The driver said, "Sir, not specifically, sir."
"Back then I was a major in the MPs. So I'm going to take a stroll now, and you don't need to worry about it. If you want to worry about it, I'll dig out your CO and we'll do the brother officer thing, and he'll OK it and you'll look stupid. How does that sound?"
The guy wasn't totally derelict. Not totally dumb. He asked, "Sir, what unit, and where?"
Reacher said, "110th MP. HQ was in Rock Creek, Virginia."
The guy nodded. "It still is. The 110th is still in business."
"I certainly hope so."
"Sir, you have a pleasant evening. Chow in the mess until ten, if you're interested."
"Thanks, soldier," Reacher said. He climbed out and the Humvee drove away and left him. He stood still for a moment in the sharp night air and then set out walking to the standalone building. Its original purpose was unclear to him. No reason to have a physically separated building unless it held infectious patients or explosives, and it didn't look like either a hospital or an armory. Hospitals were bigger and armories were stronger.
He went in the front door and found himself in a small square hallway with stairs ahead of him and doors either side. The upstairs windows had been dark. The lit windows had been on the ground floor.If in doubt, turn left was his motto. So he tried the left-hand door and came up empty. An administrative office, lights blazing, nobody in it. He stepped back to the hallway and tried the right-hand door. Found a medic with the rank of captain at a desk, with Thurman's jar in front of him. The guy was young for a captain, but medics got promoted fast. They were usually two steps ahead of everyone else.
"Help you?" the guy said.
"I flew in with Thurman. I was curious about his jar."
"Curious how?"
"Is it what he says it is?"
"Are you authorized to know?"
"I used to be. I was an MP. I did some forensic medicine with Nash Newman, who was probably your ultimate boss back when you were a second lieutenant. Unless he had retired already. He's probably retired now."
The guy nodded. "He is retired now. But I heard of him."
"So are there human remains in the jar?"
"Probably. Almost certainly, in fact."
"Carbon?"
"No carbon," the guy said. "In a hot fire all the carbon is driven off as carbon dioxide. What's left of a person after cremation are oxides of potassium, sodium, iron, calcium, maybe a little magnesium, all inorganic."
"And that's what's in the jar?"
The guy nodded again. "Entirely consistent with burned human flesh and bone."
"What do you do with it?"
"We send it to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii."
"And what do they do with it?"
"Nothing," the guy said. "There's no DNA in it. It's just soot, basically. The whole thing is an embarrassment, really. But Thurman keeps on showing up. He's a sentimental old guy. We can't turn him away, obviously. So we stage a sweet little ceremony and accept whatever he brings. Can't trash it afterward, either. Wouldn't be respectful. So we move it off our desks onto Hawaii's. I imagine they stick it in a closet and forget all about it."
"I'm sure they do. Does Thurman tell you where it comes from?"
"Iraq, obviously."
"But what kind of vehicles?"
"Does it matter?"
"I would say so."
"We don't get those details."
Reacher asked, "What was this building originally?"
"A VD clinic," the medic said.
"You got a phone I could use?"
The guy pointed to a console on his desk.
"Have at it," he said.
Reacher dialed 411 upside down and got the number for David Robert Vaughan, Fifth Street, Hope, Colorado. He said the number once under his breath to memorize it and then dialed it.
No answer.
He put the phone back in the cradle and asked, "Where's the mess?"
"Follow your nose," the medic said. Which was good advice. Reacher walked back to the main cluster and circled until he smelled the aroma of fried food coming out of a powerful extraction vent. The vent came through the wall of a low lean-to addition to a larger square one-story building. The mess kitchen, and the mess. Reacher went in and got a few questioning looks but no direct challenges. He got in line and picked up a cheeseburger the size of a softball, plus fries, plus beans, plus a mug of coffee. The burger was excellent, which was normal for the army. Mess cooks were in savage competition to produce the best patty. The coffee was excellent, too. A unique standardized blend, in Reacher's opinion the best in the world. He had been drinking it all his life. The fries were fair and the beans were adequate. All in all, probably better than the limp piece of grilled fish the officers were getting.
He took more coffee and sat in an armchair and read the army papers. He figured the two PFCs would come get him when Thurman was ready to leave. They would drive their guests out to the flight line and salute smartly and finish their little show in style, just after midnight. Taxiing, takeoff, the climb, then ninety minutes in the air. That would get them back to Despair by two, which seemed to be the normal schedule. Three hours' worth of free aviation fuel, plus a free four-hour dinner. Not bad, in exchange for a quarter-full jar of soot.A born-again-Christian American and a businessman was how Thurman had described himself. Whatever kind of a Christian he was, he was a useful businessman. That was for damn sure.
The mess kitchen closed. Reacher finished the papers and dozed. The PFCs never showed. At twelve-ten in the morning Reacher woke up and heard the Piper's engine in the distance and by the time the sound registered in his mind it was revving hard. By the time he made it outside the little white plane was on the runway. He stood and watched as it lifted off and disappeared into the darkness above.
60
The Humvee came back from the flight line and the two PFCs got out and nodded to Reacher like nothing was wrong. Reacher said, "I was supposed to be on that plane."
The driver said, "No sir, Mr. Thurman told us you had a one-way ticket tonight. He told us you were heading south from here, on business of your own. He told us you were all done in Colorado."
Reacher said, "Shit." He thought back to Thurman, in front of the airplane barn. The deliberate pause.Debate in his face, some kind of a long-range calculus, like he was playing a long game, thinking eight moves ahead.
Fly with me tonight.
I won't ask you to join me for dinner.
Reacher shook his head. He was ninety minutes' flying time from where he needed to be, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with no airplane.
Outwitted by a seventy-year-old preacher.
Dumb.
And tense.
I think they were all stirred up because they're heading for the end of something.
What, he had no idea.
When, he had no clue.
He checked the map in his head. There were no highways in the Oklahoma panhandle. None at all. Just a thin red tracery of state four-lanes and county two-lanes. He glanced at the Humvee and at the PFCs and said, "You guys want to drive me out to a road?"
"Which road?"
"Any road that gets traffic more than once an hour."
"You could try 287. That goes south."
"I need to go north. Back to Colorado. Thurman wasn't entirely frank with you."
"287 goes north, too. All the way up to I- 70."