Nothing To Lose Part 41

"Not much," Reacher said.

They flew on. There was nothing but darkness ahead, relieved occasionally by tiny cl.u.s.ters of yellow light far below. Hamlets, farms, gas stations. At one point Reacher saw brighter lights in the distance to the left and the right. Lamar, probably, and La Junta. Small towns, made larger by comparison with the emptiness all around them. Sometimes cars were visible on roads, tiny cones of blue light crawling slowly.

Reacher asked, "How is Underwood doing? The deputy?"

Thurman paused a moment. Then he said, "He pa.s.sed on."

"In the hospital?"

"Before we could get him there."

"Will there be an autopsy?"

"He has no next of kin to request one."

"Did you call the coroner?"

"No need. He was old, he got sick, he died."

"He was about forty."

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It's in store for all of us."

"You don't sound very concerned."

"A good Christian has nothing to fear in death. And I own a town, Mr. Reacher. I see births and deaths all the time. One door closes, another opens."

Thurman leaned back, his gut between him and the stick, his hands held low. The engine held fast on a mid-range roar and the whole plane shivered with vibration and bucked occasionally on rough air. The lat.i.tude number counted down slowly, and the longitude number slower still. Reacher closed his eyes. Flight time to the state line would be about seventy or eighty minutes. He figured they weren't going to land in Colorado itself. There wasn't much left of it. Just empty gra.s.sland. He figured they were going to Oklahoma, or Texas.

They flew on. The air got steadily worse. Reacher opened his eyes. Downdrafts dropped them into troughs like a stone. Then updrafts hurled them back up again. They were sideswiped by gusts of wind. Not like in a big commercial Boeing. No juddering vibration and bouncing wings. No implacable forward motion. Just violent physical displacement, like a pinball caught between b.u.mpers. There was no storm outside. No rain, no lightning. No thunderheads. Just roiling evening thermals coming up off the plains in giant waves, invisible, compressing, decompressing, making solid walls and empty voids. Thurman held the stick loosely and let the plane buck and dive. Reacher moved in his seat and smoothed the harness straps over his shoulders.

Thurman said, "Youare afraid of flying." afraid of flying."

"Flying is fine," Reacher said. "Crashing is another story."

"An old joke."

"For a reason."

Thurman started jerking the stick and hammering the rudder. The plane rose and fell sharply and smashed from side to side. At first Reacher thought they were seeking smoother air. Then he realized Thurman was deliberately making things worse. He was diving where the downdrafts were sucking anyway and climbing with the updrafts. He was turning into the side winds and taking them like roundhouse punches. The plane was hammering all over the sky. It was being tossed around like the insignificant piece of junk it was.

Thurman said, "This is why you need to get your life in order. The end could come at any time. Maybe sooner than you expect."

Reacher said nothing.

Thurman said, "I could end it for you now. I could roll and stall and power dive. Two thousand feet, we'd hit the deck at three hundred miles an hour. The wings would come off first. The crater would be ten feet deep."

Reacher said, "Go right ahead."

"You mean that?"

"I dare you."

An updraft hit and the plane was thrown upward and then the decompression wave came in and the lift under the wings dropped away to a negative value and the plane fell again. Thurman dropped the nose and hit the throttle and the engine screamed and the Piper tilted into a forty-five-degree power dive. The artificial horizon on the dash lit up red and a warning siren sounded. It was barely audible over the scream of the engine and the battering airflow. Then Thurman pulled out of the dive. He jerked the nose up. The airframe groaned as the main spar stressed and the plane curved level and then rose again through air that was momentarily calmer.

Reacher said, "Chicken."

Thurman said, "I have nothing to fear."

"So why pull out?"

"When I die, I'm going to a better place."

"I thought the big guy got to make that decision, not you."

"I've been a faithful servant."

"So go for it. Go to a better place, right now. I dare you."

Reacher said nothing. Thurman flew on, straight and level, through air that was calming down. Two thousand feet, a hundred and twenty-five knots, south of southeast.

"Chicken," Reacher said again. "Phony."

Thurman said, "G.o.d wants me to complete my task."

