Worth Dying For
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE SIX REMAINING CORNHUSKERS 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 four wheels 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 first guy opened the passenger door, and the second guy opened the driver’s door. The guy at the passenger door stood ready to block an escape, and the guy at the driver’s door reached inside and hauled the doctor out by the collar of his coat. The doctor went down like a dead weight, straight to the blacktop, and the guy hauled him up again and hit him hard in the gut and then turned him around and hit him twice more, low in the back, right over his kidneys. The doctor fell to his knees and puked bourbon on the road.
The guy who had been waiting at the passenger door walked back to his vehicle and parked it where it had been before. Then he put the doctor’s truck right behind it. He rejoined his buddy and between them they wrestled the doctor up into the cab of the first guy’s truck. Then they drove away, one on the right, one on the left, with the doctor jammed between them on the three-person bench, shaking and shivering, his chin on his chest.
In Las Vegas Safir dialled his phone, and his guy answered, in Rossi’s office, six blocks away. Safir said, ‘New developments. I’m sending you two to Nebraska. I’ll fax the details to the airport.’
His guy said, ‘OK.’
Safir said, ‘Rossi’s guys will meet you at the hotel. Mahmeini is sending guys too. The six of you will work together until the stranger is down. In the meantime try and get something going with the Duncans. Build a relationship. Then take Rossi’s guys out. That way we’re one step closer to the motherlode. We can double our margin.’
His guy said, ‘OK.’
‘And if you get the chance, take Mahmeini’s guys out too. I think I can get next to his customer. I mean, where else can he get stuff like this? We could maybe quadruple our margin.’
His guy said, ‘OK, boss.’
The Cornhuskers drove south, five fast miles, and then they slowed and turned in on the Duncans’ shared driveway. The doctor looked up at the change of speed and direction and moaned a strangled inarticulate sigh and closed his eyes and dropped his head again. The guy on his right smacked an elbow in his ribs. He said, ‘You need to get that voice working better, my friend. Because you’ve got some explaining to do.’
They took it slow all the way up to the houses, formal and ceremonial, mission accomplished, and they parked out front and got out and hauled their prize out after them. They marched him to Jacob Duncan’s door and knocked. A minute later Jacob Duncan opened it up and one of the Cornhuskers put his hand flat on the doctor’s back and shoved him inside, and said, ‘We found this guy using the truck we lost. He put his own damn plates on it.’
Jacob Duncan looked at the doctor for ten long seconds. He raised his hand and patted him gently on the cheek. Pale skin, damp and clammy, lumps and bruises. Then he bunched the front of the doctor’s shirt in his fist and dragged him farther into the hallway. He turned and pushed him onward, through the dark depths of the house, towards the kitchen in back. Their prisoner, in the system.
Jacob Duncan turned back to the Cornhuskers.
‘Good work, boys,’ he said. ‘Now go finish the job. Find Reacher. He’s on foot again, clearly. If the doctor knows where he is, he’s sure to tell us soon, and we’ll let you know. But in the meantime, keep looking.’
Roberto Cassano was still in Jacob Duncan’s kitchen. Angelo Mancini was still in there with him. They saw the sadsack doctor stumble in from the hallway, all drunk and raggedy and terrified, with Mancini’s earlier handiwork still clearly visible all over his face. Then Cassano’s phone rang. He checked the screen and saw that it was Rossi calling and he stepped out the back door and walked across the weedy gravel. He hit the button and raised the phone and Rossi said, ‘Complications.’
Cassano said, ‘Such as?’
‘I had to calm things down at this end. It was getting out of control. I had to talk to people, change a few perceptions. Long story short, you’re getting reinforcements. Two of Safir’s guys, and two of Mahmeini’s.’
‘That should shorten the process.’
‘Initially,’ Rossi said. ‘But then it’s going to get very difficult. A buck gets ten they’re coming with instructions to cut us out of the chain. Mahmeini is probably looking to cut Safir out too. So don’t let any of them get close to the Duncans. Not for a minute. Don’t let the Duncans make any new friends. And watch your step as soon as the stranger is down. You’re going to have four guys gunning for you.’
‘What do you want us to do?’
‘I want you to stay alive. And in control.’
‘Rules of engagement?’
‘Put Safir’s guys down for sure. That way we remove the link above us. We can sell direct to Mahmeini, at Safir’s prices.’
‘OK.’
‘And put Mahmeini’s guys down too, if you have to, for self-defence. But make sure to make it look like Safir’s guys or the Duncans did it. I still need Mahmeini himself. There’s no wiggle room there. I have no access to the ultimate buyer without him.’
‘OK.’
‘So leave right now. Pull back to the hotel and lie low. You’ll meet the others there, probably very soon. Make contact and make a plan.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
‘The Iranians will claim they are. But they can stick that where the sun don’t shine. You know the people and the terrain. Keep on top of it and be very careful.’
‘OK, boss,’ Cassano said. And two minutes later he and Mancini were back in their rented blue Impala, heading south on the arrow-straight two-lane, sixty miles to go.
The white van was still on Route 3, still in Canada, still heading east, more than halfway across Alberta, with Saskatchewan up ahead. It had just skipped a right turn on Route 4, which led south to the border, where the modest Canadian blacktop ribbon changed to the full-blown majesty of U.S. Interstate 15, which ran all the way to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. The change of status in what had once been the same horse trail was emblematic of the two nations’ sense of self, and as well as that it was taken to be a very dangerous road. It was an obvious artery, with two big prizes at the end of it, and so it was assumed to be monitored very carefully. Which was why the white van had passed up the chance of its speed and convenience and was still labouring east on the minor thoroughfare, towards a small town called Medicine Hat, where it intended to finally turn south and lose itself in the wild country around Pakowki Lake, before finding a nameless rutted track that ran deep into the woods, and all the way to America.