The guy in the blazer drove a well-judged part-circle and came to a stop with my door about a yard from the bottom of the airplane steps. Which I took as a hint. I climbed out and stood a moment in the sun. Spring had sprung and the weather was pleasant. Beside me the car drove away. A steward appeared above me, in the little oval mouth of the cabin. He was wearing a uniform. He said, ‘Sir, please step up.’
The stairs dipped a little under my weight. I ducked into the cabin. The steward backed off to my right, and on my left another guy in uniform squeezed out of the cockpit and said, ‘Welcome aboard, sir. You have an all-air force crew today, and we’ll get you there in no time at all.’
I said, ‘Get me where?’
‘To your destination.’ The guy crammed himself back in his seat next to his co-pilot and they both got busy checking dials. I followed the steward and found a cabin full of butterscotch leather and walnut veneer. I was the only passenger. I picked an armchair at random. The steward hauled the steps up and sealed the door and sat down on a jump seat behind the pilots’ shoulders. Thirty seconds later we were in the air, climbing hard.
TWO
I FIGURED WE
turned east out of McChord. Not that there was much of a choice. West was Russia and Japan and China, and I doubted such a small plane had that kind of range. I asked the steward where we were going, and he said he hadn’t seen the flight plan. Which was obvious bullshit. But I didn’t push it. He turned out to be a chatty guy on every other subject. He told me the plane was a Gulfstream IV, confiscated from a bent hedge fund during a federal proceeding, and reissued to the air force for VIP transportation. In which case air force VIPs were lucky people. The plane was terrific. It was quiet and solid, and the armchairs were sensational. They adjusted every which way. And there was coffee in the galley. A proper drip machine. I told the guy to keep it going, but that I would go back and forth myself, for refills. He appreciated that. I think he took it as a mark of respect. He wasn’t really a steward, obviously. He was some kind of a security escort, tough enough to get the job, and proud I knew it.
I watched out the window, first at the Rockies, which had dark green trees low down and blinding white snow high up. Then came the tawny agricultural plains, in tiny mosaic fragments, ploughed and sown and harvested, over and over again, and not rained on much. By the look of the land I figured we clipped the corner of South Dakota and saw a bit of Nebraska before setting out over Iowa. Which because of the geometric complexities of high-altitude flight meant we were likely aiming some ways south. A Great Circle route. Weird on a flat paper map, but just right for a spherical planet. We were going to Kentucky, or Tennessee, or the Carolinas. Georgia, even.
We droned on, hour after hour, two full pots of coffee, and then the ground got a little closer. At first I thought it was Virginia, but then I figured it was North Carolina. I saw two towns that could only be Winston-Salem and Greensboro. They were on the left, and receding a little. Which meant we were heading southeast. No towns until Fayetteville. But just before that came Fort Bragg. Which was where Special Forces HQ was located. Which was Tom O’Day’s natural economic habitat.
Wrong again. Or right, technically, but in name only. We landed in the evening dark at what used to be Pope Air Force Base, which had since been given away to the army. Now it was just Pope Field, just a small corner of an ever-bigger Fort Bragg. Reforms. Politicians will do anything to save a buck.
We taxied a long time, tiny on tarmac big enough for airlift squadrons. Eventually we stopped near a small administrative building. I saw a sign that said
47th Logistics, Tactical Support Command
. The engines shut down and the steward opened the hatch and lowered the steps.
‘Which door?’ I said.
‘The red one,’ he said.
I went down and walked ahead through the dark. There was only one red door. It opened when I was six feet from it. A young woman in a black skirt suit came out. Dark nylons. Good shoes. A very young woman. She had to be still in her twenties. She had blonde hair and green eyes and a heart-shaped face. Which had a big warm welcoming smile on it.
She said, ‘I’m Casey Nice.’
I said, ‘Casey what?’
‘Nice.’
‘I’m Jack Reacher.’
‘I know. I work for the State Department.’
‘In D.C.?’
‘No, here,’ she said.
Which made some kind of sense. Special Forces were the armed wing of the CIA, which was the hands-on wing of the State Department, and some decisions would require all three fingers in the same pie all at once. Hence her presence on the base, young as she was. Maybe she was a policy genius. Some kind of a prodigy. I said, ‘Is Shoemaker here?’
