Part 53 (1/2)
”You starting to see a pattern?”
”The last phone was Underwood's. He's dead, so he won't answer. So there's no point calling it.”
Reacher said, ”OK.”
”How long are you going to keep us here?”
”Just a minute more,” Reacher said. He clicked off and laid the phone on the Chevy's dash. Stared out through the winds.h.i.+eld.
Vaughan said, ”You can't do this. It would be murder.”
Reacher said, ”Live by the sword, die by the sword. Thurman should know that quotation better than anyone. It's from the Bible. Matthew, chapter twenty-six, verse fifty-two. Slightly paraphrased. Also, they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Hosea, chapter eight, verse seven. I'm sick of people who claim to live by the scriptures cherry-picking the parts they find convenient, and ignoring all the rest.”
”You could be completely wrong about him.”
”Then there's no problem. Gifts don't explode. We've got nothing to lose.”
”But you might be right.”
”In which case he shouldn't have lied to me. He should have confessed. I would have let him take his chance in court.”
”I don't believe you.”
”We'll never know now.”
”He doesn't seem worried enough.”
”He's used to saying things and having people believe him. And he told me he's not afraid of dying. He told me he's going to a better place.”
”You're not a one-man justice department.”
”He's no better than whoever blew up David's Humvee. Worse, even. David was a combatant, at least. And out on the open road. Thurman is going to have that thing driven to a city somewhere. With children and old people all around. Thousands of them. And more thousands maybe not quite close enough. He's going to put thousands more people in your situation.”
Vaughan said nothing.
”And for what?” Reacher said. ”For some stupid, deluded fantasy.”
Vaughan said nothing.
Reacher checked the final number. Entered it into his phone. Held the phone flat on his palm and held it out to Vaughan.
”Your choice,” he said. ”Green b.u.t.ton to make the call, red b.u.t.ton to cancel it.”
Vaughan didn't move for a moment. Then she took her hand off the wheel. Folded three fingers and her thumb. Held her index finger out straight. It was small, neat, elegant, and damp, and it had a trimmed nail. She held it still, close to the phone's LED window.
Then she moved it.
She pressed the green b.u.t.ton.
Nothing happened. Not at first. Reacher wasn't surprised. He knew a little about cell phone technology. He had read a long article, in a trade publication abandoned on an airplane. Press the green b.u.t.ton, and the phone in your hand sends a request by radio to the nearest cell tower, called a base transceiver station by the people who put it there. The phone says:Hey, I want to make a call. The base transceiver station forwards the plea to the nearest base station controller, by microwave if the bean counters got their way during the planning phase, or by fiber optic cable if the engineers got theirs. The base station controller bundles all the near-simultaneous requests it can find and moves them on to the closest mobile switching center, where the serious action starts. The base transceiver station forwards the plea to the nearest base station controller, by microwave if the bean counters got their way during the planning phase, or by fiber optic cable if the engineers got theirs. The base station controller bundles all the near-simultaneous requests it can find and moves them on to the closest mobile switching center, where the serious action starts.
Maybe at this point a ring tone starts up in your earpiece. But it means nothing. It's a placebo. It's there to rea.s.sure you. So far you're not even close to connected.
The mobile switching center identifies the destination phone. Checks if it's switched on, that it's not busy, that it's not set to call divert. Speech channels are limited in number, and therefore expensive to operate. You don't get near one unless there's a viable chance of an answer.
If all is well, a speech channel clicks in. It extends first from your local mobile switching center to its distant opposite number. Maybe by fiber optics, maybe by microwave, maybe by satellite if the distance is great. Then the distant mobile switching center hits up its closest base station controller, which hits up its closest base transceiver station, which emits a radio blast to the phone you're looking for, an 850 megahertz or a 1.9 gigahertz pulse surfing on a perfect spherical wavefront close to the speed of light. A nanosecond later, the circuit is complete. The tone in your ear morphs from phony to real and the target phone starts its urgent ringing.
Total time lag, an average of seven whole seconds.
Vaughan took her finger back and stared forward out the winds.h.i.+eld. The Chevy's engine was still running and the wipers were still beating back and forth. The winds.h.i.+eld smeared in perfect arcs. There was still a little protective wax on the gla.s.s.
Two seconds.
”Nothing,” Vaughan said.
Reacher said, ”Wait.”
Four seconds.
Five.
They stared into the distance. The blue arena lights hung and s.h.i.+mmered in the wet air, pale and misty, fractured by intervening raindrops like twinkling starlight.
Six seconds.
Seven.