"What, he told you that in the last two minutes?"

"I think you're an atheist."

"We're all atheists. You don't believe in Zeus or Thor or Neptune or Augustus Caesar or Mars or Venus or Sun Ra. You reject a thousand G.o.ds. Why should it bother you if someone else rejects a thousand and one?"

Thurman didn't answer.

Reacher said, "Just remember, it was you who was afraid to die, not me."

They flew on, twenty more minutes. The air went still and quiet. Reacher closed his eyes again. Then dead-on an hour and a quarter total elapsed time Thurman moved in his seat. Reacher opened his eyes. Thurman hit a couple of switches and fired up his radio and held the stick with his knees and clamped a headset over his ears. The headset had a microphone on a boom that came off the left-hand earpiece. Thurman flicked it with his fingernail and said, "It's me, on approach." Reacher heard a m.u.f.fled crackling reply and far below in the distance saw lights come on. Red and white runway lights, he a.s.sumed, but they were so far away they looked like a tiny pink pinpoint. Thurman started a long slow descent. Not very smooth. The plane was too small and light for finesse. It jerked and dropped and leveled and dropped again. Laterally it was nervous. It darted left, darted right. The pink pinpoint jumped around below them and drew closer and resolved into twin lines of red and white. The lines looked short. The plane wobbled and stumbled in the air and dipped low and then settled on a shallow path all the way down. The runway lights rushed up to meet it and started blurring past, left and right. For a second Reacher thought Thurman had left it too late, but then the wheels touched down and bounced once and settled back and Thurman cut the power and the plane rolled to a walk with half the runway still ahead of it. The engine note changed to a deep roar and the walk picked up to taxiing speed and Thurman jerked left off the runway and drove a hundred yards to a deserted ap.r.o.n. Reacher could see the vague outlines of brick buildings in the middle distance. He saw a vehicle approaching, headlights on. Big, dark, bulky.

A Humvee.

Camouflage paint.

The Humvee parked twenty feet from the Piper and the doors opened and two guys climbed out.

Battledress uniform, woodland pattern.

Soldiers.

59

Reacher sat for a moment in the sudden silence with his ears ringing and then he opened the Piper's door and climbed out to the wing. Thurman pa.s.sed him the cardboard carton. Reacher took it one-handed and slid down to the tarmac. The two soldiers snapped to attention and threw salutes and stood there like a ceremonial detail, expectantly. Thurman climbed down behind Reacher and took the box from him. One of the soldiers stepped forward. Thurman bowed slightly and offered the box. The soldier bowed slightly and took it and turned on his heel and slow-marched back to the Humvee. His partner fell in behind him, line astern. Thurman followed them. Reacher followed Thurman.

The soldiers stowed the box in the Humvee's load bed and then climbed in the front. Reacher and Thurman got in the back. Big vehicle, small seats, well separated by the ma.s.sive transmission tunnel. A diesel engine. They turned a tight circle on the ap.r.o.n and drove toward a building that stood alone in a patch of lawn. Lights were on in two ground floor windows. The Humvee parked and the soldiers retrieved the box from the load bed and slow-marched it into the building. A minute later they came back out again without it.

Thurman said, "Job done, for tonight, at least."

Reacher asked, "What was in the jar?"

"People," Thurman said. "Men, maybe women. We sc.r.a.pe them off the metal. When there's been a fire, that's all that's left of them. Soot, baked onto steel. We sc.r.a.pe it off and collect it in twists of paper, and then we put the day's gleanings into jars. It's as close as we can get to giving them a proper burial."

"Where are we?"

"Fort Shaw, Oklahoma. Up in the panhandle. They deal with recovered remains here. Among other things. They're a.s.sociated with the identification laboratory in Hawaii."

"You come here every night?"

"As often as necessary. Which is most nights, sadly."

"What happens now?"

"They give me dinner, and they gas up my plane."