She said, ‘Let’s go inside.’
She led me to a small room with a wired glass window. It had three armchairs in it, none of them matching, all of them a little sad and abandoned. She said, ‘Let’s sit down.’
I said, ‘Why am I here?’
She said, ‘First you must understand everything you hear from this point onward is a classified secret. There will be a severe penalty for a breach of security.’
‘Why would you trust me with secrets? You never met me before. You know nothing about me.’
‘Your file has been circulated. You had a security clearance. It was never revoked. You’re still bound by it.’
‘Am I free to leave?’
‘We’d prefer you to stay.’
‘Why?’
‘We want to talk to you.’
‘The State Department?’
‘Did you agree the part about classified secrets?’
I nodded. ‘What does the State Department want with me?’
‘We have certain obligations.’
‘In what respect?’
‘Someone took a shot at the president of France.’
‘In Paris.’
‘The French have appealed for international cooperation. To find the perpetrator.’
‘It wasn’t me. I was in LA.’
‘We know it wasn’t you. You’re not on the list.’
‘There’s a list?’
She didn’t answer that, except to reach high up between her jacket and her blouse and pull out a folded sheet of paper, which she handed to me. It was warm from her body, and slightly curved. But it wasn’t a list. It was a summary report from our embassy in Paris. From the CIA Head of Station, presumably. The nuts and bolts of the thing.
The range had been exceptional. An apartment balcony fourteen hundred yards away had been identified as the rifleman’s hide. Fourteen hundred yards was more than three-quarters of a mile. The French president had been at an open-air podium behind wings of thick bulletproof glass. Some kind of a new improved material. No one had seen the shot except the president himself. He had seen an impossibly distant muzzle flash, small and high and far to his left, and then more than three whole perceptible seconds later a tiny white star had appeared on the glass, like a pale insect alighting. A long, long shot. But the glass had held, and the sound of the bullet’s impact against it had triggered an instant reaction, and the president had been buried under a scrum of security people. Later, enough bullet fragments had been found to guess at a .50-calibre armourpiercing round.
I said, ‘I’m not on the list because I’m not good enough. Fourteen hundred yards is a very long way, against a head-sized target. The bullet is in the air three whole seconds. Like dropping a stone down a very deep well.’
Casey Nice nodded and said, ‘The list is very short. Which is why the French are worried.’
They hadn’t been worried immediately. That was clear. According to the summary report they had spent the first twenty-four hours congratulating themselves on having enforced such a distant perimeter, and on the quality of their bulletproof glass. Then reality had set in, and they had lit up the long-distance phones. Who knew a sniper that good?
‘Bullshit,’ I said.
Casey Nice said, ‘What part?’
‘You don’t care about the French. Not this much. Maybe you would make some appropriate noises and get a couple of interns to write a term paper. But this thing crossed Tom O’Day’s desk. For five seconds, at least. Which makes it important. And then you had a SEAL on my ass inside twenty-eight minutes, and then you flew me across the continent in a private jet. Obviously both the SEAL and the jet were standing by, but equally obviously you had no idea where I was or when I would call, so you must have had a whole bunch of SEALs and a whole bunch of jets standing by, here, there and everywhere, all over the country, day and night. Just in case. And if it’s me, it’s others too. This is a full-court press.’
‘It would complicate things if it was an American shooter.’
‘Why would it be?’
‘We hope it isn’t.’
‘What can I do for you that’s worth a private jet?’
Her phone rang in her pocket. She answered and listened and put it back. She said, ‘General O’Day will explain. He’s ready to see you now.’
THREE
CASEY NICE LED
me to a room one floor up. The building was worn and the contents looked temporary. Which I was sure they were. A guy like O’Day moved around. A month here, a month there, in nondescript accommodations behind meaningless signs, like
47th Logistics, Tactical Support Command
. In case someone was watching. Or
because
someone was watching, he would say. Someone was always watching. He had survived a long time.
