Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

cars everywhere.
    ‘Not good,’ Turner said.
    Reacher nodded, because it wasn’t. It was tight-packed and close-quarters, and rolling through would mean stopping and starting and manoeuvring around one obstacle after another. Walking speed would be a luxury.
    He said, ‘You’re the CO.’
    She said, ‘You’re the XO.’
    ‘I say go for it. But it’s your decision.’
    ‘Why do you say go for it?’
    ‘The negatives look bad, but they’re actually positives. Things could work out in our favour. The MPs and the FBI don’t know what we’re driving. As far as they’re concerned, this is just an old truck with dark windows. They’re not looking for it.’
    ‘But the two guys from the dented car might be. They’re getting good intelligence. Worst case, someone saw the credit card and knows what we’re driving.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Reacher said. ‘They can’t do anything to us. Not here. Not in front of government witnesses. They must know the MPs and the FBI are right there with them. It’s a perfect Catch-22. They’ll just have to sit there and take it.’
    ‘They might follow us. The MPs and the FBI wouldn’t see anything wrong with that. Just another car leaving the neighbourhood.’
    ‘I agree. But like I said. That would be things working out in our favour. That would be two birds with one stone. We eyeball the location, and we lure the guys out to a place of our choosing. All in all, I would call that a good day’s work. Speaking as an XO, that is. But it’s your decision. That’s why you get the big bucks. Almost as many as some high-school teachers.’
    Turner said nothing.
    Reacher said, ‘Two front burners, remember.’
    Turner said, ‘OK, go for it.’

    They checked the map and Reacher rehearsed the turns. A right, a left, a right, and that was her street, apparently. Her lot number looked to be about halfway between one end and the other. Turner said, ‘Remember, eyeballs only. No meet and greet.’
    ‘Got it,’ Reacher said.
    ‘No exceptions.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He eased off the kerb and rolled down to the first turn and swung the wheel, and then he was in the neighbourhood. The first street was a mess. Mixed-use zoning, with a bakery truck stopped outside a grocery, and a kid’s bike dumped in the gutter, and a car with no wheels up on blocks. The second street was better. It was no wider, but it was straight and less cluttered. The tone of the neighbourhood rose through its first fifty yards. There were little houses on the left and the right. Not prosperous, but solid. Some had new roofs, and some had painted stucco, and some had parched plants in concrete tubs. Regular people, doing their best, making ends meet.
    Then came the final right turn, and the tone rose some more. But not to dizzying heights. Reacher saw a long straight street, with the 101 plainly visible at the far end, behind hurricane fencing. The street had tract housing on both sides, built for GIs in the late 1940s, and still there more than sixty years later. The houses were all cared for, but to varying degrees, some of them well maintained, some of them refurbished, and some of them extended, but others more marginal. Most had cars on their driveways, and most had extra cars on the kerb. Overall so many it was effectively a one-lane road.
    Slow, and awkward.
    Turner said, ‘FBI ahead on the right, for sure.’
    Reacher nodded and said nothing. One of the cars on the kerb was a Chevy Malibu, about sixty feet away, plain silver, base specification, with plastic where there should have been chrome, with two stubby antennas glued to the back glass, with a guy behind the wheel wearing a white-collared shirt. An unmarked car, but no real attempt at deception. Therefore possibly a supervisor, just stopping by for a moment, to check on morale and spread good cheer. To the guy he was parked right behind, maybe.
    Reacher said, ‘Check out the thing in front of him.’
    It was a civilian Hummer H2, wide, tall, gigantic, all waxed black paint and chrome accents, with huge wheels and thin tyres, like black rubber bands.
    ‘So eight years ago,’ Turner said. A legal seizure, possibly, because of coke in the door pocket, or because it was charged to a scam business, or it had carried stolen goods in the back, first confiscated and then reissued as an undercover surveillance vehicle, slightly tone deaf in terms of credibility, like the government usually was.
    And sixty feet in front of the Hummer was