Page 55 of Exit Strategy
James eased back in his booth, but he didn’t say anything.
‘A guy propositioned you. Not long ago. He said he’d get you out of a fix or keep some kind of a secret for you. All you had to do was get a job here, stay out of trouble, and one day he’d ask you to do something in return. That day is today. Am I right?’
‘No.’
Gilmour pressed in closer. He said, ‘It’s okay. Don’t be embarrassed. The same thing happened to me. But the game has changed now.’
James said, ‘What do you mean?’
Reacher said, ‘The guy who propositioned you wascalled Weaver. He’s dead. He died yesterday. He was murdered. No one’s holding anything over you now. You can walk away if you want. Right now. No one will stop you. But we’re here to ask you to stay one more day. One more hour, maybe.’
James’s phone made a sound like a bell chiming. He took it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen, and a crease flashed across his forehead.
Reacher said, ‘Everything okay?’
James put his phone away. ‘Yeah. That was a buddy asking about swapping shifts tomorrow. I guess that won’t be an issue now. I won’t be here. But why should I stay today if I don’t have to?’
‘Weaver wanted you here because he was setting up a heist this morning. You probably figured that out already. We think he was killed by a rival group. They took his phone and sent a bogus message saying the shipment they want to steal is delayed until tomorrow. They sent another one to you. We saw it. You replied. You used the number two instead of the wordto. We think they sent the messages to give themselves a clear run at the shipment today. We’re going to watch. See what happens. And if we’re right, we’re going to need you to hold them here for a while.’
James thought for a moment, then said, ‘The shipment’s not delayed? It’s coming in today, on schedule?’
‘Correct.’
‘How do you know?’
Gilmour said, ‘Tracking it was my part of the puzzle.’
James said, ‘Okay, but why do you care if it gets stolen? Or who steals it?’
Reacher said, ‘Because of what’s in it. We think it’s something classified. Maybe something dangerous. We don’t want innocent people to get hurt.’
James stared into the distance for a moment, then pulled his focus back. He said, ‘All right. I’ll stay till you leave. And if you need me to, I’ll lock the whole damn terminal down.’
THIRTY-ONE
Morgan Strickland wrestled with the cot until he had forced it into a position that was supposed to resemble a couch. He thought that made it more like a torture device, and he never sat on it. But it did have one advantage. It kept meetings in his office relatively short.
Strickland moved around behind his desk and sat down. He had a few minutes before Steve McClaren was expected, and he wanted to jot down some talking points about his idea to set up a new subsidiary. He had come up with the suggestion on the fly the evening before but didn’t want McClaren to see that. And he didn’t just want to save face. He figured the idea could actually have legs. Another revenue stream could be good. Diversification could be good. And finding a justification for keeping the hopeless recruits would definitelybe good. It would be extremely good indeed, from his point of view.
McClaren knocked on the door at 8:55. Strickland called him in and gestured for him to sit. McClaren did and was still fidgeting around, trying to find the least uncomfortable position, when Strickland’s phone buzzed on his desk, just once.
Strickland picked it up and checked the screen. His face tightened.
McClaren said, ‘Another text? Want me to type out your reply?’
Strickland shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I do need to take a rain check on this discussion.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Not yet. But there will be if I don’t get some ducks back in a row, and fast.’
The Seagirt Marine Terminal was shaped like a giant rectangle with one corner lopped off. One long side and the short side faced the water. The other long side was lined with low, wide warehouses and covered storage sheds. The diagonal side ran alongside a narrow service road. The border with the road was secured by a fence. It was eight feet high. The top was angled outward and laced with razor wire. The panels were steel mesh, which was dark with rust after years of exposure to the salty sea air. The posts were square concrete, and rust from the rebar was leaching through and staining the rough surface.
Two ships were in dock that morning. They were moored nose to stern below a line of giant white cranes.The cranes’ booms stretched out across the cargo holds, and some trick of the light made it look like they were leaning down as they lifted out the containers, like prehistoric predators picking the meat off the bones of their prey. The ground beyond the cranes was scarred and pitted from decades of contact with containers as they’d been moved and stacked and loaded onto trucks for onward transport.
Reacher and Gilmour climbed back into the rental car and threaded their way across the terminal parallel with the ships and through the stacks of containers that filled the area. Some stacks were only three containers high. The tallest were seven. The narrowest were two containers wide. The deepest were six. The containers themselves came in all different colors and shades. Some were new and shiny. Some were dull and dented. Reacher remembered Gilmour’s intel buddy talking about thieves living out of containers in ports like this one and using them as bases to launch their assaults. Looking at the clusters that had been built up all around the place, Reacher could believe it. They were like little citadels. You could stay concealed in one for weeks. People could be hiding in them now, he thought. Kasselwood could be.
Gilmour continued patiently until the car was almost at the diagonal end of the terminal. Here the containers were formed up differently. A line of them jutted out from the fence at around sixty degrees. It was three containers long, three high, and one deep. Another stack, also three high, cut back at a ninety-degree angle. That left a small gap at the far end between the stack and the fence, like a breakwater at a harbor. Only this wall had been built toprotect from prying eyes, not waves or tides. That was clear.