He was behind a desk, with Shoemaker in a chair off to one side, like a good second in command should be. Shoemaker had aged twenty years, which was to be expected, because it was twenty years since I had last seen him. He had put on weight, and his sandy hair had dulled down to sandy grey. His face was red and pouched. He was in ACU fatigues, with his star proudly displayed.
O’Day had not aged at all. He still looked a hundred. He was wearing the same thing he had always worn, which was a faded black blazer over a V-neck sweater, which was also black, and which had been darned so many times there was more darn than sweater. Which led me to believe Mrs O’Day was still alive and well, because I couldn’t imagine anyone else taking up needle and yarn for him.
His grey lantern jaw flapped up and down and he stared out at me with dead eyes under overhanging brows and he said, ‘It’s good to see you again, Reacher.’
I said, ‘You’re lucky I didn’t have a pressing engagement. Or I’d be complaining.’
He didn’t answer. I sat down, on a metal chair I guessed was navy issue, and Casey Nice sat down on a similar chair beside me.
O’Day asked, ‘Did she tell you all this is secret?’
I said, ‘Yes,’ and beside me Casey Nice nodded emphatically, as if very anxious to confirm she had followed her orders by so doing. O’Day had that effect on people.
He asked me, ‘Did you see the summary report?’
I said, ‘Yes,’ and Casey Nice nodded again.
He said, ‘What do you make of it?’
I said, ‘I think the guy’s a good shooter.’
‘So do I,’ O’Day said. ‘Has to be, to sell a guaranteed one-forone at fourteen hundred yards.’
Which was typical of O’Day. Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings. I said, ‘It wasn’t a guaranteed one-for-one. It was a guaranteed two-for-two. The first round was supposed to break the glass. The second round was supposed to kill the guy. The first bullet was always going to shatter. Or deflect, best case. He was ready to fire again, if the glass had broken. A split-second yes-or-no decision. Fire again, or walk away. Which is impressive. Was it an armour-piercing round?’
O’Day nodded. ‘They put the fragments in a gas chromatograph.’
‘Do we have that kind of glass for our president?’
‘We will by tomorrow.’
‘Was it fifty-calibre?’
‘They collected enough weight to make it likely.’
‘Which all makes it more than impressive. That’s a big ugly rifle.’
‘Which has been known to hit at a mile out. A mile and a half, once, in Afghanistan. So maybe fourteen hundred yards isn’t such a big deal.’
Socratic.
I said, ‘I think hitting twice at fourteen hundred yards is harder than hitting once at a mile or more. It’s all about repeatability. I think this guy has talent.’
‘So do I,’ O’Day said. ‘Do you think he’s been in the service somewhere?’
‘Of course he has. No other way to get that good.’
‘Do you think he’s still in the service somewhere?’
‘No. He would have no freedom of movement.’
‘I agree.’
I said, ‘Are we sure he was selling?’
‘What are the odds a citizen with a grievance was also once upon a time a world-class sniper? More likely the citizen with a grievance has spent some money on the open market. Maybe a small group of citizens with a grievance. A faction, in other words. Which would increase the spending potential.’
‘Why do we care? The target was French.’
‘The bullet was American.’
‘How do we know?’
‘The gas chromatograph. There was an agreement. Some years ago. Not widely publicized. Not publicized at all, actually. Every manufacturer blends the alloy differently. Only slightly. But enough. Like a signature.’
‘Lots of the world buys American.’
‘This guy is new on the scene, Reacher. This profile has never been seen before. This was his first job. He’s making his name here. And it’s a hell of an ask. He has to hit twice, and fast, with a fifty-calibre cannon from fourteen hundred yards. If he makes it, he’s in the major leagues for the rest of his life. If he misses, he’s bush league for ever. That’s too big of a gamble. The stakes are way too high. But he shoots anyway. Which means he
knew
he was going to hit. He had to know. For certain, twice, at fourteen hundred yards, with total confidence. How many snipers that good are there?’
Which was a very good question. I said, ‘Honestly? For us? That good? I think in every generation we’d be lucky to have one in the SEALs, and two in the Marines, and two in the army. Total of five in the service at any one time.’
‘But you just agreed he isn’t in the service.’