17 A Wanted Man

fingers tightened.
    No sound anywhere. Reacher willed McQueen to make it.
Get to the garage. Hide in the sad old truck. Let the reinforcements move past you. Hit the button and close the door. Then run like hell
.
    Their trigger fingers tightened some more.
    They tightened all the way.
    Then: two shots. Very close and very loud. A ragged little volley. Like a loose double tap. The white guy fell to his knees. Then he pitched forward on his face. The Arab sprawled sideways. His face was all gone, replaced by a gaping exit wound. Shot in the back of the head.
    And behind them both, suddenly revealed, still on her feet, a Glock 19 in her hand, was a small slender figure.
    Karen Delfuenso.

EIGHTY
    DELFUENSO HAD DRIVEN Bale’s Crown Vic all the way inside and parked it in the garage. McQueen was already in the front passenger seat. Delfuenso said it was her that Reacher had seen on the two-lane, driving back and forth, with her bright lights on. At first she had meant it just as moral support, but later she had realized the backlight might be useful. Hence the triple trip. She had seen Reacher’s muzzle flash on the roof. She had buzzed her windows down and heard the shots. When the subsequent long delay became unbearable she had found her way inside.
    Reacher said, ‘Thank you.’
    She said, ‘You’re welcome.’
    She got a first-aid kit out of the trunk. Bureau issue. She said every unmarked car had one. Standard practice. A matter of policy. She cleaned the cut on his hand and bound it up. Then they got in the car. She backed up and turned around and rolled through into the entrance tunnel. Reacher got out again and hit the red button. The inner door started to close, to allow the outer door to open. The ancient fail-safe circuits, still obedient. Then they came out of the tunnel into the sweet night air, and they bumped across the dirt, where the farmer’s grandson had torn out the DoD’s old approach road. They made it back to the two-lane, and turned right, and right again, and they parked sideways across three bays in Lacey’s front lot, exactly where they had started.
    Reacher asked her, ‘Do you have an ETA for Quantico?’
    She said, ‘There was a delay. They’re still about three hours out.’
    ‘Would you drive me back to the cloverleaf?’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Now.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I want to get to Virginia.’
    ‘Quantico will want to talk to you.’
    ‘I don’t have time for that.’
    ‘They’ll need to know what you know.’
    ‘I don’t know anything.’
    ‘Is that going to be your official position?’
    ‘It always is.’
    ‘And what’s your unofficial position?’
    ‘Same thing. I don’t know anything.’
    ‘Bullshit,’ McQueen said to her. ‘He told me he had it all worked out.’
    ‘I don’t believe him,’ Delfuenso said. ‘I don’t have it all worked out. Not yet. Not all of it, anyway. Obviously I saw the nuclear waste. So I assume they were planning a strike somewhere. Maybe soon. Maybe into Nebraska’s aquifers.’
    ‘Not possible,’ Reacher said. ‘Those trailers aren’t going anywhere. Not now, not soon, not ever. They haven’t moved for twenty years. Their tyres are rotted and I bet their axles are rusted solid. It would take the Corps of Engineers a year just to get them out of the tunnel.’
    ‘Why are they in there at all? That place wasn’t built to house that kind of stuff.’
    ‘They had to put it somewhere. No one wants it in their own back yard. It was probably just temporary. But they never figured out a permanent solution. So I guess they just forgot about it. Out of sight, out of mind.’
    ‘But why would Wadiah want it, if it can’t be moved? If it can’t be moved, it can’t be used.’
    ‘They were never going to use it. It’s strictly window dressing. It’s purely for show.’
    ‘What show?’
    ‘I’m not saying another word,’ Reacher said. ‘Quantico will say I’m not allowed to know. They’ll call me a security risk. They’ll try to keep me in that motel in Kansas for the rest of my life. Which would drive me crazy. Which would give everyone a problem.’
    ‘Privately, then,’ Delfuenso said. ‘Strictly between us.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    ‘You owe me,’ Delfuenso said.
    ‘Then I get a ride to the cloverleaf?’
    ‘Deal.’
    ‘It’s the law of unintended consequences,’ Reacher said.
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘It’s a bank,’ Reacher said.
    ‘Wadiah is a banking organization,’ Reacher said. ‘The United