanging on sideways, like subway riders on a runaway train.

The metal chin hammered on.

Dust and fragments howled all around them.

Thirty miles an hour.

Twenty miles to go.

Elementary school.

Forty minutes.

But better than taking the private driveway. Which could be mined. Or at least spiked. And which definitely involved a straight head-on ten-mile approach to a right-angle corner, where any sane defender would mount a fifty-caliber machine gun. Arriving by car on the dirt road would be like coming up the motel stairs two at a time. We could pick you off like squirrels. Better to have some freedom of movement. Which meant an off-road vehicle. Which meant a battering ram. Hence the front bucket. Which was also bulletproof, and the size of a twin-bed mattress. Heavy steel, for humping jagged rocks. There was a sliver of visibility over the top. As much as they needed. For the wheat, anyway. So far, so good. The plan was working. Except for one small unintended consequence. Mainly because of the slamming around.

Reacher’s headache was coming back.

Most of the way the farm was out of sight behind the wheat, so they steered by the sun. Not exact, but close enough. First visual contact happened about a quarter-mile from where they were aiming, and just about right on time. A house and six outbuildings. Fences and beaten earth. A phone line on poles. The diesel generator’s top-hat exhaust.

And the stink of hogs.

Like a chemical weapon.

Westwood looped away, and came back head-on, and stopped about two hundred yards out. The engine died back to an idle. Last fragments of wheat settled back to earth.

Quiet.

All alone.

Reacher felt like a predator above a water hole.

Then the water hole started shooting back.

Three weapons firing. Long guns. All the same. Distinctive. Flat solid barks, and the crack of fast bullets in the air. NATO rounds out of M16s, if Reacher was a gambling man. All of them so far missing. Understandable. It was a deceptive shot. Two hundred yards, absolutely flat, eye to eye. Except it was absolutely curved, because it was part of a spherical planet. Hence the miscalculation.

Westwood said, “Should we back off?”

“No,” Reacher said. He counted in his head. He said, “Move up fifty yards. Now. Put the pressure on. They’re coming up to a magazine change.”

“Fifty yards forward?”

“Now.”

Westwood moved it up.

A ragged lull. Pretty slow. No infantry training. That was for damn sure. Then the pot-shots started again. All of them misses.

Until a single hit.

Right in the center of the front bucket. A tiny thrill through the framework. The bullet, collapsing. Then the sound, arriving late, a sonorous clang.

Reacher said, “I’m impressed.”

Chang said, “By what?”

“Finally they hit a target only slightly smaller than a barn door. Thereby revealing the front bucket is indeed bulletproof. So we’re good to go.”

Westwood said, “Now?”

“No time like the present.”

Chang said, “Take care, Reacher.”

“You too, Chang.”

They opened their doors and jumped down to the ground, one on the left, and one on the right.