CHAPTER ONE
Friday, November 5
11:10 p.m.
Washington, DC
What would Jack Reacher do?
Sanchez considered the question again for a moment before he ignored orders and executed the scumbag with a single shot to the head.
At close range, any gun might have done the job. Sanchez had chosen a Glock 19, Gen 4. Utilitarian, tough, reliable. Comfortable grip, controllable recoil, easily concealed. Used by law enforcement because of its stopping power.
A perfect choice for a man anticipating precisely this situation.
Six and a half long seconds later, Sanchez punched the off button on the military grade speakerphone.
Connection terminated.
Twenty-two floors below, the gunshot exploded through the eavesdropper’s equally high-tech headset, traumatizing her eardrums almost as if she’d been standing in front of the bullet.
The crisp audio feed she’d appreciated for the past eighty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds was gone, as though she’d been dropped head first into a vat of clammy marshmallow cream.
Could Sanchez have gone off the rails at the very first obstacle?
She increased the audio to maximum volume and strained to hear his explanation, but heard only the severed connection’s silence.
She jumped up, ripped off her headset with one latex-gloved hand and flung it to the floor of the four-by-four janitor’s closet.
Christ!
She might have screamed.
Thoughts slammed like racquetballs inside her skull as she stormed back and forth in the hot, tiny closet. Even if she could’ve heard them, her sweat-soaked coveralls and paper boots no longer rustled crisply with each step as they had earlier in the evening. Behind her surgical mask, she sucked deep breaths and shouted silenced, frustrated curses.
She forced herself down into her guerilla training. Allowed fifteen more seconds to assess, analyze, plan, and perform.
Assess and analyze.
O’Donnell should have seen it coming. She felt slightly less stupid because O’Donnell had missed the obvious, too. Sanchez was far wilier (and certainly far crazier) than she’d believed. But O’Donnell had known Sanchez better than she did and O’Donnell was now dead. It was entirely possible that O’Donnell had committed suicide by allowing Sanchez to kill him now instead of torturing him later.
The two remaining targets could disclose what O’Donnell had refused to reveal.
Which meant her goal was still in play.
O’Donnell had made either a stupid blunder or a stupid choice, but his death didn’t compromise her ultimate mission. She could still acquire what she’d come to collect. Her plan was altered, but not irrevocably thwarted.
Still, Sanchez’s unsanctioned killing of O’Donnell was nothing short of disaster. For him. He had to know that, too. Which brought her back to the fact that Sanchez was far from okay. She must have missed something important about him. Something that might present a bigger problem. But what?
She hurried through her recall of the meeting she’d overheard. The erratic shuffling of Sanchez’s shoes as he paced O’Donnell’s office, pouring out his woes. At the time, she’d been impatient, stewing in her own sweat in the airless closet, willing Sanchez to get the hell on with it. She hadn’t paid close attention to his ramblings. Mere impressions stuck in her memory. She ticked them off rapidly.
Sanchez increasingly distraught as he explained his plight, his anger growing while he recounted his five-year ordeal.
O’Donnell expressing shock. (Maybe he wasn’t lying.)
Sanchez blaming O’Donnell, who claimed surprise. (Maybe he’d been a bit contrite.)
She cringed, recalling Sanchez’s sudden switch from rage to whining pleas, begging O’Donnell to save him this time, as O’Donnell and the rest of their crew had failed to make the smallest effort to do five years before.
O’Donnell claimed he couldn’t supply what Sanchez needed. (Almost certainly lying, of course, as thieves everywhere do.)
Sanchez’s ordnance replied.
Then what?
Seven seconds before she’d recovered her wits enough to check the timer.
What happened next?
She’d been partially deafened by the blast. Her experience told her bullets blasted predictably into bony skulls, through gelatinous brain and out again, carrying moist soft facial tissue along with them. She could almost smell the gunshot, the metallic scent of blood.
