‘Get on the line for the next ten minutes and hit up everyone you know at the Pentagon. Full court press, to locate Morgan.’
Leach picked up her phone.
Reacher waited.
Ten minutes later Leach had nothing. Not altogether surprising. The Pentagon had more than seventeen miles of corridors and nearly four million square feet of office space, all occupied by more than thirty thousand people on any given workday. Trying to find a random individual was like trying to find a needle in the world’s most secretive haystack. Reacher walked back to 103 and the duty officer said, ‘The Bagram radio room figures our guys were about two hundred and twenty miles out. Maybe two hundred and thirty.’
‘That’s a start,’ Reacher said.
‘Not really. We don’t know what direction.’
‘If in doubt, take a wild-ass guess. That was always my operating principle.’
‘Afghanistan is a big country.’
‘I know it is,’ Reacher said. ‘And it’s unpleasant all over, from what I hear. But where is it worst?’
‘The mountains. The border with Pakistan. Pashtun tribal areas. The northeast, basically. No one’s idea of fun.’
Reacher nodded. ‘Which is the kind of place the 110th gets sent. So get on the horn to the base commander and ask him to order up an air search, starting two hundred and twenty-five miles northeast of Bagram.’
‘That could be completely the wrong direction.’
‘Like I said, it’s a wild-ass guess. You got something better?’
‘They won’t do it anyway. Not on my say-so. A thing like this would need a major or better.’
‘So take Morgan’s name in vain.’
‘Can’t do it.’
Reacher listened. All quiet. No one coming. The duty officer waited, his hand curled into a fist, halfway between his lap and his phone.
‘Use my name,’ Reacher said.
TWELVE
THE DUTY OFFICER made the call, and then the military machine took over, distant and invisible and industrious, on the other side of the world, nine time zones and nearly eight thousand miles away, planning, briefing, readying, arming, and fuelling. The old stone building in Rock Creek went quiet.
Reacher asked, ‘How many other people do you have in the field?’
The duty officer said, ‘Globally? Fourteen.’
‘Nearest?’
‘Right now, Fort Hood in Texas. Cleaning up after Major Turner’s thing down there.’
‘How many in hazardous situations?’
‘That’s a moving target, isn’t it? Eight or ten, maybe.’
‘Has Morgan gone AWOL before?’
‘This is only his third day.’
‘What was Major Turner like as a commander?’
‘She was fairly new. She only had a few weeks.’
‘First impression?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Is this Afghanistan thing hers, or did she inherit it?’
‘It’s hers,’ the duty officer said. ‘It’s the second thing she did when she got here, after Fort Hood.’
Reacher had never been to Bagram, or anywhere else in Afghanistan, but he knew how it would work. Some things never change. No one liked sitting around doing nothing, and no one liked their own people in trouble. Especially not in the tribal areas, which were brutal and primitive in ways too drastic to contemplate. So the search mission would be undertaken very willingly. But it would carry significant danger. Combat air support would be needed, and overwhelming air-to-ground firepower would be required. Lots of moving parts. Therefore mission planning would take some time. Two hours minimum, Reacher figured, to get all the ducks in a row. Then two hours of flight time. There would be no early resolution.
Reacher spent some of the wait time walking. Back to his motel, and past it, and then left and right on the long blocks to the ragged strip mall ahead of the Greek restaurant, which he ignored, because he wasn’t hungry. He ignored the picture-framing shop, because he had no pictures in need of framing, and he ignored the gun shop, because he didn’t want to buy a gun, and he ignored the walk-in dentist, because his teeth felt fine. He stopped in at the hardware store, and bought a pair of dark khaki canvas work pants, and a blue canvas work shirt, and a brown field coat padded with some kind of trademarked miracle insulation layer. Then he stopped in at the no-
