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Dixon said, “If there’s only one guy, and Lamaison wasn’t pla
“Which is ridiculous,” O’Do
“The guy doesn’t live in Century City,” Reacher said. “He lives way out in the desert. The middle of nowhere. The back of beyond. Where better to bring a semi full of missiles?”
“Cell phones are up,” the pilot called.
Reacher pulled out his Radio Shack pay-as-you-go. Found Neagley’s number. Hit the green button. She answered.
“Dean’s place?” he asked.
“Dean’s place,” she said. “For sure. I’m twenty minutes away.”
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The Bell had GPS, but not the kind that drew a road map on a screen. Not like O’Do
Then Reacher called Neagley back. She had gotten Dean’s address from Margaret Berenson in the Pasadena hotel. But she had no GPS, either. She was adrift in the dark, behind two last-generation headlights made weaker by blue paint on the lenses. And cell coverage was patchy. Reacher lost her twice. Before he lost her a third time he told her to find Dean’s spread and drive in tight circles with her lights on bright.
Reacher took Lamaison’s seat up front and pressed his forehead to the window the same way Lamaison had. Dixon and O’Do
They saw nothing.
Nothing at all, except vast featureless blackness and occasional pinpoints of orange light. Gas stations maybe, or tiny parking lots outside small grocery stores. They saw occasional cars on lonely roads, but none of them was Neagley’s Civic. Yellow headlight beams, not blue. Reacher tried his phone again. No service.
“Fuel’s really low,” the pilot said.
“Highway on the left,” Dixon called.
Reacher looked down. Not much of a highway. There were five cars on it within a linear mile, two heading south and three heading north. He closed his eyes and pictured the maps he had looked at.
“We shouldn’t be seeing a north-south highway,” he said. “We’re too far west.”
The Bell tilted and swung away east on a long fast curve and came level again.
The pilot said, “I’m going to have to set down soon.”
“You’ll set down when I tell you,” Reacher said.
North of the mountains the air was better. Some dust, some heat shimmer, but basically it was clear to the horizon. Way far ahead in the distance a tiny grid of lights winked and twinkled. Palmdale, presumably. A nice place, Reacher had heard. Expanding. Desirable. Therefore expensive. Therefore a guy looking for acres and isolation and maximum bang for the buck would stay well away from it.
“Turn south,” he said. “And climb.”
“Climbing eats fuel,” the pilot said.
“We need a better angle.”
The Bell climbed, slowly, a couple of hundred feet. The pilot dropped the nose and turned a wide circle, like he was hosing the horizon with an imaginary searchlight.
They saw nothing.
There was no cell coverage.
“Higher,” Reacher said.
“Can’t do it,” the pilot said. “Look at the dial.”
Reacher found the fuel gauge. The needle was riding the end stop. Officially the tanks were empty. He closed his eyes again and pictured the map. Berenson had said Dean had complained about the commute from hell. To Highland Park he had only two choices. Either Route 138 on the east flank of Mount San Antonio, or Route 2, to the west, past the Mount Wilson Observatory. Route 2 was probably smaller and twistier. And it joined the 210 at Glendale. Which probably made it more hellish than the eastern approach. No reason to choose it unless it was a total no-brainer. Which meant Dean was starting from somewhere due south of Palmdale, not east of south. Reacher looked straight ahead and waited until the distant grid of lights slid back into view.
“Now pull a one-eighty and head back,” he said.
“We’re out of fuel.”
“Just do it.”
The craft turned in its own length. Dipped its nose and clattered onward.
Sixty seconds later they found Neagley.
A mile in front and four hundred feet down they saw a cone of blue light turning and pulsing like a beacon. It looked like Neagley had the Civic on maximum lock and was driving a thirty-foot circle and flashing between dipped and brights as she went. The effect was spectacular. The beams swept and leapt and threw moving shadows and cleared a couple of hundred feet where there were no obstructions. Like a lighthouse on a rocky shore. There were small buttes and mesas and gullies, thrown into dramatic relief. To the north, low buildings. Power lines to the east. To the west the fractured land fell away into a shallow arroyo maybe forty feet wide and twenty deep.
“Land there,” Reacher said. “In the ditch. And keep the wheels up.”
The pilot said, “Why?”
“Because that’s the way I want it.”
The pilot drifted west a little and dropped a couple of hundred feet and turned to line up with the arroyo. Then he took the Bell down like an elevator. A siren went off to warn that he was landing with the undercarriage up. He ignored it and kept on going. He slowed twenty feet off the ground and eased on down and pancaked gently on the arroyo’s rocky bed. Stones crunched and metal grated and the floor tipped a foot from horizontal. Out the windows Reacher could see Neagley’s lights coming toward them through a sandstorm kicked up by the rotor wash.
Then the fuel ran out.
The engines died and the rotor shuddered to a stop.
The cabin went quiet.
Reacher was first out the door. He batted his way through clouds of warm dust and sent Dixon and O’Do
“Nice landing,” Reacher said. “You’re a good pilot.”
The guy said, “Thanks.”
“That thing with the rotation,” Reacher said. “The way it kept the door open up there. Smart move.”
“Basic aerodynamics.”
“But then, you had plenty of practice.”
The pilot said nothing.
“Four times,” Reacher said. “That I know about, at least.”
The pilot said nothing.
“Those men were my friends,” Reacher said.
“Lamaison told me I had to do it.”
“Or?”
“I would lose my job.”
“That’s all? You let them throw four live human beings out of your helicopter to save your job?”
“I’m paid to follow instructions.”
“You ever heard about a trial at Nuremberg? That excuse really doesn’t cut it anymore.”
The pilot said, “It was wrong, I know.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“What choice did I have?”
“Lots of choices,” Reacher said. Then he smiled. The pilot relaxed a little. Reacher shook his head like he was bemused by it all and leaned in and patted the guy on the cheek. Left his hand there, far side of the guy’s face, a friendly gesture. He worked his thumb up toward the guy’s eye socket, pressed his index finger on the guy’s temple, worked his other three fingers behind the guy’s ear, into his hair. Then he broke the guy’s neck, one-handed, with a single convulsive twist. Then he bounced the guy’s head around, front to back, side to side, to make sure the spinal cord was properly severed. He didn’t want the guy to wake up a paraplegic. He didn’t want the guy to wake up at all.