Now, the office was no doubt a gooey mess, Sanchez was gone, and their perfect plan compromised. She’d failed. She’d need a plausible solution before she reported the damage, but that would come later, when she’d removed herself far enough away from the scene.
Now she was pacing again like an outraged tiger. She rubbed her face, and memory-pain sliced afresh; she jerked both palms away from the long-healed scars as if they’d been inflicted again by Sanchez’s betrayal.
She sat on the janitor’s stepstool, becalmed, ignoring the timer, backhanded the sweat from her brow and then stroked the narrow scar that stretched from the corner of her left upper lip to the outside corner of her left eye. Her index finger rested on the bump of keloid above her cheekbone, massaging absently, seeking comfort and clarity.
Rehearsals proved she could disappear in ninety-five seconds leaving no trace evidence. She should be outside the building in less than three minutes. But then what? Her escape plan was compromised because Sanchez couldn’t be trusted.
Plan and perform.
Eliminate the hostages in Mexico. At least one. Immediately. Sanchez needed to know she was a woman of her word, to believe she’d kill the others if he stepped out of line again.
She’d intended to kill all of the hostages anyway. Right after Sanchez collected what he’d been sent to retrieve. His wife and brats would be of no use then. Sanchez’s failure meant she was forced to revise—terminate one hostage a little early—and delay progress toward the goal, but only slightly.
Damn Sanchez. He was too smart to have failed so spectacularly. He’d no doubt planned everything. What about her hostages? Had Sanchez planned a rescue? Changes were now required there as well.
Sanchez should never have betrayed her. She knew precisely how to deal with him. She challenged herself to remain still, kneading the pea-sized keloid like a prayer bead, while her mind raced methodically as if the devil himself snapped her ass.
Go now. Go now, her intuition prodded with each beat of her pounding heart inside the steamy, sweat-soaked cocoon that enveloped her.
Forty-two seconds after the gunshot, she was ready. She pulled off the wet protective gear, ripped the paper wall coverings down, stuffed it all along with the listening equipment into her oversized litigation bag.
A soaking wet woman fleeing a murder scene would be noticed and remembered in this neighborhood. She’d need fresh clothes immediately. She had none. She shrugged into her overcoat and turned up the collar. For now, she’d alter her planned route as she could and her overcoat must suffice.
She took one last look around the room, satisfied she’d sanitized as well as possible. She flipped off the lights, pressed the knob’s center button to lock the door from the inside, and closed the janitor’s closet solidly behind her. Sliding her gloved hand into her pocket, she slipped down the hall into the lobby and out into the Friday evening pedestrian traffic less than three minutes after Sanchez killed O’Donnell.
Six blocks away, cloaked by the late night crowd waiting for traffic to clear before entering a crosswalk, she heard her own voice murmur, “What the hell was that soldier thinking?”
Her chance to ask him came sooner than she’d expected.
CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, November 11
5:07 a.m.
Washington, DC
The untraceable cell phone vibrated itself almost to the hotel’s bedside table edge before FBI Special Agent Kim Otto awakened. She watched the wretched thing snag against the table’s lip and let it dance an unrelenting jig for a few more moments before she chose to answer.
Only one person could be calling and he wouldn’t give up.
Her assignment was off the books—not stated to her as a mere preference, but hammered home. He wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to use his secret phone inside or outside the Agency.
Kim slid her arm outside the cozy warmth of the down comforter, and brought the viper to her ear. “Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked, not caring about the edge in her tone.
The Boss ignored her question and her foul mood. “How many times have you seen him in DC this week?”
“Why?” Not even bothering to ask whom he meant or how he knew she’d seen Reacher at all. She’d found staying under the radar a monstrous challenge in the era of constant surveillance, and had experienced the consequences of failure too many times already. She kept her conversations to a minimum; her face turned away from cameras, and used only the most secure connections possible. Even so, she was only too aware that more than one pair of eyes was watching her every move.
“Get in and get out today,” the Boss said. “And watch yourself. He knows who you are and what you’re doing now. He won’t like you messing with his team.”
