Never Go Back

night before. In the first car, driven by the private first class. The guy was at the desk, on the phone. He looked up. Reacher shook his head and backed out of the room.
    Room 204 had been Stan Lowrey’s office. A hard man, and a good investigator. He had gone early, the only one of the original unit smart enough to get out unscathed. He had moved to Montana, to raise sheep and churn butter. No one knew why. He had been the only black man in a thousand square miles, and he had no farming experience. But people said he had been happy. Then he had been hit by a truck. His office was occupied by a captain in Class A uniform. A short guy, on his way to testify. No other reason for the fancy duds. Reacher said, ‘Excuse me,’ and headed out again.
    Room 203 had been an evidence locker, and still was, and 201 had been a file room, and still was, and 202 had been the company clerk’s quarters, and still was. The guy was in there, a sergeant, relatively old and grey, probably fighting involuntary separation on an annual basis. Reacher nodded a greeting to him and backed out and went downstairs.
    The sour-faced night guy had gone and Leach had taken his place at the reception desk. Behind her the corridor led back to the first-floor offices, 101 through 110. Reacher checked them all. Rooms 109 and 110 had been Jorge Sanchez’s and Manuel Orozco’s offices, and were now occupied by similar guys from a newer generation. Rooms 101 through 108 held people of no particular interest, except for 103, which was the duty officer’s station. There was a captain in there. He was a good-looking guy in his late twenties. His desk was twice the normal size, all covered over with telephones and scratch pads and message forms and an untidy legal pad, with its many used pages folded loosely back like an immense bouffant hairdo from the 1950s. The face-up page was covered with angry black doodles. There were shaded boxes and machines and escape-proof spiral mazes. Clearly the guy spent a lot of time on the phone, some of it on hold, some of it waiting, most of it bored. When he spoke it was with a Southern accent that Reacher recognized immediately. He had talked to the guy from South Dakota more than once. The guy had routed his calls to Susan Turner.
    Reacher asked him, ‘Do you have other personnel deployed around here?’
    The guy shook his head. ‘This is it. What you see is what you get. We have people elsewhere in the States and overseas, but no one else in this military district.’
    ‘How many in Afghanistan?’
    ‘Two.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘I can’t give you the details.’
    ‘Hazardous duty?’
    ‘Is there another kind? In Afghanistan?’
    Something in his voice.
    Reacher asked, ‘Are they OK?’
    ‘They missed their scheduled radio check yesterday.’
    ‘Is that unusual?’
    ‘Never happened before.’
    ‘Do you know what their mission is?’
    ‘I can’t tell you.’
    ‘I’m not asking you to tell me. I’m asking whether you know. In other words, how secret is it?’
    The guy paused a beat and said, ‘No, I don’t know what their mission is. All I know is they’re out there in the back of beyond, and all we’re getting is silence.’
    Reacher said, ‘Thank you, captain.’ He headed back to the reception desk, where he asked Leach for a pool car. She hesitated, and he said, ‘I’m dismissed for the day. Colonel Morgan didn’t say I had to sit in the corner. An omission, possibly, but I’m entitled to interpret my orders in the best possible light.’
    Leach asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’
    ‘Fort Dyer,’ Reacher said. ‘I want to talk to Colonel Moorcroft.’
    ‘Major Turner’s lawyer?’
    Reacher nodded. ‘And Dyer is definitely less than five miles away. You won’t be aiding or abetting a serious crime.’
    Leach paused a beat and then opened a drawer and took out a grubby key. She said, ‘It’s an old blue Chevy sedan. I need it back here before the end of the day. I can’t let you have it overnight.’
    ‘Whose is the red sports car outside?’
    Leach said, ‘That’s Major Turner’s ride.’
    ‘Do you know the guys in Afghanistan?’
    Leach nodded. ‘They’re friends of mine.’
    ‘Are they good?’
    ‘They’re the best.’

ELEVEN
    THERE WERE THREE chevrolet sedans in the HQ lot, and two were old, but only one was old and blue. It was dirty and all beat up and saggy, and it had about a million city miles on the clock. But it started up fine, and it idled OK. Which