Reacher could smell the new brass and the crisp
cardboard and faint traces of powder.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said.
flake what you need,’ Eddie said.
‘Where do the serial numbers lead to?’
if’he Austrian Army,’ Eddie said. if’hey kind of fizzle out after
that.’
Ten minutes later they were back on the road, with Reacher’s
new jacket carefully spread out in the Yukon’s load space over
two nine-millimetre Steyr GBs, a Heckler &. Koch MP5 un
silenced machine gun, an M16 rifle, and boxes full of two
hundred rounds for each weapon.
349
They entered Wyoming after dark, driving north on 1-25. They
turned left at Cheyenne and picked up 1-80. They rolled west
to Laramie and then headed north. The town called Grace was
still five hours away, well beyond Casper. The map showed it
nestled in the middle of nowhere between towering mountains
on one side and infinite grasslands on the other.
‘We’ll stop in Medicine Bow,’ Reacher said. ‘Sounds like a
cool place. We’ll aim to get to Grace at dawn tomorrow.’
Medicine Bow didn’t look like much of a cool place in the dark,
but it had a motel about two miles out with rooms available.
Neagley paid for them. Then they found a steakhouse a mile in
the other direction and ate twelve-ounce sirloins that cost less
than a drink in D.C. The place closed up around them so they
took the hint and headed back to their rooms. Reacher left
his coat in the truck, to hide the firepower from curious eyes.
They said goodnight in the lot. Reacher went straight to bed.
He heard Neagley in the shower. She was singing to herself. He
could hear it, through the wall.
He woke up at four in the morning, Saturday. Neagley was
showering again, and still singing. He thought: when the hell
does she sleep? He rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
Turned his shower on hot, which must have made hers
run cold, because he heard a muffled scream through the wall.
So he turned it off again and waited until he heard her finish.
Then he showered and dressed and met her out by the car. It
was still pitch dark. Still very cold. There were flakes of snow
blowing in from the west. They were drifting slowly through the
parking lot lights.
‘Can’t find any coffee,’ Neagley said.
They found some an hour north. A roadside diner was opening
for breakfast. They saw its lights a mile away. It was next to
the mouth of a dirt mad leading down through the darkness to
the Medicine Bow National Forest. The diner looked like a
barn, long and low, made out of red boards. Cold outside, warm
inside. They sat at a table by a Curtained window and ate eggs
and bacon and toast and drank strong bitter coffee.
‘OK, we’ll call them one and two,’ Neagley said. ‘One is the
350
Bismarck guy. You’ll recognize him. Two is the guy from the
garage video. We might recognize him from his build. But we
don’t really know what he looks like.’
Reacher nodded. ‘So we’ll look for the Bismarck guy hanging
out with some other guy. No point planning it to death.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘You should go home.’
‘Now that I’ve gotten you here?’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
‘You’re uptight that Froelich was killed. That’s all. Doesn’t
mean anything’s going to happen to me.’
He said nothing.
‘We’re two against two,’ Neagley said. ‘You and me against
two bozos, and you’re worried about it?’
‘Not very,’ he said.
‘Maybe they won’t even show. Bannon figured they’d know it
was a trap.’
They’ll show,’ Reacher said. ‘They’ve been challenged. It’s a
testosterone thing. And they’ve got more than enough screws
loose to jump right on it.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, if they do.’
‘I’d feel bad if it did.’
‘It’s not going to,’ she said.
I’ell me I’m not making you do this.’
‘My own free will,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘So let’s go.’
They got back on the road. Snowflakes hung in the headlight
beams. They drifted in weightlessly from the west and shone