“With Dean,” Neagley said. “The quality control guy. His behavior must have been the trigger. Bad numbers on their own don’t necessarily mean much. But bad numbers plus a stressed-out quality control guy mean a lot.”
“Did he get the whole story out of Dean?”
“Probably not. But enough to join the dots. Swan was a lot smarter than Berenson.”
“What was his next step?”
“Two steps in parallel,” Neagley said. “He secured Dean’s situation, and he started the search for corroborating evidence.”
“With help from the others.”
“More than help,” Neagley said. “He was basically subcontracting. He had to, because his office situation was insecure.”
“So he didn’t talk to Lamaison at any point?”
“Not a chance. First rule, trust no one.”
“So what tripped them up?”
“I don’t know.”
“How would Swan have secured Dean’s situation?”
“He’d have talked to the local cops. Asked for protection, or at least asked for a car to swing by on a regular basis.”
“Lamaison is ex-LAPD. Maybe he still has buddies on the job. Maybe they tipped him off.”
“Doesn’t work,” Neagley said. “Swan didn’t talk to the LAPD. Dean lived over the hill. Outside of LAPD jurisdiction.”
Reacher paused a beat.
“Which actually means that Swan didn’t talk to anyone,” he said. “Because that’s Curtis Mauney’s kingdom up there, and he didn’t know anything about Dean or New Age. Or even anything about Swan, except through Franz.”
“Swan wouldn’t leave Dean unprotected.”
“So maybe Dean wasn’t the trigger. Maybe Swan didn’t know anything about him. Maybe he found a different way in.”
“Which was?” Neagley asked.
“No idea,” Reacher said. “Maybe Sanchez will be able to tell us.”
“You think he’s alive?”
“Hope for the best.”
“But plan for the worst.”
They clicked off. Their lane moved a little. In a minute and a quarter of conversation they had covered about five car lengths. In the next five minutes of silence they covered about ten more, six times slower than walking. All around them people were enduring. They were talking on the phone, reading, shaving, applying makeup, smoking, eating, listening to music. Some were tanning. They were hitching up their sleeves and holding their arms out their open windows.
Reacher’s pay-as-you-go rang. Neagley again.
“More from Chicago,” she said. “We’re into parts of the LAPD mainframe. Lennox and Parker were about as bad as Lamaison. The two of them were partners together. They resigned rather than face their twelfth IA inquiry in twelve years. They must have been out of work about a week before Lamaison hired them on at New Age.”
“I’m glad I don’t hold New Age stock.”
“You do. It’s all Pentagon money. Where do you think it comes from?”
“Not from me,” Reacher said.
Two hundred yards later the freeway straightened and rose in front of them and they saw the source of the delay, in the far distance, in the haze. There was a broken-down car in the left lane. A trivial blockage, but the whole road was at a standstill. Reacher clicked off with Neagley and called Dixon.
“You there yet?” he asked.
“Maybe ten minutes away.”
“We’re stuck in traffic. Call us if there’s good news. Call us if there’s bad news too, I guess.”
It took another quarter of an hour to reach the stalled car and some bold lane changes to get past it. Then the flow freed up and everyone continued on their way at seventy miles an hour like nothing had happened. Reacher and Neagley were at the county facility ten minutes later. Ten miles in forty minutes. Average speed, fifteen miles an hour. Not great.
They ignored the morgue and parked in the hospital’s visitor lot. They walked through the sun to the main entrance. Reacher saw O’Donnell’s Honda in the lot, and then Dixon’s. The main entrance gave onto a lobby full of red plastic chairs. Some of them were occupied. Most of them weren’t. The place was fairly quiet. There was no sign of Dixon or O’Donnell. Or Curtis Mauney. There was a long desk with people behind it. Not nurses. Just clerks. Reacher asked one of them for Mauney and got no response. He asked for Jorge Sanchez and got no response. He asked about emergency John Doe admissions and got redirected to another desk around a corner.
The new desk reported no recent John Doe admissions and knew nothing about a patient named Jorge Sanchez or an LA County sheriff named Curtis Mauney. Reacher pulled out his phone but was asked not to use it inside the building in case its signal upset delicate medical equipment. He stepped out to the lot and called Dixon.
No reply.
He tried O’Donnell’s number.
No reply.
Neagley said, “Maybe they’re switched off. Because they’re in an ICU or something.”
