Page 89 of No Plan B

There was theoretically room in it for three cars but two of the bays were taken up by weight-lifting equipment. There were pictures on the wall of Harold in weird spandex outfits grappling with all kinds of heavy objects. Tractors. Tires. Farm animals. A wheel of cheese. Reacher had questions. The third vehicle bay was empty. There were oil stains on the floor. The remains of a paint spill. Dried-up residue from other fluid leaks. But no logbook. No meticulous records had been kept. Probably no meaningful maintenance had ever taken place in there. Reacher crossed to the tiny worktable. He took a knife. A screwdriver. A hammer. And a roll of duct tape.

When he was back in the car Reacher took all the remaining cash out of the wallets in the pillowcase. He rolled it up, secured it with the elastic band he had taken, and put it in his pocket. He emptied everything out of the pillowcase except for the tools and the SIG. Slung the lanyard with the ID on it around his neck. And drove to the prison.

—

The little crowdhad disappeared. So had the security guards and the camera operators. The only people left outside the prison were the contractors, who were strolling around, shifting the chairs, and stacking the dismantled pieces of fence. The tent was still obscuring the entrance, though it was less rigid than it had been. Its roof was sagging and its sides were billowing in the breeze. The surface of the stage had been removed. It was piled up in the back of a truck that was sitting next to the exposed framework. Reacher parked next to the truck. He climbed out of the BMW and started to march around and stare at the contractors like a boss. The contractors looked away and pretended they hadn’t seen him.

Reacher made his way to the entrance, leaned down like he was inspecting something, and gently set the roll of money on its side,next to the fence. Then he strolled back toward the BMW. When he was close he turned to the nearest trio of contractors.

“Hey,” Reacher yelled. “You three. Stop loafing around. Get that tent taken down. We’ve got visitors coming soon. How are they supposed to get to the entrance?”

The contractors grumbled and muttered and drifted away to do as they’d been told. Reacher took the pillowcase from the car and carried it to the truck by the stage. He opened the door and put it on the passenger seat. Then he stood back and watched the contractors. He waited. After a couple of minutes one of them noticed the wad of cash. He stepped closer to it. He leaned down to pick it up. But his greed and surprise had overridden his memory. He’d gotten too close to the fence. The sensors under the ground detected his footsteps. They fired off instant signals to the security computers in the control room. A klaxon sounded. Red lights flashed. All the floodlights in the complex came on at once. And all the nearby cameras rotated on their posts to give the operators the clearest possible view of the cause of the problem.

—

Reacher jumped inbehind the wheel of the truck, fired it up, and backed across to a spot near the fence at the foot of the closest watchtower. He grabbed the pillowcase. Gripped it in his teeth. Scrambled onto the truck’s roof. Stretched up and took hold of the railing at the top of the tower’s half wall. He pushed with his legs. Pulled with his arms. Poured himself headfirst over the railing. And was met by no one. There was no guard in the tower. No one with a gun or a uniform was in sight.

Reacher peered over the tower wall on the prison side of the fence. The grass triangle was below him, ahead around sixty degrees. It looked as green and lush as it had from the outside. From the higherelevation he could see the bricks surrounding it were painted red. A sign for people to keep away from it. Because of its purpose. It was a pit for guards to fire warning shots into. Its ground was soft. It was absorbent. It posed no danger of ricochets. There had been at least one riot recently. Hannah had told him about it. But there was no bullet damage in the neatly manicured grass. Therefore the towers were no longer used, except as window dressing when Hix was staging a publicity stunt. The heavy lifting in the world of surveillance was done by electronics now. Cameras and sensors. Reacher smiled to himself. It was like they used to say in the army. Sometimes there’s no substitute for the Eyeball, Human, Mark One.

Chapter43

The watchtowers were no longerregularly used, but they were still connected to the meshed-in walkways that crisscrossed the prison site. Reacher climbed down the ladder and started toward the building that housed the control center. He knew where it was because he had made Hix draw a diagram.

