Nothing to Lose

21

There were six low green buildings. They were identical metal prefabrications clustered together according to exact specifications and precise regulations. They were separated by roadways of uniform width graded from raw dirt and edged with white-painted boulders of small and consistent size. They were ringed by a razor-wire fence, tall, straight, and true. The fence continued west to enclose a parking lot. The lot was filled with six up-armored Humvees. Each one had a machine-gun mount on top. Next to the parking lot there was a slender radio mast protected by a fence all its own.

Not a motel.

Not a truck stop.

A military facility.

Specifically, an army facility. More specifically, a Military Police facility. More specifically still, a temporary advanced encampment for a combat MP unit. An FOB, a forward operating base. Reacher recognized the format and the equipment mix. Confirmation was right there on a board at the gate. The gate was a white counterbalanced pole with a guard shack next to it. The board was on stilts next to the shack and was painted glossy army green and had a formal unit ID stenciled on it in white.

Not a National Guard unit.

Not reservists.

A regular army unit, and a pretty good one, too. At least it always had been, back in Reacher’s day, and there was no reason to believe it had gotten sloppy in the intervening years. No reason at all.

How sloppy it hadn’t gotten was proved almost immediately.

The guard shack was a metal affair with tall wide windows on all four sides. Four guys in it. Two stayed where they were, and would forever, no matter what. The other two came out. They were dressed in desert BDUs and boots and armored vests and helmets and they were carrying M16 rifles. They ducked under the boom and formed up side by side and sloped arms and stepped out to the roadway. They executed a perfect left turn and jogged toward Reacher’s truck, exactly in step, at exactly seven miles an hour, like they had been trained to. When they were thirty yards away they separated to split the target they were presenting. One guy headed for the sand and came up on Reacher’s right and stood off ten yards distant and swapped his rifle into the ready position. The other guy stayed on the blacktop and looped around and checked the truck’s load bed and then came back and stood off six feet from Reacher’s door and called out in a loud clear voice.

He said, “Sir, please lower your window.”

And keep your hands where I can see them,Reacher thought.For your own safety. He wound the window all the way down and glanced left.

“Sir, please keep your hands where I can see them,” the guy said. “For your own safety.”

Reacher put his hands high on the wheel and kept on staring left. The guy he was looking at was a specialist, young but with some years in, with pronounced squint lines either side of his eyes. He was wearing glasses with thin black frames. The name tape on the right side of his vest saidMorgan. In the distance a truck’s air horn sounded and the soldier stepped closer to the curb and a semi blasted past from behind in a howl of sound and wind and grit. There was a long whine of stressed tires and Reacher’s truck rocked on its springs and then silence came down again. The soldier stepped back to where he had been before and took up the same stance, wary but challenging, in control but cautious, his M16 held barrel-down but ready.

“At ease, Corporal,” Reacher said. “Nothing to see here.”

The guy called Morgan said, “Sir, that’s a determination I’ll need to make for myself.”

Reacher glanced ahead. Morgan’s partner was still as a statue, the stock of his M16 tucked tight into his shoulder. He was a private first class. He was sighting with his right eye, aiming low at Reacher’s front right-hand tire.

Morgan asked, “Sir, why are you stopped here?”

Reacher said, “Do I need a reason?”

“Sir, you appear to me to be surveilling a restricted military installation.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I’m not.”

“Sir, why are you stopped?”

“Stop calling mesir, will you?”

“Sir?”

Reacher smiled to himself. An MP with Morgan’s years in had probably read a whole foot-thick stack of orders titledMembers of the Public, Domestic, Required Forms of Address, endlessly revised, revisited, and updated.

“Maybe I’m lost,” Reacher said.

“You’re not local?”

“No.”

“Your vehicle has Colorado plates.”

“Colorado is a big state,” Reacher said. “More than a hundred thousand square miles, soldier, the eighth largest in the Union. By land area, that is. Only the twenty-second largest by population. Maybe I come from a remote and distant corner.”

Morgan went blank for a second. Then he asked, “Sir, where are you headed?”

The question gave Reacher a problem. The spur off I-70 had been small and hard to find. No way could a driver headed for Colorado Springs or Denver or Boulder have taken it by mistake. To claim a navigation error would raise suspicion. To raise suspicion would lead to a radio check against Vaughan’s plates, which would drag her into something she was better left out of.

