61 Hours

fortune.’
    ‘The defence budget was practically unlimited back then.’
    ‘I can’t believe they couldn’t find an alternative use for it.’
    ‘The design was compromised somehow.’
    ‘Even so. Somebody could have used it.’
    ‘Too landlocked for the navy. We’re close to the geographic centre of the United States. Or so they said on the bus tour.’
    ‘The Marines could have used it for winter training.’
    ‘Not with South in the name of the state. Too chicken. The Marines would have insisted on North Dakota. Or the North Pole.’
    ‘Maybe they didn’t want to sleep underground.’
    ‘Marines sleep where they’re told. And when.’
    ‘Actually I heard they do their winter training near San Diego.’
    ‘I was in the army,’ Reacher said. ‘Marine training makes no sense to me.’
    They braved the cold again and took a last look at the stone building and its stubborn door. Then they walked back to the car and climbed in and drove away. Two miles along the runway, where battered planes were to have spilled ragged children. Then eight miles on the old two-lane, up which no adult would have come to the rescue. The Cold War. A bad time. In retrospect, probably less dangerous than people imagined. Some Soviet missiles were mere fictions, some were painted tree trunks, some were faulty. And the Soviets had psychologists too, preparing reports in the Cyrillic alphabet about seven-year-olds of their own, and about tribalism and fighting and killing and cannibalism. But at the time things had seemed very real. Reacher had been two years old at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. In the Pacific. He had known nothing about it. But later his mother had told him how she and his father had calculated the southern drift of the poisoned wind. Two weeks, they thought. There were guns in the house. And on the base there were corpsmen with pills.
    Reacher asked, ‘How accurate are your weather reports?’
    Peterson said, ‘Usually pretty good.’
    ‘They’re calling for snow again tomorrow.’
    ‘That sounds about right.’
    ‘Then someone’s going to show up soon. They didn’t plough that runway for nothing.’

    Far to the east and a little to the south a plane was landing on another long runway, at Andrews Air Force Base in the state of Maryland. Not a large plane. A business jet, leased by the army, assigned to an MP prisoner escort company. It was carrying six people. A pilot, a copilot, three prisoner escorts, and a prisoner. The prisoner was the Fourth Infantry captain from Fort Hood. He was in civilian clothes and was hobbled by standard restraint chains around his wrists and waist and ankles, all interconnected. The plane taxied and the steps were lowered and the prisoner was hustled down them to a car parked on the apron. He was put in the back seat. Waiting for him there was a woman officer in a Class A army uniform. An MP major. She was a little above average height. She was slender. She had long dark hair tied back. Tanned skin, deep brown eyes. She had intelligence and authority and youth and mischief in her face, all at the same time. She was wearing ribbons for a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.
    There was no driver in the front of the car.
    The woman said, ‘Good afternoon, captain.’
    The captain didn’t speak.
    The woman said, ‘My name is Susan Turner. My rank is major, and I command the 110th MP, and I’m handling your case. You and I are going to talk for a minute, and then you’re going to get back on the plane, and you’re either going to head back to Texas, or straight over to Fort Leavenworth. One or the other. You understand?’
    Her voice was warm. It was a little husky, a little breathy, a little intimate. All in her throat. It was the kind of voice that could tease out all kinds of confidences.
    The infantry captain knew it.
    He said, ‘I want a lawyer.’
    Susan Turner nodded.
    ‘You’ll get one,’ she said. ‘You’ll get plenty. Believe me, before long you’re going to be completely up to your ass in lawyers. It’s going to be like you wandered into a Bar Association convention with a hundred dollar bill tied around your neck.’
    ‘You can’t talk to me without a lawyer.’
    ‘That’s not quite accurate. You don’t have to say anything to me without a lawyer. I can talk to you all I want. See the difference?’
    The guy said nothing.
    ‘I have some bad news,’ Susan Turner said. ‘You’re going to die. You know that, right? You are completely