Vaughan drove. The setting sun was behind her, bright in her mirror. It put a glowing rectangle of light on her face. The truck route was reasonably busy in both directions. The metal plant ahead was still sucking stuff in and spitting it out again. Reacher watched the license plates. He saw representatives from all of Colorado's neighboring states, plus a container truck from New Jersey, heading outward, presumably empty, and a flat-bed semi from Idaho heading inward, groaning under a load of rusted steel sheet.
He thought:license plates.
He said, "I was in the Gulf the first time around."
Vaughan nodded. "You wore the same BDUs every day for eight months. In the heat. Which is a delightful image. I felt bad enough putting these clothes back on."
"We spent most of the time in Saudi and Kuwait, of course. But there were a few covert trips into Iraq itself."
"And?"
"I remember their license plates being silver. But the ones we saw last night in the container were off-white."
"Maybe they changed them since then."
"Maybe. But maybe they didn't. Maybe they had other things to worry about."
"You think those weren't Iraqi cars?"
"I think Iran uses off-white plates."
"So what are you saying? We're fighting in Iran and nobody knows? That's not possible."
"We were fighting in Cambodia in the seventies and nobody knew. But I think it's more likely there's a bunch of Iranians heading west to Iraq to join in the fun every day. Maybe like commuting to a job. Maybe we're stopping them at the border crossings. With artillery."
"That's very dangerous."
"For the passengers, for sure."
"For the world," Vaughan said.
They passed the MP base just before six-fifteen. Neat, quiet, still, six parked Humvees, four guys in the guard shack. All in order, and recently resupplied.
For what?
They slowed for the last five miles and tried to time it right. Traffic had died away to nothing. The plant was closed. The lights were off. Presumably the last stragglers were heading home, to the east. Presumably the Tahoes were parked for the night. Vaughan made the left onto Despair's old road and then found the ruts in the gathering gloom and followed them like she had the night before, through the throat of the figure 8 and all the way to the spot behind the airplane barn. She parked there and went to pull the key but Reacher put his hand on her wrist and said, "I have to do this part alone."
Vaughan said, "Why?"
"Because this has to be face-to-face. And the whole deal here is that you're permanent and I'm not. You're a cop from the next town, with a lot of years ahead of you. You can't go trespassing and breaking and entering all over the neighborhood."
"I already have."
"But nobody knew. Which made it OK. This time it won't be OK."
"You're shutting me out?"
"Wait on the road. Any hassle, take off for home. I'll make my own way back."
He left the ladder and the wrecking bar and the flashlight where they were, in the car. But he took the captured switchblades with him. He put one in each pocket, just in case.
Then he hiked the fifty yards through the scrub and climbed the fieldstone wall.
58
It was still too light to make any sense out of hiding. Reacher just leaned against the barn's board wall, near the front corner, outside, on the blind side, away from the house. He could smell the plane. Cold metal, oil, unburned hydrocarbons from the tanks. The clock in his head showed one minute before seven in the evening.
He heard footsteps at one minute past.
Long strides, a heavy tread. The big guy from the plant, hustling. Lights came on in the barn. A bright rectangle of glare spilled forward, shadowed with wings and propeller blades.
Then nothing, for two minutes.
Then more footsteps. Slower. A shorter stride. An older man with good shoes, overweight, battling stiffness and limping with joint pain.
Reacher took a breath and stepped around the corner of the barn, into the light.
The big guy from the plant was standing behind the Piper's wing, just waiting, like some kind of a servant or a butler. Thurman was on the path leading from the house. He was dressed in his wool suit. He was wearing a white shirt and a blue tie.
He was carrying a small cardboard carton.
The carton was about the size of a six-pack of beer. There was no writing on it. The top flaps were folded shut, one under the other. It wasn't heavy. Thurman was carrying it two-handed, out in front of his body, reverentially, but without strain. He stopped dead on the path but didn't speak. Reacher watched him try to find something to say, and then watched him give up. So he filled the silence himself. He said, "Good evening, folks."
Thurman said, "You told me you were leaving."
"I changed my mind."
"You're trespassing."
"Probably."
"You need to leave now."
"I've heard that before."
"I meant it before, and I mean it now."
"I'll leave when I've seen what's in that box."
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because I'm curious about what part of Uncle Sam's property you're smuggling out of here every night."
The big guy from the plant squeezed around the tip of the Piper's wing and stepped out of the barn and put himself between Reacher and Thurman, closer to Thurman than Reacher. Two against one, explicitly. Thurman looked beyond the big guy's shoulder directly at Reacher and said, "You're intruding." Which struck Reacher as an odd choice of word.Interfering, trespassing, butting in, he would have expected.
"Intruding on what?" he asked.
The big guy asked his boss, "You want me to throw him out?"
Reacher saw Thurman thinking about his answer. There was debate in his face, some kind of a long-range calculus that went far beyond the possible positive or negative outcome of a two-minute brawl in front of an airplane hangar. Like the old guy was playing a long game, and thinking eight moves ahead.
Reacher said, "What's in the box?"
The big guy said, "Shall I get rid of him?"
Thurman said, "No, let him stay."
Reacher said, "What's in the box?"
Thurman said, "Not Uncle Sam's property. God's property."
"God brings you metal?"
"Not metal."
Thurman stood still for a second. Then he stepped around his underling, still carrying the box two-handed out in front of him, like a wise man bearing a gift. He knelt and laid it at Reacher's feet, and then stood up and backed away again. Reacher looked down. Theoretically the box might be booby-trapped, or he might get hit on the head while he crouched down next to it. But he felt either thing was unlikely. The instructors at Rucker had said:be skeptical, but not too skeptical. Too much skepticism led to paranoia and paralysis.
Reacher knelt next to the box.
Unlaced the criss-crossed flaps.
Raised them.
The box held crumpled newspaper, with a small plastic jar nested in it. The jar was a standard medical item, sterile, almost clear, with a screw lid. A sample jar, for urine or other bodily fluids. Reacher had seen many of them.
The jar was a quarter full with black powder.
The powder was coarser than talc, finer than salt.
Reacher asked, "What is it?"
Thurman said, "Ash."
"From where?"
"Come with me and find out."
"Come with you?"
"Fly with me tonight. I have nothing to hide. And I'm a patient man. I don't mind proving my innocence, over and over and over again, if I have to."