Nothing to Lose

  said, You did this to me. I thought it was a new sentence. I thought he was accusing me. But it was really all the same sentence. He was pausing for breath, that’s all. He was saying, The U did this to me. Like some kind of a plea, or an explanation, or maybe a warning. He was using the chemical symbol for uranium. Metal-workers’ slang, I guess. He was saying, The uranium did this to me. ”

  Vaughan said, “The air at the plant must be thick with it. And we were right there.”

  Reacher said, “Remember the way the wall glowed? On the infrared camera? It wasn’t hot. It was radioactive.”

  63

  Vaughan sipped her bottled water and stared into space, adjusting to a new situation that was in some ways better than she had imagined, and in some ways worse. She asked, “Why do you say there are no Humvees there?”

  Reacher said, “Because the Pentagon specializes. Like I told you. It always has, and it always will. The plant in Despair is about uranium recycling. That’s all. Humvees go somewhere else. Somewhere cheaper. Because they’re easy. They’re just cars.”

  “They send cars to Despair, too. We saw them. In the container. From Iraq or Iran.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Which is the third conclusion. They sent those cars to Despair for a reason.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Only one logical possibility. Depleted uranium isn’t just for armor. They make artillery shells and tank shells out of it, too. Because it’s incredibly hard and dense.”

  “So?”

  “So the third conclusion is that those cars were hit with ammunition made from depleted uranium. They’re tainted, so they have to be processed appropriately. And they have to be hidden away. Because we’re using tanks and DU shells against thin-skinned civilian vehicles. That’s overkill. That’s very bad PR. Thurman said there are some things any government feels it politic to conceal, and he was right.”

  “What the hell is happening over there?”

  Reacher said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Vaughan raised her glass halfway and stopped. She looked at it like she was having second thoughts about ingesting anything and put it back down on the table. She said, “Tell me what you know about dirty bombs.”

  “They’re the same as clean bombs,” Reacher said. “Except they’re dirty. A bomb detonates and creates a massive spherical pressure wave that knocks things over and pulps anything soft, like people, and small fragments of the casing are flung outward on the wave like bullets, which does further damage. That effect can be enhanced by packing extra shrapnel inside the casing around the explosive charge, like nails or ball bearings. A dirty bomb uses contaminated metal for the extra shrapnel, usually radioactive waste.”

  “How bad is the result?”

  “That’s debatable. With depleted uranium, the powdered oxides after a high-temperature explosion are certainly bad news. There are fertility issues, miscarriages, and birth defects. Most people think the radiation itself isn’t really a huge problem. Except that, like I said, it’s debatable. Nobody really knows for sure. Which is the exact problem. Because you can bet your ass everyone will err on the side of caution. Which multiplies the effect, psychologically. It’s classic asymmetric warfare. If a dirty bomb goes off in a city, the city will be abandoned, whether it needs to be or not.”

  “How big would the bomb need to be?”

  “The bigger the better.”

  “How much uranium would they need to steal?”

  “The more the merrier.”

  Vaughan said, “I think they’re already stealing it. That truck we photographed? The front of the load compartment was glowing just like the wall.”

  Reacher shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “That was something else entirely.”

  64

  Reacher said, “Walk to town with me. To the motel.”

  Vaughan said, “I don’t know if I want to be seen with you. Especially at the motel. People are talking.”

  “But not in a bad way.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Whatever, I’ll be gone tomorrow. So let them talk for one more day.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe earlier. I might need to stick around to make a phone call. Apart from that, I’m done here.”

  “Who do you need to call?”

  “Just a number. I don’t think anyone will answer.”

  “What about all this other stuff going on?”

  “So far all we’ve got is the Pentagon washing its dirty linen in private. That’s not a crime.”

  “What’s at the motel?”

  “I’m guessing we’ll find room four is empty.”

  They walked together through the damp late-morning air, two blocks north from Fifth Street to Third, and then three blocks west to the motel. They bypassed the office and headed on down the row. Room four’s door was standing open. There was a maid’s cart parked outside. The bed was stripped and the bathroom towels were dumped in a pile on the floor. The closets were empty. The maid had a vacuum cleaner going.

