camera, almost certainly. It was of poor quality, very grainy, smeared a little by movement and a cheap CCD camera and fluorescent light and a low-bit digital recording. But the eyes were clearly recognizable. And the mole was there, in the same place, perfectly positioned, as unique as a barcode or a fingerprint, and as definitive as a DNA sample.
‘From where?’ Sorenson asked.
‘The rental counter at the Denver airport,’ the technician said. ‘The victim rented the Mazda himself, just after nine o’clock this morning. Now yesterday morning, technically. The mileage on the car indicates he drove straight here with no significant detours.’
‘That’s a long way.’
‘A little over seven hundred miles. Ten or eleven hours, probably. One stop for gas. The tank is low now.’
‘Did he drive all that way alone?’
‘I don’t know,’ the technician said. ‘I wasn’t there.’
A cautious guy, old school, data driven, and possibly a little bad-tempered. Night duty, in the winter, in the middle of nowhere.
Sorenson asked, ‘What’s your best guess?’
‘I’m a scientist,’ the guy said. ‘I don’t guess.’
‘Then speculate.’
The guy made a face.
‘There’s no trace evidence in the back of the car,’ he said. ‘But both front seats show signs of occupation. So he might have had a single passenger from Denver. Or he might have driven in alone, in which case the passenger seat trace would come from the two perpetrators using the car to get from the crime scene to this location.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘I would say he probably drove in alone. There’s more trace on the driver’s seat than the passenger’s seat.’
‘Like the difference between a seven-hundred-mile drive and a three-mile drive?’
‘I can’t specify a ratio. It doesn’t happen that way. Most trace gets rubbed in over the first minute or two.’
‘Yes or no? Real world?’
‘Probably yes. The driver’s seat shows heavy use, the passenger’s seat doesn’t.’
‘So how did the two guys get here? Wearing suits and no winter coats?’
‘Ma’am, I have no idea,’ the technician said, and walked back to the car.
‘I have no idea either,’ Goodman said. ‘My guys have seen no abandoned cars. That was one of the things I told them to look for.’
Sorenson said, ‘Obviously they didn’t abandon a car. If they had their own car, they wouldn’t have had to hijack a cocktail waitress. And we need to know where the fourth guy came from, too. And we need to figure out where he was while his pals were busy in the bunker.’
‘He sounds distinctive.’
Sorenson nodded. ‘A gorilla with its face smashed in. Anyone should remember a guy like that.’
Then her phone rang, and she answered it, and Goodman saw her back go straight and her face change. She listened for thirty seconds, and she said, ‘OK,’ and then she said it again, and then she said, ‘No, I’ll make sure it happens,’ and then she clicked off.
A straight back, but she had said
Not a superior from her FBI field office, therefore, or from D.C.
Goodman asked, ‘Who was that?’
Sorenson said, ‘That was a duty officer in a room in Langley, Virginia.’
‘Langley?’
Sorenson nodded.
She said, ‘Now the CIA has got its nose in this thing too. I’m supposed to provide progress reports all through the night.’
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS TECHNICALLY challenging to take out a guy in the front passenger seat while driving at eighty miles an hour. It required simultaneous movement and stillness. The driver’s foot had to stay steady on the pedal, which meant his legs had to stay still. His torso had to stay still. Above all his left shoulder had to stay still. Only his right arm could move, which would dictate a backhand scythe to the passenger’s head.
But it would be a relatively weak blow. It would be easy enough to fake a lazy cross-body scratch of the left shoulder, and then launch the right fist through a long half-circle, like a backward right hook, but the top edge of the Chevy’s dash roll was fairly high, and the bottom edge of its mirror was fairly low, so the swing would have to be carefully aimed through the available gap, and then it would have to be kicked upward for the last part of its travel.
And Reacher’s arms were long, which meant he would have to keep his elbow tucked in to stop his knuckles fouling against the windshield glass. Which would dictate an upward kick
So all in all it would be better to settle for a light tap, not a heavy blow, which meant the exact choice of target would be important, which meant the larynx would come top of the list. An open hand held horizontally, like a karate chop, and a light smack in the throat. That would get the job done. Disabling, but not fatal. Except that Alan King was asleep, with his face turned away and his chin tucked down to his chest. His throat was concealed. He would have to be woken up first. Maybe a poke in the shoulder. He would straighten up, he would face forward, he would blink and yawn and stare.
Easy enough. Poke, scratch, swing,
But Don McQueen couldn’t. Science had never found a way to take out a guy sitting directly behind a driver. Not while that driver was doing eighty miles an hour. No way. Just not feasible. No kind of four-dimensional planning could achieve it.
Reacher drove on, at eighty miles an hour. He checked the mirror. No traffic behind him. McQueen was asleep. He checked again a minute later. Delfuenso was staring at him. He learned the road a mile ahead and looked back in the mirror. He nodded, as if to say:
She began.
Forward nine.
I.
Forward eight, forward one, back five, forward five.
H-A-V-E,
Forward one.
A.
Forward three, forward eight, forward nine, forward twelve, forward four.
C-H-I-L-D,
Reacher nodded, and lifted the small stuffed animal out of the centre console, as if to say:
Reacher leaned over and poked Alan King in the shoulder.
King stirred, and woke up, and straightened, and faced forward, and blinked and yawned and stared.
He said, ‘What?’
