Running Blind

amused, in a sardonic kind of a way.

“Ready to go to work?” he asked.

Reacher nodded. “Sure, after I’ve had some coffee.”

Poulton turned the mugs over and Harper poured.

“We called Fort Dix last night,” Blake said. “Spoke with Colonel Trent. He said he’ll give you all day today. ”

“That should do it.”

“He seems to like you.”

“No, he owes me, which is different.”

Lamarr nodded. “Good. You need to exploit that. You know what you’re looking for, right? Concentrate on the dates. Find somebody whose stand-down weeks match. My guess is he’s doing it late in the week. Maybe not exactly the last day, because he’s got to get back to base and calm down afterward.”

Reacher smiled. “Great deduction, Lamarr. You get paid for this?”

She just looked at him and smiled back, like she knew something he didn’t.

“What?” he asked.

“Just keep a civil tongue in your head,” Blake said. “You got a problem with what she’s suggesting?”

Reacher shrugged. “We do it by dates alone, we’re going to come up with maybe a thousand names.”

“So narrow it down some. Get Trent to cross-reference against the women. Find somebody who served with one of them.”

“Or served with one of the men who got canned,” Poulton said.

Reacher smiled again. “Awesome brainpower around this table. It could make a guy feel real intimidated.”

“You got better ideas, smart guy?” Blake asked.

“I know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, just remember what’s riding on it, OK? Lots of women in danger, one of them yours.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“So get going.”

Harper took the cue and stood up. Reacher eased out of his seat and followed her. The three at the table watched him go, something in their eyes. Harper was waiting for him at the cafeteria door, looking back at him, watching him approach, smiling at him. He stopped next to her.

“Why’s everybody looking at me?” he asked.

“We checked the tape,” she said. “You know, the surveillance camera.”

'So?”

She wouldn’t answer. He reviewed his time in the room. He’d showered twice, walked around some, pulled the drapes, slept, opened the drapes, walked around some more. That was all.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

She smiled again, wider. “No, you didn’t.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

“Well, you know, you don’t seem to have brought any pajamas.”

A MOTOR POOL guy brought a car to the doors and left it there with the motor running. Harper watched Reacher get in and then slid into the driver’s seat. They drove out through the rain, past the checkpoint, through the Marine perimeter, out to I-95. She blasted north through the spray and a fast forty minutes later turned east across the southern edge of D.C. Cruised hard for ten more minutes and made an abrupt right into the north gate of Andrews Air Force Base.

“They assigned us the company plane,” she said.

Two security checks later they were at the foot of an unmarked Learjet’s cabin steps. They left the car on the tarmac and climbed inside. It was taxiing before they had their seat belts fastened.

“Should be a half hour to Dix,” Harper said.

“McGuire,” Reacher corrected. “Dix is a Marine Corps base. We’ll land at McGuire Air Force Base.”

Harper looked worried. “They told me we’re going straight there.”

“We are. It’s the same place. Different names, is all.”

She made a face. “Weird. I guess I don’t understand the military.”

“Well, don’t feel bad about it. We don’t understand you either.”

They were on approach thirty minutes later with the sharp, abrupt motions a small jet makes in rough air. There was cloud almost all the way down, then the ground was suddenly in sight. It was raining in Jersey. Dim, and miserable. An Air Force base is a gray place to start with, and the weather wasn’t helping any. McGuire’s runway was wide enough and long enough to let giant transports struggle into the air, and the Lear touched down and stopped in less than a quarter of its length, like a hummingbird coming to rest on an interstate. It turned and taxied and stopped again on a distant corner of tarmac. A flat-green Chevy was racing through the rain to meet it. By the time the cabin steps were down, the driver was waiting at the bottom. He was a Marine lieutenant, maybe twenty- five, and he was getting wet.

“Major Reacher?” he asked.

Reacher nodded. “And this is Agent Harper, from the FBI.”

The lieutenant ignored her completely, like Reacher knew he would.

“The colonel is waiting, sir,” he said.

“So let’s go. Can’t keep the colonel waiting, right?”

Reacher sat in the front of the Chevy with the lieutenant and Harper took the back. They drove out of McGuire into Dix, following narrow roadways with whitewashed curbstones through blocks of warehouses and barracks. They stopped at a huddle of brick offices a mile from McGuire’s runway.

“Door on the left, sir,” the lieutenant said.

The guy waited in the car, like Reacher knew he would. Reacher got out and Harper followed him, staying close to his shoulder, huddling against the weather. The wind was blowing the rain horizontal. The office building had a group of three unmarked personnel doors in the center of a blank brick wall. Reacher took the left-hand door and led Harper into a spacious anteroom full of metal desks and file cabinets. It was antiseptically clean and obsessively tidy. Brightly lit against the gloom of the morning. Three sergeants worked at separate desks. One of them glanced up and hit a button on his telephone.

“Major Reacher is here, sir,” he said into it.

There was a moment’s pause and then the inner office door opened and a man stepped out. He was tall, built like a greyhound, short black hair silvering at the temples. He had a lean hand extended, ready to shake.

“Hello, Reacher,” John Trent said.

Reacher nodded. Trent owed the second half of his career to a paragraph Reacher had omitted from an official report ten years before. Trent had assumed the paragraph was written and ready to go. He had come to see Reacher, not to plead for its deletion, not to bargain, not to bribe, but just to explain, officer to officer, how he’d made the mistake. Simply because he had needed Reacher to understand it was a mistake, not malice or dishonesty. He had left without asking for a thing, and then sat still and waited for the ax. It never came. The report was published and the paragraph wasn’t in it. What Trent didn’t know was that Reacher had never even written it. Then ten years had passed and the two men hadn’t really spoken since. Not until the previous morning, when Reacher had made the first of his urgent calls from Jodie’s apartment.

“Hello, Colonel,” Reacher said. “This is Agent Harper, from the FBI.”

Trent was politer than his lieutenant. His rank meant he had to be. Or maybe he was just more impressed by tall damp blondes dressed like men. Either way, he shook hands. And maybe held on to the shake longer than was necessary. And maybe smiled, just a fraction.

“Pleased to meet you, Colonel,” Harper said. “And thanks in advance.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Trent said.

“Well, we’re always grateful for cooperation anyplace we can get it, sir.”

Trent released her hand. “Which is a strictly limited number of places, I expect.”

“Fewer than we’d like,” she said. “Considering we’re all on the same side.”

Trent smiled again.

“That’s an interesting concept,” he said. “I’ll do what I can, but the cooperation will be limited. As I’m sure you anticipated. We’re going to be examining personnel records and deployment listings that I’m just not prepared to