17 A Wanted Man

agent might pose a challenge.’
    ‘I don’t like the idea of a CIA insider talking to Wadiah.’
    ‘Didn’t happen,’ Reacher said. ‘Your guy knifed him too soon for talking.’
    ‘They’d been together before. They must have been. At least for a few minutes. I think they walked to that bunker as a threesome.’
    Like suddenly the first guy had bolted ahead, and the other two guys were hustling to keep up
.
    ‘Probably,’ Reacher said.
    ‘So they must have talked.’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘I want to know what they said.’
    ‘We’ll ask McQueen. When we find him.’
    ‘Tell me the answer to that word game. Where you have to speak for a minute without using the letter A.’
    ‘Is that how you want to remember me?’
    ‘I could win a couple of bar bets.’
    ‘That was a game with Alan King.’
    ‘I overheard.’
    ‘Later,’ Reacher said. ‘When we’ve found McQueen. He’ll want to hear it too.’
    ‘He was asleep.’
    ‘I doubt he ever sleeps.’
    ‘How many acres was it?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter about acres. This is about buildings. We’ll know it when we see it.’
    And they saw it and knew it exactly ten minutes later, after six hundred yards on foot.

SIXTY-SEVEN
    THEY FORMED UP in back of the grocery store, where they had stood before. They aligned themselves with the road, for reference, and they turned forty-five degrees left, as before. Northwest. Reacher took a last look at McQueen’s GPS tracks. At maximum magnification they hooked around an angle, like an upside-down letter J. Clearly there was a vehicle entrance off the top east-west two-lane. McQueen had driven north on Route 65, past the McDonald’s, past the Lacey’s store, past the Texaco station, and then he had turned left, and left again, into a driveway. He had done all that enough times to burn the evidence into a photograph. And its bright end point was just about right on the diagonal across the parallelogram. About halfway along its length. Which in terms of miles would be half of the square root of two, at the pessimistic end of the scale, or half of the square root of eight, at the optimistic end. Close to thirteen hundred yards, or close to twenty-five hundred yards. Either twenty minutes’ walk, or forty. Or somewhere in between. They would be coming up on whatever it was from the rear three-quarter direction. Not bad. Better than the front, certainly, and better than head-on towards the back. Not as good as sideways on. If any house had a blank wall, it would be on the side. Or a wall with token windows, maybe with pebble glass, powder rooms or bathrooms. Like the place in the suburbs, sixty miles away.
    They separated laterally as much as they dared. Delfuenso started out way to the left, and Sorenson started out way to the right. Reacher was in the middle, and he could see both of them, but only just. They couldn’t see each other. Delfuenso set out first. Then minutes later Sorenson walked out into the dirt. Reacher came last. Three targets, widely separated side to side, widely separated front to back. Dark clothes, dark night. Maybe not yet smarter than the average infantryman, but not any dumber, either.
    There was heavy mud underfoot, all churned up and lumpy and unreliable. Some of it felt slick and slippery. Animal dung, Reacher assumed, although he still couldn’t smell anything. He kept his eyes fixed on an imaginary spot on the horizon, to keep his progress straight. He had Bale’s Glock in his right hand, down by his side. Ahead of him and far to his left he could just about see Delfuenso. A shadowy figure, barely there at all. But she was making decent progress. Short steps, energetic, really working it. He could see Sorenson a little better. She wasn’t so far ahead. And she was marginally paler than Delfuenso. Blonde, not dark. The moon was still out in places, but it was low in the sky and not bright.
    Safe enough.
    So far.
    The mud kept their speed low. Reacher revised his estimates. Not twenty minutes or forty. It would take closer to thirty minutes or sixty. Frustrating, but not a disaster. The Quantico guys were still at thirty-five thousand feet. Probably somewhere over West Virginia. Still hours away. He trudged onward, slipping and sliding.
    Then he began to slow. Because the blank view ahead of him seemed to be solidifying. Just a sense. There was some kind of substance there. Still invisible. Not a small distant farmhouse, presumably. Something bulkier. Maybe a giant barn. Sheet