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Lamaison saw his chance, and he took it. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and scrabbled his heels on the carpet, trying to get his feet under him. But Reacher was ready. Readier than he had ever been. He kicked Lamaison hard in the side and swung an elbow that caught him on the ear. Wrestled him facedown on the floor and got a knee between his shoulder blades and jammed the SIG against the top of his spine. Lamaison’s head was up and Reacher knew he was staring out into the void. His feet were drumming on the carpet. He was screaming. Reacher could hear him clearly over the noise. He could feel his chest heaving.
Too late, Reacher thought. You reap what you sow.
Lamaison flailed weak backhand blows that didn’t come close to landing. Then he put his hands flat on the floor and tried to buck Reacher off. No chance, Reacher thought. Not unless you can do a push-up with two hundred and fifty pounds riding on your back. Some guys could. Reacher had seen it done. But Lamaison couldn’t. He was strong, but not strong enough. He strained for a spell and collapsed.
Reacher swapped the SIG into his left hand and looped his right over Lamaison’s neck from behind like a pincer. Lamaison had a big neck, but Reacher had big hands. He jammed his thumb and the tip of his middle finger into the hollows behind Lamaison’s ears and squeezed hard. Lamaison’s arteries compressed and his brain starved for oxygen and he stopped screaming and his feet stopped drumming. Reacher kept the pressure on for a whole extra minute and then rolled him over and spun him around and sat him up like a drunk.
Grabbed his belt and his collar.
Pushed him across the floor on his ass, feet-first.
He got him as far as the door sill and held him there, arms pi
A mile above the desert floor. Five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet.
Reacher had rehearsed a speech. He had started composing it in the De
Then he straightened Lamaison’s arms behind his back and pushed. Lamaison slid an inch and then lunged forward to try to jack his ass backward on the sill. Reacher pushed again. Lamaison folded up and his chest met his knees. He was staring straight down into the blackness. One mile. A speeding car would take a whole minute to cover it.
Reacher pushed. Lamaison let his shoulders go slack. No leverage.
Reacher put his heel flat against the small of Lamaison’s back.
Bent his leg.
Let go of Lamaison’s arms.
Straightened his leg, fast and smooth.
Lamaison went over the edge and disappeared into the night.
There was no scream. Or maybe there was. Maybe it was lost in the rotor noise. O’Do
Reacher said, “I was trying to decide whether to let them throw you out before I saved Karla. Tough decision. Took some time.”
“Where’s Neagley?”
“Working, I hope. The missiles rolled out of the gate in Colorado eight hours ago. And we don’t know where they’re going.”
82
There was nothing the pilot could do to them without killing himself also, so they left him alone in the cockpit. But not before checking the fuel load. It was low. Much less than an hour’s flying time. There was no cell reception. Reacher told the pilot to lose height and drift south to find a signal. Dixon and O’Do
O’Do
“The Middle East,” Dixon said. “And I’d send them by sea. The electronics through LA and the tubes through Seattle.”
Reacher raised his head. “Lamaison said they were going to Kashmir.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes and no. I think he was choosing to believe a lie to salve his own conscience. Whatever else he was, he was a citizen. He didn’t want to know the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Terrorism here in the States. Got to be. It’s obvious. Kashmir is a squabble between governments. Governments have purchasing missions. They don’t run around with Samsonite suitcases full of bearer bonds and bank access codes and diamonds.”
Dixon asked, “Is that what you found?”
“Highland Park. Sixty-five million dollars’ worth. Neagley’s got it all. You’re going to have to convert it for us, Karla.”
“If I survive. My plane back to New York might get blown up.”
Reacher nodded. “If not tomorrow, then the next day, or the next.”
“How do we find them? Eight hours at fifty miles an hour is already a radius of four hundred miles. Which is a half-million-square-mile circle.”
“Five hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and twenty,” Reacher said, automatically. “Assuming you use only three decimal places for pi. But that’s the bargain we made. We could stop them when the circle was small, or we could come for you guys.”
“Thanks,” O’Do
“Hey, I voted to stop the truck. Neagley overruled me.”
“So how do we do this?”
“You ever seen a really great centerfielder play baseball? He never chases the ball. He runs to where the ball is about to arrive. Like Mickey Mantle.”
“You never saw Mantle play.”
“I saw newsreels.”
“The United States is close to four million square miles. That’s bigger than center field at Yankee Stadium.”
“But not much,” Reacher said.
“So where do we run to?”
“Mahmoud isn’t dumb. In fact he strikes me as a very smart and cautious guy. He just spent sixty-five million dollars on what are basically just components. He must have insisted that part of the deal was that someone would show him how to screw the damn things together.”
“Who?”
“What did Neagley’s woman friend tell us? The politician? Diana Bond?”
“Lots of things.”
“She told us that New Age’s engineer does the quality control tests because so far he’s the only guy in the world who knows how Little Wing is supposed to work.”
Dixon said, “And Lamaison had him on a string somehow.”
“He was threatening the guy’s daughter.”
O’Do
Reacher shook his head. “Lamaison talked about the whole thing like it was firmly in the past. He said it was a done deal. There was something in his voice. Lamaison wasn’t taking anyone anywhere.”
“So who?”
“Not who,” Reacher said. “The question is, where?”