Reacher passed through five doors along the way. They were all secured. Hix’s ID card opened all of them. The final one was the control center itself. Beyond that point the doors were designated operational, not administrative. That meant they could only be operated remotely. Which was the whole point of Reacher’s visit.

There were two people on duty when Reacher entered the control room. Both men. Both in their late fifties. Both with enough miles on the clock to make sound decisions in times of stress. That was the theory. A hypothesis based more on the likelihood of escape attempts and riots than a one-man incursion. Even an incursion by one man who could do as much damage on his own as a medium-sized riot. But either way the theory held water. Reacher gave the guysinstructions. They followed to the letter without argument. They didn’t even balk when Reacher locked them in the storage cupboard and broke the key in the outside of the lock.

Reacher checked the display on the access control panel. It was rudimentary, but easy to interpret. The symbols representing all the doors between the control center and the segregation unit S1 were green. The other doors were all red. That was what he wanted to see so Reacher took the hammer from the pillowcase and smashed the controls. Then he smashed all the CCTV monitors. There was no way he would be able to disable all the cameras on his route. Not easily. And not quickly. But there was no sense in leaving any potential relief crew with the ability to use any of them.

There were five more doors to pass through before Reacher would get to Begovic’s cell. The first two were in sections of the mesh walkway. Reacher was completely exposed while he was in there. He was in the heart of enemy territory. Massively outnumbered. Completely outgunned. If either of the doors didn’t open he would have a serious problem. Or if there was some anti-infiltration system he was unaware of, ready to kick in and trap him. Or a backup control panel. Or an automatic reset procedure. He knew there were all kinds of ways he might not leave the place alive.

Reacher approached the first door slowly. Calmly. He stretched out a hand. Pushed. The door swung open. So did the second. The third led from the mesh walkway to a covered corridor. A smaller space. Completely enclosed. He would be like a rat caught in a drainpipe if the doors froze. The third opened. So did the fourth, which led into the segregation unit itself. Reacher was at the center of the cross, on the first floor. Above him were the three rooms that formed the unit’s command hub. In the middle of each wall a door led to one of the cell wings. Reacher needed the west wing. He identified the door. The fifth. He pushed. It opened.

Reacher paused and looked at each cell door in turn. There were sixteen. Fifteen of these were always unlocked because the wing was not officially in commission. It was only being used for under-the-table projects. Hix had sworn that Begovic would be the only person locked up in there. But if he had tucked a couple of tame psychopaths away in the place, Hix might have thought it was a lie he could get away with.

Reacher listened. He picked up the sound of someone moving. Two people. In the first cell on his right. W1. Hix had described it as a transport preparation area. The door was standing open an inch. Reacher pushed it the rest of the way. Inside, there was an operating table. A metal trolley covered with surgical tools. A cabinet full of drugs. Two drip stands. A heart monitor. A person-sized metal box with a 12V car-style battery at one end to power the system that controlled its internal temperature, like a futuristic travel coffin. A defibrillator mounted on the wall. And two men wearing scrubs.

One of the men grabbed a scalpel from the trolley and lunged at Reacher. Straight forward. Going for Reacher’s gut. But with no power. No venom. The guy was no knife fighter. That was for sure. Reacher knocked his arm aside, continued to spin, building momentum, and punched the guy just below his ear. The force hurled him across the operating table and into the narrow gap next to the wall.

Reacher turned to the other guy. He was standing with his hands up. He said, “Don’t hurt me. I won’t cause you any trouble. I’ll do anything you want.”

“You’re getting ready toprepareBegovic?”

“I guess. They don’t tell us names.”

“You’re going to chop him up?”

“God, no. The buyer does that. We send the bodies out whole.”

“Who’s the buyer?”

“I don’t know.”

Reacher stepped closer.

The guy said, “I swear. It’s way above my pay grade. But there’s a rumor. This one’s going to our biggest customer. They work out of a ship. Off the Jersey coast. In international waters. Where there are no regulations.”

“So the guys on the ship cut him up. And do what? Store his body parts until they’re needed?”

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