Nothing to Lose

months ago. Thurman ordered twenty tons of TNT, and four new cell phones. Sounds like a plan to me. He already had everything else he needed. My guess is he kept one phone for himself, and gave two to his inner circle, so they could have secure communications between themselves, separate from anything else they were doing. And my guess is the fourth phone is buried in the heart of that container, with the ringer wired to a primer circuit. The ringer on a cell phone puts out a decent little voltage. Maybe they fitted a standby battery, and maybe they connected an external antenna. Maybe one of those antennas on the Peterbilt was a cell antenna from Radio Shack, wired back to the trailer.”
    “And you’re going to call that number?”
    Reacher said, “Soon.”
    He dialed the first number on the list. It rang, and then Thurman answered, fast and impatient, like he had been waiting for the call. Reacher asked, “You guys over the wall yet?”
    Thurman said, “We’re still here. Why are you calling us?”
    “You starting to see a pattern?”
    “The last phone was Underwood’s. He’s dead, so he won’t answer. So there’s no point calling it.”
    Reacher said, “OK.”
    “How long are you going to keep us here?”
    “Just a minute more,” Reacher said. He clicked off and laid the phone on the Chevy’s dash. Stared out through the windshield.
    Vaughan said, “You can’t do this. It would be murder.”
    Reacher said, “Live by the sword, die by the sword. Thurman should know that quotation better than anyone. It’s from the Bible. Matthew, chapter twenty-six, verse fifty-two. Slightly paraphrased. Also, they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Hosea, chapter eight, verse seven. I’m sick of people who claim to live by the scriptures cherry-picking the parts they find convenient, and ignoring all the rest.”
    “You could be completely wrong about him.”
    “Then there’s no problem. Gifts don’t explode. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “But you might be right.”
    “In which case he shouldn’t have lied to me. He should have confessed. I would have let him take his chance in court.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “We’ll never know now.”
    “He doesn’t seem worried enough.”
    “He’s used to saying things and having people believe him. And he told me he’s not afraid of dying. He told me he’s going to a better place.”
    “You’re not a one-man justice department.”
    “He’s no better than whoever blew up David’s Humvee. Worse, even. David was a combatant, at least. And out on the open road. Thurman is going to have that thing driven to a city somewhere. With children and old people all around. Thousands of them. And more thousands maybe not quite close enough. He’s going to put thousands more people in your situation.”
    Vaughan said nothing.
    “And for what?” Reacher said. “For some stupid, deluded fantasy.”
    Vaughan said nothing.
    Reacher checked the final number. Entered it into his phone. Held the phone flat on his palm and held it out to Vaughan.
    “Your choice,” he said. “Green button to make the call, red button to cancel it.”
    Vaughan didn’t move for a moment. Then she took her hand off the wheel. Folded three fingers and her thumb. Held her index finger out straight. It was small, neat, elegant, and damp, and it had a trimmed nail. She held it still, close to the phone’s LED window.
    Then she moved it.
    She pressed the green button.

    Nothing happened. Not at first. Reacher wasn’t surprised. He knew a little about cell phone technology. He had read a long article, in a trade publication abandoned on an airplane. Press the green button, and the phone in your hand sends a request by radio to the nearest cell tower, called a base transceiver station by the people who put it there. The phone says: Hey, I want to make a call. The base transceiver station forwards the plea to the nearest base station controller, by microwave if the bean counters got their way during the planning phase, or by fiber optic cable if the engineers got theirs. The base station controller bundles all the near-simultaneous requests it can find and moves them on to the closest mobile switching center, where the serious action starts.
    Maybe at this point a ring tone starts up in your earpiece. But it means nothing. It’s a placebo. It’s there to reassure you. So far you’re not even close to connected.
    The mobile switching center identifies the