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He took more coffee and sat in an armchair and read the army papers. He figured the two PFCs would come get him when Thurman was ready to leave. They would drive their guests out to the flight line and salute smartly and finish their little show in style, just after midnight. Taxiing, takeoff, the climb, then ninety minutes in the air. That would get them back to Despair by two, which seemed to be the normal schedule. Three hours’ worth of free aviation fuel, plus a free four-hour di
The mess kitchen closed. Reacher finished the papers and dozed. The PFCs never showed. At twelve-ten in the morning Reacher woke up and heard the Piper’s engine in the distance and by the time the sound registered in his mind it was revving hard. By the time he made it outside the little white plane was on the runway. He stood and watched as it lifted off and disappeared into the darkness above.
60
The Humvee came back from the flight line and the two PFCs got out and nodded to Reacher like nothing was wrong. Reacher said, “I was supposed to be on that plane.”
The driver said, “No sir, Mr. Thurman told us you had a one-way ticket tonight. He told us you were heading south from here, on business of your own. He told us you were all done in Colorado.”
Reacher said, “Shit.” He thought back to Thurman, in front of the airplane barn. The deliberate pause.Debate in his face, some kind of a long-range calculus, like he was playing a long game, thinking eight moves ahead.
Fly with me tonight.
I won’t ask you to join me for di
Reacher shook his head. He was ninety minutes’ flying time from where he needed to be, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with no airplane.
Outwitted by a seventy-year-old preacher.
Dumb.
And tense.
I think they were all stirred up because they’re heading for the end of something.
What, he had no idea.
When, he had no clue.
He checked the map in his head. There were no highways in the Oklahoma panhandle. None at all. Just a thin red tracery of state four-lanes and county two-lanes. He glanced at the Humvee and at the PFCs and said, “You guys want to drive me out to a road?”
“Which road?”
“Any road that gets traffic more than once an hour.”
“You could try 287. That goes south.”
“I need to go north. Back to Colorado. Thurman wasn’t entirely frank with you.”
“287 goes north, too. All the way up to I- 70.”
“How far is that?”
“Sir, I believe it’s dead-on two hundred miles.”
Hitchhiking had gotten more and more difficult in the ten years since Reacher left the army. Drivers were less generous, more afraid. The West was sometimes better than the East, which helped. Day was always better than night, which didn’t. The Humvee from Fort Shaw let him out at twelve-forty-five, and it was a quarter past one in the morning before he saw his first northbound vehicle, a Ford F150 that didn’t even slow down to take a look. It just blew past. Ten minutes later an old Chevy Blazer did the same thing. Reacher blamed the movies. They made people scared of strangers. Although in reality most movies had the passing strangers messed up by the locals, not the other way around. Weird inbred families that hunted people for sport. But mostly Reacher blamed himself. He knew he was no kind of an attractive roadside proposition.Look at yourself. What do you see? Maria from San Diego was the kind of person that got rides easily. Sweet, small, unthreatening, needy. Vaughan would do OK, too. Hulks six-five in height were a riskier bet.
At ten of two a dark Toyota pick-up at least slowed and took a look before passing by, which was progress of a sort. Five after two, a twenty-year-old Cadillac swept past. It had an out-of-tune motor and a collapsed rear suspension and an old woman low down behind the wheel. White hair, thin neck. What Reacher privately called a Q-tip. Not a likely prospect. Then at a quarter past two an old Suburban heaved into view. In Reacher’s experience new Suburbans were driven by uptight assholes, but old models were plain utilitarian vehicles often driven by plain utilitarian people. Their bulk often implied a kind of no-nonsense self-confidence on the part of their owners. The kind of self-confidence that said strangers weren’t necessarily a problem.
The best hope so far.
Reacher stepped off the shoulder and put one foot in the traffic lane. Cocked his thumb in a way that suggested need, but not desperation.
The Suburban’s brights came on.
It slowed.
It stopped altogether fifteen feet short of where Reacher was standing. A smart move. It gave the guy behind the wheel a chance to look over his potential passenger without the kind of social pressure that face-to-face proximity would imply. Reacher couldn’t see the driver. Too much dazzle from the headlights.
A decision was made. The headlights died back to low beam and the truck rolled forward and stopped again. The window came down. The driver was a fat red-faced man. He was clinging to the wheel like he would fall out of his chair if he didn’t. He said, “Where are you headed?” His voice was slurred.
Reacher said, “North into Colorado. I’m trying to get to a place called Hope.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Me neither, until a few days ago.”
“How far away?”
“Maybe four hours.”
“Is it on the way to Denver?”
“It would be a slight detour.”
“Are you an honest man?”
Reacher said, “Usually.”
“Are you a good driver?”
“Not really.”
“Are you drunk?”
Reacher said, “Not even a little bit.”
The guy said, “Well, I am. A lot. So you drive to wherever it is you want to go, keep me out of trouble, let me sleep it off, and then point me toward Denver, OK?”
Reacher said, “Deal.”
Hitchhiking usually carried with it the promise of random personal encounters and conversations made more intense by the certainty that their durations would necessarily be limited. Not this time. The florid guy heaved himself over into the passenger seat and collapsed its back against a worn mechanism and went straight to sleep without another word. He snored and bubbled far back in his throat and he thrashed restlessly. According to the smell of his breath he had been drinking bourbon all evening. A lot of bourbon, probably with bourbon chasers. He was still going to be illegal when he woke up in four hours’ time and pressed on to Denver.
Not Reacher’s problem.
The Suburban was old and worn and grimy. Its total elapsed mileage was displayed in a window below the center of the speedometer in LED figures like a cheap watch. A lot of figures, starting with a two. The motor wasn’t in great shape. It still had power but it had a lot of weight to haul and it didn’t want to go much faster than sixty miles an hour. There was a cell phone on the center console. It was switched off. Reacher glanced at his sleeping passenger and switched it on. It wouldn’t spark up. No charge in the battery. There was a charger plugged into the cigarette lighter. Reacher steered with his knees and traced the free end of the wire and shoved it into a hole on the bottom of the phone. Tried the switch again. The phone came on with a tinkly little tune. The sleeping guy just snored on.
The phone showed no service. The middle of nowhere.
The road narrowed from four lanes to two. Reacher drove on. Five miles ahead he could see a pair of red tail lights. Small lights, set low, widely spaced. Moving north a little slower than the Suburban. The speed differential was maybe five miles an hour, which meant it took sixty whole minutes to close the gap. The lights were on a U-Haul truck. It was cruising at about fifty-five. When Reacher came up behind it, it sped up to a steady sixty. Reacher pulled out and tried to pass, but the Suburban wouldn’t accelerate. It bogged down at about sixty-two, which would have put Reacher on the wrong side of the road for a long, long time. Maybe forever. So he eased off and tucked in behind the truck and battled the frustration of having to drive just a little slower than he wanted to. The cell phone was still showing no service. There was nothing to see behind. Nothing to see to the sides. The world was dark and empty. Thirty feet ahead, the U-Haul’s back panel was lit up bright by the Suburban’s headlights. It was like a rolling billboard. An advertisement. It had a picture of three trucks parked side by side at an angle: small, medium, and large. Each was shown in U-Haul’s distinctive orange and white colors. Each hadU-Haul painted on its front. Each promised an automatic transmission, a gentle ride, a low deck, air conditioning, and cloth seats. A price of nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents was advertised in large figures. Reacher eased the Suburban closer to check the fine print. The bargain price was for in-town use of a small truck for one day, mileage extra, subject to contract terms. Reacher eased off again and fell back.