The Hard Way

Reasonable security.

As long as the daylight lasted.

CHAPTER 69

THE DAYLIGHT LASTED until a little after eight o’clock. By then Reacher was in the Land Rover and Kate Lane was in the Mini. The sky darkened in the east and reddened in the west. Twilight rolled in fast, and with it came an evening mist that looked picturesque but cut visibility to less than a hundred yards. The bird scarer fell silent. All afternoon and into the evening it had been firing at unpredictable random intervals between a minimum of fifteen and a maximum of forty minutes. Now its sudden silence was more noticeable than its noise.

Taylor and Jackson were in one of the barns, working on the backhoe. Pauling was in the kitchen, opening cans for di

By eight-thirty visibility was so marginal that Reacher slid out of the Land Rover and headed for the kitchen. He met Jackson on the way. Jackson was coming back from the barn. His hands were covered with grease and oil.

Reacher asked, “How’s it going?”

“It’ll be ready,” Jackson said.

Then Taylor appeared out of the gloom.

“Ten hours to go,” he said. “We’re safe until dawn.”

“You sure?” Reacher said.

“Not really.”

“Me either.”

“So what does the U.S. Army field manual say about nighttime perimeter security?”

Reacher smiled. “It says you put a shitload of Claymores about a hundred yards out. If you hear one go off you know you just killed an intruder.”

“What if you don’t have any Claymores?”

“Then you hide.”

“That’s the SAS way. But we can’t hide the house.”

“We could take Kate and Jade someplace else.”

Taylor shook his head. “Better if they stay. I don’t want my focus split.”

“How do they feel about that?”

“Ask them.”

So Reacher did. He took a shortcut through the house and went out to the Mini. Told Kate to take a break for di

Di

Reacher cleared the table and washed the dishes and Taylor and Jackson went outside with their G-36s cocked and locked. Kate went upstairs to put Jade to bed. Pauling put logs on the fire. Watched Reacher at the sink.

“You OK?” she asked him.

“I’ve done KP before.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

He said, “We’ve got an SAS guy on one end of the house and a Parachute Regiment guy on the other. They’ve both got automatic weapons. And they’re both personally motivated. They won’t fall asleep.”

“I didn’t mean that, either. I meant with the whole thing.”

“I told you we wouldn’t be putting anybody on trial.”

Pauling nodded.

“She’s cute,” she said. “Isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“Kate. She makes me feel ancient.”

“Older women,” Reacher said. “Good for something.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. Give me a choice, I’d go home with you, not her.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m weird like that.”

“I’m supposed to put people on trial.”

“So was I, once. But I’m not going to this time. And I’m OK with that.”

“Me too. That’s what’s bothering me.”

“You’ll get over it. The backhoe and a plane ticket will help.”

“Distance? Six feet of earth and three thousand air miles?”

“Works every time.”

“Does it? Really?”

“We splattered a thousand bugs on our windshield yesterday. A thousand more today. One extra won’t make any difference.”

“Lane isn’t a bug.”

“No, he’s worse.”

“What about the others?”

“They’ve got a choice. The purest kind of choice there is. They can stay or they can go. Entirely up to them.”

“Where do you think they are now?”

“Somewhere out there,” Reacher said.

A half-hour later Kate Lane came downstairs again. The tails of her borrowed shirt were tied at her waist and the sleeves were rolled to her elbows.

“Jade’s asleep,” she said. She turned sideways to squeeze past a displaced dining chair and Reacher figured it was possible to see that she was pregnant. Just. Now that he had been told.

He asked, “Is she doing OK?”

“Better than we could have hoped,” Kate said. “She’s not sleeping great. The jet lag has screwed her up. And she’s a little nervous, I guess. And she doesn’t understand why there are no animals here. She doesn’t understand arable farming. She thinks we’re hiding a whole bunch of cute little creatures from her.”

“Does she know about the new brother or sister or whatever it’s going to be?”

Kate nodded. “We waited until we were on the plane. We tried to make it all part of the adventure.”

“How was it at the airport?”

“No problem. The passports were fine. They looked at the names more than the pictures. To make sure they matched the tickets.”

Pauling said, “So much for Homeland Security.”

Kate nodded again. “We got the idea from something we read in the newspaper. Some guy left on a short-notice business trip, grabbed his passport from the drawer, and he’d been through six separate countries before he realized it was his wife’s passport that he had grabbed.”

Reacher said, “Tell me how the whole thing went down.”

“It was pretty easy, really. We did stuff in advance. Bought the voice machine, rented the room, got the chair, took the car keys.”

“Taylor did most of that, right?”

“He said people would remember me more than him.”

“He was probably right.”

“But I had to buy the voice machine. Too weird if a guy who couldn’t talk wanted one.”

“I guess.”

“Then I copied the photograph at Staples. That was tough. I had to let Groom drive me. It would have been too suspicious to insist on Graham all the time. But after that it was easy. We left for Bloomingdale’s that morning and went straight to Graham’s apartment instead. Just holed up there and waited. We kept really quiet in case anyone checked with the neighbors. We kept the lights off and covered the windows in case anyone passed by on the street. Then later we started the phone calls. Right from the apartment. I was very nervous at first.”

“You forgot to say no cops.”

“I know. I thought I’d blown it immediately. But Edward didn’t seem to notice. Then it got much easier later. With practice.”