“Who with? They never heard of Sanchez here.”
“They have to be here somewhere. They just got here.”
“This feels wrong,” Reacher said.
Neagley took Mauney’s card out of her pocket. Handed it over. Reacher dialed Mauney’s cell number.
No answer.
His landline.
No answer.
Then Neagley’s phone rang. Her personal cell, not her pay-as-you-go. She answered. Listened. Her face went pale. Literally bloodless, like wax.
“That was Chicago,” she said. “Curtis Mauney was Allen Lamaison’s partner. They were together twelve years in the LAPD.”
69
Something tripped them up. Something unpredictable. Neagley had been right, but only half-right. Dean had been a major factor, but not the original trigger. Swan had gotten to him much later in the process, some different way, after the others were already on board. No other way to explain the scale of the disaster. Reacher stood in the hospital lot and closed his eyes and pictured the scene. Saw Swan talking to Dean, the final part of the puzzle, at home, north of the mountains, out in the desert near Palmdale, a city refugee’s paradise, a sanctuary, a young girl moving silently past an open doorway, fear on Dean’s face, concern on Swan’s. Reacher saw Swan extracting the whole story, as always reassuring and solid and confident. Then Reacher saw Swan driving straight to some dusty sheriff’s office, talking to Mauney, explaining, asking for help, demanding it. Then he saw Swan leaving, and Mauney picking up a phone. Sealing Swan’s fate right there and then. And Franz’s, and Orozco’s, and Sanchez’s.
Something unpredictable.
Reacher opened his eyes and said, “We’re not going to lose another two. Not while I live and breathe.”
They abandoned Neagley’s Civic in the hospital lot and used Reacher’s Prelude. They had nowhere to go. They were just moving for the sake of moving. And talking for the sake of talking. Neagley said, “They knew we’d show up sooner or later. The suspense was killing them. So they manipulated the timeline to suit themselves. Mauney pushed Angela Franz into calling me. He spun the bait story to keep Thomas Brant on board. He was tracking us every step of the way and feeding us things we already knew to keep us close and asking us what else we’d found out and waiting to see if we’d give up and get out of their hair. And when we never did, they decided to go ahead and take us out. First Vegas, and then now.”
They swung back onto the 210. It was flowing fast and free.
“Plan?” Neagley asked.
“No plan,” Reacher said.
The phone directory that Dixon had captured was in O’Donnell’s room at the motel, but they didn’t want to go anywhere near Sunset Boulevard. Not at that point. So they pieced together half-remembered fragments of the manufacturing plant’s Highland Park address and headed in that direction.
They found Highland Park easily enough. It was a decent place full of streets and houses and business parks and small clean hi-tech manufacturing enterprises. It was ha
rder to find New Age’s specific location. They weren’t expecting a billboard and didn’t get one. Instead they looked for unmarked buildings and serious fences and helipads. They found several. It was that kind of a neighborhood.
“Dixon called the helicopter a Bell 222,” Reacher said. “Could you recognize one of those if you saw one?”
“I’ve seen three in the last five minutes,” Neagley said.
“She said it was white.”
“Two in the last five minutes.”
“Where?”
“The second one was a mile back. Two lefts and a right. The first one was three places before that.”
“Both places with fences?”
“Check.”
“Outbuildings?”
“Both of them.”
Reacher braked and pulled an illegal U across the full width of the road and headed back the way they had come. He took two lefts and a right and slowed and Neagley pointed at a collection of gray metal buildings squatting behind a fence that would have looked right at home outside a supermax prison. It was at least eight feet tall and close to four feet thick, two faces of tight barbed wire with giant coils of razor wire heaped between them and huge concertinas of the same stuff piled on top. It was one hell of a barrier. There were four buildings behind it. One was a large shed and three were smaller constructions. There was a huge concrete rectangle with a long-nosed helicopter parked on it, white, still, and quiet.
“That’s a Bell 222?” Reacher asked.
“Unmistakable,” Neagley said.
“So is this the place?”
“Hard to say.”
Next to the helipad was an orange windsock on a tall pole. It was hanging limp in the warm dry air. There was a small parking lot full of thirteen cars. Nothing expensive. No blue Chryslers.
“What would assembly workers drive?” Reacher asked.
“Cars like those,” Neagley said.