The soldiers climbed back into the front seats and the Humvee turned again and drove a hundred yards to the main cl.u.s.ter of buildings. A fifties army base, one of thousands in the world. Brick, green paint, whitewashed curbs, swept blacktop. Reacher had never been there before. Had never even heard of it. The Humvee parked by a side door that had a sign that said it led to the Officers' Club. Thurman turned to Reacher and said, "I won't ask you to join me for dinner. They'll have set just one place, and it would embarra.s.s them."

Reacher nodded. He knew how to find food on post. Probably better food than Thurman would be eating in the O Club.

"I'll be OK," he said. "And thanks for asking."

Thurman climbed out and disappeared through the O Club door. The grunts in the front of the Humvee craned around, unsure about what to do next. They were both privates first cla.s.s, probably stationed permanently in the States. Maybe they had a little Germany time under their belts, but nothing else of significance. No Korea time. No desert time, certainly. They didn't have the look. Reacher said, "Remember wearing diapers, when you were two years old?"

The driver said, "Sir, not specifically, sir."

"Back then I was a major in the MPs. So I'm going to take a stroll now, and you don't need to worry about it. If you want to worry about it, I'll dig out your CO and we'll do the brother officer thing, and he'll OK it and you'll look stupid. How does that sound?"

The guy wasn't totally derelict. Not totally dumb. He asked, "Sir, what unit, and where?"

Reacher said, "110th MP. HQ was in Rock Creek, Virginia."

The guy nodded. "It still is. The 110th is still in business."

"I certainly hope so."

"Sir, you have a pleasant evening. Chow in the mess until ten, if you're interested."

"Thanks, soldier," Reacher said. He climbed out and the Humvee drove away and left him. He stood still for a moment in the sharp night air and then set out walking to the standalone building. Its original purpose was unclear to him. No reason to have a physically separated building unless it held infectious patients or explosives, and it didn't look like either a hospital or an armory. Hospitals were bigger and armories were stronger.

He went in the front door and found himself in a small square hallway with stairs ahead of him and doors either side. The upstairs windows had been dark. The lit windows had been on the ground floor.If in doubt, turn left was his motto. So he tried the left-hand door and came up empty. An administrative office, lights blazing, n.o.body in it. He stepped back to the hallway and tried the right-hand door. Found a medic with the rank of captain at a desk, with Thurman's jar in front of him. The guy was young for a captain, but medics got promoted fast. They were usually two steps ahead of everyone else. was his motto. So he tried the left-hand door and came up empty. An administrative office, lights blazing, n.o.body in it. He stepped back to the hallway and tried the right-hand door. Found a medic with the rank of captain at a desk, with Thurman's jar in front of him. The guy was young for a captain, but medics got promoted fast. They were usually two steps ahead of everyone else.

"Help you?" the guy said.

"I flew in with Thurman. I was curious about his jar."

"Curious how?"

"Is it what he says it is?"

"Are you authorized to know?"

"I used to be. I was an MP. I did some forensic medicine with Nash Newman, who was probably your ultimate boss back when you were a second lieutenant. Unless he had retired already. He's probably retired now."

The guy nodded. "He is retired now. But I heard of him."

"So are there human remains in the jar?"

"Probably. Almost certainly, in fact."

"Carbon?"

"No carbon," the guy said. "In a hot fire all the carbon is driven off as carbon dioxide. What's left of a person after cremation are oxides of pota.s.sium, sodium, iron, calcium, maybe a little magnesium, all inorganic."

"And that's what's in the jar?"

The guy nodded again. "Entirely consistent with burned human flesh and bone."

"What do you do with it?"

"We send it to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii."

"And what do they do with it?"

"Nothing," the guy said. "There's no DNA in it. It's just soot, basically. The whole thing is an embarra.s.sment, really. But Thurman keeps on showing up. He's a sentimental old guy. We can't turn him away, obviously. So we stage a sweet little ceremony and accept whatever he brings. Can't trash it afterward, either. Wouldn't be respectful. So we move it off our desks onto Hawaii's. I imagine they stick it in a closet and forget all about it."

"I'm sure they do. Does Thurman tell you where it comes from?"

"Iraq, obviously."

"But what kind of vehicles?"

"Does it matter?"

"I would say so."