Bad Luck and Trouble

minutes.”
    “Where?”
    “The second one was a mile back. Two lefts and a right. The first one was three places before that.”
    “Both places with fences?”
    “Check.”
    “Outbuildings?”
    “Both of them.”
    Reacher braked and pulled an illegal U across the full width of the road and headed back the way they had come. He took two lefts and a right and slowed and Neagley pointed at a collection of gray metal buildings squatting behind a fence that would have looked right at home outside a supermax prison. It was at least eight feet tall and close to four feet thick, two faces of tight barbed wire with giant coils of razor wire heaped between them and huge concertinas of the same stuff piled on top. It was one hell of a barrier. There were four buildings behind it. One was a large shed and three were smaller constructions. There was a huge concrete rectangle with a long-nosed helicopter parked on it, white, still, and quiet.
    “That’s a Bell 222?” Reacher asked.
    “Unmistakable,” Neagley said.
    “So is this the place?”
    “Hard to say.”
    Next to the helipad was an orange windsock on a tall pole. It was hanging limp in the warm dry air. There was a small parking lot full of thirteen cars. Nothing expensive. No blue Chryslers.
    “What would assembly workers drive?” Reacher asked.
    “Cars like those,” Neagley said.
    Reacher drove on, past one place, past another. The third place in line was very similar to the first. A serious fence, four blank buildings with gray metal siding, a parking lot full of cheap cars, a helipad, a parked Bell 222, white. No names, no markings, no signs.
    Reacher said, “We need the exact address.”
    “We don’t have time. The Dunes is a long way from here.”
    “But Pasadena isn’t.”

    They made the short hop east on York Boulevard and the 110. Pulled up outside the inn in Pasadena fifteen minutes later. Five minutes after that they were in Margaret Berenson’s room. They told her what they needed. They didn’t tell her why. They wanted to preserve an illusion of competence, for her sake.
    Berenson told them the first place they had seen was the place they wanted.

    Fifteen minutes later they cruised past the first place again. The fence was appalling. Brutal. A main battle tank might have breached it. A car almost certainly wouldn’t. Not a Honda Prelude. Not even a big lump like the Chrysler. Not even a heavy truck. It was a question of the wire’s resilience. The outer strands would stretch like guitar strings before they broke, dissipating the force of impact, slowing the vehicle, robbing its momentum. Then the inner coils would compress. Like a sponge. Like a spring. The vehicle would tangle and slow and stall. No way through on wheels. And no way through on foot. An individual with a bolt cutter would bleed to death before he was a quarter of the way in. And there was no way over the top, either. The concertinas were too broad and too loosely coiled to allow scaling by ladder.
    Reacher drove all the way around the block. The whole facility occupied a couple of acres. It was roughly square, about a hundred yards on a side. Four buildings, one large, three small. Dried brown grass and cinder footpaths between them. The fence was four hundred yards long in total and had no weak spots. And only one gate. It was a wide steel assembly that slid sideways on wheels. Welded to its top rail was more concertina wire. Flanking it was a guard hut.
    “Pentagon requirement,” Neagley said. “Has to be.”
    There was a guard in the hut. An old guy, gray hair. Gray uniform. A belt around his hips, a gun in the belt. A simple job. The right pass and the right paperwork, he would hit a button and the gate would roll back. No pass and no paperwork, he wouldn’t and it wouldn’t. There was a lightbulb above the guy’s head. It would be lit after dark. It would throw a soft yellow halo for twenty feet all around.
    “No way through,” Reacher said.
    “Are they even in there?”
    “Must be. It’s like a private jail. Safer than stashing them anywhere else. And it’s where they put the others.”
    “How did it go down?”
    “Mauney arrested them in the hospital lot. Maybe he had help from Lamaison’s guys. Crowded place, total surprise, what were they going to do?”
    Reacher drove on. The Prelude was an unremarkable car, but he didn’t want it to be seen too many times in the same place. He turned a corner and parked a quarter of a mile away. Didn’t