They were on approach thirty minutes later with the sharp, abrupt motions a small jet makes in rough air. There was cloud almost all the way down, then the ground was suddenly in sight. It was raining in Jersey. Dim, and miserable. An Air Force base is a gray place to start with, and the weather wasn’t helping any. McGuire’s runway was wide enough and long enough to let giant transports struggle into the air, and the Lear touched down and stopped in less than a quarter of its length, like a hummingbird coming to rest on an interstate. It turned and taxied and stopped again on a distant corner of tarmac. A flat-green Chevy was racing through the rain to meet it. By the time the cabin steps were down, the driver was waiting at the bottom. He was a Marine lieutenant, maybe twenty-five, and he was getting wet.
“Major Reacher?” he asked.
Reacher nodded. “And this is Agent Harper, from the FBI.”
The lieutenant ignored her completely, like Reacher knew he would.
“The colonel is waiting, sir,” he said.
“So let’s go. Can’t keep the colonel waiting, right?”
Reacher sat in the front of the Chevy with the lieutenant and Harper took the back. They drove out of McGuire into Dix, following narrow roadways with whitewashed curbstones through blocks of warehouses and barracks. They stopped at a huddle of brick offices a mile from McGuire’s runway.
“Door on the left, sir,” the lieutenant said.
The guy waited in the car, like Reacher knew he would. Reacher got out and Harper followed him, staying close to his shoulder, huddling against the weather. The wind was blowing the rain horizontal. The office building had a
106
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group of three unmarked personnel doors in the center of a blank brick wall. Readier took the left-hand door and led Harper into a spacious anteroom full of metal desks and file cabinets. It was antiseptically clean and obsessively tidy. Brightly lit against the gloom of the morning. Three sergeants worked at separate desks. One of them glanced up and hit a button on his telephone.
“Major Reacher is here, sir,” he said into it.
There was a moments pause and then the inner office door opened and a man stepped out. He was tall, built like a greyhound, short black hair silvering at the temples. He had a lean hand extended, ready to shake.
“Hello, Reacher,” John Trent said.
Reacher nodded. Trent owed the second half of his career to a paragraph Reacher had omitted from an official report ten years before. Trent had assumed the paragraph was written and ready to go. He had come to see Reacher, not to plead for its deletion, not to bargain, not to bribe, but just to explain, officer to officer, how he’d made the mistake. Simply because he had needed Reacher to understand it was a mistake, not malice or dishonesty. He had left without asking for a thing, and then sat still and waited for the ax. It never came. The report was published and the paragraph wasn’t in it. What Trent didn’t know was that Reacher had never even written it. Then ten years had passed and the two men hadn’t really spoken since. Not until the previous morning, when Reacher had made the first of his urgent calls from Jodie’s apartment.
“Hello, Colonel,” Reacher said. “This is Agent Harper, from the FBI.”
Trent was politer than his lieutenant. His rank meant he had to be. Or maybe he was just more impressed by tall damp blondes dressed like men. Either way, he shook hands. And maybe held on to the shake longer than was necessary. And maybe smiled, just a fraction.
“Pleased to meet you, Colonel,” Harper said. “And thanks in advance.”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” Trent said.
“Well, we’re always grateful for cooperation anyplace we can get it, sir.”
Trent released her hand. “Which is a strictly limited number of places, I expect.”
“Fewer than we’d like,” she said. “Considering we’re all on the same side.”
Trent smiled again.
“That’s an interesting concept,” he said. “I’ll do what I can, but the cooperation will be limited. As I’m sure you anticipated. We’re going to be examining personnel records and deployment listings that I’m just not prepared to
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