Page 8 of Exit Strategy
‘You know, some guys, their careers to date have met with mixed fortunes. That doesn’t mean the die is cast. It doesn’t mean they’re write-offs. Maybe any bumps in the road they hit weren’t their fault. Maybe the army dropped the ball. Couldn’t get the job done in the training arena.Which means we get another chance to prove we’re better. So I’m hoping many of them will get through. I’m hoping most of them will.’
‘I’m not passing anyone who’s not fit.’
‘I’m not asking you to. Just keep an open mind. Remember, we were all in their boots once.’
‘We were. But at least we knew how to tie them on our own.’
The band Reacher was in town to see was even better than he remembered. The singer’s voice sounded like it came from a different dimension. It was soft and powerful and confident and vulnerable, all at the same time. The guitar wailed and soared, and he could feel the bass and drums resonating in his chest. The set ended after what felt like five minutes, but Reacher didn’t want to leave right away. He stayed for the next band, which was more mainstream and less bluesy. It was still good, though. They wrapped at a minute past ten and immediately the crew got to work resetting the stage for the headliners. Reacher watched them for a minute then pulled himself away. He made his way through the crowd, out of the venue, and started toward the warehouse. The note called for the rendezvous to happen at midnight, so Reacher planned to be there no later than eleven.
Two other people left the concert just ahead of Reacher. A man and a woman, neatly dressed, maybe in their late thirties. A couple. In theory, at least. Maybe they had been at the start of the evening, Reacher thought. Whether they would still be together when the night came to an end was hanging in the balance. They were walking fast,taking long, hard strides, each hugging their own side of the footpath, backs stiff, sharp elbows angled outward, not looking at each other, not talking. They made it to the street and the woman darted off the sidewalk and raced over to the first in a line of waiting cabs. She wrenched open the back door, jumped inside, and slammed the door closed before the man could catch up. He was left standing alone, stranded in the center of the street. Reacher expected the guy to take that as a cue to walk away and rethink his priorities, but after a moment he slunk around to the far side of the car, opened the other door, and slid in alongside the woman. Reacher strolled past and saw the pair staring angrily in opposite directions, each with their arms tightly folded.
The driver of the next cab in line caught Reacher’s eye. Reacher half expected him to offer a ride but instead the guy suddenly looked down and started to fiddle with his phone. Reacher wasn’t too surprised. He was used to drivers wanting to avoid him. Something to do with the way he looked, he thought, allied with the constant diet of horror stories people were fed by the press and online. It happened more frequently as the years went by but he usually came up against it when he was trying to hitch a ride. Now it seemed to be spreading to taxis, too. Another change in the fabric of society, Reacher thought. Another thread coming loose. Maybe social media was to blame. Maybe there was something to the article he’d read in the coffee shop after all.
Reacher could have tried the next cab but chose to ignore it. He liked being on foot in a city at night. He liked the sounds. The rhythms. The darkness. Given hisheight and bulk Reacher was not exactly built to blend into a crowd so night was the only time he could enjoy a little anonymity. He passed the rest of the cabs – ten in all – and kept on walking. The streets were still bustling with traffic – mainly cars, plus a couple of delivery vans, a garbage truck spewing a thick black cloud of exhaust fumes, and a solitary police cruiser – but the sidewalks were practically deserted. He only saw a dozen other people. Some were heads down, hurrying. A couple was holding hands and strolling. One guy was clearly drunk. But none of them paid him any unwelcome attention. As he walked he saw several more cabs, all with different license plates, but all from the same company as the driver who had blanked him. Rides-R-Us. Some of the cabs were heading toward him. Some were heading away. And none were carrying any passengers. Reacher wondered how the outfit could stay in business if all its employees were so averse to doing their jobs. He figured something else must be in play, like a taxi company he’d read about where it had dawned on the owner that delivering drugs was more lucrative than transporting people.
Reacher turned onto Argyle Street. No traffic was moving. No vehicles were parked. The sidewalks were empty, as far as he could tell in the gloom. All the streetlights were broken and there were no lights showing in the windows of any of the buildings. He started toward the warehouse then heard tires scrubbing across the coarse asphalt behind him, along with the growl of a rough, ragged engine. He slowed and glanced over his shoulder. A car was approaching. Another taxi. It was from the same company as before. And it had no passengers on board.Something dubious was going on. That was clear. But the fact it was happening on every street he walked down was a coincidence too far, Reacher thought. He stepped out into the street and raised his hand like he was trying to flag the cab down. The car slowed. The driver locked eyes with Reacher, then hit the gas and swerved around him. It kept going straight for fifty yards, then coasted to the side of the road and rolled to a stop.
