Worth Dying For

We’re a transportation company, not a storage company. We have no facilities.’
    ‘So what do we do?’
    ‘We think. That’s what we do. Where is that guy?’
    ‘We don’t know.’
    ‘We know he hasn’t slept or eaten since yesterday. We know we’ve had our boys out driving the roads all morning and they haven’t seen a damn thing. So where is he?’
    Jonas Duncan said, ‘Either he’s snuck in a chicken coop somewhere, or he’s out walking the fields.’
    ‘Exactly,’ Jacob said. ‘I think it’s time to turn our boys off the nice smooth roads. I think it’s time they drove out across the land, big circles, sweeping and beating.’
    ‘We only have seven of them left.’
    ‘They all have cell phones. First sight of the guy, they can call the boys from the south and turn the problem over to the professionals. If they need to, that is. Or at least they can get some coordinated action going. Let’s turn them loose.’
    * * *
    By that point Reacher was starting to hurry. He was about four hundred yards due west of the three Duncan houses, which was about as close as he intended to get. He was walking parallel to the road. He could already see the wooden buildings ahead. They were tiny brown pinpricks on the far horizon. Nothing between him and them. Flat land. He was watching for trucks. He knew they would be coming. By now his hunters would have checked the roads, and found nothing. Therefore they would have concluded he was travelling cross-country. They would be putting trucks in the fields, and soon, if they hadn’t already. It was predictable. Fast, mobile patrols, cell phone communications, maybe even radios, the whole nine yards. Not good.
    He slogged onward, another five minutes, then ten, then twenty. The three Duncan houses fell away behind his shoulder. The wooden buildings up ahead stayed resolutely on the horizon, but they got a little larger, because they were getting a little closer. Four hundred yards away was another bramble thicket, spreading wide and chest-high, but apart from that there was nothing in sight taller than an inch. Reacher was dangerously exposed, and he knew it.
    In Las Vegas a Lebanese man named Safir took out his phone and dialled a number. The call was answered six blocks away by an Italian man named Rossi. There were no pleasantries. No time for any. The first thing Safir said was, ‘You’re making me angry.’
    Rossi said nothing in reply. He couldn’t really afford to. It was a question of protocol. He was absolutely at the top of his own particular tree, and it was a big tree, high, wide, and handsome, with roots and branches spreading everywhere, but there were bigger trees in the forest, and Safir’s was one of them.
    Safir said, ‘I favoured you with my business.’
    Rossi said, ‘And I’m grateful for that.’
    ‘But now you’re embarrassing me,’ Safir said. Which, Rossi thought, was a mistake. It was an admission of weakness. It made it clear that however big Safir was, he was worried about someone bigger still. A food chain thing. At the bottom were theDuncans, then came Rossi, then came Safir, and at the top came someone else. It didn’t matter who. The mere existence of such a person put Safir and Rossi in the same boat. For all their graduated wealth and power and glory, they were both intermediaries. Both scufflers. Common cause.
    Rossi said, ‘You know that merchandise of this quality is hard to source.’
    Safir said, ‘I expect promises to be kept.’
    ‘So do I. We’re both victims here. The difference between us is that I’m doing something about it. I’ve got boots on the ground up in Nebraska.’
    ‘What’s the problem there?’
    ‘They claim a guy is poking around.’
    ‘What, a cop?’
    ‘No,’ Rossi said. ‘Absolutely not a cop. The chain is as secure as ever. Just a passer-by, that’s all. A stranger.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Nobody. Just a busybody.’
    ‘So how is this nobody busybody stranger holding things up?’
    ‘I don’t think he is, really. I think they’re lying to me. I think they’re just making excuses. They’re late, that’s all.’
    ‘Unsatisfactory.’
    ‘I agree. But this is a sellers’ market.’
    ‘Who have you got up there?’
    ‘Two of my boys.’
    ‘I’m going to send two of mine.’
    ‘No point,’ Rossi said. ‘I’m already taking care of it.’
    ‘Not to Nebraska, you idiot,’ Safir said. ‘I’m going to send two of my boys across town to babysit you. To keep the pressure