Nothing to Lose

63

Vaughan sipped her bottled water and stared into space, adjusting to a new situation that was in some ways better than she had imagined, and in some ways worse. She asked, “Why do you say there are no Humvees there?”

Reacher said, “Because the Pentagon specializes. Like I told you. It always has, and it always will. The plant in Despair is about uranium recycling. That’s all. Humvees go somewhere else. Somewhere cheaper. Because they’re easy. They’re just cars.”

“They send cars to Despair, too. We saw them. In the container. From Iraq or Iran.”

Reacher nodded.

“Exactly,” he said. “Which is the third conclusion. They sent those cars to Despair for a reason.”

“Which was what?”

“Only one logical possibility. Depleted uranium isn’t just for armor. They make artillery shells and tank shells out of it, too. Because it’s incredibly hard and dense.”

“So?”

“So the third conclusion is that those cars were hit with ammunition made from depleted uranium. They’re tainted, so they have to be processed appropriately. And they have to be hidden away. Because we’re using tanks and DU shells against thin-skinned civilian vehicles. That’s overkill. That’svery bad PR. Thurman said there are some things any government feels it politic to conceal, and he was right.”

“What the hell is happening over there?”

Reacher said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Vaughan raised her glass halfway and stopped. She looked at it like she was having second thoughts about ingesting anything and put it back down on the table. She said, “Tell me what you know about dirty bombs.”

“They’re the same as clean bombs,” Reacher said. “Except they’re dirty. A bomb detonates and creates a massive spherical pressure wave that knocks things over and pulps anything soft, like people, and small fragments of the casing are flung outward on the wave like bullets, which does further damage. That effect can be enhanced by packing extra shrapnel inside the casing around the explosive charge, like nails or ball bearings. A dirty bomb uses contaminated metal for the extra shrapnel, usually radioactive waste.”

“How bad is the result?”

“That’s debatable. With depleted uranium, the powdered oxides after a high-temperature explosion are certainly bad news. There are fertility issues, miscarriages, and birth defects. Most people think the radiation itself isn’t really a huge problem. Except that, like I said, it’s debatable. Nobody really knows for sure. Which is the exact problem. Because you can bet your ass everyone will err on the side of caution. Which multiplies the effect, psychologically. It’s classic asymmetric warfare. If a dirty bomb goes off in a city, the city will be abandoned, whether it needs to be or not.”

“How big would the bomb need to be?”

“The bigger the better.”

“How much uranium would they need to steal?”

“The more the merrier.”

Vaughan said, “I think they’re already stealing it. That truck we photographed? The front of the load compartment was glowing just like the wall.”

Reacher shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That was something else entirely.”