Page 13 of The Secret

The guy withthe pen in the car in Annapolis was named Paul Birch. He put his pen away, took out his gun, and turned to his partner, Simon Stainrod. Birch nodded. Stainrod pulled the lever that popped the trunk and the two men climbed out. Stainrod retrieved a tactical battering ram—a heavy metal cylinder nine inches in diameter and eighteen inches long, with two articulated handles fixed to its center line—and they crossed the road, side by side, Birch a couple of feet ahead, six feet apart. They ignored the gate and stepped over the two-foot-high wall. Walked parallel with the path, one on either side, feet in the flower bed, churning up the damp dirt and crushing the shrubs that were growing there. They reached the house and stepped up onto the porch. Stainrod swung the ram back then heaved it forward, hard, waist high, parallel with the ground, gaining momentum as it passed through the air. It slammed into the door near the keyhole for a heavy-looking lock. The wood splintered. The screws tore away from the hinges. The frame ripped off the wall and the door careened back into the hallway like a punch-drunk boxer reeling from a knockout blow. Then it flopped over, landed horizontally, and slid until its top edge was pressed against the foot of a grandfather clock. Stainrod dropped the ram, pulled his gun, and took up a position tucked in tight against the wall near the ruined doorway. Birch ran past him. He left a trail of muddy footprints over the remains of the door, along the hallway, and up the stairs. He knew where the bedroom was. He knew where all the rooms were. He’d memorized a faxed copy of the house’s original design before leaving the Pentagon that evening. He found the right door. Held his flashlight parallel with the barrel of his gun. Kickedthe door open. Burst through. And lined up his gun on the head of the bed.

—

Paying for anight in an airport hotel and only using the room for a couple of hours was not strictly necessary. Not an optimal use of funds. Not the kind of thing Roberta and Veronica Sanson would have considered doing even a month before. But under the circumstances, they figured they could justify it. There were some definite benefits. They could hang out without anyone seeing them together. They could order food from room service and eat without the risk of other restaurant guests remembering either of them. And very soon—maybe in only a few days’ time—they were going to be rich, so the cost aspect was essentially a nonissue.

How rich they were going to be was yet to be determined. But when Owen Buck’s investigator had tracked them down, and they had verified his bona fides, and Buck had tried to salve his dying conscience by revealing what had happened in India back in ’69, he had left them with no doubt. A heap of cash was out there. The way they saw things, it had their names on it. They were entitled to it. They were going to take it. And that would be a fitting way to round off what was needed to right the wrong that Buck swore had been done to them.

—

It took Bircha moment to register the fact, but the bed was empty. He checked all four corners of the room. The bathroom. Under the bed. Inside the closet. And found no one. He cleared the other upstairs rooms. There were two more bedrooms and another bathroom, but no sign of Pritchard and no indication that anyone else lived there. So Birch went back downstairs. He stopped in thehallway and shot a glance at Stainrod. Stainrod shook his head. Birch moved on and searched the living room. The dining room. The kitchen. A tiny laundry room. And finally the garage.

There was no sign of Pritchard in any of them.

Birch returned to the hallway and used his radio to call the pair who were watching the back of the house. He said, “Anything?”

The reply was loud and clear. “Nada.”

“Are you certain?”

“One hundred percent.”

“OK. One of you come inside. Help me search. Pritchard must be hiding. He must have a bolt-hole somewhere. In the crawl space. The attic. A hollow wall. Somewhere. And he must still be here. His bed hasn’t been laid in. His closet is full of clothes. I saw a bunch of suitcases still in there, too. His car is in the garage. And we know he didn’t leave on foot. So we need to find him. Immediately.”

—

The sisters ate,and talked, and watched TV, and took turns showering, and were ready to leave the hotel by 11:30p.m. That gave them a half-hour cushion in case Riccardo’s shift finished late. Veronica left first. She walked down the stairs, strolled through the deserted lobby, crossed to the courtesy bus stop, and waited ten minutes for a ride to the airport’s departure terminal. Then she made her way straight to arrivals and found the passenger pickup area.

Roberta stayed in the room another five minutes then headed outside, to the valet stand. She smiled at the new guy on duty and handed over her stolen collection ticket.

