scouted around the big empty barn. It was a sturdy metal structure,
built throughout with the same flecked, galvanized metal as the stall
railings. The big door was locked from the outside. Probably a steel
bar padlocked into place. No problem if he could get at the padlock,
but he was inside and the padlock was outside.
The walls met the floor with a right-angle flange bolted firmly into
the concrete. The walls themselves were horizontal metal panels maybe
thirty feet long, maybe four feet tall. They were joined together with
more right-angle flanges bolted together. Each flange gave a lip about
six inches deep. Like a giant stepladder with the treads four feet
apart.
He climbed the wall, hauling himself quickly upward, flange to flange,
four feet at a time. The way out of the barn was right there at the
top of the wall, seven sections up, twenty-eight feet off the ground.
There was a ventilation slot between the top of the wall and the
overhanging slope of the metal roof. About eighteen inches high. A
person could roll horizontally through the gap like an old-fashioned
high jumper hang down outside and drop twenty feet to the ground
below.
He could do that, but Holly Johnson couldn’t. She couldn’t even walk
over to the wall. She couldn’t climb it and she sure as hell couldn’t
hang down outside and drop twenty feet onto a set of wrecked cruciate
ligaments.
“Get going,” she called up to him. “Get out of here, right now.”
He ignored her and peered out through the slot into the darkness. The
overhanging eaves gave him a low horizon. Empty country as far as the
eye could see. He climbed down and went up the other three walls in
turn. The second side gave out onto country just as empty as the
first. The third had a view of a farmhouse. White shingles. Lights
in two windows. The fourth side of the barn looked straight up the
farm track. About a hundred and fifty yards to a featureless road.
Emptiness beyond. In the far distance, a single set of headlight
beams. Flicking and bouncing. Widely spaced. Growing larger. Getting
nearer. The truck, coming back.
“Can you see where we are?” Holly called up to him.
“No idea,” Reacher called back. “Farming country somewhere. Could be
anywhere. Where do they have cows like this? And fields and stuff?”
“Is it hilly out there?” Holly called. “Or flat?”
“Can’t tell,” Reacher said. Too dark. Maybe a little hilly.”
“Could be Pennsylvania,” Holly said. They have hills and cows
there.”
Reacher climbed down the fourth wall and walked back to her stall.
“Get out of here, for Christ’s sake,” she said to him. “Raise the
alarm.”
He shook his head. He heard the diesel slowing to turn into the
track.
That may not be the best option,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Who the hell gave you an option?” she said. “I’m ordering you.
You’re a civilian and I’m FBI and I’m ordering you to get yourself to
safety right now.”
Reacher just shrugged and stood there.
“I’m ordering you, OK?” Holly said again. “You going to obey me?”
Reacher shook his head again.
“No,” he said.
She glared at him. Then the truck was back. They heard the roar of
the diesel and the groan of the springs on the rough track outside.
Reacher locked Holly’s cuff and ran back to his stall. They heard the
truck door slam and footsteps on the concrete. Reacher chained his
wrist to the railing and bent the fork back into shape. When the barn
door opened and the light came on, he was sitting quietly on the
straw.
SEVEN
THE MATERIAL USED TO PACK THE TWENTY-TWO-INCH CAVITY between the
outside of the old walls and the inside of the new walls was hauled
over from its storage shed in an open pickup truck. There was a ton of
it and it took four trips. Each consignment was carefully unloaded by
a team of eight volunteers. They worked together like an old-fashioned
bucket-brigade attending a fire. They passed each box along, hand to
hand, into the building, up the stairs to the second floor. The boxes