Never Go Back

The second wallet was loaded more or less the same as the first. A healthy wad of twenties, and some leathery small bills the guy had gotten in change, and a deck of credit cards, and a North Carolina driver’s licence with the guy’s picture and the name Ronald David Baldacci.

There was no military ID.

Reacher said, ‘If one is sanitized, they all are.’

‘Or they’re all civilians.’

‘Suppose they aren’t.’

‘Then they’re lifers at Fort Bragg. To have North Carolina DLs.’

‘Who’s at Fort Bragg these days?’

‘Nearly forty thousand people. More than two hundred and fifty square miles. It was a city all its own at the last census. There’s a lot of airborne, including the 82nd. And Special Forces, and psy-ops, and the Kennedy Special Warfare Center, and the 16th MP, and a lot of sustainment and logistics.’

‘A lot of people in and out of Afghanistan, in other words.’

‘Including the logistics people. They brought stuff in, and now they’re taking it out again. Or not.’

‘You still think this is a repeat of the Big Dog scam?’

‘Except bigger and better. And I don’t think they’re selling it here at home. I think they’re selling it to the native population.’

‘We’ll find out,’ Reacher said. ‘We’re one step away, after all.’

‘Back burner again,’ Turner said. ‘You took care of what you had to. Now you’re going to meet your daughter.’

About five minutes after that the guy came out of the bathroom, pale, sweating, seemingly smaller, much diminished, only his lower body moving, his upper body held rigid, like a robot only half working. He stumbled down the aisle and squeezed past the grandma and dumped himself back in his seat.

Reacher said, ‘He should ask the stewardess for an aspirin.’

Then the flight reverted to normal, and became like most flights Reacher had taken. No food was served. Not in coach. There was stuff to buy, mostly small chemical pellets artfully disguised as various natural products, but neither Reacher nor Turner bought any. They figured they would eat in California. Which would make them hungry, but Reacher didn’t mind being hungry. He believed hunger kept him sharp. He believed it stimulated creativity in the brain. Another old evolutionary legacy. If you’re hungry, you work out a smarter way to get the next woolly mammoth, today, not tomorrow.

He figured he was owed about three hours’ sleep, after being woken by Leach at four in the morning, so he closed his eyes. He wasn’t worried about the two guys. What were they going to do? They could spit peanuts at him, he guessed, but that was about all. Beside him he felt Turner arrive at the same conclusion. She rested her head on his shoulder. He slept bolt upright, waking with a start every time his head tipped forward.

Romeo called Juliet and said, ‘We have a serious problem.’

Juliet said, ‘In what way?’

‘Turner must have remembered the number after all. Reacher’s lawyer just made an application to see the full bio on A.M. 3435.’

‘Why Reacher’s lawyer?’

‘They’re trying to slip it by. They assume we’re watching her lawyer, but maybe not his. It’s not even his main lawyer. It’s the newbie doing his paternity case.’

‘Then we can get it thrown out, surely. It’s got nothing to do with his paternity case.’

‘It’s an application, like any other. The process is what it is. We’d have to show good reason. And we can’t, because there’s nothing demonstrably special about the guy. Except to us. We can’t afford that kind of attention. Everyone would think we’d lost our minds. They’d say, who the hell is redacting that guy? He’s just a run-of-the-mill peasant.’

‘So how long have we got?’

‘A day, perhaps.’

‘Did you cancel their credit cards?’

‘I cancelled his. Easy enough, because it was the army’s to start with. But I can’t touch hers without a paper trail. Margaret Vega is a real person.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘We’re going to finish it in California. They’ll be on the ground soon, four against two.’

Reacher and Turner slept most of three hours, and woke up with the plane on approach into Long Beach, and with the steward on the PA again, talking about seat backs and tray tables and upright positions and portable electronic equipment. None of which interested Reacher, because he hadn’t moved his seat back, hadn’t used his tray table, and had no electronic equipment, portable or otherwise. Out the window he could see the brown desert hills. He liked California. He figured he could live there, if he lived anywhere. It was warm, and no one knew him. He could have a dog. They could have a dog. He pictured Turner, maybe in a back yard somewhere, pruning a rose or planting a tree.

She said, ‘We shouldn’t use Hertz or Avis. To rent the car, I mean. Or any of the big franchises. Just in case their computers are hooked up with the government.’

He said, ‘You’re getting paranoid in your old age.’

‘Doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.’

He smiled.

She said, ‘What would that leave us with?’

‘Local guys. Rent-a-Wrecks, or four-year-old Lamborghinis.’

‘Will they take cash?’

‘We have credit cards.’