Reacher saw light at the front of the main building. The door, opening. A tall shape stepped out. Parker, probably. He closed the door behind him and hustled around the near gable wall and headed for the distant shack thirty yards away. He unlocked the door and went in and less than a minute later he came back out and locked up again.
The prison, Reacher thought. Thank you.
The searchers were twenty yards away. Eighteen and a quarter meters, sixty feet, 720 inches, one-point-one-three percent of a mile. Reacher shuffled ahead a little and closed the gap. The searchers stumbled on. Now they were ten yards ahead, on a diagonal, maybe eight yards to Reacher's left.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He hauled it out and cupped it in his hand. The caller ID said Dixon, which meant Lamaison. The answers to his question, recently relayed by Parker.
I said I'd call you, Reacher thought. Can't talk now.
He jammed the phone back in his pocket and waited. The searchers were almost dead level with him, eight yards to his left. They moved on. Reacher squirmed around, a silent half-circle on the ground. The searchers walked on. Reacher completed the circle. Now he was behind them. He got silently to his feet. Took short quiet strides, stepping high to keep his soles from brushing the grass with telltale rustles. He fell in behind the two guys, ten feet back, then eight, then six, centered exactly between them. They were a decent size. Maybe six-two, two-ten, pale and meaty. Blue suits, white shirts, crew cuts. Broad shoulders, thick necks.
He hit the first guy with a massive straight right, dead-center in the back of the neck, two hundred and fifty pounds and days of rage behind the blow. The guy's neck snapped forward and his skull snapped back and bounced straight off Reacher's fist and smashed forward again until his chin smacked his chest. Whiplash. Like a crash test dummy rear-ended by a speeding truck. The guy went straight down in a heap and his buddy turned toward him in shock and Reacher danced through a short shuffle step and headbutted him full in the face. He knew it was a great one by the sound alone. Bone, gristle, muscle, flesh, the unmistakable crunch of serious damage. The guy stayed vertical but unconscious for a second and then went down flat.
Reacher rolled the first guy on his back and sat on his chest and pinched his nose with one hand and blocked his mouth with his other palm. Then he waited until the guy suffocated. It didn't take long. Less than a minute. Then he did the same thing with the other guy. Another minute.
Then he checked their pockets. The first guy had a cell phone and a gun and a wallet full of cash money and credit cards. Reacher took the gun and the cash money, left the cell phone and the credit cards. The gun was a SIG P226, nine-millimeter. The cash money was a little less than two hundred dollars. The second guy had another phone, another SIG, another wallet.
Plus Dave O'Donnell's ceramic knuckleduster.
It was right there in his jacket pocket. Either a reward for good work at the hospital takedown, or a stolen souvenir. Spoils of war. Reacher put it in his own pocket and jammed the SIGs in his waistband and the cash in his back pocket. Then he wiped his hands on the second guy's jacket and crawled away, low and fast, peering into the dark where he imagined Neagley to be. He had heard nothing from that direction. Nothing at all. But he wasn't worried. Neagley against two guys in the dark was about as reliable as the sun setting in the west.
He found another broad dip in the grass and lay down on his elbows and pulled out his phone. Called Dixon 's number.
"Where the hell were you?" Lamaison asked him.
"I told you," Reacher said. "I don't pick up when I'm driving."
"You're not driving."
"So why didn't I pick up?"
"Whatever," Lamaison said. "Where are you now?"
"Close by."
"Before the 110th Dixon says she was with the 53rd MP and O'Donnell says he was with the 131st."
"OK," Reacher said. "I'll call you back in ten. When we arrive."
He clicked off and sat up cross-legged in the dirt. He had his proof-of-life answers. Only problem was, neither one of them was even remotely true.
75
Reacher crawled south through the grass, looking for Neagley in the dark. He made it through fifty fast yards and found a corpse instead. He blundered right into it, hands and then knees. It was a man, cooling fast. Blue suit, white shirt. Broken neck.
"Neagley?" he whispered.
"Here," she whispered back.
She was twenty feet away, lying on her side, propped up on one elbow.
"You OK?" he asked.
"Feeling good."
"Was there another one?"
"Behind you," she said. "To your right."
Reacher turned. Same kind of guy, same kind of suit, same kind of shirt.
Same kind of injury.
"Any problems?" he asked.
"Easy," she said. "And quieter than you. I heard that head butt all the way over here."
They bumped fists in the dark, the old ritual, about as much physical contact as she liked to permit.
"Lamaison thinks we're on the outside looking in," Reacher said. "He's trying to scam us with a deal. If we surrender they'll lock us all up for a week and then let us go when the heat dies down."
"Like we'd believe that."
"One of my guys had Dave's knuckleduster."
"That's not a good sign."
"They're OK so far. I asked for a proof of life. Personal questions. Dixon says she was with the 53rd MP and O'Donnell says he was with the 131st."
"That's bullshit. There was no 53rd MP. And Dave was posted to the 110th straight out of Officer Candidate School."
"They're talking to us," Reacher said. "Fifty-three is a prime number. Karla knew I'd pick up on that."
"So?"
"Five and three make eight. She's telling us there are eight hostiles."
"Four left, then. Lennox, Parker, and Lamaison. Plus one. Who's the fourth?"
"That's Dave's message. He's a words guy. One-three-one. Thirteenth letter of the alphabet, first letter of the alphabet."
"M and A," Neagley said.
"Mauney," Reacher said. "Curtis Mauney is here."
"Excellent," Neagley said. "Saves hunting him down later."
They bumped fists again. Then cell phones started to ring. Loud and piercing and insistent. Two of them, different tones, unsynchronized. One each in the dead guys' pockets. Reacher had no doubt at all the same thing was happening fifty yards away. Two more dead guys, two more pockets, two more ringing phones. A conference call. Lamaison was touching base with his foot patrol.
Something unpredictable.
The phones rang six times each and stopped. Silence came back.
"What would you do now?" Reacher asked. "If you were Lamaison?"
Neagley said, "I'd get guys in those Chryslers and turn the head-lights on bright and fix myself a little motor patrol. I'd run us down in less than a minute."
Reacher nodded. Against a man on foot, the lot felt big. Against a car, it would feel small. Against more than one car it would feel tiny. In the dark it felt safe. With xenon beams blazing away it would feel like a goldfish bowl. He pictured cars bouncing over the rough ground, pictured himself trapped in their lights, darting left, darting right, shading his eyes, one car chasing, two cars converging.
He glanced at the fence.
"Correct," Neagley said. "The fence keeps us in just as well as it kept us out. We're two balls on a pool table and someone's about to turn on the lights and pick up a cue."