Worth Dying For

harm in that? In and out in one night, who’s even going to know?’
    ‘There’s probably a lot of it. Boxes and boxes.’
    ‘I’ll help with the grunt work.’
    ‘McNally was Second Armored? Same as Tony?’
    Reacher nodded. ‘But Second Squadron, not Third. Not quite in Tony’s class.’
    ‘Where are you staying?’
    ‘The Marriott. Where else?’
    There was a long pause. The younger cop looked on. Hoag was well aware of his scrutiny. Reacher watched the dynamic unfold. Hoag cycled through proper civil caution to a kind of nostalgic old-school can-do soldier-to-soldier recklessness. He looked at Reacher and said, ‘OK, I know a guy. We’ll get this done. But it’s better that you’re not there. So go wait for us. We’ll deliver.’
    So Reacher drove back to the Courtyard Marriott and put the Cadillac way in the rear, behind the building itself, where it couldn’t be seen from the front. Safer that way, in case Seth Duncan couldn’t be stopped from getting on the horn and spreading the word. Then he walked back and waited at the lobby desk for the clerk to finish on the phone. He seemed to be taking a couple of bookings from someone. When he was done Reacher bought a night in a ground floor room, which turned out to be way in the back of the H, very quiet and very adequate, very clean and very well equipped, all green and tan colours and brass accents and pale wood. Then forty minutes later Hoag and his partner showed up in a borrowed K-9 van loaded with eleven cardboard cartons of files. Five minutes after that, all eleven cartons were in Reacher’s room.
    And five minutes after that, but sixty miles to the north, the doctor left the motel lounge. He had talked with Vincent a bit, just shooting the shit, but mostly he had drunk three triples of Jim Beam. Nine measures of bourbon, in a little more than an hour. And it was cloudy and going dark, which meant that hisglance up and down the road didn’t reveal what it would have if the sun had been brighter. He climbed into the pick-up truck and started the motor and backed out from his place of concealment. He swung the wheel and crossed the lot and turned right on the two-lane.

TWENTY-EIGHT
    T HE SIX REMAINING C ORNHUSKERS HAD SPLIT UP AND WERE operating solo. Two were parked north on the two-lane, two were parked south, one was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southeast, and the sixth was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southwest.
    The doctor ran into the two to the north.
    Almost literally. His plan was to dump the truck as soon as he found some neutral no-man’s-land and then walk home cross-country. He was getting his bearings and looking around as he drove, staring left and right, the bourbon making him slow and numb. His gaze came back to the traffic lane and he saw he was about one second away from colliding head-on with another truck parked half on and half off the shoulder. It was just sitting there, facing the wrong way, with its lights off. Eyes to brain to hands, everything buffered by the bourbon fog, a split second of delay, a wrench of the wheel, and suddenly he was heading diagonally for another truck parked on the other shoulder, thirty yards farther on. He stamped on the brake and all fourwheels locked up and he skidded and came to a stop more or less sideways.
    The second truck pulled out and blocked the road ahead of him.
    The first truck pulled out and blocked the road behind him.
    In Las Vegas Mahmeini dialled his phone. His main guy answered, eight blocks away, in Safir’s office. Mahmeini said, ‘Change of plan. You two are going to Nebraska, right now. Use the company plane. The pilot will have the details.’
    His guy said, ‘OK.’
    Mahmeini said, ‘It’s a two-part mission. First, find this stranger everybody is talking about and take him out. Second, get close to the Duncans. Build up some trust. Then take out Safir’s guys, and Rossi’s too, so that from this point onward we’re bypassing two links in the chain. In future we can deal direct. Much more profit that way. Much more control, too.’
    His guy said, ‘OK.’
    The doctor sat still behind the wheel, shaking with shock and fear and adrenalin. The Cornhuskers climbed out of their vehicles. Big guys. Red jackets. They walked towards the doctor’s stalled truck, taking it slow and easy, one from the left, one from the right. They stood for a second, one each side of the pick-up’s cab, still and quiet in the afternoon gloom. Then the