Part 26 (2/2)
There was no military presence east of Despair or west of the fork, across the weak parts of the road.
The MP base straddled the strong part.
The truck route.
Close to Despair, but not too close.
Not sealing the town like a trap, but guarding one direction only and leaving the other wide open.
The base was equipped with six up-armored Humvees, each one an eight-ton rhinoceros, each one reasonably fast and reasonably maneuverable, each one topped with a belt-fed 7.62-caliber M60 machine gun on a free-swinging mount.
Why all that?
Reacher lay in bed and closed his eyes and heard barking voices from the Rucker cla.s.srooms:This is what you know. What's your conclusion?
His conclusion was that n.o.body was worried about espionage.
He got out of bed at four o'clock and took another long hot shower. He knew he was out of step with the Western world in terms of how often he changed his clothes, but he tried to compensate by keeping his body scrupulously clean. The motel soap was white and came in a small thin paper-wrapped morsel, and he used the whole bar. The shampoo was a thick green liquid in a small plastic bottle. He used half of it. It smelled faintly of apples. He rinsed and stood under the water for a moment more and then shut it off and heard someone knocking at his door. He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded across the room and opened up.
Vaughan.
She was in uniform. Her HPD cruiser was parked neatly behind her. She was staring in at him, openly curious. Not an unusual reaction.Look at yourself. What do you see? He was a spectacular meso-morph, built of nothing except large quant.i.ties of bone and sinew and muscle. But with his s.h.i.+rt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts, plus a dimpled .38 bullet hole in the left center of his chest, and a wicked spider web of white lacerations low down on the right side of his abdomen, all criss-crossed and puckered by seventy clumsy st.i.tches done quick and dirty in a mobile army surgical hospital. Souvenirs, in the first instance of childhood mayhem, in the second of a psychopath with a small revolver, and in the third, shrapnel from a bomb blast. Survivable, because childhood mayhem was always survivable, and because the .38 that hit him had been packed with a weak load, and because the shrapnel had been someone else's bone, not white-hot metal. He had been a lucky man, and his luck was written all over his body. He was a spectacular meso-morph, built of nothing except large quant.i.ties of bone and sinew and muscle. But with his s.h.i.+rt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts, plus a dimpled .38 bullet hole in the left center of his chest, and a wicked spider web of white lacerations low down on the right side of his abdomen, all criss-crossed and puckered by seventy clumsy st.i.tches done quick and dirty in a mobile army surgical hospital. Souvenirs, in the first instance of childhood mayhem, in the second of a psychopath with a small revolver, and in the third, shrapnel from a bomb blast. Survivable, because childhood mayhem was always survivable, and because the .38 that hit him had been packed with a weak load, and because the shrapnel had been someone else's bone, not white-hot metal. He had been a lucky man, and his luck was written all over his body.
Ugly, but fascinating.
Vaughan's gaze traveled upward to his face.
”Bad news,” she said. ”I went to the library.”
”You get bad news at libraries?”
”I looked at some books and used their computer.”
”And?”
”Trichloroethylene is called TCE for short. It's a metal degreaser.”
”I know that.”
”It's very dangerous. It causes cancer. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, all kinds of cancers. Plus heart disease, problems with the nervous system, strokes, liver disease, kidney disease, even diabetes. The EPA says a concentration of five parts per billion is acceptable. Some places have been measured twenty or thirty times worse than that.”
”Like where?”
”There was a case in Tennessee.”
”That's a long way from here.”
”This is serious, Reacher.”
”People worry too much.”
”This isn't a joke.”
He nodded.
”I know,” he said. ”And Thurman uses five thousand gallons at a time.”
”And we drink the groundwater.”
”You drink bottled water.”
”Lots of people use tap.”
”The plant is twenty miles away. There's a lot of sand. A lot of natural filtration.”
”It's still a concern.”
Reacher nodded. ”Tell me about it. I had two cups of coffee right there. One in the restaurant and one at the judge's house.”
”You feel OK?”
”Fine. And people seem OK here.”
”So far.”
She went quiet.
He said, ”What else?”
”Maria is missing. I can't find her anywhere. The new girl.”
42
Vaughan hung around in the open doorway and Reacher grabbed his clothes and dressed in the bathroom. He called out, ”Where did you look?”
”All over,” Vaughan called back. ”She's not here in the motel, she's not in the diner, she's not in the library, she's not out shopping, and there isn't anywhere else to go.”
”Did you speak to the motel clerk?”
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