So Reacher said, “I’m headed for Hope.”

Morgan took his left hand off his rifle and pointed straight ahead.

“That way, sir,” he said. “You’re on track. Twenty-two miles to downtown Hope.”

Reacher nodded. Morgan was pointing south but hadn’t taken his eyes off Reacher’s hands. He was a good soldier. Experienced. Well turned out. His BDUs were old but in good order. His boots were worn and scratched but well cared for and immaculately brushed. The top of his eyeglass frame ran exactly parallel with the lip of his helmet. Reacher liked soldiers in eyeglasses. Eyeglasses added a vulnerable human detail that balanced the alien appearance of the weapons and the armor.

The face of the modern army.

Morgan stepped in close to Reacher’s fender again and another truck blew by. This one was a New Jersey semi loaded with a closed forty-foot shipping container. Like a giant brick, doing sixty miles an hour. Noise, wind, a long tail of swirling dust. Morgan’s BDU pants flattened against his legs and skittering miniature tornadoes of dust danced all around his feet. But he didn’t blink behind his glasses.

He asked, “Sir, does this vehicle belong to you?”

Reacher said, “I’m not sure you’re entitled to information like that.”

“In the vicinity of a restricted military installation I would say I’m entitled to pretty much any information I want.”

Reacher didn’t answer that.

Morgan said, “Do you have registration and insurance?”

“Glove box,” Reacher said, which was a pretty safe guess. Vaughan was a cop. Most cops kept their paperwork straight. Too embarrassing, if they didn’t.

Morgan asked, “Sir, may I see those documents?”

Reacher said, “No.”

“Sir, now it seems to me that you’re approaching a restricted military installation in a stolen load-bearing vehicle.”

“You already checked the back. It’s empty.”

Morgan said nothing.

“Relax, Corporal,” Reacher said. “This is Colorado, not Iraq. I’m not looking to blow anything up.”

“Sir, I wish you hadn’t used those words.”

“At ease, Morgan. I was speaking negatively. I was telling you what I wasn’t going to do.”

“No laughing matter.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I need to see those vehicle documents, sir.”

“You’re overstepping your authority.”

“Sir, I need to see them real quick.”

“You got a JAG lawyer on post?”

“Negative, sir.”

“You happy to make this decision on your own?”

Morgan didn’t answer. He stepped close to the fender again and a tanker truck blew by. It had an orange hazardous chemicals diamond on the back and a stainless-steel body polished so bright that Reacher saw himself reflected in it like a funhouse mirror. Then its slipstream died away and Morgan stepped back into position and said, “Sir, I need you to show me those documents. Just wave them at me, if you like. To prove to me you can put your hands on them.”

Reacher shrugged and leaned over and opened the glove box lid. Dug through ballpoint pens and envelopes of facial tissues and other miscellaneous junk and found a small plastic wallet. The wallet was black and was printed with a silver shape resembling a steering wheel. It was the kind of cheap thing found for sale at gas stations and car washes, alongside air fresheners shaped like conifer trees and ball compasses that attached to windshields with suction cups. The plastic was stiff and brittle with age and the black color had leached to a dusty gray.

Reacher opened the wallet, out of Morgan’s sight. On the left behind a plastic window was a current insurance certificate. On the right, a current registration.

Both were made out to David Robert Vaughan, of Hope, Colorado.

Reacher kept the wallet open with his thumb and waved it in Morgan’s direction, long enough for the documents to register, short enough for neither of them to be read.

Morgan said, “Sir, thank you.”

Reacher put the wallet back in the glove box and slammed the lid.

Morgan said, “Sir, now it’s time to be moving along.”

Which gave Reacher another problem. If he moved forward, he would be in Despair township. If he U-turned, Morgan would wonder why he had suddenly gotten cold feet and abandoned Hope as a destination, and would be tempted to call in the plate.

Which was the greater danger?

Morgan, easily. A contest between the Despair PD and a combat MP unit was no kind of a contest at all. So Reacher put the truck in gear and turned the wheel.

“Have a great day, Corporal,” he said, and hit the gas. A yard later he passed the little green sign and temporarily increased Despair’s population by one, all the way up to 2692.