Worth Dying For

have them find him sitting in one of their own cars.
    Which left the Cadillac. Right age, right style. Local plates, neat, discreet, well looked after, clean and polished. Black glass. Practically perfect. A no-brainer. He put his bag on the ground right next to it and dropped flat and shuffled on his back until his head was underneath the engine. He had a tiny LED Mag-lite on his key chain, and he fumbled it out and lit it up and went hunting. Cars of that generation had a modulebolted to the frame designed to detect a frontal impact. A simple accelerometer, with a two-stage function. Worst case, it would trigger the airbags. Short of that, it would unlock the doors, so that first responders could drag dazed drivers to safety. A gift to car thieves everywhere, therefore not much publicized, and replaced almost immediately with more sophisticated systems.
    He found the module. It was a simple tin can, square and small, cheap and basic, all caked in dry dirt, with wires coming out of it. He took out his knife and used the butt end of the handle and banged hard on the module. Dirt flaked off, but nothing else happened. He thought the dirt was maybe insulating the force of the blow, so he popped the blade on his knife and scraped the front of the module clean. Then he closed the blade and tried again. Nothing happened. He tried a third time, hard enough to worry about the noise he was making,
bang
, and the message got through. The Cadillac’s dim electronic brain thought it had just suffered a minor frontal impact, not serious enough for the airbags, but serious enough to consider the first responders. There were four ragged thumps from above, and the doors unlocked.
    Technology. A wonderful thing.
    Mahmeini’s man scrambled out and stood up. A minute later his bag was on the back seat and he was in the driver’s seat. It was set way back. There was enough leg room for a giant. More proof, as if he needed any. Like he had told Rossi’s guy, American peasants were all huge. He found the button and buzzed the cushion forward, on and on, about a foot, and then he jacked the seat back upright and got to work.
    He used the tip of his blade to force the steering lock, and then he pulled off the column shroud and stripped the wires he needed with the knife and touched them together. The engine started and a chime told him he didn’t have his seat belt on. He buckled up and backed out and turned around and waited in the narrow lane parallel to the long side of the H, the engine idling silently, the climate control already warming.
    Then he pulled out his phone and went through the Marriott switchboard, first to Safir’s guys, then to Rossi’s, in both casesfollowing Mahmeini’s script exactly, telling them that plans had changed, that the party was starting early, that he and Asghar were leaving for the north immediately, and that they had five minutes to get their asses in gear, no more, or they would be left behind.
    The SUV was a GMC Yukon, metallic gold in colour, equipped to a high standard with a couple of option packs. It had beige leather inside. It was a nice truck. Certainly the kid called John seemed proud of it, and Reacher could see why. He was looking forward to owning it for the next twelve hours, or however long his remaining business in Nebraska might take.
    He said, ‘Got a cell phone, John?’
    The guy paused a fatal beat and said, ‘No.’
    Reacher said, ‘And you were doing so well. But now you’re screwing up. Of course you’ve got a cell phone. You’re part of an organization. You were on sentry duty. And you’re under thirty, which means you were probably born with a minutes plan.’
    The guy said, ‘You’re going to do to me what you did to the others.’
    ‘What did I do?’
    ‘You crippled them.’
    ‘What were they going to do to me?’
    The guy didn’t answer that. They were on the two-lane road, north of the motel, well out in featureless farm country, rolling steadily along, nothing to see beyond the headlight beams. Reacher was half turned in his seat, his left hand on his knee, his right wrist resting on his left forearm, the Glock held easy in his right hand.
    Reacher said, ‘Give me your cell phone, John.’ He saw movement in the guy’s eyes, a flash of speculation, a narrowing of the lids. Fair warning. The guy jacked his butt off the seat and took one hand off the wheel and dug in his pants pocket. He came out with a phone, slim and black, like a candy bar. He went