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69

The first thing Garber said was, "We just heard froon John James Frazer was found dead in his office"

I said, "Dead how?"

"Looks like a freak accident Apparently he fell and hit his head on the desk His staff got back fro with a picture of Carlton Riley"

"That&039;s bad"

"Why?"

"This is not a great time to lose our Senate Liaison"

"Did you read the file?"

I said, "Yes, I did"

"Then you knoe don&039;t need to worry about the Senate anymore Whoever replaces Frazer will have plenty of ti"

"Is that going to be the official line?"

"It&039;s the truth She was a Marine, Reacher Sixteen years in She knew all about cutting throats She kne to do it, and she kne to pretend she didn&039;t And the car alone proves it Right there, what more is there to say? She wrecks Paul Evers&039;s car, and she wrecks Reed Riley&039;s Same MO Same exact reason Except this time she&039;s only one of four beautiful women And Munro says Riley dates her and then dumps her for the other three in succession So this tioes beyond breaking arms This time she has her own private deer trestle behind an e to be the official line?"

"It&039;s what happened"

"So what next?"

"It&039;s purely a Mississippi ht, and we have no way of knoill happen Most likely nothing will happen My guess is she won&039;t arrest herself, and she won&039;t give the State Police any reason to either"

"So we&039;re going to walk away?"

"All three of the to do with us"

"So the "

"Is Kelha"

"She denies dating Riley, you know"

"She would, wouldn&039;t she?"

"Do we know anything about General Dyer?"

"He died two years ago after a long and exe The man was stainless"

"OK," I said "I&039;ll take steps"

"Tohat?"

"Torapping up my involvement"

"Your involve"

"I have private property to recover"

"You left soht back"

"What did you leave?"

"My toothbrush"

"That&039;s not important"

"Will the DoD reimburse me?"

"For a toothbrush? Of course not"

"Then I have a right to recover it They can&039;t have it both ways"

He said, "Reacher, if you draw one iotaI can do to help you Right now so their breath We&039;re one inch away fro a three-time killer Except neither one of the about it Not him, for one reason, and not her, for another So we&039;ll probably get aith it But we don&039;t know yet Not for sure Right now it&039;s still in the balance"

I said nothing

He said, "You know she&039;s good for it, Reacher A ate Iyou like a violin First she was trying to get rid of you, and when you wouldn&039;t go, she switched to keeping you close So she could ress Or the lack of it Why else would she even talk to you?"

I said nothing

He said, "The bus is long gone, anyway To Memphis You&039;d have to wait until tos differently toley still on the post?"

He said, "Yes, she is I just made a date to have a drink with her"

"Tell her she&039;s taking the bus ho the company car"

He asked, "Do you have a bank account?"

I said, "How else would I get paid?"

"Where is it?"

"New York From when I was at West Point"

"Move it to soon"

"Why?"

"Involuntary separation inia"

"You think it will come to that?"

"The Joint Chiefs think war is over They&039;re singing along with Yoko Ono There are big cuts co Most of them will fall on the army Because the Marines have better PR, and because the Navy and the Air Force are a whole different thing altogether So the people right above us are ht now"

"Am I on those lists?"

"You will be And there will be nothing I can do to stop it"

"You could order o back to Mississippi"

"I could, but I won&039;t Not you I trust you to do the right thing"

70

I met Stan Lowrey onhis car just as I was unlocking the Buick

I said, "Goodbye, old pal"

He said, "That sounds final"

"You ain"

"Why? Are you in trouble?"

"Me?" I said "No, I&039;one when I get back"

He just shook his head and smiled and walked on

The Buick was an old lady&039;s car If reat aunt, and she would have driven a Buick Park Avenue But she would have driven it slower thanwas as soft as ahway And I got on the highway as soon as I could On I-65, to be precise Heading south, down the eastern edge of a notional corridor, not down the western edge through Me frohter shot And therefore faster Five hours, I figured Maybe five and a half I would be in Carter Crossing by ten-thirty at the latest

I went south all the way through Kentucky in the last of the daylight, and then it got dark pretty quickly as I drove through Tennessee I hunted around for a hts The broad road took ht neon of Nashville, fast and above the fray, and then it took h open country, where it was dark and lonely again I drove like I was hypnotized, auto, surprised every ti out of the journey

I crossed the line into Alabaas and a map I kneould need to head west off an early Alabama exit and I needed a e-scale plan you can buy ahead of tiht unfolded neatly and showedmore than that Mississippi was just a blank white space on the edge of the paper I narrowed down et area and found a choice of four east - west routes Any one of theht have been the road that led onward past Kelhaht There could have been all kinds of dog-leg turns waiting for ular

Except that Kelha wars and mass mobilizations And DoD planners have always been a cautious bunch They didn&039;t want so lost in unfans here and there,the way to and from every major installation in the nation Their efforts intensified after the Interstate systeun The Interstate systeood reason Eisenhower had been Supre World War Two, and his biggest proble men and materiel from point A to point B across lousy and unmarked roads He was determined his successors should not face similar problems should land war ever come to America Hence the Interstate system Not for vacations Not for cons had not been shot up or trashed or stolen by the locals, I could use the beacons

I found the first of the signs at the next exit I came to I came off the ramp and struck out west on a concrete ribbon lined here and there with low-rent malls and auto dealers After a time the commercial enterprises died back and the road reverted to what I guessed it had been before, which was a h what looked like pretty country There were trees and fields and the occasional lake There were sues and the occasional inn There was a bright h in the sky, and it was all very picturesque

I drove on but saw no ns until I was in Mississippi, and only one more after that But it was a bold and confident arrow pointing straight ahead, with the nu just seventeen o The clock in my head said five past ten If I hustled, I would arrive ahead of schedule

71

Evidently the DoD engineers had been just as concerned about the ard approach to Kelham as the eastward The road was the same in both directions Same width, sanized it ten miles out Then I sensed the trees and the fence in the darkness to ht on a map

The southern periate to arrive I saw no reason why it wouldn&039;t be at the exact mid-point of the fence The DoD liked neatness If there had been a hill in the way, arineers would have reineers would have drained it

In the end I guessed that actually there had been a small valley in the way, because after a couple ofa causeway about six feet high The land all around was lower Then the causeidened drae fan-shaped concrete elevation floating above the grade Like a gigantic turn-in, like the mouth of a wide new road It started out about the size of an end-on football field Maybe ot a little narrower It es No sharp turns The turns were shallow, easing gently through graceful, generous curves To acco

But if the fan shape was the mouth of a new road, then that new road dead-ended fifty yards later, at Fort Kelhaate was a heavy-duty affair That was for da I had seen outside a couardhouse, which was also a serious affair It had nine personnel in it The county&039;s interests were represented by the lone figure of Deputy Geezer Butler He was sitting in his car, which was parked at an angle on the cusp of the farther curve, in a kind of no-man&039;s-land, where the county&039;s road became the army&039;s

But the army&039;s heavy steel barriers ide open, and the army&039;s road was in use The base was all lit up and alive, and the whole scene looked exactly like business as usual People were co crowd, but no one was lonely Most were driving, but so, because it was close to ten-thirty, and there were early starts to out Instructors, probably And officers Those who had it easy I braked behind two slower cars and soate and pulled in behind me and I found ainst the tide, going west, heading for the other side of the tracks Possibly the last of