  Vaughan said, “Mrs. Rogers is gone.”

  Reacher nodded. “Now let’s find out when and how.”

  They backtracked to the office. The clerk was on her stool behind the counter. Room four’s key was back on its hook. Now only two keys were missing. Reacher’s own, for room twelve, and Maria’s, for room eight.

  The clerk slid off her stool and stood with her hands spread on the counter. Attentive, and helpful. Reacher glanced at the phone beside her and asked, “Did Mrs. Rogers get a call?”

  The clerk nodded. “Six o’clock last night.”

  “Good news?”

  “She seemed very happy.”

  “What then?”

  “She checked out.”

  “And went where?”

  “She called a cab to take her to Burlington.”

  “What’s in Burlington?”

  “Mostly the airport bus to Denver.”

  Reacher nodded. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “That depends on your point of view.”

  Reacher was hungry and he needed more coffee, so he led Vaughan another block north and another block west to the diner. The place was practically empty. Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. Reacher stood for a second and then slid into the booth that Lucy Anderson had used the night he had met her. Vaughan sat across from him, where Lucy had sat. The waitress delivered ice water and silverware. They ordered coffee, and then Vaughan asked, “What exactly is going on?”

  “All those young guys,” Reacher said. “What did they have in common?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They were young, and they were guys.”

  “And?”

  “They were from California.”

  “So?”

  “And the only white one we saw had a hell of a tan.”

  “So?”

  Reacher said, “I sat right here with Lucy Anderson. She was cautious and a little wary, but basically we were getting along. She asked to see my wallet, to check I wasn’t an investigator. Then later I said I had been a cop, and she panicked. I put two and two together and figured her husband was a fugitive. The more she thought about it, the more worried she got. She was very hostile the next day.”

  “Figures.”

  “Then I caught a glimpse of her husband in Despair and went back to check the rooming house where he was staying. It was empty, but it was very clean.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Crucial,” Reacher said. “Then I saw Lucy again, after her husband had moved on. She said they have lawyers. She talked about people in her position. She sounded like she was part of something organized. I said I could follow her to her husband and she said it wouldn’t do me any good.”

  The waitress came over with the coffee. Two mugs, two spoons, a Bunn flask full of a brand-new brew. She poured and walked away and Reacher sn
iffed the steam and took a sip.

  “But I was misremembering all along,” he said. “I didn’t tell Lucy Anderson that I had been a cop. I told her I had been a military cop. That’s why she panicked. And that’s why the rooming house was so clean. It was like a barracks ready for inspection. Old habits die hard. The people passing through it were all soldiers. Lucy thought I was tracking them.”

  Vaughan said, “Deserters.”

  Reacher nodded. “That’s why the Anderson guy had such a great tan. He had been in Iraq. But he didn’t want to go back.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Canada,” Reacher said. “That’s why Lucy wasn’t worried about me following her. It wouldn’t do me any good. No jurisdiction. It’s a sovereign nation, and they’re offering asylum up there.”

  “The truck,” Vaughan said. “It was from Ontario.”

  Reacher nodded. “Like a taxi service. The glow on the camera wasn’t stolen uranium. It was Mrs. Rogers’s husband in a hidden compartment. Body heat, like the driver. The shade of green was the same.”

  65

  Vaughan sat still and quiet for a long time. The waitress came back and refilled Reacher’s mug twice. Vaughan didn’t touch hers.

  She asked, “What was the California connection?”

  Reacher said, “Some kind of an anti-war activist group out there must be running an escape line. Maybe local service families are involved. They figured out a system. They sent guys up here with legitimate metal deliveries, and then their Canadian friends took them north over the border. There was a couple at the Despair hotel seven months ago, from California. A buck gets ten they were the organizers, recruiting sympathizers. And the sympathizers policed the whole thing. They busted your truck’s windows. They thought I was getting too nosy, and they were trying to move me on.”

