Nothing to Lose

The guard shack was a metal affair with tall wide windows on all four sides. Four guys in it. Two stayed where they were, and would forever, no matter what. The other two came out. They were dressed in desert BDUs and boots and armored vests and helmets and they were carrying M16 rifles. They ducked under the boom and formed up side by side and sloped arms and stepped out to the roadway. They executed a perfect left turn and jogged toward Reacher’s truck, exactly in step, at exactly seven miles an hour, like they had been trained to. When they were thirty yards away they separated to split the target they were presenting. One guy headed for the sand and came up on Reacher’s right and stood off ten yards distant and swapped his rifle into the ready position. The other guy stayed on the blacktop and looped around and checked the truck’s load bed and then came back and stood off six feet from Reacher’s door and called out in a loud clear voice.

He said, “Sir, please lower your window.”

And keep your hands where I can see them,Reacher thought.For your own safety. He wound the window all the way down and glanced left.

“Sir, please keep your hands where I can see them,” the guy said. “For your own safety.”

Reacher put his hands high on the wheel and kept on staring left. The guy he was looking at was a specialist, young but with some years in, with pronounced squint lines either side of his eyes. He was wearing glasses with thin black frames. The name tape on the right side of his vest saidMorgan. In the distance a truck’s air horn sounded and the soldier stepped closer to the curb and a semi blasted past from behind in a howl of sound and wind and grit. There was a long whine of stressed tires and Reacher’s truck rocked on its springs and then silence came down again. The soldier stepped back to where he had been before and took up the same stance, wary but challenging, in control but cautious, his M16 held barrel-down but ready.

“At ease, Corporal,” Reacher said. “Nothing to see here.”

The guy called Morgan said, “Sir, that’s a determination I’ll need to make for myself.”

Reacher glanced ahead. Morgan’s partner was still as a statue, the stock of his M16 tucked tight into his shoulder. He was a private first class. He was sighting with his right eye, aiming low at Reacher’s front right-hand tire.

Morgan asked, “Sir, why are you stopped here?”

Reacher said, “Do I need a reason?”

“Sir, you appear to me to be surveilling a restricted military installation.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I’m not.”

“Sir, why are you stopped?”

“Stop calling mesir, will you?”

“Sir?”

Reacher smiled to himself. An MP with Morgan’s years in had probably read a whole foot-thick stack of orders titledMembers of the Public, Domestic, Required Forms of Address, endlessly revised, revisited, and updated.

“Maybe I’m lost,” Reacher said.

“You’re not local?”

“No.”

“Your vehicle has Colorado plates.”

“Colorado is a big state,” Reacher said. “More than a hundred thousand square miles, soldier, the eighth largest in the Union. By land area, that is. Only the twenty-second largest by population. Maybe I come from a remote and distant corner.”

Morgan went blank for a second. Then he asked, “Sir, where are you headed?”

The question gave Reacher a problem. The spur off I-70 had been small and hard to find. No way could a driver headed for Colorado Springs or Denver or Boulder have taken it by mistake. To claim a navigation error would raise suspicion. To raise suspicion would lead to a radio check against Vaughan’s plates, which would drag her into something she was better left out of.

So Reacher said, “I’m headed for Hope.”

Morgan took his left hand off his rifle and pointed straight ahead.

“That way, sir,” he said. “You’re on track. Twenty-two miles to downtown Hope.”

Reacher nodded. Morgan was pointing south but hadn’t taken his eyes off Reacher’s hands. He was a good soldier. Experienced. Well turned out. His BDUs were old but in good order. His boots were worn and scratched but well cared for and immaculately brushed. The top of his eyeglass frame ran exactly parallel with the lip of his helmet. Reacher liked soldiers in eyeglasses. Eyeglasses added a vulnerable human detail that balanced the alien appearance of the weapons and the armor.

The face of the modern army.

Morgan stepped in close to Reacher’s fender again and another truck blew by. This one was a New Jersey semi loaded with a closed forty-foot shipping container. Like a giant brick, doing sixty miles an hour. Noise, wind, a long tail of swirling dust. Morgan’s BDU pants flattened against his legs and skittering miniature tornadoes of dust danced all around his feet. But he didn’t blink behind his glasses.

He asked, “Sir, does this vehicle belong to you?”

Reacher said, “I’m not sure you’re entitled to information like that.”