A Wanted Man

hundreds of feet from front to back. It was maybe forty feet tall. It was about the size of the Lacey’s supermarket. But far more substantial. Lacey’s was a cheap and cynical commercial structure. Lacey’s looked like it would blow away in a storm. And plenty of similar establishments had.

But this thing out in the field looked bombproof. Something about the way it was hunched down in the earth suggested concrete many feet thick. The radiused haunches where walls met roofs suggested immense strength. Its corners were rounded. There were no doors or windows. There seemed to be a waist-high railing all around the edge of the roof. Tubular steel.

They walked closer. Forty yards later they had a better view. Reacher glanced back. Behind them the wind was nibbling at the fissure in the clouds. The moon was coming out. Which was both good and bad. He wanted a little more light, but not too much more. Too much more could be a problem.

He faced front again and started to see detail up ahead. The building wasn’t black. Not exclusively. It was also dark brown and dark green. Dull flat non-reflective paint, thickly applied in giant random slashes and spikes and daggers.

Camouflage.

A U.S. Army pattern, dating back to the 1960s, to the best of Reacher’s recollection.

Delfuenso whispered, ‘What is it?’

‘Not sure,’ Reacher said. ‘An abandoned military installation, obviously. The fence is gone. Some farmer got a hundred extra acres. I don’t know what it was originally. It’s blastproof, clearly. Could have been for storage of air- defence missiles, possibly. Or it could have been an ammunition factory. In which case the concrete is protecting the outside from the inside, not the other way around. I would have to see the main doors to know more. Missile storage needs big doors, for the transporters. An ammunition factory would have smaller doors.’

‘Abandoned when?’

‘That’s a very old camouflage pattern. So the place hasn’t been painted in fifty years. It was abandoned after Vietnam, maybe. Which might make it more likely it was an ammunition factory. We didn’t need so many bullets or shells after that. But we cut back a little on missiles too. So it could be either.’

‘Why is it still here?’

‘These places can’t be demolished. How would you do it? They were built to take on a lot more than a wrecking ball.’

‘How do people get a place like this?’

‘Maybe they bought it. The DoD is happy to take what it can get. Or maybe they’re squatting. No one checks on places like this. Not any more. No manpower. There are too many of them. Your granddad’s tax dollars at work.’

‘It’s huge.’

‘I know it is. You want to revise your personnel estimate? You could get more than forty people in there. You could get four hundred.’

‘You could get four thousand in there.’

‘Didn’t McQueen give you a figure?’

‘A terrorist headcount is a moving target. He never saw everyone at once. I’m still betting on a couple of dozen, tops.’

‘They must be rattling around in there.’

‘How do we do this?’

‘Very carefully.’

‘Where do we start?’

Reacher glanced at her. And then at Sorenson. The guy in the field knew he was watched over by people who would react instantly if he ran into trouble. But instantly was a big word. They were very close to four hours into a mission launched because eight hours had seemed ludicrously long. Was four hours an instant? Not even close.

So was eight hours so much worse?

He said, ‘The smart money is on very careful surveillance. We need to study that place from all four sides.’

Delfuenso said, ‘That would take hours.’

‘So be it.’

‘You mean we should wait for Quantico.’

‘It’s an option.’

‘But not a good one,’ Delfuenso said. ‘Especially not for Don McQueen.’

‘I agree.’

‘So the dumb money is on attacking without adequate preparation. Is that our choice?’

‘Call it half-assed preparation.’

‘To be honest, in what way are we even minimally prepared?’

‘We’re tooled up,’ Reacher said. ‘We’re awake, and they might not be.’

Sorenson said, ‘If we don’t do something now, there’s no point doing anything at all. That’s our situation, right? And that’s a military kind of problem, isn’t it? Did you train for this stuff?’

‘I trained for all kinds of things. Usually by starting with a little history. Back in the day the Soviets had some pretty big missiles. That thing in front of us was built to stand up to one. We have three handguns.’

‘But suppose you were the inside man?’

‘I’m all in favour of helping McQueen.’

Delfuenso said, ‘Just not with us?’

‘There were certain things I never had to say to my own people. Because it was right there in the job description.’

‘What certain things?’

‘You could get killed or maimed, doing this.’

‘Is there a way we can reduce that risk? Without taking hours?’

‘Yes, there is,’ Reacher said.

They invested seven minutes in talking through the contingencies. There was no point in making a plan. No plan could survive the first exchange of fire. No plan ever did. Except in this case it was impossible to make a plan, anyway. Because there was no information.

They turned away from the building and sat down in a line in the dirt and talked. This might happen, that might happen. They agreed some rules of thumb. They nailed down some basic procedures. Reacher was reasonably optimistic about getting close to the concrete. Neither a missile hangar nor an ammunition factory needed gun ports. And there was no way to drill your own. Even with a missile. So the place was not bristling with guns. Therefore the approach from distance would be safe enough. After that, there would be plenty of things to worry about. There would be sentries on the roof, presumably. Behind the tubular steel railing. On a walkway. Or maybe a running track. But not many sentries. And all of them so far untested. Reacher knew his history. Sentries were sometimes more trouble than they were worth.

They ran out of things to say. There was an awkward silence. No doubt the FBI had appropriate banter for the occasion. The army sure did. But private jokes are private jokes. They don’t translate between cultures. So none were made. All three of them just stood up mute and turned around and paced off distances and got into their starting positions. They looked ahead through the dark and identified their personal targets.

‘Ready?’ Reacher said.

Sorenson said, ‘Good to go.’

Delfuenso said, ‘Yes.’

‘Remember, speed and direction. No deviation from either. Now go.’

They stood up.

They started walking.

All went well, until Sorenson was shot in the head.

SIXTY-NINE