The guy returned with the minivan after fifteen minutes. Roberta gave him an average tip—not memorably big, not unforgettably small—and climbed in behind the wheel. She drove away from thehotel and followed the signs to the airport, and then the arrival terminal. She drifted to a stop by the curb at the far end of the pickup zone and immediately Veronica stepped out from behind a pillar. A moment later she was in the passenger seat. A minute after that Roberta was speeding toward the city, following a route to an address she had memorized before they had arrived in Chicago.

Chapter6

The phone in the Pentagonrang at 9:00a.m.Eastern, the following morning. That was 8:00a.m. Central, where the call originated. Right on time.

The guy who answered listened in silence then hung up, switched to an internal line, and dialed the extension for an office that was one floor higher up and one ring closer to the center of the building.

Stamoran picked up immediately. He said, “Is it done?”

“Neville Pritchard is not in custody,” the guy recited. “Repeat, not. He was positively identified, alone, at his home, but in the short time between confirming the sighting and the team gaining entry, he disappeared. How he evaded capture is unknown. His current whereabouts are unknown. Records indicate he received no phone calls prior to the raid. No other signals were observed or detected. Therefore he is believed to be acting alone. Attempts to locate him are ongoing with the utmost urgency.”

Stamoran laid the receiver down, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and silently cursed. He should have sent snipers, notnursemaids. Especially not nursemaids who somehow tipped their hand in the middle of a simple snatch job. Which they must have done. There was no other explanation. Pritchard had been alone. No one had contacted him. The report made that clear.

Stamoran took a long, slow breath. He tried to view the situation rationally. The news wasn’t great. They didn’t have Pritchard. But equally, the news wasn’t terrible. There was no reason to believe that Pritchard had been captured. He was just in the wind. So whoever was going after the scientists from ’69 didn’t have him, either. The secret was safe. For now.

Stamoran opened his eyes and picked up the phone. “I want the team from last night to understand they have one chance to redeem themselves. I want two additional units assigned. The best we have. I want Pritchard found. Like, yesterday. And when he is found, if he tries to run again, I want him stopped. By any means necessary.”

—

Sergeant Hall wasalready at her post at Rock Island Arsenal. She was set for a busy morning. A truck was due in from Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Paperwork was going to be involved, followed by some manual labor. It was a process Hall was familiar with. She had gone through it more than seventy times in the last year. She knew exactly what to expect so was already at the guard post at the base’s main entrance, waiting, when the M35 Deuce and a Half rumbled into sight, looking tired and worn in its faded desert-sand paint job.

Hall waited for the gate to clank back into place behind the truck then climbed into her Humvee and led the way to the storeroom Reacher had visited the previous day. It was a step called for by regulations, not necessity. The sergeant who was driving the truck had pulled that duty more than fifty times. He could have followedthe route with his eyes shut but was required to have an escort for as long as he was on-site. He didn’t mind. And neither did Hall. It was an arrangement that worked very well for both of them.

Hall drove slowly until she reached the front of the building, then parked well clear of the storeroom’s steel door. She walked back, unlocked it, and waited for the truck to grind to a halt. She watched the driver jump out. His name was Chapellier but she privately called himApebecause of his short body, long arms, and hunched gait. He rolled up the flap at the rear of the truck’s canvas cover and opened the metal cage that had been bolted to the load-bed floor. Then together they started to haul out the crates of weapons that had been sent back from the Gulf and stack them up on the storeroom’s Intake shelves. They worked steadily and efficiently and when the truck was empty, they moved straight on to refilling it with the crates from the Red shelves. The ones that held the weapons Hall’s team had earmarked for destruction.

When the final crate had been squared away and the records had been updated and signed and the doors to the storeroom and the truck’s cage had been locked, Hall got back into her Humvee. Her forehead was prickling and she could feel a drop of sweat inching its way down her lower back. She shifted in her seat and watched in her mirror as Chapellier climbed into the truck. She could have made him turn around in the narrow roadway but instead she set off the way they were already facing, planning to loop around and circle back to the guardhouse from the opposite direction. That was the way she always did it. No one watching—in person, or on a screen fed by the site’s network of security cameras—would have been remotely surprised.

Hall’s chosen way out was a little longer than the route they had followed on the way in. It involved passing through a kind of tunnel that had been formed when a set of classrooms had been extendedout over the road due to a lack of space on the site. The covered section was more than 150 feet long. Cameras were lined up along its entire length. There wasn’t an inch that escaped observation.

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