Reacher was tempted to circle around to a busier neighborhood and find a place where he could prevent the next empty Rides-R-Us car from escaping before he could question the driver, but he knew he didn’t have time. The cab mystery was intriguing, but it was less important than getting set in the warehouse ahead of the guy who’d invited him there. So Reacher stayed in the middle of the street, clearly visible to anyone who was watching, and walked forward until he was level with the center of the next building. He headed toward its entrance as if that was his intended destination and kept moving until he was lost in the shadows. His eyes were on the stationary cab. It stayed where it was for a minute. Two. Then its brake lights went out and it pulled away. As soon as it was out of sight, Reacher doubled back to the warehouse. He found the door, heaved it open, stepped through, eased the door as near to closed as it would go without making a sound, then dodged to the side and eased back until he felt the wall against his shoulder blades. The interior of the place was pitch-dark. It was silent. The air was stale. Reacher stood still for two minutes. Three. Then he shouldered the door into its frame, took out his flashlight, held it between his teeth, and turned to the stack ofplanks he’d piled up earlier. He forced each one in turn into place behind its pair of brackets and checked that the door was secure. Then he made a complete circuit of the storage area. The beam of his flashlight was too feeble to penetrate all the way into the darkness so he sensed as much as saw that the cavernous space was still empty. He made his way up the stairs to the third floor and checked the filing rooms. They were still deserted. He checked the offices on the second floor. They also remained empty. Finally he picked a spot at the right-hand end of the gallery near where he had first climbed in. The only way into the building was once again the broken window in the adjacent office. Anyone who entered that way would have to walk right past him. And he was perfectly placed to see if anyone opened the shutter that covered the entrance to the first loading bay.
The clock in Reacher’s head told him it was 10:52. That left sixty-eight minutes until the rendezvous unless the guy who’d left the note was cautious and showed up early. Or longer, if he was careless or disorganized or liked to play dubious mind games. Either way was fine with Reacher. Waiting was one of his strengths. It was a skill he had honed during his years in the army but even before that it had suited his temperament. Time had taught him that he had two natural states: violent, explosive action, or quiet, almost comatose inactivity.
SEVEN
The guy who had left the note turned out to be cautious.
Reacher heard a scrabbling sound, low down, on the far side of the staircase, at 11:45. Fifteen minutes before the appointed time. Someone was outside fiddling with the lock on the loading bay shutter. The sound stopped and a narrow strip of dim light appeared at the base of the entrance. It grew in a series of sharp jerks, each accompanied by a harsh metallic shriek, until it was a foot high. Then two feet. Then three. A shadow with a hunched back ducked under the solid edge and pushed it most of the way down again. Reacher heard a rustling sound, then a soft thump. A flashlight clicked to life and in the backwash Reacher saw a man dressed all in black leaning over a backpack he had set on the ground in front of him. The guy pulled out a pistol – it was on the largeside, maybe a 1911 – tucked it into his waistband, closed the pack, and swung it onto his back. Reacher caught a glimpse of the guy’s face. He recognized him. It was the man who had brushed past him at the coffee shop just after noon.
The guy drew the gun and held it in his right hand. He took the flashlight in his left, clamped it beneath the weapon, and made his way slowly around the warehouse’s storage area. He took his time and covered every square inch of the floor. The beam of the light and the muzzle of the gun moved smoothly, in unison. He swept ten feet up all the walls. But he didn’t go any higher. In the shadow on the balcony, Reacher smiled. A long time before, in Escape and Evasion training, he’d been taught that if you need to hide, you climb, because no one ever looks up. No one knows why. It’s just some quirk of human nature. He had thought that was crazy at first, but over the years it had been proved right, time after time.
The guy finished his search but instead of taking a position with the staircase between himself and the loading bay door, as Reacher had expected, he continued straight along the center of the space. He stepped up onto the lowest stair and started to climb. The old wood creaked and groaned. The guy took two more steps. Four. Reacher slipped the note the guy had left out of his pocket, ready to use it to identify himself as a friend when the flashlight beam picked him out. The guy continued up four more steps. His pace was steady. Unhurried. The wood continued to complain. Then the guy stopped climbing. His head ducked down. There was a louder creak, theflashlight went out, and the guy disappeared in the total darkness.
