Bad Luck and Trouble

corporate. But a little out-of-date. Leased secondhand, Reacher guessed. The whole interior smelled faintly of jet fuel.
    There was a space behind the rearmost seats. For bags, Reacher guessed. A luggage compartment. Just like a minivan. It wasn’t a huge space. But it was big enough. He found the levers and flopped the seat backs forward. Climbed over and sat down on the floor, sideways, with his legs out straight and his back jammed against the side bulkhead. He took the captured SIGs out of his waistband and laid them on the floor, next to his knees. He leaned forward and hauled the seat backs upright. They clicked and locked in place. Then he slumped down to test whether he could get low enough to keep his head out of sight.
    Probably, he thought.
    He raised his head again. The cabin windows were misted with dew. Dark and gray and featureless. Like television screens, turned off. Nothing was happening outside. Noises were dulled. Clearly the carpet and the quilting doubled as soundproofing layers.
    He waited.
    Five minutes.
    Ten.
    Then the misted windows lit up with bright moving shapes and shadows. The cars, coming back. Three sets of headlight beams, bouncing and turning. They played on the glass for a moment and then they stopped and stabilized. Then they died altogether. The cars, back in the lot. Parked.
    Reacher strained to hear.
    He heard nothing except slow footsteps and low voices. Agitation, not triumph. The unmistakable sound of failure.
    The search was over.
    No success.
    He waited.

78
    He waited and grew cold and cramped from sitting still. He pictured the scene forty yards away, Mauney’s body in the doorway, the empty Samsonite in the office, discussion, argument, pacing, panic, confusion, apprehension. The side of his face was inches from the seat back in front of him. The leather was close enough to smell. Normally he would have been in severe distress. He hated confinement. Claustrophobia was as close as he ever came to fear. But right then he had other things on his mind.
    He waited.
    Twenty long minutes.
    Then a door opened up front and the helicopter dipped and settled as its undercarriage compressed and recovered. Someone had climbed aboard. The door closed. A seat creaked. A harness buckle clicked. Switches clicked. Faint orange light jumped from dozens of instrument faces and threw sudden shadows on the roof. A fuel pump whirred and chattered. Reacher leaned forward from the waist and moved his head until one eye was lined up with the gap between the seats. He saw the pilot’s leather sleeve. Nothing more. The rest of the guy was invisible behind his bulky chair. His hand was dancing over switches and touching the faces of dials one by one as he ran through preflight checks. He was talking to himself, quietly, reciting a long list of required technicalities like an incantation.
    Reacher pulled his head back.
    Then there was an incredibly loud noise.
    It was halfway between a gunshot and a split-second blast of compressed air. It came again, and again, and again, faster and faster. The starter mechanism, forcing the rotor around. The floor shook. Then the engines fired up and gears meshed and the rotor caught and settled to a lazy whop-whop idle. The torque rocked and twisted the whole craft on its struts, just a little, rhythmically, like it was dancing. The interior was filled with a loud thrumming noise. Driveshafts whirred and spun overhead. Jet exhaust whined outside, high-pitched and piercing. Reacher jammed the muzzles of the captured SIGs under his legs so that they wouldn’t bounce and rattle and slide. He took his Glock from his pocket and held it down by his side.
    He waited.
    A minute later the rear door was wrenched open. A blast of louder noise flooded in. After the noise came the acrid smell of kerosene. After the kerosene came Karla Dixon. Reacher moved his head an inch and saw her dumped on the floor head first like a log. She came to rest on her side, facing away. Her wrists and ankles were tied with rough sisal rope. Her hands were behind her back. The last time he had seen her horizontal had been in his bed in Vegas.
    Two minutes later O’Donnell was wrestled in, feet-first. He was bigger and heavier and landed harder. He was tied up the same way as Dixon. He rolled facedown alongside her, his feet next to her head. They lay there together like cordwood, moving a little, struggling against the ropes.
    Then the struts bounced again and Lennox and Parker climbed