Thirty minutes later Petersburg was twenty miles behind them. They were heading west, on a small road on the edge of a national forest. The truck had turned out to be a Toyota, not new, but it ran well. It was as quiet as a library, and it had satellite navigation. It was so heavy it smoothed out the bumps in the road. It had pillowy leather seats and plenty of space inside. Turner looked tiny in it. But happy. She had something to work with. She had a whole scenario laid out.
She said, ‘I can see why these guys are worried. An A.M. number changes everything. The guy is known to us for a reason. Either his activities, or his opinions. And either thing is going to lead us somewhere.’
Reacher asked, ‘How do we access the database?’
‘Change of plan. We’re going to Pittsburgh.’
‘Is the database in Pittsburgh?’
‘No, but there’s a big airport in Pittsburgh.’
‘I was just in Pittsburgh.’
‘At the airport?’
‘On the road.’
‘Variety is the spice of life,’ she said.
Getting to Pittsburgh meant cutting northwest across the state, and hitting I-79 somewhere between Clarksburg and Morgan-town. Then it was a straight shot, basically north. Safe enough, Reacher thought. The Toyota was as big as a house and weighed three tons, but it was effectively camouflaged. What’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On a beach. And if the Toyota was a grain of sand, then West Virginia’s roads were a beach. Practically every vehicle in sight was a full-size pick-up truck. And Western Pennsylvania would be no different. A visitor from outer space would assume the viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.
The late start to the day turned out to be a good thing. Or a feature, not a bug, as Turner might have put it. It meant they would be driving the highway in the dark. Better than driving it in the light. On the one hand highways got the heaviest policing, but on the other hand cops can’t see what they can’t see, and there was nothing less visible than a pair of headlights doing the legal limit on an Interstate highway at night.
Reacher said, ‘How are we going to get the exact A.M. number?’
Turner said, ‘We’re going to take a deep breath and go way out on a limb. We’re going to ask someone to get all snarled up in a criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting.’
‘Who?’
‘Sergeant Leach, I hope. She’s pretty solid, and her heart is in the right place.’
‘I agree,’ Reacher said. ‘I liked her.’
‘We have records and transcripts in the file room. All she has to do is go take a look at them.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then it gets harder. We’ll have a reference number, but not a name or a biography. And a sergeant can’t access that database. I’m the only one at Rock Creek who can. Morgan now, I suppose, but we can hardly ask him.’
Reacher said, ‘Leave that part to me.’
‘You don’t have access.’
‘But I know someone who does.’
‘Who?’
‘The Judge Advocate General.’
‘You know him?’
‘Not personally. But I know his place in the process. He’s forcing me to defend a bullshit charge. I’m entitled to cast the net wide in my own defence. I can ask for pretty much anything I want. Major Sullivan can handle it for me.’
‘No, in that case my lawyer should. It’s much more relevant to my bullshit charge than yours.’
‘Too dangerous for the guy. Moorcroft got beaten half to death for trying to get you out of jail. They’re never going to let your counsel get near that information.’
‘Then it’s dangerous for Sullivan, too.’
‘I don’t think they’ll be watching her yet. They’ll find out afterwards for sure, but by then it’s too late. There’s no point closing the barn door after the horse is out.’
‘Will she do it for you?’
‘She’ll have to. She has a legal obligation.’
They drove on, quiet and comfortable, staying in West Virginia, tracking around the jagged dip where the end of Maryland’s panhandle juts south, then setting course for a town called Grafton. From there the Toyota’s electronics showed a road running northwest, which joined I-79 just south of Fairmont.
Turner said, ‘Were you worried?’
Reacher said, ‘About what?’
‘Those eight guys.’
‘Not very.’