Reacher returned the note to his pocket and strained his ears to pick up any kind of sound. His eyes searched for motion. He heard nothing. Saw nothing. Five minutes crawled past. Six. Then he latched onto another scrabbling noise. Below him and far to his right. Not metallic this time. More like pointy claws skittering across concrete. The guy’s flashlight flickered back into life. The beam jerked back and forth across the floor at the distant end of the warehouse. It picked up movement. A rat, scurrying toward the far corner. The muzzle of the guy’s gun flared. Thecrackof the shot echoed off the walls. A spent bullet whined as it ricocheted off the solid ground. A shell case bounced off the banister rail and rattled onto the floor, and a smell like burned hair tickled Reacher’s nose.
The guy kept the flashlight switched on for another five seconds. It was a little shaky now, but steady enough to pick out a patch of blood and fur that was sprayed across the foot of the end wall. That was all that remained of the rat. The guy himself was sitting three-quarters of the way up the staircase. His backpack was by his side. His right foot was wedged securely two steps down, and his legs were crossed at the knee so that his left thigh formed a platform to support his right forearm. His body was angled to his left, giving him a perfect vantage point to cover the loading bay entrance. He breathed deeply, turned back to resume his vigil, and doused the light.
Reacher now knew where the guy was, and he had picked up some other useful information at the same time.The guy he was watching was tactically proficient. Lowering the loading bay shutter to leave such a narrow gap had been a smart move. Anyone wanting to enter would have to roll on the ground, so even if they were armed they would be vulnerable and exposed – unless they pulled the shutter up higher and risked making a noise, which would eliminate any element of surprise. The guy was also a good shot. He had quick reactions. But he was jumpy as hell. He had gone to such lengths to set up a rendezvous where he had the upper hand and then he had blown his advantage with the gunshot. Anyone approaching or staking the place out would have heard it. And he hadn’t fired because he was in real danger, but because he’d been spooked by a rodent. Reacher was ten times closer than the rat had been. He was a hundred times bigger. And he was infinitely more threatening. If he broke cover, could he rely on the guy to recognize him? To realize why he was there? The guy had seen him once, briefly, at the coffee shop. He hadn’t been under stress then. Now he was freaking out. Would he hold his fire? Was there any guarantee? Reacher thought not. He still wanted to help but now he figured the risk outweighed the reward by too great a margin. So he changed his plan. He would stay where he was, safe in the darkness, and wait for it to dawn on the guy that he’d been stood up. He would leave, and after that, Reacher would head to the Greyhound station. He had done what he’d come to town to do and he saw no reason to stay any longer.
Morgan Strickland had been alone in his office for over an hour. He was sitting slumped in his squeaky chair, feeton the metal desk, eye on the monitor. He was watching the last couple of technicians who were working on the area that was going to be used the next morning for the recruits’ final assessment. He was going to wait until they left before he made his move. That wasn’t strictly necessary. He was the boss. He was entitled to enter the control room whenever he liked. He didn’t need a reason, or an excuse. But he had learned over the years that it sometimes paid to be cautious.
The technicians were thorough. Strickland couldn’t deny that. Normally he would have applauded such conscientiousness, but that night he wished they would hurry. He would be happy to see the back of them. When the coast was finally clear, he got to his feet and stretched his back the way he’d been taught two decades previously. He took a step toward the door, then paused. His phone had started to ring. The melody was ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica, which meant the caller was on his list of special contacts. He saw it was someone else who favored caution. Though in Strickland’s opinion, this guy, Mark Hewson, had a tendency to let his caution tip over into cowardice. Especially since his move to the Pentagon.
Strickland answered and said, ‘Mark. Have you signed?’
There was silence on the line for a moment, then Hewson replied, ‘If it were up to me, I would have. You know that, Morgan. But it’s not that simple. The DoD is a big ship. It takes a while to change direction.’
‘How many times do we have to go over this? It’s simple. Ask yourself: What do you want? Promotion and glory? Or to sit on your ass in a cubicle for the rest of your career?’
‘I’m not in a cubicle. I have—’
‘Focus, Mark. Fortune favors the brave. You know that. You have the chance to change history. What I’m proposing is genuinely the best way forward. The country can’t afford to always be preparing for the last war. My way is the future. We can prove that.’
‘I know. I’m on board all the way. But there are people I have to bring with me. People who need time to adapt to new ideas.’
‘Screw those people. If you – when we – win, nothing else matters. You know how people say it’s easier to seek forgiveness than to ask permission? Well, that’s bullshit because you don’t need either when you win.’
‘I know. I get it. But there are angles I have to deal with that don’t impact you. I have a major PR minefield to tiptoe through with this whole Armenia thing.’
‘What PR minefield? You think the public would back Iran over whoever we pick?’
