Ray’s eyes were burning. He looked away from Reacher’s scar and glanced nervously up at the roof.
He spoke as fast as he could and ended up sounding exactly like an educated Parisian woman. Exactly like he recalled his dead mother sounding. Ray nodded slowly.
“You foreign?” he asked.
“French,” Reacher said. “We operate international brigades. I said I’m here to check out the degree of risk you people represent to us.”
“I saw you shooting,” Reacher said. “I spotted it. A thousand yards.”
“Guided by satellite,” Reacher said. “I told you, SDI technology, through the microchip. We can all shoot two miles, perfect score every time.”
“Christ,” Ray said.
“I need to be out in the open at ten o’clock,” Reacher said. “It’s a safety procedure. You got a wife here?”
Ray nodded.
“What about kids?” Reacher asked. “Any of these kids yours?”
Ray nodded again.
“Sure,” he said. “Two boys.”
“If I’m not out by ten, they all die,” Reacher said. “If I get taken prisoner, the whole place gets incinerated. Can’t afford for my microchip to get captured. I told them you guys wouldn’t understand how it works, but my chief said some of you could be smarter than I thought. Looks like my chief was right.”
Ray nodded proudly and Reacher checked his watch.
“It’s seven-thirty, right?” he said. “I’m going to sleep two and a half hours. The satellite will wake me at ten exactly. You wait and see.”
He lay back down on the floor and curled his arm under his head. Set the alarm in his head for two minutes to ten. Said to himself: don’t let it fail me tonight.
35
“I REFUSE TO believe it,” General Garber said.
“He’s involved,” Webster said in reply. “That’s for damn sure. We got the pictures, clear as day.”
Garber shook his head.
“I was promoted lieutenant forty years ago,” he said. “Now I’m a three-star general. I’ve commanded thousands of men. Tens of thousands. Got to know most of them well. And out of all of them, Jack Reacher is the single least likely man to be involved in a thing like this.”
Garber was sitting ramrod-straight at the table in the mobile command post. He had shed his khaki raincoat to reveal an old creased uniform jacket. It was a jacket which bore the accumulated prizes of a lifetime of service. It was studded with badges and ribbons. It was the jacket of a man who had served forty years without ever making a single mistake.
Johnson was watching him carefully. Garber’s grizzled old head was still. His eyes were calm. His hands were laid comfortably on the table. His voice was firm, but quiet. Definite, like he was being asked to defend the proposition that the sky was blue and the grass was green.
“Show the General the pictures, Mack,” Webster said.
McGrath nodded and opened his envelope. Slid the four stills over the table to Garber. Garber held each one up in turn, tilted to catch the green light from the overhead. Johnson was watching his eyes. He was waiting for the flicker of doubt, then the flicker of resignation. He saw neither.
“These are open to interpretation,” Garber said.
His voice was still calm. Johnson heard an officer loyally defending a favored subordinate. Webster and McGrath heard a policeman of sorts expressing a doubt. They figured forty years’ service had bought the guy the right to be heard.
“Interpretation how?” Webster asked.
“Four isolated moments out of a sequence,” Garber said. “They could be telling us the wrong story.”
Webster leaned over and pointed at the first still.
“He’s grabbing her stuff,” he said. “Plain as day, General.”
Garber shook his head. There was silence. Just electronic hum throughout the vehicle. Johnson saw a flicker of doubt. But it was in McGrath’s eyes, not Garber’s. Then Brogan rattled his way up the ladder. Ducked his head into the truck.
“Surveillance tapes, chief,” he said. “We’ve been reviewing the stuff the planes got earlier. You should come see it.”
He ducked out again and the four men glanced at each other and got up. Walked the short distance through the cold evening to the satellite truck and up the ladder. Milosevic was in shirtsleeves, bathed in the blue light from a bank of video screens. He shuttled a tape back and pressed play. Four screens lit up with a perfect clear overhead view of a tiny town. The quality of the picture was magnificent. Like a perfect movie picture, except filmed vertically downward, not horizontal.
“Yorke,” Milosevic said. “The old courthouse, bottom right. Now watch.”
He hit fast wind and watched the counter. Slowed the tape and hit play again.
“This is a mile and a quarter away,” he said. “The camera tracked northwest. There’s a parade ground, and this rifle range.”
The camera had zoomed out for a wide view of the area. There were two clearings with huts to the south, and a flat parade ground to the north. In between was a long narrow scar in the undergrowth, maybe a half-mile long and twenty yards wide. The camera zoomed right out for a moment, to establish the scale, then it tightened in on a crowd at the eastern end of the range. Then it tightened further to a small knot of people standing on some brown matting. There were four men clearly visible. And one woman. General Johnson gasped and stared at his daughter.
“When was this?” he asked.
“Few hours ago,” Milosevic said. “She’s alive and well.”
He froze the picture and tapped his fingernail four times on the glass.
“Reacher,” he said. “Stevie Stewart. We figure this one is Odell Fowle. And the fat guy is Beau Borken. Matches his file photo from California.”
Then he hit play again. The camera held steady on the matting, from seven miles up in the sky. Borken pressed his bulk to the floor and lay motionless. Then a silent puff of dust was seen under the muzzle of his rifle.
“They’re shooting a little over eight hundred yards,” Milosevic said. “Some kind of a competition, I guess.”
They watched Borken’s five final shots, and then Reacher picked up his rifle.
“That’s a Barrett,” Garber said.
Reacher lay motionless and then fired six silent shots, well spaced. The crowd milled around, and eventually Reacher was lost to sight in the trees to the south.
“OK,” Webster said. “How do you want to interpret that, General Garber?”
Garber shrugged. A dogged expression on his face.
“He’s one of them, no doubt about it,” Webster said. “Did you see his clothes? He was in uniform. Showing off on the range? Would they give him a uniform and a rifle to play with if he wasn’t one of their own?”
Johnson spooled the tape back and froze it. Looked at Holly for a long moment. Then he walked out of the trailer. Called over his shoulder to Webster.
“Director, we need to go to work,” he said. “I want to make a contingency plan well ahead of time. No reason for us not to be ready for this.”
Webster followed him out. Brogan and Milosevic stayed at the video console. McGrath was watching Garber. Garber was staring at the blank screen.
“I still don’t believe it,” he said.
