‘Any of yours?’
‘Happily no. Only upward, which isn’t the same. But that was the problem. That’s why the files were sealed. Some big names went down. It was a failure of intelligence. With a small letter, not a capital. Ours was less than theirs. Once again we underestimated them. These unshaven guys wearing dresses had predicted exactly how we were going to attack, and even exactly where we would stand to plan it out, and exactly when we would show up to do it. A day either way on that, maybe. But four-day dogs are what they like best, and that’s what we got. The umpires would have to call it one-zip for them. We had fourteen down. Cost them nothing except a cell phone and someone else’s dog.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said.
‘You were worried I got my people killed.’
‘I thought it would upset you.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if I had,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have made it through.’
Then Mackenzie came out, and next Bramall, and they both stood around in let’s-go poses, so eventually Sanderson got up, and Reacher followed her back to the car.
They hit Rapid City’s southern limit just as the sun was setting.
FORTY-THREE
THEY DROVE THROUGH town, straight south to north in the dark. Reacher recognized some of what he saw. He recognized the street with the chain hotels. He recognized the all-day Chinese restaurant, where Scorpio’s guy had picked him up, in the battered old Lincoln. They kept on going and came out the other side of town on what Bramall’s phone said was the four-lane that led up to Klinger’s diner. And it did, as promised. Klinger’s turned out to be more of a family restaurant, all lit up, floating alone in a vast dark parking lot, somehow both faded and majestic all at once.
They went in, and ate, because it was dinnertime. Eat when you can, Reacher said. You don’t know when the next chance will come. Sanderson endorsed the theory. For a small guy Bramall was always hungry. Mackenzie said she didn’t really feel like eating, but in the end she ordered a meal. Afterwards she said it was good. Reacher agreed.
They asked the waitress if she knew an Exxon station about a twenty-minute drive away. The woman screwed up her face, like she knew, like it was on the tip of her tongue. Then like she knew once, but she didn’t know any more. One of those questions so everyday it couldn’t be answered.
Then something came to her.
‘The highway gas is Exxon,’ she said. ‘Up at the rest area.’
Back in the car Bramall looked at his navigation screen. The closest rest area was six miles east of the closest on-ramp. The electronic brain said it was twenty minutes away. Bramall said the pharmaceutical factories were mostly in New Jersey. Trucks would come west. A secret warehouse inside an I-90 rest area would be a very convenient thing to have. It could be stocked and re-stocked at any time of night or day. Equally it could stock and re-stock incoming visitors at any time of night or day.
‘But it didn’t,’ Reacher said. ‘Stackley told us they had to wait until midnight. It sounded like the opposite of a warehouse to me. Nothing was stored there for people to show up and get. It was the other way around. People got in line and waited for stuff to show up. Maybe it arrives there at midnight. So I agree, the rest area is the obvious place. But as a meeting point only. As a rendezvous. With a lot of moving parts. One rogue westbound truck comes in, and six or ten guys like Billy and Stackley load up and move out. It must be a real fast hustle. Right in the middle of an I-90 rest area, but under the cover of a shed half full of snowploughs. The voice mail said they’ve got it all to themselves. I guess that’s correct. It’s summertime.’
Bramall said, ‘So after eating dinner at Klinger’s, Stackley drove twenty minutes to the rest area, where he bought gas, and then he rolled a hundred yards around a corner and waited till midnight. All we have to do is figure out which corner. Which won’t be difficult. The rest area is a finite size. We’re looking for a service road leading to the snowploughs. How many can there be?’
‘Is it always this easy?’ Mackenzie said.
‘Mr Bramall makes it look easy,’ Reacher said.
Sanderson said nothing. She was infantry. She knew about pointy-heads and their best laid plans.
Bramall started up and headed north on the four-lane, through the night-time darkness, all the way to the highway ramps, where he made the right to head east towards the rest stop, which the machine told him was just six minutes away.
The machine was correct. Exactly six minutes later Bramall coasted off into a giant central facility. The eastbound and westbound lanes skirted it in mile-wide loops through the prairie. It was like a town all by itself. It had lit-up acres of Exxon gas and diesel, and half a dozen bright neon fast food franchises, and a highway patrol building, and a chain motel, and a highway department office with a weighbridge.
What it didn’t have was snowploughs. At least not within easy view. Reacher felt red-hot infantry scepticism coming out from under Sanderson’s hood. Mackenzie looked disappointed. Maybe not so easy after all.
They gave it one more go-round. After which they were confident there were no snowploughs stored anywhere within the bounds of the facility. There were no service roads leading to covered garages half full of any kind of winter equipment.
Which raised an obvious question. If not there, then where? There had to be winter equipment stored somewhere. A lot of it. Winter was a serious issue in South Dakota. Mackenzie said maybe so serious they used a whole separate depot for it. She knew the west.
But where was the depot? Who could they ask? It was a weird question. Do you know where the state stores its snowploughs? No one would know. Most folk would take it for some kind of a weird political stunt, to make a point, or to expose their ignorance, like asking if they knew their congressperson’s name. The only people who would know the answer were people who were currently somewhere else. Wherever the state stored its snowploughs.
Reacher said, ‘He prepaid his gas at eleven twenty-three. Right here, very close to where we’re sitting now. Let’s say it took him two minutes to walk back from the kiosk and get set. Let’s say he started pumping at eleven twenty-five. How long does forty bucks last?’
Mackenzie said, ‘Out here you could fill a big tank.’
‘So it took a few minutes. It could have been well after eleven-thirty before he was back on the road. But he was the new boy there. He didn’t want to screw up. He needed a big margin of error. He must have been going somewhere real close by. Three-minute maximum, literally. He would want to make sure he got there on time. Or early. He would want to be comfortable.’