Kim had already seen the results of things and people Reacher disliked. Not pretty. “Can’t see that we have a choice, given what you’ve supplied us to work with.”
Ten days ago, they’d been tasked with completing a background check on a subject being considered for a special assignment. Routine. Except the assignment was classified above her clearance and the subject was Jack Reacher and someone had worked very hard to ensure every paper trail ended with his discharge from the Army fifteen years ago.
For the first five days, she and her partner believed Reacher dead. For the next five, they’d learned so little about him that he might as well have been. Today, they planned to change their luck.
“You could tell me what you know,” she said. “Or give us access to his existing files. Or do anything remotely helpful.”
She listened to silent breathing for a moment, then tossed off the duvet and shivered with the cold shock. High-tech microfiber pajamas might be great for travel packs, but they certainly weren’t warm. If she didn’t get back to her Detroit apartment soon, shopping would be unavoidable.
“Check your mail,” the Boss said at last, as if he’d only made up his mind to send her something during the call. “And be guided accordingly.”
After that, she heard nothing at all. She threw the cell phone across the room, where it hit the wall and bounced onto the carpet. With luck, maybe the damn thing would never ring again.
Sleep was now impossible.
Three hours later, showered and dressed and fully briefed on the short report the Boss had sent, Kim opened her door after the first knock. Room service. She signed for her meal, ushered the server out, and poured more strong black coffee. She snagged a piece of toast and spread a bit of jam over it. She wasn’t really hungry, but bread would soak up the two mini-pots of coffee already in her stomach and reduce her antacid consumption. Maybe.
The next knock on her door marked the arrival of her new partner, Carlos Gaspar.
“Let’s ignore the dead ones for the moment,” she said as he walked in. “Any brilliant ideas about the others?”
Both had dressed for the same work day—hours of interviews in the business districts of DC and New York—but Gaspar’s relaxed khaki was all casual Miami, and Kim’s tailored black suit was pure, stodgy Detroit. They looked exactly like what they were, Kim thought. She found that refreshingly unusual.
“Look on the bright side,” he joked. “Fewer interview subjects means less work. We’ll make it home for Thanksgiving.”
Kim’s relationship with Gaspar mirrored the paradox of their assignment. Straightforward, but complicated. Easily stated, but impossible to predict. Reliable, but dangerous. In some ways, Kim felt she knew Gaspar well because of everything they’d already survived. In other ways, Gaspar remained nearly as much a mystery to her as Reacher himself.
Gaspar stood facing the window, watching the cold, grey November sky, preoccupied. His wife was very pregnant and alone in Miami with Gaspar’s four daughters. Kim knew he wasn’t happy about being away from Maria and the girls. And something very negative had happened yesterday in Gaspar’s Cuban-American community while they were in Virginia following up a lead on Reacher. Something that worried him. Gaspar didn’t tell her about the problem and made it clear he didn’t want to discuss his personal business with her. She was glad. She had enough on her plate already.
“I’m waiting for that brilliance,” she said.
Gaspar shrugged. “Brilliance? Such as?”
Kim watched him a moment. She was lead on this assignment and it was up to the leader to make sure all the players were fit for duty. Events had already proved the job was a challenge for Gaspar, given his injuries. Today’s plan was routine pavement pounding and interviews.
Before the Boss’s call, she’d thought she could afford to give him twenty-four hours to figure things out at home. After that, if the assignment continued, he needed his head (and as much of his body as he could muster) in the game. For now, she’d let that plan stand. But she’d do whatever she had to do, including replacing him, if it came to that. She wouldn’t work with Gaspar if he couldn’t do the job.
Like her mother insisted, when there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.
With exaggerated patience, Kim recapped what Gaspar seemed to be ignoring. “Reacher’s old unit had nine members, counting Reacher. We’ve spent two days trying to track them down. We were only able to locate three. We’re set to meet the first two of those this afternoon. You were supposed to come up with a can’t-miss approach for today’s two. What are we going to say?”
