‘You were that pilot?’ Reacher asked, on a hunch.
DeWitt glanced over and nodded.
‘You were still there in ’75?’
DeWitt nodded again. ‘Five combat tours, then a spell on HQ duty. Overall, I guess I preferred the combat.’
There was noise in the distance. The bass thumping of a powerful helicopter, coming closer. Reacher joined Jodie at the window. A Huey was in the air, drifting over the distant buildings from the direction of the field.
‘Your ride,’ DeWitt said.
‘A helicopter?’ Jodie said.
DeWitt was smiling. ‘What did you expect? This is the helicopter school, after all. That’s why these boys are down here. It ain’t driver’s ed.’
The rotor noise was building to a loud wop-wop-wop. Then it slowly blended to a higher-pitched
whip-whip-whip as it came closer and the jet whine mixed in.
‘Bigger blade now,’ DeWitt shouted. ‘Composite materials. Not metal any more. I don’t know what old Vic would have made of it.’
The Huey was sliding sideways and hovering over the parade ground in front of the building. The noise was shaking the windows. Then the helicopter was straightening and settling to the ground.
‘Nice meeting you,’ DeWitt shouted.
They shook his hand and headed out. The MP sergeant at the desk nodded to them through the noise and went back to his paperwork. They went down the stairs and outside into the blast of heat and dust and sound. The co-pilot was sliding the door for them. They ran bent-over across the short distance. Jodie was grinning and her hair was blowing everywhere. The co-pilot offered his hand and pulled her up inside. Reacher followed. They strapped themselves into the bench seat in the back and the co-pilot slid the door closed and climbed through to the cabin. The familiar shudder of vibration started up as the craft hauled itself into the air. The floor tilted and swung and the buildings rotated in the windows, and then their roofs were visible, and then the outlying grassland, with the highways laid through it like grey pencil lines. The nose went down and the engine noise built to a roar as they swung on course and settled to a hundred-mile-an-hour cruise.
The stuff Sark had read called it ‘power walking’, and the idea was to push yourself towards a speed of four miles an hour. That way your heartbeat was raised, which was the key to the aerobic benefit, but you
avoided the impact damage to your shins and knees that you risked with proper jogging. It was a convincing proposition, and he believed in it. Doing it properly, six hundred yards at four miles an hour should have taken a fraction over five minutes, but it actually took nearer eight, because he was walking with O’Hallinan at his side. She was happy to walk, but she wanted to do it slowly. She was not an unfit woman, but she always said I’m built for comfort, not for speed. It was a compromise. He needed her cooperation to get to walk at all, so he never complained about her pace. He figured it was better than nothing. It had to be doing him some kind of good.
‘Which building?’ he asked.
‘The south, I think,’ she said.
They walked around to the main entrance of the south tower and inside to the lobby. There were guys in security uniforms behind a counter, but they were tied up with a knot of foreign men in grey suits, so Sark and O’Hallinan stepped over to the building directory and consulted it direct. Cayman Corporate Trust was listed on the eighty-eighth floor. They walked to the express elevator and stepped inside without the security force being aware they had ever entered the building.
The elevator floor pressed against their feet and sped them upward. It slowed and stopped at eighty-eight. The door slid back and a muted bell sounded and they stepped out into a plain corridor. The ceilings were low and the space was narrow. Cayman Corporate Trust had a modern oak door with a small window and a brass handle. Sark pulled the door and allowed O’Hallinan to go inside ahead of him. She was old enough to appreciate the courtesy.