Reacher drove on, past one place, past another. The third place in line was very similar to the first. A serious fence, four blank buildings with gray metal siding, a parking lot full of cheap cars, a helipad, a parked Bell 222, white. No names, no markings, no signs.
Reacher said, “We need the exact address.”
“We don’t have time. The Dunes is a long way from here.”
“But Pasadena isn’t.”
They made the short hop east on York Boulevard and the 110. Pulled up outside the inn in Pasadena fifteen minutes later. Five minutes after that they were in Margaret Berenson’s room. They told her what they needed. They didn’t tell her why. They wanted to preserve an illusion of competence, for her sake.
Berenson told them the first place they had seen was the place they wanted.
Fifteen minutes later they cruised past the first place again. The fence was appalling. Brutal. A main battle tank might have breached it. A car almost certainly wouldn’t. Not a Honda Prelude. Not even a big lump like the Chrysler. Not even a heavy truck. It was a question of the wire’s resilience. The outer strands would stretch like guitar strings before they broke, dissipating the force of impact, slowing the vehicle, robbing its momentum. Then the inner coils would compress. Like a sponge. Like a spring. The vehicle would tangle and slow and stall. No way through on wheels. And no way through on foot. An individual with a bolt cutter would bleed to death before he was a quarter of the way in. And there was no way over the top, either. The concertinas were too broad and too loosely coiled to allow scaling by ladder.
Reacher drove all the way around the block. The whole facility occupied a couple of acres. It was roughly square, about a hundred yards on a side. Four buildings, one large, three small. Dried brown grass and cinder footpaths between them. The fence was four hundred yards long in total and had no weak spots. And only one gate. It was a wide steel assembly that slid sideways on wheels. Welded to its top rail was more concertina wire. Flanking it was a guard hut.
“Pentagon requirement,” Neagley said. “Has to be.”
There was a guard in the hut. An old guy, gray hair. Gray uniform. A belt around his hips, a gun in the belt. A simple job. The right pass and the right paperwork, he would hit a button and the gate would roll back. No pass and no paperwork, he wouldn’t and it wouldn’t. There was a lightbulb above the guy’s head. It would be lit after dark. It would throw a soft yellow halo for twenty feet all around.
“No way through,” Reacher said.
“Are they even in there?”
“Must be. It’s like a private jail. Safer than stashing them anywhere else. And it’s where they put the others.”
“How did it go down?”
“Mauney arrested them in the hospital lot. Maybe he had help from Lamaison’s guys. Crowded place, total surprise, what were they going to do?”
Reacher drove on. The Prelude was an unremarkable car, but he didn’t want it to be seen too many times in the same place. He turned a corner and parked a quarter of a mile away. Didn’t speak. Because he had nothing to say.
Neagley’s phone rang again. Her personal cell. She answered. Listened. Clicked off. Closed her eyes.
“My Pentagon guy,” she said. “The missiles just rolled out the gate in Colorado.”
70
If Mahmoud has got the missiles, then this thing is bigger than we are. We have to suck it up and move on. Reacher looked at Neagley. She opened her eyes and stared right back.
“How much do they weigh?” Reacher asked.
“Weigh?”
“As in weight. Pounds and ounces.”
“I don’t know. They’re new. I never saw one.”
“Guess.”
“Heavier than a Stinger. Because they do more. But still man-portable. Crated, with launch tubes and spare parts and manuals, say fifty pounds each.”
“That’s sixteen and a quarter tons.”
“A semi,” Neagley said.
“Average speed on the interstates, fifty miles an hour?”
“Probably.”
“North on I-25 to I-80, then west to Nevada, that’s about nine hundred miles. So we’ve got eighteen hours. Call it twenty-four, because the driver will take a rest period.”
“They’re not going to Nevada,” Neagley said. “Nevada is bullshit, because they’re going to use these things, not destroy them.”
“Wherever. Anywhere significant is eighteen hours from Denver.”
Neagley shook her head. “This is insane. We can’t wait twenty-four hours. Or eighteen. You said it yourself, there could be ten thousand KIAs.”
“But not yet.”
“We can’t wait,” Neagley said again. “Easier to stop the truck on the way out of Denver. It could be headed anywhere. It could be headed to New York. JFK, or LaGuardia. Or Chicago. You want to think about Little Wing deployed at O’Hare?”