  Vaughan pushed her mug out of the way and moved the salt and the pepper and the sugar in front of her. She put them in a neat line. She straightened her index finger and jabbed at the pepper shaker. Moved it out of place. Jabbed at it again, and knocked it over.

  “A small subgroup,” she said. “The few left-hand people, working behind Thurman’s back. Helping deserters.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  Vaughan asked, “Do you know who they are?”

  “No idea.”

  “I want to find out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to have them arrested. I want to call the FBI with a list of names.”

  “OK.”

  “Well, don’t you want to?”

  Reacher said, “No, I don’t.”

  Vaughan was too civilized and too small town to have the fight in the diner. She just threw money on the table and stalked out. Reacher followed her, like he knew he was supposed to. She headed toward the quieter area on the edge of town, or toward the motel again, or toward the police station. Reacher wasn’t sure which. Either she wanted solitude, or to demand phone records from the motel clerk, or to be in front of her computer. She was walking fast, in a fury, but Reacher caught her easily. He fell in beside her and matched her pace for pace and waited for her to speak.

  She said, “You knew about this yesterday.”

  He said, “Since the day before.”

  “How?”

  “The same way I figured the patients in David’s hospital were military. They were all young men.”

  “You waited until that truck was over the border before you told me.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want you to have it stopped.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted Rogers to get away.”

  Vaughan stopped walking. “For God’s sake, you were a military cop.”

  Reacher nodded. “Thirteen years.”

  “You hunted guys like Rogers.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And now you’ve gone over to the dark side?”

  Reacher said nothing.

  Vaughan said, “Did you know Rogers?”

  “Never heard of him. But I knew ten thousand just like him.”

  Vaughan started walking again. Reacher kept pace. She stopped fifty yards short of the motel. Outside the police station. The brick façade looked cold in the gray light. The neat aluminum letters looked colder.

  “They had a duty,” Vaughan said. “You had a duty. David did his duty. They should do theirs, and you should do yours.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “Soldiers should go where they’re told,” she said. “They should follow orders. They don’t get to choose. And you swore an oath. You should obey it. They’re traitors to their country. They’re cowards. And you are, too. I can’t believe I slept with you. You’re nothing. You’re disgusting. You make my skin crawl.”

  Reacher said, “Duty is a house of cards.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I went where they told me. I followed orders. I did everything they asked, and I watched ten thousand guys do the same. And we were happy to, deep down. I mean, we bitched and pissed and moaned, like soldiers always do. But we bought the deal. Because duty is a transaction, Vaughan. It’s a two-way street. We owe them, they owe us. And what they owe us is a solemn promise to risk our lives and limbs if and only if there’s a damn good reason. Most of the time they’re wrong anyway, but we like to feel some kind of good faith somewhere. At least a little bit. And that’s all gone now. Now it’s all about political vanity and electioneering. That’s all. And guys know that. You can try, but you can’t bullshit a soldier. They blew it, not us. They pulled out the big card at the bottom of the house and the whole thing fell down. And guys like Anderson and Rogers are over there watching their friends getting killed and maimed and they’re thinking, Why? Why should we do this shit?”

  “And you think going AWOL is the answer?”

  “I think the answer is for civilians to get off their fat asses and vote the bums out. They should exercise control. That’s their duty. That’s the next-biggest card at the bottom of the house. But that’s gone, too. So don’t talk to me about AWOL. Why should the grunts on the ground be the only ones who don’t go AWOL? What kind of a two-way street is that?”

  “You served thirteen years and you support deserters?”

  “I understand their decision. Precisely because I served those thirteen years. I had the good times. I wish they could have had them, too. I loved the army. And I hate what happened to it. I feel the same as I would if I had a sister and she married a creep. Should she keep her marriage vows? To a point, sure, but no further.”

  “If you were in now, would you have deserted?”

  Reacher shook his head. “I don’t think I would have been brave enough.”

  “It takes courage?”

  “For most guys, more than you would think.”

  “People don’t want to hear that their loved ones died for no good reason.”