Gaspar’s tone was clipped, as if he were reciting the phone book. “We’re doing a routine background check on Jack Reacher for the FBI Special Personnel Task Force, updating his personnel file since he left the Army. We want to know, soup to nuts, what they can contribute to our almost non-existent data.”
“Just like that?”
“Why not? The guy’s a licensed P.I. and the woman’s a forensic accountant. Both ex-Army police. They’ll get it.”
Kim drained the coffee cup and refilled. She felt taut as a drawn bowstring.
“He didn’t call you?” she asked.
“Sure, he called,” Gaspar told the view out the window. “He warned me about Reacher coming our way. He sent the report. I’ve read it. Nothing worth getting our panties in a wad over. Let’s not get off course again just because he’s yanking our chains, okay? We tried that last week and it nearly got us killed.”
Now that they had at least an understandable plan, Kim wanted to stay on track, too. Despite running into dead ends everywhere they turned, they’d managed to uncover bits of Reacher’s Army file that the Boss had refused to supply. They’d already tracked down two of Reacher’s prior commanding officers. Both generals now, and both tight-lipped. Deliberately unhelpful, beyond suggesting they interview members of the elite special investigative unit Reacher had recruited and trained. For two years, the team had been inseparable, a force to be reckoned with, never messed with. If Reacher had kept in touch with anyone, the two generals said, it would be the eight other members of that unit.
Given what she knew about Reacher so far, Kim had her doubts. But a group of people once that tight could be a gold mine of information. Maybe. Besides, neither she nor Gaspar had identified any viable alternatives.
So, after unencrypting the Boss’s early morning e-mail, they had even fewer.
She asked, “I wouldn’t feel too optimistic about my life span if I were in Reacher’s old unit, would you?”
Gaspar shrugged again, distracted, still gazing out the window—or at his reflection. “Special investigative units are manned by soldiers with a death wish, Sunshine,” he said. “Volunteers for extremely hazardous duty. Natural risk-takers. Adrenaline junkies. They continue risking life and limb after discharge, too. Predictably, they don’t live long.”
She nodded. “True. But, Reacher’s team never lost a member while they were handling the Army’s extremely hazardous duty. They leave the service, and now four of the eight are dead, another is presumed dead, not one has died of natural causes, and their leader can’t be found.”
Gaspar shrugged. “The first one died in a car wreck. Car crashes kill plenty of Americans every year.”
As if he’d said one member of Reacher’s unit had died on a trip to Mars, she asked, “You believe that was an accident?”
At long last, he turned to her. “You don’t, I suppose,” he sighed.
“Let’s say you’re right. One car wreck. What about the others? Five years ago, one member of the unit disappeared and three more members died. All within days of each other. All three of the known dead tortured, their legs broken to immobilize them. And then each one dropped, still alive, from a helicopter miles above the desert floor. That is not normal risk-taking, adrenaline-junkie death-defiance, Chico. No way.”
The data they’d uncovered on Reacher’s army days had, as usual, revealed too little. He had never been popular with his peers. As a military policeman, Reacher was in trouble often and he’d made enemies.
But he’d been discharged fifteen long years ago and a lot of those enemies were dead or not interested in Reacher anymore. Unlikely Reacher would hide from anyone out to hurt him, anyway, based on the little Kim knew of the man. He was more of a confront-me-if-you-dare type.
So why was he living so far off the grid not even a sniffing bloodhound could find him? There had to be a reason, and the one she’d reluctantly reached was as good a working hypothesis as any.
Gaspar shrugged, wagged his head back and forth. “It bothers me that I’m starting to understand you. You’re actually thinking Reacher killed four members of his own unit? Oh, and maybe five while we’re at it, counting Jorge Sanchez, who hasn’t been found yet.” His tone conveyed precisely how preposterous he thought her suspicion was. “The Boss sure as hell didn’t tell me that. Can you prove it?”
She said nothing.
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